A core part of every Fallout game is a colorful cast of companions players can take with them on their adventures. Fallout New Vegas has some of the best, but it’s hard to know who are the best and the worst when you’ve not traveled with them for a while.
As you travel around the Mojave Wasteland in Fallout New Vegas, you’ll encounter a wide spectrum of characters, all of whom have unique personalities, wants, needs, weapons, and abilities. While many of them are enemies you must kill or persuade to leave you alone, a handful can accompany you for the rest of the game. But you don’t want to get stuck with the wrong ones.
Fallout New Vegas companions ranked best to worst
In the list below, I’ve ranked every Fallout New Vegas companion from best at the top here to worst at the bottom. This list includes permanent followers and only the temporary followers from each DLC. I had to draw the line somewhere, and I’d end up putting The Kings at the top if we included everyone who ever helps The Courier out.
1. Craig Boone
Craig Boone is a complicated character in Fallout New Vegas. As a retired sniper for the NCR, he’s a crack shot and will actually help you spot enemies from ridiculous distance. He’s got a pretty tragic backstory that’s fantastic to explore, adding so much rich history to the game’s world once you unearth it from dialogue options and through time spent together.
Something that I think is both good and bad about this companion is his loyalties. It takes a lot to push him too far, but if you push him, he’s going to explode and just start killing whoever is around. Don’t go into Legion camps with him. To balance this out, he has some fantastic quests you can embark on that deal with that story side of things I mentioned, and you’ll feel like you’ve seen a lot more of the world if you complete them.
2. Rose of Sharon Cassidy
Also known as Cass, this is one of the most charming companions you’ll meet in Fallout New Vegas as you explore the vast open world. She’s the owner of Cassidy Caravans and is the daughter of John Cassidy, an NPC from Fallout 2. She, similar to Boone, is a ranged specialist, but has had a much less harrowing life. Her quests are enjoyable and you’ll end up coming out of them with a buff to your health and a companion who deals a lot more damage with guns.
It helps that Cass has a great voice actor in Rachel Roswell. She’s a great character to have around, thanks to the way she chats about the environment, the enemies you kill, and just the idle chatter you’ll have when you’re venturing around the Mojave.
3. Rex
After playing through most of Fallout 3 and only discovering Dogmeat towards the end of my 200-hour first playthrough, I put in every effort to unlock Rex as a companion as soon as I found him in Fallout New Vegas. He’s a cybernetically-enhanced dog with false limbs and a robo-brain all of his own. He looks like the best boy you could ever hope to have with you.
Few things are better in Fallout games than having a dog companion to help you out in a fight or quest. Rex can sniff out enemies, making one quest in particular much easier, and is a great way to distract groups of foes when they all try to gang up on you. The number of times this dog has saved my hide is more than I can count.
4. ED-E
ED-E is absolutely one of the best companions in any Fallout game, as far as I’m concerned. It’s a prototype Dualframe Eyebot you can find on your journey around the Mojave Wasteland and recruit it once it’s been repaired. ED-E has its own quest for your to tackle, and you’ll find unique interactions around the game world with various people or factions who either want data from it or have seen it before and will fill you in on its backstory.
This companion is particularly useful because it acts like an early-warning signal for enemies. ED-E will start firing before you’ve seen the danger and asks no questions. In some cases, this is a detriment, because you might need to speak to certain foes it starts blasting. It can also be upgraded while you play, adding more benefits to keeping it around.
5. Dean Domino
You’ll find Dean Domino in the Sierra Madre. He’s a famous pre-war lounge singer who was Ghoulified and, when you meet him in the Dead Money DLC, is a pretty nasty person, all things considered. He’s actually responsible for the vocal surgery that Christine Royce was subjected to, all in the name of chasing the treasure at the heart of this expansion.
The Perk Domino bestows on the player during the DLC will delay the damage that clouds inflict for a brief moment, enough to get out of them. It might not sound like much, but it’s the journey of acquiring him that’s so much fun. I love having him around, but he really is one of the meanest characters in the Fallout universe. If your character is low-intelligence, they can enrage him through dialogue because they simply won’t be able to speak to him.
6. Raul Alfonso Tejada
The second Ghoul in our list, Raul is a mechanic when you meet him and a former gunslinger of the Mojave Wasteland. He’s a pretty interesting character, because you find him after he’s been captured and downtrodden for years. He’s tolerant of both the NCR and Legion, so he’s a pretty good character to have with you if you’re not sure which side you’re going to lean into when the time comes in the main story.
When following the player, he has a few Perks that will benefit everyone in your party. These are all themed around his life, so he boosts repair skills, repairing a lot of stuff himself, and will offer a bonus to sharpshooting, which is such a massive help in a pinch when you get ambushed out on the road.
7. Lily Bowen
Few companions in Fallout New Vegas are as memorable as Lily Bowen. First of all, she’s a Nightkin, which is an elite Super Mutant variant created by The Master in the original Fallout. As with many characters in this game, she has a tragic backstory that saw her ripped away from her family and ultimately forced to choose between memories of her grandchildren or madness. She chose a bit of both, and that’s when you meet her.
Bowen is a powerful ally, increasing the duration of Stealth Boys by 200%, but she’s also a little bit of a liability. She can be completely crazy, rushing into battle with her custom weapon to rip enemies to shreds, even if you’re trying to sneak around. If you’re going out with her, just be aware that you might need to do some damage control.
8. Christine Royce
Christine Royce is another companion you can only have with you during the Dead Money DLC, though she will also appear in Old World Blues. She’s had an incredibly rough time by the time you encounter her in an Auto-Doc, having been operated on for two weeks solid. Still, she comes out of it determined to see out her goal.
Her Perk specifically helps you with your Bomb Collar in the DLC, so it’s not going to be useful outside of it. However, it’s a useful one to have at the time, and her added firepower is always welcome on your journey through the expansion. The reason to keep her around is, of course, her story, which you can’t help but want to see through far more than the main quest.
9. Arcade Israel Gannon
Arcade Gannon is a great character, one you’ve got to speak to quite a bit before you’ll figure out who he really is and why he’s happy hiding away and doing a job he isn’t necessarily thrilled about. His past means he’s actively hunted by the NCR and doesn’t like talking about himself. However, he’s one of those characters you’ll keep going back to see for various reasons, and each time it’s worth chatting to him to uncover just a little more.
The main benefit to having Gannon as a companion is his Perk, which improves the health regeneration you get from all sources. It’s a small improvement, but an important one you’ll notice through every combat encounter and intense Vault. Swapping other companions out for him if you’re having a hard time in a certain quest is a good move if you want to live.
10. Dog/God
Dog/God are two personalities in the same Nightkin. They were created by the mental instability that followed the destruction of the creature’s former owner: The Master. Dog is a subservient personality who serves only one person in the Dead Money DLC, Father Elijah. However, the God personality can be triggered by playing a Holotape of the character’s voice, and this personality wants the character to be freed from their enslavement.
The most interesting part about this character is that you can gain either personality as a companion. They each have their own Perks that will help you out in a way that’s beneficial within Sierra Madre. I just really love the lore of this Nightkin and having them around, so I can explore every part of it through conversations and quests. They make the DLC much more worth playing if you can get them.
11. Veronica Santangelo
Veronica is a Scribe fo the Brotherhood of Steel and partner to Christine Royce, though the faction split them up as soon as their relationship was discovered. She’s dedicated to her cause but is conflicted about those in leadership. Ultimately she stays, but you’re able to get her to leave and join the Followers of the Apocalypse if they’re who you want to save.
Veronica allows you to craft items through her dialogue, and can even offer you a new Perk if you provide her with some pre-war attire. She’s a great character to talk to and learn about the world from. You’ll also benefit from the added connection of her past when meeting Royce in the DLC, which will definitely make it feel like a much larger experience.
12. Waking Cloud
Waking Cloud is an Honest Hearts companion and one of the first Sorrows converts. She’s got a potentially troubling problem for you, in that you can learn about her husband’s fate and decide if she gets to find out the truth or not. It’s a a great dilemma that fleshes out the DLC. As a companion, she provides a Perk that makes it much easier to sneak past the White Legs, which is incredibly powerful for the expansion’s story. Outside of this, though, she’s nothing special.
13. Follows-Chalk
Follows-Chalk is a very sweet character because he’s quite naive of the world outside of his small region and tribe within the Honest Hearts DLC. Through talking to him, you learn he’s still not earned his chalk, hense his name, and just follows the true hunters in the tribe. In truth, he just wants to see the world, and there’s nothing I love more than telling him he should leave and go and do that.
However, in his brief time as your companion, he’s super useful. When you reach a high point in the DLC’s map, you’ll unlock more of the surrounding map markers because he’s such a great scout. This is amazing if, like me, you enjoy uncovering the entire map in Fallout games and knowing nothing is left undiscovered.
14. Joshua Graham
Graham is also known by a different name: the Burned Man and a former member of Caesar’s Legion. He survived the initial failure at Hoover Dam, was coated in pitch and burned before being thrown into the dam, and somehow survived. He is a living legend, but a questionable soul given his past as the founder of one of the worst factions in Fallout history.
He can take and repair every weapon in the game, and he’s a lot of fun to talk to if you’ve got Legion affiliation or a high Speech skill. He’s also possibly the hardiest character in the Fallout universe. Immune to chems, he removes his bandages every day to replace them with clean ones, feeling the same intense burning pain every time he does. What a trooper.
