Fallout 3 General Tips

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This is Part 2 of our complete Fallout 3 Walkthrough, featuring Fallout 3 General Tips, Character Creation Tips, Radiation, Lockpicking, Hacking, Repairing, Looting, Sneeking and Chems.
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Character Creation Tips
1. Like all games that let you customize your character's stats, you should go in with an idea of the kind of character that you want to create.
2. In Fallout 3, this means that you should concentrate on a primary combat specialty (Melee Weapons, Unarmed, Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, etc.), two support skills (Lockpicking, Science, Speech, Barter, Repair, etc.), add to the stats that support those three skills, and then choose perks that further complement those skills.
3. After you complete the G.O.A.T, you'll be able to choose three skills to add a permanent +15 bonus to. Whenever you level, focus on getting these skill up to snuff before delving into the others.
4. Strength and Endurance are two primary stats that shouldn't be neglected no matter what kind of character you try to create. Without strength, you'll constantly be throwing stuff away to keep from being over encumbered. Without endurance, you'll have a tough time surviving against characters with ranged weapons that force you to get close to them in order to have an acceptable chance to hit.
5. Try to get lockpicking and science to at least level 25 no matter what your focus is so that you can at least attempt to lockpick low level locks and terminals.
Radiation
1. Since you're living in a world torn apart by nuclear war, it's only natural that having to deal with radiation is a frequent occurrence.
2. If you hang around areas that are heavily radioactive, you'll gain a certain amount of Rads (think of them as radiation points) per second. You can also gain rads by eating foods or drinking liquids that are highly radiated.
3. If you get 400 rads, you'll come down with radiation poisoning. You'll suffer from some slight decreases in your stats that will only get worse every 200 more Rads you pick up. In order to get rid of your radiation, visit a doctor, or use the item Radaway.
Lockpicking
1. Whenever you decide to lockpick a door, you'll have to complete a lockpicking minigame.
2. You can force a lock by pressing the X button, but I'd recommend against it nearly every time unless its chance to succeed is 100%. If you fail when forcing a lock, the lock breaks and the door can never be opened.
3. Here is how the lockpicking minigame works: You move the left stick to move your bobby pin left and right along a half circle arc and you move the right stick to move the screwdriver to the left along a quarter circle arc.
4. Every lock has a sweet spot that will unlock the door if you manage to get the bobby pin inside of it and then move the screwdriver all the way to the left.
5. The closer to the sweet spot you are, the more you're able to move the screwdriver. The farther away from the sweet spot you are, the more resistance the screwdriver will have.
6. If it's a very easy lock, the sweet spot will be very large and if it's a very hard lock, the sweet spot will be very small.
7. The trick is to start out with the bobby pin in three locations. First put the pin in the 10 o' clock position. Slowly move the screwdriver to the left and stop as soon as you feel resistance.
8. If you were able to get decently far with the screwdriver, you know that the sweet spot is on the left side and just have to fine tune the bobby pin until its in the right spot.
9. If the screwdriver was barely able to move at all, then put the bobby pin over to the 2 o' clock position and try to move the screwdriver.
10. If you got farther with the screwdriver, you know that the sweet spot is somewhere on the right side and just need to fine tune the position of the bobby pin.
11. If you have nearly the same amount of resistance from both the left and the right side, then put the pin in the 12 o' clock position and fine tune it from there.
12. Having a high lock picking skill doesn't really make this process any easier. All it affects is whether or not you're even capable of trying to pick higher difficulty locks.
13. If you feel like you're not close to finding the sweet spot and your bobby pin is about to break, back out and try again. Bobby pins aren't exactly rare, but they're one of those things that you can never find them when you need them.
Hacking
1. Like lockpicking, whenever you want to hack a terminal, you'll have to go through a hacking minigame.
2. This is how it works: Every terminal has a password that can be found by guessing specific words that are given to you.
3. Every time you guess a word, the computer will tell you how many letters are in the correct spot.
4. You have four guesses with which to narrow down the possible passwords.
5. The harder the terminal, the bigger and more plentiful the passwords become.
6. The trick here is to find words that have similar beginnings or endings.
7. For example, let's say some of the words in the password bank are singing, slicing, winning, picture, guitars, and speaker.
8. In this case, you would want to use your first guess to guess one of the "ing" words. If the results come back with at least three letters matching, then you can safely assume that one of the other two "ing" words is the password.
9. If the results come back and you don't have at least three letters matching, then you can rule out the "ing" words and just focus on the others.
10. From there it's just a matter of highlighting a word and lining up the letters with the word you guessed. If I previously guessed "guitars" and it told me that I had 1 letter right, then I'd highlight the remaining words and see how they compared with the word "guitars".
11. For example:
12. guitars
13. speaker
14. Nothing matches.
15. guitars
16. picture
17. The "t" matches in both. It's in the fourth position. Since we've already ruled out the "ing" words and speaker, the password must be "picture."
18. TIP: If you're on your fourth guess and you haven't narrowed it down completely, just exit out of the terminal and retry. You'll start over and you won't run the risk of locking the terminal forever.
Repairing
1. It's an unavoidable fact that your weapons will degrade over time. The question is how will you decide to repair them.
2. Repairing your weapons is a must due to the fact that a well maintained weapon not only will deal much more damage than a weapon on the verge of breaking, but also because it has a smaller chance of jamming when you're trying to reload it. If your assault rifle jams will you're being attacked by multiple enemies, you won't be able to bring up your pip boy to use a stimpack until your character unjams the gun.
3. If you have a high repair skill, you should always pick up extra guns that you already have, even if they're completely busted to use as repair parts.
4. To repair an item yourself, bring up the weapons menu of the Pip Boy, press Y over the weapon you want to repair and then press A. Simple as that. It will automatically take a weapon of the same type and dismantle it to repair the gun you chose.
5. Having a high repair skill will let you repair your weapons to higher percents to let them deal more damage and last longer.
6. If you don't have points in repair, your only option is to bring your weapons to a weapon dealer and have them repair it for a fee.
Looting
1. As tempting as it is to loot everything off every single corpse you find, there is a limit to how much weight you're able to carry. As such, you need to make some tough choices of what to loot and what to leave behind.
2. Guns weigh a lot and chances are you're only focusing on one specific type. Don't pick up heavy weapons that are for a different specialty of combat. If you're a small guns specialist, don't pick up miniguns, gatling lasers, laser rifles, sledgehammers, etc. They weigh too much and you probably won't end up using them anyway because you're not skilled enough in their class to make them effective.
3. Fat Mans and Missile Launchers on the other hand still have their uses since they deal splash damage and are good for taking out groups of enemies or really big enemies like Super Mutant Behemoths.
4. Grenades and mines are good to have too, but be aware that they quickly add up in weight. If you're over encumbered and can't figure out why, check your grenade and mine supply. You probably have about 50 of each.
5. Some things that you should loot or steal because they sell for a lot are: cartons of cigarettes, pre-war money (plentiful, don't take up any space and sell for about 7-10 caps each), radscorpion poison glands, scrap metal (can be given to Walter in Megaton for experience and caps), and pre-war books (can be sold to a Scribe in the Arlington Library for 100 caps a piece) just to name a few.
Sneaking
1. By clicking the right stick, you'll be able to go into sneak mode.
2. How stealthy you are is dependent on several things. How high your sneak skill is, how much light you emit, how bulky your armor is, how much light you are standing in, how fast you're moving, and whether you're in an enemy's line of sight or not.
3. When you are out of sight, the word hidden will appear on screen. During this time you're free to do whatever you want without getting caught. You can steal, you can hack, you can lockpick, you can attempt to pickpocket, etc.
4. When a friendly NPC has noticed you, the word detected will appear. If you try to steal, hack, or lockpick while detected, you will be caught and the NPC will either turn hostile, or run over to you and take back whatever you stole.
5. When an enemy vaguely notices your presence, the word Caution will appear. This is basically just to inform you that enemies are nearby.
6. If the word danger appears, it means the enemy has clearly recognized you as a threat, but has not come to engage you yet.
7. When the word danger starts flashing, it means that the enemy is engaged in battle and will soon start shooting or charging you if he hasn't already.
8. If you manage to attack an enemy while hidden, you'll get a sneak attack critical which will deal a lot more damage than if you had just attacked him normally.
Chems
1. Chems are essentially Fallout 3's version of drugs. There are a total of 6 types chems (a few have some variations) in the game: alcohol (vodka, beer, wine, etc), psycho, jet, med-x, buffout, and mentats.
2. Most chems will give a large bonus to a specific stat for a short period of time. The problem with them though, is that every time you use them you have a chance of becoming addicted.
3. When addicted to a chem, you will lose stat points whenever the chem wears off since you'll be in withdrawal.
4. You can kick an addiction by visiting a doctor and paying them 50 caps.
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Fallout 3 General Tips

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Character Creation Tips

Radiation

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Chems

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