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Fallout 3 Hints
Looting Tips
1 of 10: See the Stealing Tips for some good loot-related tips to use in areas where you don't want to make the friendly residents hostile to you.
2 of 10: Always pick up every item you find that is weightless. They can't weigh you down at all, and they're usually useful (like with ammo and aid items), or they can at least be sold for caps. Items with a low weight and high value should also be taken, but should be used or sold (or stored somewhere) as soon as possible to help keep your inventory's weight down.
3 of 10: Another way to keep your inventory's weight down is to combine similar equipment items by repairing them. However, the total combined value of the repaired items will probably be less (maybe a lot less) than the total combined value of all the unrepaired original items. That can be important if you're wanting to sell the items rather than use them.
4 of 10: Always search all of the cheap, misc. item containers just in case they have something good. These include desks, filing cabinets, lockers, toolboxes, garbage cans, metal boxes, gore bags, and a few others. There usually won't be anything really valuable in those, but if you search them all, you can end up with lots of extra bottle caps, ammo, cheap items to sell, etc.
5 of 10: With lockers, don't just open the locker containers to look for items. Also visually scan the doorless shelves in the locker sets to see if any items are sitting in them. If so, you can take them directly by pointing at them and hitting the Activate key.
6 of 10: You'll sometimes find small items hidden inside of or under things that can be picked up and moved using Grab mode. For instance, there are many small open-topped wooden crates that might have items in them. Whenever you find such crates, pick them up in Grab mode and shake them around to see if anything falls out.
7 of 10: Many heavy and/or cheap-looking items aren't worth weighting yourself down with unless you can sell them to someone right away, but many such items are useful in crafting custom weapons, and should be taken if possible. See the Custom Weapons hints for a list of which cheap items can be used for that.
8 of 10: Some areas are so full of good stuff that you'll have to find a container or two to dump things into until you're completely done looting the place. Then either take everything from the container and walk slowly to the nearest merchant (you can't fast-travel while over-encumbered), or make several fast-travel trips.
9 of 10: Using chems or apparel to temporarily boost your Strength can help when carrying stuff away. Also, using chems and apparel that boost your Charisma and Barter skill will help while selling stuff and buying more supplies.
10 of 10: Instead of hauling away all of an area's loot right away, you could leave most of it in a container, making a written note of exactly where it is so you can come back for it later. That frees you up from making several loot-hauling trips (or one very slow trip), and having many such stashes scattered about the wasteland can come in handy when you need to raise money fast -- check your list and head for the nearest stashes.
