Starting out is hard to do....

[Saynosin]

Hello everyone,

 

Well I am having a problem that most noobs have (or so I am guessing) when I start this game. See I don't know which stats I should be raising and which not to put so much attention to, How to gain XP and Money and really just how to advance properly in this game. It seems everytime I try to get something done I do not have the stats or I am to weak to fight any baddies. Please help me out. :wallbash: This game seems to be incredible but I cannot get my barrings. Thanks guys/gals

[Harabec Weathers]

Not entirely I understand youre problem here.

I mean forst off given that Fallout 3 is like 100% fightning all the time, you need to have a weapon skill. I recomend "small guns" since it the easiest to get ammunition for.

You gain exp by killing things, doing missions, picking locks, hacking computers, that sort of thing. You gain money...well by selling crap (easy enough) or from doing missions.

I recomend the first 3 perks you get are Swift Learner, that was you maximize youre exp earning potential.

 

Dont worry about the difficulty, af you level up the game will get ridiculously easy, mainly because of how much health youll have by level 20.

[spammster]

Fallout 3 really is only hard in the beginning, once you leveled up some it gets pathetically easy.

 

for character creation, the same rules as in fallout 1 & 2 apply.

 

Intelligence is probably the most important of the stats, cause it defines the amount of skill points you earn per level up. (this should be >=8)

 

Perception is probably next in line does not need to be as high as intel but still should be raised to around 6-7

 

Strength: its main use is for carrying stuff and melee combat a value of 6 is fine here (if you intent to use weapons instead of your fists or bats etc.)

 

Endurance: this ones a tough one, it was the most important in the previous ones because it defined your action points now its VATS points and since its no longer turn based it isn't as important anymore, still a high enudrance never hurts (especially if you have huge probs with enemys, then you shall needs vats and should up it)

 

agility is kinda meh just leave it at what it is

 

charisma is still the most useless, it only affects barter and speech, barter is hard in the beginning of the game but real fast you end up with more caps than you could ever need, the only real important one here is speech (see skills later on) set it to 2-3 (and spend the points on stuff like intel)

 

okay, i forgot one of the special stats but i kinda can't remember which one it is, so i guess if you leave it at 5 its good.

 

now the skills:

you have to tag 3 of them

these 2 you should always pick if you want to make your life a lot easier:

 

speech (cause there's a lot of speech challanges in the game that save you a lot of time and work, so a high speech will get you faster to your goal)

small guns (the most important type of weapon, including pretty much everything thats not huge or energy based)

 

and the thrid one mainly depends on what you want, a good 3rd one is lockpicking, cause you will need that a lot and tagging it gets you quite far early on.

 

now for getting a good start in the game, you need to decide if you wanna live in megaton or tenpenny tower.

if you wish to live in megaton, raise your explosive skill to 20 (thats the requirement for disabling the bomb)

if you wish to live in tenpenny tower you pick the harder start, cause its advised that you finish moira's book first (not only is it good XP it gives you a perk that makes your live easier) and remember there's a bobblehead in megaton, so don't blow it up before you pick it up.

 

for a first run I'd advise you to disarm the bomb, that gets you a place to live right away and some caps

 

the skills you should focus on at the beginning of the game:

small guns (get it to around 80 to make it easier and later on raise it to 100)

speech (raise it to 100)

lockpicking (raise it to 100)

science (for starters you can raise this to 50-75, you can't fail terminal hacks, if you only have one try left, click on the red exit button and start again, it takes more time but you can spend your points on other things first and you don't encounter very hard locks early on)

 

for lock picking & science, always keep in mind that these require a level of 25/50/75/100 etc. so don't raise the skill to 24 and then spend points on something else, raise it to 25, so you can pick that damn lock/terminal

 

lets say you get 20 skill points per level and you have lockpicking 75, don't put 20 points in it, put 10 points in it and spend the other 10 points on another skill, and on the next level spend 15 points on lockpicking and 5 on something else, you need 2 level ups to pick a very hard lock, so there's no point in spending all points from the first level on lockpicking, it doesn't make a difference when you could spend some of the point on small guns to increase your weapon skill making earning skill points easier !!

 

when you got these stats going, you wanna look into repair & barter

 

repair is a kinda secondary skill you don't have to use your repair skill all that much (once in the survival book quest) you will mainly use it to repair your weapons and armor causing either more damage or giving you more protection.

 

and well barter just makes buying stuff cheaper and you can sell your junk for more money (don't get it all that high 50 is fine for making a good profit and dear god don't pick the master trader perk, thats a waste of a perk)

 

good starting perks are educated (gives you more skill points each level) and comprehension (gives you 2 skill points for each book read instead of 1)

 

there are about 23 books of each type in the game, so if you collect them all with the comprehension perk you gain 46 skill points from the books (which is about half what you can raise em to max. so if you collect books early on, stash em somewhere until you got that perk)

 

the medicine skills aren't really all that important, there's so many stimpacks in the game, that you hardly ever have to use these skills (you can raise them later for some quests where you need medical skills)

 

at some point get skill points in energy weapons, cause most players switch from small guns to energy weapons (they deal a lot of damage and when you start playing with the enclave there's massive energy weapons around for you to reapair you weapon to max. level)

 

i could prolly tell you a lot more about stats, but you gotta figure some out for yourself and in the end its just about what you want, you can finish the game with every possible character (unlike in Fallout 1 & 2)

[Steven917]

Get that perk where you double the amount of skill points you get from books... I don't play Fallout 3 anymore so I don't remember what level you have to be.

[Saynosin]

Wow thank you that was a great deal of help at least i know where i should be starting off now...lol I was going to blow up Megaton but now I have reconsidered lol. Thanks again and if anyone has any other tips I would greatly appreciate it. I am not looking for a godly combination just something so my character can survive and I can learn. ^^

[Harabec Weathers]

Just keep leveling up and youre character will be a "godly combination" regardless of what you do. Like I said it gets waaaaay easier as you level up.

[spammster]

a couple more tips:

 

if there's terminals and locks (a lot of saves have these)

 

pick the lock first (you get XP for lockpicking) and then hack the terminal (you get XP for hacking that, even though you already picked it) you can do it the other way round, but make sure you don't select unlock safe.

 

if you are real close to a level up (like less than 100 points away) you can abuse the first aid/medicine skills for that. if you use them sucessfully you gain 25 XP each time you use em (this way you can gain the few points without having to head out, just hurt yourself a bit and heal yourself without stimpacks).

 

I'm not sure if the barter exploit (in Fallout 1 & 2) still works in Fallout 3 (in F1 & 2 you gained a few XP each time you bartered, so you could abuse that by bartering for caps only (offer 100 caps and get 100 caps in return, repeat over and over again and you gain XP))

 

once you reach level 10 you won't have that much problems anymore the only thing thats dangerous then are enclave and mutants (those with guns)

with level 20 every enemy is easy

with level 30 its a joke (if you use Broken Steel)

[Nagaoka]

I recomend the first 3 perks you get are Swift Learner, that was you maximize youre exp earning potential.

 

The other advice in this post was good, but I must say DO NOT take the swift learner perk.

 

 

You will gain experience ridiculously fast. The game just throws exp at you for every little thing you do. I wanted my first time playing to be vanilla, to get a feel for the game, but I had to go back on that and download a mod that allowed me to level SLOWER just so I wouldn't be level 20 before I had even gotten a third of the way through the main quest (I had mostly been exploring, and even that I hadn't done a lot of by then).

 

Heck, the slower leveling mod wasn't even slow enough for me, but I digress.

 

 

Don't worry about skills too much, get the Comprehension perk and the perk that gives you more skill points per level and you can pretty much guarantee you'll have all the skills you need. If you don't have the proper levels you need (like if you are too low on lockpicking), don't forget stuff that can give you bonuses (equipment or mentats or whatnot).

 

 

Really, you don't have to worry at all. Just play the game how you want to play it and the game will rarely punish you for it. Everyone will have their own ideas of what skills are important (if you ask me, speech is near useless and repair is godly for keeping you strong and getting you lots and lots and lots of caps) and the same with perks. Just have fun and don't think about it ^_^