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Alright so I bought Fallout 3 and never really gave it a proper chance back in the day. I'm going to start it over tonight and dig in.

Give me your sage wisdom and advice, I'm really excited to play this game properly (I don't think I "got" the game mechanics and genre the first time).

What do I need to know to enjoy/rock/blow away the baddies/make a kick ass character?

It took me a while to figure it out. Learn to use VATS, first of all, and be ready to wander aimlessly (or find a map online if you don't like to do that.) Also, it took me a while to figure out how the compass and map system pointed me towards my destination. Really, I think there are two things that bug me about Fallout 3: The colorless graphics and the lack of a good tutorial. Once you get a handle on the game mechanics, it turns out to be a pretty fun game, though.

I highly recommend that you play the game in vanilla mode FIRST then maybe try some add-ons. (there are TONS)

Well I wouldn't call myself a master at the game, but I say just choose what skills most interest you. Just make sure to concentrate a bit in only a few as you level. Also, make sure to choose the skills you want before applying your SPECIALS because they tie together.

If you want to be a great combat fighter, choose either Small Guns, Melee, or Unarmed. Choose a second one later like Energy Weapons or Big Guns if you want, but I wouldn't concentrate on them at the start since there are so few in the begining (Unarmed is also a bit risky until you get something good like a PowerFist).

If you want to play it with a bit more of a challenge, try playing a more non-combat character. Like for SPECIAL put a lot of your points into Intelligence and Luck, then each time you level you can load up on skills. You won't be as great of a gunslinger, but there is something pretty satisfying as a master of science/medicine/speechcraft about being able to hack/heal/talk my way out of situations that normally would be pretty violent. I would still concentrate on a weapon ability though, simply because you can't get through the whole game without some fighting, maybe starting with some in Small Guns and then going Energy Weapons once you have the chance.

I personally love small guns because you can get ammo and weapon early and lots of it

I dumped everything into Agility. Small guns & sneak are a deadly combo. Plus you get a shit-ton of Action Points for VATS and they replenish quickly.

Your first few levels you should get the abilities that give you more experience and skill points (don't remember their names) as they are of greater benefit the earlier you get them.

Dave said:

I dumped everything into Agility. Small guns & sneak are a deadly combo. Plus you get a shit-ton of Action Points for VATS and they replenish quickly.

Your first few levels you should get the abilities that give you more experience and skill points (don't remember their names) as they are of greater benefit the earlier you get them.

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ah, you do what I do. I sneak up, use VAT and blam! head shot at close range

Dave said:

I dumped everything into Agility. Small guns & sneak are a deadly combo. Plus you get a shit-ton of Action Points for VATS and they replenish quickly.

Your first few levels you should get the abilities that give you more experience and skill points (don't remember their names) as they are of greater benefit the earlier you get them.

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This sounds pretty sweet but I also like the idea of being pretty good with a specialty like hack/science/craplikethat. Is it hard to make a character mixed like that? I don't want to end up mediocre in a bunch of things.

There's no real way to be mediocre in a bunch of things since the game does force you to specialize. Close-combat could be tricky, so I wouldn't put everything into unarmed and melee weapons to start with. You can make yourself weak in combat or weak in science or lockpicking, I suppose. That would simply make some treasure caches unavailable though. I like lockpick, small guns, and stealth as a combo but have made plenty of other builds as well. It almost always includes lockpick but even that isn't really necessary.

First Pro Tip : Never put a 10 in any of your SPECIAL stats at creation.

You'll find baubles during your adventure that will increase in each stats, 7 baubles, each for a stat.
Added at: 16:10
Repair is a great skill, you'll find a lot of stuff out there and often you can fix them by mergeing two of the same items to make a better item. You can even sell stuff you don't even need for some nice caps.

Also, Security and Lockpicks are great skills. Max those early.

Sneak is a fun skill to you.

Hmm. Forgot about the bobbles. But they are hard to find. (Plus I am currently playing New Vegas so they don't have bobble heads.

So things that seem important:

1) Small Guns
2) Repair
3) Sneak
4) Agility

Small guns are a must for a n00b.

Repair is okay but you can ignore it for a time, although there are a few places where you have to have X repair skill to be successful.

Sneak is also a preference thing. You don't HAVE to have it, but getting in close undetected sometimes is handy. But no matter what your sneak skill is, when you are in sneak mode you see if someone sees you or not. Sometimes this alerts you to enemies you would not normally notice.

Agility is great for small guns.

Science & lockpicking is great because sometimes you just can't do something without them.

Speech is great because sometimes you can get more money/information with it.

For now ignore - energy weapons, unarmed, barter, big guns, survival (is this one in FO3 or just FO3NV?)

I never bother with energy weapon in FO3 cause ammo are so frekkin hard to find (early in the game) small arms, easy and great! works on sniper rifle too (small arms) which was interesting.

Yeah, I always thought that was weird, too. To me, the rifles & handguns should have been different skills.

I dumped my stats into explosives. Lay down a tonne of frag mines, shoot them in the back once with a rifle to get their attention, and watch as they blow themselves up trying to get to you.

Later in the game, energy weapons are awesome, but I still use my rifles for most things even at level 16.

I started with balanced stats and then used bonuses to up my Perception. I found Lockpicking and Science important because I wanted to steal everything.

If you want, give a theme to your character, it'll help you decide what skills and perks to get. I made my character a super scientist, and focused on hacking, repair, and energy weapons. Got him a lab coat and glasses pretty quick.

Small guns and energy weapons are both viable. If you want to go energy, I would suggest starting with it. You can find a laser pistol in one of the first quests in the game at the super duper mart, and unskilled pistol can hold you over until then.

It is fun to RP more heavily, like Ravenpoe says. My roommate created a powerful-ugly character with 10 Strength and maxed his melee skills, then decided his character truly appreciated the strange, but would not tolerate even the slightest bit of sass. He was neither good or evil. Simply if you were nice to him he liked you, if you insulted him he pounded your face in with a sledgehammer, and if you were weird (like a ghoul, or say a man who believes he's a superhero) he went out of his way to help you. He wound up neutral.

Here's my suggestion for weapon skills, in order of effectiveness.

Energy Weapons: These edge out Small Arms in my book for 2 very simple reasons. One, ammo for them is abundant late game, no matter what your choice is, where as high end Small Arms ammo (especially .44 magnum for Lincoln's Repeater, one of the best Small Arms in the game) can be hard to find without buying it. Two, the best Energy Weapon (in terms of efficiency) is easily obtainable with little effort in Rivet City, where as the best Small Arm (Xualong Assault Rifle) requires completing a tedious, missible, and fail-able side quest.

Small Arms: These are the best choice for most of the game, but they start to lose out when compared to the Plasma Rifle and Gatling Laser. Your going to be using a Hunting Rifle for most of the game, because it's cheap, efficient, and abundant. You'll eventually want to replace it with Ol' Painless or Lincoln's Repeater. You'll want a Chinese Assault Rifle for close range fights though.

Big Guns: These generally aren't too good of a choice, but there are a few good picks. The Flamethrower is great at what it does, while the Gatling Laser (which can also use Energy Weapons) basically outclasses the Minigun in every way once you find one. The Fatman is fun to use as well, but it's not practical by any means.

Unarmed: This has some great feats and the Deathclaw Gauntlet does great damage, but the simple fact that you need to be so close really hampers things. Deathclaws will rip you up, period. Get a gun.

Melee: There is only one good Melee weapon in the game (the Shishkabob), but it requires a feat from Big Guns (Pyromaniac) to really shine. However, you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get one. This loses out to Unarmed because it doesn't have the stun moves you can get via Unarmed.

Explosives: Frag grenades suck, Plasma and EMP grenades do decent damage without skill, and Nuka Grenades/Bottlecap Mines do amazing damage on their own. Honestly, just pile up a bunch of landmines and lure an enemy over them if you need to use them. Don't use your points here.

AshburnerX said:

Explosives: Frag grenades suck, Plasma and EMP grenades do decent damage without skill, and Nuka Grenades/Bottlecap Mines do amazing damage on their own. Honestly, just pile up a bunch of landmines and lure an enemy over them if you need to use them. Don't use your points here.

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I'm pretty sure Plasma and EMP Grenades both fall under energy. I think the explosives skill only effects them in terms of your accuracy and distance you can throw.

Don't forget that explosives skill also effects how long you have to disarm landmines. That comes in really handy! (Though with high enough points in sneak I guess you can just take that feat to run over landmines without setting them off at all if you want).

checkeredhat said:

I'm pretty sure Plasma and EMP Grenades both fall under energy. I think the explosives skill only effects them in terms of your accuracy and distance you can throw.

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No, it's still explosives according to the Fallout Wiki.

Don't forget that explosives skill also effects how long you have to disarm landmines. That comes in really handy! (Though with high enough points in sneak I guess you can just take that feat to run over landmines without setting them off at all if you want).

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... Or you could just be careful. Or take the hit because Stimpacks are EVERYWHERE and you'll be sitting on hundreds of them by the end of the game.

Intelligence is the most important stat since the skill points into skills are WAAAAAAAY more important than the stats themselves. If you start your intelligence relatively high and take the perk that gives you more skill points per level (as well as the one that doubles the skill points from books) you can almost max every skill before the level cap.

Yeah, good advice here. I concur: don't try to be a generalist. You've played enough games by now to know what your specialties are, and there's probably a build that caters to it. I preferred sneak and small guns. I picked every perk that gave me a VATS advantage. That combo lets me one-hit the baddies from orbit. Don't underestimate Strong Back either. You'll find a lot of useful stuff in the world, and you won't be going back to your house enough to store it regularly.

I don't know if you're like me at all, but I kind of rushed the main storyline because I was digging it. I still had a lot of side quests to do after that, and not much motivation to do them because the main quest was over. So if you're like me and can't motivate yourself after the game technically "ends", don't rush the main story.

Yeah, I'm going to try and specialize on a smarter, sneakier guy. I generally feel more comfortable with long range strategy type characters so I figure that going the route that focuses on staying alive over being a "bad-ass" is more what I would actually want to be like if I was thrust into this world.

I've noted Strong Back and Intelligence.

Espy said:

Yeah, I'm going to try and specialize on a smarter, sneakier guy. I generally feel more comfortable with long range strategy type characters so I figure that going the route that focuses on staying alive over being a "bad-ass" is more what I would actually want to be like if I was thrust into this world.

I've noted Strong Back and Intelligence.

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Honestly, the most efficient choice in the game is to start with 9 Int, then rush to Rivet City once your out of the Vault to get the Int bobblehead from one of the tables in the science lab. After that, play as normal until you get the + skill points per a level perk. Also, save ALL of your magazines until after you get the + skill points from books perk.

So based on what you guys and others have said I'm thinking of going something like this:

Strength 6
Perception 7
Endurance 5
Charisma 4
Intelligence 9
Agility 7
Luck 2

Sound decent?

Luck is nice in that it effects critical chance but it's not that important if you're popping headshots constantly.

Luck is much more important in New Vegas if you ever want to win money in a casino.

I read that it basically is just an enhancer with no negative affects so it's worth taking some of the points and tossing them into something useful.

Charisma 2.

You'll never use it.

Interesting. Where should I throw those other 2 points?

Probably Luck. Don't bother with any kind of Speech or Barter. Money is only tight early on. Later you'll earn more than enough. If you really want to use "speech" to get through some situations (never necessary to continue the game) just get the Perk (Black Widow) or the male equivlant.

Coo. Did that and bumped luck back up to 4.

I believe you need 6 or 7 Luck for the increased criticals talent. Other than that, I don't recall any real need for luck. Though if you're going the Guns/Sneak route, again you'll never need it. At the half-way point (minimum) you'll one-shot/head-shot just about anything with the most basic guns. (You'll have a sneak criticals bonus perk, a headshot bonus criticals perk, and a small guns damage critical perk, as well the as the "expody" critical damage perk)

Luck is nice for "scrounger", but I just set it to 1. You can boost it up to effectively 5 with a perk later.

Yeah Scrounger was another Perk to completely ignore. Luck will still be better than Charisma, but below everythingelse.

Charisma is useful for ONE thing: Animal Friend. Not having Yuai Gai or Deathclaws bum rushing you ALL THE FUCKING TIME is almost worth the 4 points you'd spend to get it. They changed it a bit for New Vegas (Deathclaws will ruin your day now), but it's nice if you can spare the points. Other than that though, there really isn't any reason to raise it. Putting points into Speech is much more effective.

Luck is A MUST in New Vegas. I saved my high Luck run for Hardcore mode in New Vegas... being able to raise tens of thousands of caps early on (and then spending them on implants) makes the game SO easy, even on Hardcore mode.

I also recommend skipping Scrounger and it's Bottlecap equivalent... unless your doing an energy weapons run. Those extra cells in the early game can really help, but you don't really need them once Enclave start showing up. It also increases the number of Alien Energy Cells you'll find with the Alien Blaster, which can greatly increase it's life if your not getting the Mothership Zeta DLC.

On the subject of DLC, here's a few quick opinions...

Operation Anchorage: Story is lame and the actual gameplay is very much a railroad, but the rewards for doing it are gamebreakingly good. If you REALLY want power armor early on, get it.

The Pitt: Still kinda railroaded, but the story is stronger and the reward, while nice, isn't overpowered. However, it's also completely useless unless your going small arms or big guns. Has a decent mid-range gun too.

Point Lookout: Great story, while also very open ended. However, ALL of the rewards for doing this DLC are worthless. Axes are crap melee weapons (they are much better in New Vegas...), the level action rifle doesn't pack the punch to justify using it, and the special energy weapon doesn't work correctly. If your going to do this DLC, do it early on.

Broken Steel: GET THIS. It extends the main game, boosts your level limit, and has some very cool new items.

Mothership Zeta: Same problems as Operation Anchorage... great rewards, but crap story. Not worth getting unless you really like energy weapons like I do.

One curiosity, does anyone else find it hard not to base their characters around their "origin"? This is one thing that always bothered me (not really the right word, but you know what I mean) about Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, in that they kind of give you a profession or origin.

For example, in Fallout 3 I ended up making my guy concentrate on medicine and science, just because my father was a doctor and scientist. I couldn't see myself making him a rogue character or strongman. I ended up going small guns and energy weapons just because I felt I needed them and they fit the most.

In New Vegas, I made my guy into a wasteland wanderer, putting most of my points into things like small guns, survival, repair, and barter, because it seems more like I was a contract courier that needed to know how to take care of myself out in the Mojave more then spend time in the cities.

Now that I think about it, I had the same problem in Oblivion. I started out in a prison, so I felt my character had to be some type of scoundrel or rogue character, simply because it made the most sense for me to be in prison that way.

I have made characters outside of those sets since then, but I always find the first one I have to base on a realistic set of skills based on my "upraising" or "past professions". It is hard for me not to gravitate that way.

AshburnerX said:

...DLC...

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Well as soon as PSN gets fixed I will get right on that

@Scytherexx: Nope. I pretty much made my character a reflection of myself (thrust into that situation) more than what the set-up would normally imply. That's the beauty of the Fallout/Elder Scrolls games. Here's a world.... be yourself!

ScytheRexx said:

One curiosity, does anyone else find it hard not to base their characters around their "origin"? This is one thing that always bothered me (not really the right word, but you know what I mean) about Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas, in that they kind of give you a profession or origin.

For example, in Fallout 3 I ended up making my guy concentrate on medicine and science, just because my father was a doctor and scientist. I couldn't see myself making him a rogue character or strongman. I ended up going small guns and energy weapons just because I felt I needed them and they fit the most.

In New Vegas, I made my guy into a wasteland wanderer, putting most of my points into things like small guns, survival, repair, and barter, because it seems more like I was a contract courier that needed to know how to take care of myself out in the Mojave more then spend time in the cities.

Now that I think about it, I had the same problem in Oblivion. I started out in a prison, so I felt my character had to be some type of scoundrel or rogue character, simply because it made the most sense for me to be in prison that way.

I have made characters outside of those sets since then, but I always find the first one I have to base on a realistic set of skills based on my "upraising" or "past professions". It is hard for me not to gravitate that way.

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Well, if it is anything like real life, A LOT of the times, the kids doesn't grow up to be like their parents Even RP sense you don't have to. You could be this rebellious kid after your father ran away etc etc.. who knows

Chibibar said:

Well, if it is anything like real life, A LOT of the times, the kids doesn't grow up to be like their parents Even RP sense you don't have to. You could be this rebellious kid after your father ran away etc etc.. who knows

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That's how I played it in the choices sense. My Fallout 3 character was pissed that her father ran off and took it out on the world. Then when she finds the tapes recording her mother and father together, she starts to soften and do right. Father Liam Neeson was still pissed off at me for blowing up Megaton though.

escushion said:

That's how I played it in the choices sense. My Fallout 3 character was pissed that her father ran off and took it out on the world. Then when she finds the tapes recording her mother and father together, she starts to soften and do right. Father Liam Neeson was still pissed off at me for blowing up Megaton though.

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"Honey, why'd you murder a town full of people with a nuke?"

"Because YOU ran off and left me to die at the hands of my friends and neighbors... who tried to murder me BECAUSE you left."

"... let's get that water flowing!"

If you have the Broken Steel DLC, the 10 extra levels means you'll have so many skill points and so many extra perks it's almost impossible to have a specialized character. You could quite possibly have 100 in every skill.

I agree that Small Guns or Energy Weapons would be a better specialization for your first playthrough, because those are the weapons you'll be using most. The overall most devastating build though, in my experience, is a sneaky Unarmed specialist, with a Deathclaw Gauntlet and the Paralyzing Palm perk, and preferably coupled with the Chinese Stealth Armor from Operation:Anchorage. You can literally go through the game without taking a single scratch and spending a single bottlecap on ammo, while taking down Super Mutant Behemoths for fun.

bhamv3 said:

If you have the Broken Steel DLC, the 10 extra levels means you'll have so many skill points and so many extra perks it's almost impossible to have a specialized character. You could quite possibly have 100 in every skill.

I agree that Small Guns or Energy Weapons would be a better specialization for your first playthrough, because those are the weapons you'll be using most. The overall most devastating build though, in my experience, is a sneaky Unarmed specialist, with a Deathclaw Gauntlet and the Paralyzing Palm perk, and preferably coupled with the Chinese Stealth Armor from Operation:Anchorage. You can literally go through the game without taking a single scratch and spending a single bottlecap on ammo, while taking down Super Mutant Behemoths for fun.

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so basically you became a super sneaky ninja with death touch!

Can't believe I've had this game for almost a year and I haven't reached the Broken Steel section of the main story yet...

Anyway, situation: I said earlier in this thread that around when my character finds the recordings of her mom under the Jefferson Memorial, she stopped being an evil bitch and began helping everyone, to the point where's she's Very Good at level 17. That was the RP reason--the real reason is that my wife told me you can't beat the game if you're Evil or Very Evil. She apparently read online that you don't really get an ending that way.
I took her word for it without a thought and only today am I looking online and not finding an answer, which is making me doubt this. So, anyone have insight? If I swing back to the dark side, can I still get a decent ending?

Ok so HOLY SHIT. I'm just about to start the last mission and am doing some of the random stuff, DLC, etc.

This game is freeezing on my PS3 like it's going out of style. What the hell? I'm having to restart my system almost every 15 minutes! I'm playing a brand new Fallout 3 GOTY edition FYI. Anyone else had this problem?

Espy said:

Ok so HOLY SHIT. I'm just about to start the last mission and am doing some of the random stuff, DLC, etc.

This game is freeezing on my PS3 like it's going out of style. What the hell? I'm having to restart my system almost every 15 minutes! I'm playing a brand new Fallout 3 GOTY edition FYI. Anyone else had this problem?

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Probably corruption in the save file. With all bethesda games played on a console, the best course of action is to always save in a new slot, and not save over your save games if possible. Happened to me in morrowind all the time.

Hmm. Thats what I did but at a certain point I HAVE to start saving over them. Can I go in and delete the save files and start fresh on my saves?

You know your Q/A sucks when your game doesn't run properly on a console. A console that if possible, you can even throw last minute patches to your player base.

Other than that, I still like Bethesda.

I love Bethseda games because they're one of the few games that truly let me "let loose". PC is the only way to go for their games though, they shine beyond words thanks to the mod community. I tend not to buy/play their games till a "GOTY" version is released. By then, the kinks are worked out, the mods are polished and there's MUCH more playability and stability.

Needless to say, my characters in most Bethseda games make me beyond jealous that I can't act out.

Well, it's really odd. It worked fine for 95% of the game and now that I'm almost done (all I have left is The American Dream and Broken Steel) it's just decided to freak out. I read a thing that said to turn off Auto-Saves and that it would help so I'll give that a shot tonight. (FYI Shego, this is the GOTY edition).

It's kind of sad that they never bothered to put a patch out for it. Now I'm all kinds of nervous about New Vegas but at least it only cost me a few bucks so...

New Vegas is getting a big patch before they release Old World Blues.

Sweet.