User:Eganio10795

My Experience with Fallout
I was introduced to the series when I purchased Fallout 3, and have been a devoted fan since (having recently purchased and begun to enjoy Fallout:New Vegas). I have become a real fan of Bethesda Softworks after I bought, played, and thoroughly enjoyed Oblivion, another excellent game by that company. Although that game provides a great opportunity to build a warrior class character with heavy armor and devastating melee skills and weaponry, Fallout gave me the opportunity to build the sort of character I really crave in a battle/loot/quest oriented fantasy RPG. Namely, it allowed me to build a hearty individual skilled in Guns, Repair, and Lockpick. I love the ability to simultaneously loot locations and kill most of their denizens, gaining valuable items and experience in the process. But more importantly, I love the ability to dispatch enemies mainly with projectile weaponry, as it enables multiple swift kills in a small area and time, which is highly convenient in the Wasteland, where enemies can often swarm your character. Not to mention the amazingly useful V.A.T.S., which grants you the ability to pause battle and focus your fire on individual body parts and weaponry, creating an opportunity for systematic disabling and elimination of your enemies.

Some General Advice for New Players
Keep a watchful eye on your radar, as it will be your first advantage over your enemies. You are granted a certain range of perception of living entities and locations in your vicinity, dependent upon your associated skill level. This means (depending on your sneak ability and your approach) you can provide yourself with a strategy for dispatching your foes before they even know you're there. Contacts show up as vertical bars between your HP bar and the compass bar. Bars colored the same as your HUD are friendly, while red bars indicate enemies.

Another admonition I can't forget is to be cautious of your Pip-Boy 3000, as it can give away your position very quickly. For one thing, it has a light that is easy to forget about, and can be seen across dark rooms and corridors. Furthermore, the radio is quite audible for a good distance, so if you are using a stealth approach, it should be turned off before crossing barriers into unexplored areas and/or if enemies appear on your radar.

Starting Out
Find a place to call a safehouse as soon as you can. This will be somewhere preferably in a settled area (populated by friendlies, of course), in a house/building with unowned sleeping accommodations and a non-respawning container for safe storage of valuables. Finding such a treasure can be a task in and of itself but is well worth the investment of time. A safehouse will sometimes be rewarded to you upon completion of certain quests related to particular locations. Some locations outside of settlements may seem like good choices, such as certain isolated buildings, but such locations often contain a re-spawning cadre of enemies that will be waiting for you the next time you visit, even if you wiped out the entire lot 3 in-game days ago.

For instance, in Fallout:New Vegas, the player is plopped right into Goodsprings at the start of the game, making it relatively easy to find a decent safehouse, which exists in town (I'll let you find it). But in Fallout 3, the player is released from Vault 101 at the outset, which is close to Springvale and Megaton, only the latter of which is occupied by friendlies. Because the road leading out of the vault takes the player straight into Springvale, the player may be tempted to try and make one of the buildings in the town their safehouse, which would be a mistake, since Raiders frequent the school and nearby Super-Duper Mart, and the only intact house is already occupied by a paranoid woman on the run from a shady business owner in nearby Megaton.

In both Fallout 3 and Fallout:New Vegas, the player is deposited in fairly inhospitable surroundings, with only a few loosely affiliated friends and even fewer resources. It is paramount at the beginning of either game to immediately seek out some essential supplies, namely a weapon and appropriate ammo, some sort of protective armor or clothing, a means of healing, and caps. Generally, all of these things are obtainable early on if the player looks around carefully, and does not rush through areas. As with many RPGs, the playable character (PC) determines the pace of progress through story lines, despite any perceived or expressed anxiety in NPCs or plot details (with some exceptions), so you can take your time for the most part.

Weapons and Ammunition
Choose your weapon(s) according to how you customized your character at the beginning of the game (when you chose your strengths and weaknesses) and how you chose to apply skill increases when leveling. For instance, if you created a character who is both strong and agile, he/she might be best suited for hand-to-hand combat, and you might not want to focus too heavily on any particular type of projectile or melee weapon. Alternatively, if you chose to focus on building your Guns skill, try to pick up and maintain conventional projectile weapons (such as pistols, rifles, and the like), and leave energy and melee weapons aside (or sell them), unless you chose to simultaneously build one (or both) of those skills as well.

I personally prefer allotting a good deal of weight to a variety of weapons I can keep at my constant disposal. Especially early on, when the weapons you find are in bad shape and your repair skill is low, I find it important to keep a large repertoire of weapons handy. This becomes obvious when using one weapon primarily, where its condition can deteriorate rapidly, which makes having back-ups that are in better condition a good safety-net. I enjoy using the hotkey buttons, and usually fill them all up as quickly as I can. I designate one slot as my main (for my best weapon), one as my secondary (for the next best, of course), and the remainder as ancillary. I also make it a rule to only purchase ammunition for my main gun (and let ammo for secondary guns accumulate through looting), unless necessity dictates a different approach, such as where my main gun's ammo is ubiquitous and secondary ammo is scarce. This way, I can save caps for purchasing better weapons and armor, since they become harder to find the better they are, and are often tempting (and expensive) components of traders' inventories.

Because I tend to prefer Guns-oriented characters, my weapon inventory (by level 5 or so) generally looks something like this:


 * Primary: Rifle
 * Secondary: SMG
 * Tertiary: Pistol
 * Quaternary: Energy weapon
 * Ancillary/context-dependent: Melee weapon

Due to the sparse availability of weapons near the beginning of the game, I tend to carry around a hunting rifle or a cowboy repeater as my main gun until I find something better, such as Lincoln's repeater or a brush gun, which does significantly more damage. Upon finding (or purchasing) such a treasure, it becomes my primary gun, and the other rifle I was using becomes my secondary rifle. Pistols follow the same trend, where I start off with a small semi-automatic, then find a more powerful revolver to replace it as my secondary gun, at which point the semi-automatic pistol gets bumped to a tertiary position.

Also because of my favoring Guns-oriented characters, I keep only one energy weapon and one melee weapon handy for context-dependent situations, such as battling robots (energy weapons are superior to projectile weapons for dealing with armored metal), and where I don't want to waste ammo on an easy enemy (e.g. a radroach or a giant rat). As I expand my inventory, traditional guns tend to push out such weapons, and I find myself going manually to my Pip-Boy 3000 to select these context-dependent weapons, which is fine considering the relative infrequency with which I use them. To me, it is much more important to establish and maintain a primary weapon repertoire that is hot-keyed, as quick in-battle decisions will likely necessitate such a thing, whereas situations where ancillary weapons are needed will likely occur with less frequency and where I have an opportunity to assess the situation beforehand.

Therefore, by level 15 or so, my character's weapon inventory looks something like this:


 * Primary: Large caliber rifle (e.g. Lincoln's repeater or brush gun)
 * Secondary: Large caliber handgun (e.g. .44 magnum or hunting revolver)
 * Tertiary: Fully automatic weapon (e.g. 10mm SMG or light machine gun)
 * Quaternary: Sniper rifle (e.g. Reservist's Rifle or Anti-Materiel Rifle)
 * Ancillary/context-dependent: Energy weapon (e.g. laser rifle or plasma rifle) and melee weapon (e.g. baseball bat or Chinese officer's sword)

Note: In Fallout:New Vegas, you are presented with broader weapon and ammunition varieties than you got in Fallout 3, making selection even more dynamic. For instance, I tend to fill my tertiary slot with something that can deliver armor piercing rounds, as armored enemies resist conventionally shaped rounds in the updated game mechanic. This means I like to carry around something that is handy when dealing with sentry bots and the like, which are frustratingly resistant to normal rounds.

Armor and Clothing
As with weapons, choosing the right armor and/or clothing for your character is extremely important. For instance, a character created with high perception, agility, and intelligence would probably make a stealthy looter/assassin, and would be best suited to light clothing that grants increases to the endurance and sneak abilities. Conversely, a physically powerful character built for using large melee weapons and/or heavy guns would probably tend to favor heavy armor, and wouldn't necessarily be concerned with stealth and the noise that such attire generates.

Furthermore, it can be advantageous to keep both armor and certain types of clothing available for context-dependent interactions. For example, it is a good idea to carry around a piece of clothing that increases your lockpick and repair abilities, such as the occasionally encountered utility jumpsuits, which can come in handy when your lockpick skill level is 5 points below the cutoff for a locked container, or you want to repair an important item, but your associated skill level is 5 points shy of the cutoff.

In general, I try to look for armor that is medium or light, as heavy armor's encumbrance has a noticeably detrimental effect (unless your agility is particularly high). At the beginning of the game, you will most likely find lighter armor like leather, and as you progress, more protective options will avail themselves to you. Combat armor (and the associated combat helmet) is really the best generic armor you can get your hands on, as it does not encumber you noticeably, and generally provides very good DT. Until you have an established contact with high Repair skill somewhere in the Wastes, it is a good idea to use generic armor like leather and combat, as they are relatively ubiquitous and therefore easier to maintain than specialized equipment.

In Fallout:New Vegas, factions will respond to your clothing in predictable ways throughout the Mojave Wasteland. If you have gained infamy with a particular group, you can disguise yourself as one of them to enable you to approach without being attacked. However, if you are wearing faction clothing of a group to which the faction you are approaching is hostile, they will attack you without provocation. So be cautious when deciding what armor/clothing to wear in certain areas. Remember that although you may be on good terms with two separate factions, they may not be on good terms with each other, so use caution if you decide to don one of their distinctive sets of clothing. A fine example is after gaining fame with the NCR, I went and completed the quests necessary for obtaining Power Armor Training since I had found and restored a nice set of T-51b power armor. However, I forgot that the BoS and the NCR hate each other, and stupidly ambled into the Mojave Outpost wearing BoS power armor, and was immediately attacked, prompting me to reload the auto-save and rethink my clothing options before fast-traveling there a second time!

Aid
Another vital component of your inventory must be some sort of medical assistance for traipsing about the Wasteland, as you are almost guaranteed to need it at some point (unless you are fond of constantly reloading save files). The most commonly sought-after medical treatment device is probably the Stimpak. It can be hard to find and is usually quite expensive when bartering, although at least one is found in first aid boxes (which are pretty common) at a fairly high rate (I'd say at least 50% of the time), so it is not hard to build up a decent Stimpak stockpile if you are thorough in your looting.

Another source of medical aid is food, although (especially in Fallout 3), consuming it often comes at the cost of simultaneously ingesting rads. This can be removed with RadAway and deterred with Rad-X, but these are also relatively hard to find (especially RadAway) and expensive. Another drawback to food in the Wastes is that it often weighs at least one unit (almost always in Fallout 3), whereas Stimpaks are weightless.

Miscellany
Having junk in your inventory may seem pointless, but there are many things strewn about the Wastes that warrant allotting some space for. For instance, crafting weaponry, ammo, and other useful items can be a fun and rewarding diversion, and always requires the constituent components be collected prior to generation of the object in question. Knowing what these components are and where to find them is pretty esoteric at the beginning of both games, but both become apparent as you progress, so be patient.

Furthermore, some items listed as miscellany are highly valuable and can be sold to any vendor, or can become important quest items, allowing progress through certain checkpoints that require the player to locate them for repairing certain items whose functioning is required for the quest to progress.

Getting Comfortable
Once you have established yourself in the Wastes, it's time to really dive into quest lines and explore. Venturing forth from your comfort zone during the first portion of the game can be a little challenging if you go the wrong way. For instance, the first time I played Fallout 3, I went directly east from Megaton into the Washington, D.C. ruins, navigating the dark, lonely Metro tunnels, battling the feral ghouls that would startle me half the time, barely defeating them when in packs of more than two. And I went back and forth (from filling up my inventory and going back to Megaton to barter) without fast-traveling for almost a month before my stupid ass realized that I could do so (this was my first experience with a Bethesda game). And all of this was before I realized that a direct assault on the DC ruins was probably not the best approach, and that leveling up to the south of Megaton before moving east might have been a preferable alternative.

I was again presented with this situation when I began playing Fallout:New Vegas, but this time, I heeded the warnings. I paid attention to the fact (in dialogue) that deathclaws were lurking about to the north and northeast of Goodsprings, so I avoided that approach to The Strip, and opted instead to head southeast and east, which proved a decent alternative. It also granted me the opportunity to pick up a companion in Novac, which is an invaluable addition to your party. As an aside, I was able to do the same once I reached the Museum of History in DC, but only after a good deal of single-handed super mutant slaughter with my puny .32 caliber hunting rifle (sometimes laughably pitted against a super mutant armed with the same weapon, which made me glad they are such bad shots and that their heads are such big targets!).

This was until I obtained Lincoln's Repeater, which turned me from preferentially avoiding proximity to super mutants (due to their strength and understandably dangerous melee attacks) to running right up to them so I could blow their heads clean off with one .44 Magnum round. This brings me to my next point, which is exploration. Inside and outside quest lines, there are plenty of opportunities to acquire treasures such as Lincoln's Repeater, which is not only one of the best rifles in Fallout 3, but also an historical artifact coveted by more than one collector (although for highly disparate reasons). Always check corners and hallways with your Pip-Boy 3000 light (after you've cleared the area of enemies, of course) to make sure you haven't missed doors or containers. And check the local map on your Pip-Boy 3000 as well. It will show you which areas you've explored (visible) and which you haven't (obscured), as well as doors/access points you may not have seen. And remember that many valuable objects (like stimpaks, caps, cigarettes, bobby pins, pencils, etc.) often aren't inside of containers, and are simply sitting exposed on a surface (sometimes even on the floor or just above your line of sight), and can be very hard to see and easily bumped around accidentally, so be thorough!

Getting Good
Once you are comfortable with your surroundings and the general gameplay, you can begin honing your character's skills in various activities throughout the Wastes.

Exploration
One of the most enjoyable aspects of Fallout 3 and Fallout:New Vegas, in my opinion, is finding new locations and discovering what lies inside. Locations vary widely in their complements of NPCs, enemies, loot, and quest-related options, so don't assume that a particular type of location is the same throughout the Wasteland. All locations are unique and offer very different experiences.

Looting locations after you have dispatched the hostile denizens can be very fun. All containers display whether or not there are contents to rummage through (they display  [Empty]  if not), so selecting the right ones is easy. Furthermore, many valuable items (in particular weapons and apparel) can be repaired using another of the same type, increasing the value of the repaired item, and completely removing the one used for parts, thereby freeing up its weight. This is an excellent thing to remember when over-encumbered, and can free up a significant amount of inventory space to fill with more loot.

Also keep in mind the cap:weight ratio of every item you are thinking of picking up (the higher the better, of course). At the beginning of the game, you will likely be willing to pick up things with a very low cap:weight ratio (below 5), such as pressure cookers (3), beer (2), teddy bears (3), toasters (1.67), crutches (2.5), etc. for bartering, since you will have a lot of empty space and few caps. Later on, however, especially when you allotted a certain encumbrance to weapons and armor, you will likely want to instigate a rule regarding the cap:weight ratio of the things you're picking up. In general, at the beginning of the game, I start picking up things with cap:weight ratios of 1 to 5, since there's not much else around at this point. Once I have established a base weapon and armor encumbrance, I shift to picking up things with a cap:weight ratio of 5 or above only, and ignore everything else. Inventory space becomes highly valuable, and many items that are worth a decent amount of caps are also quite heavy (such as the wood chipper, which has a cap:weight ratio of 0.5).

If you are a patient, methodical, and paranoid player like me, one thing you will probably find yourself doing is fast-traveling quite a bit back and forth from merchants to safehouses, and saving quite often. I establish routes for myself to fast-travel once I have gathered a full inventory (and filled up any companion's as well). These routes necessarily include all high-end merchants, i.e. those with a significant amount of caps (and inventory) replenishing every 3 in-game days or so. The routes, of course, change as I find better merchants and safehouses.

I establish a route because 1) different merchants have different inventory, so visiting each of them regularly helps you find things you may be looking for, and 2) oftentimes, the inventory I wish to sell amounts to more caps than the merchant has at the time, prompting me to take the remainder to another merchant. In this manner, it is quite easy to amass a considerable fortune in caps as you progress though the levels, making it possible to purchase rare and extremely expensive weapons, armor, and other treats. Furthermore, in Fallout: New Vegas, finding people with a Repair skill of 100 (e.g. Major Knight and Sato) is not as difficult as it is in Fallout 3. This means in Fallout:New Vegas, I make a place like the Mojave Outpost (where Major Knight is stationed) one of the stops on my route, as it saves me the trouble of finding duplicates (or more) of the items I wish to repair and worrying about my own Repair skill level.

Once I have repaired my gear and reset my encumbrance to base (i.e. sold all the items I wished to sell), I save at the end-point of the route (my primary safehouse), which becomes the starting point for the next round of exploration and scavenging. I also use this safehouse to store valuable items that I will (or may) need later on. If you do this, make certain you are in a gifted safehouse (quest-related) or an accessible interior location inside a friendly settlement with an unowned container (e.g. a footlocker) next to an unoccupied bed.

Battle
Once you have hardened yourself to the rigors of battle in the Wastes, you will begin to notice trends in your enemies' behaviors, as well as in your own. You can (and definitely should) use these to your advantage whenever possible. For instance, you may notice that AI has a tendency to run up against rocks, walls, fences, etc. and continue running as though the barrier were invisible, trying their damnedest to get to you. This makes picking them off from a vantage point almost laughably easy, and can be a viable strategy when confronted with a particularly tough enemy.

Also, knowing your enemy is key to taking advantage of its weaknesses. A prime example is with the deathclaw, which is normally the most fearsome creature in the Wastes, with its size, speed, and strength far outmatching most everything else. However, get your hands on a dart gun, and you can quickly turn this monster into mincemeat. Because the bipedal deathclaw relies heavily on its speed to deliver itself immediately to its target in order to initiate a devastating melee attack (the only attack it has), crippling one of its legs (requires only one shot with the dart gun) effectively removes its biggest advantage, allowing you to take your sweet time filling its cranium with hot lead while it slowly limps angrily (almost pathetically) toward you. Luckily, deathclaws don't know how to use stimpaks!

Another example is the super mutant, not commonly known for its intelligence or battle prowess with projectile weaponry. Although they can use any weapon a human can, super mutants generally rely on melee weapons, using their enormous strength to their advantage. This means a super mutant armed with nothing or with a melee weapon should be kept at a distance, preferably sniped. Conversely, a super mutant armed with a rifle or other smaller projectile weapon is a far less formidable opponent. Because they are so big, slow, and not-too-bright, super mutants have a really rough time managing the human-size weapons they are sometimes armed with. This makes them extremely poor marksmen, creating a window for you to approach to even point-blank range in order to dispatch the occasional super mutant armed with a hunting rifle (which seems to be their base projectile weapon of choice). The major caveat to this is with big guns, with which super mutants seem almost uncannily adept. A super mutant carrying a minigun, rocket launcher, gatling laser, etc. should generally be avoided. If it can't be avoided, try targeting and crippling its weapon in V.A.T.S., which will remove the super mutant's range advantage, and require it to approach for melee attacks, allowing you to snipe it as it approaches.

This brings me to another major component of battle, the Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System (V.A.T.S.), which is, in my opinion, an indispensable component of gameplay. Not only can you pause battle, but you can target enemies' individual body parts and weaponry, making possible systematic crippling and elimination of your foes. It also makes dealing with multiple enemies much easier, since you can divide up the attention you give to each target. In this manner, you can easily stymie an incoming melee attack (by crippling the legs, attack arm, or weapon itself), then immediately blow off the head of someone else pointing a weapon at you while the melee opponent is recovering from your attack, then switch back to the melee opponent before he/she/it has initiated another attack. This brings in the idea of ordering on V.A.T.S., which is very important for effective use of the system. Because you have a limited amount of AP, you must economize during battle when using V.A.T.S. Order your opponents according to the threat they pose to your character. Allot your AP to more serious threats, and leave the less serious threats to manual aim while AP is regenerating.

For instance, let's say you are dealing with a group of Raiders. If you have good armor and most of your HP remaining, you can withstand a fair amount of small arms fire while dealing with more immediate threats, like rapidly approaching melee opponents. After you have dispatched the more immediate threats in V.A.T.S., while your AP is regenerating, use manual aim to begin dealing with ranged opponents, then return to V.A.T.S. when AP is back to finish them off. This way, the majority of the damage you have sustained will likely be from medium-range small arms fire, and you will have avoided any damage from melee attacks (which can cripple limbs much more easily than small caliber bullets). Your armor should keep your overall and individual limb HP from dropping too low from ranged small arms fire, whereas it is much worse at preventing crippling damage from melee attacks. Even while wearing armor, withstanding melee damage while trying to pick off ranged enemies is a bad position in which to put yourself, so make sure you not only know how many opponents you are dealing with, but what their individual attack patterns and methods are likely to be as well.

Dialogue
First off, if you want to speak to an NPC, holster your weapon. Believe it or not, NPCs generally respond rather negatively to being confronted by someone with their weapon drawn, and may lose disposition toward your character if you persist in this sort of behavior. There are instances where you will have to draw your weapon against a newly hostile NPC after particular dialogue options, but you will have enough time, and should generally speak to every NPC with your weapon initially holstered.

It can be very tempting to rush through dialogue, especially when the NPC is rambling, has really cheesy lines, or isn't making any sense. But this can be a grievous mistake, as many quests, locations, NPCs, and valuables are made available through dialogue with NPCs. In fact, the vast majority of quests are picked up this way in both Fallout 3 and Fallout:New Vegas. This means talk to everybody you encounter. It is well worth the time. Even when a quest is not offered, NPCs oftentimes give the player map markers, supplies, and valuable advice regarding locations, hostiles, and other NPCs, so don't be shy.

When speaking with NPCs, you will sometimes be presented with a dialogue option preceded by a bracketed indicator with a skill and associated numeric ratio, for instance  [Science 35/40] . In this example, you are being told that there is a dialogue option that will grant you a speech success, but your associated skill level (Science, which is 35) is 5 points below the cutoff (which is 40). The dialogue option that does appear in this situation is one that will not grant a success. In this case, you would need to use something that would boost your Science at least 5 points. If you did so and returned to dialogue with the NPC, a new dialogue option (one that will grant a speech success) would appear for the topic in question.

In other instances, you will be presented with a dialogue option preceded by a bracketed indicator containing either a primary statistic or a skill followed by a number, rather than a ratio, e.g.  [Perception 6]  or  [Barter 50] . In these cases, you already have the necessary level of the indicated primary statistic or skill, and the dialogue option will grant a speech success automatically.

Quests
Quests are the primary means of progress through the game's story line. Acquiring them is almost always done by speaking to NPCs, where they are generally embedded somewhere in the dialogue paths available to the player. This makes speaking to every NPC with whom you can engage in dialogue (generic NPCs give you a stock response, without zooming into dialogue) a very good idea.

Quests vary from simple to grueling, with a more-or-less predictable return in XP (and perhaps caps, valuables, or both). Generally speaking, the simpler quests are available at or near the beginning of the game, fairly proximal to the starting point, and return low XP and few material rewards, if any. The further you get away from the starting point, and the higher your level, the more difficult the quests tend to be (with some exceptions), and the greater the XP and rewards.

Many quests require acquisition of certain miscellaneous items in order to complete them (e.g. for repairing an object involved in a quest line). This sort of thing meshes very nicely with the remainder of gameplay in that you can save and go about your general business while also seeking the necessary parts for your active quest. Also, many of the items required for quests are found in new locations that grant XP and valuables to the player (through combat and looting) while working for a reward that will likely grant more of the same. This tends to smoothly incorporate locations, NPCs, objects, and even quest lines into a very enjoyable and oftentimes memorable experience.

Remember that because you control the playable character (PC), you dictate the pace of the vast majority of quest plot elements. There are, of course, a few exceptions where your actions must be completed within a certain time frame, but for the most part, you can take your time completing quests. This is true despite a good deal of implicit and explicit anxiety on the parts of many NPCs. The prompts (quest updates) given by the HUD in the upper left hand corner are the best indicators of the urgency with which you need to treat the current situation. A good rule of thumb is that if you are tasked with acquiring something or speaking to someone in a separate location, you can rest assured that you can take your time in doing so, waiting, fast-traveling, sleeping, healing, trading, etc. in between.

Conquering the Wastes
Once you have gotten good at the game, you are ready to conquer the Wastes. So go conquer!

Charles McMurtry
Known throughout the Mojave Wasteland as the Courier and Guardian of the Wastes, Charles McMurtry's beginnings could not have been more humble. Born to Theodore and Sarah McMurtry in the heart of the New California Republic, Charles began working at the tender age of 9 helping his parents herd and milk Bighorners on their ranch in what was once known as the Sacramento Valley. One of Charles' earliest childhood memories is of visiting New Reno, with its painfully disingenuous, cynical, and corrupt denizens. The incident that stood out in the boy's memories from his visit was the savage beating of a prostitute by a customer in full public view. No one ran to her aid, and no one accosted the attacker. What really struck a nerve in the boy, however, was the complete lack of empathy displayed by all of the people around him, even his own parents. He can still remember his mother's attempt at consolation: "These things happen, Charlie. It's best not to get involved."

As Charles matured and began to learn the history of events preceding and succeeding the Great War, his resolve to right the wrongs that humanity had imposed upon itself grew stronger. Much to the chagrin of his parents, Charles couldn't let go of the fact that people would treat each other so callously, and almost daily expressed his desire to "get out of here and fix shit." Knowing they couldn't constrain their passionate son's thirst for justice, Charles' parents contacted a friend of theirs in New Vegas and arranged for his room and board, as well as employment with the Mojave Express, in the hopes that the change of scenery would, according to his father, prevent Charles from someday "wandering off and getting himself killed."

The McMurtry's plans for their son, while well-intentioned, were unfortunately poorly aimed. Not more than one week after being employed by the Mojave Express, Charles was ambushed during what was supposed to be a typical delivery. Charles did think it a bit odd to be transporting a mere poker chip not more than 10 miles from Primm to The Strip as Benny and his team approached him just outside Goodsprings. However, he couldn't have imagined the importance of his cargo, nor the atrocious ferocity with which people would try and claim it for themselves, no matter the cost. Benny and his team obviously wanted Charles' cargo badly enough to do things they normally wouldn't...Charles can even remember Benny expressing remorse for the "necessity" of his actions immediately before shooting him.

Left for dead in an almost insultingly shallow grave outside Goodsprings, Charles was nursed back to health by the town's doctor, Mitchell, after being rescued by Victor, an unusually friendly automaton that had witnessed the incident. Miraculously, though shot in the head, Charles made a rapid recovery and was within days able to help the impromptu Goodsprings militia fend off an attack by a group of Powder Gangers led by Joe Cobb. Using Goodsprings as a safe-point and trade center, Charles set out to the southeast after hearing rumors that deathclaws had taken over the area to the north and northeast of Goodsprings. After quickly dispatching the few remaining Powder Gangers at their nearby western and southern camps, Charles happened upon Primm Pass, where he, for the second time in a week, narrowly escaped death by defeating the blind deathclaw patrolling the narrow passage to the east.

Battered and bruised from his first encounter with a deathclaw, and contemplating his new infamy with the Powder Gangers, Charles recuperated at Harper's Shack while surveying the landscape to his east, pondering the other dangers that undoubtedly lied in wait. Charles set out at first light east from Harper's Shack, and eventually happened upon Ranger Station Charlie, which lifted his spirits after encountering people dressed in familiar NCR attire. Encouraged by the NCR's obvious dedication to civilizing the Mojave Wasteland, Charles pushed northeast toward the silhouette of the dinosaur that could just be made out beyond the narrow rail yard. After only a few minutes, Charles found himself in Novac, now even more encouraged by finding another established settlement.

Charles quickly began speaking to everyone he could find in town for news of the man that had tried to kill him, but with little success. Mere rumors and casual remembrances were all that the town had to offer, except for the uncannily ubiquitous robot, Victor, who urged him vaguely on toward the glowing lights of The Strip. A discussion with one of the regular snipers frequenting the mouth of the giant metal dinosaur at the town's east end gave him some more indication of the types of people he would encounter. Craig Boone, an ex-sniper from the 1st Recon squadron, clued Charles into the danger from the east, namely Caesar's Legion, which would undoubtedly become a major threat to his own safety, not to mention the safety of the entire Mojave Wasteland.

Boone's accounts of his wife's abduction and sale into slavery for Caesar's troops compelled Charles to invite him along as a companion, as his intended targets for annihilation now included Caesar's Legion. Boone agreed to come with Charles on one condition: that he discover the truth regarding his wife's abduction. Boone felt that Charles had a unique position in the town as an outsider: the townsfolk might reveal clues to him that they would be otherwise reluctant to relay to Boone himself. Emboldened by the potential alliance, Charles asked around town and gathered enough gossip to narrow his search down to the Dino Dee-lite motel office, where he discovered a bill of sale with Boone's wife as the commodity, Caesar's Legion as the purchaser, and Jeannie May Crawford as the seller. According to instructions, Charles led Jeannie May in front of the dinosaur so that Boone would have a clear shot of her head, which he rapidly and efficiently removed as payment for the sale of his wife into slavery.

With Novac and its betrayals in his past, Boone was ready to move on. Charles eagerly accepted the invaluable assistance from his new friend, who would prove a cunning sniper and fiercely loyal ally. Charles convinced Boone to help him investigate the numerous reports of ghouls to the west of Novac, at the REPCONN Test Site. Boone, eager to battle Caesar's Legion, was in no mood to dawdle about and cater to Charles' whims, but he saw an opportunity to toughen the young man up. On their way to the site, Boone briefed Charles on the feral ghouls: "Once you see those eyes, you'll be mighty eager to plant a round between them before they get too close...nothing human should look at you like that." Boone's advice proved salient, as Charles' nerves were put to the test upon approaching and entering the site. Nothing in his ranch days had prepared him for the horrors of battling feral ghouls. Even his narrow brushes with death at the hands of Benny outside Goodsprings and the blind deathclaw in Primm Pass paled in comparison to what he came to see as a sort of euthanasia for irreconcilably mutated fellow human beings. As he and Boone made their way to Jason Bright and his followers, Charles battled with visions of his parents, mutated into feral ghouls, dying at his own merciful hands.

Boone was remarkably accurate in his estimation of Charles' capabilities, and the ease with which battling feral ghouls would harden him to the rigors of battle. When Charles agreed to help Jason Bright clear out the basement of the test site, Boone began to worry his training diversion would end up taking much longer than he thought. However, Charles proved a formidable, and oftentimes frighteningly accurate, combatant. Learning to stalk feral ghouls before they stalked him had obviously had the intended effect. In later conversations about his travels with the Courier, Boone could be heard saying, "I swear, that son of a bitch could smell those motherfuckers." This generous appraisal was likely due to Charles' efficient removal of the vast majority of the nightkin in the REPCONN Test Site basement on his own, where he would listen for their obvious breathing, slowly approaching, waiting for them to attempt an ambush.

Having assisted Jason Bright and his followers reach their destinations, Charles was ready to head north. This decision was made much easier by Boone's constant urgings as they watched the rockets launch from the observation deck. Later, while listening to Radio New Vegas amidst their travels, Charles and Boone would share a quick laugh when they heard mention of the "local crackpot" in Novac giving a frighteningly accurate description of the events at the REPCONN Test Site, where he claimed ghouls in rockets were looking for a place to call home.