A first-time Fallout player found 10,000 caps in the first hour – and it's not a bug, it's a rare Luck 10 event

The Luck stat in the Fallout series is more than just a number on a character sheet. It's a system that literally rewrites the rules depending on how many points you invest in it, producing some of the most memorable and hilarious moments across the entire franchise. A recent Reddit post about a first-time player stumbling upon nearly 11,000 caps in the opening hour of the original Fallout reminded the community just how thoroughly Luck can break a playthrough.

In the original Fallout, the Luck stat directly determines what's inside the crate next to an overturned Nuka-Cola truck in the wasteland – one of the game's special random encounters. At Luck 10, the player walks away with 10,765 caps; at Luck 1, they get exactly one. If the character has the Fortune Finder perk, that amount doubles.

Interestingly, the developers originally planned a special outcome for low-Luck characters – the crate would be stuffed with bottle caps from a fictional soda called "Shaft-Cola," completely worthless as currency. The idea never made it into the final game, which is a shame, since it fits perfectly with the humor of the original titles.

Beyond the truck, high Luck – not necessarily 10 – in Fallout also unlocks an encounter with a crashed UFO, where players can pick up an alien blaster, one of the best weapons in the game. The catch: it has an effective range of just 10 hexes.

Fallout 2 expanded on the Luck mechanics further. High Luck combined with the Gambling skill opened the door to infinite cap farming at casinos – the game's economy essentially stopped being balanced at that point.

That game also features a ghoul named Typhon whose buried stash of caps from a previous era can be found as a standalone quest – but by the time a player gets there, those caps are already worthless, since the economy has shifted to NCR dollars. A funny inversion of the same truck mechanic.

Fallout: New Vegas, however, became the true playground for Luck experimentation. The stat works in virtually every corner of the game. With Luck 9, the Courier can perform brain surgery on Caesar to remove a tumor – even with low Medicine, because it's a separate Luck 9 check, not a Medicine check.

The scene ends with Vulpes Inculta's line:

"That was... incredible. How did you do that?"
"I have no idea."

With Luck 7, simply saying "ice cream" to the security robot at REPCONN headquarters is enough to get waved through without a single question. Interestingly, you can also get past it with Intelligence 2 or lower!

In the New Vegas casinos, high Luck turns Blackjack into a near-predictable affair. At Luck 10, cards fall so favorably that players win 6–7 times out of 10 and can get themselves banned from most casinos within 10–15 minutes if they push it.

The Ultra-Luxe bans players after winning 15,000 chips, the Tops at 10,000, and Gomorrah at 9,000. Getting banned from every casino is its own achievement in the game, and with Luck 10, it can be wrapped up in a single evening.

There's also a great line from Doc Mitchell during character creation if you max out Luck – he notes that bullets tend to turn around and crawl back into the barrel when someone shoots at people like you.

So if you want a fresh take on Fallout, especially the games made by the original developers, do yourself a favor and pump that Luck stat.