When you play through Fallout 3, What style of gameplay do you prefer?

The lock, load and blow the hell out of everything that looks at you odd.

or

The sneaky, stealthy light-footed assassin who disposes his foes of quickly?


Personally I LOVE tossing a grenade into a room (with my enhanced explosive area mod so nades actually DO something) and walking in with my assault rifle, or combat shotgun and just turning the entire room into scattered flying bits of clutter.
I do have my little soft spot for the stealth playstyle though. I absolutely love being able to assassinate people when they piss me off, take their little key, go to their shop and rob them friggen blind :shifty:

Also **ITEM AND OA SPOILERS**

I just finished playing through Operation Anchorage for the first time (This is my second playthrough, never really made it there on my first before I restarted). Unfortunately i'm playing through with "only reverting to a save if I die, so if I do something bad to mess something up, fml).I went into the Armory room after I finished and got all my goodies :drool:. The goodies being the Power Armor, Ninja Suit, Gauss Rifle, and sixy sixy sixY improved versions of the small guns.Unfortunately I did this relatively early on. Ended up finishing OA at level 7. And now I don't think I'm going to find anything useful for.... friggen ever of playtime now.But since I got all this neat stuff, i'v been debating turning my playstyle into a lock, load, stealth and blow crap up xD.

Oh anyways. What does everyone else prefer as a playstyle, and how do you feel about them?
And if you got any advice on a sweeet murderous stealth con-man who destroyed everything, robs, everyone, and raqes, kills and pillages the innocent, let me know

I do my best to avoid bloodshed, and make use of stealth, disguise (mods) and plain running away. I have grown to dislike combat and one day it just came to my mind, how can my character save the world if he was the number one cause of death in the Wasteland?

My current character throws nades to start the party, then I hose down the area with a mini gun. I hit O:A at about level 5. I don't understand your concern... there are far better weapons (imho) out there.

Lmao. Number one cause of death, sounds like me alright.
I dunno, when I play games like this, I try to imagine "What would I be like in this situation, what would I do?".
Sadly enough this turns into me playing as a "Look out for yourself, make sure you're taken care of" guy. This usually results in me robbing people blind for stimpacks (Seriously. I end up with like 250 lol), or murdering people for the stuff they have that I want//need.

I see your view on it though. I'v tried playing it that way but, it seems EVERYTHING wants to kill me. I had a "good" character, walked out of Megaton, and five minutes later had like 7 contract killers trying to waste me in the wastelands. Nooot cool.

Aand I actually started this game off good, giving the world the benefit of the doubt. Until I came across O:A and they pulled that little betrayal. Ya.
I'm murderous now lmao.




Omg you have no idea how much I wish I knew I could use Grenades in V.A.T.S (I don't know WHY I never realized this, but I started having tonnes of fun with it last night, now i'm throwing my explosives skill up as well .

And well I played my other character to level 17, but I ended up restarting due to mod issues messing my game up. But the Gauss rifle is better then everything else I had (except the Fat Man), the improved versions of the 10mm, Chinese Assault Rifle and Combat shotgun all outshinned my weapons. I Do know I will find better weapons, but whenever I play through my first game file of any game, no matter how much I explore. I somehow miss unique weapons haha.

I'm a team player, my fembot companion is my energy/heavy weapons specialist & I handle the small arms, locks, repairs & explosives

That's a good idea. I was debating walking through the game with a companion. But the first one I got died like, friggen instantly ><

Actually, I've found that I am most effective when using grenades,the minigun (I use the unique version) and the Heavy Incinerator out of VATS. I can bounce nades around corners, and whip them dramatically farther than VATS will allow. I just wish we could cook them a bit... As for the minigun and incinerator, at most I've ever been able to string together is three VATS setups, while using it in real time, I can walk the fire right into them. So I free hand it, tapping the trigger on a regular basis during combat, because I can then keep it spooled up and ready to go faster than if I spooled it up from a cold start. I also lay elaborate minefields to funnel crowds of enemies to me, but that's another story.

If you decide to get companions, I cannot stress enough to you to never ever give them grenades of any kind. You will die a lot.
I gave Charon some nades once. We had a raider battle in a metro tunnel. I watched him throw a nade, it bounced off a pipe, and landed at my feet. Cue up death music....

Who was it? found most of them to be pretty tough, Dogmeat was weak but with broken steel he is a tank at higher levels because of a bug who give him tons of health.
For the others equip them, yes all the human and the ghoul can wear power armor even before you can. Yes except Fakwes and Dogmeat they get trouble with albinos or reavers so it's best to tell them watch your back and them to use ranged combat.

Lmao. I love that.
But ya, I mean I out of VATS throw grenades all the time. I do find it hard to be honest, to aim them sometimes. I either throw to short or bounce it off an overpass of sorts trying to compensate for my lack of arch-adjusting skill. But When I see something at a distance, such as a raiders head JUST over a little sandbag or piece of road. It nicely bounces at their feet and explodes. I still have alot of work with them. I need a mod that makes GRENADE explosions bigger. I see some for all explosions, but this usually causes cars to develop a nuclear unfriendly personallity that usually results in me, and everything within a 50 mile radius dying due to chain explosions and my own "OH GOD ITS CHASING ME CHUCK GRENADES EVERYWHERE" mentality (: lmao.
And ya, don't give them rocket launchers either... had both of them shoot me in the back while im running into the enemy base blazing guns.
*Que missle falling high pitch whistle and wait for certain doom*




Annnd i'v had jericho, and some girl from paradise falls. forgot her name. They kinda svcked lol.

:facepalm: So true! I gave Fawkes a bunch to carry just 'cause they were over my weight limit, and he threw one after another inside a Satcom tower. Pretty funny though, with me yelling and scrambling around trying to get away and 4 or 5 raiders shooting at us. :ahhh: I had to do it a few times because of the auto-save coming in the door.

For another fun style, I like to toss in a grenade and then run in with Knuckles or a Powerfist or Shish to clean up in the confusion. I never had much luck with VATS and grenades. It would be kind of nice if you could practice throwing baseballs of pool balls, but you get enough practice any way.

Lately I have been playing a stealthy, sniper type. She only uses single-shot rifles, like Ol' Painless and the Lincoln Repeater. It is a nice change from my last character, who relied mainly on the Xulong Assault Rifle, and could just spray her enemies to death with bullets. On the other hand Artemis (my riflewoman), is all about one shot, one kill.

I like using grenades too, but I have to admit that the most fun I have had with them is shooting them out of the hands of Raiders. I remember the first time I did it, it blew the Raider to bits!

personally, I mostly use nades for clearing out the gas filled areas & as targets if the the enemy tries to use them, & yes companions using explosives... NOT a good thing.

I'm making 2 new files because i'v gotten into this stupid mood i get into when I'm forced into restarting my first play through, cause then I want to play two different ways.
Lol.

I believe this game is meant to be played at least three times, to follow each different karmic path. But when you have the opportunity to create all kinds of characters, the replayability is greatly enhanced. I guess I've played 11 or 12 full game characters before getting bored with them.
Here is a play style that I am doing currently (copied and pasted):

Here are some of my play restrictions, to name a few:

1. No fast-travel
2. Ammo has weight
3. One big gun, one mid-range weapon, one "up close and personal" weapon, some nades, couple of mines.
4. 5 stims, two radaways, two radx
5. You can pop one stim only, during combat, and no spamming of any health items.
6. No Educated, Comprehension, Grim Reaper's, Light Step, Finesse, etc : basically any perk that makes you too powerful.
7. You cannot carry ammo for a weapon you are not carrying. Honestly, you cannot carry 40 missiles. You can carry one, but since this is all fiction, I say you can carry two.
8. No sleeping in the wastes unless you have a companion.
9. I have to go to the doctor to cure radiation poisoning and crippled limbs. Sometimes meaning that I must walk my crippled ass all over the Wasteland looking for a doctor.
10. Every transaction must equal zero. Which means that I am basically trading, instead of selling. My barter is unchanged from the beginning = 13 for skill.
11. I can make money by scavenging, finding Quantums, and selling sugar bombs.
12. You cannot repair unless you are standing next to a workbench. You cannot be over-encumbered, ever. If you can't carry it, dump it.
13. If a weapon breaks on you out in the wastes, you must drop it, no matter what it is.
14. My character has been addicted to alcohol since level 4 or so.

Try it after you've made your uber character.

Pretty much all of my characters have been very stealthy.

Might try a frontal assault character. But I'm playing with FWE, which dramatically increases weapon damage. So that makes a walk in a blast the place up character difficult, i think, since if there are a bunch of enemies and one has a minigun your character can be shredded in about a second.

I use mods to make Wasteland more dangerous (ex. http://www.fallout3nexus.com/modules/members/index.php?id=1079527) and I play with 4 gang members with me all the time (I'm the gang leader). Then I decide do I play around Wasteland securing the places from enemies or do I sneak around with my team (if you try this, better to download a mod that makes better NPC AI:s; or your team sneaking will be cursed already.)

On the other save (the cheat/mod test save) I put TGM on, customize vanilla weapons as superpower ultimate killersweapons (try modding a Chinese AF by Fire rate in 90, burst shot on and put the colour to black-red; COOL) or download weapon and other mods to test (or just to have fun time killing, destroying and exploding).

Nothing says loving like sneaking up behind them, leveling your shotgun at their head and watching the ‘sparks’ fly!

I can’t stand spending more than three shots to kill someone so for me it’s sniping, or sneaking. Grenades are really only good to catch their attention with after I have put a mine in their way to come get me, or to slip in their pocket after I have pulled the pin. Mines are great, one of my favorite spots was a hallway I mined up, took a pot shot at a SM with a minigun and pulled back. He walked down the hallway and all blew himself to pieces. One shot, three mines and I’ve got a new minigun to pass along to the caravan guards.

I don’t like companions or Dogmeat, he’s great when wandering outside but in a building he is just a crazy liability. Dogmeat and Clover seemed to get along fine though. I rarely bothered shooting when both of them were on the job, just walk around and take care of my own business and let them kill things. All I was good for was sniping enemies before they noticed them.

Do grenade timers last longer depending on explosives or sneak skill? Cause when I put them in someones pocket, it goes off after like half a second lol.

I gave Clover a fatman and some mini nukes, yes it she stopped saying "can I have a better gun" downside was that she blew me up. Actually it was semi serious, I gave her the tesla cannon to carry and she used it very tactically, only picked it up to hit enemies behind cover from times to times. Yes this was probably because with her skills it did less damage than the unique Chinese assault rifle but nice to hit hidden enemies. Fatman did most damage so it was the obvious choice in close combat.

Grenades is hard to use outside of VAT, still useful in some cases, clear out gas leaks, sometimes they are fun to throw down holes as a gift the enemies downstairs.
In VAT nuka grenades are a lightweight reaver/ albino killer.

With shotguns, who shotgun does you use? Just tested out the metal blaster from the pit in sneak mode, single hit to kill on sentry bots with body shot so you will do the same on a overlord or reaver if you manage a headshot. The terrible shotgun is even more effective but has a higher spread so you has to get closer .

The Metal Blaster is a fantastic weapon. My energy characters tend to use this a lot. Personally, I prefer the Double Barreled Shotgun from Point Lookout. I just love how it looks. Quite devastating when used out of VATS, at about 15 feet. I use the Kneecapper before I visit Point Lookout. I hate how the combat shotguns look, so I never use them and always sell them.