Honestly, after a while I could pick most locks on my first try, so I never really resorted to that. And (slightly) later on, when the harder locks started to appear, I had enough bobby pins on me to make me not have to worry about breaking one or two.

Yeah, it would have been nice if achieving 100 points in the lockpicking skill would let you force lock successfully every time but no it doesn't. So ended up quicksaving every time I found a lock because fuck that door might be the only way in and fuck if I'm going all the way back because of some screwed up force lock because I ran out of bobby pins AGES ago.

Additional Spam:
Oh fucking hell Pang, now don't I feel like a fool. :(

Additional Spam:
In my defense (hardly one I know) Oblivion's lockpicking had been so drilled into me that the thought never occurred to me. I fucking had Oblivion's mouse flicking and timing skill down pretty damn well.

In theory you only need one if you don't break the pick, but not every one can pick every lock without it breaking. I don't even know what game you are playing.

Or you could do what a smart person does and stop and restart the process before it breaks.

As previously mentioned.

READING!

COMPREHENSION!

HURRAY!

I don't need to I have enough and usually it only takes me two, three times max. WOW!

Yeah, except we're not talking about your experience. We're talking about theory for people who aren't as good at it as you are. You know. Since you brought up theoretical discussion.

LANGUAGE!

Or you could not keep looking for an argument and maybe people can actually discuss the game for once, without mini-game and Oblivion talk. As the other flying username guy already said.

So has anyone found any skill books for the Small Guns skill? So far I've found 2-5 of every other skill book, but I haven't found Small Guns.

I don't really want a hint about where they are, but what I'm curious about is what they look like (i.e. are they the same color as a desk and easy to miss.)

http://www.saxypunch.com/miscimg/Guns_and_bullets.JPG

So yeah, pretty tough to spot.

Ouch, I'm guaranteed to have missed a few of those. Thanks for the pic.

Shite. They look almost exactly like ruined/destroyed/other dummy book objects.

I haven't finished the game yet, though I do want to say that I felt like the game just fell apart on me. I mostly have a dissatisfaction with my character's final development at level 20. I'm waltzing around in Power Armor, but I'm more often than not using the SP versions of Combat Shotgun/.308 Rifle/.34 Rifle. I can't say I'm a fan of the Big Guns tree of weapons and from what I hear, Energy might not be all that better.

I feel like certain actions I took in the beginning just doing whatever the hell I wanted have sort of nerfed the main quest for me. Things just feel tedious, and I think hitting 20 before even being half-way through the main quest might have done it. I'm probably going to start a new character and just try to apply a bit of the knowledge I gained from my previous game and hopefully finish Fallout 3. I still feel its Bethesda's best game, but I'm at a loss for what happened in my own game.

Aye, I hear you. I'm on level sixteen, and for the past few level-ups we've put all the available skill points into energy weapons after resorting to nothing but big guns most of the game. Pretty sure we went about ten levels straight using the Chinese Assault Rifle before we got to Raven Rock a few days ago and suddenly discovered Plasma Rifles.

Anyway, I like to think of a first character as something of a dry run in open-ended RPGs like this. It's already decided that we're going to play an asshole woman who specialises in unarmed. Gonna re-roll as soon as we finish the main quest.

Are you guys playing on PC or console? I remember some people came out with a mod for Oblivion that removed the lousy auto-correcting difficulty (for some reason I don't think a wolf should have a 20% chance of killing me no matter what level I am...) in favor a more traditional mostly-static difficulty areas. I imagine for the PC a similar mod will come out within a reasonable amount of time, so you might not want to play the game to death yet.

I'm thinking of sticking it out to finish the main quest, just to have it done, but I think re-rolling would be the best solution for myself at the moment.

I'm on the 360, though from what I've read, Fallout 3 would more than likely run on my laptop. I'm weighing my options at the moment, I'll have to see how the 360 version pans out for me. Also, the difficulty seems fine depending on what enemies you're fighting, though Sneak and Death Sprint (something like that, Level 20 VATS Perk in any case) can be game breaking at times. Deathclaws can be a pain in the ass in numbers no matter how good your stats are.

I'm playing on the PS3. The whole difficulty-scaling malarkey isn't anything I've come across yet. At least, not on the same level that Oblivion had it...

Oh, and for people playing on PC: the child-killing-and-looting mod came out recently.

Child-killing mod? Now that is good news.

And, honestly, based on my first run through the game I see no point in putting skill points into energy weapons or big guns since, well, the Chinese Assault Rifle is more than powerful enough to last through the game. Ammo gets very plentiful later on too, so yeah. No big deal.

Then there's Lincoln's Repeater, which is just, for lack of a better term, fucking awesome. .44 ammo isn't as plentiful as 5.56mm or shotgun shells but when you can kill most things with one or two shots it's not really a problem, is it?

Oh man there is some awesome loot I found last night.

Vengeance - which is a souped up laser gatling gun that dishes out damage like you wouldn't believe. You have to go through the fucking caves of the Death Claw Sanctuary found in the mountains in the western side of the map (might be a bit north too - can't quite recall). It's the place that Enclave is capturing Death Claws from with mild success if the piles of Enclave officers and soldiers inside are any indication. You have to go deep into the cave to find it though. It's in a radiated red pool filled with bodies. It's delicious.

A bit east of that place is a drive-in movie lot and north of that is some sort of platform for a power station or radio station (memory is a bit fuzzy) but suddenly something falls from the sky. Fucking alien gun and its alien ammo. Takes down death claws in 2 or 3 shots. Shoots a fast ball of energy out that travels great distances which not only does a ton of damage but sets the enemy on fire. I'm fucking Marvin the Martian.

I love these weapons so much.

I think the gun-from-the-sky thing is actually a random event.
Fucking nice weapon, though. 70ish base damage if I remember...

I found that last night too.

Just got this game, Been playing like mad.

I really like this game and all, But its so easy to get detract from the main quest, And Its starting to piss me off.

By the way i think i lost my "Bittercup" glitch, :( Pappy never opened up regarding his you know.


On other note, I am heading to National Archives right about now, I've leveled up Speech,Small Guns, and now Stealth.. Any other that might benefit my character?

So you're easily distracted, and because the game offers options, this is pissing you off? I'd say learn to enjoy the experience of a game and stop worrying about completing some 'main' story quest.

Besides, if you don't "get distracted" from the primary questline, the game lasts about 20 minutes.

Don't mind him. He's just too used to his slightly interactive storybooks. He'll come around. Maybe.

lol Wrong wording there, Anyway i love the game, (been playing it for 6 hours straight) What i mean is, I just hate that whenever i feel i am about to finish a quest, something pops out, And i just can't leave it alone.


Anyway i might grab this for the PC, due to mods.