Hey

How do I hack those computers??
When i chooise a word and it is 1/9, then i try to find another word where theres only one similer letter, but often it isn't that word any way!!!
Any one who can help???

P.S. Sorry about my english

1/9 means that 1 out of the 9 letters of the word you chose was in the correct position.

One trick is to scroll through and click on whenever closed brackets are highlighted. They may or may not contain other characters inside. It will randomly remove a dud entry or replenish your attempt allowance.

It took a bit of getting the trick of it, for me, but after a while I had it figured out. Remember that you can cancel (the "B" button on the XBox controller, for example) to quit, and you can start all over again with full attempts. Note that the password is then different so you are literally starting all over again.

Basically, once you have managed to get it to remove as many duds as possible, you choose a word and go from what it tells you.

Does that help? I can give a more specific/explicit example if you need.

You could just try picking random passwords, its what I like to call the "High Roller !" technique.

That's helpful. I've kinda avoided hacking terminals.

I lie to myself and say it's not a part of my gameplay style for that playthrough.

I think i get it, thanks

I use that method as well, but I find it irksome having to go back into the terminal multiple times when it is an "owned" terminal. Continually getting "bad" karma for it is annoying when you are near the beginning of the game(before you're really given the opportunity to get loads of "good" karma).

What I find helps is to start on the first word, and for examples sake let's say it showed 2/9 letters corect, and the systematically go through each word after it and see how many letters match, if it's less than 2 in this example, it would mean the word was not corect, and if it was more than two it would mean the same thing, if you found a word that had exactly two matching letters, pick it, because at least it might get you a little closer, also, when you find you have one attempt left, I would use the paren trick (mentioned early in the forum and also in your manual that came with the game) and if your not absolutely sure of the password I would back out and try again. I hope this explanation is helpful and I'm sorry if it's a little wordy and confusing. Happy hacking!

I have had good luck hacking by doing the following:

Look to see how many words have a similar pattern. Several, for example, might end in "ing". Try one of those.

• If you get 3 out of whatever correct, chances are it's one of those "ing" words.
  
• If, on the other hand, you get, say, 2/8, you can eliminate all words with the pattern you tried ("ing" in my example). Then that leaves only a few words to try.

And, of course, always start over after three tries.
The advantage is that time stops while you are working on hacking. Don't have to worry about a bad guy walking in on you while you are busy hacking the computer terminal.

In some cases, is it better not to hack terminals? I was trying to hack one in the Super-Duper Mart and on in a metro station. Reading up in it it seems that if I had hacked these I would have activated a Protectron Robot which would probably have attacked!

Hacking the computer would have given you the option to activate the Protectron if you wanted to. It would not start attacking you just by you hacking the computer as it had not yet been activated.

In my experience, the Metro Protectrons won't attack as long as you can provide a Metro Ticket. There's often at least one lying around in a drawer or filing cabinet nearby. I'm kind of a geek and think it's neat that it would ask me for a ticket and then take one

I had always kept one Metro ticket on me and was surprised when it took it. I had always assumed that the ticket was just one of those "junk" items that were good for caps only.

I hacked that one.

The robot asssumed I was an employee of the store and only attacked the bad guys!

I read up this after I posted, plus I remembered wrong. I DID hack the Super-Duper Mart terminal, but didn't activate the robot because I didn't know how. Once I had accessed it there was just a blank screen witha flashing cursor. Typing did nothing :shrug: However, strangley my answer to Moria was about a robot jumping out of a cake, despite it not happening. It was only then I realised that the robot could possibly be activated.
I got board trying to hack that Metro terminal, but had picked up a ticket anyway

I'm rather the opposite. When I find such a terminal, I love making multiple attempts and failing for 3 of the 4 available. Reset the terminal and try again for even more karma loss. For an evil character it's a easy and free ride to Very Evil.

Jenifur Charne

I can see your point, Jenifur.

For evil characters it would be a good way to increase your "evilness" without mindlessly killing people for no reason(as the old adage for Dungeons & Dragons goes, Chaotic Evil doesn't mean Chaotic Stupid;) ). Just because someone is evil(in a fictional world) doesn't mean they have to be of the "moustache-twirling" over-the-top kind of villain.

However, for the "good" player, it is annoying. :biggrin:

Funny, you could "fail" hacking attempts a bunch of times to lower your karma level to infinitely low levels and raise your karma by giving purified water to the countless hobos in the wastes to get it back up.

Love that.

One of the tweaks in Wrye Flash allows you to alter the number of words for the hacking minigame. You could use this tweak to make the minigame ridiculously easy and pointless if it bothers you too much to do it. On the other hand, it becomes extremely easy with a decently high Science skill, anyway.

Remember that you can get both XP possible with terminals that unlock doors by hacking the terminal, exiting out, then lockpicking the door.

As other have said, having letters correct means they are the right letter in THE RIGHT POSITION in the word. For example:

hacking-3 of 7

kingdom-1 of 7

wedding-3 of 7

running- 7 of 7


Hope everyone understood that lol.

Also always go for a word with a part that is common with many other options. Like "ing" or "ed" or words that start with "can" that way if say you pick a "ing" word and get 3 correct you most likely have the "ing" correct. That also means you can count out non-"ing" words most likely. You then pick a second "ing" word and that can verify if you are looking for an "ing" word. So by finding ways to group words together you can eliminate entire groups of answers rather than individual ones. If you pick an "ing" word and get 2 out of whatever right or less that means that you eliminate all "ing" words as possible answers.

Hope everyone could follow that too lol.

It does not become that easy even with a perfect Science skill.
This is because in the hacking minigame, the dud words remover is random EVERY time.
Even at Science 100, I have encountered Easy grade terminals, with 10 possibles, a mere 2 dud words brackets, and no replenish.


When I find doors or safes like that, where the doors do not require a 'key' (in those cases the 'key' is the terminal), I pick the lock on the door first, then hack the terminal second. Doing things your way will only ever give you one part of the XP possible since the terminal has unlocked the door fully for you.

Jenifur Charne

I am pretty sure that I was able to get XP twice even by doing the terminal first. All I did was successfully hack the computer and then just exit the terminal. Since I did not choose the option to unlock the safe/door I was still able to manually unlock it afterwards.

Ahhh.
Now I understand what you were doing.
I was thinking you had used the functions available on the terminal after a successful hack.

Jenifur Charne