Character Creation The best place to start is by creating your own character. The three pre-made characters can finish the game, but they are not the best choices. By fine-tuning your own character to match your playing style, you stand a much better chance of success. Start with the statistics. No stat should be lowered to less than five. All of the statistics have a reason to be increased, but some are more deserving of those extra character points than others. Strength: The major use of Strength in the game is your inventory carrying weight. Unless you are playing an unarmed or melee-based character, a Strength of 5 or 6 will do you for all weapons except one. If you lower your Strength, and take the Small Frame trait, you will have a lot of difficulty carrying the necessary equipment. Perception: The ability to use weapons effectively at long distances is critical to any ranged weapon-using character. A high Perception will drastically increase your chance to hit with guns at a distance. You should spend at least a point or two in Perception if you plan on using guns (which is highly recommended for beginning characters). Endurance: This stat mostly affects your hit points. Unfortunately, there are many really big weapons in the game that will be used against you that don't really care about the number of hit points that you have. Fortunately, if you have enough hit points, you can take one or two blows from one of these big weapons and survive. If you do want to increase Endurance, you get the best results if you raise it to 6, 8, or 10. Charisma: Unless you plan on playing a Speech-based or Bartering character, you should not spend any points on Charisma. It is acceptable to lower this stat by a point or two, but dropping below 4 can hurt some of your dialog choices. Intelligence: This is probably the most critical stat if you want to talk to people in Fallout. Your intelligence number will determine what choices you have when talking. If you lower it below 4, you will only be able to baby-talk. Raising it a point or two will help dialog, and increase the number of skill points you get every level. Agility: Agility is the determining factor in the number of action points you get every turn in combat. Beginning characters will want a good Agility. Luck: Luck is a weird statistic. You should not plan on increasing it unless you want to go big. Stay with a 5 or 4, or increase it up to 9 or 10. It is possible to drop your Luck all the way to 1 or 2, but you will miss out on some special encounters. Besides increasing your chance of causing a critical hit, Luck will determine how often you get a special random encounter. These special random encounters often contain special items that will give you a major advantage at the beginning of the game. Traits To Take Gifted is a good all-around trait to take. You really cannot go wrong, especially if you also take a high Intelligence to make up for the lowered skill points every level. If you are taking a character that is planning on causing a lot of critical hits, then take Finesse. Starting out will be rough, but as soon as you make a level and can increase your weapon skills, you'll be on a happy road. To maximize the number of character points that you start the game with, you can also take Small Frame or Bruiser and move those free points to another statistic. Both of these traits have very restrictive downsides, and should be chosen with care. Fast Shot sounds wonderful, but you lose the ability to make targeted shots. At higher levels, this will restrict the number of critical hits you can make. One tactic is to take Fast Shot, and then take it away later with the Mutate Perk. But there are other Perks that will also increase the number of attacks you can make. Refer to the Perks section of the manual as you create your character to make sure that you have the proper statistics. Skills That Need To Be Tagged Choosing the proper tag skill is probably the most important character design decision that you can make. High skills are essential to successfully complete the game, and the skills that you choose to tag will increase the fastest. This will determine the difficulty level of the early game, when you have few experienced skills. Small Guns is always a good choice. It covers the widest variety of firearms, and all the early guns that you will find. Tag this skill, and it will pay off big for the first part of the game. Energy Weapons is also a good tag skill, but it will only really help later in the game. For most characters, using two of your three tag skills on these two combat skills is a good idea. If you're making a hand-to-hand character, then you will want Unarmed or Melee weapons. Thief characters will want Sneak and Lockpick or Steal. Diplomacy characters will definitely want Speech, with perhaps Barter or Science. Probably the easiest character to take is a Lucky, Perceptive Sniper. Shoot people from a distance. Make targeted shots when you have the skill and you will cause critical hits. Good stats for this character: ST 6, PE 9, EN 5, CH 4, IN 7, AG 8, LK 8. Take Finesse and Gifted. Tag Small Guns, Energy Guns, and either Speech, Barter, or Lockpick. Pump the skill points from your first couple levels into Small Guns and use targeted shots. Combat No matter what you do, at some point it will require a good gun or a sharp knife to solve a problem. Combat is also a good source for experience, but not the only way to gain levels. The best method is to try and solve every problem without resorting to violence, but to always keep your gun ready. Speaking of keeping your gun ready, some guards will get mighty upset if you have a drawn weapon. If someone tells you to put it away, they usually mean it. The best thing to do is keep your primary weapon in your hand, but switch the active item away to hide it. It costs nothing to switch active items in combat but it takes a lot of time to reach into your inventory and grab your gun. The easiest weapons to use are ranged weapons, especially against unarmed critters. If you can attack them at a distance, and they have to move up to you, then you want to attack and move away. Let them come to you. Your chance to hit is modified by the distance between you and the target. If you want to get the best possible chance to hit, use the reserve action points key (hold down Control when you click the mouse button to move) and move as close to your opponent as possible. Reserving your action points this way will lower the range modifier, giving you a better chance to hit but ensuring that you will have enough AP left to fire. If you can, find some cover. Then at the start of your turn, pop around the corner, attack and move back. This works against opponents that have ranged weapons as well. Anytime you have some extra action points, reload your weapon. Anytime you need to reload and heal yourself, just open Inventory and perform as many actions as you need. Use your Stimpaks from Inventory to save action points, if you need to use more than one Stimpak and you don't have one in your hand. Stimpaks can be used from an active item slot, but they work much better from Inventory. Armor is important. Always wear the best possible stuff. Note that some armors have better defensive values against different types of attacks. You might need to switch armor to battle opponents armed with energy weapons, for example, especially later in the game. Don't be afraid to switch between different types of weapons, as well. Many of the ranged weapons use different ammo. You may need to switch weapons when you run low on one type of ammo. Always keep a backup weapon or two in your inventory, in case you lose a weapon or run out of ammo. Perks When you start advancing in levels, you will be given the opportunity to select Perks. These Perks are based on your character's statistics, skills, and level. Different characters will get to choose from different Perks. When you are creating your own character, read the Perk list in the back of the manual. Make sure that you have high enough statistics to select the Perks that are interesting and that you plan on selecting. There are very few ways in the game increase Statistics once you start playing. For example, Awareness requires a Perception of 5 or better, and it is available at Level 3. This is a very good Perk to have (since it tells you how many hit points critters have left and what weapon they are carrying, even down to the ammo they have loaded and the number of shots left). You don't want to start with a character that has a PE of 4 or less if you want to take Awareness. A list of good Perks: Awareness, Bonus Move, Bonus Rate of Fire, Action Boy. These will make combat much easier. Tag! is an excellent Perk to take if you want Energy Weapons late in the game. Not only will it add +20% to your skill immediately, it will double the number of skill points you have already placed in the newly tagged skill. Don't waste a Tag skill on Energy Weapons during character creation, if you want to use the Tag! Perk to add it later. Of course, the best Perk to choose will be one that fits your character. Pick a Perk that will add something to your character and the way you play, or remove something that is slowing you down (like not enough action points in combat). The super high level Perks are very hard to get. Any Perk that has a level requirement of 15 or 18 is going to be out of your reach for a long time. NPC Team Members There are five non-player characters that can join your team. Adding them will help in combat and make it easier to get through some areas. There are two areas where having a large team will impede you. Talk to your team members to find out what weapons they can use. Use Barter or Steal to give them improved weapons, ammo, and Stimpaks. NPCs cannot use armor. If an NPC is not using the weapon you want him to, make sure he has the proper ammo and tell him to use his best weapon in the next combat. They will put their current weapon away, and you can Steal that from them. With an NPC, the Steal command acts as a transfer command. It is always successful, and they do not mind. Here's a guide to those NPCs who can join you. Tandi is the daughter of Aradesh in Shady Sands. After she is kidnapped, she can be rescued from the Raiders. If you don't bring her immediately back to Shady Sands, she will stay with you during your adventures. Return to her home, and she leaves permanently. Ian can be found in Shady Sands. Offer him $100 or, if your Speech skill is good enough, a piece of the action. Ian works well with big pistols. He sometimes goes crazy with a burst weapon, so be careful about giving him the SMG. Tycho is found in Junktown in the Skum Pitt. Meet him in the evening, and talk to him twice. Dogmeat is also found in Junktown. He can be bribed into joining your group. Give him an Iguana-on-a-stick or wear the Leather Jacket to look like his former master. Katja is located in the Boneyard. She is in the entrance to the Followers. She will easily join your group. All NPCs will attack the nearest threat in combat. Miscellaneous Hints _ Always have a weapon ready in one of your slots, but keep it inactive. This way you won't have to waste time fumbling around in your inventory when you enter combat (and waste action points), but you'll get a better reaction from people by not holding a gun in your hand. _ Always reload your gun if you have a couple of spare action points. _ It's often better to run away than to convert any leftover action points into armor class. _ Use cover. Try and remain out of the enemy's line of sight when combat begins. Come out to shoot, but duck right back behind your cover during the battle. Make them come to you. _ If you need to heal yourself during combat, don't waste the four points it costs to open your inventory. Use as many stimpacks as you need and make sure you reload your weapon since this action will be free. _ Don't stand between a friendly NPC and his target, especially if they have a burst weapon. _ Use the proper weapon for the job. Don't waste grenades or rockets on lone targets. _ Never forget to use targeted shots! _ If you are too weak to properly use a weapon, remember that it will only cost you a -20 percent penalty for every point of strength below the minimum. A high skill will easily offset this. _ No matter how good your armor is, always save your game before entering combat. Critical hits can kill the most well-armored character. _ You should go to the cities in this order: Shady Sands, Vault-15, Raider Camp, Junktown, the Hub, and Necropolis. Reprinted by permission of PC Gamer magazine, (c)1998.