Fallout 3 Hints

An Ultimate Character Build

• When you create your character, give him the following attribute values and tag skills.
  
  Strength: 7
  Perception: 6
  Endurance: 9
  Charisma: 1
  Intelligence: 6
  Agility: 4
  Luck: 7
  
  Tag skills: Big Guns, Explosives, and Melee Weapons.
  
  
  When you level up, choose the perks listed below.
  
  Level 2: Intense Training -- Strength
  Level 3: Intense Training -- Luck
  Level 4: Educated
  Level 5: Comprehension
  Level 6: Toughness
  Level 7: Intense Training -- Intelligence
  Level 8: Strong Back
  Level 9: Demolition Expert  (Explosives skill must be at least 50)
  Level 10: Finesse
  Level 11: Demolition Expert
  Level 12: Pyromaniac  (Explosives skill must be at least 60)
  Level 13: Intense Training -- Intelligence
  Level 14: Cyborg  (Science and Medicine skills must be at least 60 each)
  Level 15: Intense Training -- Perception
  Level 16: Better Criticals
  Level 17: Intense Training -- Perception
  Level 18: Demolition Expert
  Level 19: Bloody Mess
  Level 20: Ninja  (Sneak and Melee Weapons skills must be at least 80 each)
  
  
  Below are some tips and notes on playing with this character.
  
  * Combat can be kind of hard at first, since you'll have mostly small guns and melee weapons, and you didn't tag the Small Guns skill. However, you should be able to make do until you can find or buy some big guns and explosives to help out. Also, get Dogmeat as soon as you can to use as a distraction follower, and buy a dart gun schematic in Tenpenny Tower so you can make one to cripple enemies with. (If you're playing on the highest difficulty setting, you might want to tag Small Guns instead of Big Guns to help with early-game combats.)
  
  * Use the parenthesized notes in the above perk list to help you make sure your skills are high enough to get certain perks when they're recommended. The first one is Demolition Expert at level 9, which requires an Explosives skill of 50. Plan ahead and hunt up bobbleheads and enough skill books to make sure you qualify for every high-requirement perk by the time you reach the level it's recommended for. (Also allocate a good amount of level-up skill points to help with this.)
  
  * Starting soon after you exit Vault 101, you should begin buying up ammo for not only the guns you're using at the time, but for ones you know you'll be using later on. Since you're a big guns specialist, be sure to buy all the electron charge packs, 5mm ammo, and flamer fuel you find in merchants' inventories, since you'll undoubtedly be using Gatling lasers, miniguns, and flamers a lot once you find some. (If you use several stealth boys, you can sneakily get the unique versions of several big guns early in the game, including the super-powerful Vengeance. Also, take a follower to the Bethesda Ruins every few days for the respawning raiders, one of which will always have a flamer and a Big Guns skill book.)
  
  * Other early goals include getting your Strength and Luck attributes up to 10 each. That's fairly easy to do, since their bobbleheads are pretty easy to get, as are the Lucky 8 Ball (do the "Big Trouble in Big Town" misc. quest) and the Ant Might perk (do the "Those!" misc. quest).
  
  * If you install the Broken Steel add-on game and gain the ability to level up to level 30, the only new perks that you should consider taking are Quantum Chemist (so you can make more nuka-grenades) and Almost Perfect (to raise all attributes that are below 9 to 9). The rest of the time, look back through the level 2 thru 20 perks that you skipped before and take semi-useful ones like Scrounger, Life Giver, Fast Metabolism, Adamantium Skeleton, and Solar Powered. (You also might want to take Silent Running to help with the occasional sneaking.)

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