Summary
TheFalloutTV series is canon to the games, and so follows a lot of the same logic. We see Lucy casually overcome a stab wound by injecting herself with a stimpack, while her brother Norm breaks into the security system of Vault 33 by selecting from a random string of words.
By that reasoning, Lucy should be levelling up as we do in the games, which begs the question: what level is she now that she’s completed the main quest?
Spoilers for Fallout.
Episode 1
Lucy’s very first objective is to fight the raiders invading Vault 33 and sneak out in search of her kidnapped dad. Since Lucy is using a tranquilizer gun, she doesn’t get a shred of XP from any of the enemies she defeats. To boot, her dad delivers the final blow against her husband-to-be, so she doesn’t even get the XP payout for his death. Already off to a bad start, and her dad is a filthy kill-stealer.
Lucy then tries to convince the rest of the vault to let her leave and look for her father, but she fails the speech check. So, the only XP she gets from the first episode is, unfortunately, earned by finishing her first main quest when she sneaks out of the vault. Going by Fallout 4 mechanics, she gets 200 XP, bringing her up to Level 2.
Episode 2
Episode 2 is where Lucy starts to improve her gains. Let’s say finding a new location gives you an average of 22 XP, in this episode, she immediately runs into a house full of skeletons. Odds are, given that it’s in the middle of the desert, it’d have a map marker. With that, she now needs 253 XP to level up.
Next, she runs into a creepy old man living in the middle of nowhere and a scrap town full of merchants, giving her 44 XP. The Ghoul attacks, Maximus shows up, and she stands guard while Dr. Siggi Wilzig is given a new leg. She doesn’t earn much here, but her and the doctor escaping completes the second quest. That’s another 200 XP.
At the end of the episode, Lucy has to cut the doctor’s head off. Let’s be generous and say that’s a science check, earning her 31 XP. Voila, Lucy has now reached Level 3.
Episode 3
In the next episode, she gets kidnapped by The Ghoul and used as gulper bait. While she manages to fight back and survive, she’s clearly trying a pacifist run and doesn’t actually kill anything. Instead, she remains The Ghoul’s captive until the credits roll - escaping his clutches is her next main quest. That means the only XP she earns in Episode 3 is from discovering the riverside ruins and the rundown desert town, giving her a meager 44 XP.
Episode 4
Lucy and The Ghoul pass the Westside Medical Clinic and enter the Super Duper Mart, giving her another 44 XP. The Ghoul passes out and Lucy ventures inside to find a robot called Snip Snip. Once again, she’s kidnapped, this time by an organ-harvesting robot.
Hardened by the wasteland, Lucy breaks free and lets all the other kidnappees escape. Though still a naive vault dweller, she inadvertently releases a cabal of feral ghouls. This is important, because Lucyfinallygets a kill, ending her pacifist run but finally getting some actual XP. Except feral ghouls aren’t worth much, so she gets a measly eight XP. However, she does complete the quest.
As this is the halfway point, main quest XP is increased. That means she gets 300 XP instead of 200, bringing her up to Level 4.
Episode 5
Lucy now needs 307 XP to level up again. Cue Episode 5. Here, she rescues Maximus from his power armour prison, enlisting him as a companion. So long as she deals 25 percent of damage to any enemy he kills, she will also get the XP. For now, she earns 22 XP for the location discovery.
The two walk along the train tracks until they cross a bridge, giving her another 22 XP. They run into two cannibals who are quickly dispatched by a far less trusting Maximus, but Lucy does no damage to them whatsoever, so she doesn’t earn a slither of XP.
The two then findthe crater of Shady Sands, a big pivotal story location. XP is boosted for these kinds of spots, so she gets a juicy 50 XP. And with a big story revelation that pushes the narrative forward, Lucy wraps up another main quest and earns herself a respectable 350 XP, bringing her to Level 5.
To work out how much XP is needed for each level, I usedthis handy tablefrom Jiiks_.
Lucy and Maximus carefully venture into Hawthorne Medical Laboratories, earning another 22 XP. But as they explore the rundown facility, the two pass out, waking up in Vault 4. The ‘discovery’ earns her a big payout of 50 XP and gets the next main quest rolling.
Episode 6
As Lucy is in Vault 4 for the entire episode, there are no new locations for her to discover. Her only hope is to complete a quest or get a kill. But she does neither. In fact, the closest she comes to getting any experience is by sneaking onto Level 12, but shefailsand gets caught.
Episode 7
Lucy unravels the truth of Vault 4 and is let go, completing another main quest. As we’re nearing the end of the series, she earns a more sizable 400 XP, bringing her to Level 6. The two then discover the radio station for another 22 XP. Being so weak this late in the game is really not okey-dokey, Lucy.
Episode 8
Going into the finale, Lucy needs 594 XP to reach Level 7. This is remarkably low for a Fallout protagonist. But she does get a nice payout of 50 XP for reaching Moldaver’s scraptown.
Here, she hands over the head, listens to Moldaver’s big revelation that her father is a scummy Vault-Tec employee who helped instigate the apocalypse they’re all suffering under, and importantly, completes the main quest!
Lucy gets a delicious 600 XP, bringing her to Level 7. But she doesn’t fight when the Brotherhood of Steel invade (leaving that to The Ghoul), so she earns no extra combat XP aside from a lone feral ghoul she puts out of its misery right at the end. One last fizzle of just eight XP.
Final Tally
Going into the DLC (season two), Lucy needs 669 XP to reach Level 8. It’s safe to say that a gust of strong radioactive wind, let alone a deathclaw or automaton, would be enough to send her back to the main menu. It might be time for her to put that pistol to use and stop relying on her failing charisma checks, because being a pacifist doesn’t get you anywhere in the Wasteland.
Fallout
Fallout is a franchise built around a series of RPGs set in a post-nuclear world, in which great vaults have been built to shelter parts of humankind. There are six main games, various spin-offs, tabletop games, and a TV series from Amazon Studios.
