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You can ignore survival if you want.
Speech is fantastic and you should bump it if you want to avoid certain aggravating fights.
I liked FO3 the same way I liked Oblivion: they were both good games, quality AAA RPGs. But Bethesda lost something in between Morrowind and Oblivion, I don't know that I can quantify what it was. The only way I can think to describe it ATM is that they lost vision or daring or inspiration or something.
NV has that quality, as did FO1 and FO2. In fact NV is probably my second favorite Fallout game after the original as of right now. I hold off on assigning a final value since sometimes it takes years before I can really decide how much I like a game, but about 40 hrs in I'm putting this game up there with the classics.
Since this is a hard thing to explain I'll give examples (spoilered to be safe, but they're not really spoilers, I won't go into specifics) of things that NV did that a Bethesda game wouldn't have that elevate it a notch above FO3 IMO:
Boone:
The Kings:
Chief Hanlon:
Those are all pretty small examples, and I could probably do a dozen more but I won't. The accumulation of all those things is what makes the world feel real, which changes the way I experience it pretty much 100%. Enough stuff like that and even a game's flaws seem to be part of a continuous whole.
<3 I can so agree.
Also I am considering doing a LP of Fallout: Tactics. Because I do love cutting people with rippers in that game.
I found sneak to be not such an effective point dump, since most of the time you'll be relying on stealth boys when the going gets tough.
Energy weapons vs guns - I'd say energy weapons get the edge late game, with the special gauss rifle, guns are close, but energy weapons just edge them out, and the ammo is more common after a point.
Melee vs Unarmed - both are really good for dealing with deathclaws and other wildlife, I'd go Unarmed just for the ballistic fist though.
Repair is a license to print money, and both it and science allow you to skip some absolutely obnoxious fetch quests.
My progression to 100 was:
1) guns, 2) repair, 3) science, 4) lockpick, 5) speech
If I could do it again it'd be:
1) energy weapons, 2) repair, 3) speech, 4) science, 5) lockpick
explosives is kinda crap, the 40mm grenade machine gun was still awful at putting down deathclaws compared to the higher single shot damage guns and energy weapons.
<3 Stumpy and the Shotgun Fist <3
EDIT: Wait a minute, was that on PA instead? Second and last result on Google for SATSF.
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Is this still your attempt to illustrate your point by writing "in the style of FO3" or are you just actually like this?
Guns are serious variety, energy weapons less so but still enough to be neat. Melee is tricky, but rewarding. Personally? the range of guns in this is just too awesome to ignore. There's a lot of potential for western shootouts. Speech is handy. Order of handy non-combat skills is probably science, lockpick then speech. Science is just so useful in so many scenarios in this game. Not sure about knocking people out, but stealing with stealth is pretty simple.
Currently playing: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Metro 2033
Mostly it plugs a dialogue gap, but there are a lot of times you can use it where like, someone would send you to pick up 3 scrap metals, a pressure cooker and a wonderglue, you'll just be like [science] what if you used corn syrup water and a piece of ham.
It also lets you make stimpacks, and reload energy cells.
It saved me from several tedious fetch quests. Unfortunately though, the hacking is the same, but it seems to be less of a companion for lockpick in this one, and more it's own thing.
There are a lot more dialogue options were science is useful this time around.
Personally, I didn't put much into it, but that's because I like the lockpicking minigame more than the hacking one.
EDIT: Though I did appreciate that there were a lot less "here is a locked door/safe with a terminal next to it" situations. Hacking usually gets you information, lockpicking usually gets you loot or a shortcut.
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they are meaningful.
They make me feel like a bad ass.
I wore the
For the entire game. There was only like 4 or 5 times where I had to take my reinforced metal armor off of ED-E and wear that instead
I'm still kind of bummed there are no ponchos in the game, as it was originally my intention to play a post-apocalyptic Man With No Name.
But then I realized how useful speech is in the game and started dumping a whole bunch of points into it and that sort of went down the tubes anyway.
Is it possible to raise the level cap above 30? I haven't found any mods that do it.
I'm playing on hardcore mode without survival and it's been fine. Survival's probably one of the less useful skills.
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I know this seems like a stupidly obvious thing to say, but I'm betting we'll at least see a smaller raise in the cap with an upcoming DLC.
Aw, man, I hope we get a full expansion this time around
Yeah, that was pretty great
Don't send that seditious shit my way!
Yes. Play hardcore. Adds a fantastic dynamic to the game I like more than anything else. I have 25 in survival. I'll probably put another 5 points into it since the recipes you can make at 30 are good.
The biggest survival skill check I found in dialogue was like 45, you need it to cook food, but honestly, there is enough crap laying around the world that I might get it up to the point where you can make a caravan lunch and don't put anymore into it.
In fact, if I had a choice I'd just take packrat perk over survival, because packrat effectively cuts the weight for every food/water object in half.
I went through hardcore / hard with survival at 35, and it was only touch and go at the very beginning. Once you get a base of operations to dump food at and discover a water source you are g2g.
The Bounty Hunter Duster caps damage at 6, thats cool. I think. I'm actuallly not sure. But damn it looks sweet.
I've yet to try knocking people out. How does that work? If you straight up bitch slap a dude and steal his money, won't that count as attacking a faction? (much like taking a shot at someone?).
On usefulness, well... Science I would say is great if you're going energy weapons. Otherwise, not so much. Same with repair and guns. I mean they're both pretty sweet on their own, but if you're going guns without repair, or energy weapons without science, in my opinion you're doing it wrong.
I ended up pumping science later on with my sneaky sniper guy, just because I like to hack terminals and read the emails and such. It really helps set the scene in a lot of environments.
On the Morrowind vs. Oblivion debate, I can't say that there is a parallel to this in regards to FO2 and FO3. Morrowind was a rich imaginative world full of lore, magic and jam packed with secret and awesome things. Oblivion was... run around for 15 minutes and you've seen everything to see.
When I see people that love NV but (are acting like) they hate FO3, I just don't get it. It's not a radical departure in any real sense. It's a regular sequel. A little more shit, a little more fine tuning, but practically the same game.
"There is not a man of us who does not at times need a helping hand to be stretched out to him, and then shame upon him who will not stretch out the helping hand to his brother."
I hate this fucking site so much.
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My wife was very confused.
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
If you make it to 30 before the end game, then you must be just grinding.
cause I did shit loads of side quests and killing things and I didnt ding 30 until the final end game.
Personally, I haven't even hit 20 yet, in my first playthrough or this one
I think FO3 might be the only game I ever played where I was actually satisfied with the way they did the DLC so I wouldn't mind seeing it again with NV. That being said, I hope it's more along the lines of Broken Steel or Point Lookout... the rest of them were linear, combat oriented and didn't really feel like they even belonged to the same game.
there is a mod on the nexus that raises to 100, not sure if has the same problems the one fo3 had with levelled lists messing up, but i dont think nv as any levelled lists from what i can tell.
also question to anyone withe classic pack, is it worth keeping the vault 13 canteen on me at all times, like is there a dialouge or some reference to fo1/2 you get if you have it? at the moment its getting annoying and making h20 management useless, even with the 5 sips limiter.
I was taken aback to run into a dialogue option which required a Survival skill of 60 for success. Mainly because I was like, "Who in their right mind would have that many points in Survival?"
Only dialogue option which used that skill I've found, and it was pretty unimportant.
Currently playing: Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Metro 2033
I made the mistake of taking the XP+10% perk three times, but even taking that out of the equation it's still pretty easy to max out just going around doin' quests and shit, no real grinding nessecary.
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Sounds good, especially the part about being separate from lockpick. I hate the hacking minigame though.... oh well.
Good to know, thanks!
Because for all the hate Fallout 3 has, It did give us the great metal god of glory.
you wasted 3 perks on that?
You are fucking nutty
GT: batshido Hit me up on ME3.
I'm on a pretty good clips towards 30. I haven't confronted Benny or done any of the faction quests and I'm at level 24 or 25 (can't remember, at work now), and it seems like there are still a lot of side quests I haven't done.
I have spent a lot of time wandering around killing stuff though.
The Oblivion:Morrowind as FO3:NV comparison isn't perfect but it's got some accuracy to it I think. NV's gameplay is pretty much the same as FO3's, but everything else (story, atmosphere, characters, mood) is different enough that there's a big gap in quality between the two.