Ahh thank you SR. I'll see about having her travel that road to Greyditch. She already spoke to the quest-giver (the boy) they keep telling each other to **** off!

I still wanna ask how often stuff respawns, like in the Super Duper Mart? I notice that outdoor locations seem to be able to respawn at any time, but what about indoors? I tried looking (and searching) on that Wiki site, to no avail.

I cannot remember for sure, but I think the respawns are the same as Oblivion: every 3 days.

Edit: It is 72 hours. But enemies do not always respawn, especially indoor ones. This page on Power Leveling has more details. But being that it is about Power Leveling, I am sure you have read it already Renee.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 17 2013, 01:26 AM

Nope, had the moral turnaround and the complete Karma re-spec between Raven Rock and Project Purity. The Lone Wanderer started out as a selfish, town-nuking douchebag, but lead the assault on Project Purity as a reformed hero who gave his life to save the Wasteland.

Until I installed Broken Steel. On one hand, it was nice to have more fun with my character again, but the redemptive sacrifice was a nice way to end his story. Managed to RP a whole character arc, which was cool.

Gotta say, Renee, your game sounds brutal! I was playing on Normal difficulty (I think you said you were doing that too, though I can't be sure) can't remember finding Fallout 3 anywhere near that difficult. I found it almost a little too easy, in fact...

Going back to places you thought you already emptied is a good idea, Renee. I´ve come back to so many places I thought I´d picked clean but as it turned out in so many cases, I hadn´t. And more often than not I´ve left places because I collected so many things that I needed to sell them off, only to forget to come back and scavv the rest of the place!

What level are you now, btw?

Hey, everyone. Marge is Level 5 I believe. And I have been playing on Easy difficulty, Mustard. I can't imagine what it must be like on Normal.

I am surprised at how much trouble it is giving you Renee. I'm not trying to rub it in, but I never had this much trouble, and I always play on Normal.

Maybe you need to take a more stealth-oriented playstyle, and spend more time going slowly, and sneaking around to get surprise shots?

Hoarding your stimpacks is definitely something you need to do. Never store them or put them down. I do not believe they weigh anything, so you can literally carry hundreds of them (I believe I left the AntAgonizer with 200+ stimpacks in her inventory). I always hotkey my stimpacks so I can use them quickly in a fight. You can use food for healing as well. Purified Water is one of the best alternate healing sources, but so too is dirty water, iquana on a stick, brahmin meat, etc...

Other helpful tips are to make sure you keep your weapon repaired up as best as you can keep it. Using the really common weapons in the game makes this easiest, as you can always find spare guns to use for parts. The Hunting Rifle, 10mm Pistol, 10mm Subgun, are probably the most ubiquitous guns in the game. You can always find ammo and spares for them. The .32 Pistol and Chinese Pistol are also very common, but just don't have the punch to be worth using. Even the 10mm Pistol becomes too weak after a while. The 10mm Submachine Gun stays viable for a long time though, thanks to its rate of fire. A Hunting Rifle for long range and the Subgun for close in fights is a great combination.

Don't be shy about using grenades and mines either. I cannot freethrow the grenades for crap, but I found that I almost always get them dead on if I use VATS. Setting up mines ahead of time is also a great way to help in a fight. Or if you get ambushed, run around a corner and set some mines there, then back up. Then the baddies will run around the corner to get you and step on the mines.

All this talk of FO3 is tempting me to fire it up again and maybe take the AntAgonizer to Point Lookout, or just explore the western part of the map.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 17 2013, 08:01 PM

Some good advice there from Sub

I always planted mines when I was raiding ruins in my early days. Now I just go guns blazin, but back then I wasn´t so sturdy and that approach was very good. Come to think of it, I actually like that sneak-and-plant style better than how I play nowadays. But I can´t really go back to it at this point. It would just feel wrong now.

-----

Currently rescavvin´ Vault-Tec HQ and yet again I have to seriously question my ability to see things. Just found a Quantum I apparently didn´t pick up last time. I also disarmed some dead muties in case they come back

Here is an example of stealth-oriented play with a low-level character. Bastet takes on the Super Duper Mart. I think she was about 4-5th level at the time, and was using the dart gun.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 19 2013, 04:49 PM

How cute she was! Lol on the anime Pip-Girl!

Lol, you can rub it in, I don't mind. Maybe I just suck at this game. *shrugs* It's too bad, too, because I frickin' love it. And maybe it's ego, but i refuse to push the slider down to Very Easy. It just seems (for me) that would be such a wuss thing to do.


Yes, this is how I approach things, for the most part, unless I'm dealing with an easy enemy, like a vicious dog. I'm RPing a single woman in a very dangerous world, so yes, she does sneak around a lot. I have 7 solid years of Tomb Raider under my strap, as well; I used to play TR games all the time before i discovered TES games. I learned to sneak while with Lara.

Perhaps the reason is Marge's Sneak isn't very high, yet. I believe it's still in the high 20s. She just got Small Guns up to 50, though, and from what I hear, accuracy starts to go up once we get past 50?



C'mon, now, I'm not that much of a n000b! Of course Marge carries these. I also remember where every single bed is located, and she uses these beds as bases of operation, so that she winds up being as efficient as she can with stimpack. Even so, they wind up going way too fast sometimes. I have no idea where it's possible to find hundreds of stimpacks, she (so far) has found one here, two there.

And Marge uses food for small-healing, too. I like this feature, actually; food is actually useful in this game, unlike vanilla TES.



Check.

Here's the thing. It's not the repairing or the stimpacks or the sneaking, it's the NPC's weapons. I noticed this: when Marge went from Level 4 to Level 5, it seemed that all a sudden, ALL the raiders started to carry sub-machine guns, and/or missle launchers. ALL of them. Every single fight, Marge sneaks up, tries to get a decent shot in (using VATS mostly, although I've tried just aiming free-style, too, so she can get extra shots off), but winds up running away, because she's now got some serious firepower aimed at her.

And whenver she picks up a missle launcer or a Big Gun, the thing is damn-near broken. Even if she finds another example to repair it with, it's only a matter of time before her new toy is useless.



Yeah, me too. Sorry if I sound like I'm whining up above, I'll figure things out on my end.

Try looking over the tips page on the wikia, it has a lot of good advice.

Thanks, hon. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with anything, but I did drop Marge's Luck to 3 when I created her. I then put the extra 2 points into other stats (Perception and Intelligence). I didn't read the entire page yet, but here's what it has to say about Luck

Luck is most important to players who rely on critical hits, as every 1 point grants 1% to your crit chance. Luck also makes a relatively minor impact on all of your skills (Luck / 2, rounded up). Luck of 5 is a prerequisite for the economic perks of Fortune Finder and Scrounger. Luck of 6 is needed for combat perks like Mysterious Stranger and Better Criticals.

Doesn't really say anything about lowered Luck changing the dynamics of the encounters that Marge is having, but who really knows? Luck has always been one of those 'mysterious' sort of skills in RPGs; oftentimes the game devs will say something like "Luck changes your fortune in mysterious ways", and this never seems to get fully explained to us gamers.

Thanks, SR.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Aug 20 2013, 06:35 PM

I have always considered Luck to be a pretty important attribute in FO3. At least for most characters. Your chance for a critical hit is based upon your Luck. The base chance is your Luck stat. So your Luck of 3 means you have a 3% chance for a critical hit. The weapon you use also influences your critical hit chance by their Critical Chance Multiplier. For example, a combat knife has a x3 critical multiplier, so Marge would have a 9% chance of getting a critical with one.

With the right weapon, the right perks, and a maxxed out Luck, you will get a critical hit with every shot. For example, with a Luck of 10, the Finesse Perk (+5% crit chance), the Survival Expert Perk (+3%), and using VATS (+15%), you have a base 33% chance of a critical. Now use a Sniper Rifle or the Lever Action Rife from Point Lookout - which both have a x5 critical multiplier - and you have a 165% chance of a critical hit. Now that gets modified by your weapon condition. Its a straight condition x your chance, so if your sniper rife is at 60% condition, you have an 99% chance of a critical hit with it.

Now some weapons give you zilch for a better crit chance, or extra critical damage, and with a few crits are actually impossible. So a character using one of those is not going to benefit much from a high luck. The Big Guns and the assault rifles are those. You have to look over the weapons to see what works with a high luck, and which ones do not matter.

Every two points of Luck also adds 1 point to each of your skills. So a Luck of 10 gives you 5 more points in every skill.

I have also found that the perks that only add more skill points are not really worth taking. You get skill points to spend at every level up anyway. It is better to save your perks for the special things that you cannot get any other way. The Black Widow perk is one of the best examples: +10% damage to all males if you are playing a female. Plus you get some fun dialogue options with all the sausages in the game world. Intense Training is one of the only ways to raise your Special stats. If you don't see any good perks, take a level in that and raise one of your stats instead. Child At Heart is actually a very cool perk. I took it with a character who was a child, and it opens up a lot of dialogue options that get you more loot and special items, like the Wazer Wifle. Gunslinger and Commando are must-haves for anyone who uses VATS a lot. Entomologist gives you an extra 50% damage against insects, and is really helpful in Greyditch. Pyromaniac gives you a +50% damage with fire weapons, so it is awesome for a Shishkebab or flamethrower character.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 20 2013, 07:24 PM

Well this is good to know.



So is this.

Marge is Dead is Dead. She's very very cautious (not just me, but her) and chances are she'll survive. But if she doesn't for some reason, I'm not starting a character with Luck below default.

And here's some screenies of Marge. Ready? I only have a couple.

Here she is in the Church of Atom. She found this blue "pre-war" dress and it's her favorite piece of apparel. I personally don't like it that much; it's not something I'd wear, but I'm sure if I ever get locked up in a vault, and then have to wear a jumpsuit day after day that maybe I'd feel differently, huh?

Here's a closer shot of her. She smiles as though she's content with her life. You'd never think she's a warm-blooded killer, huh?

No pics in her action gear yet, but they'll be coming soon.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Aug 20 2013, 08:08 PM

Marge is cute as a button! I know what you mean about those pre-war dresses. They are way to 50s girly for me. But I have had a few characters who wore them in town. Nyx loved the pink one!

I try not to start any character with stats under average. Sometimes I might go with something as low as a 4 and go for the corresponding bobblehead that raises it (there is a bobblehead in the game to raise each attribute by one point, and each skill by 10 points. Finding them all can be quite a challenge, a few are locked by quests, like the Energy Weapons. The Medicine bobblehead is in Vault 101, so you have to either grab it at the start of the game, or if you go along the main quest far enough to the point where you can go back inside the vault.)

So my characters usually have a lot of 5, 6s, and a few 7s. Then I use the Intense Training to raise the ones that really matter to the particular character. For a melee fighter I would raise Strength. For a small guns user Agility, etc... For a sniper I would take Luck up as high as I could go. I know some people put Charisma at 1, but I like my characters being able to talk to people, so I never do. A lot of people also start with Intelligence at 9, so they get the most skill points (the skill points you get every level are based on your Intelligence stat), but I think every character being a genius is a bit of a stretch too. Plus it means something else like Charisma is going to be stuck at a 1 to make up for it.

There are also a few items laying around that will give you a stat boost. The Lucky Shades will give you a +1 to Luck. There are a couple hats that give you a +1 to Perception. Though my characters only wear what looks good on them of course, even if that means losing the bonus.

All of this FO3 talk is tempting me to roll a new toon to beat the game with...

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 21 2013, 09:48 PM

Lol, I am thinking of rolling a tank toon. Buff his stats up and so I can PWN some Raiders!

Lol, poor Pseron! He's the one that started all this, like it or not, it's taken a life of its own.

Ahhh Nyx look so pixie-ish, like someone you'd see going to a rave or something. Raves, do they even have raves anymore? Sigh, I'm so out of touch. Anyways, she's cute, too. What was her direction in the wasteland? What did she prefer to do?

What's interesting is when i did the Tutorial with Cho, I was rather panicked, and missed a lot of things. With Marge, I felt the need to explore a bit more, now that I knew it's not so hard to survive the beginning. So Marge actually found that bobblehead.

Yes I was reading some website that recommended not putting Speech down that far, unless you're interested in some heavy RPing of an unliked character.

And now, I return to Marge N. Overra, folks. She's at her new home in Megaton. It's nice having a home. She took it easy for a few days; regrouping and trying to decide what to do next, for she feels she must do something. She doesn't want to become another Megaton "settler".

Of course, as she lazed about, sleeping all hours and such, the world outside her .... has changed. .. as the Raiders at the elementary school have also regrouped.

Now, go roll that toon, SubRosa. I wanna hear about your new avatar pwning some NPCs as you metagame, too. Do you think you'll roll a LG PC or a CE PC? Or perhaps, a pure neutral?



This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Aug 20 2013, 11:23 PM

I was thinking of Wyrd too. He should speak up. The three of us could have a contest, and all roll up toons at the same time and see who could beat the game first!

Nyx was a fun character, and had a really good RP to her. I used the Shojo mod to make her a child. Her backstory is that she is a cyborg from the Institute in Boston and was trained to be an assassin. Being a child, it would be easy for her to win people's trust and get them to lower their guard. Of course she did not really know any of this because of the brainswashing done to her. Her "father" was actually her handler. He felt bad about how the Institute was using her, and deserted, taking her with him to lead a "normal" life. But he was killed in Greyditch, along with everyone else (I RP'd that her game started there). So normal was never in the cards for Nyx. She only gradually figured out that she was not an ordinary child as she traveled the wasteland, doing good deeds and whacking bad guys.

Okay, since you twisted my arm, I rolled up a toon to pwn the game with. Meet Inanna. She's a science geek (energy weapons of course), who has just busted out of the Vault. She eagerly agreed to help Moira Brown with her survival guide, and is now off on her way to find food and medicine at the Super Duper Mart.

I am using a mod that gives you an energy pistol to start the game with. I am also (trying) to use some mods that let you craft energy ammo.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 21 2013, 12:06 AM

Well cool, look at your new one! How long do think it'll take to baet teh gmae?



No seriously, Inanna looks "smart". It's hard to explain, but you've got an intelligent-looking face for her. What race is she? .. That Shojo mod looks intriguing. I didn't think I'd ever mod FO3, but ... heh heh...

On the subject of race, you know what's funny?, when I created Cho I did so because TES does not allow Asian-looking features (not in Vanilla... I've tried) and so I've been wanting an Asian for years now. Best I could do in Oblivion was Eradi~Kate, who looks more like a Mestizo.
And Marge is Hispanic. When i was drawing her up, I remember thinking "she doesn't really look Hispanic" and I thought I should play this up a bit. But looking at her in my two pics just now, she's got some Spanish-looking features for sure. It's subtle, though.

Nothing respawned in Marge's game. I figured the Elementary school wouldn't, since she never finished killing the ants in the basement, but she cleared both the Super Duper Mart and Farragut station ages ago. Despite sleeping & waiting many days, nothing has respawned.

OTOH, there have been some pretty kewl adventures outside. She ran across a fight between some raiders and a couple super-mutants. She hid behind a barrier, waiting for the fight to end, so she could take some easy pickings. When it did, the super-mutants saw her move and started firing at her, but then they seemed to get bored (she was crouched down and they only hit her once). Oddly, they did not bother to come looking for her, they actually wandered off, despite the fact that Marge's Pipboy was still indicating DANGER.

She's now undecided where to go next. She might try heading towards the library, not that she'll make it there. But she's gotta at least try.

This post has been edited by Renee Gade IV: Aug 21 2013, 01:22 AM

Inanna is a hispanic too! I based her on Amata, but made a few tweaks here and there.

I have always wanted to play asian characters in TES as well. I wish I could have someone in Skyrim who looks like Grace Park, or Zhang Ziyi, or Michelle Yeoh. Sigh. I did make Kitsune, and Kunoichi, and Tomoe Gozen in FO3 though.

I loaded up my last save of the AntAgonizer's game and checked out the Super Duper Mart. It had not respawned, even though she did it over a month in game time beforehand. She checked out Springvale School too. The inside of the school was still exactly the same. But the raiders outside had respawned.

This post has been edited by SubRosa: Aug 21 2013, 02:46 AM

Toons? Beat the game? What the duse are you talking about!??

Cute character btw, Renee And if you want the Duper Mart to respawn, there´s always mods. Yes, mods. Want me to give you links to some of them?


That DANGER sign cannot be fully trusted. You can be completely out of harms way and it still reads that after your previous encounter. Not all the times of course, but in some cases it lingers.


This post has been edited by mirocu: Aug 21 2013, 10:59 AM