I don't recall the earliest you can get spiked knuckles. They tend to stay unconscious for a while and once they're on the ground you can repeatedly punch them in the eyes and have a ~95% chance of connecting. One other piece of advice: if you find yourself fighting multiple opponents in metal armor focus on knocking them all out before finishing them off. But for some reason using the brass knuckless seems to substantially decrease the liklihood of landing those devestating crits that knock guys down or out or cripple limbs. Why bare fisted? In terms of hp, brass knuckles definitely do more damage. If you're forced to a fight someone in metal armor before getting either of these two weapons I recommend fighting bare fisted (no brass knuckles) and going for head (not eye) shots until you crit and knock him/her unconsious. In the early game, one thing that can be problematic is people wearing metal armor. The first "good" weapons are the combat knife and spiked knuckles. There are a plethora of close combat weapons in Fallout 2. Obviously you get the damage boost but you'll do the following things significantly more often: cripple limbs, knock opponents down, knock opponents unconscious (head shots), and blind them (eye shots).
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Also, before getting decent weapons eight strength helps tremendously as your hits tend to be much more devestating.
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To me though, starting a close combat character with low strength isn't really in the spirit of the build. Many consider more than five or six points in strength to be a waste.and on some level they’re right. If you want to save a perk lower strength to 7 and raise agility to 10.
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Most likely money will not be a problem though, as you'll be selling 99% of all weapons and ammo you find. This will make a huge difference in your selling prices. At some point you may want to consider spending a few points just to get it to 0 or even 10%. The low charisma means your barter will be in the negatives to start with. By the end of the game you'll have so many hit and action points this basically won't matter. This build has some obvious deficiencies.