Demolition Expert is a Fallout 2, Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4 and Fallout Tactics perk. It is also a skill that was to appear in the canceled Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 (skills in this game work like perks do in other Fallout games).
Fallout 2 and Fallout Tactics
“You are an expert when it comes to the fine art of handling explosives. They always go off when they're supposed to, as well as causing extra damage.”— Fallout 2 In-game description
For characters that like to blow things up, there is nothing better than this perk. Explosives set by this character do more damage and always detonate on time.
In Fallout 2, dynamite and plastic explosives cause an additional 10 points of damage.
Fallout 3
With each rank of this perk, your character will do 20% more damage with mines and grenades.
Affected weapons
Although weapons such as the missile launcher and Fat Man fire explosive projectiles, they are considered Big Guns and are not affected by this perk. However, the Fallout 3 Official Game Guide claims that the perk does work on missile launchers.
Bugs
The Nuka-grenade is not affected by this perk. [verified]- Grenades and mines used within the Anchorage Reclamation simulation are not affected by this perk.[verified]
Fallout: New Vegas
With each rank of this perk, your character will do 20% more damage with all weapons governed by the Explosives skill.
Note that this damage bonus only affects the actual explosive part of the weapon's damage, not the physical impact. For grenades and mines this is a negligible difference as they typically only deal 5 physical throwing damage at most. But for a Fat Man (GRA) it is much more significant as 400 of its 1000 base damage is from the physical impact.
Affected weapons
Prior to patch 1.4.0.5xx, the Demolitions Expert perk only applied to weapons listed in a specific Form List, which contained a few notable (and undesired) omissions. The patch subsequently expanded the Demolitions Expert perk to apply to all weapons governed by the Explosives skill, unique, DLC, or otherwise. For reference, a full listing of Explosives-skill weapons follows.
Fallout 4
Demolition Expert increases the damage dealt by thrown grenades, mines, explosive weapons such as the missile launcher and Fat Man (these also stack with the Heavy Gunner Perk) and even the legendary Explosive prefix.
However, it does not increase the secondary damage dealt by said weapons (e.g. a grenade that deals 2 types of damage). In this case, it will only increase the damage of the first type. That also means that this perk does not increase the damage of pulse mines and pulse grenades because they only deal secondary energy damage.
| Rank | Requirements | Description | Base ID |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | PER 5 | The bigger the boom, the better! Your explosives do 25% more damage, and you can craft explosives at any Chemistry Station. | 0004C923 |
| 2 | PER 5, LVL 10 | Your explosives do 50% more damage, and grenades gain a throwing arc. | 0004C924 |
| 3 | PER 5, LVL 22 | Your explosives do 75% more damage and affect a larger area. | 0004C925 |
| 4 | PER 5, LVL 34 | Your explosives now do double damage. Mines and grenades shot in V.A.T.S explode for double damage, too. | 00065E13 |
Notes
- The "gain a throwing arc" for rank 2 actually means that when your player character primes a grenade, a giant green arrow will show the trajectory and initial landing point for that grenade. It does not account for successive bounces, but even still can be a great aid in successfully using grenades, especially since grenades cannot be used in VATS anymore.
- Since it's not completely clear from the rank descriptions, ranks higher than 1 are still needed to unlock successively more advanced crafting recipes.
- Rank 3 adds 25% explosion radius.
- This perk does NOT affect the "Explosive Vent" power armor mods.
- It does, however, affect the "Explosive" legendary weapon effect to great effect. See the respective page for details.
- It also affects artillery strikes.
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2
 | The following is based on Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 design documents and is not canon. |
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Increased Critical Chance to all explosive weapons.[1]
| End of information based on Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel 2 design documents and is not canon |
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References
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