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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh okay, it's not just my game, then. A friend told me not all places respawn.

Love those character pics. I want Tomoe's outfit.



You must have missed this. Over at Beth's forums there was a discussion about ... I don't remember what the heck it was about. I think we were talking about World of Warcraft, and at some point Pseron made a list of terms that he's heard so often they "make my teeth grind". Avatar, toon, tank, buff ... I don't remember them all. We're not making fun of Pseron, we're making fun of all the WoW geeks who actually use these terms day in and day out.



Sure, why not. I don't have my PC yet, but ... soon ....

Get the PC first, dear. Until then you shall not pass! ... into the world of modding

----

I´m glad I installed the mod that respawned cells. Thanks to that I got the mole race back!! I didn´t think it brought that back too but apparently it did. I watched them from afar today and I must say it was quite entertaining. Either mole rat won every other race so it was very even. I didn´t kill any of the raiders this time, I think it´s nice to have some activity left in the game

My main goal today though was rescavvin´ Red Racer factory, but I amassed so many raider and Talon armor I instead decided to head to Rivet City to offload some of it, if not all, to avoid getting overencumbered inside the factory. As it turned out, I ran into some more enemies along the river bank and thus overencumberance was unaviodable anyway.

It is from the Mothership Zeta dlc. There is a suit of samurai armor, helmet, and a katana. Naturally I made a mod that puts them in one of the museums, so I can use them without doing the dlc (that one is my least favorite of the Fallout 3 dlcs).

I wondered what would happen if I put Marge Overra into a search engine. There does happen to be a real Marge Overra.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/152229512/Effect...Decision-Making

I don't know about Marge N. Overra.

Marge has had better success today. She's been looking for the Vault-tec headquarters. Can't find the place, but in her search she's come across plenty of raiders and centaurs. She's got a nice stash of things to sell once she gets back to Megaton.

She also found Dukov's place. What a nasty brothel. There's nothing really there for Marge, Dukov and the girls are friendly to her, so she spent the night there. And stole a bunch of pre-war money.

!

Careful. Dukov´s a good shot and an even better one if he´s drunk

I guess Marge wrote the book on making decisions!

Yes, if you need some problem-solving, or more effective decision making, don't hesitate to call Marge Overra! Her problem-solving and decision making skills are unmatched in the tri-state area! .. Whether you need to disarm a Protectron, or are seeking ways to down some raiders, Marge is your woman!

Call or click today!


---------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit: Marge N. Overra has returned to Megaton. She's done a bit of buying & selling, and now has over 400 caps after selling a couple mini-nukes to Moira. She's not sure what she's doing next; probably heading directly south.

I heard a spoiler from a friend, and he's saying I shouldn't do the Stradivarius quest yet. Marge is not strong enough. She'll be at Level 7 soon, so maybe after this level she'll take this one on.

I always keep those nukes. They´re fun to add to the collection And I vividly remember how poor I felt early on in the game. 400 caps was something I couldn´t even dream about and now I´m close to 90.000!


The quest involves lots of walking which of course is a risk when it comes to running into enemies. However there is a good reward for that quest and if she bulks up on stimmies and brings the sawed-off shotgun alongside the 10mm sub, she should do ok I think.
I don´t remember which level I was when I did it. Maybe 7 is too low. Bear in mind though that the higher level you are, the higher level your enemies are too

The upper area of the vault is just some bloatflies. But the lower levels have some really tough baddies. Just remember to shoot them in the face. It is not armored. Mines are also helpful. But it will take a bunch to stop even one. If you are creative with the computer terminals, there is a way to kill many of them without firing a shot.

Also when you are in the vault looking for the violin, look for a page of sheet music. There is one in there. Bring that back to Agatha and ask for a reward. If you do both she has a really good extra for you.

Yes!!!! Finally it happened! I finally met a Wastelander mentioning the Wasteland Survival guide!! I have waited so long for that encounter!

Oh, and today I also exceeded 90.000 caps! Less than 10K to go!

Isn't it nice to have some acknowledgment for your efforts to write that darn thing? I also like that the encounter is based on the quality of the book. If you made a bad book, the wastelander is barely holding their own against a molerat. If you made the best book they polished off a 'lurk, radscorpion, or some other big baddie.

It was awesome!! It was somewhere south-east of Fort Constantine, amongst some train wrecks by a body of water. I only heard a single shot so I investigated what it was. I didn´t see what he was shooting at but considering he was in the water, my guess is a mirelurk of some kind.


I like this too! And since I got the best possible version of the book he greeted me as his best friend Upon exiting conversation though and trying to talk to him again he blew me off like I was the plague!

I guess your fifteen minutes of fame was over!

I can't imagine having more than a thousand! Wow.

Selling Raider outfits really pays off

I´m currently following a small Outcast patrol and we´re not far from Big Town. I´m expecting to collect what they have in due course

---------

Well, I bummed out on the Outcast armor and weapon. They disappeared somewhere around Fairfax. They must have gone down one of the subway entries. I looked for them but couldn´t find them

So I was off downtown instead and currently I´m following a trail leading to the BoS outpost in the Mall. Lots of goodies has been found along the way

Marge N. Overra found Greyditch, and also found the safehouse with the beds in it. She did some exploring (running past the fire ants instead of wasting ammo on them) and found another Metro station. Down here, she's been killing the ants with her hunting rifle; there is no other option.

At some point, she decided to go back to her safehouse. She's got food & stimpacks, but if she can sleep, she can conserve all of these additional items. She left the station, running again past the fire ants, and made her way back to her safehouse.

Next morning, she left the house, and did her usual run. But there were noticably less ants on the streets! Eventually she found out why. Lots of them were dead, and she found a couple of Talon Mercs (also dead) near the Metro station.

I love mometns like this in TES, when it's obvious something has happened while my char. has been sleeping. It's cool moments like this exist in FO as well.

Nice you noticed such a thing, Renee I love it too as you very well know

--

Had a great session tonight myself. I went through unexplored parts of the Metro and collected lots of goodies to sell! I worked my way downwards, towards Anacostia station. This was a tactical choice because I was sooo weighed down from all the loot that I had to get to the nearest place in order to sell it off asap. It wasn´t a bother since I also explored uncharted areas

When I finally emerged from the depths just by Rivet City, I was so releaved (thanks, random Watch guard ) to see the old place! I really enjoyed walking up to it and in to my bed at Wetherley hotel to sleep for a few hours before the market opened up.

Personal reflection: Being forced to walk and not having the option to run was a fascinating thing. I never walk normally but when I have to do that and allow myself to take my time, it enhances the gaming experience tenfold!
It also helped to be underground for so long. I only stay above ground these days and it was such a relief to finally be out in the open again after all that time crawling through the metro.

Pics will be up shortly

I just love watching the bad guys fight each other. Like Boudica in the Metro

I love watching fights too but unfortunately there wasn´t any. Till I pulled the trigger, that is

Walking. I started a thread over at Beth about walking in TES4, I think it had a poll, as well. i've always been a walker. Lady Saga is an exception to this; she doesn't carry much weight and she's a former dancer, and she loves to run. But all my other character only run when they have to, like Karheem fleeing the city guards.

Marge is the same way, she walks a lot, only running when necessary, or if she's feeling a bit impatient, and happens to know the area around her is safe. But the Wasteland is mostly not safe for her!

Marge is in Megaton right now, but a couple days ago she met a 'scientist' down in the Marigold Metro. Turns out, he's the next step in the Fire Ant quest (Those!) but Marge has not officially started this quest, since she and the boy did not get along when they met initially. So she's got Those! as a quest now, but she started it backwards!

I just realized: we can eat the fire ant's nectar to use as a resistance. I did not know this. The "scientist" is the one who pointed this out.

In other news: Deputy Weld has been destroyed, sadly. It seems every time Marge was leaving Megaton, this robotron was in a fight with somebody or something. Well, he finally got finished off, by a stupid soldier ant, of all things.

Dangit. I liked Dept. Weld. There is no option to repair him, though.

Weld is dead!? Very unfortunate indeed. He´s never died in my game and I have the option of resurrecting him

I s´pose you´re not considering a reload, Renee?

Even if I did consider this, I would have had to go all the way back to before, when Marge was returning to Megaton from the wasteland. This means I would have had to rewind several days. Naww...it's too much work. It'll be weird not having his little 'comments' anymore. It'll also kinda suck because I have noticed that right in front of Megaton seems to be a random spawning point for encounters, which means Marge'll now have to do a lot more protecting of this area, just as she's wanting not to waste any ammo.

Gotta say that if I were on PC, I wouldn't resurrect an NPC human, but I would resurrect Deputy Weld. I'd just RP that he got repaired, and his robobrain (whatever it's called) had some sort of surgery.

This is exactly what I do in my game. If I find a robot I´d like to get back I just RP that my good skills as a mechanic are enough to repair it. Just did that in fact with a metro protectron

First Dogmeat, now Weld? You have the worst luck Renee. Too bad you are not on the PC, you could set the important NPCs as essential and not have to worry about them.

Very soon my friend, very soon. Patience!

So this is not a usual thing, I take it? That Deputy Weld gets demolished? I've noticed that almost every time Marge has either left or returned to Megaton, Weld was in a fight with somebody. And upon further inspection on that last fateful encounter, turns out Doc Hoff and his partner were also nearby and dead. A couple Talon dudes + a robot I've never seen before (one that rolls on Catepillar-style tracks, like you'd see on road construction equipment) were also nearby. Plus those ants. Apparently Weld had been in a fight with that weird robot + the Talons, and then a couple ants showed up and finished Weld off for good.

I know the Talon folks hate Marge. Lopov has told me these guys are supposed to be ambivalent towards our character (unfriendly, but not hostile), but since she attacked one of them awhile back, they've always been mean to her. So perhaps they showed up to Megaton looking for her, but encountered poor Deputy Weld instead.

In other (better) news: Marge N. Overra managed to finish Those!, the quest with the fire ants. She managed to kill the five required ants (the guardians) but did not mess with the queen. I'm glad we didn't have to mess with the queen. But I'm feeling rather proud; it's been awhile since Marge has "baeten" anything.

I do not think I have ever had Deputy Weld die. I think only once has one of the caravaneers died in my games. I do get the occasional random baddie at the entrance to Megaton, usually a few raiders, but only very rarely. They usually never last more than few seconds against Weld, the sniper above the front door, and the caravans.

So the Talons and a Robo-Brain got Weld? Now that I can see. The Robo-brains are a tough. They are a higher level enemy. If you have good karma or if you disarm the bomb in Megaton Talon Company will hunt you down. They will randomly appear either when you fast travel or change zones (usually going through a door to a new area, like Megaton's gate). So if you have not seen them for a while, get ready for them ever time you leave an area.

Congrats of finishing Those! Did Marge take the increased Strength or Perception? More importantly, did she let Dr. Lesko live? Most of my characters blow his brains out once they have gotten their reward.

That's so weird. Why on Earth is my game so much tougher than both of yours? And it's on "Easy", too!



Oh that explains it. Marge did disarm the bomb. She never FT's though. So you're saying these baddies can sometimes walk into Megaton?

Marge took Strength, which is now 6 I believe.. her Perception is already at 7. And she did not kill Lesko, but she felt tempted to, after hearing the full story about how he's the one responsible for the fire ants. But it seems the guy is somehow necessary, in the sense that perhaps Marge might need him in the future.

I have no idea why your game seems so difficult. I have been scratching my head at that from the beginning. Maybe it is just because it has been so long since I played it for the first time, that everything seems so easy to me now? Maybe you are suffering from an X-Box curse?

I have never seen the Talon Company guys inside Megaton. Usually they spawn in the outdoor areas, after you walk through a door that triggers a loading screen to get there. Like stepping out of a metro station and into part of the DC Ruins. Or stepping out of Megaton and into the Wasteland outside. That sort of thing seems to trigger them the most.

The wiki says you can sell Fire Ant Nectar to Lesko after Those is finished (which includes finding Bryan Wilks a home). But so far as I know there only fire ants in the game are in Greyditch, so after you loot their bodies for nectar and sell them to him there is nothing else he does in the game. My characters have never even bothered selling him the nectar. You do get negative karma for killing him, but its a drop in the bucket if you saved Megaton and have been doing other good deeds.

That was a misunderstanding and I probably used the wrong word as it often happens when my thoughts are faster as my typing speed. I actually meant The Outcasts, the guys in black & red power armor. They are not hostile from the start but they are rude and at least in my games, they are glitchy. Sometimes my characters never attacked them but they got hostile for no reason and remained like that while my current character Emily killed about six but the rest aren't hostile.

I think that Talons start appearing once you have Very Good karma and Regulators if you have Very Evil. You probably automatically become VG if disarming the bomb and VE if blowing the town unless your karma was extreme before these events.

I'm also surprised that your game is so difficult, Renee but I don't find any expalantion anymore. For instance, in my games, there is very rarely any fighting going on outside Megaton, I'm sure Talons were never there in my game unless they were lured there.

Missile launchers are fairly common in my current game as well, they're not present in every battle but occasional raiders and super-mutants carry them. For some reason, 10mm submachine guns are in my game extremely rarely carried by raiders, sure, they are found in containers but almost never on raiders.

...

Well...my current character Emily enslaved her first target today and it was Arkansas because he was the closest. She and Dogmeat (whom she calls 'boy','buddy' or 'dog') since she doesn't know his name, are curently staying at slaver barracks. Emily is thinking a lot about her past deeds but her remorse seems to be only temporary. In the morning she's planning to visit the clinic to see if the slaver's doctor can help her cure addictions to alcohol, jet, med-x and psycho.

I forgot to say this. 7 is not enough! You need to grind that toon up Renee, how else can you expect to beat the game!