The game seems balanced so that any character build can win the game but i think intelligence is important if you want to see and do everything. Some recipes require 90 science, so i eventually try to get my science up there, medicine and survival increase the healing effects from stimpacks and food and unlock some perks and recipes. If you have 80 + the comprehension perk, reading a skill magazine will temporarily boost it to 100 to help you in those rare instances you find a very hard lock.

I also usually raise my lockpicking to 75 very early on because i want to be able to pick each lock as i come up to it instead of having to backtrack and remember where they are later. There is a perk you can take that caps your xp level at 30, i guess for the greater challenge, but all your skills will be 100 if you do everything you're gonna be maxed out or close to maxed out.Ī good balance of skills might be necessary if someone wanted to do some sort of 'Challenge run' where they leveled up as little as possible and only stuck to the main questline but i never played that way, i like to see and do everything so i don't really worry about my skill levels, although seeing as you can find 4 of each skill book and an addition 1-2 in the dlc packs, i try not to level any skill past 80 at least until i find the skill books. Raising guns, increases the dps and your accuracy in vats, but i find i don't need to use vats that often, i usually run and run and use iron sights and save vats for when the enemy is really close to me and when they are that close i get 95% accuracy anyway.

I plan to raise repair to 90 by level 14 because i like the jury rigging perk. Right now on my second playthrough, i am level 12 and i have 50 speech and 80 repair, 70 science.

i think the only speech challenges that require 100 are at the very end of the game and they are optional, not really needed. I actually don't raise my speech until much later, most speech challenges are in the 50-75 range.

Fallout new vegas speech magazine