Rad Absorption (Broken Steel)

 is a perk added to Fallout 3 with the Broken Steel add-on. It makes a reappearance in Fallout: New Vegas.

Fallout 3
With this perk, your radiation level will decrease by 1 rad every 60 seconds (game time) so long as the player is not currently being exposed to radiation (standing in radioactive water, for instance). Waiting one hour will heal 60 rads, meaning that waiting 17 hours will reduce your rad count to zero from any amount. The rate also applies to fast travel, sleeping and using the wait function itself.

This perk is useful in preventing rad build up, which combined with a high radiation resistance can reduce incidences of serious radiation poisoning to few and far between. It synchronizes well with Solar Powered for healing minor health damage and minor radiation poisoning during daylight hours. It also makes most radiation gained from consumables entirely negligible, allowing even the potent slop served in The Pitt to be a useful alternative to stimpaks.

Much of the perk's effectiveness is negated by the My First Infirmary present in the player's house. Since most missions can be postponed, it is often simpler to return home to clear rad buildup rather than wait it out. In addition, players who rarely sleep will find much less benefit to it.

Fallout: New Vegas
This perk functions similarly to the one in Fallout 3, but is only one-tenth as effective (6 rads per 60 seconds, or 6 rads per 1 hour in-game). This is compounded by the fact that RadAway is much less common, and less effective without high Medicine. Similarly, rads removed with food are far less effective without the use of high Survival. Finally, there is no free rad removal tool like the infirmary in Fallout 3. As in Fallout 3, unless Dead Money is installed which gives players a free, unlimted supply of RadAway from the Sierra Madre vending machines with the correct holodisk, it will more or less negate rad buildup from food and water, which is especially useful in Hardcore mode. However, the high level necessary to obtain the perk makes it of somewhat questionable usefulness, as any player at that high a level will likely be rich enough to afford virtually limitless doctor visits.

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