Fallout 3 bottle caps

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mecandbuttons

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 11, 2008
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I seem to be always short of bottle caps no matter what. How are you guys getting bottle caps? I need like 1700 for a house theme. I have like 25 :rolleyes:
 
mecandbuttons said:
I seem to be always short of bottle caps no matter what. How are you guys getting bottle caps? I need like 1700 for a house theme. I have like 25 :rolleyes:
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As soon as you get access to the perk to find more caps, take it!
Also, keep up your repair skill, since weapon repairs from vendors gets very expensive.

Other than that, try to sell as much crap as you can. Look for items that don't weigh a lot or at all but are worth a good amount and sell them.
 
That and do as many random quests as you can. Try to get as much money as you can from the quest givers, so it might be useful to put some points into Speech so you could possibly convince the quest givers to reward you with more caps for whatever random task they need you to do.
 
WhiteZero said:
As soon as you get access to the perk to find more caps, take it!
Also, keep up your repair skill, since weapon repairs from vendors gets very expensive.

Other than that, try to sell as much crap as you can. Look for items that don't weigh a lot or at all but are worth a good amount and sell them.
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I'll offer an alternative to this that I read on Shacknews that seems to be serving me well.

First, I only pick up items that are worth at least 5 caps for every pound. So none of the random ruined books laying around or anything like that. Also, if you didn't nuke Megaton, there's a guy there who works at the water processing plant who will buy scrap metal off of you once you repair some pipes around town.

Pick your merchant, sell all your stuff, then have the merchant repair your gear. The reason is that if you just sell all your stuff, the merchant won't have any caps left. So get your stuff repaired there to keep the money flowing. If you have your barter skill high enough and you sold enough items, you should still make a profit off the whole transaction. I have about 2000 caps now, which isn't anywhere near as high as some people, but is certainly much higher than the 200-300 level i seemed stuck at before.

Like others said, getting questgivers to give you more money helps, as does the Scrounger perk.
 
I killed some vendors and stole their caps, as well as some of the cool stuff they were selling. LOL
 
one thing that helped early off is if you take the quest to find that girl silver, convince her to give you all the caps, then kill her lol. She gives you 400caps and tells you thats all she has, but if you kill her you find another 100 on her.
 
steal all of your medical supplies, and keep your repair skill up

the karma loss from stealing stimpacks and stuff is nothing, I do it all the time and I'm still "very good." I'm at about 6700 caps right now, but I never bothered with the crap launcher, or any of the house themes / items. I also wandered around a lot before starting the main quest, I havent even been to rivet city yet, and I'm level 13.
 
mecandbuttons said:
I seem to be always short of bottle caps no matter what. How are you guys getting bottle caps? I need like 1700 for a house theme. I have like 25 :rolleyes:
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I have plenty of bottle caps at level 13 but I’ve never really had a problem with money (not rich yet, but I always have enough for whatever I want). There are a number of things you can do. I’ll list everything I can think of that I’m doing:

  • Get the Scrounger Perk (level 8 I think). It gives you more ammo when you open containers. It works with the Fortune Finder perk but if you have to pick between the two, go with Scrounger because you can sell the ammo you find and make more in the end that way.

  • Increase your repair skill and while you’re out fighting raiders or super mutants make sure to repair the weapons and armor as high as you can. This way you can not only carry more, but the repaired items are worth much more when you sell them.

  • Try to get the Roving Trader Jacket and Roving Trader Hat ASAP. I found a pair on a dead trader just west of Minefield. Each of these items gives you a +5% bonus to Barter (10% total) so you should equip them before you start offloading your treasure onto any trader. Also remember that every person you can trade with will buy anything you have to sell.

  • Increase your Speech skill. You can usually talk people into giving you more caps or additional items when you complete a task for them. Alternatively if you have patience, you can just forget about your speech skill and every time you encounter a speech challenge just quick-save right before the conversation. This way if you fail you can just quick-load and try again till you succeed.

  • Search every trashcan! Cigarette Cartons are what I lived off of in the beginning of the game. They have a really good weight/value ratio. Cigarette Packs are good too since they weigh ½ of a pound. Pre-war money is also a valuable item to trade since it has no weight, but it’s harder to come by. Personally I like using the pre-war money as ammo for the Rock-It-Launcher instead because it’s the only ammo I found for it so far that’s weight-less.

  • In general, you can sell all of the boxed / canned food that you find (except Sugar Bombs, they have use in a quest) because there are much better choices out there for healing yourself including drinking out of a sink. Even with the food sanitizer, a lot of boxed food is still +6 HP / +2 RADS where drinking from a sink is something like +24 HP / +5 RADS (would be +8 RADS to get the equivalent HP from food).

  • If you take the Rad Resistance Perk at level 8 it can essentially replace your need for Rad-X so you could sell all the Rad-X you find.

  • Use Quick-travel whenever your pack gets full. Once I clear a zone / dungeon / building if my pack isn’t yet full, I’ll keep exploring until I reach my carry limit. Then I’ll get to the world map (if I’m not already outside) and travel back to Megaton. If I have more stuff to sell than the traders have bottle caps, I’ll just take as much of their ammo or stim-packs as I can get to even out the trade.

  • Dress for the occasion. If you’re going into a zone where you don’t expect to fight very difficult enemies or see a lot of combat, wear light armor with stat boosts instead of heavy armor without. In addition to being able to carry more loot, wearing the right light armor can give you the extra little boost needed to pick a harder lock, hack a harder computer, or deal more damage with a certain weapon type.

Hope all that stuff helps.
 
Also, another tip is finish the Ian ( Blood Ties) quest early. There's a 'Family' member who's a merchant and will sell you scrap for 1 cap each. Buy it all up (about 20 pieces or so) and go back to megaton and sell it to the water processing guy. Think I'm getting about 20 a pop from the scrap so thats 380 caps profit for 20 pieces.
 
I dont use energy weapons so caps are easy to come by, I sell microfussion cells and fission batteries to make most of my money. Pretty much , just become a junk dealer , everything has a price.... so sell it. Also you can find a piece trader armor that increases you barter skill by 5 , wear that when you trade.
 
I'm also pretty short on caps, and I can't imagine why you'd want to spend so much decorating your house. :p I used speech to get 200 extra caps at the end of one quest, but gave it back because I didn't want to lose karma for taking from the needy. Nice guys finish last, I guess. I also blew almost 1200 to build the stupid Rock-It Launcher. That was a waste.
 
for me its pretty simple..

kill everything and loot everything..


and i mean everything..

weapons and junk..


the gold mine is AMMO..

it has zero weight and sells for a lot..

if you take it as a weight to money thing you quickly see what is worth a lot.

Ammo has an infinite $/weight (since it weights nothing).. pick up all the ammo whether you are going to use it or not..

next is the Pre-War money (No weight)

then stuff like

Carton of Cigarettes are 50val/2weight (25/weight)

sensors are 30/2 (15/weight) and so on and so on..

if you have to choose when you reach your weight limit use the $/weight to decide what to carry and what to keep.. although i end up usually quick-traveling a few times to get all the loot (bodies tend to stay in the world a long time)..


once you get rolling its pretty easy to make money.. and when you get the +50 carrying perk it makes it even easier..
 
So is there a list of what's needed and what's not needed? I got like a ton of stuff but I keep saving it because I don't know when I'll need it. Do I need an iron or toaster or vacuum? How many plunger do I actually need? I guess if I knew that I'd sell whatever I didn't need.
 
I'm super rich in my game. I've decorated my house theme TWICE now and I am only level 9. It's already fully kitted with my first infirmary, chem lab, nuka cola machine, and the science theme (since it comes with a tesla book) and then I replaced it with a vault theme. There's probably 10,000 caps invested in my house. I had to do it since Moira just didn't have enough money to buy everything I was selling her.

I don't know how you guys are so poor. I just kill everything I come across and steal all their weapons and ammo. I concentrated on my repair skill because it allows you to combine damaged/weaker armor and weapons into single good ones worth more money than the damaged ones separately.

Repair skill is the key to being successful in this game because you can carry more stuff simply because you can combine two heavy items into one single item that is worth more than the separate items were before. I'd go out and kill 5 raiders and repair combine all of their raider armor into a single one that is nearly 100% condition that is worth more caps than the 5 armors separately and it only weighs as much as 1 armor.

I don't pick up ANYTHING unless it is weightless ammo/health or weapons or armor. All the junk I leave, even cigarettes unless it is carton. Every night I go back to Megaton after getting like 15 hunter rifles and 10 sets of raider armor and what not, repair and combine them on the way so I can carry everything, and then sell it to poor Moira who doesn't have enough caps to pay me so I am forced to buy house upgrades which basically are free after awhile.
 
Spare-Flair said:
I'm super rich in my game. I've decorated my house theme TWICE now and I am only level 9. It's already fully kitted with my first infirmary, chem lab, nuka cola machine, and the science theme (since it comes with a tesla book) and then I replaced it with a vault theme. There's probably 10,000 caps invested in my house. I had to do it since Moira just didn't have enough money to buy everything I was selling her.

I don't know how you guys are so poor. I just kill everything I come across and steal all their weapons and ammo.
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Wow, I'm jealous... I'm not broke poor, but I don't have a consistent supply either. Until I got my find more ammo perk, I was even starting to scrounge for ammo at various merchants.

I'll try your method. I'm also at level 9 so I'll see if what you say helps out.
 
rofl I've been playing hours, even days non stop and I just realized what bottle caps are... I = NOOB!
 
Spare-Flair said:
I don't know how you guys are so poor. I just kill everything I come across and steal all their weapons and ammo. I
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Well this is obviously why you're rolling in the dough. This simply doesn't work if you're playing as a good character.

There's some pretty good tips in this thread though. My character is scraping by and I still wear the armored vault suit for armor. I'm only lv 5 though so that may or may not be an issue. :p
 
I'm a poor bastard.

Though funny thing last night. I traded with a caravan guy, and as I walked away he was attacked by one of those werewolf type animals. killed the trader and the guard ran off. So I looted the body and then looted the caravan, 400 caps boosh.
 
Just kill NPCs. If you see someone who looks rich, shoot them in the head with a shotgun while sneaking and investigate if they're as rich as they look.
 
"kill everything and loot everything.."

Problem solved
wink.gif
 
I've got nearly three thousand, and I'm not lacking weapons. I've got rocket launchers, miniguns, shotguns, laser rifles, fat boys, hunting rifles, assault rifles, twenty grenades, seventeen frag mines, four bottlecap mines, 10mm submachineguns, plenty of ammo for them all, and meds coming out of my arse. I don't actually know how I've got so much money.
 
If you travel to Minefield you can take all of the mines if you have high enough explosives stats. They sell pretty decently I think.
 
vicaphit said:
If you travel to Minefield you can take all of the mines if you have high enough explosives stats. They sell pretty decently I think.
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how do you take the mines? Do you sneak up on them or do you have to run and defuse before they explode?
 
when i did it my stat was pretty low so i'd get close, set off the beeping and disarm before it blew up.. pretty easy..
 
Wally said:
I've got nearly three thousand, and I'm not lacking weapons. I've got rocket launchers, miniguns, shotguns, laser rifles, fat boys, hunting rifles, assault rifles, twenty grenades, seventeen frag mines, four bottlecap mines, 10mm submachineguns, plenty of ammo for them all, and meds coming out of my arse. I don't actually know how I've got so much money.
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Same here. I've got about 4000 caps plus a stash with at least one copy of every weapon I've come across, all repaired up to about 90%. I've basically got the same thing in my collection of armors. I have probably a couple hundred bottles of various alcohol and liquor in my fridge as well as a few hundred different food-stuffs. Got no idea how many Misc items I'm saving in my Filing Cabinet.

I keep all my ammo on me since it's weightless, and I don't sell it anymore because I have no need for the caps. Now I've got over 3K 5mm rounds, 1K 10mm rounds, 1K energy cells, and 700 5.56 rounds. I mostly use the .44 and Combat Shotgun so my other ammo piles just keep growing.

If I were to start selling the stuff from my stashes I could easily clear 10K caps (over time as the traders regen money of course).

As long as you don't mind quick travelling, money should not be a problem in this game (especially with the perks available by level 8).

Ragenrok said:
what do you do though, just run at em, look at em and hit E?
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Yep, if you have the skill just press E once to disarm the mine (you have about 2 secs once in range before it blows up) and then E once again to pick it up.
 
Reading this thread makes me feel like I suck at this game. I mean, I just thought I was doing okay, but now it's like.... I'm awful.
 
Early in the game, the Blood quest can net you a ton of money and some really good weapons to boot. This quest also gives you the ability to make really good money off of blood packs down the line to help out. They're all over the place, so stockpile 'em for this quest if you can.
I also highly recommend using the Wasteland Survival Guide quests to net you some dandy items you can sell.
 
I'm level 10 and have around 2600 caps. Like others have said, search through everything for crap to sell or even bottlecaps. Steal meds/chems and sell what you don't need....if you don't have a house there are still places where you can sleep off injuries for free...just remember where they are and fast travel there when you need to instead of using meds/food items. Many quests give you caps or at least expensive items you can unload if they aren't your style. I have a high speech rating which is good for fleecing extra caps as well..;)
 
I am level 11 or 12 and I managed to save up 7,000 bottle caps. This after about 30 hours of game play and I still have not completed the first quest after leaving Vault 101.

Here's how I did it (not at home right now so skills my not be accurate):

1. I rely mostly on melee attacks; basically switching between a bat and combat knife. That way I can save ammo for when I absolutely need. Melee skill is about 38, Small Arms skill is about 50.

2. Repair your own equipment when possible so build up your repair skill when you can. My Repair skill is probably about 44. This saves you lots of caps.

3. Build up your Strength. Each point allows you to carry 10 lbs more. My Strength is 7 so I can carry up to 220 lbs of stuff.

4. Carry the more valuable stuff back to Megaton or whoever to sell. I also keep a very large cache of armor, weapons and ammo. Not sure if it makes a big difference, but I also repair stuff I plan on selling so if I am carry two raider armors in poor conditions I will perform a repair to improve the condition and lower the weight so that I can continue on with my quest / exploration.

5. Try to improve your Barter skill since it will slighly increase your buying / selling prices. I think mine is about 26 pretty low. But I also found a trader's outfit that increased Barter skills by 5 when worn.

6. Join the Slavers, I did this even though my alignment was Very Good. I think my Speech skill might have been high enough to influence Grouse to allow me to join. You will be given a mission to "recruit" 4 candidates, each will net you 250 caps for a total of 1,000. You will be given a weapon called a Mesmetron that will confuse your target and when you talk to him/her you can slip on the Slave Collar.

It will always work on those 4 people, but on others there could be ... side effects. I think it is a bug, but every time I tested enslaving (5 times) a raider and go back to speak to Grouse, he always tells me that the person died on the way to the Slaver's home base. I suppse it only works on people inside a setlement.

7. Do not pay to get healed. You can fully regain your health by simply sleeping for an hour.

I may flesh rthis out a bit more later.
 
phobic said:
Well this is obviously why you're rolling in the dough. This simply doesn't work if you're playing as a good character.
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What? Of course not. :)

I am a good character too. What I meant is I kill everything that attacks me, raiders, mercenaries, super mutants. Raiders and mercenaries will drop armor mainly and supermutants always drop hunter rifles but sometimes miniguns and flamers.

I have never killed an NPC except for Burke and only kill spawned bad guys.

My repair skill is 85 and I have level 10 intelligence (9 to start and the bobblehead). If I wear the Vault 101 utility suit I get 90 repair. Basically everything I pick up I repair and combine and it equals me getting rich only off spawned bad guys. I feel bad about disturbing anything else in the game and typically don't pick up junk lying around since it ruins the atmosphere and look of the game.

My fortune was made in selling tons of raider armor, hunter rifles, and assault rifles that I cobbled into 95% condition. I have about 6 sets of Power Armor sitting in my locker but I haven't ever sold one of them. I also sell lots of conductors and fission batteries. I sell all the grenades and mines I come across since I don't use explosives.

BTW, I am still using the armored Vault 101 suit too. Seriously, this is a bit disappointing since it's like the best armor in the game. +5 small and +5 energy weapons? Sheesh, I haven't found anything else I want to wear.
 
I kill everything that moves. My goal is to depopulate every town, find my vagrant father, and kill the ugly bastard. :) I'm sure he's got something of worth on him!
 
I've raped all the caravans that sit outside megaton...

>_<

Yeilded me 1000+ caps and numerous weapons at lvl3... lulz...
 
Also once you've saved Rileys Rangers you can get a quest from Riley to map the wasteland earning Caps for every location you discover, just go back once in a while to collect caps. First time I turned in locations I got 1800 Caps :D
 
Dallows said:
Reading this thread makes me feel like I suck at this game. I mean, I just thought I was doing okay, but now it's like.... I'm awful.
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Ha, I won't beat yourself up over it as long as you're enjoying it.

Some people are really anal about collecting stuff. Like magpies to shiny objects, or flies to shit ;)
 
spicey said:
Ha, I won't beat yourself up over it as long as you're enjoying it.

Some people are really anal about collecting stuff. Like magpies to shiny objects, or flies to shit ;)
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Oh no, lol. I love the game. It's just funny some people are like "I have 5000 caps, easy money" and I'm like "wtf I've got like 500."
 
So was the repair tool on your desk in Vault 101?

Because I completely skipped over whatever it was on my desk...lol Anybody know where I can get a repair tool?
 
Spare-Flair said:
BTW, I am still using the armored Vault 101 suit too. Seriously, this is a bit disappointing since it's like the best armor in the game. +5 small and +5 energy weapons? Sheesh, I haven't found anything else I want to wear.
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Once there's a bounty on your head, bounty hunters will come look for you, generally around the metro station areas. Kill them and combine their armor and its pretty decent.

I made the switch when Killed the Talon mercs and repaired all their armor to DR +18, thats when I made the switch. Now that they're dead (and no one can keep that armor up to spec), I use combat armor which provide DR +24. DR+24>DR+5, +5 Small/Energy Weapons

When you start having to go against Centaurs, Super Mutants AND Giant Scorpions at the same time, you'll make the switch too.
 
spicey said:
Ha, I won't beat yourself up over it as long as you're enjoying it.

Some people are really anal about collecting stuff. Like magpies to shiny objects, or flies to shit ;)
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for some reason these games always make me into a psychotic murderer.
:(
 
well i took the advice from this thread and bumped my repair skill up.. wow what a difference it makes in the game..

its almost a must need ..

i took the extra level perk and went 3 levels last night and got my repair upto 91..


i also took the ammo perk which also made a huge difference in making money..

i started last night with 1100 caps and by the end of the night i had 6000.. (i got 800 from the steal the decleration question)
 
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