Orchid Win7 v1 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> So I managed to leave Vault 101.

You can get out without violence, you can just leg it around the guards.

> Next I'm supposed to pick the lock to open the door. The game marked the
> lock as "very easy" (not just easy, but *very* easy), and yet I failed
> miserably, not even coming close to unlocking it.

The lockpicking minigame isn't that hard once you get the trick of it, and it's
invaluable for finding loot. You do need quite a lot of pins before you get good
at it tho :\

> I'm not actually sure what the point in Vault 101 existing is. I mean, I
> left the vault, and I'm presumably never going back there, so everything
> that just happened was basically a total waste of time.

The idea is that it's an in-universe character generator (the skill classroom
test etc), tutorial and story beginning all in one. And you're assuming you
never go back there ;-)

> But I had
> assumed that all living entities were hostile

Hostiles show red on your radar. All others show green.

> bomb
> and yet it was
> trivially easy. I don't know if there's a random component and I was
> just extremely lucky, or what.

IIRC the bomb requires your repair skill to be a certain level, which might not
immediately be the case depending on your initial skill choices in the vault.

> So I walked all the way back to Megaton. But apparently the game seems
> to think there definitely *is* food to be found, and won't let me abort
> the quest until I find it.

You since found fast travel ;) Don't forget it's an open world game. You don't
*need* to advance a quest, you can just go find some more. That particular quest
line isn't part of the main story, although Moira's tasks are quite good at
getting you around to interesting places.

> towards the river, and a large team of humans started shooting me. So I
> quickly crossed the river, and got shot at even more. There were only
> two enemies, but no matter how much I shot at them, they just wouldn't
> die. Eventually I exhausted all my health supplies and died.

Hmm, there are two super mutants on the west bank of the river around there I
think. They're pretty tough early in the game, especially when your accuracy
isn't yet high enough to hit them at range.

> So I tried going further north. But then some kid runs up to me and
> tells me how "fire ants" have taken over his town, and begs me to fix
> it.

Again, you can just ignore quests if you're not ready for them yet. There are
very few cases where you're required to do something immediately. IIRC the kid
just tells you to meet him somewhere, so you can go back whenever you're ready.

> First of all, it asserts that trying to evenly spread your upgrade
> points among all abilities is a doomed strategy, and you have to pick
> one or two and focus only on those.

Early on, good advice. However you can pretty much max out all skills by the
endgame so I wouldn't worry. A guns skill is very useful for a first
playthrough, as is repair, speech (so you can take the negotiation route where
possible and save ammo and karma). But there's no right way to play the game to
be honest.

> They urge you to use V.A.T.S. constantly, for everything. Clearly I'm
> using it wrong. So every time enemies are near, the game is constantly
> nudging you to turn on V.A.T.S... So I press V, and the game pauses and
> asks me what part of the target I want to hit. So I say, uh, head. And I
> press Accept. And the game unpauses, and nothing happens. So... what was
> the point of that, exactly?

As you subsequently found out, you can queue up as many shots as your AP
permits. Although the accuracy can be a bit of a crapshoot until you get your
guns skills up, VATS is still the best way to go for beginners because you take
almost no damage whilst in the mode. And the slo-mo kill replays look awesome.

> (Apparently ammo is extremely rare in this world.)

It's really not. You'll burn through it at the start of the game, but after 10
hours of looting ammo for guns you don't yet have, you'll end up with plenty.


I must have sunk more than 300 hours into Fallout 3 alone over the last 7 years,
it's a great game. As someone else said, try New Vegas too if you end up liking
it. The game mechanics in New Vegas are significantly improved (and there's a
hardcore mode where you have to regularly sleep, eat and drink, and ammo has
weight), and the story choices are much better too. I still prefer 3 for the
exploration/atmosphere though.

I shall be giving 4 a go next year I expect :D

Bill

Post a reply to this message