Hey guys. I just got back into F3 in anticipation of NV, and my current character is a lot of fun and I plan on doing a lot with him (currently level 10, good karma, focusing on Small Guns / Lockpick / Repair, 20 hours in). However, I've never really played through with a female character or a bad karma character, so I'm missing out on a large part of what the game has to offer.

I've also never used melee as a primary skill (or really at all to be honest). So I was wondering whether anyone could talk about how practical it would be to play through in mostly realtime using almost exclusively melee weapons? I'd probably have some grenades and a pistol (Blackhawk most likely) for use in a pinch, but in general I'll be using purely melee weapons. Basically any advice and opinions on playing with melee as a primary skill would be appreciated!

And while I've got you, if you could offer any pieces of advice for playing as an evil and/or female character would be awesome. Stuff like perks, quests to do, weapons to use, places to go, etc.

I don't have mods or DLC, and I'm on 360 so mods are out of the question.

Without Broken Steel. Doing a pure melee build with explosives should be a piece of cake. Just remember use the shishkebab which is the best melee weapon in the game. High endurance because you will take a lot of damage. High strength, strength increases melee damage. Sneak is OK, but I usually don't bother with it much. Grab perks like pyromaniac, better crits, toughness, cyborg, black widow (if female). Ninja is useless without mods being it is broken. Maybe on XBox it isn't? Anyway good luck. If all else fails blow stuff up :nuke:

A melee character works much better than one might originally think. It is almost impossible to miss, and some of the weapons can really dish out the damage. As Dope said, get the shishkebab as soon as you can, it carves people up like a hot knife through butter (literally!).

One thing you will want to do tactics-wise is to use cover as much as possible. Often after an enemy spots you, it is best to duck back around a corner and wait. Let them come up, then smack them as soon as they come around the corner. This avoids taking damage from being shot up as you charge them.

I think it could work. I'd suggest keeping a dart gun or some bottlecap mines handy for Yao Gui and Deathclaws, and a Fat Man for the occasional Behemoth. Any other adversary can be efficiently dispatched with your melee weapon of choice.

I would, however, suggest carrying two melee weapons, the shishkebab and something else. That way, if your weapon breaks, you have a backup plan.

Evil karma isn't that hard to do, as long as you have the stomach for various atrocities. Since I don't, I play evil by getting the Mezzer and enslaving raiders... figure they deserve worse.

Exactly. All you have to do are things like:

1) Kill
2) Steal
3) THAT QUEST!!!
4) Enslave

You get caps a lot easier since more dead folks=more looting=more caps. Just be careful not to slaughter everyone or else you'll end up with a wasteland that's even more empty.

My guy's neutral however. It's amazing since all my other characters have gone from either pure good or pure evil in nanoseconds.

All melee or even unarmed can be a really fun play-style, even played non-VATS.

F3 doesn't do this the best of any game I've played, but it's not the worst. For some odd reason-- I chalk it up to game devs never experiencing a real fight, but I could be wrong-- there is a lag in the animation between the pressing of the ATTACK!!! button and the swing of the fist/sledge/shishkebab. Lots of games do it.

Actually, it's not so much a lag as it is a programmed in "pose": your character sets her feet, winds up, then swings after your enemy has moved. Total telegraphing, if the enemy AI had more brains than a 200 year-old deviled egg. You'd so get your ass kicked in a bar fight if you fought like that.... and no one ever would, unless they were Captain Kirk.

You get used to it and time your swings accordingly, but it really makes no sense. You wouldn't have a half second delay between hitting the attack button and firing a gun, would you? It would drive gamers to distraction. You have to tap the button when the mole ratty or vicious dog is still twelve feet away to time the punch as it pounces

Even with that "pose time" delay, it's still very satisfying. Link your hits up with side-stepping dodges and you can pwn any other melee npc with your bare fists... Ferals, Raiders, Mutes... They charge, you step aside, turn and smack 'em a couple of times, repeat. :toughninja: Woohoo! I can't find it, but there used to be a Youtube vid of someone beating up a Deathclaw with his bare hands.

Plus you sell all the ammo and guns you scrounge, so you get rich very fast. Enough to buy rare, powerful ammo for your one long-range .308 or .44 rifle, and enough to pay repair people to keep it in top shape, so you don't have to put points into Repair skills.

That's a good tactic to use even if you're not using primarily melee. I like using it with my Combat Shotgun. Fire a few shots at them with my .10 mm to get their attention, then duck around a corner and wait with my Combat Shotgun ready. It's also a good idea to drop a Frag Mine around the corner for some extra damage. Even a Super Mutant Master goes down in no time with that approach.

Ninja uses an entry point so critical chance is calculated on the hit. It will not show as a general bonus to crit chance in the console. Increasing the percent chance of Ninja does seem to work properly. In my SPECIAL revamp mod I did move it out of the entry point and into an increased crit chance ability just so it will show up properly, but I don't believe it is a necessary change.

Playing as an Evil Female character is my speciality.

Rule 1 Steal everything, make sure that the owner isn't looking your way.
Rule 2 If you see a scavenger (not the caravans) check what they have in their store and if they have anything valuable, sneak behind them and shoot them
Rule 3 Profit, Profit, Profit its all about the caps
Rule 4 Don't blow up Megaton its not worth it under any circumstances. Even if your pure evil its still not worth it
Rule 5 Be mean to people but be smart about it.

The Achilles heel of a dedicated melee character (I'm trying one now) seems to be the fact that he/she can run into trouble with raiders, Talon/Regs, or super mutants armed with projectile weapons at a distance. You might well lose half your health closing in with them, even though you slaughter them quickly and efficiently when you get there. A good option is to team up with a follower like Jericho, whose Chinese assault ruifle chews up enemies at a distance.

Then don't close on them, let them come to you. Simple.

Just the other night I did this with a bottlecap mine, and took out two Talon company mercs in one kaboom! I never even had to lay a finger on them (except to look the corpses).

Yes, never underestimate the power of a well placed Bottlecap Mine. Though I prefer saving them for tougher opponents than Talon Co. mercs. A couple of Frag Mines are almost as good as 1 Bottlecap with them, and I tend to have alot more of them. There's one spot where they spawn in, near the Sewer Depot by Grayditch. They'll show up by the front door and there's a side door where you can exit and start laying 2 Frag mines around every corner of the building. Then just take a couple of shots at them and let them chase you around the building for a bit. Pretty soon, no more Talon mercs.

Yeah, the closing distance against a crowd thing is the crux, alright.

I've been having a good run getting a look at them to see if one's carrying a flamer, shooting the one with the Flamer in the head with the .308, then ducking behind some NON-EXPLODING object and waiting for all the rest with some spiked knuckles, or my favorite Burning Lawnmower Sword.

heh heh.

Those Flamers are a bear at about 15 feet. I hate those things.
I love setting mines, though, and luring enemies over them. Don't know why that's so satisfying, but it is. The combo of melee/unarmed + explosives is mighty entertaining.

I guess because it makes you feel like you outsmarted them. One second they're barreling towards you saying things like "I'm going to tear your heart out." then the next second BOOM.

Doing a melee character based on Buffy the Vampire Slayer for amusemant at the moment, and it works pretty well. I did raise her stats a bit via console command but an all-melee character is certainly viable. The loss of ranged firepower is counteracted by the fact that you can sell literally every gun and bullet you find; you'll have quite a lot of excess funds.

Im currently playing a stealthy pure melee character. Haven't laid a finger on a trigger besides the BB gun you have to shoot. I went to The Pitt at about level 4 to get the Auto axe, I thought that would be a good start. Then I did Anchorage at level 7 and got my stealth armor and the Shocksword. He's now about level 10. I find it quite fun playing stealthy melee. Not as hard as I thought it would be so I pumped up the difficulty all the way up. Got a bit harder there. Quite a fun challange. I really enjoy it and I always love being a stealthy character. Don't forgot the excessive amount of caps you get from selling ammo and guns. Super Mutant Behemoth was probably my biggest challenge yet. Its a fun challenge and I recommend trying it.

It's an easy game. Pure melee is fairly viable with the right build, although there are rare occasions when the enemies are unreachable, e.g. turrets, so I'd recommend maybe sticking Explosives in there.

Or keeping a shotgun handy, even if you're not that good with it. And stock up on Med-X and anything else that boosts your damage resistance: Barkskin, Toughness, Cyborg, and some good armor.