Shep's Review of Fallout 3: GOTY Edition

[Wing Commander MAD]

The only thing money is good for in Fallout 3 is buying entirely cosmetic home decorations and repairing otherwise nonrepairable items.

I think in my last game through the main content and all five expansions I bought maybe three things.

My main issue was just that the enemies do not level up proportionally high enough to match you at level 15-20.

Broken Steel does add some more bulletsinks, but again they stop being terribly challenging pretty soon.

Really the new enemies are more frustrating than anything else, as they take an inordinate amount of ammo to kill. I will say the nigh invulnerable Dogmeat/Fawkes/Robot (generally considered bugs) help in making it slightly less tedius. Super Mutant Masters with laser chain guns are a bit of a bitch though, assuming you're not using heavy weapons, especially in large groups of other Mutants.

I will say though, it was fun late game tossing about grenades as if they grew on trees.

[Vendetta]

Really the new enemies are more frustrating than anything else, as they take an inordinate amount of ammo to kill.

I never really found them that durable, obscene critical rate and weapons like the Metal Blaster tended to take care of them. (From a sneak attack that could kill a Feral Ghoul Reaver in one shot)

Tougher than the standard mobs (FGRs and Super Mutant Overlords have 1000HP, Deathclaws have only 500, Albino Radscorps have 1500), but they still went down without undue comment.

The cheating bastard enemies in Point Lookout were worse, with their +20 nonresistable damage bonus meaning that they could always put some hurt on you, no matter how well armoured you were.

[General Zod]

Really the new enemies are more frustrating than anything else, as they take an inordinate amount of ammo to kill.

I never really found them that durable, obscene critical rate and weapons like the Metal Blaster tended to take care of them. (From a sneak attack that could kill a Feral Ghoul Reaver in one shot)

I found a combat shotgun and plenty of ammo was just fine for the Super Mutants early-game. As far as money, about the only thing I ever used that on was purchasing up stimpaks and ammo.

[Serafina]

Fully repaired items are worth a shitload of money - even simple rifles or raider armor, which you can find everwhere.
As in many games, the economy is not really challenging - with a good repair skill, you can buy every piece of ammo (and lots of other stuff) from every shop and still have spare money, at least mid-to-late game.

I found the main challenge to be finding merchants with enough bottlecaps to offload all my junk. And someone to repair my fancy power armour from "You gotta shoot them in the head". Only after investing heavily in those travelling guys from Canterbury Commons were those problems partially sorted (still no damn 100% repair skill guy).

There is a cheat that allows you to use bottlecaps to repair stuff with your own repair skill (it costs the same as it would cost with a hyptotetical trader with X repair, where X is your repair skill - up to 100).
IIRC, there are also a couple of mods that use this - either by including a trader where you can buy sets of spares that allow you to repair everything, or by simply including an item that allows you to use the cheat at your house.

IIRC, one creative implementation gave you a "spares box" that hold spares which could be bought 10:1 at traders and which worked the same the above cheat does (so, instead of spending 985 bottlecaps, you sepnt 99 spares from your box - if you have enough with you, otherwise you have to refill it).

[AMT]

Once you get a combat shotgun or AR it's even more absurd. Just remember repair, science and lockpick are the only important skills and you'll be fine (and make infinite money selling repaired items).

Infinite money? Interesting... do tell.

Fully repaired items are worth a shitload of money - even simple rifles or raider armor, which you can find everwhere.
As in many games, the economy is not really challenging - with a good repair skill, you can buy every piece of ammo (and lots of other stuff) from every shop and still have spare money, at least mid-to-late game.[/quote]

So it's worth it to cannibalize several things to get a fully repaired item rather then selling 10 crappy items?

[General Zod]

Fully repaired items are worth a shitload of money - even simple rifles or raider armor, which you can find everwhere.
As in many games, the economy is not really challenging - with a good repair skill, you can buy every piece of ammo (and lots of other stuff) from every shop and still have spare money, at least mid-to-late game.

So it's worth it to cannibalize several things to get a fully repaired item rather then selling 10 crappy items?

There's an even easier method really. You can carry a mostly unlimited amount of ammo, and the chainguns the Supermutants carry are generally asstacular, and not to be used. As a result you've got a metric fuckton of 5.56mm ammo just building up. I find that you can sell that as a very, very easy means of getting lots of money.

[Wing Commander MAD]

So it's worth it to cannibalize several things to get a fully repaired item rather then selling 10 crappy items?

Not quite, the better something's condition is the better it's price, but only to a degree. It really requires some experimentation to find the optimal point to sell or repair. I know I had enough shit lying around (on account of I'd clear out several areas and just throw it in a locker in my house to deal with later when I could better repair/sell it) that I did some tests and came up with some optimal rules of thumb, or course I don't remember any of them.

Really the quality of items isn't a terrible issue in generating money, the biggest problem is finding a merchant with enough caps. The only merchants who have worthwhile amounts are the travelling ones after the associated quest, and they can die in an unmodded game (thank you console commands), not to mention the fact that they're schedules tend to get wonky mid to late game (probably due to encounters with enemies and/or getting stuck on terrain features. Honestly, I'm tempted to just add a merchant who has lots of caps and 100 Repair Skill via mod to some convenient location, as trying to sell stuff in the vanilla game (late game) is more tedius than anything else. Generally speaking, if I find an aspect of a game tedius thats not a good sign for the devs. The fact that the same lategame economy issues tended to creep into all Bethesda games, make me think it's an issue that they've never bothered with, indicating they don't get too many complaints about it (or simply don't care). I suppose my OCD induced compulsions to collect everything from slain enemies, and to get the best possible value for my stuff doesn't help either. I should note that for those on the PC who don't want to use mods, there is a console command that lets you repair items for a price using your own repair skill. Where the money disapears to is a rather amusing though, as apparently paying myself to do a job, does infact incurr labor fees that I refuse to share with myself (must be some sort of pension plan ).

[MKSheppard]

Out of all the DLC, I'd have to say that Point Lookout offered me the best value as an add-on; the other addons were either too shortish (Broken Steel); or were very much like a 'on rails' FPS shooter, even if they did have their moments (Mothership Zeta, Operation Anchorage, and The Pitt).

Point Lookout had an actual open area to explore on your own, even if it was a little bit small, and it oozed atmosphere in spades (though so did the others, but Point Lookout had them all beat).

[Ghost Rider]

Point Lookout also had a modicum of challenge versus "I R HAEV SUPAH ARMR AND GUNZ!!!". Well, kinda given the hit points on the stupid critters.

As for money, sell nearly everything...after a while you are sitting on thousands of caps doing nothing more then keeping a useless tally.

[loomer]

I remember deliberately crippling myself late game in a pretty heavily modded F3, before the DLC came out.

I spent an hour riding the wastes on a giant ant with my character dosed to the gills on 2C-B and smack, shooting at raiders and mutants with a .32 revolver. It was actually pretty damn awesome - all the shifting light and sharpness settings. It was like shooting angry rainbows.

[RecklessPrudence]

Loomer, your sig is strangely appropriate to that post...

Also, how does F3 run on older systems? I'm saving up to buy a new PC, but my current one is pretty damn old.

[phongn]

Speaking of Fallout ...

[weemadando]

What the fuck?

OK, so Vegas clearly didn't get hit that hard.

And now California is invading?

Can't wait.

[General Zod]

What the fuck?

OK, so Vegas clearly didn't get hit that hard.

And now California is invading?

Can't wait.

Personally, I'm hoping for at least a few Six String Samurai references. I'll be highly amused if New Vegas has Russian soldiers as some of your enemies.

[MKSheppard]

Point Lookout also had a modicum of challenge versus "I R HAEV SUPAH ARMR AND GUNZ!!!". Well, kinda given the hit points on the stupid critters.

The problem is that the DLCs all came out pretty late after the original game, and in the GOTY edition, they're on a separate DVD, and not slipstreamed into the Fallout 3 install and enabled from the start. You have to do some searching to find out how to activicate them.

Playing the addons without an end-game character (level 18-20 or so) is certainly going to be a lot harder.

As for money, sell nearly everything...after a while you are sitting on thousands of caps doing nothing more then keeping a useless tally.

This is nothing new. The original two Fallouts were like this. After a point, you sort of hit 'I am a walking ammunition shop'.

[General Zod]

Playing the addons without an end-game character (level 18-20 or so) is certainly going to be a lot harder.

I found it wasn't much different regardless of your level. I replayed Mothership Zeta on a lower level (12-13) to re-do some stuff, and they auto-adjusted the levels of the enemies. Whether or not it's challenging mostly depended on your playstyle.

[Twigler]

There is a cheat that allows you to use bottlecaps to repair stuff with your own repair skill (it costs the same as it would cost with a hyptotetical trader with X repair, where X is your repair skill - up to 100).
IIRC, there are also a couple of mods that use this - either by including a trader where you can buy sets of spares that allow you to repair everything, or by simply including an item that allows you to use the cheat at your house.

I assume these are for the PC edition? Or else my Google-fu fails me horribly for once.
I guess I can't complain too much since I picked up the Xbox version of game for €12.99 (pricing error at the shop).

[Ghost Rider]

Point Lookout also had a modicum of challenge versus "I R HAEV SUPAH ARMR AND GUNZ!!!". Well, kinda given the hit points on the stupid critters.

The problem is that the DLCs all came out pretty late after the original game, and in the GOTY edition, they're on a separate DVD, and not slipstreamed into the Fallout 3 install and enabled from the start. You have to do some searching to find out how to activicate them.

Playing the addons without an end-game character (level 18-20 or so) is certainly going to be a lot harder.

It seperated on GoTY edition? That sucks. While I didn't care to buy the DLCs, at least it was a full package.

As for money, sell nearly everything...after a while you are sitting on thousands of caps doing nothing more then keeping a useless tally.

This is nothing new. The original two Fallouts were like this. After a point, you sort of hit 'I am a walking ammunition shop'.

LOL...yeah. Like the earlier ones, I had thousands upon thousands of whatever was my fave gun(s).

[General Zod]

There is a cheat that allows you to use bottlecaps to repair stuff with your own repair skill (it costs the same as it would cost with a hyptotetical trader with X repair, where X is your repair skill - up to 100).
IIRC, there are also a couple of mods that use this - either by including a trader where you can buy sets of spares that allow you to repair everything, or by simply including an item that allows you to use the cheat at your house.

I assume these are for the PC edition? Or else my Google-fu fails me horribly for once.
I guess I can't complain too much since I picked up the Xbox version of game for €12.99 (pricing error at the shop).

Yup, PC only. You don't get cheats for the console versions.

[Stark]

The way repair works it's not important anyway; if you have a decent repair and a named gun, you can just refine that type of gun into a few 70-90% repair items and use that to keep your named gun working. The named guns are generally massively better, much better than their damage implies; the a2-34 plasma (or whatever) is basically a oneshot machine and you can repair it with any plasma rifle. I just left stuff at the super market coke machine and stopped by when I needed something. There's basically no reason to carry mroe than a few guns anyway, because with decent repair skill (and thus damage/armour) you won't need much ammo.

[Ghost Rider]

The way repair works it's not important anyway; if you have a decent repair and a named gun, you can just refine that type of gun into a few 70-90% repair items and use that to keep your named gun working. The named guns are generally massively better, much better than their damage implies; the a2-34 plasma (or whatever) is basically a oneshot machine and you can repair it with any plasma rifle. I just left stuff at the super market coke machine and stopped by when I needed something. There's basically no reason to carry mroe than a few guns anyway, because with decent repair skill (and thus damage/armour) you won't need much ammo.

Hell the evidence of only carrying essentials is looking at end game inventory aka level 6-30. You should have 1-2 guns that you like, thousands of ammo of said type. One body armor, a cap for the head, maybe a pair of Lucky Sunglasses, a few trillion Stim Packs and quest items.

I had room because I'd repair my armor in the field to 100% within 1-3 kills and be on my way, I used the named Chinese Assault Rifle and the named Combat Shotgun. I used the Ranger battle armor, some silly Chinese fur cap, Lucky Sunglasses. I searched DC more or less to find new shit to find....until I realized I hadn't even gotten my dad or hell I didn't visit 3Dog.

My real complaint is one I know most echo. You become too powerful far too early and the only way at points is to force yourself into unusual paths in trying to bump difficulty.

[PeZook]

Out of all the DLC, I'd have to say that Point Lookout offered me the best value as an add-on; the other addons were either too shortish (Broken Steel); or were very much like a 'on rails' FPS shooter, even if they did have their moments (Mothership Zeta, Operation Anchorage, and The Pitt).

I hear you. I kind of expected Anchorage to be less railroaded and the showdown to be more epic: it has nothing on the final sequence of Mothership Zeta with the frantic button-mashing death-ray spewing hilarity.

BTW, Mothership Zeta becomes a hundred times better for some reason if you download 40K Space Marine armors and go there wearing one...at least it did for me. Filthy Xeno scum!

[loomer]

This got me to actually get the DLC. Point Lookout is incredible with FWE. It is poetry in motion when, hopped up on MDMA and 2C-B, you oneshot a Ghoul with a shovel. It's actually decent DLC too, compared to the crap they peddled for Oblivion.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I haven't been to point lookout, someone told me there's a lovecraft inspired place there...

[Ghost Rider]

I haven't been to point lookout, someone told me there's a lovecraft inspired place there...

Kinda. Fallout 3 has two places with lovecraftian influence, and Point Lookout tries to bridge them. How successful is really one's point of view, but they are out there.