Fallout 3!

[Phen]

I think they explode a little more often with bloody mess, but it happened fairly often before that too. And I thought the exp-thing is nice enough, but obviously, a lot less nice with a capped max level. But it's alright, since there's no way I can resist playing again as an evil character. Just can't decide weather that one should go big guns/energy weapons or unarmed/melee. There are some pretty cool perks for the unarmed... Anyone has tried them?

[Jebobek]

I might go evil and unarmed next time. Just because due to the silly (but awesome) death-physics when I punch someone in the head, their head either explodes or is knocked clean off.

Anyone have experience with big guns to an extent with ammo? I don't want to put all of my skills in the big guns and find out later that I must constantly switch back to little guns due to ammo concerns.

[Amnesiasoft]

There's always the Rock-It launcher.

As for Bloody Mess, I don't know what game you're playing, but just about all my weapons have significantly greater effects on the enemy body. Using my Hunting Rifle and Chinese Rifle, I've done a headshot only to have all their limbs explode. With the combat shotgun, I've made a torso shot causing, well, EVERYTHING to explode.

[thecommabandit]

I know a lot of people on the official forums wanted the ability to skip the VATS cutscenes (before the game was out) because they thought they'd get tired of them. I don't know about you lot, but I've racked up ten or so hours and it still amuses me greatly to watch my character beat the shit out of a radroach with a baseball bat. Even funnier if it's a Raider.

With regards to flamey things and motorbike brakes:

Spoiler:

You can make a thing called a "Shishkebab" out of a motorcycle gas tank, some lawnmower blades and a brake handle once you have the schematic. What a shishkebab is is a sword with a fuel line to a gas tank. Gasoline all over the blade + fire = flaming sword +1. Haven't managed to find the schematics yet, but I was looking around some metro station and encountered a ghoul called Golla or something clad in a trader's outfit and a party hat... I found like four of the brake handles in his store cupboard in a box (not a container, just sitting in one of the boxes). Gas tanks tend to fall off broken motorbikes in the wasteland. Lawnmower blades can be found lying around in boxes or, oddly enough, in lawnmowers.

I found a powerfist at level seven in

Spoiler:

the Mirelurk caves where you get given a map to the caves of the Mirelurk King. Freaky guy that is, he doesn't even look like a mirelurk, but I found a powerfist in his treasure pile, along with a laser rifle and a fair chunk of ammo for it (woohoo! *pew pew*).

[Upsilon]

Spoiler:

I've just gotten to the GNR building. On the way I picked up some power armor and a laser pistol off a dead guy. I repaired my own laser pistol with his, so now I have a laser pistol in good condition and a metric fuckton of ammo for it. But I want a laser rifle dammit!

[BumpInTheNight]

Regarding perks, I've been putting points constantly into things like "get an extra point to put into Str/Agi/Int" or "everytime you level you have more points to spend on whatever." I think its a boring thing to do but I'd like to see how it pans out when I hit lvl 20.

Did anyone invest in the bloody perk? How much different does it look?

I just re-made a new char and a high reason for doing so was how silly the Bloody Mess thing started to make battles and Vats view. Silenced 10mm gun to the head and the guy's legs blow up? Toooo silly for me, fun but too silly Something I realized on the 'max stuff' concept is max your int, you get 17 points base on your skills instead of 15 and 20 points/level even without the perk that gives you more at lvl 4. I also just wanted to make a psychopathic little girl character, my current guy is pretty far and all with great gear but I went a little too good and benevolent for my tastes.

Plus he just kinda looks like a douche


But the new girl is off to a flying good start

Spoiler:

PS I love how the hooker in Moriate's bar hits on you regardless of gender

[Phen]

Ahaha. I'm concerned you'll kill someone important, but it's pretty cool you can just kill everyone...

Regarding fashion, I found a shop with all sorts of old clothing Looks awesome running around with a business-suit and fedora-ish hat and killing the shit out of everything, not like those wimps in powerarmor.

[Aethernox]

I believe, in regards to power fists, that

Spoiler:

I found mine in the Tepid Sewers, in a locked room. There was a raider named Rockfist or something to that extent, and he has a good deal of loot around the place. He should drop a key upon death.

[Jessica]

I've been having a number of crashing problems. I dropped the video from high to medium. hopefully that helps.

[Phen]

I've been having a number of crashing problems. I dropped the video from high to medium. hopefully that helps.

Me too. I havn't done anything about it, though... Hopefully it's just not me and there'll be a patch or something.

[BumpInTheNight]

Crashings for me too, I think there is too wide of a variety of reasons to try and trouble shoot at this point but I can say I've experimented with a bunch of fixes and think I found a good niche. I found that regardless of the video settings it'd get the random crashes for instance, most of them go back to the nvidia driver itself going down but that ultimately can still mean anything triggered it from the game's engine too.

The last thing I did though was follow the advice from the forum about the ogg file association and far as I can tell there hasn't been a crash since. Essentially someone hypothesizes that if you have winamp and its the associated .ogg file player it'll cause some sound effects to create crash conditions. I went in and re-associated it with WMP as suggested instead. Why this matters/worked I haven't a clue...but it seems to have for me.

*crosses fingers that its the last situation for me that causes the crashes resolved*

[Rippy]

My game hung up once, just froze completely and I had to restart the game, but other than that it's been pretty good.

[Jebobek]

I had a couple of freeze delays, like when someone ran over my energy mine it paused.. them BAM and the action started up again. I think its something about loading up new sounds.

[thecommabandit]

I don't get that, usually if it freezes it's frozen until I kill the process. Once, it did freeze (with stuttery repeated sounds) and then it unfroze, but that was just once.

[SoapyHobo]

Spoiler:

I've just got out of the metro system after the GNR bit, found a laser pistol in a safe at the metro just before that. Tried it out on a couple of ghouls and promptly blew the place up. Didn't kill the overseer at the start, wanted Amata to like me, she stayed behind though...so lonely *cries*

Pretty good so far, game hung on me after I entered someone's house but was fine after loading it up again. Mr (Max) Radd is hoping the points put into energy weapons will be worth his time, helping people out when it suits him and stealing random stuff when no-one's looking.

...And occasionally when they are.

[Upsilon]

In other news: The Combat Shotgun is the best ever.

[Amnesiasoft]

I've had one crash, when I exited the game. Nothing else.

[Upsilon]

I've had plenty of crashes. Luckily, they were all after I had recently saved.

I found a sniper nearly right after I entered D.C his name was Sam something. I killed him and took his sunglasses, then I later found a "Dirty Pre-war Business Suit". I put both of these on and equipped the Combat Shotgun.

Here is the result:

Spoiler:

[thecommabandit]

I found Dogmeat! I'm so happy. He's awesome.

Had another crash, I was in some area of DC with lots and lots of cars... some Raider decided it would be a good idea to shoot at one of them. Boom! All of us go sky-high in a string of nuclear explosions. Then when it tried to re-load the most recent save... crash. Heh. I needed to stop playing anyway.

[Phen]

I've had plenty of crashes. Luckily, they were all after I had recently saved.

I found a sniper nearly right after I entered D.C his name was Sam something. I killed him and took his sunglasses, then I later found a "Dirty Pre-war Business Suit". I put both of these on and equipped the Combat Shotgun.

Here is the result:

Spoiler:

You're missing the hat!

In other news, I poked at that windows live thingy. And was confused when I suddenly didn't have any saves. So it doesn't count any of the progress I've made so far
I'll be making a new evil char, anyhow. Xaddak, you're going melee, right? Is it hard to play with that?

Edit: I've just decided to go for energy weapons instead. But it's really fun being an evil, thieving bastard.

[Upsilon]

You're missing the hat!

Well, see, I planned on

Spoiler:

killing Mr. Burke and taking his hat after tattling on him to Lucas Simms, but when I got into Megaton I just popped some Mentats and disarmed the bomb without ever seeing Burke.

[Rippy]

All unarmed/melee would be an interesting playstyle. I guess you'd just put all your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. in endurance, since it improves both your health and unarmed? It'd be nice if you could change your speed somehow too. (does your speed reduce as the amount of equipment increases? I'm pretty sure that in Oblivion your speed was related to the % of your total carry capacity being used, so you'd be faster wth 50/200 than 180/200. If this applies to Fallout 3, would you technically get a speed increase by taking the perk that gives you +50 carry capacity? I haven't really noticed a difference myself. You'd think there should be SOME way to change your speed, especially since you could do this in Oblivion and this seems like pretty much the same engine)

Speaking of which, I wish there were a sprint button. It's kind of annoying to watch your character jog leisurely away from a horde of mutants firing at him, or jog up to an enemy when closing the distance with his melee weapon.

[Delbin]

Delbin, have you noticed any considerable difference with the commando perk? I almost picked it, but then got the Strong back instead, since I was sick of having to run back and forth all the time.

I have noticed a significant difference, so I'd definitely recommended it. I get 30% accuracy at pretty long range with the hunting rifle. Not too bad considering.

[Jack Saladin]

Ah goddamnit, this is doing the exact same thing to me Oblivion did... I went to bed at 3AM last night, dreamt about Fallout for 3 hours, got up and started playing again. >.<

There's a ridiculous amount of stuff to do in this game. You can spend 10 minutes running from any one point in the game to any other point, and you'll pick up at least three new quests. Not to mention all the stuff lying around that isn't officially a "quest" - weird buildings to investigate and so on.

I wonder if this will top Oblivion for my "most hours played within first week of ownership" award. Oblivion got 80.

Anyone know any neat, random, non-spoilerish things to check out?

[Amnesiasoft]

This is a double spoiler. It also contains Mass Effect stuff.

Spoiler:

I just convinced John Henry Eden to destroy the Enclave...which is at least 50% more awesome than convincing Saren to commit suicide in Mass Effect.

[Phen]

That was a bigger spoiler than I had hoped for. Goddamnit. Ah well, I havn't even met the enclave yet. Regarding Megaton and Tenpenny,

Spoiler:

I had hoped had a better reason for destroying the town than that it didn't look pretty.

[thecommabandit]

Ah goddamnit, this is doing the exact same thing to me Oblivion did... I went to bed at 3AM last night, dreamt about Fallout for 3 hours, got up and started playing again. >.<

There's a ridiculous amount of stuff to do in this game. You can spend 10 minutes running from any one point in the game to any other point, and you'll pick up at least three new quests. Not to mention all the stuff lying around that isn't officially a "quest" - weird buildings to investigate and so on.

I wonder if this will top Oblivion for my "most hours played within first week of ownership" award. Oblivion got 80.

Anyone know any neat, random, non-spoilerish things to check out?

Yeah, something weird that's probably a mini-quest without the Pipboy entries is the town of Andale. I can't remember where it is now, probably vaguely eastish of Megaton but

Spoiler:

you go there and there are two or three intact houses and a shack. I went into the two intact big houses and sitting perfectly quietly at the dinner table you'll find a man, his wife and their child. I talked to a few of them and one man invited me round for dinner, one of the wives told me that Andale has been the official best town in America for so long no-one knows when they won it first. And the son of one family told me that "Dad always deals with the newcomers". After that I went into the small house and was greeted by Old Man Jenkins telling me to get out and that "people wander in, and they don't wander back out" and to check the basements or the shack if I don't believe him. Unfortunately, I can't even pick medium locks yet, let alone very hard, so Andale's mystery remains that...

I've probably got about fifteenish hours of play racked up now.

[Rippy]

Regarding Megaton and Tenpenny,

Spoiler:

I had hoped had a better reason for destroying the town than that it didn't look pretty.

Same... I guess it's supposed to be a crappy reason, though, so that you feel bad for going through with it.

Also, yes or no question to people who have played through the game and explored more than I have: Is there a nicer city somewhere than Rivet City? The barren wasteland is making me long for a nice prosperous city to keep me safe from all the mutants and raiders, but I'm not sure if there is such a place.

[Jack Saladin]

Also, yes or no question to people who have played through the game and explored more than I have: Is there a nicer city somewhere than Rivet City? The barren wasteland is making me long for a nice prosperous city to keep me safe from all the mutants and raiders, but I'm not sure if there is such a place.

According to the radio, there's a bunch of trees out there somewhere. Not exactly a city, but, uhh it's nice, apparently? Rivet City is the biggest settlement.

It's 3AM again. >.<

[Phen]

Now this windows live thingy made me restart AGAIN... And now I can't find the laser rifle in the metro where I got it in the last two playthroughs. Anyone has suggestions on where else to find a laser rifle?
For you people who has completed the game, does it end when you finish the main quest? Or are you still allowed to run around with your character?

[Upsilon]

I heard somewhere that you have to start up an earlier save in order to continue playing.

[Wolf]

To the people who are losing their saves to Windows Live:

Go into the Fallout folder wherever you installed it. When you make a windows live profile, it makes a save folder for that profile. Your old saves (from when you weren't using a profile) will be in the save folder, but not in the folder for that profile. You can just copy your saves into the profile's folder, and they'll work just fine (you'll miss out on some early game achievements, though (like the GOAT, probably).

I hope this helped? I realized I probably wasn't too clear. But it will be obvious once you find it!

I've decided I really, really like having a character with a decently high speech skill. It's great fun easily convincing people to tell you stuff like passwords.

Also, the first fight with the Talon Company. Did anyone else find it really hard? I mostly had a bad time of it because I was low on ammo and didn't have a lot of health stuff, but I made it through after a few tries.

And about the main quest:

Spoiler:

Did anyone else skip a huge chunk of it by accident? I had gone to Megaton and was sent off to go find Galaxy Radio. However, I did the Those! quest and went to Rivet City. I then talked to Doctor Li and thus automatically finished Chapter 2 and completely skipped over Chapter 3. I'm now theoretically off to go to the Jefferson Memorial or whatever.

I went back to find Galaxy Radio anyway, though. Which actually didn't work so well because the Brotherhood didn't show up to help me out like they're apparently supposed to. I got to kill a whole mess of Supermutants with my hunting rifle, though. : )

Wierdly enough, though, the huge mutant with the melee weapon still showed up outside of the radio station. He killed all of the Brotherhood people, too, but I snuck past in the chaos and the radio station still let me in. Any explanation besides wonked up scripts due to a messy quest order that you guys can think of?

[Jack Saladin]

Also, the first fight with the Talon Company. Did anyone else find it really hard? I mostly had a bad time of it because I was low on ammo and didn't have a lot of health stuff, but I made it through after a few tries.

I pwnt them hard but my character's pretty well suited to killing humans. I've been raiding their camps as well, but I can't see anything that seems to have an impact on them hunting me. Anyone know if they have an HQ or something?

I'm playing a small guns wielding, stealthy, computer hacking, lockpicking Very Good kleptomaniac ninja. I'll save your town and shit, but then I'll break into your house, steal everything inside, and lol at your private diary on your computer. Still ranks me as "Very Good" since I always go out of my way to help people prior to screwing them over, so obviously the game doesn't mind too much.

If you're not hacking the computers of everybody who you meet, you're seriously missing out. There's shitloads of backstory and other information in there that you'd never find otherwise, and lots of funny stuff about the characters (and getting robots to do your bidding is just awesome, particularly in places with specific commands like the RoboCo HQ). Likewise with lockpicking, focussing on those two skills (with a bunch of speech thrown in as well) gives me the best view of the story, methinks. Play your cards right in the Those! quest and you'll get a unique lab coat that gives you a pretty significant boost to Science, btw.

I haven't found any companions who are willing to sign on with my high karma yet... Dogmeat is somewhere NW, right? Haven't even been near there yet.

Played for 20 hours so far, owned it for 40. >.>

Edit: Shet, sounds like the PC version is a bit of nightmare. The PS3 version is buggy as shit, and has a noticeable serving of slowdown and brief freezes, but it hasn't deleted any of my saves. Yet, at least.

Kind of *facepalm* that even the most notorious of the bugs from Oblivion are perfectly carried over into this. They didn't actually fix anything.

What's the reaction from the hardcore old-skool Fallout faction? Because it really, really is "Oblivion with guns", which I think is awesome, but is exactly what they were fearing.

[Upsilon]

Anyone know where I can get parts to make the Railway Rifle? I have a few Steam gauge assemblies, I have like 80 railway spikes, and I think there's a few crutches in the Springvale elementary school, but I have yet to see any pressure cookers or fission batteries.

[Phen]

I'm not having any of my saves deleted and I know I could retrieve them. The thing is, I just wanted to try and activate the Live thing, so achivements are actually working. Since I always hear people moaning about them.
I set out to be an evil character, but saved Megaton. So I'm between being a pirate and a wanderer, the game tells me. Also wanted to focus on energy weapons, but that's just useless, I just discovered - the chinese assault rifle is stronger than the special plasma rifle reward in the synthetic man.

Mister Burke is a special man, too... Even dead, he sends hitmen after me. Well done, indeed.

Edit: I find loads of pressure cookers and fission batteries, but that's just on my way through things... Maybe I found a cooker in the super duper mart, but I'm not sure. I imagine Pinkerton has fission batteries.

I think I'm playing a lot like Saladin - that's also why my chacter is still not good, 'cause I killed some people in the vault. So, I do good deeds and steal all the time. To max everything out, though, I'm thinking it's best not to raise skills over 60-70, since there should be 25-skillbooks for each plus the bobbleheads. (I've got the comprehension perk, so actually I shouldn't raise them more than 40, if I knew where they were...)

Question for the weapon shop in Rivet City. I hear that they sell more powerful weapons if you ask correctly, but even when I get him to say that he'll show me, nothing happens.

[Rippy]

Today's exploits of Rippy's sadistic psychopath character:

Spoiler:

- Shot up the Brotherhood of Steel headquarters after advancing the plot there. I have 21 holotags to prove it, and the only 2 survivors were unkillable (Lyons and Gunny). I got two cool weapons from it, though: the sniper rifle and the gatling laser. I hardly use big guns and I'd never seen the ammo before, so I left the laser, but the sniper rifle is cool.
- Got a drug addiction while popping every kind of drug possible during said Brotherhood massacre
- Went to Paradise Falls (the slaver town), was apparently a very popular guy among the slavers, and I have agreed to lure out a child from a cave so that he can be captured by slavers and I can advance the plot (the alternative is saving some slave children).
- Cured the drug addiction
- Stole a silenced 10mm pistol that was on the table at the Paradise Falls gun shop, but not for sale. It's very weak, but seems kinda cool nonetheless. (now I just need that perk for silently killing people in their sleep)

All in a day's work.

Has anyone gotten to the Vault 112 part in the main story? It was the weirdest thing ever. Also,
[BIG SPOILER, you have been warned]

Spoiler:

Is it possible to not have your dad die when the Enclave soldiers attack at the memorial? I hear there are many endings to the game, so I'm wondering if this is always part of the plot.

Also wanted to focus on energy weapons, but that's just useless, I just discovered - the chinese assault rifle is stronger than the special plasma rifle reward in the synthetic man.

Note that the damage rating of weapons depends on your skill level in that type of weapon, it's not an absolute value. Could it be you just had a higher SW skill than EW at the time? Is there any real difference between the two kinds of weapons anyway? I mean, lasers still fire in one-shot bursts, they still need ammo...

[Wolf]

Is there any real difference between the two kinds of weapons anyway? I mean, lasers still fire in one-shot bursts, they still need ammo...

Well yeah, but lasers are SHINY, sir. And that's all the motivation to use that weapon type you really need.

[Jack Saladin]

Except there's waaaay more variety within the small guns class - you've got your shotguns for close range, your hunting rifle and sniper rifle for long range, the Chinese AR for mid-range, and the scoped magnum for being a bad mo'fo'. With lasers, you've got pistols and rifles.

Don't see why you'd go for laser weapons, in fact, small guns seems a little too good in comparison. There's much, much more ammo around for small guns, as well.

I found Dogmeat, he died about three seconds into the first gunfight I got into. Stupid dog.

Edit:

I imagine Pinkerton has fission batteries.

Where is the key for the ship bow, by the way? I could never figure out how to get in. Is it main quest related? Wonder if I have a high enough lockpick skill yet...

I finished the Wasteland Survival Guide quest line, which is nine very spread out quests which take quite a while to finish off, and the final reward is so lame. Ah well, it got me out and about. Maybe if I'd finished all of the optional requirements and hadn't lied that one time...

[Xanthir]

Don't see why you'd go for laser weapons, in fact, small guns seems a little too good in comparison. There's much, much more ammo around for small guns, as well.

Honestly, small guns have *always* been better than the other categories. The only reason I would tag Energy Weapons in the old games was because of the Solar Scorcher.

[Jack Saladin]

And I don't see how big guns can ever be practical at all, since there's so little ammo around, and they take up a ridiculous chunk of your weight limit.

I'm kind of missing the vibe from right at the beginning, where every bullet was worth its weight in gold and I had to be very careful about where I spent them. Now I have thousands of rounds between all my guns, and almost a thousand for the CAR/AR alone.

It also suffers from Oblivion's "pick up like ten minutes worth of junk from any random dungeon or house and you'll have all the money you'll ever need for the rest of all eternity" syndrome. And since I'm swimming in ammo, I have nothing to spend it on. Are there any houses to buy out there?