Hello all, I am coming back to Fallout3 after some years and have added some mods that make it harder. I don't want to do the main quest again, in fact no quests at all for a bit, just roam around mapping the territory, scavenging, surviving and generally pleasing myself. That is fine, up to a point, but here I am, roaming around somewhere north of TenPenny, still in a Vault suit, and easy game for any Talon squad which happens to come my way ( and they do). I suppose I hoped that at level 3 I wouldn't meet such strong opponents, but no matter how carefully I creep around, and try to avoid them, they pop up, and of course, kill me. So, my question is, will I have to do quests so as to get better gear and clothing before I go wandering ( on tiptoe) all over the Wasteland, and if so, do I have to go through the whole gamut of sidequests - getting food and medicines from Super-Mart, doing the fire-ants at Greytown (?), getting me legs blown off by mines, irradiated, dealing with ghouls under Tenpenny, rescuing kids from the Mutants at German Town and dealing with the slavers at Paradise Falls etc, etc. I have done most of these before, and I wanted to play a free game this time around, and hopefully find quests I haven't yet done, when I am ready to take them on. At present I am trying to locate Canterbury Common, because I don't think I got to grips with that area in previous games. I have got all extensions bar Zeta, but don't want to explore them until I feel i have got to wherever I want to go in the main map, nor do I want to join the Outcasts or any other faction - just me, though a friendly mutant might come in handy here and there!

Anyway, your wisdom appreciated

I'm playing a heavily modded game. So my setup might be a lot different than yours. Anyway...

Talon company armor is pretty good, if you can take them by surprise with a decent weapon. If that's too much right now, get armor off raiders. It's not great, but it's better than what you've got.

Also, you are collecting loot and trading, right? You can get by with a 10mm pistol for a bit, but you want to upgrade your weapons, too. That will make fights a lot easier. You can still be the lone wolf anti-social character, just be a practical one, who occasionally trades for supplies.

Another option is to get the armored vault suit from Moira. You can do that without starting up her quests. Again, it's not great, but it's ok early in the game.

some items can only be obtained through questlines. But there are versions of those same items just laying around in the waste somewhere, waiting to be picked up. Use the Fallout 3 wiki site, or just google "fallout 3 assault rifle" or "fallout 3 combat armor) (really any item) and it will tell you where one is laying around somewhere waiting to be picked up. The most powerful, uniquely named weapons mostly require a quest.

Level 3 on "very hard" is pretty low to be complaining about dying all the time though

You can always just set the difficulty to "very easy" for one fight if it's frustrating you badly.

well thanks y'all. Lone-wolf anti-social is EXACTLY where I am, and want to stay at really. Didn't know about there being goodies just out there waiting to be collected - but I prefer to come across them serendipitously . I have garnered a few weapons by following the traders and then scavenging from the raiders they killed, but sold their clothes to get caps to buy ammo as the FWE mod I have on there reduces the amount of loot. I could set it to vanilla, but prefer to tough it out. I.m not dying all the time Travis but seem to need a lot of bullets to kill things - like about ten to kill a radscorpion, 5 or 6 to get a feral ghoul. Think the gun I am using is a Lewis machine gun (?) and in good condition, but soon I will be out of ammo for that. Even the raiders seem to be equipped with high-powered rifles in FWE where in vanilla they would use cue-sticks and knives. When the mercs find me, even though I am hidden and not moving, my bullets seem to have no effect on them, but theirs do on me... ho hum