Good Natured is arguably the best. You essentially gain more points than you lose. Most people aren't going to use every weapon type in the game so you're really only losing 5-10 points that you would benefit from having while gaining points in skills that you will use the entire game.
Hoarder I forget how it works. isn't it just free carry weight as long as you're carrying something? I think if you've got the repair skill the one that causes increased weapon decay is okay as well? The issue with traits is that it's a first person game and you're not really going to have many options to make the traits meaningful like you would in a CRPG, since most of the combat gameplay. I recently played ATOM RPG and Trudograd and found myself roleplaying as the addicted medic. It was a neat trait in the first game that made you more likely to be addicted but gave you increased medicine. Took it as a roleplay chance and just made my character try to be very adverse to drugs (like a struggling addict). Second game pooed on that quite a bit. They made the perk much better but you essentially *had* to use drugs to make it work. I think it was bonus crit chance while chemmed up, but you were constantly addicted so you had to be using nonstop. Killed the roleplay i had from the first game.
Most games with traits run into the issue of most of them being extremely tedious or unfun for gameplay purposes, and the only reason to pick them is roleplay or extra challenges.
Speaking of, is it me or are most of the traits either ridiculously situational or just plain drawbacks with little to make up for them? Very few of them looked worthwhile to take at all.
A lot of them feel useless on your first playthrough, but some of them become better once you've played through the game once or twice.
Built to Destroy is bad on a first run, but once you've learned how to farm currency and craft weapon repair kits to offset the decreased weapon lifespan (or get Raul as a companion), it becomes a lot more useful.
Good Natured is usually a net positive, since it takes skill points away from all the combat skills and puts them into the five most useful non-combat skills, but most players use one or at most two combat skills so you can eliminate the practical downside on your first level-up.
Skilled is bugged, where you can take it again when you leave Goodsprings and get to rebuild your character, and a third time when the Autodoc in Old World Blues lets you re-roll your traits, and the +5 to all skills stacks each time, but the 10% decrease in XP gain doesn't. If you're not as averse to using exploits as I am, that's +10 to all skills at the start of the game, raised to +15 in the midgame, all for a 10% decrease in XP earned in a game where XP is not hard to come by.
The downside to Small Frame can be mostly neutralized in Goodsprings by jumping off a cliff to break your legs, then sleeping in a bed to fully heal, until you've broken a total of 50 bones and get the Tough Guy challenge perk that reduces limb damage.
Logan's Loophole gives you full immunity to addiction and doubles the duration of all consumables (not just chems, like the description says, so your Stealth Boys will also last twice as long) at the cost of capping your level progression at 30 instead of 50. You can completely counteract this by completing Old World Blues, then return and use the Sink's Autodoc to remove it or replace it with another trait just before hitting level 30.
Since this is your first playthrough, I'll give you one important warning: When you enter a casino and turn over your weapons, there's a bug that causes your companion's weapon to be permanently lost, so be sure to put their weapons into your inventory before entering.
Get Vigilant Recycler and start taking trips to workbenches or you will probably end up rather sad until you get Brotherhood access, start buying out Van Graff stock, or go to the Big Empty.
Speaking of, is it me or are most of the traits either ridiculously situational or just plain drawbacks with little to make up for them? Very few of them looked worthwhile to take at all.
