I've played a few Bethesda games and now I'm planning on giving this one a go (it will be my first proper Fallout play through).

Without spoilers or cheats, is there anything I should be made aware of?

For example: Bugs.

There's a companion who is an older man, and will talk to you after you talk to some other older men with him following you. The problem is, there are three specific old men he will react to, and you might stop being able to talk to them after doing certain quests. Make sure you don't progress the quests "Three Card Bounty" or "Volare" unless you have that companion with you.

Other than that you should be good to go. This game has a lot of bugs but they've largely been fixed in patches. You will probably still get the odd crash though, so make sure to save manually, because autosaves can get corrupted if it crashes while trying to save. You can also turn autosaves off entirely to improve stability, and I've heard that if you save in new slots rather than overwriting that's better, though god knows why. If you're on PC grab whatever the best community patch is nowadays and the CASM mod which creates a save every 5 minutes for you. If you're on Xbox, clear the cache occasionally in the consoles's settings and by holding LB+RB+X as the game is booting up. If you're on PS3... don't play Bethesda-engine games on a PS3

Game/story wise you're probably best off going in blind. There's no order in which things *have* to be done, so don't worry about getting to certain places too early. Pick a favourite weapon type as soon as you can and pour points into that for best results.

Thank you! Yes, I'm on the Xbox. I will keep this open in a tab whilst I play.

Do not listen to NCR propaganda. Try to learn as much about each faction from people in said faction, and some informed locals/companions.

Some are ill-informed and just spout stuff.

Your actions have consequences

Bugs, I've barely had any but be sure to save now and then so you've got saves to revert back to in case of bugs. Normally a reload from a previous save will fix it.

Thank you.

"Your actions have consequences" Totally agree.

It's useful to build up the speech skill, to open up more options/choices.

If somebody warns you that certain areas are dangerous, take it seriously.

Don't expect to do the whole game in one play through. There are 4 paths to follow in order to beat the game and certain quests can only be done depending on which path you choose. There are also faction specific quests that you can only get if you align with them.

Hey Im new to Fallout too and just "beat" 3 (I think I only have 2 major quests left I have no interest in). Im about to start NV later today. I'll tell ya what I find out to help out.