nothings better than slow walk speed coupled with a fucking encounter every 2 pixels
When I asked how character level affects encounters, Izual said lvl does nothing with that, but when I was 1st-3rd level I had what you have on screen all the time, sometimes I didn't even move 1 pixel, because I simply clicked on world map and
instantly had an encounter without even moving and sometimes even more than 2 times in a row, so I had like 3 encounters on the same pixel of world map, but after 10th-11th level I could easily go from Hub to Vault 13 with only 1-2 encounters, and now I have them really rare, so I'm really happy that I didn't tagged outdoorsman and spent 0 skill points on it, on 1st level I had 22% outdoorsman, now I have the same 22% outdoorsman, but it working strangely better.
Also I have 2nd level alt with almost the same outdoorsman (~20-26 or 28) and he has encounters everywhere, so probably it's just real life luck, but for me character level makes encounters more rare, no, I'm not talking about avoiding them, I'm talking about encounters frequency only, avoiding still the same... with 22% outdoorsman it's a bit rarely, but gives alot XP, so as for me, I still can't find a reason to tag and raise this skill, only if you're taxi-type character, I'm happy with my 22% outdoorsman now, so I simply don't need it, also since wipe I never used TB fight, and really... RT even better than TB, because only few critters running at the same speed as player, and about shooters.. it's not that hard really, just don't run, shoot and stand at the same place and you'll be happy + fights much faster, after wipe I lvling on mutated molerats even faster than pre-wipe because of RT, so right now outdoorsman useless, only again... if you're leader build and simply don't want to spawn on every encounter with whole party.
Edit:
Also forgot to say that I painting stars and other strange figures with red dots on world map on mutated molerats squares, it means that I spending most time on wold map than encounters.. and yes, I have only 22% outdoorsman and 14th level. While my 2nd level alt got these damned encounters almost every pixel, from Hub to Junktown mine he usually have from 6 to 10 encounters, if I'll do that with my main he'll have from 0 to 1 may be 2, but both have the same outdoorsman %, alt may be have even more % on few.