Don't forget that in Fallout 1 and 2 - often the best tactic is to run away very fast. That's usually how I'd make that first long trip out to Vault City. Just because you find yourself in a random encounter doesn't mean you have to try and fight your way through it.

Well if you thought slavers and raiders were bad, just wait till you start stumbling across Enclave patrols. Even when I have power armor, they still kill me.

I already came across an Enclave patrol, with Frankie leading it. Thankfully, they were interested in someone else, so I just politely let them walk away...

I got to Vault City and realized I misplaced the flask when I talked to Vic's friend... :banghead: Fortunately, I remember seeing several such V13 flasks in Vic's hut, so I gotta trek allll the way back for it...

Whle heading back, I ran into a gang of five slavers... but also with (I'm presuming) a Vault City goon squad. The VC guys ripped them to shreds (literally! ... and hosed Sulik once in the process by mistake) with some support from me, and now I got a SMG for Sulik (finally!) and a CAWS out of it. I have more guns than I need right now...

EDIT: I just realized that it was that little pickpocket twerp that probably relieved me of the V13 flask. :flame:

The old Fallouts can be pretty unforgiving games. Depending on one's own preferences, that can actually be a good thing, though. I rather enjoyed the danger inherent in taking my first trip out from the Den and trying to make it to Vault City in one go. That usually took a couple tries, but I actually thought it was refreshingly easy compared to my time with XCom.

I found it difficult, but not impossible - even with characters that weren't generally built for taking on loads of enemies. But, I also spent a lot of time running from my enemies, and making sure all my companions were set to stick close to me so that they didn't needlessly run into danger while I was just trying to get away. (Sulik, I've found, is indispensible early in the game for a non-combat build - at the very least for his capacity to draw enemy fire.)

Once you get over the initial hump, the difficulty starts to drop off rather dramatically, as well. By the end of the game, you are pretty much unstoppable - and most enemies aren't going to pose much of a challenge once you get some decent gear and a couple levels under your belt.

X-Com, now that was one damn tough game. It's one of the few games that I can think of outside of Rainbow 6 where you can loose half your squad in the first few minutes of play.

Hah no kidding. Fired it up yesterday, lost my entire squad due to mind control and really sniper-ish sectoids. Not looking forward to Chrysalids. Heh, if they tried to re-make X-COM..imagine how easy it'd be.

Ugh, Mind-Control and Chrysalids - the two most evil things ever invented for a videogame. I fell into a system in those games where I'd save at the beginning of every round just in case I'd end up losing half my squad all at once.

As hard as a gang of Raiders might be to run into in the beginning of Fallout 2 - at least they can't kill one of your companions in one shot and simultaneously turn them into an yet another one-shot enemy that you have to deal with.

That just goes to show that your relative difficulty with the older Fallout games is largely subjective. Coming from a turn-based sort of background, those games aren't really all that "tough" (mostly in that if you've played a lot of turn-based games you're going to be used to reloading alot and getting into fights you don't have any real chance of winning.) By that same token, however - I did find I had some difficulty in Fallout 3, whereas if I'd come into that game from a background of games like Gear of War, Halo, and the like: I probably would have had an easier time of it.

Funny. Anyways, ya visit Modoc yet? Great place.

It is probably a good idea to free Sulik (like nuclear day said)...he's awesome against KEENG RAAT (i think that's right) and will take care of you in the early game...anyways...hang in there...after vault city it starts going down hill and becomes kinda like FO3 (aghast! BLASPHEMY!)...you pretty much become a god (except for the occasional minigun/plasma crit)

To "remake" X-Com you'd basically have to make all the aliens take only 1 step, be unarmed and start the player with heavy ballistic vesting, and armor piercing ammunition...and then just then, you might have a chance....

Frank Horrigan isn't meant to attack you at the point.

The "real" Enclave patrols will kick your ass times ten.
I'm lv36 and I still occasionally lose against them.

Well the only real reason you "become a god" is that armor actually works in the originals. Most enemies don't carry AP ammo, or heavy weapons that can take on power armor aside from Enclave patrols and Super mutants. Anyway loot everything you can in the beginning for selling to get better armor. I managed enough to buy the leather armor after getting sulik before moving on to the Den and I tell you it was a life saver for some encounters.

Ahhh, I remember my first hellish hike to Vault City, desperately hoping that all I'd be jumped by where Geckos...

There is actually an easier way...in New Reno, there is this arms-dealer...

He carries on his person, but doesn't wear, a two-sleeved leather jacket. Steal it!

I'm not saying it's easy, but that jacket is really good!

Im playing too, for the first time. My first char was an utter failure, but it really goes to show that this is not a bethesda RPG where stats barely matter. I had to make a new character and this one is faring quite a bit better. The biggest difference is I tagged the steal skill and pickpocket everyone I come in contact with. Ammo and money is no longer a problem really. Now the only thing giving me trouble is those darn random encounters. Some of them are pretty much impossible. I think I need to hang around the starting area a little longer and fight weaker enemies to get my levels up a bit. All in all, its kind of tedious and boring at times but its still pretty fun. I only wish I had total control over my companions in battle. That would make battles a lot more fun I think.

Fallout and Fallout 2 were a lot of fun in my opinion. Heck, I still play them. Sure, they're tough at times, especially at the beginning, but then that's what 1) saved games are for and 2) running away is for. Random encounters especially are usually pretty easy to run away from. Sometimes discretion is the better part of valor.


I can't recall a single "impossible-to-detect trap" in either Fallout. The traps are always detectable. There's even a skill for dealing specifically with traps. If you can't detect the traps, perhaps it is because your character's perception is a tad too low? That or you didn't realize the raised plates that appear when you detect them are the traps?


Considering that I still play Fallout and Fallout 2...

Here's some general advice:

1 ) On your first time through, don't screw any of your SPECIAL attributes. Don't put a single one below 5, but especially don't screw with Intelligence.

2 ) Steal. Every chance you get, save and then try to sift through people's chests, shelves, etc.

3 ) Steal even more. Steal steal steal. Ammo is everywhere, you just have to pick pockets to get it. And you always need more stimpacks. A good 30% in the Steal skill is mostly all you need, if you don't mind saving before any attempts and loading if you fail. Not only can you get an awful lot of ammo this way, and get some guns before you can even buy them in shops, but you can also sell lots of loot for other things you need.

4 ) Books are your best friends. Small Guns, First Aid, Science, Repair, and Outdoorsman are all skills increased by reading books.

5 ) Whatever you do, never ever ever take the Fast Shot trait on your first time through the game. Aimed shots make the world go round. You can do far more damage and get additional effects using aimed shots.

6 ) If you hate random encounters then raise your Outdoorsman skill.

7 ) It almost shouldn't need to be said, but your first time through, really start yourself off oriented to using the Small Guns skill for combat. Combat in the game pretty much centers around this skill. Go with the flow. Each level always dump some points into it, even after it reaches 100% since range, darkness, and aimed shots all take away from your chance to hit.

8 ) Armor matters. Upgrade your armor whenever you can.

The trap was meant as an example of impossibility to prevail, not as an example in the game. The spikes are undetectable and thus guarantees player death, whereas if there were some subtle pattern anomaly indicating the traps, then it would instead become a pattern matching challenge instead of a major irritant.

"I don't give a damn about realism, I want to have fun playing a game. "

Thats ok, but crpg balance can't be completely separated from the rest of the world and should at least be consistent and make some sense.

Wow, maybe this is the answer to why I can't enjoy any modern RPG games.. There's just something about fallout I got used to in the past 9 years of continuous playing that I haven't found anywhere else ever since... Maybe except for morrowind.. yeah, there definitely was something about that morrowind...

When I play Fo2 these days I don't even read the dialogues anymore, since I know which one is the right answer and I basically know all the "talking-head" dialogues by heart.. and believe it or not, I still love to play it. I really do. Fo3 is a great game, but as every other Bethesda project it's unbalanced, bugged, feels unfinished - but yes, a few years of hard work by its fan community and it might be perfect.

I'm just curious if you're going to find that special little thing about old fallout games that made them such a legend...


I only hope it wasn't good old Fred

btw, if you have any questions about Fo2 just throw them at me, I'll have the answer ...

Indeed, I just did a play through with the restoration project mod.

Fallout 2 is painful to play, especially at the start. Not having points in certain things makes it take 10 minutes to kill something, like the [censored] plants in the garden. It's obnoxious.

No game should be that much of a pain in the ass to start off, bad development there.

I like my games to be challenging, unlike Fallout 3.

different people consider different things fun. FO2 and UFO:EU are the most fun games in my opinion, exactly for the fact you have to think carefully before you act.

funny that you mentioned tomb raider as an example, b/c games like TR - it's game design - revolve around the idea, that the more time you waste on it the better. so there will be times when you are meant to die, just so you keep trying again and again. and that's not the case with FO.

actually, I'm not sure why you would call FO2 hard, on my first playthrough I got all the way to final boss w/o breaking a sweat (on default difficulty settings) but couldn't beat him head on, b/c my character svcked, good thing there were ways around it. I'd suggest you read up on SPECIAL a little bit and start over with a new char. my key to success is: perception and agility, aimed shots to the eyes - each is a critical and destroys almost any enemy. also, don't miss any sidequests, you can easily gain 15 levels just doing quests before you hit New Reno for the first time. I always skip random encounters, that's one thing I hated about FO

anyways, for me FO is a paragon of game design exellency, if you consider it boring and just plain bad - you haven't played any good games yet

I bought the trilogy recently too, tried Fallout 2 got trough the temple okay, and then got owned by geckos :facepalm:

Fallout has gone a bit better, but i just can't beat the Deathclaw, i've tried maybe twenty times now waiting for the "Dice" to roll in my favor, but it's not just happening. I guess i need to go get bigger guns and/or heavier armor, that never happened in Fallout 3