Fallout 3 Fully Explored + Mods & Short Guide

Well I did it, I've Investigated every spot that shows up on the map
with the explorer perk, and a few more besides. Basically it was just
a monotonous slogging repetition of what I'd already explored at about
1/3 of the sites. The only thing I found which I thought was
interesting in the other 2/3rds of the the game was a girl with a
quest for nuka-cola-quantum and her uh... boyfriend. The reward
sucked but the situation was funny.

So for the interesting quests/places that are 'musts' that you don't
learn of from the main quest or easily along the way - be sure to
visit:

Big Town (can learn of from little lamplight quest, or stumble across
easily)
Girdershade (can learn of from traveling merchant random encounter)
Oasis (can learn of from wastelander encounter or radio)
Republic of Dave (can learn from Underworld quest, learn of Underworld
various places)
Canterbury Commons (can learn of from caravan)

That's a pretty short list of places outside the main quest, or easily
found quests along the way of the main quest that have good stories to
go with them, out of more than 100 locations? Although there's
probably more than 20 places with interesting stuff you can find from
the main quest or side quests in locations the main quest takes you.
Actually you can learn of all those other interesting places along the
way too, so I don't see any reason to explore anything you don't learn
about. That leaves 75+ that are mostly just empty places with
monsters and loot, making it a big mostly boring world if you just
wander around. Most of those have a tiny snippet of story to go with
them, but aren't very interesting or developed, certainly not enough
to bother spending time on.

The majority of my other thoughts on the game stand from my other
postings:

7.5/10 rating, Good game, possibly better than anything else this
year, but that's not saying much. Certainly nothing compared to the
Originals. Lots of flaws, lots of bugs, lots of crashes. Enough
Fallout there to make it feel like it's fallout, but just barely and
only after getting out of the vault. Quite a bit of Oblivion poking
through, but infinitely better in every way than Oblivion. (at least
we can say Bethesda is improving)

Now that the Modding Kit is out it'll probably feel a hell of a lot
more like Fallout after some people get their hands on it.

I've found a few of mods indispensable (you should be able to search
and find them easily from the titles I've given)

#1 - XP Reward Hotfix. Set xp to same as very easy (in case you
weren't paying attention to other posts fallout 3 designers decided to
reverse the way XP works in most RPGs, by giving you more the harder
the setting of the game), so leveling takes longer (well unless you
are playing on very easy to begin with). Leveling is way too fast
even just exploring the learnable areas as mentioned above. It seems
about right to me with this mod.

#2 - Mod to increase level cap. (actually just using the console
command "player.setlevel 19" to reset level to 19 when I reach 20, but
comes out the same, I'd rather use a mod so I know what level I'm
actually at which I'll do for my next game). Combined with the one
above, you shouldn't really need it unless you are hell bent on
exploring every little cranny, but once you reach the cap it's a real
downer.

#3 - MTUI for Fallout 3. Improves the interface on the PC. More
dialog on screen, more inventory, etc, basically un-consolizes text a
bit.

#4 - Respawn Timer. The default respawn timer is only 3 days, so if
you leave the Super Duper Mart alone for that long all those raiders
have respawned (while none of the boxes have), making all your efforts
of cleansing the wasteland for naught. Even with the minimum
experience mod, there's probably enough monsters around that if they
all stayed dead forever you could get to level 40 (probably more like
100 without). There's absolutely no reason for anything to respawn
ever, and it kills the wasteland feeling. I'm pretty sure this
doesn't affect wandering monsters outside or random encounters, as
I've been jumped repeatedly by Talon at the same spot, but it seems
less than before, I'd like to know for sure.

#5 - Fallout 3 Item Descriptions. Gives the item descriptions in
inventory. Only use it if you have high textures on though, I was
using it at medium and the descriptions were all fuzzy. Not really
necessary, but adds something to the game.

Somewhat Spoilers follow, which is just my thoughts on skills &
weapons
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Favorite All Around Weapon - Vengeance (unique Gatling Laser)
Favorite weapon vs. tough opponents - Fat Man
Favorite to slaughter weak monsters - Shiskebob
Special mention for flinging bodies 50 feet in the air - Frag Grenades

Favorite Armor - T-51b Prototype Power Armor (Unique armor, not
repairable with other armors)
Runner Up - Riley's Ranger's (Unique/Quest Combat armor with nice
bonuses)

Big Guns is much more viable than in the original fallouts, and I
think the best choice for a single weapon skill having the best weapon
for confined spaces - the Flamer, the best precision weapon - The
Gatling Laser, and the best heavy hitter/room clearing - the Fat Man,
and a very good weapon for ammo shortages - The Rock-It-Launcher.
It's also extremely easy to come across Minigun early (as I did in my
first game on accident). Although either Small Guns or Energy Weapons
are quite viable. Trying to get by with just Melee, Explosives, or
Unarmed would be extremely difficult, but any of those are quite
useful for secondary weapon skills - I wouldn't get both Melee and
Unarmed as they both do essentially the same thing, Melee is
significantly better than Unarmed though. Since skill affects both
accuracy AND *damage* you'll want to get your main one up to 100
ASAP.

You might be able to finish the game without spending on a weapon
skill, but it'd be a real challenge, and I'm not sure how fun, since
the majority of the game is combat. Even if you don't spend any
points on one there are point you have to fight. You could sneak past
some points and rely on the fact that quest npcs only fall unconscious
when they should be dead, but it'd really break the immersion for me.

Rating:

#1 Big Guns (can do everything, best weapons in every category, only
drawback is possibly not finding/affording one early, and being
heavy.)

#2 Small Guns (Good ranged & only scoped weapons, plentiful ammo &
weapons)

#3 Energy (High precision, low damage until extremely rare Alien
Blaster/Plasma Rifle)

#4 Explosives (Bad in confined spaces against melee opponents,
although robots you can pulse grenade/mine with impunity, Extremely
good damage especially early game & don't have to worry about repair,
also lets you disarm traps which is extremely useful)

#5 Melee (No ammo required! Good damage, best weapons at start of
game, not good against ranged enemies)

#6 Unarmed (Worst Choice, damage below all other choices, even with 3
perks invested, no ranged, rare/hard to find weapons)

#7 Stealth (Technically not a weapon skill, but it's more useful in
combat, which isn't saying much. It's unfortunately useless against
already hostile creatures with melee or unarmed, as they will see you
before you can get into range, even maxed out. It is still useful
with ranged, but the 1/4 speed you have to go at is so slow as to be
extremely annoying, so you either have to crawl around everywhere or
be lucky enough to spot enemies at extreme ranges, I've found it far
more fun to just ignore stealth. The only thing it's really good at
is to kill friendlies with sneak attacks, or planting explosives on
them, therefore I'd only put points into it if you want to do that)

I wasn't having much trouble with ammo (except on my explosives
expert, but I didn't know of an explosives supplier at the time) until
I upped the game to very hard difficulty, then I noticed my ammo
expenditure started going way up.

Other Skills:

Most of the other skills beyond combat are very useful each makes huge
differences to the ease of the game in it's own way. I found most the
skills in general far more necessary and helpful than in previous
fallouts.

#1 Lockpicking - I don't know if it's even possible to finish the game
without it, but it'd be very difficult. Almost everything good is
behind locks, probably half of ammo and first aid as well. There's
even one spot in the game you can't get out of unless you have it at
100 - or you have to reload the game.

#2 Explosives - Just being able to disarm & take all those mines is
well worth a few points (somewhere between 25 to 50) if you don't take
enough you'll probably be reloading a lot, after flying through the
the air limbs going in different directions.

#2 Repair - Well repaired weapons do more damage, and you can carry
significantly more loot by virtue of repair, it even seems repaired
items are worth more than the sum of what you used to repair them,
I've found most unique gear you can repair with a standard weapon/
armor as well (not all though), with it maxed out you can get stuff to
100% which not even the best NPC can do.

#3 Barter - Having a low barter you'll be lucky to get enough out of
your loot to afford to repair your gear let alone buy ammo for your
weapons. Around 50 is probably good enough, but more is better.

#4 Medicine - More HP from Stimpacks. It's worth it to get at least a
skill of 40, there's an exceptionally good
quest reward you need this much to get, not to mention with a
character at 25 I went through so many I kept running out on normal,
with it maxed out I could just barely keep even on very hard. You
could get by without it by judicious retreating and resting though.

#5 Science - almost everything you can do with science can be done
with lockpicking. There's at least one quest that needs a high
science, and a few unique items you can't get without it, but for the
most part it's skippable. I'd only really start spending on this once
you get everything else at an acceptable level.

#6 Speech - Most speech dialog options using speech make you sound
like a ***, but you get more rewards typically 2x as much. There
aren't that many monetary rewards though. However there's some nice
ones near the beginning of the game, that can make quite a difference
at that level, so if you get it high then it can make the beginning
significantly easier. Or if you want just want to play a *** then
it's a must. There are still a very few quests/people you can get
something from when you couldn't otherwise, but overall I think it's
quite skippable, which is unfortunate.

#7 Sneak - Outside of combat it's only use is to steal stuff. There
isn't anything worthwhile that you can steal anywhere in the game, and
nowhere you can sneak past anyone that would make any difference.
There are not quests or rewards that require it. The only non-combat
use for it is if you want easy negative karma, since everything you
steal gives negative karma to you. However if you are going to do
that you could either use a stealth boy and get it temporarily up to
100, find places where no-one can see you, or kill everyone first,
since for some stupid reason even after everyone in an area is dead,
all their things are still marked to give you negative karma.

- Justisaur
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