I'm looking for a challenge in FO3. I'm pretty experienced with the game, and I've always played on normal.
Before I up the difficulty, I just want to know, how much harder is it?

Well it's... you know... pretty hard.

I recommend trying it. I always play FO3 and now FNV on very hard. It actually got to a point w/ FO3 where it was too easy on very hard so I installed the FWE mod from http://www.fallout3nexus.com/ which made it much more challenging.

A lot easier than I sure as hell thought it was gunna be.

Very Hard is very misleading but I can't imagine what Mothership Zeta + Point Lookout would be like on very hard.

Very Hard is not very realistic. Yes, I've done it. All your enemies become bullet sponges. I should be able to kill anything with one sneak headshot with a sniper rifle. Think about 8 solid hits. I play on Normal until level 5 and Hard the rest of the time. I make the gameplay harder by imposing self-restrictions instead.

I have played on Hard and Very Hard to see how it was, but for me it just killed all the fun. Enemies become bullet sponges indeed, pumping clip after clip in one enemy just doesn't feel right to me.
Now I always play on Normal, it is the right balance for me. When I snipe with enough XP it should be a one hit kill and I should be able to drop medium enemies with no more then one clip.
But I would say try it yourself and adjust the level to your liking.

My reaction to, giving the enemy far more health does not make the game more fun. Why not change the equipment lists, more sniper rifles, and rocket launchers, add fatman to the random equipment list, with a 5% chance that a raider is carrying a fatman you can not ignore them and let dogmeat handle them. Ok with some tanks in groups, note the tanks might not be the most dangerous enemy only the one who is hard to kill.

One other way to increase difficulty is to cap your hp, if you have 700hp you can ignore most enemy fire and just concentrate on killing them.
This was an even bigger problem in Oblivion at higher levels.

Fairly hard without any good equipment.

I think Very Hard is a bit too much - enemies can soak up too much damage. Hard is a bit more realistic, I think and provides enough of a challenge for those finding Normal too easy (as I did), without having insanely powerful enemies that refuse to die. :shrug:

If you are not the worst FPS player ever,crank up the difficulty to vh/hc , don't spoil your game with guides , videos or discussions and gtfo the forum now. Come back after you finish your awesome first game

Pretty easy.

Eh, I got done playing a few hours of VH, and it's pretty easy. I think I'm going to switch back to Normal, because I don't like wasting all 172 5.56 rounds on one Super Mutant Master

I'm playing on hard (and I'm not an expert FPS player) and I find the game just to the challenge I wanted. So I recommend it and not Normal.

Fallout 3's "Very Hard" is another game's "Normal". This game needs "ulta super duper insane HC" difficulty level.

I've played Very Hard. It's, well not very hard. Maybe not easy and it's maybe challenging but I doubt you need to worry about it too much. And I'm certainly not a FPS expert but was still able to survive combat well enough with Very Hard. As mentioned above, Very Hard can also be very unrealistic.

What is very hard is the game with FWE and MMM on normal difficulty. Those are great mods. And they definitely increase the difficulty. Your character can easily can be killed in under once second if you're not careful. PC only, but if you've got a PC I highly recommend those mods.



I could buy that. The last game I played before returning to FO3 is Mass Effect 2. Seems Mass Effect 2 on Normal was about as hard as Fallout 3 on Very Hard. Maybe ME2/Normal was a bit harder than than FO3/VH, at least on the first playthough (got easier the second time around).

The Ultra Super Duper Insane hardcoe is FWE, I think

Can I install FWE or MMM and continue my current game? I doubt that but I need to ask!

Unrealisticly hard.

I would like to see a difficulty where it is realistic, One shot to the head and your finished (same with an enemy, not super mutant etc.) bleed out effects (visually as well).