Now I know why I find Lookout so creepy; Renee lives there!

I prefer Lincoln´s over the regular. Got a mod that reduces the mag to five shots for that gun as that is more "realistic" (sorry!) considering the heavy caliber the weapon had irl. Will still collect the regular one though of course


The ride, pic one
The ride, pic two
The ride, pic three
This looks.... ominous..
Greetings
Unexplored land is before me once again!

you guys are cracking me up. I've never even been to Point Lookout! ... you have me curious though, what it's like there. Perhaps some day this fall we'll take a day trip to Point Lookout.

Do you want me to put all my PL updates (including pixies) in a spoiler tag, Renee? I don´t wanna ruin anything for ya

Oh no. You are fine. Even if I read a spoiler, chances are I won't remember it by the time I get to PL.

Hey I got a question for y'all. Marge is up to Level 11, and I know her game will cap at 20 without Broken Steel. What exactly does this mean? Will perk choices keep happening, or does this just stop?

Ok


All perks will stop at 20 as well, so choose wisely

Edit: Should you install and do Broken Steel though, perks come back.

Okay thanks. Wow, this means each character really becomes kinda specialized with the limited perk choices and level cap.

I just chose the Animal Friend perk. Marge recently got attacked by this big dino-looking creature with an Oriental name. I forget what it was called. Anyways, that thing would have probably killed her, had she not had a safe place to run at the time (not to mention a homemade Nuka-Grenade) The AF perk is supposed to make this huge enemy 'friendly' to Marge.

That was probably a Yao-Gai. They are mutated bears. Nasty critters. The Animal Friend perk will make them friendly to you.

Here is a friendly one beside the AntAgonizer. That one was the sidekick of the trader who is in the lead of the group. Anty decided to tag along with them for a while.

Oh yes, that's what it was, a yao-gai. Sucker frightened the heck out of me and Marge.

Hey, let me ask you all a question. Marge is in Vault-tec headquarters, and there's supposed to be a key that opens a final door. We've been all over Vault Tec, looked through a safe, multiple containers, dead robots. Nothing. I'm starting to get bored of walking around in circles.

I'm not asking for a spoiler, I am gonna ask for more of a hint. Like, don't say "the key is in X", I'm looking for "look up as you walk"or something vague.

I dislike blatant spoilers. Feel like such a dummy ... OHHH that's where it was? *facepalm* But a hint makes me feel like I'm still using at least some of my wits.

There is no key to get into the mainframe. You have to access the three system operations terminals throughout the HQ to open up the door. One is on the first floor, and the other two are upstairs.

I was thinking of taking Animal Perk too. I should have


Amyhoo...

Today I got my ass handed to me, and it wasn´t even on a silver platter. I was crossing a bridge with a roof not far from Haley´s Hardware store. There was some fine loot on it btw. As I peeked into the gloom ahead of me I could see movement, so I loaded up the Dart Gun and fired at one Brawler and one Creeper.

They started to sprint for me and suddenly I could hear gun shots. From behind! When I turned around I could see another Creeper and a big Tracker with an axe coming at me!! And I only had the D-B shotgun ready!

Long story short, I pulled up my trusty Vulcan minigun and let the hail of bullets rip their torsos apart from their legs. But man, I´m really taking damage here! And yet my armor is at full condition!

Those Stimpaks are truly worth thier weight in gold now.

Edit: Hold on... They have no weight!

The enemies in Point Lookout do extra damage, above and beyond what their weapons normally do. I think it is 15 extra points per hit. There are several mods to reduce it to normal though.

Think I´m gonna keep it the way it is and instead deal with the newly found difficulty through other means

Oh, I have a mod that gives me a house there! Should be neat Haven´t activated it yet but I will tonight. Then we´ll see how long it takes for me to get to it

I love the Animal Friend perk. Did a couple hours of gaming before bed last night and Marge did happen to encounter a yao-gai, which looked at her with disinterest before going back to graze upon whatever yao-gais graze upon. That was really cool, but then Marge came across a group of raiders: 3 to 1 this battle was. She started firing with her lazer pistol, but then remembered the yao-gai.

Ran back down the hill, and guess what? Now she had a friend to help her against the raiders! A really big, mean friend!

How's Point LoOkout, Sir mirocu? ...

Dammit! Now I really wish I had taken the Animal Perk! And there´s no way for me to get it nowSHUT UP, RENEE!!


Ooh, is it Sir now?

Well, I´m actually less excited about it at this point. I sorta miss the Capital Wasteland; the swamps doesn´t really do it for me. But I can´t go back now, oh no! I have a house to find and about a dozen quests to finish! That´s actually what makes me cringe, I´m so not used to doing quests anymore. I just wanna roam around and find things and yeah I know, I can ignore the quests but it doesn´t seem right to ignore them all

You're on PC, though, is there a CK you can 'fix' this with? It is seriously cool getting wildlife on our side.



Yes. Sir mirocu. You have been knighted so far as I'm concerned, pard'ner. I'm psyched to go to PL, but even more psyched for Pittsburgh. Can't wait to 'waste' some enemies there.

I have been doing about 75% wandering, 25% quests with Marge. I under-estimated the size of the wasteland, it's larger than I initially thought. Marge is heading north to Vault 92, she is nowhere near it, but at some point (on a hilltop) she turned around and looked and the Monument and Capitol were these tiny little buildings. We're used to seeing them from the Megaton area, you see.

Well, today I investigated a prison camp, a crashed jet and a trapper´s schack. I was so surprised when I went into the little house as I could hear the heavy footsteps of a Super Mutant! It turned out to be a Scrapper, though. That skinny, little bugger appeared to be just as heavy!

Tons of loot and not enough merchants to sell it to so for now I store the rest in my footlocker on the boat.

T´night was a busy night, I tells y´all!

I finally got around to investigate the burning mansion which btw is very close to the pier where I got off the boat

Turned out there was a ghoul inside, a somewhat fancy ghoul, and he was in dire need of some help defending the mansion from intruders! I ran around shooting them all and barricated the west and east wing so they couldn´t get in and then helped him, along with his two dogs, to shoot off the last ones. When finally we had a chance to talk he turned out to be pretty rude, especially for someone who just had his butt saved!

Anyways, I did get a fancy new perk called Superior Defender! My second perk in Lookout, actually. The first one made me better at killing ferals.


Oh, I almost forgot. I found Renee!!!!!!

!!! That's her alright!

Playing Fallout 3 today I managed my most pathetic death in the game yet. After killing a bunch raiders on a bridge, near Vault 101, I then managed to fall off it. After that the only thing to do is restart.

Haha a similar thing happend to Eva Bree once, so I understand the frustration! Haha

Welcome to the forums BTW

I have jumped off that bridge on purpose and nearly died too, so don't feel bad!

Hey CT! Welcome! Have some cake. I promise it's rad-free Heh heh.

I didn't want to admit it, but since you're here I will say it now: Marge N. Overra (the lady in my profile pic over at Beth's forums) died awhile back; maybe 2 weeks ago. She got killed by this big dinosaur-looking creature, which Lopov told me is a deathclaw, I think. It sucked. The thing came up from behind and I panicked--hit the wrong set of buttons. Marge was in sneak-mode at the time (sneaking up on a bunch of raiders) and the deathclaw only had to hit her 3 times.

I have a new character I'm forming; I think he'll be semi-evil, or at least kind of a pr!ck. He'll have a low Personality (I forget what this stat is called). His name will be Ben D. Banana. I think I got that name from The Simpsons, when Bart makes his prank calls he asks for funny names and stuff.

Heh! I thought you´d gone AWOL on us, Renee!

Too bad Marge died, she seemed to be a nice lady Stupid Deathclaw Btw, did you see that pic I took of you in Point Lookout?

Sorry to hear about Marge. That is why some of us do not play dead is dead...

Started again yesterday, from the save before leaving the vault. I'd just bagged a deathclaw courtesy of one of those random events, and then made a second attempt at clearing the bridge I fell off yesterday. Only to fall off it again backpedalling to get away from a grenade.

I think I'm just going to stay the hell away from that bridge from now on.

I´m still not sure if I´m gonna move my stuff from the Duchess to the new home I found out west in Lookout. I may just haul it all back to Megaton

Sneaking around the motel

You're not playing FO3 dead-is-dead?



I am just glad we made it as far as I did, being a n00b new player and all. I didn't expect to get that far, seriously.

Yeah, I'm playing Dead is Dead, I just don't see a reason to go through the tutorial everytime in Fallout 3. Without a skill based leveling system the only differences between characters that aren't from the character confirmation screen are the contents of the inventory, and that doesn't really change much. Might as well skip all that and create my character just before leaving the vault.

Edit: Fired up my new game, new character by the name of Gregor. He's cleaned out Springvale, didn't kill Silver, did kill all the raiders in the elementary school, netting himself a sawed off shotgun and a hunting rifle. And in the barn near the "Bridge of Doom" he found something that caught me totally be surprise. A dead Wastelander, dreesed as a roving trader, carrying a Fatman! Plus a mini-nuke and an instruction manual for it. Gregor learned the basics of handling nuclear devices from the manual, and so was able to disarm the bomb in Megaton when he returned. So now he's got somewhere to live, and to store spare weapons. And he's reached level 4.

And we don't actually have to do this every time, anyways, since FO3 allows us to change stuff just before leaving the vault; it's just like in Oblivion. Only for TES: V Skyrim did they change this.

What about FO:NV? Can we change characters just after exiting any sort of Tutorial?

Yes, you can but IIRC you can change your character once you wander a distance away from the starting town, not directly after a tutorial.

Skipping the tutorial in Oblivion does have it's downsides though. I generally go through the tutorial with every character I start just to make sure the skill usage is right. Otherwise it would bug me.

If I recall correctly in FO:NV once you leave the area you start in it gives you the option to finalise your character, but it's been a long time since I played, so I could well be wrong.

Edit: Seems I'm not. Apparently Lopov's been taking some ninja training.

Damn was that game a mess.

Now you've got my attention! I want to try FO: NV now!

The radscropions walking around doing handstands on their forelegs were hilarious. But the submersible scorpions - who were under the ground, except for their tails - were not. You could not shoot them because you hit the ground. But they could still sting you with their periscopes tails. Of course who can forget the dog with the external eyes?

That's a must! Although FNV relies more on story than on exploration IMO, it's for me far better than FO3, maybe also because it was produced by some original FO developers.

Whatever you do, don't get it for the 360! When I had that game it started out with gamebreaking bugs, and became less stable with each successive patch. By the time they finished "patching" the game it was so unstable that I only had a 50% chance of getting out of character creation before it completely froze.

While Obsidian have made some fantastic games, including one of my all time favourites, Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic 2, they are awful when it comes to bugs.

And of course, we can just "rp" this as a dog which has been mutated to the point of no return.



Oh really? Yes, I read all about the early days of Fallout, and how they were on the verge of bankruptcy and stuff. It's cool some of the original devs got their job back, at least.



I'll probably get it for 360. I'll just deal with the bugs I guess. These next few months years are gonna be devoted to modding OB and Skyrim, I won't have time to get involved with FO. The vanilla game seems like it'll be fine for me for a very long time. So much to explore.

Whoa, a ghost dog!

I might pull a reversed-Renee and get meself a 360, just to play New Vegas Or I might get a PS3 to play Skyrim!

Bah, just stck to Fallout 3. 90% of the fun, 1% of the bugs, glitches, and instability.

@Mirocu: Sure you will, right after you start a new character in Oblivion

I have got to agree with Call here. I did not try FONV until about six months ago, so I missed the really huge game slaying bugs it shipped with. But even with the final and supposedly fixed version of it, it really was buggy. Most it was just weird things like scorpions doing handstands, or the dog with his eyeballs floating in midair beside his head. But there was one completely game breaking one involving the vault that was overgrown with plants. If not for the command console, I would not have been able to escape that one.

But even bugs aside, FONV is literally half the game FO3 is. The right and left sides of the game map are completely inaccessible, so you can only explore the part running down the middle. When it comes to locations, FO3 has much more to places to explore, things to kill, and loot to scav.

@Call - I know, right!??

@Sub - Wow, is it really that bad? Sound like I was lucky FO3 didn´t come with Steam then I love free-roaming and exploring and being restricted like you describe in NV just misses me off

It was worse actually. The devs essentially cordoned off some areas by filling them with super powerful critters, that your starting character does not stand a chance against. A prime example is directly north of Goodsprings, where you begin the game. If you start the game and try to go past the hill with the graveyard at the edge of town, you will just die. So the game forces you to the south instead, at least until you have gotten up in levels and obtained more powerful weapons.

That´s just some seriously stupid game design imho, at least for this kind of game. But hold on just a sec here, are they trying to go back to how early RPGs were, maybe? Didn´t the old school tabletop games have areas just for high-level characters?

I think it is because they are trying to emphasize the story - i.e. the main quest - at the expense of pure exploration of the open world. They want to funnel your movements down into areas where you will encounter the two main factions in the MQ - The NCR and the Legion - and use that build toward their big crescendo of the upcoming war between the two. Speaking of which once you get to a certain point near the end of the main quest you are locked into it, and the game literally ends once you are done. No more side quests, no free-roaming, no doing dlc, nothing but create a new character. It is similar to how the vanilla ending of FO3 kills your character off (except Bethesda at least fixed that with Broken Steel).

I am cool with scorpions doing handstands and overgrowing plants, but this sounds strange. Are you saying we are supposed to be able to explore these areas, but the vanilla game's so buggy that we can't?

Well, I don't find NV that bad, actually I like it more than FO3. There are some bugs, as mentioned above, and it's true that the game rather forces you to avoid some areas until you're better prepared but I never had problems with that and had some DiD characters that managed to survive these tough areas, it's difficult but it's do-able. And when it comes to characters, writing and story in general, FNV beats FO3 in every aspect IMO. There are a lot of choices and consequences which I like because it feels like your character does in fact have a great impact on the world.

No, the left and right quarters of the map are literally blocked off by things like cliffs or rivers so you cannot go there, and there are no locations put there on the map. Take a look.

I missed the vast, open areas. I missed running around shooting Talons, Raiders, Radscorpions and Muties. Also, I missed my home in Megaton.

mirocu is back in the Capital Wasteland!

Well I think I'll avoid New Vegas, then, and just stick to FO3, at least on Xbox. It's not like I have any extra time for yet another game, anyways.

Personally I find it difficult to decide which I prefer out of the two games as I truly love them equally.

HOWEVER I play New Vegas more purely because of the companion system. I've used a glitch so I can have more than one companion so I find it fun that Eva slowly recruits a team of wasteland explorers (Currently Veronica, Cass, Boone, Raul and Rex).