Seconded. I had one invisible raider with a sniper rifle take me out three times before I clued in.
Yeah, that’s how I got mine as well. Just don’t know where the darn thing is!
I’ve never played any Fallout game.
Should I just get Fallout 2?
Fallout 1, 2, and Tactics for six bucks each. If you want to try before you buy, plug Fallout Abandonware into Google.
Ah! Check on your Pip-Boy local map, in the ‘data’ section; as you enter the town, go down to the bomb, then go left up past the food stall, then left again past Lucy West and then Jericho’s house and you can’t miss it.
Anyone else finding it really hard to stay in the black? After kitting myself with enough ammo and stims I have pretty much zilch left. Any good goldmines around? My main source of income seems to be selling pre-war money and scrap metal to that old fella.
I had just had a near-death experience with a standard mutant so I was scared as hell when I came across the SUPER mutant. I had a bottle cap mine on me though. It was funny because I snuck up on him, so I just kinda sat there staring at him not 5 feet away from me until I figured out what I was going to do. Set the bottle cap mine, made a noise, then set off the mine when he was standing on it. Took me a good 3-4 minutes to track down where his head landed. 
From the entrance to Megaton, take a really quick left. There should be some makeshift wooden stairs to your pad.
If you want to make a lot of money, go scavenging in the subway ruins. The loot laying around isn’t generally all that valuable, but there are lots of things to kill that have good stuff on them. Of course, raiders and mercs will be using some of that hardware against you.
Here are a couple of the cooler game moments I’ve seen so far:
[spoiler]When I was approaching the Galaxy News Radio building, I ran into some super mutants who started coming towards me, but then turned to engage a squad of Brotherhood of Steel knights. Introductions were cut short as we dashed through ruins, fighting through more waves of muties on the way to the GNR building. When we arrived at the plaza and finished off a larger group of muties, with the assistance of the Brotherhood sentries already there, it looked like we could take a breather. But then a giagantic Super Mutant Behemoth came rampaging into the plaza, killing a Brotherhood initiate and knocking out several others in short order. The thing was 30 feet tall, and its weapon was a street light pole with a fire hydrant attached to the end. I ducked and ran like mad, taking the occasional pot shot while the sentries rained down fire from balconies above. Finally it went down like some great tree collapsing, and I entered the GNR building.
Later on, I was inside the Museum of Technology looking for a replacement for GNR’s damaged radio antenna. I was listening to some cheerful prewar song on the Pip-Boy when I came across the planetarium. The projector turned on, splashing stars and galaxies on the overhead dome and playing a recording about how man’s destiny lies in the stars. I had only a moment to muse on that when a pair of muties barged in, no doubt attracted by the sudden noise. So there I was, awash with sounds of a peaceful town, outer space, and shotgun fire, in a half-destroyed building once dedicated to human innovation, fighting off muties that were the result of a more sinister sort of human innovation. I could not help but laugh a little at the sheer absurdity of it all.[/spoiler]
Argh! I need a new computer, STAT!
This game seems too lovely for me to wait. I wonder how much I can get for a kidney.
Build one yourself and save some money!
You should be able to build a PC that will run this game better than any console for ~$500: System Builder Marathon: $500 Gaming PC | Tom's Hardware
At $6 I’ll just buy them.
Thank you very much for the link!
Mapping the wastelands for the Rangers pays big bucks. I got 600+ caps as soon as I accepted the quest when they paid me for the locations I had already uncovered
Are there flashlights in this game? Some areas are really dark, and I’ve found no light sources 
Also :
I can’t the “Family” I checked out all three places the sheriff suggested, and all I got was a vague direction of “east of here” from the ghoul at the station. Any help?
Hold your pop boy key for a few seconds… More a torch than a flashlight
Yeah, this took me a while, too. There’s a couple of ways of getting there. Going east as the ghoul says, you’re looking for a the Meresti Trainyard, so look out for trains and tracks. Alternatively, there’s a manhole in the station with the ghouls near some radiation barrels that’ll eventually get you to the Family too.
If you’re working on Chapter 2 of the Wasteland Survival Guide, or know where the Arlington Library is,
There’s a Brotherhood of Steel scholar inside who will give you 100 caps and 10 exp for each undamaged Pre-War book you bring to her. I found 8 in the library alone, and there’s quite a few lying about in abandoned houses and such. One of the Chapter 2 quests involves downloading the archives from that library, so pick that up first if you can.
Also, tangent: The Shishkebab weapon is great fun!
It will quite possibly go down as the worst ever in a major release - I can’t imagine anybody making anything worse in the future ;).
Thankfully it’s not game-breaking, just vaguely annoying.
Sweet! I really need to start reading the manual before I play.
Yep. I sorta like the resource constraints, though. Makes for an on-the-edge nervousness - I’m always short of non-10 mm ammo and stimpacks ( which may say something about my reckless gameplay ). Now that I have a submachine gun I’m starting to burn through the 10 mm worringly fast as well.
At level five I did encounter a pair of super-mutants and while the standard guy wasn’t that bad, the rocket-launching brute was a bitch. After reloading a couple of times I finally had to use my one and only bottlecap mine to take him out. Now I think I’ll just flee until I get some better gear :).
I have to say that so far I am quite enjoying it.
Man, people in this thread need to log off the game for 15 minutes and read the manual. Your PIPBOY IS a flashlight.
On 360 you hold down the B button, which brings the pipboy up, but when you hold it down it turns on the flashlight.
They also explain this to you in the very beginning segment of the game.
I’ve been playing too much and need to take a day off I think. My neck is starting to hurt from looking at the TV so much for long periods of time.
I thought I might have been near the end so I was trying to hurry through (bad habit) and found out I’m about 75% of the way through.
You people bitching about the map have clearly never played the original Fallouts. I mean, yeah it’s bad, but it’s better then the old ones.
I dunno. I no longer remember the original Fallout, but I seem to recall Fallout 2’s local map as being kinda crappy, but better than this one, which I have hard time following at all ( I have pretty much stopped bothering ). The world map is maybe 5% better, but it’s functional, nothing more ( which is fine ).
Clearly?
I played Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 and Tactics. I played through Fallout 2 numerous times.
This map is by far the worst, especially since the game is in 3D with various levels on top of each other.