If you pester the teacher he’ll let you just pick your skills without doing the test.
Which is the great thing about this game. You can really play it any way you like, you can be good, neutral or evil (which allows or disallows you certain comrades, events and so forth), or any sort of combination of the skill set. All of which have speech options that influence characters of that particular persuasion. In some cases you really have the option of doing things the easy way or the hard way, the good way or the bad way. The amount of diversity is pretty astounding. And the real time cinematic quality is as well; as I’ve said it looks super, duper awesome.
Big guns is a waste. They’re rare, their ammo’s rare, and they cost a lot to repair. Basically, whip out a minigun and just shoot until something dies, and it’ll work even at pretty low skill levels.
Energy weapons are good against robots, but at the same skill level, actually tend to do less damage than small guns. I always use energy weapons, but it’s not really an ideal choice, I don’t feel like. However, there is a great unique plasma rifle that’s real easy to get, which helps it out, a lot. Then again, the unique .44 magnum is pretty easy to get, and a real motherfucker.
Explosives isn’t that useful, since grenades and such don’t go up that much in damage. Super mutants can generally be killed by spamming mines on their stupidity and finishing them off with a couple bullets to the head. Since there’s no real reason to sell those mines you pick up, since you never spend many caps, you should just have a shitton of disarmed mines to the point it doesn’t really matter how many you use.
Fallouts are notorious for their slow beginnings (except FOT). FO3 seems to give you more leeway so far in the combat department: In the previous games you wouldn’t dream of finding big guns/laser guns so early and explosives were too rare to justify even a skill point in them.
Haven’t been mauled by auto weapons yet, but rocket launchers seem to be the real deal this time. Limbs are broken more often.
Rig: there still isn’t much reason to put points into big guns. If you’re going to use them, there’s a perk that gives you FIFTEEN POINTS in big guns, and you can take it THREE TIMES. Just wanted to tell you, in case you were spending points there. <_<
Also, the Big Guns skill book is a random drop from some raiders, so you can raise it to 100 without ever putting a skill point in it, if you kill a lot of raiders near the Bethesda offices. Since you can just get 45 points in it pretty easily, it’s not even that many raiders.
Energy weapons come earlier, but aren’t as good. Chinese Assault Rifles are better than Plasma Rifles in basically every way. The damage, rate of fire, speed of projectile (when shooting from a distance, enemies can sometimes dodge plasma bursts, as they’re slower than lasers and bullets.) are all skewed in favour of the assault rifle. I guess there’s a few energy weapons that are basically unbeatable, but they’re both pretty rare.
Hmm, I know I played the original Fallout for a while, and I don’t remember feeling like it was slow to pick up, but that’s just me. Still, if you guys think it gets better, I’ll try and get to it. But, all I could think of while I was playing it was “THIS is the same Fallout 3 that everyone’s gushing about?”
I’m with SG here, I really can’t fathom calling Fallout 1’s beginning “slow”. It was basically “Chip broke, world’s a fucking wasteland, go and get mauled by Radscorpions kthbye” and next thing I knew, my ass was off the front door trying not to get killed by rats.
Yeah, but if you didn’t have a close combat character you either spent a lot of time watching your character unable to make his punches connect to mice or had to use your weapon on them. The Radscorpion Cave was great if you got Ian (but you’d play second fiddle) and a bit miserable otherwise, considering your low % at that point.
[Also, bloody Overseer with twin miniguns vs Character with a few scraps. Thx for the help guys!]
That said the visit to V15 is good setting building, Junktown gives the world’s state in a nutshell and I actually love these initial stages when (wo)men are (wo)men and radscorpions are radscorpions.
Thanks for the hint. I probably won’t spend a perk on them because of Int 9>19 skill points, but I wouldn’t have guessed there were so many books. I considered Big Guns (the few points I spent there) a luxury to get me out of tight spots.
Actually I enjoy stumbling in the dark for the first time in years. Exploring and being surprised feels good.
I read on the Fallout 3 wiki that if you hoard the books until you get the perk that gives you 2 points per book, theres an extra 240+ extra skill points there alone. And if you find the bobblehead of one of your main skills then you get 10 points instead of just, well, whatever you normally get. It’s how I maxed out my skills so quick, I was level 16 or 17 and had all 3 maxed out. I’m kind of a god at the moment, and I got Dragon Age early so I’ll be playing this a little less.
Thanks. Fallout 3 was fantasic on the xbox 360, and its even better on PC because of the GECK. Lots of hours of fun. thanks again for the find.
Plus, start with 10 int and take whatever perk gives more skill points, early. Nothing but skills matter. Nothing.
Start with 9 int and get the int bobblehead ASAP. <_<
Can’t get it before you level up at least once. Sounds like there’s a skill point or two somebody didn’t get.
Seriously, though, I don’t think anything but skills matter.
I think strength matters just for bettering how much you can carry (I was wrong before, it’s not endurance). Because honestly, I think equipment trumps skills in terms of value.
Yeah, but you really don’t need to carry that much. My first character had a starting strength of either 2 or 3, and just didn’t carry shit he didn’t need.
Oh, well, I use like 8 different weapons so… there ya go, I need the muscle.
Repair is about as useful in this game as in all past three games combined.
I used about 5 or 6, by the end of the game, but I guess I had power armour, by then.
Two skillpoints aren’t going to matter jack shit. Given that there are free boosts throughout the game, starting any character with a 10 in anything is just laughable.