You should be able to find some free places to sleep. If you cannot find a bed anywhere, I wonder if killing Silver (she lives just outside of Megaton [do her quest first]) will allow you to sleep in her bed. Also, disarming or blowing up the bomb in Megaton will net you a place to live in either Megaton or Tenpenny Tower respectively. Stimpaks were pretty abundant when I played, but I usually conserved them and ate large quantities of snacks/animal meat instead and then cleared out the radiation I took in.
I have no idea about the bottlecaps thing. That sounds like a glitch or something. Money doesn’t have any weight, so I doubt it has anything to do with that.
You should definitely focus on doing quests in Megaton first though. Depending on how you complete the quests there, you can get a few perks that’ll help you out later. Once you’ve finished all the quests there, you’ll have picked up a few others around from small settlements around the place. Head over to Tenpenny Tower around level 10.
Here are some tips.
1. As the post above already mentioned, use VATS whenever there’s a chance.
2. Always sneak, even if your sneaking skill is low. It’s easier to hit oponents and if they don’t see you while you’re sneaking your first hit will always automaticly score a criticall hit and that a good start when going to a fight. Also, while sneaking, you’ll know that someone is attacking you even if you don’t see them.
3. Don’t waste your caps on sleeping in inns. When no one’s attacking and you’re low on health drink water if there a source nearby, don’t bother with the radiation meter, there are Radx and Radaway’s for that. Save all the stimpacks and food for battles.
4. When in a really tight situation a combination of Medx, Psycho, and Jet will make things a lot easier, but there’s a good chance you’ll get addicted, so use it as a last resort if you’re running low on caps.
5. In Fallout 3 one the most important skills is repair. The bigger it is the better armor and weapon condition is when you repair them, and better condition means that your weapons do more damage and your armor has a higher damage protection, not to mention the higher price when selling.
why can I carry only 150 caps btw? Does it have something to do with the weight?
Must be a glitch. Have you tried the latest patch.
First off, is your explosives skill at least 25? If so, disarm the bomb, and you’ll get a free house, 100 caps(more if you pass the speech challenge with the sheriff), and positive karma. If you want, you can also blow the bomb by talking to Mr Burke in Moriarty’s…you’ll get negative karma, a penthouse suite, and more cash than do-gooders. Either way, you won’t need to worry about spending money to heal up.
I’m with Aniki on the 150 caps limit…it HAS to be a glitch, because caps, ammo, and most medicines have no weight; thus, you can carry as many as you want.
And though this may grate against some people’s nerves, don’t be too proud to lower the difficulty level(which you can do at any time). The hunting rifle is a great weapon to start out with for sniping(especially against Fire Ants!), but if you search a ‘hollow rock’ near the south end of Megaton, you can find a full-fledged Sniper Rifle(complete with scope!). Be careful though, it will degrade fast.
I use VATS all the time and pretty much all I use is the hunting rifle. It’s still hard to find ammo for it though. In buildings and such combat isn’t all that hard, but in open field I can’t help but be spotted by Raiders or those Super Mutants and I get destroyed. I’ll try doing some sidequests or something to level up. I’ll look into the caps thing. I’ll try the latest patch or something, since it doesn’t do it automatically.
Yeah and the 150 caps thing was a bit of fail on my part. I kept selling my stuff to the same guy and apparently in Fallout 3, merchants don’t have unlimited money. You see where I’m going with this…
I can’t fathom why you’d only be able to get 150 caps, I didn’t think there was any money limit in this game.
LOL, yeah, I get it. No problem buddy. Go to Rivet City, and you have another shop. Get a quest to deliver a letter from Lucy West in Megaton, and at the end of that quest, you’ll have access to another shop. Between all of that, you should be able to start getting tons of cash.
General pointers below, so if you don’t want anymore, don’t look.
Heads up on divvying up skill points…stop leveling each skill at around 80, and use skill books to make up the difference. Otherwise, it will be far too easy to find yourself 40 points shy of maxing out two or three skills. This is a non-issue if you have the Broken Steel expansion, but…oh, and if you DO have BS, don’t grab ANY bobbleheads until after you get the Almost Perfect perk at level 30.
I agree with this, but small guns is still the most effective path towards success in combat early in the game and so it is the best path for someone who is new to the game and having a hard time with it.
Small guns are dominant because you can master them early and then easily plow through the rest of the game using only them, putting points into no other weapon skill. It’s much harder to do that with any other weapon. This is true in all 3 Fallout games.
My second Fallout 3 character exclusively used hand to hand attacks and I didn’t have much trouble, but I’d have had a much harder time if I didn’t play through with a small guns oriented character first.
Go to Rivet City, and you have another shop.
If he’s having trouble this early in the game, "go to Rivet City" isn’t very good advice. He can’t get to Rivet City.
The INT bobble is in Rivet City. It’s helpful to get it early to maximize the skill points you have available.
I do think I will finish the game at least once without using any bobbleheads or skill books though.
Right now I’m doing the sidequest where I deliver that letter from Lucy. Her parents are dead so I’m just trying to find her brother now.
I also got the idea quickly that small guns dominate so I spend many points on that skill as level up.
And yeah TK, it IS possible(as Blameless said) to get to Rivet City at any point, but I admit, you do have to know the path(circumvent the entire ruins, and then stay on the shoreline), and know enough to not sightsee on the way.
Yeah, that’s probably the worst of the DLC.
And yeah TK, it IS possible(as Blameless said) to get to Rivet City at any point, but I admit, you do have to know the path(circumvent the entire ruins, and then stay on the shoreline), and know enough to not sightsee on the way.
Sure, but you could instead pump your small guns to 100 and then spend all your other skill points on other non-weapon skills that are extremely useful—repair, speech, hacking, lock picking, sneaking—to get those up to high levels fast, and still easily dispatch any enemy in the game. If you make your character’s sole weapon focus energy weapons, you’ll have an incredibly hard time early on because you won’t have easy access to any energy weapons, so you have to put some skill points into a combat skill that you have easy access to right away, and then build your energy weapons skill later which ultimately results in a waste of points on the earlier combat skill that you’re never going to use after you’ve got good energy weapons.
In other words, small guns is the most efficient use of skill points on a combat skill. Energy weapons are more powerful later in the game, but then it doesn’t actually matter, because mastered skill in any gun type will allow you to always win with no trouble using VATS. So the most efficient character is always one that uses small guns exclusively because he/she can fight most effectively early on, continue to win with the same weapons later on, and then focus exclusively on whatever other skills the player desires.
Keep in mind I am only pointing this out because it is the easiest path through the game. The whole point of Fallout is character and game path versatility, and while Fallout 3 does this least effectively of any game in the series, it still does a pretty decent job of it. You can make a character who focuses on pretty much any set of skills and win that way, and it’s really fun to do so. But for a new player who has yet to understand what’s really effective in the game, a small guns character is by far the most effective way. After he’s beaten the game and is more comfortable he may want to go through again with a totally different character.
Perhaps it’s because I played the original without Broken Steel for so long, but I still have the habit of stopping my skill point dumping at 80, then filling in the gap with skill books. BS makes this a non-issue, but the habit still remains.
And while we’re on the subject of BS, that also makes Small Guns deficient against two enemies(which thankfully are somewhat rare): Albino Radscorpions and Super Mutant Overlords. Is it possible to beat them with small guns? Absolutely. Is it going to take a while, and a significant chunk of ammo? You betcha. Pound for pound, I’ve found that energy weapons can drop those two(along with any other enemies) a lot faster than small guns alone. I’ll acknowledge that Overlords still have the classic ‘Shoot them in the head’ weakness, but do you really want to go up against an Overlord with a Tri-Beam Laser Rifle? Not without heavy firepower, I would think.
But as you said, it’s all a matter of how one wants to make their characters. This is Kent Brockman, and that’s my two cents.
I don’t know about the rest, but this one was the most fun I’ve had with a sidequest in Fallout 3. Plus I picked some ridiculously strong weapons and I now one shot everything in sight. And I have like 500 bullets. And I can get more by just going back. So yeah, I am officially no longer having trouble with Fallout 3. Only trouble right now is getting to Rivet, which is apparently a huge ship that I can’t reach. I only found a door that leads to it, but it’s locked and I can’t pick the lock. Any suggestions?
Just as a hint, depending on what you do in two different quests, you’ll be coming OUT of that door, not going in.
WHITE KNIGHT GLOTY
Which makes no sense, since I steal everything not tied down :erm:
Picking the right perks is important too. For example pick Comprehension when you first get a chance and go looking for books, easy way to max out stats.
also, it may not be much, but if you have the space, collect as much junk as you can, each bottlecap that is worth, will help you buy supplies (25 tin cans got me one stimpak when i wa sshort on money and couldnt sell anything, you get the idea).
also, pillage downed enemies for everything they have, sometimes raider armors can sell for up to 60 caps (which is a lot at the start)
on the weak enemies like mole rats, use melee weapons.
for weak human enemies, use melee weapons too, but in VATS, and aim for the head.
You know, I was thinking at first that "I’m tough enough to survive whatever he throws at me, I have Hellfire Armor and max level, I can handle it!"
Yeah…>.>
Anyway, when I shot the guy and started checking the area later, I learned real fast why I didn’t survive…hell, even Behemoths buckle under 3 Fat Man shells and six or seven Frag Mines!!!
They’re still people too…