The bottlecap mines are very useful, particularly against mirelurks and super mutants in confined spaces. The shishkebab is a handy last-resort weapon, but if you’re paying attention nothing should get that close.
I’m currently relying almost solely on the A3-21 plasma rifle. One- or two-shot kills on deathclaws can’t be sniffed at. I’m also getting a little grenade happy - I built up an enormous collection of them, wanted shot of the weight, and they’re handy for taking out radscorpions and robots at distance.
My current frustration is - yet again - the firelance blaster. Boom goes the explosion in the sky, carefully I watch, spend an hour collecting the energy cells (and get jumped twice by giant radscorpions), but can I find the damn gun? Can I buggery.
I saw the blast in the sky, started heading toward it, found the Alien Power Cells strewn about…and was attacked by a couple of mercs, one of whom was using the Firelance on me! Seems he found it first, fortunately I was able to go rat-tat-tat with my gat in the VATS and get it from him.
I’d played through to about level 16, just wandering around and doing side quests. After accidentally skipping the whole of GNR by way of Rivet City I thought “Well, I might as well see what’s going on in the main quest chain”
And then it was the end.
I’ve missed so much that y’all are talking about here. Now I’ma have to play again.
Best find of the whole game, though, was the ghoul mask. That made getting through the underground so damned easy. I’ve got to remember which quest I got it from so I can get it again.
There’s a TON of stuff out there. On your replay, make it a point to explore to the north and west a LOT. I downloaded the hack that allows a level cap increase to level 40, and I’m at level 28 now with lots of places left to “discover” and on the main quest I haven’t progressed past finding the Citadel. Point is, you should be easily able to reach level 20 way before the main quest completes, if you explore enough.
Oh, I did hit 20 before I finished the main quest. The rest of the MQ was enough to hit 20, I just was wandering along doing my thing and then it’s like “BAM, end now!”
I got a helluva lot of stuff all over the map found, though. TBH, the north east, although highly populated on my map already, was where I seemed to miss the most.
Yeah, the main quest is definitely a let down. It’s probably roughly the same length as Fallout 2 (go to San Fran, go to Navarro, go to the tanker, go free your people). But for some reason it felt (at least for me), much shorter.
But yeah, you can easily spend another good few days exploring the wasteland, and there are generally new and interesting things to discover. I do hope that they come out with a patch for the 360 that raises the level cap, though.
To see some sort of progress, mostly. On this play through I’m going melee/explosives, and if that proves to be too easy as well, then I’m going to try a non-violence run. I also noted a great deal of difference when I moved the difficulty slider up–it’s still not hard, but at least I’m using stimpacks and food now.
I’m also amused that the good route gets you the crappy house, but the guys after you have good gear, while the evil route gets you the good house, but the people after you have crappy gear on them.
I’m getting a computer that in all other respects will play Fallout 3 just great, but it will have a NVIDIA GeForce 9400 series graphics card which the Fallout website says isn’t supported. This this a big deal?
I think that’s due to new developments in the storyline(s). Once you kill a monster it’s gone (buildings I’ve cleared stay cleared) but sometimes new enemies invade an area. Such as…
The monument is infested with Super Mutants and you can clear them out. But when you get to a certain point on the main quest the Monument gets invaded by Enclave soldiers.
Right, indoor areas stay cleared but outdoor ones don’t. I’ve cleared Muties from a certain shell of a building not from from the Museum of History only to have them show in the same place later on. Likewise with Raiders outside that army depot.
Once the Union guys head to the Monument, I’ve had traders and raiders (not at the same time) inhabit the old union building. I’ve also seen a handful of ghouls or mutants show up at previously-cleared sites, but never in the original numbers.
