Fallout 3: Difference between revisions

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- Hold down your Pip-Boy button to activate a short-range flashlight, but remember to turn it off if you're trying to be stealthy.
* What skills you tag in the beginning doesn't have a dramatic effect on your character, simply tag whatever you believe to be useful early on such as a weapon skill and Lockpicking and/or Science. You're also given a second chance to readjust your skills and attributes once the tutorial is over.


- Due to male enemies being more common than female ones, female characters are recommended to pick the "Black Widow" perk whereas the male character counterpart "Lady Killer" is not nearly as useful.
* Attribute-wise, Charisma is fairly useless as Speech checks are far more frequent in dialogue than Charisma checks and you can simply tag Speech if you want to be good at talking. Luck is also not crucial, although the powerful "Better Criticals" perk that increases Critical Hit damage by 50% does require 6 Luck and 6 Perception. On the other end, Intelligence in particular shouldn't be neglected as skill points are useful for all characters.  


- What skills you tag in the beginning doesn't have a dramatic effect on your character.
* The perks that give you extra skills points from leveling up (Educated) and from books (Comprehension) are both quite useful and worth taking early. Other skill point-increasing perks, as well as experience-increasing ones, tend to be skippable.


- Don't fret too much over what skills you tag. All that does is add 15 to them, so it affects the beginning of the game.
* It's worth picking up as much as you can carry from the starting area for some early spending money and repair fodder.


- The perks that give you extra skills points from leveling up and from books are both quite useful and should be taken as early as possible.
* Hacking and lockpicking checks always require either 25, 50, 75 or 100 Science/Lockpicking, so aim for those numbers if you want to access as many things as possible. Of these two, Lockpicking is arguably more useful as many things accessible by hacking such as safes can also be broken into directly with lockpicking.


- The only real threat the "Animal Friend" perk helps against are Yao guais, but they're also so dangerous that it can be worth taking one point in it just to avoid them.
* If you can't come up with a perk to pick, don't forget about Intense Training. Attributes are difficult to increase permanently, so even just +1 to one of your choice can be helpful.


- However I will tell you tagging a skill at the start of the game doesn't make a huge amount of difference, just adds fifteen skill points straight off the bat. After a few levels pumping skill points you can make any skill effective. Just not every. Figure out what skills you're relying on and get them up as early as you can.
* Early on, it's possible to skip parts of the main quest if you're enthusiastic in your exploring, but this won't break anything permanently.


- Bear in mind that most puzzles that can be solved with Science and Lockpicking can be solved by both (i.e. many of the safes can be remotely opened by computer). Since these skills let you do more complex hacking/lockpicking at the 25, 50, 75, and 100 points, it's probably best to level one up and then the other.
* Hold down your Pip-Boy button to activate a short-range flashlight, but remember to turn it off if you're trying to be stealthy.


- Pick up as much as you can possibly carry from Vault 101. All the security armor, all the police batons, all the helmets, all the beer and bonesaws and random shit, everything. What you don't use to repair stuff with later you can sell for a tidy sum to help make the beginning of the game easier.
* You can always back out of terminal hacking mid-attempt to avoid getting locked out. Also, finding various closed brackets like () or [] in the lines of garbage between the words will remove wrong answers from the list or refresh your attempts.  


- If you are planning on being good/neutral, do the "disarm the bomb" quest in Megaton as soon as you have high enough Explosive skill (I think its something fairly low like 25). It gets you a house where you can stash gear you aren't using, but don't want to sell, in the cupboards, and a bed where you can rest.
* Handling the atomic bomb situation in Megaton nets you your personal housing where you can safely stash your gear and rest.


- There are characters in various places that buy specific items for more than their value. So stash any Sugar Bombs, Pre-war books (NOT "Burned book" or anything like that, books that have the title "Pre-war book"), brotherhood of steel holotags, Nuka-cola quantum and scrap metal in your house, then when you find the related characters you can fast travel back and forth making a decent amount of money. I messed up a little by drinking a ton of nuka-cola quantum before finding the woman who buys it, and now I'm scraping around looking for another 7 bottles...
* Certain miscellaneous items such as Pre-War Books and Sugar Bombs can be given to specific people for extra money. Nuka-Cola Quantum bottles are of special note, as a certain quest requires bringing 30 of them to the quest giver.


- I don't normally use guides for games, but you might consider looking up the locations of the bobbleheads, each one either gives you +10 points in a skill or +1 point to an attribute.
* Keep an eye out for Vault-Tec bobbleheads, one exists for each skill and attribute and they give permanent bonuses. One (Medicine) can be found at the very beginning of the game on your father's desk.


- Explosives is the only combat skill you need in the entire game. You can one shot anything big with bottle cap mines/nuka grenades. With a maxed skill + demo perks you can kill groups of anything with 1-3 frags even at close range. If you're overwhelmed with anything then you can lay down mines and lure it. Grenades and mines are also plentiful and you'll be able to harvest plenty more from booby traps.
* While the Repair skill is very useful, you will eventually encounter NPCs who can repair anything to full durability assuming you can afford it. Also, unique weapons can also be repaired with their mundane counterparts, and vice versa.


- If you plan on making an intelligence or speech heavy build with limited combat skills then take explosives.
* While the Bloody Mess perk can be funny, everything exploding into chunks can make looting groups of enemies a chore.


- I suggest doing Reilly's Raider when you get a chance so you can get the device from Reilly at the end (ask her for it upon Quest Completion) to earn money for every marked location. With the amount of land you bound to find, you can earn a large amount of caps.
* Ammo and stimpaks have no carry weight so they essentially double as currency. If a vendor is out of money, consider trading your loot for ammo and stimpaks which you can later sell to someone else if you've no use for them.


-  If you want Dogmeat, I suggest you do the Moira quest to the mine field, and head south upon reaching your destination, which you will soon come upon a gated junkyard.
* While headshots tend to be the most effective in combat, sometimes it can be worth crippling an opponent's arm to cause them to drop their weapon, or crippling their legs to reduce their movement speed.
 
- It is possible to skip large parts of the main quest if you're too enthusiastic in your exploring. Don't worry, you can still finish the game normally, you're just jumping the gun a bit.( To avoid this I would suggest doing the story quest until you reach the Brotherhood of Steel Citadel. That's far enough into it that you won't have to worry about accidentally tripping over a quest location, going into it and finding stuff out of order.)
 
- If you want to play the game on easy mode tag Energy Weapons and complete the "Replicated Man" quest in Rivet City and get the Android's Plasma Rifle. Turns the game into a complete joke. If you have the right perks, you basically 1 or 2 shot everything.
 
- Intense training is actually pretty useful. There ARE ways to increase your SPECIAL stats, but any extra bonus is helpful. The perks to generally avoid are the skill-boosting perks. With Comprehension and the ungodly amount of books around the wasteland, you'll be able to boost your skills to 50 or above without even trying. I have a level 20 character with 3 skills at 100, 4 in the 90's, a couple more in the 70's/80's, and the rest around 50 or 60. Stat increases are MUCH harder to come by than skill increases.
 
- As far as useless perks go, the experience bonus from Swift Learner isn't that great since XP is pretty plentiful. Child at Heart is used about a half-dozen times in the game in special dialogue options, so there are certainly more useful perks to choose. The Lawbringer/Contract Killer perk is handy for making cash, but not much beyond that. Infiltrator lets you pick broken locks, but if you're breaking locks, you're doing something wrong. Same with the Computer Whiz perk, which lets you hack locked-out terminals--if you're locking yourself out of terminals you're doing something wrong.
 
- "Strictly Business" is probably the only quest to look out for on your evil playthrough. In doing other quests you can kill people essential to that one. Also, if you go exploring and fool around in the Jefferson Memorial you can prevent yourself from getting the achievement for the "Scientific Pursuits" quest like I did. So maybe you could read up on both these quests on fallout.wikia.com so you don't lose your chance to get them.
 
- Also hoard all the nuka cola quantum you come across if you want to get all the quest achievements.
 
- Pay thorough attention to the entire tutorial. (You'll know when you're done with the tutorial.) Also, remember to use VATS whenever possible.
 
- Repair skill is very useful, because weapons degrade faster under VATS, and you'll find loads of extra weapons. Ammo weighs nothing, so pick up all you find.
 
- The best way to do Fallout 3 so you don't screw up the story missions is to just go ahead and do the story up to meeting the Brotherhood of Steel. Otherwise there are a couple of areas where you can accidentally skip story by just exploring while after that it becomes harder to mess it up. After that just spend the rest of your time exploring which is the meat and potatoes of Fallout 3.
 
- Basically, if you're going to wander and don't want to mess the story up, avoid these three places on the map: Jefferson Memorial, Rivet City, and "Smith Casey's Garage", out west. Those are the only three that I think can really mess up the order of things.
 
- On your way out of the vault, take pretty much everything. If it isn't nailed down take it and sell it later.
 
- Just before you leave the fault you have the chance to change all your skills and attributes, so don't worry too much the first time you set them.
 
- You are usually better only focusing on one or two combat skills rather than trying to be a jack of all trades. Small guns are the most common weapon type that doesn't require you to be standing on someones toes to hit them.
 
- Most areas scale to your level reasonably well, so dont be afraid to explore. Save often though.
 
- There is a perk that increases the number of skill points you get per level. There is also a perk that increases the number of skill points you get from reading a book. Both these perks should be taken as soon as you can!
 
- You also automatically gain the ability to use power armor once you finish the Operation: Anchorage DLC.
 
- Be conservative with display options.
 
- Intelligence is vital, Strength is important, Charisma is shit. Don't increase a stat to 10, go to 9 and have the bobblehead take it to 10.
 
- You NEED at least one strong weapon skill. If you're not sure, choose Small Guns. Repair is vital, Speech and Barter are shit.
 
- Mandatory perks: Educated, Comprehension, Strong Back.
 
- Shit perks: Child at Heart, Swift Learner, Here and Now, Lead Belly, Night Person, Chem Resistant, Infiltrator, Computer Whiz.
 
- If you find yourself in Rivet City before the main quest sends you there: DON'T talk to Dr Madison Li. Doing so will semi-break the Galaxy News Radio quest.
 
- To contradict what a previous poster said, I would suggest going to  Rivet City's  Science Lab  before  Galaxy News Radio . The jump in the main quest is incredibly small, and Three Dog will offer you a different reward for doing his quest:  instead of info on your dad's whereabouts, he'll give you a key to a weapons cache you can't otherwise get .
 
- If you find a weapon with a funny name, it's unique and likely does more damage and/or is more likely to inflict a critical hit. Be careful not to use it to repair a normal version of that weapon!
 
- The game doesn't tell you this outright, but you take much less damage while attacking in VATS mode, and are a lot more likely to inflict critical hits. However, it causes your weapon to degrade three times as fast.
 
- The perk Bloody Mess isn't really worth it, and you'll get tired of the bodies exploding.
 
- Generally speaking, perks that only add skill points aren't much good.
 
- In the vast majority of cases, you have nothing to lose by attempting a Speech check, and stand to gain a small amount of XP along with whatever you're trying to persuade someone into doing. So I'd say go for any line of dialogue that starts with [Speech, X%], no matter how small the percentage chance of success.
 
- Each of the weapon skills has its drawbacks and advantages. You can't go wrong with boosting Small Guns for the early game, then putting points into Big Guns or Energy Weapons for the later levels when you're swimming in money.
 
- Ammo has no carry weight so it essentially doubles as currency. No matter what weapons you're using, take all the ammo you can from anything. If you have to sell fifty sets of armor and the vendor is out of cash, buy ammo. You'll likely lose some money in the conversion but it's better than nothing. Alternatively: stimpacks are always useful.
 
- Try to get the Dart Gun schematics early, as once you start encountering Death Claws, it will save your fucking life. Keep any and all Pre-War Books that you find, they're good for easy money.
 
- The farther you go out into the wasteland, the more likely you are to come across bigger, more deadly creatures. The higher your luck, the more likely you are to have random encounters, which is how you can get some of the best weapons early.
 
== Limbs ==
 
Each limb has its own health gauge (as do yours, if you check your pipboy) and when you deplete the health gauge you "cripple" the limb. You'll be able to see how healthy an enemy's limbs are while you're in VATS, so it's really not hard to cripple limbs with a gun vs. grenades. Stronger enemies will have much stronger limbs (like Super Mutant Masters, Deathclaws, Yao Guai, etc.) so it's best to focus on the head (for damage) or the torso (for accuracy) to bring them down quickly instead of on the other limbs. There are different benefits to taking out each limb, but as you've noticed these will rarely help you kill the enemy quicker:
 
- Arms: If you take out the arm an enemy is using to hold his weapon, he'll drop the weapon. If he still has another good arm, he'll usually pick up the weapon with his other arm and start firing again, but you can run and grab it if you're quick enough.
 
- Legs: Some enemies, most notably deathclaws, will rush you and start dealing massive amounts of damage. If you can take out one or more of their legs from a distance, they'll take much longer while running at you.
 
- Weapons: Most melee weapons and guns carried by enemies can be shot by you and their conditions depleted to the point of unusability. They'll be dropped and picked up again by the enemies, but since their condition is at 0 they'll be unusuable. Much better than crippling arms if your intent is to disarm an enemy.
 
- Tongues, Stingers, Antennae etc.: Some enemies like radscorpions, ants and centaurs will have damage-dealing appendages you can shoot. This will either frenzy the monster (like with ants) or prevent them from using that appendage to hurt you (like with centaurs).
 
- Torso: No real benefit to crippling this, but in most encounters this'll be the easiest to shoot.
 
- Head: Crippling the head usually outright kills the creature, but when it doesn't it makes it harder for the enemy to hit you accurately. Pointless with helmeted creatures unless you have a good weapon, lots of ammo and you can take a few bullets.
 
== DLC ==
 
- Broken Steel is great, it lets you keep playing after the main quest ends and adds a lot of perks. The campaign is pretty good.
 
- The Pitt is OK. The story is mostly good but it throws the Idiot Ball at one point.
 
- Operation Anchorage is nothing but fighting, but it's pretty satisfying fighting.
 
- Point Lookout is pretty good. Go in with at least a lvl 25 character with a Gatling Laser or similar and a fuckton on ammo.
 
- Mothership Zeta sucks, don't play it.


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