Getting Started

Statistics & Skills

Truer words have never been spoken.

Part of the fun in Fallout 3's gameplay is the depth of character customization offered through a number of S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats and Tag Skills that can each potentially change the way you play the game.

When choosing S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, it's important to choose stats that emphasize skills you intend to use, as well as bumping up any derived statistics. For instance, Strength and Endurance can often be sacrificed for players who want to avoid being an brutish oaf with Melee or Heavy Weapons, while Intelligence should always be pumped for extra Skill points.

Skills are rated 1 through 100 (with 1 meaning you're a complete doofus in that discipline, and 100 meaning you have assumed complete mastery of it), but as many of the Skills are stat-derived you will probably never have anything less than 10. Non-combat skills should be given higher priority than combat skills, as good gameplay can make up for a world of low combat skills or poor gear.

A quick summary of how S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats could affect character creation:

• Strength
  • Carry Weight
  • Melee Damage
  • Melee Weapons Skill
• Perception
  • Energy Weapons Skill
  • Explosives Skill
  • Lockpick Skill
• Endurance
  • Health
  • Resistances
  • Big Guns Skill
  • Unarmed Skill
• Charisma
  • NPC Attitude
  • Barter Skill
  • Speech Skill
• Intelligence
  • Skill Points Per Level
  • Medicine Skill
  • Repair Skill
  • Science Skill
• Agility
  • VATS Action Points
  • Small Guns Skill
  • Sneak Skill
• Luck
  • Critical Chance
  • All Skills

And here's a breakdown of what the Tag Skills can do for you:

Barter

Lowers the price of goods from vendors and repair from technicians. Not worth taking since you'll be swimming in caps later in the game, especially if you take the Fortune Finder or Scrounger perks.

Big Guns

Big Guns are the highest damage-dealing weapons in the game, bar none. Early on it can be difficult to get your hands on one, but a quick trip to the Mall should net you a Minigun or Missile launcher, both guaranteed to have enemies groveling before your feet. The all-mighty Fat Man is also based on Big Guns damage, and with the Experimental MIRV Fat Man you can easily top a thousand damage per shot with a decent Big Guns skill. The obvious downside here is that Big Guns are very heavy, and ammo can be hard to find.

Energy Weapons

Energy Weapons generally have higher damage than Small Guns, but are hard to find early in the game and ammo can be sparse. Plasma weapons do more damage than laser weapons, but laser weapons have the advantage of striking instantly instead of waiting for a projectile to strike. Points in Energy Weapons can be considered an investment for the future as they will make you highly formidable mid to late game.

Explosives

Explosives are plentiful (nearly everyone has a grenade) and just plain fun. A high Explosives skill will also give you more time with which to disarm or avoid landmines, and is required for disarming certain traps.

Lockpick

Lockpick and Science are special skills in that their value are more or less unimportant, in so far as percentages. A high Lockpick gives you a higher percentage of successfully forcing a lock, but the Lockpicking "minigame" is so simple that you should never need to. The true importance is that every 25 points in Lockpicking gives you access to a new difficulty of locks, with a 100 Lockpicking score allowing you to attempt any lock in the game not mandated by a key.

Medicine

Medicine affects how much health is gained by Stimpacks, as well as how much radiation is removed by RadAway, and the duration of drugs including Rad-X, Med-X, and the entire gamut of narcotics.

Melee Weapons

While initially it may seem that any gun skill would be preferable to Melee Weapons, an acute observer will find that only Big Guns and Explosives do more damage than a well-tuned Melee Weapon. Melee Weapons are also very plentiful, and can be absolutely devastating when combined with a good Sneak skill. Get your hands on a Super Sledge from the Mall, a Ripper from Andale or a Shishkebab from a Schematic as quickly as possible. You'll be glad you did.

Repair

Science:

Science, like Lockpicking, is only important in blocks of 25. Every 25 points give you access to more and more difficult terminals, with 100 points allowing you to attempt to hack any terminal in the game. When hacking, a high Science skill also determines how many possible passwords will be available on-screen for you to choose from.

Small Guns:

More or less the de facto combat skill for people who do not wish to specialize. The vast majority of firearms fall under this category, and they are indeed incredibly plentiful. Small Guns are eclipsed in damage by every other category of weapon, and are often very fragile. Take Small Guns if you never want to worry about ammo or finding a gun.

Sneak:

A high Sneak skill will cause your character to make less noise while sneaking, which can be offset by heavy armor, a heavy load of equipment, or having your light turned on. Note that Sneak does not make you invisible-that's reserved for the Stealth Boy. Sneaky players will delight in the Silent Running Perk, which increases movement speed while sneaking. A good combination of Sneak and Melee or Unarmed combat can create a truly formidable stealth assassin.

Speech:

Speech is used to make Speech challenges against NPCs, often to sidestep quest requirements or gain better rewards from missions. A player with a high Speech can skip hours of tedious side quests, avoid difficult combat, and garner a ridiculous sum of caps very quickly.

Unarmed:

Unarmed combat covers everything from bare fists, to brass knuckles, to the awe-inspiring Power Fist. Unarmed damage is directly affected by Strength to the tune of 0.5 damage per point of Strength. Don't forget about the easy 2 points of Strength garnered later in the game if you choose to wear Power Armor. The Iron Fist and Paralyzing Palm Perks can greatly increase the efficacy of Unarmed combat as well.

In addition to the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. and Tag skills, you can choose Perks as you level up that give bonus effects and provide a much more focused specialization in the process of developing your desired character type. Perks benefit you in a variety of ways, and it's best if you look through them carefully-even the ones you do not yet have access to- and pick ones that compliment your character. Certain Perks require prerequisites, so it's important to look ahead and make sure it's possible to get the ones you want.

VATS Combat

Learn to love VATS--you'll need it.

While you can go around targeting everything via your target reticle and still be able to fight effectively, you will be ignoring a major function of Fallout 3's combat system: VATS, shorthand for Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System. Accessing VATS allows you to pause the action and put a bead on specific body parts of the target while displaying the percentage chance on specific regions of the target's body on which you can land a successful hit. This percentage is calculated from your proficiency with the equipped weapon, your distance from the target, and availability of exposed regions on the target. The more "covered up" the region is, the lower the percentage.

This targeting system is heavily rooted in realism in that aiming for certain limbs offers a certain degree of tactical flexibility. For instance, striking a target's say, legs, hard enough could cripple him, causing him to limp toward you and decrease his movement speed. Headshots deal the most amount of damage depending upon the enemy and could stand a bigger chance of a critical, one-shot kill. When dealing with tough enemies or an enemy brandishing a deadly weapon, a good tactic is to always go for the arms or the weapon itself. This should emasculate the once-fearsome enemy considerably, and you can laugh off his weak punches as you pummel his face.

As long as your Action Points (AP) permit, you can take multiple steps during your slow-motion attack animation, but you will have to wait for your AP to regenerate before being able to take further actions. The other reason to use VATS is a neat bonus 15% chance of a critical hit on top of that hidden number derived from Luck, certain Perks, and other hidden bonuses.

Karma

The game's story is very involved in that your decisions alone will determine how certain things pan out. Many of the dialog choices you are given have Karmic-related repercussions that aren't made apparent until at a later stage in the game. You can have either Good, Neutral or Bad Karma depending on your actions throughout the course of your adventuring.

Pretty much anything can positively or negatively impact your Karma. Killing someone, making choices that may be hurtful to the other party, stealing, etc. all drop your Karma. Conversely, if you choose to lead a virtuous life, you probably could go with your gut instinct of always doing the "right" thing to garner good Karma.

Karma influences you in several ways during your game and has a hand in determining your final ending sequence as well. It modifies the kind of dialog choices you receive when interacting with certain evil or good-aligned individuals (this can either be beneficial or detrimental), causes people with an opposing Karma to want to kill you, and allows you easier or harder access to certain regions of the Wasteland.

You should probably decide before you start making any major decisions whether you want to go the evil, neutral or good route.

Lockpicking & Hacking

We mentioned earlier in the Statistics section that the Lockpick and Science Skills have somewhat of a narrow impact on lockpicking and hacking themselves. Both of these are featured in their own "minigame" of sorts, but accessing these minigames are dependent on the current level of the Skills.

Lockpicking

You need a Bobbypin for starters and the basic know-how. If you know what you are doing, you shouldn't ever need a second Bobbypin. When your view switches to a magnified view of the lock, you are given control of both the screwdriver and the Bobbypin. The point of these movements is to wiggle either in a certain direction without applying too much force that the Bobbypin breaks until the lock clicks open. This takes a bit of practice to get the general feel of it.

Hacking

Once you've gained access to a terminal, a hodgepodge of numbers, symbols and words in a seemingly randomized arrangement appears on the screen. You have a finite number of attempts before the terminal locks you out permanently. How in the world are you able to decipher the password from this scrambled mess? Hidden in the jumbled text block somewhere lies the correct password. If you look carefully at the massive wall of text, you can make out actual English words. One of these is the password!

As your first step, you need to pick any word at random, at which point you are given a fraction (number of letters correct out of a total number of letters in the word). It is extremely important-to your becoming a skilled hacker-to note that the number of letters correct signifies the same number of letters located in the same place of the correct password. For example, if you are given the fraction 4/8 for the word "Question," this means the password also shares a -tion ending, which comprises four letters and can easily be the suffix of many other words.

Once you have an idea through the process of elimination, you can factor the number of possible words versus the number of attempts left. If the former outnumbers the latter, you will need a second or possibly third guess to narrow your choices further. If you're down to one attempt left and still aren't sure of the answer, it's better to power down the terminal and turn it back online for a brand new puzzle set.