Dealing with the fallout of these choices - Lets Play Fallout 1

[TheGreatCatJames]

Check out the intro

"Fallout" Intro

Fallout 1 is an RPG created by Interplay, (Who closed down but members went on and became obsidian) There were two sequels to this game, (2, and New vegas) as well as a couple of spin offs, (Tactics, and brotherhood of steel) And a couple of games made by someone else that aren’t very good and we’ll forget about them.

The main premise is america became such a fascist place and so ready to kill anyone that nuclear war happened and people in america mostly survived by hiding in vaults. One of these vaults, Vault 13, is the one the player starts from and is having a problem, the water chip failed and has 150 days of water left. The Vault decided to send out one person to try to get a second one.

This is where we come in.

And I do mean we! Because I’m not going to pick the starting stats, skills, and traits. You are! I’ll play the game dealing with these choices. Note: I won’t go for low intelligence, It’s really ableist and I don’t want to deal with that.

Q: So We’ll choose any stats we want?

A: Sort of, stats can max out at 10 and get as low as 1 (Unless the gifted trait is chosen then it can only get as low as 2.) Fallout starts players with 5 at everything and 5 more points, lowering stats will give more points to play around with but of course we’ll get penalties

Q: Can we decide on the character’s name? Age? Gender?

A: Yes. Though a name can only be 12 spaces long, age is between 16 and 35, and since this is the 90’s it only lets players be male or female, also there’s not a whole lot of places were we can attempt to romance someone in this game (even then it’s only heterostuff so who cares.)

Q: Can we choose morality?

A: If you want to. I’ll play the character with a certain morality.

Q: What are traits?

A: So all the fallout games have these (Except the ones made by other people who we don’t care about) A trait has both an upside and a downside. I’ll go over each one later

Q: So choosing skills, what’s up with that?

A: Basically players are allowed to tag 3 (4 if the player later gets the Tag! Perk) skills, not only will these skills get bonus points to them but also for every additional point added to them will count as 2 points Players get more skill points on level up.

Q: Will readers get to pick perks?

A: Maybe, could be fun if that was done but if people are feeling merciful they could let me decide them

Q: What do all these things do?

A: Ah glad you asked

Like it says the strength stat will modify hit points (Along with endurance) Carry weight, and melee/unarmed weapon damage (Though you need a lot for that to make a big difference) weapons also need a certain amount of strength to use them but really 90% of the weapons don’t need more than 5. We’re going to get a lot of stuff though out the game so having a lot of strength will help with that.

Perception is great if we’re going for a ranged weapon build, and good even if we don’t. Sequence will not only decide who goes first a turn but high enough will let us lap enemies.

Endurance helps us live. Gives us more hitpoints per level and also resistances, there’s also natural healing but that happens every 3 hours of rest/travel

Will help us talk to people. Though having a high speech skill can make up for that

possibly the most important stat for any build. and also not really a thing that is measurable in the real world. Regardless more int means more skill points!

We’ll need this if we do a lot of combat (We probably will) basically every turn we have a number of action points to do things, with a max of 10 (Though only if we get agility to 10) Armor class is our skill to dodge attacks and also pretty useful though armor will increase this. 5 agility will get us 7 action points which is good enough for most builds.

An important stat, a lot of things are affected by luck, such as critical hits (1% chance for every point of luck) To critical failures (Yep this game has those) To random encounters.

Now on to skills, skills can go up to 200% though around 150% is usually enough to carry players though the game

Small guns: Most guns are in this category so it’s a good idea to have this skill tagged

Big guns: 3 guns are in this one but they do a lot of damage but we won’t get any early on
Energy weapons: All the weapons in this one are very powerful but again we won’t get any early on.

Unarmed: There are fist weapons that use this skill so technically not unarmed, regardless it’s awesome to invest in early on, Need the best weapon in this category to keep this skill good in the endgame.

Melee weapons: Non fist melee weapons anyway. There’s a lot of weapons in this category and they don’t cost a lot of action points to use similar to unarmed

Throwing: Sucks. Not only do you need a lot of them to be useful but also are expensive and encounters don’t give a lot

First aid: Lets the player heal hit points for free, useful if we don’t have healing items.

Doctor: Like first aid but will also heal broken limbs. Also takes more time in game.

Sneak: Lets you be sneaky, works better than in new vegas. (Seriously why didn’t it work in new vegas unless I got a stealth boy, why the hell-)

Lockpick: Lets players unlock things. Don’t do this while people are looking if you’re unlocking something you’re not supposed to

Steal: lets us take things from people, high enough lets us not care about money.

Traps: Lets players disarm traps, which don’t really appear until endgame.

Science: Not as useful as new vegas, since it only lets us use computers good.

Repair: Lets players make things work.

Speech: Make talk to people good. A lot of interesting conversations will happen with a lot of speech.

Barter: Lets players buy and sell things at better prices never really necessary but useful.

Gambling: A skill a lot of people like to believe exists. There’s two gambling places in the game and we won’t have to worry about money if we get this skill high enough.

Outdoorsman: not only decides what random encounters we get but also decides how many of them and also decides on the chance to get dehydration damage. Eh. Even with low outdoorsman skill it really doesn’t affect much.

certain books will increase skills. though there are only books for first aid, outdoorsman, small guns, repair, and science. They only let skills go up to 91% Tagging certain skills will give bonus items at the start of the game related to that skill.

Now for traits, We pick 2 and have to deal with them thoughout the entire game

Don’t really care for this one, natural healing isn’t that useful, poison and radiation doesn’t happen a lot in this game.

If we’re going for a melee build this is good. it increases strength by 2 and decreases action points by 2 which isn’t bad if we have max agility since those two extra points aren’t use that much.

Gives us only 1 point of agility at the cost of 50 carry weight. which is like 2 points of strength. that sucks.

We would get a 20% bonus to hitting with one handed weapons but a -40% chance to hit with two handed weapons. Most end game weapons are 2 handed so unless we go unarmed this might not be the best

-30% on non critical hits but +10% crit chance. Not being able to do as much non crit damage will be a problem early on but later in the game crits become super important.

Oof this one’s name. Anyway More sequence is helpful but not having any natural AC is a problem in both early and late game.

The description for this one is a little misleading. It doesn’t decrease crit chance it decreases crit damage. The Melee damage increase isn’t too good even if we go for melee/unarmed. (only added 4 points to damage)

So most weapons in this game can do an aimed shot, think VATS from new vegas. We won’t be able to do that if we chose this trait but the decreased action point cost is pretty good.

Normally we would have to deal enough damage to a character to see the messy death animation. This makes it so that when the player character (And only the player character) Kills someone we can see the messy animation. And that’s all this trait does so if we wanted a trait that didn’t have a downside this is it.

This turns the game into a chaotic mess. an enemy my try to punch us and will trip so badly they die. A dog may break it’s leg trying to bite us. A guy may blow himself up with his own rocket launcher. Note that if we have really high luck this won’t really affect us. And yes crit fails will happen without this trait but it’s a once or twice in the game thing.

If we wanted to make a less combat focused character this will help. giving us a starting boost with the cost of a starting reduction in combat stats, though we can raise those easily though tagging and reading skill books.

What they mean by ill effects is withdrawal which happens when drugs were off. Addiction is pretty bad since those will last a long time if we don’t take anymore and happen randomly.

Chems usually last for several hours in game and if you need them you would probably only need them for a short amount of them, Not bad.

Ehhhhh really not all that good Since most people you want to talk to will be awake during the day and I don’t know why you would need a lot of intelligence or perception during combat.

Not good. Perks are great and normally we would get them every 3 levels and more skill points doesn’t help that much.

This one is pretty good. Since stats are basically set in stone at the start with few very expensive chances to raise them. And it will give more stats to play around with at the start

And that’s everything we need to know right now. So the stats that people want me to have the most will be the highest ones I’ll raise and the ones people want the least will be the one I decrease the most. (With the exception of intelligence) The traits and skills people want the most is the ones I’ll go with. So get to voting.

[TheGreatCatJames]

Basically I’m going to give people a day to decide and if I don’t get a lot I’ll go with the first build people want.

[meatmage]

i’m not really sure how to build a good character but what about a sneaky character with a lot of charisma?

[TheGreatCatJames]

traits? and exact skills?

[Timrod]

If I remember right, the best choice is Gifted and Small Frame because carry weight doesn’t really matter all that much when you have companions to do that for you. You dump Strength and Endurance and then pump Agility to 8 (9 with Small Frame) and Perception to 7 or 8, and the rest kind of doesn’t matter.

[TheGreatCatJames]

6 hours till I go with the choices.

[TheGreatCatJames]

alrighty I guess we’re going with a stealthy build. will do an update very soon

[TheGreatCatJames]

Welp People wanted me to be stealthy and not have strength and endurance, so that’s what we’re going with. I’ve never done a stealth build for this game so this will be new for me.

The part of the intro where the vault overseer tells us about the water chip problem happens and we’re off. I’m Sure the guy there had people vote on worse builds than what I got, but lets look at our inventory before we do anything else.

We got a knife, a gun that has 12 bullets in it with an additional 48 bullets, (If we choose small guns we would have had 72 bullets instead) 4 stimpacks 2 flares and a lockpicking set. The lockpicks appear because I choose the lockpick skill at the start. Everything else we get regardless. (Boy I wish fallout 2 gave you items when you pick out your skills, that would make the tutorial slightly better.)

The Dead guy has a knife and armor piercing 10mm bullets, would be useful if we went for small guns.

It’s only a few steps before we meet our first enemy, a rat. I think final fantasy 9 is the only RPG that doesn’t start the player fighting rats, Considering how sexy they made the rat peo-

So as you see our weapon the knife would cost 3 AP (The bight green dots) to attack the rat and we have a 66% chance to hit, it’s an actual 66% not like XCOM where 95% means 50-50 chance. something interesting will happen if we right click our weapon instead of left click (Left clicking is what we do to get the targeting and clicking on the enemy with it will let us attack.)

We get to do an aimed attack, note that the fast shot trait would stop us from doing it. Also note the increased AP cost. The point of Aimed attacks is to break a body part and makes an enemy less effective in combat, which can happen even if we don’t aim but it’s random that way.

And yes you can target the groin. Sadly was taken out in new vegas but added back in The Outer Worlds which is Obsidian’s Sci-fi game and pretty good.

Also some weapons have multiple modes outside of aiming, I’m not sure what’s the difference between slash and thrust.

Also when combat is over you either have to pick end turn or end combat (on the bottom right you can see the options in that square) to end it.

You can search enemy bodies, rats have nothing so it’s pointless right now.

Ending a turn before you use up all AP will boost your AC (The dodge stat) up by the amount not used. it was 9 before but now it’s 18, this only last until your next turn though.

That rule applies to enemies as well. Note that this rat has 65% instead of 66% to hit. Raising your combat skill raises your accuracy against enemies, it won’t increase damage you have to switch out your weapon with a better one for that.

Also wow there’s a rat problem right outside of vault 13 huh? Let me fix it for them before I get the water chip.

Also at the start of combat (And only at the start) the player gets two turns instead of one, so if you kill an enemy and the other enemy isn’t close enough you can end combat before they get too close to be considered in combat (Though different enemies have different range to be considered close enough.)

So to even use sneak effectively we need to turn off always run. There is a perk later on that lets us sneak while running, hopefully we’ll be able to get it.

Also remember to hit done in that screen for anything to take.

This is sneaking, you can tell because the game says we’re sneaking. The game makes a dice roll if we’re close enough to anything to make sure if it sees us.

Of course it helps if we don’t walk in front of an enemy.

If we kill an enemy in stealth it won’t alert other enemies, I assume you have to not use guns as well.

There I killed something by attacking the groin, hopefully people won’t bother me about it.

Oh jeez our HP is low. Thankfully I can fix this!

if your switch your cursor (you do that by clicking right mouse and you can change between moving, aiming, or the fancy mouse cursor.) To the mouse cursor and hold left click you get several options, the face (Or pressing the skilldex button on the lower right.) Will bring up our skilldex.

Brings up this list of skills, thought it’s not every skill just the active ones (They’re classified between combat, active and passive.) We have first aid and doctor on there (We can turn on sneak here but we can also press the 1 key to do so)

And we succeed! We have 3 chances to succeed in a day, same with doctor (And yes those are counted separately) Though we don’t heal much from that, stimpacks are better but it’s good to have that option if we don’t have any, we can also heal through rest.

clearing out the rats gets us 500 exp (With the self heal as a bonus) Half way to our first level up! Not bad.

Walking to the red part of the map will take us out of the area.

This is the overworld map, we can click on any area on the overworld to go to that area but clicking on one of the location buttons will make our character automatically go to that area also if we click on the town/world button…

We’ll get a stylized map of the area, it lets you quick teleport to the area within that area but we can’t do that with vault 13 right now.

Anyway we should head to vault 15 right now.

And we have a random encounter, we go to a direction until our icon turns into a lightning bolt (I meant to get a pic of it but I was too slow.) And we have a traveling merchant, not every random encounter will be enemies lets see what this merchant has.

And we have our first talking screen, Not only can we ask the person questions the game gives us but we can also ask them about anything (The Tell Me About button.) If anyone knows of good things to use this for pleas tell me, we can also barter with almost anyone! (Certain characters if we try to will say “This person does not want to barter with you” if you try) Not everyone has something to barter for. Obviously the barter skill affects our ability to balance on the bartering pole and being able to buy stuff for cheap. But lets ask about Shady Sands first.

By the way alt tabbing while in a talking screen the game will do this mess, this is what I go though for you people

I’m turning this guy down just in case we get more random encounters, some are wacky.

This is what the bartering screen looks like, we take what we want and put it on the right wooden block and we offer the amount we want to trade on the left, since we don’t use guns I’m selling it with the AP bullets as well as the extra knife and the two flares (They’re off screen the lower up and down buttons would show us them) I’m keeping the normal bullets because they’ll be usefull, not to use but they will be useful. The first aid kit will temporary boost our first aid skill when we use it but will disappear after a few uses.

Anyway lets- Wait what’s this place? The vault 15 thing is going past it! Lets click on this green circle and see what’s there.

Why it’s shady sands! the place the merchant was going to take us! Also I was too slow again but the guy on the right there tells us to holster our weapon, Just put a non weapon in slot two and click on the red button next to the screen where the game tells us stuff.

Talking to the guy who told us to put away our weapon his name is seth. Lets ask him for information.

“Information? What do you want to know about?”

I’ll Represent what our character is saying in italics. I want to know about this place.

“Shady sands is a peaceful community. We have our own irrigation system, so we can grown our own food. If we were not plagued with raiders and radscorpions, we would have no problems.”

Wow an irrigation system and crops. They thought of that and logically thought out how people might live in a post apocalyptic time, Not a lot of writers think that out but the writing people behind fallout did and every fallout games has logical places like that.

Lets ask about the radscorpions.

“-looking for an antidote ask quickly as he can. Hey, if you have the means to help us, why don’t you talk to our leader, Aradesh.”

So note the down arrow when the courser when we hover over the text. That means that person has so much to say they have more than one screen of text which is why I took the screenshot and then added what else that person said. Also if we choose go to the radscorpions cave we go there. It’s the only way to go there by the way we can’t go there on the overworld. Asking more about the place will go back to the previous dialog about shady sands, so lets ask about the raiders

“There are several groups of raiders. I organize guards like Ian to help fight them off. There’s one band to southeast of here. Watch out for them.”

Well that almost certainly won’t come back later.

Before we do anything though we’re buying this guy’s rope. We absolutely need it later so we’re buying it now.

Also when we go to leave he says this

“You should speak to Aradesh, our leader. He likes to meet all of our visitors. He should be in our Town hall, The building to the south.”

We’ll do that after talking to this Ian fellow

Here’s Ian

Here’s me selling bullets to Ian

And here’s me recruiting Ian with the money he gave me.

Ian has stuff about being a paid mercenary but I’m skipping it. He’s the first compainion of the series and honestly compainions are a little weird in the first game, they don’t get levels with the player which means they don’t get stronger, you can tell them to use their best weapons including the ones you give to them but you can’t make them were better armor, also if they die they’re dead for good like in hardcore mode of new vegas. We also get 100 experience points for recurting Ian.

DO NOT GIVE IAN A SUBMACHINE GUN WHAT EVER YOU DO DON’T!

Anyway lets talk to the leader, There’s a bunch of people hanging around but they have generic dialog.

One of the women sprites in the building the leader is in is his daughter Tandi Not only does she have a face (Along with the daytime behind her even though it’s night.) But she’s also animated and voice acted… I didn’t capture the voice acting, oops. Anyway she’ll become important.

My name is Sneaks.

“Well…How do you like our little town. Bored yet?”

Ah crap I never know how to respond to questions. Uhhh…

It’s Okay. Can I ask you a few questions?

“Sure I guess. I’ve Never been out of here, so I don’t know what help I can be. So wha’tcha Need?”

What else is around these parts?

“There’s a bunch of cities down south. But since you’re Such a great traveler, I’m sure you know that already.”

Jeez you enter one town and everyone assumes you’ve been everywhere.

Thanks

“No problem, anything else?”

What’s going on around here?

“We got radscropions! I mean, I know it’s not a good thing, But no one’s died from the stings. And it’s the closest thing to excitement we’ve got here!”

Didn’t Seth say some people died? Anyway

Have you heard any stories from down south?

“Just stuff.”

Oh gee thanks that’s real informative. Actually I do like there’s a dialog that’s meant to tell you nothing about what you ask. Gives more character

How do you like it here

“It’s Okay I guess. I mean, it is home and all, but it’s so boring! You know, I want to see the world!”

Lets be nice and tell her it’s not that bad.

Woah she changed expressions I guess they could do that with the stop motion models they used. Also it’s a slow fade to the changed expression for each model.

Anyway that’s basically all we can talk to her about. As we go to leave she’ll say this.

“Well, thanks for talking. We don’t get many strangers around here, so it’s good to talk to new people. Well, see ya!”

She still had the same face she had when saying that, She doesn’t stay mad but still.

Now we talk to the leader

This is Aradesh the leader (He’s the spite in that room that’s a cloaked person even though he’s not cloaked in the talk sprite.) I don’t think it’s a good idea to tell people about the vault we come from so I’m picking the first option

“I know of no village to the west.”

CRAP, I didn’t expect anyone to call me out on that. Ok don’t panic, UHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHDON’TCATCHMEONTHIS-

Have you been though the mountains west of here?

“Ah well, to my regret I have not. Which begs the question, how did you make it that passage?”

Stop being clever!

It was pretty tough, but I made it!

“Yes hmmm, yes, yes. yes. I shall believe you…for now. But we do not trust easily, especially those who might be dangerous. Know that Seth and I will be watching you.”

Ok, ok we’re good for now. Though that kicked us out of the conversation so we have to talk to him again.

Can you tell me about shady sands?

“Shady Sands is much like a family, one that keeps to itself.”

What do you have going on around here?

“The Gardens are on the south side. The Brahma pens are north, although the smell is, I fear, quite intense this time of year.”

It’s december in game if you wanted to know.

Anything else?

“We are small and self sufficent so there is little else to tell.”

can you tell me about the other towns around here?

“Junktown Lies south of here, though there is little in the way of visitation. From stories, I’m certain there are cities south of that.”

Anything else going on around here?

“Oh my yes. Great packs of Rad Scorpions are killing our herds. We don’t know where they’re from, and no matter how many we kill, there’s always more!”

Go on.

“And now the monsters are attacking my people! Razlo is trying to find a cure for their poison, but I’m not sure how it goes.”

Well I’ll help you with those things!

^u^

Well that’s our quest now. Lets talk to the other guy.

I’m trying to kill some radscorpions. Do you have anything to help?

"Why would I be able to help you kill radscorpions? I’m a doctor, not a warrior. For that you should see Aradesh, or even Tandi, or her boyfriend, Seth. Leave me.

I need something for their poison

“If I had a sample of their poison, I could create a cure.”

So that’s two quest technically. Though I have to go to the same place for both so it’s convenent.

But I think that’s a good place to stop for now, next time the caves and then different caves!

[TheGreatCatJames]

I can’t believe Ian got into smash, everyone’s favorite Fallout character.

[TheGreatCatJames]

When we last left our hero: She decide it was a good idea to go kill scorpions with a knife and a random guy who she payed off with his own money. Lets see how she does.

However before that lets talk to this farmer.

So this screen will have different dialog if I raise my science skill high enough. It doesn’t have to be very high as I was able to do it without leveling up on previous games however for now Lets pretend we didn’t talk to this guy and load a save just incase I screwed myself out of something.

Instead lets go to our doo- to the radscorpion caves.

Be sure to put healing items in your second slot when going into high combat areas.

All radscropions are big in the first game, starting with the second game they get smaller, still poisonous though poison honestly seems less dangerous in the first two games.

Now I can show off getting items off of dead enemies, just click on the dead enemy and it will bring up the screen on the second image where you have to drag what you want from the enemy. Starting with the second game there will be the very convenient take all button of course we have to watch our carry weight.

And since we can only carry 95 pounds and the Scorpion Tail weight 20 Ian gets to be our mule!

Ian is being MVP right now, it’s a great idea to bring him along if you’re playing the game for the first time.

Bullet items if found on the ground appear as this box that’s highlighted in yellow if we hover the mouse over it. These are going to Ian of course

We can give the bullets to Ian by bartering with him.

We can also steal from Ian, no he doesn’t mind, not if he wants to live if he wants to.

And after kill 4 radscorpions we level up! I put all the points into sneak making it up to 76% and that’s it for this level, Yeah unlike new vegas we don’t get a perk every other level we get one every 3 levels, Fallouts 1 and 2 really wanted players to focus on making specialized characters, also note how many hit points we get, thanks guys.

Hoo boy, 4 radscorpions, we gotta be careful and try to draw them out 1 at a time.

It says I was hit instead of the radscorpion but he definitely turned before he shot, and for a good chunk of health!

And here’s the problem with Ian, he can’t aim for shit! Now he’s the really bad part, companions in fallout 1 don’t level up, so Ian will never get better. He basically falls off of usefulness halfway though the game so keeping him is a good idea for beginners but there’s better ones.

By the way if you have to use a one use item IAN you have to go into your inventory put another of the item in the slot you had it in, Fallout 2 did it better by doing it automaticlly and new vegas you can put an item in a favorite slot and use it instantly since it’s more of an action RPG.

So a bad side to this game is that it only tells you if you finish a quest in the lower left screen corner, yes that small part of the UI is often the only thing that tells you that you’re done with the quest.

All the scorpions are dead so lets get our reward.

First lets talk to Razlo (After waiting until 6 am because he needs his beauty sleep.)

Waiting in fallout 1 and 2 is clicking on the pipboy option then clicking on the bell in that menu (Note the time limit) and clicking when you want to stop waiting which game game justifies as an alarm clock, considering I tend to turn off alarms and go back to sleep even after 8 hours of rest it’s not a good justification.

Actually lets look at the other options on the list.

Status brings up the list of places we’ve been too and clicking on one of the names will show what quests we have to do.

Automaps work kind of like doom’s automaps, they’ll map out places if you explore them enough.

The maps button on the UI also brings up a map screen but only of the area you’re in, switching between high and low doesn’t really do much, infact the map isn’t too useful but there is an optional upgrade we can get for it.

And archives just brings up FMVs we’ve seen. There’s one more function that we can’t choose yet but that’s going to be later.

For now lets give Razlo the tails.

And doing that not only gives us a free antidote but it also gives us experence points, Though only the first time we give him a tail after that we just get the free antidotes, but hey radscropions are random encounters and it’s good to have something for poison.

It also takes 4 in game hours for him to make one so it’s going to take us like 2 days to give him all the tails, eh the vault will have plenty of time. What’s a digression here and there?

Time to tell the mayor the good news

“Things are much more settled now. Razlo has been working on a cure for Rad Scorpion poison, and with that, we should be able to fight what’s left of them.”

You don’t need to worry anymore, I destroyed the nest.

“You are truly a hero! Know that the people of shady sands are most grateful.”

Thanks. bye.

Yeah that’s also how I end conversations too.

anyway we have an important place to go to.

And thats to this woman standing behind Aradesh and buying the nuka cola off of her!

And getting addicted to nuka cola! My first goal when playing one of the classic fallouts is to get addicted to nuka cola as soon as possible, of course a nuka cola addition does nothing unlike other addictions in the game but it’s fun, also look at our reputation, doing the scorpion cave and getting the antidote raised it up by that much. We’re also close to another level up so why not go to vault 15 since it might have enemies there, also the water chip is probably worth some experience points.

By the way since we talked to someone who gives us directions to raiders we now can use one of the buttons on the side to go there. We have no reason to and yes we could have gone there even without talking to someone, infact we can go to the final areas of the game right at the start if we wanted to (but I haven’t done that yet so not for this run.)

And the game stopped us form going there to tell me my character wants another nuka cola, I know the feeling since I have a bottle of soda that I can’t open right now because the cap fused with the bottle! Going to burn a damn hole in my hand…

And random encounter from radscropions not too happy about killing the ones in the cave! So mad they get a first strike and hit me.

I think I’m screwed

Yep I was, this is how you can tell this is an old PC RPG, random encounters will actively try to kill you and some builds have lower chances of surviving, so thanks for telling me to dump endurence.

Time to pretend that didn’t happen and load a save.

And finally we made it to vault 15, also that radscorpion isn’t always there guarding the entrance, thankfully it’s only one and not 4.

After killing the scorpion (And taking a few shots in the back from Ian) we go down to yet another cave full of rats, and the entrance looks blown open, Huh.

I’m trying to get Ian to stay close to me but his AI is broken and expects me to go a certain distance before following leaving me to kill all the rats by myself, jerk.

God damn it Ian.

There’s a locker in the entrance of the vault with 6 flares, I guess people had to leave in a hurry if they left those.

That guy is a little bigger than most other rats.

OH GOD IT’S THE SIZE OF A BEAR WHY DID I AGREE TO SMALL FRAME?

Turns out it’s not that tough, and worth only a bit more than normal rats.

Fun fact, crits can knock things down which means they lose some AP to get up before they can do anything.

This room had a locker with stimpacks and a first aid kit.

And here is where you need the rope we bought at shady sands. Which must have been a rude moment for people who went here without going to shady sands the first time they play the game.

And it takes us right down into an encounter with rats, boy sure do love encounters where enemies are almost certain to get the first hit!

Ian decided It would be fun to punch random rats while I get attacked by pig rats, and then decided to shoot the rat he was punching at super close range, at least he didn’t miss.

And we level up which means we get to choose a perk. And by we I mean you. You the readers get to choose the perks and I have to deal with it. First is Awareness, I think by more detailed they mean you get to know how hurt the enemy is, which fallout 2 does automatically and so does new vegas so that should tell you how useful that perk is.

Earlier Sequence, Eh, not all that useful because we already have quite a bit of sequence already.

Not useful at all, I mean for ranged it’s a tiny bit useful but we’re melee so no.

Eh, we have decent enough charisma and we can make up for it with the speech skill anyway.

Useful because of what I talked about earlier with one use items.

We can learn locations of places by talking to people this perk isn’t useful at all.

We’ve got high intelligence already and once again skill points in speech makes up for not having this.

Very useful in this game because comparatively you get less encounters in fallout 1 than you do in 2 and new vegas so I reccomend this one.

but what we get is up to you! (Please don’t choose night vision oh god!) I’ll wait a day and go for whatever you pick or if you didn’t I’ll go for one I want.)

[Dakmordian]

I think going with Swift Learner is the best choice, I always try to take it as soon as possible.

[TheGreatCatJames]

Almost forgot about this but looks like swift learner will be picked when I update.

[TheGreatCatJames]

So when we last left our hero: She went into a cave and admired the natural beauty in the cave while some guy shot her in the back while trying to shoot at scropions and her in the back a couple of times, and then she went into a vault and admired the artificial beauty while a guy shot her in the back while trying to shoot rats. Also she gained a level and a perk.

The people (Well the person.) Picked and we go with swift learner! And I put points in lockpick.

Probably should have put the points in melee weapons, whatever I killed it.

What does that mean? It’s a sit down toilet, if it’s broken you can’t use it if you’re anyone.

So the game doesn’t allow for players to move past party members. Whatever hack job they did to make party members a thing makes it really tempting to kill Ian earlier than the end of the first half of the game when he blocks the way out! And I accidentally loaded a save after managing to get him out of the way when I meant to save.

In the next room I find more ammo I can’t use. yay.

In the room after that however there’s a locker, with a rope which we need to progress more though the dungeon, and a jacket!

The jacket is armor so now I need to explain defense in this game. First of all the jacket is a reference to mad max, secondly the numbers on the right under armor class are types of damage, normal is 90% of damage until the endgame, the percentage is damage resistance, it reduces damage by that percentage, the number to the left of that one is damage threshold which flat out removes that much damage by whatever the number is, damage threshold is calculated first then resistance.

See now we take 3 damage from a rat instead of 4. (Yeah we’re going to switch armor as soon as we get better ones except in one case.)

Anyway we’re on the third level of the vault, getting first turn attacked by a big mole again, this is nowhere near the worst this game gets about that.

Now that I have armor I’m not giving Ian this ammo, he’s going to be irresponsible with it.

No Ian, you’re not getting the damn bullets! I don’t care if you trap me, You’re only going to speed up your inevitable demise!

This random ass locker has bombs in it, the grenades are being sold but I’m hanging on to the tnt. Need it for something much later on in the game.

The SMG is a great weapon if you have points in small guns, I don’t and neither does Ian so he’s never going to see it, however he will see the ammo since he can use it.

“You will have to look for the water chip elsewhere. You gain 500 experience points.”

All that information is on the bottom left screen and I had to scroll it up to look at more of it. Yeah the UI of the first two fallout games are pretty bad honestly. But hey there’s a new weapon there (The thing that looks like a police club) Lets see what it is!

A crowbar, unfortunately we can’t become Gorden Freeman because we need one more point in strength, tell me, how heavy is a crowbar in real life?

There is something special here, a book. It gives us points in whatever the book is about.

In the room to the left of the first aid book there’s one last locker and it has more fucking ammo that we can’t use because we don’t have the weapons or requirement to use.

And that’s it for the vault. It’s mostly been rats, moles, and disappointment.

Lets go back to shady sands and maybe ask for directions or something.

I should have put points in outdoorsman, then maybe I wouldn’t have to deal with all these damn scropians.

Ian decides to walk away after taking enough damage from the radscropians and one kept following and they’re both off in the land of leaving the place when you walk on it and I’m not sure if the game is going to work properly so that’s a reload.

So when we get to shady sands this is happening. Oh boy I’m not excited about doing this quest as a melee weapons user.

However due to problems with my apartment right now I’m going to have to cut this update short. Next time I’ll probably die a lot.

[TheGreatCatJames]

Hey sorry I haven’t updated in a week, having focas problems real bad.

[TheGreatCatJames]

When we last left our hero: She went to a cave and found nothing but got rewarded for it. Then went back to shady sands.

Talking to Aradesh and agreeing to save Tandi gets an upgrade.

Not only does it do more damage it also has 2 range. So I use less AP getting to someone to kill them!

You can also throw the spear, You’re not going to more than once because throwing is trash but still.

raiders are on the map, they call themselves the Khans, not that it will mean anything as they’re not going to appear after this game. (Because they’ll be dead)

We have to go into this building, and I’m going to put my weapon away for now. because boy what’s going to happen is going to be messy!

Time to use my stealth powers and stab the leader (Who is the one wearing the metal armor.)

IN THE GROIN!

That’s what you get for only wearing chest armor and expecting me to use ranged weapons! Also kidnapping that’s pretty bad.

hey someone else besides Ian missed and shot their teammate for once.

I killed the raider leader

And I got metal armor, which is a substantial upgrade to the leather jacket, and heavy as shit. so I hate you people for choosing low strength and small frame right now.

Now I’m the leader.

Also those two girls who were standing next to the leader? Yeah they were also kidnapped and I get bonus experence for rescuing them, The ones in armor however are going to be killed.

Yeah see? I have no Idea where they are now but they’re rescued

Look at all this stuff I can’t loot! Also the leather armor is a step inbetween the jacket and metal armor. It weighs less but fuck trading out my armor for now!

She says that and then runs away (Because we kicked her ass.)

The game won’t let you end combat with hostlie creatures near by but it doesn’t really define what counts as hostile or as “Nearby” the people running way don’t really count as hostile I don’t think but nearby can be like less than 10 feet away which is how I managed to get experience for the earlier stuff.

Do you see that? That’s the power of the keybla- why you want high DT.

I reached level 4 and now upgrading lockpick!

This raider has buffout. Which considering our lack of strength and endurance might be helpful to us.

Desert Eagle is quite powerful, so I decided to give one to Ian. How much is it going to bite me in the ass?

Well since I killed the leader I get his stuff, I’m pretty sure they won’t mind, I could have used that shotgun, jerks.

Oh hey, one of two fire weapons in this game, it’s a throwing weapon, so really there’s one fire weapon in this game.

And that’s why you want high luck, to knock people the fuck out!

Ah glitches, where would we be without you.

Fun fact throwing weapons look like boxes when put on the ground (I put it on the ground to make room for ammo.)

Lets save Tandi now that I’ve gotten all the raiders

She gets a new background for this part

Yes, so just sit tight. I’ll get you out.

“Well what’s your plan?”

I’m going to fight the Khan Leader in exchange for your freedom.

“You? Fight him? You gotta be kidding me! [Sigh] Listen, if you come up with another plan, let me know, okay?”

Did you not hear and see the ultra violence going on? Anyway her cell door doesn’t have a key for it but we have lockpicks.

So in order for Tandi to follow us the game counts her as a party member, we could go the rest of the game with her and she probably sucks less than Ian but I get experience for returning her and that’s better than anything

As we get to shady sands we can talk to Tandi again

“Hi! I was afraid you were gone and I wasn’t going to get a chance to thank you for rescuing me. Aw! That was great! Action, Adventure… Anyway, if there’s anything that I can do for you, just ask.”

I should note you can attempt to ask her out (even if you are a girl) she rejects you and honestly I don’t feel like being a creep. Anyway that’s all she has to say.

we also get a reward from Aradesh.

He’ll also tell us about junktown, I probably could have asked him after taking care of the radscropions.

also I could have asked Ian, but honestly I don’t like Ian so fuck him

He also says this now when we end the conversation.

That’s it for shady sands (except for talking to the crop guy but I need higher science for that) we can finally move on.

But that will be for next time.