Fallout 3 Game Add-Ons (DLC) Hints

Customized Stealth-Based Character

• When you create your character, give him the following attribute values and tag skills.
  
  Strength: 7
  Perception: 6
  Endurance: 7
  Charisma: 1
  Intelligence: 6
  Agility: 6
  Luck: 7
  
  Tag skills: Small Guns, Sneak, Lockpick.
  
  
  When you level up, choose whatever perks you want within the following guidelines.
  
  * Make sure your Sneak skill is 50 by the time you reach level 12 so you can immediately take the Silent Running perk.
  * Get your Explosives skill up to 60 as soon as you can after level 12 so you can take the Pyromaniac perk before long to greatly increase the shishkebab's damage.
  * Get your Sneak and Melee Weapons skills both to 80 before you reach level 20 so you can take the Ninja perk, thereby greatly increasing your sneak-attack damage with any melee weapon.
  
  
  Below are some tips and notes on playing with this character.
  
  * If you've already started a character and don't want to start all over, be sure to get the Chinese stealth armor ASAP and the Silent Running perk on your next level-up. Those are the two most important elements of this character build, and will be enough by themselves to make you into a powerful sneaker.
  
  * As soon as you exit Vault 101, loot Megaton and do some other local stuff (plus maybe the super-lucrative "Tenpenny Tower" misc. quest), then do the Operation: Anchorage add-on to get the Chinese stealth armor. Start using it right away to help you steal things unseen in towns, and to sneak-run your way around the wasteland to discover new locations and snatch special items (such as bobbleheads and skill books) from dangerous areas without having to do a lot of tough combat.
  
  * Before you get the Silent Running perk, you'll have to be very careful when sneaking around near enemies that you don't want to fight. When your danger indicator reads "caution," do not continue sneak-running -- either hold still or sneak-walk away from the enemy until he stops looking for you. Also, quicksave frequently so you can quickrestore and try again if you get spotted and attacked.
  
  * Another early goal is to get a dart gun schematic (note that you can get two on the "Tenpenny Tower" quest) and start making yourself some dart guns. They're very useful on enemies who've spotted you, but that you don't want to fight. If you'd rather not restore a save and try sneaking by them again, shoot them with the dart gun to slow them down, then quickly run away from them. Or better yet, sneakily dart them before they notice you to make both running away and sneak-attacking them much easier.
  
  * After you get the Silent Running perk, you'll be able to maneuver around enemies undetected a lot more easily. You can have your Pip-Boy light on and be sneak-running all around, and you probably won't get more than a brief "caution" indicator occasionally. This makes it much easier to sneak past enemies unseen, and to sneak up behind them to deliver devastating melee attacks. Even if your first attack doesn't kill your victim, he still probably won't see you, especially if you sneak-run away from him and wait until your danger indicator reads "hidden" again before repeating your attack. (Note that hitting him with a sneaky dart to cripple him will make sneak-whacking him and keeping away from him while he's searching for you much easier.)
  
  * Right after you get the Silent Running perk, you should invest a lot of time and effort in hunting down bobbleheads and skill books. You should sneakily retrieve most or all bobbleheads, plus enough Sneak, Explosives, and Melee Weapons skill books to make sure you'll meet the requirements for the Pyromaniac and Ninja perks. If you sneak around and get those items without doing much combat or quest-finishing, you shouldn't level up much or at all during the process.
  
  * There are a few ranged weapons that are stealth-friendly. They include the silenced 10mm pistols and dart guns from the main game, and the infiltrator guns from the Pitt add-on game. The infiltrators are especially nice, since they're a cross between assault rifles and sniper rifles, neither of which are stealth-friendly.
  
  * Explosives are also stealth-friendly, despite all the noise they make. You can toss grenades to blow enemies up, or lay mines for them to stumble onto. With more powerful enemies, it can be very effective to lay a line of mines, then shoot your target with a stealth-friendly ranged weapon so that he'll run across the mines while looking for you. If you plan on using sneaky explosive attacks a lot, you should make lots of bottlecap mines and nuka-grenades, and take the Demolition Expert perk two or three times.
  
  * Weapons that aren't stealth-friendly can still be useful to stealth characters, especially if they do a lot of damage per shot. Remember that you can get bonus damage for two things other than critical hits: sneak-attack damage (when your danger indicator reads "hidden") and head-shot damage. If you combine those two and use a powerful weapon, you can score one-shot kills against most humanoid enemies. Just remember that your stealth will be compromised, and any other nearby enemies will see you and start attacking. The very best weapons to use for this are combat shotguns, since they fire nine pellets with each shot, and the critical damage is calculated for each pellet that hits the target. For some reason, this only works outside of V.A.T.S. The best V.A.T.S. sneak-shooting weapons are the alien blaster and Firelance. They're also the best weapons to use when you're detected and can't run away or restore a save.
  
  * It's pretty easy to combine this character build with a V.A.T.S.-intensive one. To do so, I recommend you choose the following perks for levels 2 thru 19: Intense Training (Strength), Intense Training (Luck), Educated, Comprehension, Toughness, Gunslinger, Strong Back, Commando, Finesse, Intense Training (Agility), Silent Running, Sniper, Cyborg, Pyromaniac, Action Boy/Girl, Better Criticals, Concentrated Fire, and Bloody Mess. There'll be a bit of a conflict for the level 20 perk, since you'll want both Ninja and Grim Reaper's Sprint. Choose one, then get the Broken Steel add-on so you can level up to level 21 and get the other.
  
  * After you install the Broken Steel add-on and get your level 21 perk, you'll need to decide which perks to take for levels 22 thru 30. There's only one new perk that's really useful to you, and that's Nerves of Steel. You might want to take Almost Perfect to raise a few stats, and Quantum Chemist so you can turn regular Nuka-Colas into quantums for nuka-grenade-making, but I don't recommend it. I suggest you take Nerves of Steel, Demolition Expert (all three), Life Giver, Fast Metabolism, Adamantium Skeleton, Paralyzing Palm, and Mysterious Stranger in whatever order you prefer (as long as you take Nerves of Steel at level 26).
  

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