Low Spoiler general advice

[red.hexapus]

#12238

Have been travelling by train recently, so to kill time I’ve written these few tips/some advice to help you get into one of my most beloved games. Hope you find it useful 🙂

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Best ways to play FALLOUT in recommendation order (sorry, but not MS-DOS, don’t hate me ;)):

1. Fallout Et Tu (https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/42) – transfers Fallout 1 files to Fallout 2 engine, very well made, I only play it like this now. Additional bonus: you can play Fallout 2 when you finish the first game 🙂

2. Fallout Fixt – (https://www.nma-fallout.com/resources/fallout-fixt-full-all-fixes-and-mods.8/) good patch, used to play using that before switching to Et Tu. Not being updated anymore from what I know.

3. Fallou1 1-ce (https://github.com/alexbatalov/fallout1-ce) – played it a bit, i remember it has a native build for Linux, but still felt unfinished

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TIPS:

1. Save early, save often, save in different slots (you have 10 of them). F4-F5 is save-load. F6-F7 quick save-quick load.

2. When in doubt press F1 (help screen)

3. You can use items on objects by putting them in hand and clicking (like a weapon) or by pressing right button and selecting backpack

4. You have two slots for weapons. B switches between them for free, N changes attack mode (depends on weapon e.g. single shot, target shot, auto mode).

5. Never ever give an automatic weapon to a companion unless you want to see this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oN8RejRo8Rg

6. Always have these with you: ropes, a few stimpacks, radaway, 2 rad-x for highly radiated areas to have 90 rad protection (if you have a Geiger counter it will tell you how radiated it is)

7. You can boost your stats using chems (drugs), Psycho is especially useful as it gives you huge damage protection. If you get addicted to a certain chem, best way to overcome it is go “cold turkey” (that is wait long enough for the addiction to go away)

8. There is a time limit of 150 days, but unless you wander back and forth through the wasteland, you have more than enough time. If your time runs low, you can always extend it by 100 days (you’ll easily find out how to do it)

9. best way to heal is by resting (rest until healed from pipboy), second best heal is by stimpacks

10. resting till morning stops at 6am, you should rest two more hours to 8 am, because at 6am most NPCs are still “asleep”, shops closed etc.

11. targeting enemy zones gives you some advantages (hands – reduce hit chance, legs – move points, head and eyes – higher chance for a crit, groin – chance for knockdown)

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Stat overview:
Stats mostly stay the way you set them at the start, but there are some ways to increase them.

STRENGTH: not that important, mostly useful for carry weight, also impacts melee damage but not that much

PERCEPTION: useful for a sharpshooter, increases hit chance with ranged weapons

ENDURANCE: useful to ensure your survival, gives more HP, every 3 points increase your regeneration rate

CHARISMA: dump stat, every 2 points allow you additional companion in the party, that’s that i guess

INTELLIGENCE: useful: every point in INT gives you 2 skill points/ level up, also high INT opens more dialogue options (BTW if you char has less than 4 INT he has difficulties in communicating with others – very unique to play like that, but you miss on some quests)

AGILITY: very very useful, normally you have 5 Action Points to use in your turn, for every 2 points in AGI you get 1 more AP. And these are needed for moving, shooting etc.

LUCK: increases critical chance, high luck unlocks special encounter (pop-culture references) in the wasteland, not that useful, but some funny builds can be made with LUCK 10 in Fallout2 🙂

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Skill overview:
Combat skills (increase to at least 120 to reliably hit enemies):
USEFUL >> Small Guns (early+mid game), Energy Guns (late game)
OK >> Big Guns, Melee, Unarmed
TERRIBLE >> Throwing

Active skills (you can use these via 1-8 keybord buttons):
1. Sneak – can be used for some tricks (like rehiding during combat), but for the most part I don’t recommend it

2. Pick locks – useful, get yourself Lockpick/Electronic Lockpick and open these pesky doors

3. Traps – helps with disarming traps, for the most part you can run through them if you have strong enough armor

4. Steal – oof, if you are up for save-scumming then you can take it, but it’s easy to piss off people by stealing (they attack) so i rarely use it. you can in theory farm XP with steal (you get 10XP for 1st stolen item, 20XP for second and so on), but there are better, more reliable ways

5. First Aid – you can heal you HP, but the amount is so small that it’s better to use Stimpacks

6. Doctor – heal broken legs, arms etc. better to visit a doctor and pay him than waste points here

7. Science – useful for accessing information from all the terminals, i usually have it at around 100 by the end of the game

8. Repair – useful for disabling force fields mostly, (usually have it at 70-80)

Passive skills:
1. Speech – Pump it up, and you will see how many people you can talk down, there is a lot of situation when this is useful

2. Barter – quite useful, at the beginning everything is super expensive, getting it to 60-70 helps with buying stuff, unless of course you go…

3. Gambling – you increase you gambling to around 100, you go to a casino, press and hold the button for highest bet and the money printer goes BRRRR

4. Outdoorsman – avoid tedious encounters, not crucial but convenient

Also: you can find magazines spread around the wasteland to increase some skills, specifically: First Aid, Repair, Science and Outdoorsman. The lower your skill when reading the more skill points you will get (9 – your skill divided by 10).

[red.hexapus]

#12239

And here’s an exemplary shooter/diplomat build I’ve made, if you want to have a nice first run:

https://nwcp.vercel.app/vault-dweller#CAFkVhYSlB2OIAA=

Traits: Finesse, Gifted
Tags: Small Guns, Energy Guns, Speech

S 5 – enough for this char
P 9 – higher hit chance
E 6 – good HP + healing rate 2
C 2 – dump stat
I 9 – for talking and skill points
A 10 – 10 Action Points what else to say
L 6 – also ok, with finesse you have 11% crit chance

Perks
LV3: Awareness (lets you see enemy HP)
LV6: Bonus Move (2 additional points to move)
LV9: Better Criticals (roll better on crit table, you can outright kill some enemies when shooting the eyes.)
LV12: Bonus Rate of Fire (1 AP cost reduction when shooting)
LV15: Action Boy (even more AP)
LV18 : Sniper (60% crit chance with luck 6)

Pump Small Guns + Speech to 120,
afterwards Energy (120), Barter (80) and Lockpick (80)
First Aid, Science, Repair and Outdoorsman from books which you can buy/find