User:Vokiel39848

Just dumping some hints, tips & exploits about Fallout 3 where I thought made the most sense. In all honesty, after playing the game for at least 2 months straight, the game is very far from being fair and balanced. There's always ways to make it more enjoyable than what its creators intended. Unfortunately that often involves going around the mechanics or favoring certain approaches. This is the purpose of what I'm writing here.

Strength is expensive
"Strength is a measure of your raw physical power. It affects how much you can carry, and determines the effectiveness of all melee attacks."


 * Unless you are planning on playing a pure Melee Weapons character, strength is in my humble opinion very overrated. It allows you to carry more yes, however what's the real difference between say carrying 180 and 200 pounds? Is 20 pounds a lot when you think that most interesting items you'll pick up weight between 5 and 20 pounds? Unfortunately it really makes no difference. You'll end up being overweight regularly even with a base carrying capacity of 300 ( 10 strength + Strong Back ), and this won't make you richer in the end.


 * The problem is that every point of strength only gives you 10 more pounds of carrying capacity making investing in this statistic a pretty expensive luxury. My advice, is if you aren't going for melee kills, drop this to 4 or even 3. If you plan on using Explosives or Unarmed, 4 is the only requirement for Little Leaguer and Iron Fist. Finally, you won't suffer any accuracy penalties with some weapons, like in Fallout 1 and 2, and the lower carrying capacity isn't going to be more annoying than a normal one.

Perception is broken
"A high Perception grants a bonus to the Explosives, Lockpick and Energy Weapons skills, and determines when red compass markings appear (which indicate threats)."


 * Anyone will tell you not to increase any statistic to ridiculously high levels right out of the cradle. This is specially true for perception. The reason isn't really because of the skills it governs, but mainly because of the so call threat marker that really appears when the game wants it to appear. Unfortunately, most of the time perception is plainly broken. Hostiles will often just materialize right in your face, making that threat indicator completely useless. Also note that perception doesn't mean you'll ear better as everything that comes from behind you won't have a threat marker until you turn around. The only place where it seems to give you an advantage is indoors when sneaking up in rooms, going around corners and just standing around looking for some threat. The problem here is that the advantage is a 1 or 2 seconds faster indicator. That really isn't a hole lot considering that if you are detected indoors, hostiles will just run after you. No one out there will attempt sneaking on you or hiding from you, making perception a broken commodity


 * Perception might also be considered important for Lockpicking, but if you are not tagging the skill from the start, the mere 2 skill points per perception point will be seem completely useless. Average and Hard doors to pick are quickly encountered in the game, which require a skill of 50 and 75 respectively. Reaching this barrier is a lot of investment for loot that is mostly not critical.


 * Energy Weapons and Explosives aren't skills used early in the game, keeping this statistic average will not hurt your character that much. Note however, that some important perks require a perception of 6. Sniper at level 12 and Better Criticals at level 16 are absolute musts. I would keep this statistic at 5 or 6, with a definite intention of having it at 6 for level 12 with Intense Training if necessary.

Endurance is underrated
"Endurance is a measure of your overall physical fitness. A high Endurance gives bonuses to health, environmental resistances and the Big Guns and Unarmed skills."


 * A measure of your overall physical fitness can never be underestimated, specially at the beginning of the game. For every point of endurance, you gain 20 points of health. Starting at 1 this represents a 20% increase, which is a big increase. Adding 1 from 5 to get 6, still gives you a solid 10% increase. When you think most hostiles will be damaging you for 1 to 10 points of health in the beginning, getting 40 more health points and some 4% damage resistance can make a surprising difference.


 * There is also the minor fact that endurance is the statistic behind the Big Guns skill. It's true that you'll mostly be using Small Guns in the game, Big Guns are only really useful in certain situations. With all the indoors fighting, the skill has a somewhat fad taste. When you do use the skill though, you'll be happy to have a good base in it. It can quickly become a lifesaver many times, don't underestimate the Big Guns.


 * After experimenting with several characters, I have strong tendency to drop 7 to 8 points into Endurance quickly. Either start with 7 and pick Intense Training, or just start with 8.

Charisma is lazy
"Having a high Charisma will improve people's disposition toward you, and give bonuses to both the Barter and Speech skills."


 * There's two kinds of players that will find charisma really useful, lazy players and role players. Once role players realize that Fallout 3 isn't really a great Role Playing Game and that most quests and characters feel broken in some way anyways, all you have left is the lazers. People who want to take shortcuts and finish all quests as fast as possible.


 * Wait you say, what about Barter? How am I going to get rich? The same way everybody else does, by selling junk. Barter barely affects the price of the junk you'll be selling in half of the game. The other pieces of equipment you'll be keeping for repairs mainly. Try not selling any weapons or armor above the combat armor, you'll still end up with plenty of caps, enough to have no clue what to do with it. What about Speech? Well that's for skipping quests, getting game details, getting better rewards and/or loot. Is that really necessary? No, since all of the quests can be completed without it and you'll be rich in the end anyhow. Add to this picture that you can still have a high Speech skill with low charisma.


 * If you have no interest in role playing or if you're tired of it, drop this low. 4 and below, get some points for more important things. Note that if you have something against killing animals, the Animal Friend perk requires 6 in charisma. No, Deathclaws aren't animals.

Intelligence is essential
"Intelligence affects the Science, Repair and Medicine skills. The higher your Intelligence, the more Skill Points you'll be able to distribute when you level up."


 * Essentially you gain 1 skill point per point invested in intelligence per level. Sounds expensive? Not quite. Suppose you max this statistic very early on and pick the Educated perk as soon as you can, at the end of the game at level 20, you would have 145 skill points more than a character with average intelligence, 5. This is several more skills maxed in the end, without having to take Perks that just raise skills. Not having to take those perks, means you can invest in pure damage or pure accuracy Perks, which makes your character much more of a threat.


 * Repair is also a pretty essential skill in the game. The best merchant I've ever found for repairing weapons and armor had 50 in repair, which is barely enough for damage throughput of your weapons. Science and Medicine aren't that essential, but having a good base in them is somewhat useful for any kind of character.


 * Start strong, start with at least 7 or even 8 in intelligence. Progressing in the levels, while fighting increasingly difficult opponents will be much easier with more skill points to invest and in the end you'll get a pretty good feel with 5 to 6 skills maxed and more in the 70s.

Agility is perfection
"Agility affects your Small Guns and Sneak skills, and the number of Action Points under V.A.T.S."


 * Caring for agility is mainly caring for the amount of Action Points available under V.A.T.S., which makes a lot of difference in early levels. The difference here is a perfect fight versus a fight where you got banged quite a bit and have tons of gear to fix. Having more Action Points entering a fight certainly helps getting that perfect luster a lot. V.A.T.S. is the kind of toy that can allow you to drop opponents in close range without being hit. The more Action Points, the easier, but before you are able to harness this, you'll have to learn how to get close to your target without being detected.


 * From the first minute you'll step out of Vault 101, I can guarantee you'll be sneaking more than 50% of the time you're playing and this is no matter what kind of character you cooked up. There's simply no way around it. Your accuracy improves and you become harder to hit while crouched, sneaking. Surprisingly having success at sneaking doesn't require a very high skill, between 30 and 40 is fine. What this all means, is you can safely tag 3 skills without touching sneak, put several points in agility, put several skill points in sneak in your early levels and be quite all right at surviving in the wasteland afterward.


 * Small Guns is also the most common type of weapon found across the wastes. A detail perhaps, but certainly an important one. If you are going to play a small guns kind of player like many others, then agility is a must. This statistic is also a requirement for Sniper, a pretty decent perk for small guns/commando type characters.


 * This is another strong area, use 7 or 8 points right from the start, you won't regret it.

Luck is overrated
"Raising your Luck will raise all of your skills a little. Having a High Luck will also improve your critical chance all weapons."


 * True it does raise your skills a little, so do books, drugs, booze and miscellaneous items that increase other stats. Starting with anything higher than 5 in luck is just a waste of points. There's enough gear out there to increase luck while playing and there's also plenty of ways to increase skills by a lot more than just raising luck.


 * Luck also doesn't seem to change what happens in the game that much, even the critical chance is complete BS in my humble opinion. When you meet an opponent that is suppose to be difficult, your luck bonus will just be voided. Actually I never tried lowering it below 5, maybe that's something worth trying, maybe not. Maybe what it does is hinder characters with low luck rather than advantage characters with high luck. Because of this I recommend not touching it with a 9 foot clown pole, leave this at 5.

Safe Containers
A safe container is a container in which you can drop equipment or junk without worrying about the container regenerating content on top of it. These containers are useful when you're overweight and need to Fast Travel somewhere. As long as you remember where you put your stuff, you can keep many of these around the map which shortens down time where you need to go back home to resupply.

It seems that pretty much every container in the game is typically a safe container as long as you empty it before hand. I haven't found any exceptions. Note that containers will regenerate some of their content over time and keep the original stuff you found in them, if you do not completely empty them. Note also that you can drop anything in any container regardless of what it is. Ammunition Box, Grenade Box, Mine Box and Nuka-cola Vending Machines can contain a Minigun if you want.

Game Mechanics

 * 1) Save Escape: A save escape is the act of running away from hostiles by zoning out and then reloading the auto-save before the hostiles zone in. The game will be reloaded without any hostile in pursuit. My experience is that this works very well in most situations, but I haven't tried it in all areas facing all hostiles. Don't be surprised if it doesn't work in some cases.

World Mechanics

 * 1) Standing on a rock: Good 'ole get the enemy stuck somewhere and shoot it down. Jump on top of a rock, if you have a follower he will start running around it trying to reach you. Animals, Ghouls and anything that can't shoot will do the same. Choose your rock carefully though, or you might get a bad surprise.
 * 2) Talon Mercs / Regulators: You feel that the way these hostiles spawn is idiotic? You think the game developers were just too lazy to make them challenging to fight? Same here. Here's a hint, they always spawn at the same location. Here's another, there's too many frag mines in the game. Draw your own conclusions.