First Fallout 3 Character

[IndorilTheGreat]

First of all, if this should be in spoilers, I apologize, and a moderator may move it if he or she deems it necessary.

 

Now then, onto my main topic... *Ahem*

 

I'm going to buy Fallout 3 tomorrow (PC - duh! :P ), and it will be my first ever character. I would like some advice on skills.

 

I was thinking: Lockpicking, Small Guns and Explosives (as my first three main skills). Any suggestions for improvements or different main skills?

 

Thanks. :thanks:

[Monolithic0117]

Of course, it depends entirely on your playing style. Explosives is useful only if you're going to be using grenades and land mines frequently, otherwise it shouldn't be a tag skill. Lockpicking is one of the best skills, since there are many useful containers/rooms locked with Hard and Very Hard locks.

 

Small Guns is also one of the best skills, as chances are your main weapons are going to be pistols and rifles. I'd also recommend Energy Weapons, as they are powerful and accurate, Medicine, because you will be using a lot of Stimpacks/chems, Repair, as you will be repairing weapons very frequently, Science, as you will be hacking computers often, and Speech, as you will unlock useful benefits if you win Speech challenges.

 

Big Guns, Melee Weapons, and Unarmed aren't as useful, as chances are you won't be using melee weapons and miniguns/missile launchers frequently.

 

Barter is of average usefulness, as later on you will gain enough caps to nullify the usefulness of this skill, and take Sneak if you're going to pickpocket often and it suits your playing style.

 

These are (IMO) the most useful tag skills: Lockpick, Repair, Small Guns.

[IndorilTheGreat]

Thanks. :)

 

I figured that Explosives wouldn't be too big of a role in my game. I just like - pardon the term - "making things go boom." :P

 

Big guns, I wasn't planning on making that a major skill. I figure I can just use the bigger weapons as if I were playing a FPS. The Minigun in VATS is just terrible...

 

Small guns and lock picking is defineately a must have then.

[grumbler]

I would argue that sneak is a better low-level skill than science, because of the sneak-auto-critical bonus. There aren't many places in the early game where the player needs a 50 science, and there is no benefit for science scores more than 25 and less than 50.

 

I'd go with sneak, small weapons, and repair as my tag skills, and I would emphasize them in my first couple of level-ups until they are all at least 50. Then I would work on lockpick (again, not useful between 26 and 49), medicine, science, and speech.

[elgareth]

I would argue that sneak is a better low-level skill than science, because of the sneak-auto-critical bonus. There aren't many places in the early game where the player needs a 50 science, and there is no benefit for science scores more than 25 and less than 50.

 

I'd go with sneak, small weapons, and repair as my tag skills, and I would emphasize them in my first couple of level-ups until they are all at least 50. Then I would work on lockpick (again, not useful between 26 and 49), medicine, science, and speech.

 

 

Totally agree!

 

Having created several characters, I find the above skills the most used and useful. Science & Lockpicking become important pretty fast, but you can usually go back and open/hack things you may have had to pass up before. Explosives gets a lot of use by me as well, but not as much as the first 3 mentioned.

 

Barter has been the least useful skill so far!

[dertechie]

Unless you're going for some odd concept (pacifist, for example), you'll want to pick from a fairly small set of initial skills. Remember, Tag skills aren't crazy important, all they do in FO3 is add 15 points to the skill. A nice bonus, but not game-determining.

 

But, you'll usually want a way to kill stuff, Repair, and a way around puzzles.

 

Killing stuff is simple: Small Guns or Melee Weapons, it's all you'll have for a while! Most will recommend Small Guns, they're common and effective. Energy Weapons is an interesting third option, but you won't see loads of Laser/Plasma guns for a while. They can be picked up fairly early, but not until you've got a few levels.

 

Repair is there because it's much cheaper and easier to fix your own stuff than it is to depend on vendors. You'll pour points into it sooner or later, why not get them now?

 

Puzzles usually have some subset of 6 options: talk your way through (Speech), pay your way through, blast your way through, sneak past (Sneak), pick the lock(Lockpick) or hack the console(Science). I took Science on my first playthrough, I'd recommend Lockpick.

 

More importantly, put a few points into Intelligence. Each point of intelligence nets you 1 more skill point per level, which makes tag skills less important. Don't start with more than 9, you'll have the opportunity to grab a free point easily enough.

[Alceister]

Barter is not tremendously useful. Lets take this situation: You have found 9 Assault Rifles in poor condition. With a good Barter skill, you might sell each of them for 40 caps, but you've wasted a ton of space bringing them back. On the other hand, with a good Repair skill, you can put them altogether to make 3 Assault Rifles in good or very good condition, and then when you sell them, you get about over 100 caps a pop.

 

As I said above, Repair is probably the most useful "utility" type skill. Repairing at merchants is often expensive and not very well done in most cases. With certain weapons in energy weapons or heavy weapons categories repairing can be extremely costly.

[frankc]

One thing I've noticed about lockpicking/science is that lockpick is more generally useful - random locked ammo containers are fairly common - and most "dungeons" have at least one locked utility closet packed full of weapons and ammo with no corresponding terminal. The fly in the ointment is that when there are two options for a safe or door the lockpick difficulty is one level higher about half the time.

 

Another important thing to keep in mind is that you can get a coat that gives +10 science fairly early and another that gives +5 lockpick.

 

What I really need now is a mod that switches out clothing as needed. I've found myself fighting in a scientist's labcoat or vault utility suit one time too many after forgetting to switch back.

[Lukkas]

I think the skills you choose and the way you create your character, is entirely up to you, something you can try is to put yourself in the PC's shoes, what is my PC like? How would my PC survive in the wasteland? How would my PC interact with other people in certain social situations?

 

after you answer these questions, it's important to think about how you like to kill stuff, if you like to keep it realistic and use common guns(still effective) you may want to go the small guns route, plenty of ammunition to be found at the on-set of the game, and the number one choice for stealth characters.

 

If you like missiles, explosions, blowing stuff up, etc, etc, you should take the big guns route, mini guns, rocket launchers, nuke launchers, flame throwers.. you get the idea, less realistic, in my opinion then using guns that are much more common and realistic for the Fallout setting.

 

There's the Energy Weapons route, however I don't know a whole lot regarding this category, so if you want to know more someone else can do the explaining.

 

Lastly, unarmed and melee weapons, using things such as baseball bats, tire irons, lead pipes, sledgehammers, etc, etc, and w/ unarmed you have the option of brass knuckles, spiked knuckles, power fist..

 

All of the main weapon category's are usually equally effective (however in vanilla fallout, small guns users are the only ones with access to sniper rifles, however I know there are mod's for energy weapon snipers as well, so don't be disheartened.

 

Anyway, if you have any other specific questions you'd like answered, I can help to the best of my ability, and I'm sure other people in this forum will have answers to questions, that I cannot answer.

 

Cheers, Lukas.

[Animation]

Is Lockpicking really so critical? Because lemme tell you ... i LOATHE it. I cant even figure it out. I've tried on 5 or 6 different Very Easy locks, and I couldnt open any of them. Something about a sweet spot. All that happened each time I tried was my screwdriver or bobby pin moved or something and then the bobby pin snapped. Every time.

 

Man, I wish there were an "auto attempt" type option like there was in Oblivion.

 

Can one get through the game without ever touching Lockpick? Because I hate it.

 

If not, I dont suppose there is a skeleton key object in the object codes that can be added, is there?

 

Thanks!