Ah, you haven’t even been to GNR yet so you definitely have not activated that one. You need to rescue Dr. Li first.
Heh, fair enough.
Modified for Doper Nitpickery: you cannot get power armor that serves as anything other than a paperweight until you get trained to use it. You should, however, pick up every suit you can find and use them as spare parts for repairing your eventual suit of power armor. You should especially:
take the “you have to shoot them in the head” quest, as it leads to the single greatest set of power armor in the game, one that has absolutely no penalties to your abilities.
I once tried the ‘vault’ style in Megaton. A whole lot of caps for very minor cosmetic alterations that ended up making it more difficult for me to move around the house. Not worth the caps, IMO.
Buying the work bench is a good investment, as it saves time and aggravation. I’d also assume (but I’m not certain) that various caravans might sell sniper rifles and/or ammo, and the brotherhood merchant almost definitely does, but I can’t be certain.
If not, they might after paying that Uncle guy in Cantebury Commons 200 caps for them to increase their inventory.
If one goes the Evil route, one won’t be able to talk to caravans until one brings up one’s karma.
The science theme is kinda silly- you get a few minor items from it, but basically it just fills a lot of the space with useless machines.
The doctor machine and the chemistry set (I don’t remember what they are called) are the most useful things in my game- I recommend those before the repair table, you can always use the ones you find in shops around the game, specially in megaton. Wish I could help you on the sniper rifles, but
All you have to do to get better options and prices on weapons, ammo, whatever, just invest in Canterbury Commons with the traders. I have also found that hella useful in these late stages of the game.
I am on hour 79 cause I just roll around the wastes clearing black from my local map screens. I still have about a third of the board to go, and wasting all that ammo and using all those weapons means I need whatever I can.
Haven’t even been to Cantebury Commons afaik (unless that’s where the ant guy and the robot guy are battling it out…in which case I was there but just passed through on the way to do something else) but I’ll check it out. 200 cap investment to be able to buy better stuff would be VERY nice and well worth it.
Finn…do you know where you pick up that quest you talked about in the spoiler section?
Looks like I should stay away from the themes…I’ll definitely get some of the other stuff though and I have lots of caps to burn atm (like 6k I think).
-XT
That’s the place.
Thought the name sounded familiar. I whacked the ant dude but there wasn’t a quest for it when I did it so probably too late now.
-XT
That’s from Crowley, one of the Ghouls in Underworld. He wants some backstabbers killed but if you ask around Underworld a bit and find out what he really wants he’ll give you keys the location of the power armor on completion.
Interesting although it’s Mr. Crowley (like the Ozzy song)… however I think you get more experience if you
go to the people he wants killed, use persuasion to get them to give up their keys (Tenpenny will probably already be dead if you helped the ghouls peacefully get into the tower and he doesn’t have a key anyway), and then go to Crowley to complete the quest. Use persuasion to convince Crowley that you killed the people when in fact you didn’t, and use persuasion to get him to give up the location of the military base. You can also persuade other people who have the keys to give up the location of the base. Then you just follow behind Crowley after the quest is done, wait until he leaves Underworld and blow his head off. I don’t believe you take a loss in Karma, no other ghouls see you (as long as you do it in the lobby and not outside where another ghoul is patrolling) and you get the keys. Win-win.
Hm…could be a problem here then:
I helped the Ghouls completely destroy Ten Penny Tower and kill all the humans in there. I took quite a karma hit on this, as well as the radio guy has had some bad things to say about me, but they pissed me off (plus I couldn’t get them to agree to a peaceful solution…not sure if I missed something there).
Does this mean I can’t do this quest now?
-XT
No no, sorry if I was too terse for proper clarity.
I was just saying that even if you do the peaceful solution the ghouls still murder Tenpenny. And in any case it doesn’t matter, because Mr. Crowley just wants Tenpenny dead and Tenpenny doesn’t have a key anyway.
Oh, and just in case on another play through you want to convince them “peacefully”:
[spoiler]Two merchants have safes that you can lockpick. Do so and steal all their caps, they then leave Tenpenny Tower when you talk to them, citing the lack of security as their reason. That leaves three other holdouts (you don’t need to convince all of Tenpenny’s residents, just those five). Of those three, the man and another woman are having an affair. I believe you can find a love note from him to her in her quarters (sorry, I’m totally blanking on the names). If you show that note to the guy’s wife she takes out a pistol and blows his head off before tracking down the woman and shooting her… and then she wanders off into the wasteland.
Of course, you can always be totally borings and just pass the speech checks to get them to accept the ghouls, but where’s the fun in that? ;)[/spoiler]
Ok…thanks. 
I think it was vastly more fun to turn the feral ghouls loose and see them whacking everyone in the tower…gods that was really funny! Besides, there was so much loot I ended up having to make several trips to get it all out of there. In fact I think there is still stuff in the tower armory that I haven’t bothered to go back for.
-XT
Hah! I didn’t even realize that the tower has an armory.
Yup…plus you get all the goodies off all the guards (including the head of security guy who’s name currently escapes me), all the residents (some of who have some surprising loot) and of course that Ten Penny guy…as well as all the stuff in their rooms and such.
Plus you get all the fun of seeing the ferals run about with that panting noise they make whacking people left and right. 
-XT
I think I’ll have my Evil character turn Mr. Burke into a slave. Was going to do that with my Good character but couldn’t find him.
I’m really enjoying playing this as a fairly evil character. I spared the town, but I’m quite happily killing and robbing anyone I think might give me an advantage. My Barter and Speech skills are less than 10 - who needs them when you’ve Small Guns of 96? - and I’m working on my Energy Weapons and Melee skills to give me that breadth of killing power.
TBH, if you have small guns then energy weapons are just icing and melee weapons are probably a detrimental skill to train. You generally want to make sure that you’re not at all close to the things you’re killing. I can’t even imagine how you’d go about taking down a deathclaw, even with a powerfist or supersledge.
And:
once the Enclave emerges from their bunker, they’ll start sending kill-teams out who have mind controlled deathclaws with them.
A friend told me there is a light saber in the game…but she may have just been pulling my leg. I DID see:
An alien space ship thingy out there when I was wandering about. No idea what, if anything, was in it though.
I agree with Finn though…myself, I like to keep folks at more than arms reach. My own small guns is 100 with 90 to energy weapons.
BTW, is there a level limit? My leg pulling friend says you can’t go past level 20…true?
-XT
As said before, most of the themes are just clutter, but if you’ve got more caps than og, knock yourself out. Love nest or whatever she calls it is interesting. When you’re standing in front of her, do a quicksave. Then buy a theme and look it over, quickload and look at the next one.
I’ve bought the workbench. It’s just far too handy sitting there next to a locker full of parts.
Poll time. Favorite weapons.
Myself.
Key 1: Chinese assault rifle /w 1500 rounds.
Key 2: Combat shotgun /w 400 rds
Key 3: Frag grenades x20. 50 more in storage
Key 4: Shishkebab. Feral ghoul flambé anyone?
Key 5: Frag mines x20
Key 6: Pulse grenades x10
Key 7: Sniper /w 50 rds
Key 8: Mezzer (quest specific tools)
I love the Chinese Assault Rifle as well. Not only does it look cool but it’s bad ass damage (3 shot burst to the head with 100 small guns means pretty much instant death). I generally run around with this as my out weapon and switch to the sniper rifle for long range engagements (my favorite kind), or the combat shot gun/44 mag sniper pistol for short range. I also carry a rocket launcher with rockets for taking out gun turrets and some pulse grenades for robots and such.
The problems with my weapons mix is that it’s hard for me to find Chinese Assault Rifles and Sniper Rifles to fix keep them in good shape. Combat shot guns are a dime a dozen (I have tons of them), and I’ve managed a fairly good stock of the .44 mag sniper pistols and missile launcher. I also have tons of laser rifles but I honestly don’t use that weapon all that often…it just doesn’t seem to have the killing power for me of the other weapons (probably because energy weapons wasn’t one of my tag skills and it’s taken me time to build it up).
I haven’t tried the mini-gun yet though I have several in perfect repair and I have tons of 5mm ammo for it. I figured I’d wait until things get really hairy in the end game to trot one out…that and getting my power armor and get my big guns up to over 70.
-XT