f13.net

So, just for the sake of being able to talk about a nice, hardy min-maxing without fear of seeing a spoiler by accident, I'm putting this here.

Stat Stuff:

Strength - As the game goes on, I routinely found myself cursing the lack of more carrying capacity, forcing me to occasionally drop lucrative goodies at strength 5.  As far as future planning goes on this stat, the perk that lets you carry extra weight has a requirement of Strength 5, so if you start under 5, be ready to raise it up to compensate.

Perception - Being able to see distant enemies on the compass is a very very nice thing, and you need perception 6 for a few useful gun perks down the road.

Endurance - I made sacrifices in endurance to boost other stats.  Being a bit squishier is, to me, an acceptable price for higher intelligence and agility.

Charisma - I left it at 5.

Intelligence - Started at 8, boosted it to 9 ASAP.  Skill points are mother, skill points are father.

Agility - Also started this one at 8.  As with the old Fallouts, the more action points available the better off you are, as long as you're using the VATS system.  Which you should be.  A higher agility can make the difference between getting off one more shot or being a teensy bit short, and one more shot is always good.  The boost to Small Arms didn't hurt any, either.

Luck - Luck's an odd duck.  If you raise it to 7, you'll get an extra point in every skill.  If you raise it to 9, you'll get a second.  That's 13 skill points per two points in the stat, in addition to boosted chances of critting.  Intelligence gives more skill points per stat point, but no help with crits.


Perk Stuff:

Swift Learner and Here and Now: Suck.  Don't waste perks on leveling faster, 'cause you'll still hit a wall at level 20, and then those perks won't do you a bit of good.

Educated and Intense Training (Intelligence): Get both of these ASAP.  The two perks together get you four extra skill points per level, and since the points aren't retroactive, you're best served by taking these perks as soon as they're available.

Ladykiller/Black Widow and Child at Heart: These are both fun and useful perks, opening unique dialogue trees with people that will get you valuable information, on top of some amusing dialogue.  In the case of Ladykiller and Black Widow, the damage bonus certainly doesn't hurt at all, either.

Comprehension: Double the skill point gain from reading books, what's not to love?  Hold off on reading any books you find until you have this perk.  (The comic book you get in the opening part of the game will vanish from your inventory if you don't read it ASAP, so go ahead and read that one before having the perk.  Save the rest.)


Random other things:

How the fuck do I repair stuff?:  This was not explained worth a damn by the manual.  You need multiple items to repair things.  For example, if you want to repair your seen-better-days 10mm pistol, you select it, open the repair screen, and use other 10mm pistols to repair your best one.  This destroys the 'donor' pistols, so be sure you're repairing your highest-quality item with your lowest-quality items rather than vice-versa!  In some cases, similar items quality for the purposes of repair.  If you find a special pistol, for example, normal pistols of the same caliber may be eligible as spare parts for it.

Hacking: Remember that Mastermind game with the colored pegs?  The hacking minigame is essentially identical.  You pick a word, and the minigame tells you how many letters are correct and in the correct location.  The latter part is very significant.  If you pick THEM and it says that 0/4 letters are right, that doesn't rule out METH from being the password.  Even though they have the same letters, the game will only count a letter as correct if it's in the correct position as well.  There are also super sekret things you can click on in the computer screen that will undo a failed guess.  Look for random garbage enclosed in brackets, something like (FGD32AD_//*).  If you move your mouse over it and it lights up, it's a sekret bonus that you can click on.

Bobbleheads: If you see a Vault Boy bobblehead doll, it's not just decoration, pick it up.

Dialogue: If you have a high stat, it will sometimes allow for bonus dialogue options.  If you see a dialogue option preceded by a stat name in parenthesis, odds are that it's a good one to choose, leading to a better outcome of the conversation.

Good info. Wish I knew some of this before starting.

As far as Karma goes, does this really have any point beside what followers you can get, and generally what story arc you follow?

Oh yeah, any tips on Stealthing? I seem to never be able to stealth close to NPCs. My stealth is 55 and I am level 9.

Thanks for posting that, it's going to help a lot when I start up playing this weekend!   :-)

Lower your weight, wear clothing (not armor), and light levels matter a lot. Plus, the game likes to completely FUCK you via millions of cans and bottles on every flat surface.

What he said.  Also, you have a flashlight in your PipBoy, activated in the PC version by holding down the tab key.  Make sure it's turned off, because the game treats that light like, well, like someone trying to be stealthy with a flashlight.

Much like Oblivion, stealth is tricky in Fallout.  If you have a clear line of sight to a target and they haven't seen you yet, take the shot.  Otherwise they're likely to spot you in a second or two.  Sniping from a distance with a rifle is much more liable to work than sneaking up on someone with a knife.  If you're trying to get close, make sure you're walking rather than running; the game is very harsh on being sneaky while moving faster than a crawl.

I've found that using VATS is poor for sniping; a shot that you can make fairly easily just by aiming by hand will have like a 15% chance to hit if you try to use VATS for it.  I've one-shotted raiders from a couple hundred feet away with a scopeless hunting rifle.

The comic will be in your dresser after Amata wakes you.  You don't need to read it when you get it.

For my second character, I gave myself a 9 Int, then picked up the Intelligence bobble-head.  With only a little bit of side-tracking, I had it by level four along with the Educated perk.  That way I only lost out on two skill points, however it meant a point I could spend elsewhere at creation.

Location if wanting to go that route:

For sneak, also you need to remember to Walk, not Run (hold down the shift key to Walk) The 'Silent Running' perk is supposed to mitigate moving as a cause of sneak breaking, but it didn't seem to work. Also, having a heavier weapon seems to hurt sneak, as does having a weapon out. And guns make noise when fired, except the Silenced 10mm and the Dart Gun.

Don't make a stat above 9 in creation or by perk.  The cap of 10 is a hard one which cannot be penetrated by bobblehead.  Well, you can make a stat 10 if you are not going to bother raising it with bobbleheads or Intense Training.

I have no idea what Karma does, except it might determine who is hunting you.  I notice that you have to do a lot of work to undo your karma set while growing up in the Vault.

If an equipped item goes to zero condition, it will stay equipped but cannot be reequipped if removed.  Remember this if you use any +skill armor.

Having dicked around with the game for a bit, I can say this about the stats:

Strength: Crap stat. Carry weight is nice, but str just doesn't give enough increase to be worthwhile. You have a base 150, plus 10 per str. This means that a 1 str character will have 160 carry weight, and a 10 250. Your sidekick can carry shit for you, anyway. Unarmed/melee is a joke in this game, anyway. I suppose one might want to start with 3-4, get it to 5 and pick up strong back. It's easier to just dump it.

Perception: Average. If you're using guns(you're using guns) then you'll want 6 for some of the nice perks. From what I can tell, however, perception doesn't do much, or anything, for you beyond a straight skill boost to some shooting skills. You can just compensate for these with more int, so going past 6 isn't worth it.

Endurance: This is not Fallout. Endurance is huge in this game. The one caveat being that you're not playing on easy with a tweaked out build that makes you A-#1, regardless. Your base starting hp is 100 plus 20 per end. That means a 1 end person starts with 120 hp, and a 10 starts with 300. Since hp boosts per level are rather small, buffing endurance provides a huge bonus.  It also gives some nice bonuses to some resistances. You want at least 5 for some nice perks. Put your leftovers here.

Charisma: Crap stat. It doesn't give you more sidekick slots like the originals, and the meager skill bonuses bonuses you can more than make up for with more int. Apparently it affects how much people like you, but neutral is for suckers so past around level 5 or so people are still going to think you're either Cotton Candy Jesus or RoboHitler Satan, so it doesn't matter. Dump it.

Intelligence: 10.

Agility: This is not Fallout. Agility is crap in this game. You start with a base 65 ap, and get 2(!) per point of agility. However, if you're using guns(you are), you'll probably still want to get it to 6 at some point, to pick up some nice perks.

Luck: Average. Sniper isn't the godmode it was in the originals, and I think luck has little or nothing to do with random encounters. Still, you'll want 6 for some nice perks.

You're at least 50% wrong. RTFM?

I just started with a melee focused character, trying to hit something without using vats is almost pointless.  You can be standing on top of them and not connect, or they constantly block, your swing is always being deflected off of walls and furniture, npcs practically circle strafe you and then when you do manage to connect you do pathetic damage compared to vats mode.  I don't know if it's the same with guns, haven't fired one yet.

Oh, that's why that bobblehead in my inventory does nothing.  I haven't gone too far so I can go and change it.  And on that note and without spoiling anything if you didn't like any of the appearance/skill choices you made you get one final chance to change them early on after the first set of events.  You should save your game at that moment and remember not to delete it if you want to replay the game later with a different build, unless you want to go through the first bit again.

My guy has under 20 in melee, and can kill mutants just fine - 2 hits in VATS, and 2 more when they're running away because I crippled their weapon and gave them an uppercut swing to the balls.

I have to say, the carry-weight mechanic in Fallout 3 may be reminiscent of the earlier (10 year old) games, but it has no place in a modern game.  Personally, I think a mantra of game design should be that anything that is neither challenging nor fun should be removed or streamlined. 

The carry-weight mechanic in Fallout 3 does not make the game more challenging in the way that a restriction on the number of guns you can carry in a traditional FPS might.  Instead, it essentially a restriction on how much junk you can mule around to sell to the vendor, without having to leave the dungeon, fast travel back to dump the crap, and then return to the dungeon to loot more stuff.  Essentially, you have to choose between letting loot rot and making annoying trips to town to sell junk. 

In an overall worse game, I might accuse the devs of trying to pad the game length.  I think Fallout 3 is largely very good though, and I expect it was kept this way to stay faithful to the originals.  I disagree with some of you, in that I think this game feels like Fallout, in a good way.  But hewing too close to the original has its own problems.

I also think the SPECIAL system is a little flawed.  It was always a little problematic and its interaction with this game makes it moreso.  First of all some skills are really good, and some skills are really bad.  Barter, for example, seems to be junk. Money is very easy in this game, and big ticket items are affordable even without barter.  For the same reasons, the perks for bonus caps and ammo suck.

Similarly, division of weapons into small, big and energy really seems to deprive the game of a logical progression in weapons.  If you invest skills and perks in small guns, there seems to be limited benefit to using anything else, which means you use primarily the same hunting and assault rifles the entire game.  Either you decide you want to be the minigun dude or the pewpew laser dude, or else you just get small guns and sniper/commando and make people's heads explode.

One of the problems with Fallout, not just this game, but the concept, is that the freedom it gives you is going to be incredibly difficult to balance difficulty around.  For example, if a weakling (low Strength/End/Agi, stacking Int/Charisma) can complete the game, or a player taking non-combat perks can complete the game, then a player who specs for combat will be a walking buzz-saw of death.  It seems very difficult and resource-intensive to make equally fleshed-out rewarding paths for players who engage in combat and players who avoid it. As a result, these games have not been difficult. 

I've been playing WoW for a while, and the sort of attitude of finely honing your character development becomes in an MMO like that really just allows you to blow single-player RPGs out of the water.


   

Actually, quite a few of the weapon perks are useful to multiple weapon types; IE commando is good for small arms rifles, and also energy rifles. Prolly large big guns weapons as well.

I did not think those perks worked for energy weapons.

It's not over-powering, but I BELIEVE it works. I saw a difference in VATS between my laser pistol and laser rifle. I'll check again.

Confirm they work across skills. I'm not sure about for big weapons though.

I'm not seeing the problem here. It comes down a bit to an aesthetic difference, and maybe to a harmonious blend of the build choices you've made. It's an incentive in that sense to play through a couple of times, to see what happens if you're a STR/END guy who uses a Shishkebab. (Has anyone tried being a low INT/low CHA to see what the dialogue trees are like? Do you ever get the amusing "dumb-guy" truncated dialogue trees you got in Fallout?)

If progression was from small guns to miniguns to pewpew energy weapons, why would that be better? I like instead that you run across different enemies who have different weapons preferences, and that your character can't use everything with equal facility or isn't locked into a single min-max weapon progression.

If you're using VATS with the minigun, you're missing the point of this weapon. I mean, yeah, it's fun to watch shell casings pour out of the thing's ejection port in slow-mo, but the weapon is at its best when you're getting charged by 4-6 super mutants and you just obliterate them with a wall of lead. No real need for precise aim with a bullet hose. Sniper kiills, though...brings back those old Fallout memories--like killing Frog Morton with one shot clear across the screen. "You said what? Yeah, I thought so."

Otherwise, it's pretty close to the feel of the originals. Ammunition management was a big part of Fallout 1 and 2, and it is here as well. Better have more than one (really about three to four) irons in your fire. I agree with the constant to-ing and fro-ing to vendors to dump junk. Something that could have been cut from 3 and not missed at all. Just drops you out of the action way too often. If anything, loot is a little too commonplace. The old Fallouts were characterised by some pretty lean times, ammo-wise.

I disagree with every point litigator made.

Just switching weapons a lot saves ammo pretty well. If you use automatic weapons constantly, you'll be low all the time. Hunting rifle ammo is always around (about half the hostiles have one) and just bust out a VATS combat shotgun indoors to replenish that and 5.56

My first playthrough I was always scrounging ammo and wound up taking the "finds more ammo" perk. My second one, I tend to have 800 of everything, and I've yet to find a good laser/plasma rifle to start burning the 1300 ammo I've got for that.

Minmaxing is the enemy of Roleplaying. If you minmax you will always have it easier, but you can't balance a game around that. I will go farther than that and say you shouldn't. Go die in a Mmogfire until you learn to play games properly again.


I agree on the loot thing, though. It gets tedious until you have enough money to just ignore the junk.

I like scrounging ammo and having to keep a range of weapons on hand. It compels interesting choices, it adds real pressure to combat. Interesting choices under pressure are what good games are all about. Unlimited ammo and a steady progression towards levelling everything in sight with a BFG is what makes designers *have to* segregate a game into levels or put the game progression on rails, so that when you've got infinite ammo and the firepower of the USS Enterprise in your hands you still have something to fight that has the same. In Fallout 3, (as in 1 & 2), every area in the game retains some sense of challenge because I've got to conserve resources but at the same time, shit isn't levelling up with me as in Oblivion, so I'm not dealing with mole rats that could rip a Super Mutant's asshole out in 2.4 seconds.

Wrong. There is a compelling difference between the pew-pew and the small guns and the booming big guns.

Small guns work great in the indoor maps, particularly shotguns. Shotguns are also great for killing those damn scorpions for some reason.
Lasers work better at long ranges and seemed to really tear up robots.
Big guns are great for taking on groups or one really big enemy.

You can just stick with one type the whole game but you'll have a rougher time of it.

Lockpicking. How the f*ck does that work? On easy locks, it seems a matter of using either a or d to turn the lock with the screw driver while angling the bobby pin slightly to the left or right. On medium difficulty, however, that trick does not work, and I have no real sense of what I'm mean to do.

Sometimes you have to move the bobby pin way way to one side or the other. Once you get used to the feedback from watching how the pin jiggles when you turn the lock you'll be able to tell which way to put it, how far, etc. Harder locks basically seem to just have a narrower range of angles that will work.

The abundance of loot is great if you take the repair skill since it lets you condense your inventory while getting fully working items.  You have the option to take a lot of things, and you don't have to go back for what's left.  If you do then you either need the caps, or you're not making the hard choices about what to leave behind.  I'm a packrat, and I'm more or less okay with it.  (It does annoy me on some of the really large installations with one-way trips.)  If nothing else, find a container at the entrance and stow stuff there while you ferry it back and forth.

It's the same.  Look for the bobby pin to start rattling and stop if it does.  Adjust a little, and try again.  It's less forgiving, but the same.

You only turn in one direction I think, I just use A.  What I do is:

1.  Start turning using A.  If there's resistance stop turning  (lock should reset position) and move the bobby pin slightly to left or right.
2.  Start turning again. If you get immediate resistance stop turning and move the bobby pin to the other side.  
3.  Continue to turn slow.  As soon as you hit resistance, stop turning and make minor adjustments to the bobby pin until you can turn cleanly past that resistance. Do not attempt to push past any resistance, you will break the pin.
4.  On easy locks, it will be very easy to find where to have the bobby pin and get a clean turn.  On hard and very hard, the you have to be very exact with your bobby pin placement and bobby pins will snap a lot easier.  I find it easier to guess the bobby pin placement and start narrowing it down where it needs to be.  For instance, if the 12 o'clock position fails and fails early, try a 2 or 10 o'clock position rather than just slightly right or left and start narrowing it down.

Lockpicking isn't bad, it's just trial and error until it sticks. Don't jam the screwdriver or you'll break it though.

Hacking is fucking stupid.

Yes it is.  I quick save before any attempt.  I still think I get it about 75% of the time.

Why quicksave? Just back out on the 3rd try.

Yeah, if you're down to one guess left on a hack attempt, just hit the power button to exit out and start fresh.  There's really no excuse for failing on a hack attempt.

Hah, I would have thought that they would have disallowed that.  I just assumed it.  :uhrr:

Hacking is easy even if they are very hard. They give you how many you got right and you know they're in the same position as well.

So, let's use this example. 5 letter words.

Brick
Brack
Trick
Cream
Steam
Shaft
Stick
Stack

So you choose brick. You get 3/5 right. So, you narrow it down. At first glance you probably think "it could be brack or maybe truck or maybe stick or maybe stack." Let's look at them. You have 4 in common with brack, so that can't be it. You have 2 in common with stack so that's not it. This leave trick or stick. If it was trick you would have 4 in common so it can't be trick. The correct word is stick.

Using this methodology I was able to hack most computers with only two or three guesses. It's very important to look at not only what you got right but also to look at words that you would have had more matches with if it was that word like my trick and brick example above. Even if you get only 1 out of how ever many letters right you can eliminate possibilities this way by looking at words that your guess had more than 1 letter in common with. I once guessed it on my second try becuase my first choice had zero matching letters in it.

I swear I had an npc in-game tell me that at some point, I was sort of surprised.

Thought it was a loading screen.

I am sorry. Making up a story for why I chose something not-good instead of something good does not make a choice between good and not-good interesting.  An interesting choice is an interesting choice.  

Speccing into Barter because I imagine my character as a wheeler-dealer is unattractive if Barter is a shitty skill.  

Yeah, but choosing between a meek Science geek, a stealthy ninja, a dumb brawler or a special forces sharpshooter must be possible. And you must be able to win fights either way. Therefore the optimal build must be overpowered by virtue of the weak builds not being unplayable and discarded after half a game (*cough* Arcanum *cough*)

Wrong thread.

What ?

....


Fuck.

Due to the small limit of selections, the game is stupid. Because the entire minigame is based around getting a solid guess right off (either 0/5 or 3/5) anything else devolves into dumb luck, followed by powering off the terminal and going back in.

For added hilarity: Lockpicking has a "force" option where you can try to skip it with a set success percentage. Hacking has no such thing to avoid the fucking thing.

Lockpicking also lets you keep trying as long as you have pins. Hacking's methodology would be a lot better if you needed cables or some shit that burnt out on failures. Something less "first click of minesweeper" style stupidly random.

Actually, by the end of the game i was good enough at hacking to be able to complete most hacks in the first 3 tries. Getting, say, 1/12 correct is quite helpful. There really isn't a lot of luck.

You do kinda go wonky-eyed from all the looking up and down to compare letters.

Also, lockpicking pins tend to break only after the third try on a general direction, so the exit-reenter trick also works with them.

Exactly. My worst enemy when hacking was my eyes getting tired. It really is just a matter of being patient and comparing all of the words.

I love the hacking. And the lockpicking. They both just took some work to get used to.

Things that annoy me: darkness, no energy assault weapons, having to be right-handed.

Somebody needs to mod that pip-boy with a frikkin spotlight or something. And I'm really hoping for some new weapons.

And in a continuing reason why I hate most FPS. I'm left-handed. It totally kills my immersion for my character to be right-handed. It's not so bad in fantasy settings because it's so far from reality. But I was in the Army for 8 years. Using the Fallout 3 assault rifle feels familiar. Yet not. Because the gun is on the wrong fucking side.

Oh, and make it so we can add scopes to more weapons. I'm addicted to the sniper rifle because of this, but it doesn't have an in-close burst capability ~sigh~

Personally weird annoying thing that probably doesn't bother anybody else: none of these building have emergency exit diagrams. I want to find them, scan them into my handy pip-boy, and have an insta-map. Especially for the fucking metro.

Yes, I know I'm weird.

You don't worry about things like emergency exit diagrams when you face Communism! The USSA seems to have not had any societal progress past the '50s, so no OSHA mandated emergency exit signs or ADA ramps for you.

The only real controversy in stat-building, for me, is whether or not to start the game with 9 or 10 intelligence.

With 10, you get more skill points total, but you effectively lose one stat point because the INT bobblehead provides no bonus.

However I suppose it is technically possible to make a rush for the int bobblehead. the loss of a couple of skill points is worth a bonus additional stat point in total.

Perks have not been designed well! The problem is that there are perks which are incredibly better than other ones and that takes a lot of the fun out of picking them.

What they probably should have done is divide the perks into classes and you have to pick from a different subset at different levels (i.e., every third level you get a pick from the 'meh' pool, the next level is a pick from the 'average' pool, next level is a pick from the 'good' pool) otherwise you're just ticking off the good ones and ignoring the ones with marginal benefit in favor of .. more stats.

An even better idea would have been to have you pick a 'major' perk and a couple of 'minor' perks each level. Stuff like Commando, Silent Running or Intense Training count as major perks. Stuff like Light Step, Lead Belly, or the +5 to two skills perks are definitely minor.

They should also make it so that perk bonuses and item bonuses allow for skills to go above the normal 100 limit.

Hold down tab for several seconds.

I made it to the place to grab the bobblehead by level 4.  That was with a few exploratory detours.  At a cost of only a couple skill points, I think it's worth putting that point in one of your other attributes instead of a 10 Int.

In addition to the Pip Boy flashlight, you can also adjust the brightness settings for darker areas.

It may be cheating, but even a slight shift makes a huge difference.

Thinking that the levels were infinite, like the other fallouts, I stuck 3 perks into the improved experience.  I now feel cheated as fuck.

 :oh_i_see:

If they release a mod maker, I'm betting the level 20 cap will be one of the first things to disappear.

You can just leave the crap to rot if you are rich, yes?  I only carry spares to repair with, and even then it's not strictly necessary since I have at least five different guns on me at any time.  Really, just stop hauling every pack of cigs and spatula back to town.


Looks like I've found your trouble.

I am playing with 4 STR and the carry limit is only slightly annoying (like when I grabbed the Fat Boy in GNR and couldn't run but who cares I had a Fat Boy!).

My sbeaking sucks but then I am run crouching...thanks to whomever pointed that out!

I find the game moderately challenging because I am spreading my skill points around liberally. I know from previous Fallouts this isn't the best practice but 80 in small guns at level 6 makes the game too easy. Speech rules.

Um, the one time you miss or come short with the fatboy, you'll really, really want that run ability.

Does anyone know if when a SPECIAL says for example "increases Small Guns" does that solely refer to the bonus points in that skill or does it have other invisible perks?

Say for example I wanted Energy Weapons, but didnt care about anything else Perception does for me. I would probably be better in the long run putting more points in to INT, am I correct?

Yes. Provided you don't care about other skills P helps then you can skimp on it and use higher INT to dump skill points into Energy Weapons, I don't think there's any 'hidden' bonus or benefit. The wiki has the actual formula for SPECIAL contribution to skills.

I'm not on board with the trashing of Perception.  Unless you really don't care that shit can sneak up on you.

I was just using it as an example.

I'd have to load up my current game, but I went with small guns, sneak and repair as my tag skills. IIRC, I have Perception and Agility at 7 or so and Int at 7 as well. Pretty sure I tanked charisma and a bit of luck to do that. Needless to say, I think Agility, Perception and Int are the three most important stats in the game.

At any rate, once you get past lv 12, having gunslinger, commando, sniper and other perks has made my sneak and shoot build pretty badass. I also have about 17 stealth boys right now, so that helps as well.

I'm glad I bought the strat guide. I don't use it to find the optimal quest solutions (unless I get stuck), but it was nice to see how far I needed to progress the main quest to get power armor and also nifty for finding random locations I may have missed just traversing the wasteland.

I think I"m cheating by using VATS to see if something is coming at me before I pick it up on my radar

Prototype armor.

I have an obscene amount of work to do in the next two weeks, so I gave the DVD to someone else.  Keep me from temptation and all that.  But man, I wish to God I hadn't made that decision.

I do this as well, but it's because I have a 4 Per and when Dogmeat starts growling I start looking for enemies any way I can.  Enemies have to be some combination of close or noisy (super mutants) to show up on my radar.  I haven't decided for certain, but I suspect my low Per is why I have the hard time using a sniper rifle in VATS.  For "real" sniper distances I use the scope.  The only way to be sure is to recreate an old-style rifleman and see how it works out.

Disarming traps... is that based on Repair or is it foolproof?  Anyone ever disarm/activate a trap unsuccessfully?  I haven't, but I have a damn high Repair.  Same question for land mines, except I have like 17 Explosive skill and as long as I can hit the button before it explodes, I'm fine.

I have been flat-out denied on terminal bombs because my explosive skill is under 45, but I haven't failed other than that.

Disarming a bear trap or tripwire shouldn't take any skill to do.

I know baby carriges require a 60 demo skill.  Grenades, too, I think.

Am I reading it wrong or can you use the scope independant of VATS on the Sniper Rifle ?

How?

Uhhhh. Seriously? Just aim, the scope zoomes in as if it were iron sights.

Don't you have to right click to zoom?

I think I have it set to V, that's why I didn't mention a key.

I've stuck with the default right click to zoom, but yeah, you can zoom without VATS and for distant shots, that's often the best, because I don't think your chances for hitting then depend so much on your skills allocation. It's much more first-person shootery: I've gotten one-shot kills on Super Mutants at level 4 with a sniper rifle that way, before my Small Guns is very high. If I go into VATS, the chance of the same shot working that well is much lower.

I have noticed that bullets don't travel in a perfectly straight line as if this was a FPS, so non-VATS aiming isn't foolproof.  It's better in some situations, though, such as the sniper rifle and the totally-awesome scoped Magnum.  On the other hand, using a hunting rifle outside of VATS is all sorts of bad.

Edit to say there is a zoom button which is LT on the 360.  This uses the scope if you have one.

It definitely still depends on skill allocation to a considerable degree.  Seems like in non-VATS mode you've got an invisible cone of fire.  Exact same shot, several times, different hit locations.  Not sure I like that system, I'd prefer one where the cone of fire is visible so you can see the improvement.  Or similar to sniping in Mass Effect where your reticle waves all over the place unless you have enough skill to steady the shot - but if you hit the button just when the reticle is over the target, it's going to hit.

There's definitely a cone of fire, but I'm not sure if it actually shrinks as your skill goes up. The effect is rather blatant with the laser pistol, since you get a nice big tracer each time.

It does shrink. I did the "minetown" quest on my first character that had small guns of around 50 at the time, and I could easily take out the mines with one or maybe two bullets. On my second character that is Energy Weapons, when doing the quest, I used my pistol to shoot the mines to conserve energy ammo, and on average it took me 5 to 7 bullets to kill a mine because I was constantly missing.

Shoot mines... I fired at one a few times before I said "fuck it", then just ran up and grabbed it.  There's no cone of fire on my hand, bitches!

I would prefer the Mass Effect system, too.  It feels more natural to me.  The sniper rifle has it, so I wonder if it could be modded in.  Remove cone of fire, but add drift.

Grabbing mines is OP, hear one activate? Circle around while spamming e. Sure win.
Baby carriages get me every time. If you have toddlers and you hear a baby cry your first response is to remove the headphones or hit mute on your speaker system. Wrong move.

Carriage got me one time, being the first time, because I was like "The hell... a baby?  Wow, that's a fucked-up looking baby-- DAMMIT!"  I now view all carriages as suspect.

Try shooting with a crippled arm or head, viola targeting drift.

I found I couldn't play F3 in FPS mode - it is just too easy to run out of ammo. VATS if anything is an ammo-save mode.

Oddly repair skill is how you carry more loot - fixing anything and everything you get will increase its value, so 3 nearly-broken hunting rifles will cost only fraction of fully-repaired. It also punishes you heavily if you use anything but what your enemies are using - you will have to shell out astronomical cash on NPC-repair if you happen to use anything but common-drop weapons.

I too hate cone of fire in most games. I deal with it in Fallout because it's not primarily a shooter....

But shit like Counter-Strike? Fuck that, how am I supposed to have a reasonable chance to know where my shot is going if my reticle does not move, but my shots do? Just give me the drift and force me to  compensate.

HATE DRIFT.  HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE.

I like sniping in this game.  I aim at head; I shoot; head goes pop.

Find the unique versions of the various weapons and you'll be all :heart:. Lincoln's Repeater is awesome; does ridiculous damage, incredibly accurate, reloads quickly and repairs using hunting rifles.

Unless you prefer to use the laser chaingun or plasma rifles; then you're just fucked.

Pool of blood, Shadowclaw Sanctuary.


Android quest, proper answers.

What, it's plot spoilerless  :why_so_serious:

You still have to repair the fuckers and find ammo. I have something like 800 5.56mm rounds at level 10 despite using the assault rifle fairly heavily and maybe 120 microfusion cells despite never firing a shot.

Ah, I see.

Well, Enclave soldiers drop plasma rifles. Mine is almost always at full, because they hunt me pretty hardcore.

The laser chaingun I never use so I'd never notice. I don't even pick up miniguns anymore.

I tried to map weapons to the 1-8 keys last night and it didn't work. The pipboy showed that it was mapped but hitting the key didn't do anything.

For those who asked about mods: http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/categories.php (http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/categories.php)

It's still early, only a few of the Oblivion tools work as is, but there are already texture mods, some attempts at extending the level cap, and a few other tweaks.

One that makes Lady Killer/Black Widow open to both genders for example.


Anyone else notice that you can hold down "Z" to pick up objects like you could in Oblivion? I plan on trying to re-enact the Arnold escalator sequence from Total Recal and seeing if dead Maruaders stop bullets.

They teach you to pick up objects in the tutorial :) But yeah, I forgot until you just mentioned it.

I ended up taking the Scavenger perk for more ammo, now I'm well-stocked with assault rifle and shotgun ammo and have enough sniper ammo to open combat with and take out things like super mutants with rocket launchers on high perches (bastid).

Does anybody know what makes Skills go down one point or did I run into a bug? Because suddenly Science and Repair are down to 99.

Radiation affects stats. Might be it.

Seems my Lucky 8-Ball was bugged. Removed it from the inventory, took it back, and now everything is fine again.

The sniper rifle has drift.  It has a pretty small cone of fire though.  It's ideally how I would like all weapons.  Now if I could get ammo for it in any decent quantity...

If I knew how to do the mods, I think would I would go for is a cone of fire when firing from the hip, but move to the more accurate shot with drift when aiming.  Higher skill means less drift, so when maxxed your hands are steady as a surgeon's.  (Maybe make high medicine help!)

Are you sure? I snipe a lot and don't even notice any. 

Do you have a high skill in small guns?  That might be why.  I had something in the teens and it was terrible at anything beyond 50 yards.

Str: It gives you 10lbs per strength, a pretty nice bonus.  You don't need to go crazy pumping it, but having 5-6 gives you a ton of benefit.  You can fit an easy 300+ caps in 60lbs.  A little helpful for melee builds.

Perception: Not really that good.  Either use it as a dump or invest 5 (and get the bobblehead) for better criticals.  The radar is goofy anyway.

Endurance: Useful if you go for an unarmed build, otherwise a worthless stat.  The only reason you invest in this is because you need 5 endurance for the strong back and toughness perks, which are overall excellent perks.

Cha: The ultimate dump stat in this game, it has barely any affect outside of getting you skill points and all the perks tied to it suck.

Int: The big daddy stat, you want 9 and you want that bobblehead fast.  A 10int character will gain 100 more stat points than a 5 int character over the course of the game.  You make up any losses in skills that interest you in two levels.

Agility: +2 AP per point, not amazing, but not terrible.  You really want to hit 6 points to grab action boy.


Luck: Surprisingly good, 1% chance to crit per point.  You need to get 6 for that better criticals perk (which is amazing.)

Skills:
Repair is huge, the most important skill in the game.  If you use repair to fix two weapons into one, that single weapon is worth more than the two combined (as long as you didn't hit your repair cap) and takes up much less space.  Repair converts that heavy raider armor into a single 15 weight item that nets you 150 caps. 

Lockpick and Science aren't necessary, but I highly recommend hitting at least 75% (maxing them out is best) at least one play through.  You get more out of the game if you can pick all the locks and hack all the computers. 

Small arms is the best combat choice due to the huge amount of great weapons available, but swapping to energy weapons late game is an option.  Plus a number of the small arms unique weapons are monstrously good.  Chinese assault rifles are more dangerous than most other weapons and a handful of pulse grenades can handle any robot issues for you.

Speech opens up a lot of options for you and "Lying Congressional Style" is pretty easy to find.  It is useful if you are playing good karma, but not needed at all if you are playing bad karma.

Each skill has a bobblehead for +10, and 25 books (one of them only has 24, but I forget which one.)  Each stat has a +1 boblehead.  Stats can never exceed 10 and skills can never exceed 100.


Min/Maxing is just analyzing the system and playing it to its fullest.  If a game cannot handle a player min/maxing it, it is simple a bad game.  Things don't need to be perfectly balanced either, a smart player will figure out "path A is the best" pretty fast.  All you have to do is sprinkle interesting options and play styles along the other paths in a single player RPG.  They may not be the best, but people will try them anyway.  Role playing games can't rely on the player being terrible, just as they can't rely on the player doing "build x because it is really the best."

I found a really useful tweak guide (http://www.tweakguides.com/Fallout3_1.html) if you want to try and fix performance, mod or wanted the basics of Console Commands.

All roleplayers are aware what a Munchkin is. But typically most Munchkins revel in the knowledge that they beat the system. What I don't get is the moaning that the system is too easy and should be harder because they played it.

Its ok to find the best path, its not ok to tweak the game so its the only valid one.

Min/maxing is for lifeless douches.

Yeah, I said it.

I actually got a blue screen of death while playing yesterday, I haven't seen one of those in many years, I didn't even know they existed in Vista.

Is The Family always aggressive towards you? I had just gone neutral from good so I wondered. That was a tough fight at level 5 with only 55 small guns. I prevailed eventually by preparing the battlefield (i.e. mining the shit out of it) beforehand. It also sucks that all the good loot in there is a karma hit. Those fuckers attacked me first.

To answer spoilerless - no.

I was good and we came to an agreement without bloodshed.

You're confused.

Gun A hits for 6 points.  Gun B hits for 20 points, looks way cooler and has flashing lights and calls you sugar when you kill someone with it.  You take gun B, right?

Stat 1 has an unnoticeable change on the way you play the game.  Stat 2, once you reach the threshold, makes people heads explode when you squish them between your fingers.  You take stat two, right?

So, are you a min-maxxer or are you just playing the game and going by the obvious clues and progression path put there by the designers for you to enjoy?

The real issue isn't making characters that are competent because the corollary is that you would have to play incompetently to play correctly.

Generally in my experience, min/maxing tends to go more along the lines of squeezing out an extra 0.3% performance by making the exact right choices.  In fallout 3 this might go something along the lines of:

Make sure you start with 9 INT, get the INT bobblehead before you get to level 3.  Since each skill has 25 skill books available, plus a bobblehead that increases it by 10, make sure no skill is ever raised above 65 with points (unless you've raised them all to 65 and still have points left over, in which case you probably need to reallocate stats away from INT to push the min/max envelope and not 'waste' anything).  Calculate the best route to go all around the world and pick up the skill books and bobbleheads asap.  And so on, and so forth.

It doesn't mean 'use what is obviously better', instead it's all about going into the effort to figure out exactly what IS better when it's not obvious, and squeeze all you can get out of it.

That said, I don't agree it's 'for lifeless douches', since it can be fun, but not really in a single-player story or exploration based RPG.  And then there's the people that see something sub-optimal and MUST MAKE IT BETTER.  I get that feeling sometimes.

In which case, don't read a book until you get the '2 skill points per book' perk, then never raise a skill above 40. You can max everything!  :drillf:

Negatory. I just don't feel the need to squeeze the life out of every game I play. I play them for fun, not to beat them with extreme fucking prejudice. I get the flashy gun? Cool. I don't and I have to find another way to skin that cat? That's cool too. There's eight million ways to play this game. I don't have to have the perfect character to get to the end of it.

I'd say if a game can't handle a character not min/maxing, it's a bad game. Also, it's SO easy to see the new WAR kids in a crowd.

Of course, now I kinda wanna play Oblivion again.

This time with Tesla armor and a plasma rifle.

I learned last night that I completely adore plasma weapons.  I'd been stashing them away unused, but once I'd gotten enough to have a good supply of spare parts for repair, I whipped out the plasma pistol and started popping people in the face.  Holy shit, if I'd known that plasma weapons make peoples' heads fly off while their bodies dissolve into a puddle of glowing green ooze, I'd've been using them from the very first second. 

An alien blaster pistol fell (literally) out of the sky in front of me too.  I have yet to use it, as the ammo is super-super scarce, but I'm just itching to shoot something in the head with that and see what happens.  I had the alien blaster in Fallout 1, and it was the best thing ever.

Small arms are reliable and plentiful, but damn if the energy weapons aren't way more fun.

I found the Firelance in my first play-through but never used it due to a lack of ammo.  If I get one this go 'round I might cheat just to be able to fire it more than once.

I love my plasma rifle.  Green goo for everyone! <zot> <zot> <zot>

I don't have 9 INT but I took the skill points perk so I get 20 per level. 14 more levels = 280 skillpoints coming my way. Small guns is already 80. No way I need all those so why worry about the book bonus? I don't have the patience for Sneaking so that's out. Barter is pointless. Stimpacks are everywhere so don't need Medicine. Unarmed and melee are not for this character (4 ST). All I really need is Speech (55 already), Big Guns and Energy Weapons. Lockpick and Science are dump skills.

One possible miscalculation is big guns are pretty heavy, so if you want to carry a few different ones, spares for repair, etc., that carrying capacity will limit you. There are ways to boost strength, though.

My guy has 5 Str and I could do Big Guns if I had focused on it, since I seem to have seven small guns on me at any given time.  I could make do with the Rock-It, Missile Launcher and Minigun, assuming I could find enough 5mm rounds... but I guess that's why you have the Rock-It Launcher.

I played and loved Oblivion but fuck it's retarded levelling mechanic so I know how to play Fallout 3.

Tilde motherfuckers, tilde.

T
G
M

I hated bloody mess after a while, the 5% wasn't worth the constantly exploding bodies for me.

Sure it was cool the first few times I saw it, but I prefered the random severing without it.

That 5% is pretty great actually....

lol wut

You don't like Bloody Mess? :pedobear:

I temporally disliked it as I watched a well armored enemy blow up and thought to myself "fuck, now I can't steal his armour, that's going to cost me damage and caps".  But then I found out you can just search one of the hunks of meat and still get everything.

wish they fixed melee somehow. it was just not worth it.

Higher skills often give you options in the game world, not just their primary effects.  If there's nothing you specifically need, you might as well put points into them anyways.

It can get annoying when you blow up multiple dudes in a small area. "Which one of these hunks is a raider I haven't searched yet?"  :why_so_serious:

I'm really just tired of bloody mess. I miss how people would die before I had the perk.

You can only watch someone's arms and legs flying off from a headshot so many times <--- never thought I'd say that one

Now that I'm in the upper teen levels, MF and Energy cells are way more common, so I've switched over to using a named Laser Pistol and a generic Laser Rifle for most combat, with a Chinese Assault Rifle or Combat Shotgun in reserve in case things get up-close-and-personal. Once you start using Lasers, no more body parts everywhere - just little piles of ash.  :awesome_for_real:

I haven't used the plasma rifle much, as I've only found two so far, but once I get that thing repaired up, I'll see about turning dudes into goo. I have to say I like the rapid firing and zero travel time of the laser weapons though. I gotta get me a named laser rifle...

Or just find the named plasma. It is the sex.

Yeah I have bloody mess and am now raising EW as my Small Arms is 100...Plasma is ewey gooey goodness.

I kinda screwed the pooch on that one. Can't get that weapon any more. But meh, what I got instead is useful when enemies get close and I have to drop into VATS.

Not sure if that needed spoilers, it does reflect on the gameplay a bit since the path to that item is pretty squishy as far as karma is concerned.

As to the named Laser Rifle...


The damage seems low until you realize that that is per shot, and the laser rifle fires nice and fast.  I actually prefer it to the plasma.  Once I had the caps and the ammo rolling in, I pretty much just used that until the final mission, where I pulled out the Alien Blaster because I knew the game would be over anyways.  Blue piles of ash ftw!

Yes, unfortunately the save where I could've gotten the named plasma rifle is like 15 hours earlier now - around level 6 or so. Not worth reloading and replaying 10 levels of adventuring.

That said, I'm slowly working my way towards the named laser rifle, I just need to stop going "ooh, point of interest over there..."

I was retarded and accidentally repaired a normal laser rifle with the named one when I was clearing inventory. :(

I've managed to avoid that with all the other ones.

They really need to put a confirmation dialog on that shit.

"YOU ARE ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING ASTOUNDINGLY DUMB. DO YOU WANT TO PROCEED? [Y] [N]"

I think that could work well pretty much anywhere.

That's why they added the handy cheat system :why_so_serious:

I was pleasantly surprised (because I have no self control sometimes with cheats) that one cannot cheat unlock some things. I actually have to put points in locklpicking.

Just got my power armor training, and at this point any of the power armor I've seen is worse than the Riley's Ranger armor I'm wearing. What use is +2 str when the armor weighs 45 lbs, if you don't do melee? I'm assuming I'll find better power armor eventually.

As to uniques - so far I've found the plasma rifle and a sawed off. Best thing about the plasma was that it started 100% repaired.

This is more or less the situation I was in when I got it, but I was carrying around an Enclave Power Armor set.  The normal and Outcast versions of the power armor suck compared to Riley's armor, but the Enclave set has a significant amount more DR than Riley's.  It was a tough choice for me, and I'm still not sure I chose right with the power armor.

Tesla armor is nice, but there's no strength to help offset the weight.  If I were to author a mod to fix some of the design oddities, I'd likely make power armor have 0 weight when worn.  Power armor, unlike in Fallout 1 or 2, doesn't seem to make a massive difference due to the lack of high damage resistance v. certain types of damage.   Stuff made you basically immune to most physical damage in the previous titles.

I haven't found much use for armor period, let alone power armor.  I ended up playing the majority of the game, including the ending, in a duster and a fedora.  I didn't miss the armor at all.  I was mainly a sneaky, snipey kind of player, but even during that final bit where you fight a good chunk of Enclave soldiers at once, it didn't pose much of a challenge.  Although a series of one-shots with the alien blaster combined with the Reaper's Sprint might have had something to do with it.  Granted, this was on hard, maybe on very hard you need that extra damage absorption. 

Pro tip: the laser rifle makes a better sniper rifle than the sniper rifle.

Protip - The Lincoln Repeater is the best "sniper" rifle in the game.

Yeah, that's a goodun.  I just love making piles of ash too much.  The reload animation for the repeater is lovely too.

I don't suppose there's any way to restore it to pristine, is there? I started using it, and noticed that it started to degrade, and by gum, I don't want to be stuck with a craped up museum piece.

Does it degrade with use or only when you take a hit?

It repairs with hunting rifles

I got a named laser rifle. It is sweet, sweet candy.

Does anyone know how the game's autobalancing works? I've started to run into a lot more of the top-tier enemies now (level 18), whereas they were pretty rare 6 levels ago. Thing is, my gun and repair skills have been maxed or near-maxed the entire time, so I'm getting that very MMO-like feeling of becoming less powerful in relation to my enemies despite nominally getting better.

If the game bases its autobalancing strictly off of level, I'd've been better off freezing my level around 14-15, where I was mostly facing mid-tier enemies that I could take out in 2-3 shots for the most part.

I still run into mole rats at level 20; all leveling up has seemed to do is increase the variety of things I run into. (Advancing the plot does this also.) It seems to me that what part of the map you're in also has a big influence; I haven't been running into deathclaws and giant radscorpions around Megaton. I am not sure but what level you where when you first went into a particular region may have an effect.

That said, what at level 18 are you having trouble with? Do you have an NPC helper? They help a lot in my experience.

Oh, I'm not having trouble, but that's because I'm strutting around in advanced super armor with a named laser rifle, several forms of high explosive, and an entire ammo dump strapped to my back. I still encounter (and utterly destroy) mole rats, roaches and worker ants on occasion. However, I'm also finding far fewer regular super mutants, regular protectrons, and regular radscorpions compared to their more advanced compatriots.

It's just that things are taking six shots or so to kill, whereas they were taking 2-3 before, which has the logical effect of making you feel less powerful relative to prior levels - I've more or less hit a power ceiling while my enemies haven't.

Yoru, if you really want an item you can cheat

PLAYER.PLACEATME [ID Number],1,1,1



Item codes (http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=893933) Hexcodes & Other codes (http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=895002).. The first number determines quantity.


But you can... Open console, target locked thing, and type UNLOCK
You also can increase skills by cheating, MODPCS "SkillName" "Number"

TGM is to turn on/off God Mode

Cheating on a first playthrough ruins the game. Now, for a second, Cheating Game, well... let's just say there's a certain Blaster I wouldn't mind having as a toddler.

That does not unlock Mr Burke's or Lucas Simms' door, for two examples.

If there is a mod for science auto hack success (NO MORE WORD GUESSES PLEASE) I'd download it in a heartbeat.

Overall what someone mentioned is right, Weapons should have different types of damage.

It is ridiculous to have projectile weapons having no difficulty penetrating Power armor. At least make power armour has high resistance from frontal attack yet have a weak point at the back, giving bullets a chance.
Energy weapons would have no difficulty with penetration yet have slower rate of fire & more scarce ammo.
Melee has targetted attack please. Hitting VATS with my unarmed char didn't give me any option. What a fucking waste. I wanted to make a ninja guy that stealth up to people's face and knock out their guns but I couldn't.

I got my first helper last night, and once again I found myself upset with the state of game AI. I heard a robot around the corner, so I loaded up some pulse mines and laid a nice trap along a corridor. She tore around the corner and got liquified  :oh_i_see: I quickloaded four times before I finally just backtracked and parked her in a quiet spot while I went ahead and cleared out the level. At least you can park them, I guess.

At one point she aggroed on the robot that was several rooms away and threw a grenade that bounced against a door....into my face. Bitch, you marked for evil playthrough nastiness.

I like that the enemies in this portion are much tougher than robots I'd previously faced. Two new varieties, one fairly simple, one muthatough.

Also wish melee had a target, the Chinese Officer's Sword screams for lopping off limbs/heads selectively.

Yeah.  I don't understand why VATS doesn't let you target with melee weapons.  I loved gouging people's eyes out with a ripper in the first games.

They're begging for a chain saw, but ripper was close enough.  :grin:

The unlock cheat works on terminals.

Ripper is cannon.  Where's the damn cattle prod though? I liked that one.

Still, no way I'm touching melee in this one.  It just seems damn gimped.

Was having the same grief with Dogmeat until I found the cheat to make him not die,now if he does something stupid he just drops out cold and I can happily go about clearing the area.

I could of sworn I was using Vats with a baseball bat early on with the rad roaches were you close enough to them? I'm going to have to try again now and see for sure.

You can use VATS, but there is only one target with melee. You can't specifically hack off an arm for example.

I'm expecting that this is something modders will look at, but it could be tough to change.

I hate cheating with a passion, but making Dogmeat unconscious instead of letting him stay at home all the time would be something I could get behind.

Agreed. Cheat for the lazy, kthx  :grin:

I'll throw the codes up on the spoiler thread.

I'm the same way I don't generally use cheat codes but having to reload every time dogmeat got stuck somewhere,trained half the wasteland pathing to me or died was getting really old.

I let the stupid dog die.  Just like in the other Fallouts.

:ye_gods:

Dogmeat doesn't throw grenades at me, and at this point he seems nearly unkilllable.  Also, the first time I sent him looking for something, he brought back a beer.  GOOD DOGGIE!

I still sent him back to the vault when I went to Minefield.

I've only had to reload for Dogmeat death a couple times, and one of those was a weird zone-out-of-a-building-and-for-some-reason-he's-half-a-mile-away-fighting-laser-robots situation. He's pretty tough.

Those fucking radscorpions are follower assassins.  I'll be wandering around somewhere, and my follower will up and charge off into the sunset with a "humper-dumper-doo!" to promptly be ganked by like three giant radscorpions.  I wound up accidentally ditching that follower, though, and wound up with a much cooler follower who doesn't die like a retard every ten minutes, so good trade.

I left both of my characters in the house. Charon and Dogmeat are strong as all hell, but I'm tried of jumping into a place and having them path 5 minutes around just to reach me.

Nothing like clearing out a room of muties only to turn around and see no one, then be greeted a few minutes later with the 'XYZ has died' screen.

Really needs some sort of squad interface or hotkey system, even if it is as bare as "everyone stay here" and "everyone follow me".

Here's something weird, as soon as I started the escort quest from Vault XX to Rivet City, Charon disappeared. At the end of the run from Rivet to PP to the Citadel, I went back into the Taft tunnel to scavenge some more power armor and there he was. Just sitting pretty. Where the hell did you go Charon?

Good point, even a (shudder) EQ-style pet command system would be nice. Pet stay, follow and three levels of hostility: passive, defensive and aggressive.

Mod tools and DLC packs announced (for PC and 360): (http://fallout.bethsoft.com/eng/home/pr-112508.php)

 :heart:

Since this is the wrong thread, without spoilers, I think the best I can do with this one is a "lol wut?"

 :yahoo:

Huh, interesting. I'd already cleared the wastes of both the enclave and the brotherhood. And anyone else that dared to greet me.

I guess I know what I will be playing through March now.   :awesome_for_real:

Nude mod incoming in 3, 2, 1...

someone's already working on it. Google 'Tessera'
He reviewed the game and said 'there's no prostitute ,wtf? This isn't fallout! I can't sleep with prostitute!' and proceed to show a screenshot of his work in progress...what else? Fallout 3 skins with nipples.

Sigh... There have been multiple nude mods for it since about the begining of the month. The first mods you always see are boobies, and "hey look, I made a gun that does 6000 damage!"

Heh. The front page of tessmage.com has images of his "work".  The first stage of his Fallout 3 mod is an anti-hotlink image for his own site.  :awesome_for_real:

I have sneak attack, sniper and mysterious stranger if hidden the initial headshot kills everything but Super Mutant Brutes.

That is cool but I am not sure I would find that fun. Of course, I could just put the sniper rifle away when I wanted to do it up close and personal.

I had one mysterious stranger visit at l20. It's pretty crap but maybe that's because I usually kill my target while in VATS.

I don't usually have much trouble taking down things in VATS, either, so I passed on Mysterious Stranger.  Basically it is a chance of an insta-kill?

While I don't have a statistically approved amount of data on this subject, it appears to be a guy in a trencoat and a hat that insta-kills your target with his .44 magnum as you exit VATS.

Oh, well, that's silly.  Could work if I had a non-combat character, but that also is silly.

Actually I usually lay a few mines get in close and shoot the heads of as many enemies as possible with the hunting rifle and then back off with the shotgun it's quite fun though I'm sure there are more fun ways of playing the game.

It should be noted the mysterious stranger also plays a funny James Bond-y musical cue when he shows up and kills stuff. I find it pretty entertaining, personally.

NPC AI really fucks with the ambush/minefield style of gameplay.

Yeh mysterious stranger randomly turns up and kills off a target with cool music, I don't think he was really worth it though sometimes he misses if there's something in the way or he's too close, the odd time he's taken the heat off me.

I agree Sky.  Artificial Common Sense needs to be worked on.  The chick in power armor bristling with energy weapons is probably the one who should be in front, not the wonder twins sporting the latest in tattered rags wielding lead pipes and steak knives.