[spoiler] Two of the residents own shops on the lower level and have safes behind the counters. Lockpick the safes and clean them out. The shop owners then whine about how the place isn’t safe, and go wander the wasteland, looking for a safer place. And they probably get eaten by deathclaws or something.
After that, you have three people left. Susan Lancaster’s room has a love letter on her desk I think from Edgar Wellington. Pick up the love letter, and then go to find his wife Millicent. Tell her about the note, and she pulls out a pistol and kills Edgar. (Then she pumps a clip into his corpse’s crotch). She then hunts down Susan and kills her too. Ideally though, if you’re evil, you’ve already mezzed Susan and sent her to the slavers.
Tada! Ghouls can move in. Only… if you don’t want them to slaughter everybody in the tower once they move in, you need to kill Tenpenny himself to prevent a massacre. [/spoiler]
I went back to my pre Tenpenny save and have been leveling up downtown, I found the Underworld Ghouls and got the headshot quest, and have been reading twikis on all of the various ways to make it through. I’d like to try and move the ghouls in and still get to shoot Tenpenny in the head to both have vigilante satisfaction and prevent the ghouls from murdering everyone as you suggest.
I just killed Agatha. As in, the violin-playing lady that just wanted to share her music with the remaining populace. Playing an evil character is hard. But I DID claw her to death with my Deathclaw Gauntlet while Jericho smoked a cigarette. So I guess I’ll just have to do without violin music this time around (which I did the first time around even when I completed that quest playing as a good character).
It is a lot more difficult to play as a truly evil character, though, because so many of the quests seem to only be triggered or solved by taking a positive karma route. I guess it kind of reflects the real world in some ways.
I did get the kid, Brian Wilkes, to call me an asshole, though. That was satisfying.
Still trying to play spoiler-free. I had an interesting find in Rivet City, and although I couldn’t do anything with it and had to die on purpose, I’m wondering what its significance was.
So, in the Marketplace I accidentally picked up something I shouldn’t have. Multiple security guards and other assorted characters immediately started shooting at me. I turned at Commander Danvers and one-shotted her. I knew I was probably going to die, so before my health went to zero I checked to see what loot she had. Basic stuff, except for one thing: an “Armory Key”. I know there’s an armory somewhere in Rivet City, but I’ve never seen reference to a key before. Any significance to this?
I could be wrong but: Probably no significance. You often find keys on the bodies of semi-important people you kill. You’ve probably got the key for a usually locked door in Rivet City, and inside you might find some decent, but no hugely mega amazing guns and ammo. But I could be wrong. Finding a key on a body isn’t usually hugely significant in this game
And save your game regularly. If you want to be a good character you’ll want to be able to undo things that give you negative karma.
More importantly - you may want to replay a conversation with different choices about what you say. Sometimes choosing the wrong thing to say can have unwanted consequences.
Yeah, I save VERY frequently since I had a few bad things happen to me (like losing Dogmeat fairly early in the game in Paradise Falls). Also it pays to save before any conversation, especially if you are going to try using your speech ability during the conversation.
Yeah…I learned it the hard way. Same with saving before attempting to force a lock pick on something. It sucks when you are trying to get into some door and have a 95% chance, attempt a force and have the pick break rendering the door pertinently locked (unless you have the perk that gives you another chance).
Now it’s just reflex for me to hit the autosave almost continually.
Most games have a quicksave key. I think it’s F5 in FO3. I find myself pressing F5 before every irreversible action (and after it, if I know I won’t want to undo it) and also after traveling at a distance, and after picking things up, before unlocking things, after unlocking things.
I save a LOT. But sometimes it can backfire. I will be so used to pressing F5 that I will find that I want to go back a bit and can’t.
There is actually something more significant than that in Rivet City, depending on how you play out the “Replicated Man” quest:
The security chief of Rivet City is actually an android who had plastic surgery and a mind-wipe so he could live a free man. There’s a way to play the quest out so that he remembers this, kills the man who is after him, and then gives you his custom plasma rifle.
You get him to remember who he is, don’t have him kill Zimmer, and the android gives you his plasma rifle. Then you go to Zimmer, rat out the android, and get a permanent +10 bonus to VATS. Win/win!
Get his plasma rifle by offering to kill Zimmer yourself. He’ll clear it with the guards so that you can take out Zimmer without repercussions. Now go to Zimmer, and turn Harkin in to get the Wired Reflexes perk. This gives you a Karma hit. Zimmer will head out to reclaim Harkin, at that point enter VATS (crouch if you want a sneak attack critical because his back will be to you and he’s not expecting it) and take him and his cyborg bodyguard out. This will get you a postive Karma boost equal to the negative boost you got for turning Harkin in. Best of both worlds, more loot than any other way of doing it, and no penalty to Karma.
