I'm playing fallout 3 for the first time and could use some advice.

Z

Zan

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 9, 2007
Messages
160
I know I'm late to the party but I'm finally going to start playing fallout 3. I want my character to be a smooth talking sniper so I'm going with small arms and speech. What else should I tag? Repair? Sneak?

Would these be good stats for a sniper type character?

4 Strength
4 Perception
7 Endurance
7 Charisma
7 Intelligence
7 Agility
4 Luck
 
perks mean more, strenght will be helpfull, it allows you to carry more. char is good for chatting ( if you plan to be good)

you will get more points to add as you play (not much but a few)

i would do


6 Strength
6 Perception
6 Endurance
7 Charisma
6 Intelligence
4 Agility
5 Luck
 
I do plan to be as goody goody as possible, so I want be stealing from innocents.
 
Strength is important because 80% of the game play is simply carrying junk around with you.

Perception is also important to help enemies pop up on the radar sooner.

I also like Endurance for more HP.

Don't bother taking the bonus EXP perk because you'll max your character eventually anyways.
 
Is speech worth tagging? If I was going to play a charmer what would be the min charisma that I would need?

small arms
speech
repair

or

small arms
speech
sneaking

or

small arms
speech
lock picking
 
Invest in intelligence and be sure to get that perk that gives you extra skill points upon leveling up as soon as you can. It really pays off as your character progresses.

There are some awesome character building guides over at Game FAQs. There's even guides on how to make a completely perfect character, all attributes at 10 and all skills at 100.
 
lock picking is pretty uber, I would also reccomend saving before critical lockpicking doors and stuff and reloading if you fail / break to many bobbie pins
 
Commander FAT said:
There are some awesome character building guides over at Game FAQs. There's even guides on how to make a completely perfect character, all attributes at 10 and all skills at 100.
Click to expand...

its called hacks :rolleyes:
 
Repair is important because the higher level you can repair your weapons, the more powerful they are.

Small arms is great. More so for the first half of the game though. My only problem with going as heavy as I did into small arms is that in the second half of the game, when energy weapons get more common, they are much more powerful even with less points into them.
 
pro tip: you get more experience points with greater difficulty. Jack it up as high as possible. :)
 
Sikkyu said:
its called hacks :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Uh no. It is possible to max out your character's attributes and skills. It just takes time and being sure that you don't past up the few bobble heads that have the potential of being lost forever. There are a few of them. I think there is one in Megaton. For certain there is one in Dad's office. There is also one more way later in the game. These three have the potential of being permanently lost if you don't pick them up before taking other actions.
 
Yeah it's already been mentioned, but take Repair skill, it's priceless. When you pick up 4 or 5 sets of armor, combine them into 1 good set, sells more and you can carry more, higher quality items this way to sell back.
 
I'm glad someone started this thread, I'm gonna start playing the goty edition this weekend.
I figured repair and strength are important, especially repair..
 
I'm thinking of installing it myself. I've tried playing twice but I just got out of the Vault before putting it down to play something else etc...

Can anyone suggest some mods that are good for the first playthrough of the GotY edition (w/ all DLC type)? I'd be open to graphics mods, UI stuff, those that make certain annoying tasks easier and improve game mechanics etc... but aren't completely imbalanced like 1 hit kill guns or that change the story/feel of the game entirely.?
 
I use NMC's texture pack, Fallout Wanderer's Edition (FWE), DarnUI and Mart's Mutant Mod. There's tons more, but those are the primary ones. If you have any more specific needs, I can probably recommend a mod to meet it.
 
Maybe when my 5850 arrives I'll play through it on the PC. Never played any of the expansions.
 
Riddleofsteel can you please explain what the mods you listed do? I would like to use mods but nothing that makes the game easy, if anything harder is better so it takes me longer to beat it. My first playthrough I'm not gonna use any mods at all.

I haven't beat the regular story let alone all the expansions. Plus I will start from scratch on pc I only played it on 360. Should be nice to see how it looks on pc after playing it on 360..

Has anyone actually done a side by side? I'm interested what settings equal the console version, so I can then turn some of it up and enjoy the difference lol..
 
speeech is about as pro as it gets saves alot of time. repairs is useful since vendors cant repair well. if you use small guns stack agi and press v and gib everything
 
Commander FAT said:
Invest in intelligence and be sure to get that perk that gives you extra skill points upon leveling up as soon as you can. It really pays off as your character progresses.
Click to expand...

Since there's a Bobblehead that gives a +1 intelligence, I started with intelligence 9.

Also take the Comprehension perk as soon as you can. Save your books till then.
 
Last edited:
BladeVenom said:
Since there's a Bobblehead that gives a +1 intelligence, I started with intelligence 9.

Also take the Comprehension perk as soon as you can. Save your books till then.
Click to expand...

I'm not 100% if that was a good idea. I think there are things later on that can boost attribute points. Been a while, I can't remember.
 
get an overhaul mod that make the game play as it was supposed to be played. THe Mickey Mouse leveling system takes away from the enjoyment big time.
 
I know last time I set my stuff up wrong and I paid for it later, I'll make sure I do a better job this time.
I can't remember how I set it up tho but I believe I did repair and speech high at the start. I had no idea what I was doing tho lol.

I'll make sure to do some reading this time around, even tho I didn't have my stuff set up good last time I still had a blast playing the game. I bet I didn't even come close to beating the game and I played a good amount 20-26 hours worth.

I like fo3 because I can just wander around and do whatever I want, the game is so open I remember running around from spot to spot, if I saw something new I went there. Fo3 deserved the goty title
for sure..
 
One thing I did was to get the perk that makes books worth 2 instead of 1, then I went and found as many books as I could. It was a lot of fun looking for the books but when I was done my character was so leveled up that the game got way too easy.
 
Repair is essential. Also, using a MOD that lets you use scrap metal and similar items to what your repairing are great.
 
If you really want to maximize your build, go with the Almost Perfect At Level 30 build noted in section S6 of the GameFAQ. They do it in quite a different way that lets you end up with all stats at 10. It takes a bit of planning, an unusual set up at beginning (STR: 6, PER: 6, END: 6, CHR: 1, INT: 9, AGL: 7, LCK: 5), and not taking any stat bobblehead (except for Luck) until reaching level 30 (because the Almost Perfect perk increases all stats to 9). They also give a precise order of Perks to take which I found to work very well, and will surprise (and dismay) many by not taking Intense Trainings or Comprehension.
 
Last edited:
I picked up the Goty edtition and am playing it the second time (first time for all dlc). For the first play through, just play it without any build tips. Even playing with a "bad" build, the game isnt too hard. Beyond books, there are bobble heads that raise SPECIAL's by one (one bobble head for each SPECIAL) point and skills by 10 (one bobblehead for every skill) points. My only commendation is to take 9 int (or 10 if you dont want to look for the int bobblehead) and the comprehension book so you can play around with a lot of skills.

Sneak is pretty fun, especially if you do the operation anchorage DLC early. With sneak, you can pickpocket and loot red items without pissing off people (as long as you're [hidden] and not [detected]). Whats also fun is reverse looting and putting live grenades in enemies. If you dont get caught they start to panic then blow up. Also your first hit while [hidden] is a critical, and there is a later perk to do enhanced critical damage. This means you can sneak and snipe from a distance to thin ranks, conserving ammo.

Lockpicking and Computers help with looting, there are many safes and computers to lockpick/hack. This also helps with getting a lot of exp (for every successful pick/hack). This opens up different way to complete quests sometimes. Skills checks come in multiples of 25, so aim to stop at one multiple. There's also items that raise lockpicking by X amount, so you dont have to max out lockpicking. For example, if a hat raises lockpicking by 10, then you can stop at 65 or 90 and just equip it when you want to lockpick, saving points for other skills. There are very few [Very Hard] locks, so some recommend stopping at 65 and using equipment to when needed.

Small guns is the staple combat skill. Early on, you'll see more small guns and ammo, so it'd be easier for first time players to stick with that until you have enough points to play around with other combat skills (explosive, big guns, energy weapons).

Speech and barter helps with saving money. Successful speech checks also give some exp, but they mostly open up new quest paths and give better quest rewards. Barter helps buying/selling. at 100 barter, you sell items at face value (the VAL of an item when you look at it), below you'll be getting less when you sell and paying more when you buy.
 
you just go to the mysterious signal asap and the game becomes cake. the toughest mobs are overlords and all you do is shoot 1 bigboy at it and alll dead (thats with no biggun skill and on hard difficulty)
 
I cannot wait to play this, you guys are doing a excellent job at driving me nuts, Keep up the good work lol...
 
Bman123 said:
Riddleofsteel can you please explain what the mods you listed do? I would like to use mods but nothing that makes the game easy, if anything harder is better so it takes me longer to beat it. My first playthrough I'm not gonna use any mods at all.

I haven't beat the regular story let alone all the expansions. Plus I will start from scratch on pc I only played it on 360. Should be nice to see how it looks on pc after playing it on 360..

Has anyone actually done a side by side? I'm interested what settings equal the console version, so I can then turn some of it up and enjoy the difference lol..
Click to expand...

NMC's Texture pack makes the game gorgeous, but takes a good deal more memory. You will need some smaller texture addons for little things that NMC's doesnt cover, but overall it does the majority of the game world. FWE makes the game quite a bit harder and changes a few other aspects such as the beginning (optional change). DarnUI makes the games user-interface much more intuitive and can be set up to show your xp meter, radiation, hunger etc. Mart's Mutant Mod makes the game much harder also but has some occasional bugs that can usually be sorted out. It adds more monsters to each spawn group. Nothing like running into a subway station packed with ghouls when low on ammo for that "Oh, CRAP!" moment. Let me know if you need more help.
 
I would recommend a higher int as you get more points per level, a decent strength and a decent agility. So you can carry stuff, and get more crits/better accuracy.

Repair is vital as stated, vendors can't repair for crap.
Small Arms as 90% of the time you will be using these at least until endgame when you get an enormous amount of heavy weapons.
lockpicking - this comes in handy so often just being able to pick all locks with ease and picking up everything you can.
 
The laziest way to lockpick is to take advantage of the instant load times.

F5 in front of a lock pick
E, F, F9 if Fail.

You can basically reload and contuniously force lock until you get it to work, even with Very hard locks (10% successs rate) you can pick in about 15 seconds. I've gone the entire game on a single bobby pin :)
 
Not sure if quicksave and quickload should be used. Savegames can get corrupted. Get CASM which automatically save games at regular intervals (You have a lot of control over how and when the game saves). It's one of those mods that is far more awesome than it sounds.
 
Damn, this makes me want to load up FO3 and play again.

Strategy: Don't take too long to finish the game because it gets MUCH less fun when you max out your level. Then again, I never got any expansions so YMMV.
 
Parmenides said:
Not sure if quicksave and quickload should be used. Savegames can get corrupted. Get CASM which automatically save games at regular intervals (You have a lot of control over how and when the game saves). It's one of those mods that is far more awesome than it sounds.
Click to expand...

This. CASM is a lifesaver.
 
I've played fallout 3 twice, first visiting all the areas, a year later doing the main mission and the dlcs. Never had an issue with saves, ever. Maybe I was lucky.
 
+9 to intelligence.


and blow up megaton that place sucks to navigate in.

everything else isn't as important as these 2.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top