Fallout 3 [spoilers, etc]

[Samwise]

Yes, but it takes something like twelve bullets to bring down the ogres, so if I want to use VATS I need to fire my three shots that it has the energy for and then run around kiting him while it charges up.  Really fucking annoying.  It seems like it's easier to just aim manually and boom headshot.

[rk47]

sneak attack combo of grenade & landmines are quite effective too.

30ish explosive skills are good enough for me.

[Yoru]

Yes, but it takes something like twelve bullets to bring down the ogres, so if I want to use VATS I need to fire my three shots that it has the energy for and then run around kiting him while it charges up.  Really fucking annoying.  It seems like it's easier to just aim manually and boom headshot.

Damage is as much the weapon as the skill. If you're popping a mutie with a 9mm, you're doing it wrong. Pull out the magnum, the sniper rifle, whatever you have that has a huge damage rating and shoot them in the head.

Alternately, explosives. If you're really desperate, set up a bottlecap mine and lure them over it. No more mutie.

That said, if you're not having fun exploring the big brown outdoors and shooting things, it's pretty much over for you. The storyline is short and not terribly good; it serves mostly to forcibly funnel you from the big brown outdoors into the small grey indoors.

[Hindenburg]

Are you keeping your weapons repaired?
Some here missed that bit.

[Samwise]

Yup, keeping 'em all repaired.  So far the best gun I've got is the hunting rifle that some of the orcs carry, followed by the pistol I left the vault with.  I'd get something better if it were in any way obvious where to go to get it.

[eldaec]

Yeah, the combat difficulty curve is all broken to hell.

Level 1-5 : Easy
Level 6-11 : Difficult and irritating
Level 12-17 : Kotor Easy
Level 18-20 : Tiresome again


After you do the antenna thing, you get to slog south again, but after that you are out of he city, and at least you don't get caught in stupid city dead ends and unintuitive mazes with invisible walls all over the damn place.


For the best hunting rifle you want the Lincoln Repeater which is lying around in the museum of history. You'll get a laser rifle before long, which is as good as the hunting rifle. That and a combat shotgun will suffice for 99% of regular combat, you should also have a fat man by now for extreme situations (though I stopped even carrying that around because I never used it - Giant Crab syndrome).

[Shrike]

If you need it, I'd use the Fat Man early and not worry about ammo for it. It doesn't do you any good if you don't use it.

Later on, I'd consider going without it. At 100% repair and 100 big gun skill, the thing is a friggin' menace. 1700 damage with a relatively short range makes it touchy as hell to use. At these levels, the rocket launcher is more than good enough. So use it early and use it often.

My favorite weapon is still the Reservist's Rifle. It was hell keeping it in good repair, but sniping stuff was great fun. And it wasn't just sniping. I recall Dave of Republic of Dave fame meeting his (well-deserved) end about 6" off the muzzle. Oh, for a bayonet...

[rattran]

Yeah, the combat difficulty curve is all broken to hell.

Level 1-5 : Easy
Level 6-11 : Difficult and irritating
Level 12-17 : Kotor Easy
Level 18-20 : Tiresome again

You're doing it wrong, 15+ should be 'Godlike Brainblaster of DOOM' Unless you're putting all your skills into Bargaining and Ice Dancing, you should be a combat god by 15.

[eldaec]

Yeah, the combat difficulty curve is all broken to hell.

Level 1-5 : Easy
Level 6-11 : Difficult and irritating
Level 12-17 : Kotor Easy
Level 18-20 : Tiresome again

You're doing it wrong, 15+ should be 'Godlike Brainblaster of DOOM' Unless you're putting all your skills into Bargaining and Ice Dancing, you should be a combat god by 15.

Seriously, did you read the post you are replying to?

[schild]

The only reason this game seemed remotely difficult is because Fable 2 came out around the same time. Fallout 3 would be one of the easiest games ever if Fable 2 had never come out. As such, it just ends up middling in difficulty because Fable 2 lowered the bar so damned much.

[Shrike]

It was an easy game. I never really came very close to dying, despite a "where angels fear to tread" attitude.

The original two games were much, much, more difficult and VERY unforgiving. Enemies got crits, too, you know...

Regardless, I had a blast, but it wasn't a strain making it though the game.

[Koyochi]

That said, if you're not having fun exploring the big brown outdoors and shooting things, it's pretty much over for you. The storyline is short and not terribly good; it serves mostly to forcibly funnel you from the big brown outdoors into the small grey indoors.

Totally so. I was planning to replay the game with bad karma, after finishing it rather quickly with good karma. I had a new level 4 char, but I found that I can absolutely not be bothered by it anymore. There surely are quiet a lot of things I haven't discovered yet and they might all be very interesting ... but I see those things merely as many steps of preparing myself for a quick rush of the storyline, which I already finished. I have already proven to myself that I can get anywhere and finish every location if I wanted to (maxed enough important skills, big pile of high dmg weapons, even bigger stash of ammo and stimpacks, good armor, etc) so there is no challenge in it anymore. And I'm the kind of player that would be characterized as an 'explorer' in mmorpgs.

[Megrim]

sneak attack combo of grenade & landmines are quite effective too.

30ish explosive skills are good enough for me.

You can also sneak up on people, if your sneak is high enough, and stick a frag down their pants. This instakills afaik.

[Lantyssa]

Flamethrowers are really good early on.  I stumbled across one at the start of my last game and it made a huge difference.  I'd hide around a corner to make the enemies close then *FWOOSH*!  That was enough to get me to Rivet City by level 4.

[Samwise]

The minigun is pretty win.  Shame there are never enough bullets for it.

I've found that the orcs and ogres die a lot faster when I skip the VATS bullshit, aim manually, and shoot them in the head until they die.  That discovery has helped quite a bit.

[Yoru]

I found VATS to be useful primarily in CQB, particularly for room-entry situations indoors. Since it more-or-less stops time, you can usually pop two or three guys instantly, depending on your load-out.

The iron sights are king outdoors or at long range, once you have enough weapon skill to reduce scatter.

[Evil Elvis]

The Gatling Laser you get near the end is pretty pimp.

I'm tempted to load the game up so I can go get this bad boy.

[Samwise]

Okay, the auto-save system is complete bullshit.  I managed to get myself in a state where my auto-save put me in a room full of gun-toting ghouls who all wanted to kill me (unbeknownst to me, turning down a quest can apparently cause an entire city to instantly aggro on you).  It really needs to keep more than one save state at a time so you can go back to the earlier one if your current one is fucked up.  Blah.

[ashrik]

Yikes. 90% of the time I save the game, it's in a new save file, because I'm constantly scared of ruining my character or my game by some previously-unknown-yes-all-important choice.

[Samwise]

I'm not even used to having to explicitly save my game these days.  Because most games made in the last, oh, ten years, have quicksave/autosave/checkpoint systems that don't fuck you in the ear.

[Rasix]

Really?  The first feature I look for in just about any game is the quick save key.  I don't like redoing things from even 5 minutes ago.

[ashrik]

Well, I don't think you could rightly say that it was the nature of FO3's autosave system that fucked you, as something similar could be found in any game that allows you to autosave and get into I'm Fucked! mode

[Reg]

Was it in Underworld that you got in trouble? When I told a questgiver I was going to keep all the keys and treasure for myself he attacked me and when I defended myself the entire city went crazy on me.

[Samwise]

That's the one, Reg.  Except I didn't even defend myself, because I figured if I did the whole city would aggro on me.  As it turns out, they aggro on you anyway.     And as soon as I walked out of his bar, my one and only autosave got overwritten, and my last "real" save was a few hours ago that I have no desire to repeat.

I might be able to get out of it by bringing up the pipboy every few steps to stimpack myself up.  Or I could just uninstall.

Ashrik, the thing I find obnoxious about this is that most games I've played in recent memory that would allow you to get into I'm Fucked! mode keep more than one autosave.  Vampire: Bloodlines comes to mind since it's the same sort of FPS/RPG that Fallout is, and offers similar opportunities to fuck yourself by running out of important stuff while low on health, or pissing off key NPCs, BUT: it keeps something like twenty autosaves for you, which gives you very ample time to correct your mistake.

[Rishathra]

I might be able to get out of it by bringing up the pipboy every few steps to stimpack myself up. 

Hotkeys?

[Rasix]

That's the one, Reg.  Except I didn't even defend myself, because I figured if I did the whole city would aggro on me.  As it turns out, they aggro on you anyway.   

I just killed him, his guard and then everyone was still cool with me.  Town responses can be somewhat buggy. 

Couldn't you just go back in and maybe use a stealth boy to get out or just sprint to the exit?  It's not a big place.

Can you name another game that has multiple autosaves?  I don't remember any off hand. It seems like you're getting upset over a pretty common feature I see, and I don't know why any rational gamer would rely on an autosave system.  They seem to be rather arbitrary by nature.

 

[Tarami]

Yes, but it takes something like twelve bullets to bring down the ogres, so if I want to use VATS I need to fire my three shots that it has the energy for and then run around kiting him while it charges up.  Really fucking annoying.  It seems like it's easier to just aim manually and boom headshot.

I found that the game became much, much more fun when I turned down the difficulty to a point where my guns actually hurt. The quest with the fire ants ("Those!") had almost made me quit the game in disgust. The combat is never that fun anyway, the scavenging and exploring more so.

About explicitly saving your game... I don't play many games to be honest but not doing this is asking for frustration, in pretty much every RPG I've ever played. I pile up hundreds of saves if the game allows for it (which FO3 does.)

Really late edit: Schpelling.

[Reg]

Oh hey that's a good idea. If the difficulty slider is as effective as it was in Oblivion setting it all the way down to maximum easy mode should let you escape easily. Plus, I've read elsewhere that in most towns if you stay away for a few days they forget they were mad at you so you can go back.

[Tarami]

The easiest setting is "very easy", quite literally. I play on easy, which is easy enough to be able to kill atleast one mob with a full pool of AP. Thing is, some mobs (like deathclaws) are still really fucken dangerous if you don't have a combat-oriented character.

[Samwise]

Can you name another game that has multiple autosaves?

Half-Life 2 and all its spawn keep a fairly healthy bank of autosaves IIRC.  The games I've played in recent memory that only have one autosave are all ones that are designed not to let you fuck yourself with that one autosave (e.g. Overlord and Mirror's Edge).

I might have just happened to play nothing but games that do this well and gotten spoiled, but at this point I sort of expect a game to recognize when I've just done something I don't want to do over, and make sure I don't have any reason to have to repeat it.  It's not that hard of a thing to pull off, and if your game includes long stretches of tedium followed by easy opportunities to hose yourself, it's a pretty important thing to consider.  If not for the long stretches of tedium I wouldn't be angsty about it, but goddamn does it take a long time to get from point A to point B.

[Reg]

So did setting things to super easy mode and then staying away for a few days fix things?

[Samwise]

I've been too annoyed to fire the game back up.  Even if I can get out with my life, that whole group of quests is locked out and I'll have no way to get them back.  Which probably means another few hours slogging through wasteland/metro shooting bandits, orcs, and zombies before I find the next bit of content.  Pfaugh.

[Shrike]

Ahh, Crowley and the Underworld. Yeah, I stepped on that particular landmine, but I had a gatling laser and the ghouls didn't. Predictably, this ended badly for the ghoulies.

However, I did have a save not too long before and I wanted to actually do this quest "right". So reload and try it again. Still, cowboying the place was kinda fun.

One quest where I did get royally screwed by the save system (and lack of attention on my part) was the Tenpenny Towers thing with the ghouls. I tend to "feel out" everyone in a new location before I start actualy trying to do the quests. Well, this got me in trouble with talking the locals into letting the ghoulies in the front door. So I said screw it and introduced the ghouls to my minigun (didn't like whathisname's--head ghoul/troublemaker--attitude anyway). From what I found out later, this wasn't a bad thing and probably saved me a trip (and some power cells) later to clean up the mess. Serendipity and all that.

[Rishathra]

Even if I can get out with my life, that whole group of quests is locked out and I'll have no way to get them back.

The only quest you do in Underworld is Crowley's, so it's not like you are missing anything.  You can start the Rangers quest there, but it's not required, you can start it elswhere too.  The place is really more a merchant hub than a quest hub.  Also, as was previously mentioned, if you avoid the place for a few days and come back, they usually calm down.  The only thing I can think of that you might be missing out on is Charon as a companion, and that's only if you kill him or Ahzrukhal, or the town never de-aggros.

Oh, and in the future, take the keys to Fort Constantine, unlock the doors but leave the armor, then give them to Crowley.  Head back to the Fort and pick up the armor.  Profit.

[Samwise]

So Crowley telepathically knows whether you've taken the armor or not, but not whether you took the keys, and he'll never show up to claim the armor himself?     

I'd started on a couple of other quests in there before getting chased out, so I know it was more than just his.  Once I escape their immediate wrath I'll see if waiting a couple of days does the trick.