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Fallout SeriesFallout 1 - am I going about combat wrongly?(14 posts)solved(14 posts)solved
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Posted October 01, 2013
Just started a game of Fallout (1) for the first time.
Love the setting and the atmosphere but the combat seems a bit harsh at the beginning.
I'm walking through a cave of rats and my character keeps missing in combat (whether with the knife or unarmed, though unarmed seems better).
As a result, the rats slowly took me down to near death. Is this normal or am I missing some important combat tips?

I don't want to use the gun since ammo seems very limited and it would take over half my starting ammo to take out all the rats (including some misses)

I found one tip - try to hit the rat then run away with remaining AP until I get a new turn. This makes the initial very short cave into a 15-20 minute boredom fest (largely as I keep missing my attempts to hit)


Any other advice is welcome.
This question / problem has been solved by DeMignonimage
Posted October 01, 2013
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TrollumThinks: ...
I found one tip - try to hit the rat then run away with remaining AP until I get a new turn. This makes the initial very short cave into a 15-20 minute boredom fest (largely as I keep missing my attempts to hit)
The tip is good in the beginning, even if it takes a while. Just let the rats approach you, without enough actions point left to attack you. Then on your turn, you hit it and back off to get some distance.

What you might do wrong, is using targeted attacks. When you click on the weapon picture, you can switch the attack mode. Targeted attacks are those, where you have to choose the area of the body you'd like to hit. They have a higher rate of criticals, some areas a chance of knocking the enemy down, cripple an arm or leg or kill instantly, but they're less likely to hit. There's a number displayed, how likely you'll be to hit (with 99 the best). While nice later on, I'd do normal attacks at the beginning, because your weapon skills are probably too low. If your opponent is much stronger than you and you're able to do the back off trick, you can go for the head for a chance to kill the enemy instantly (you probably will do this a lot later on, but it takes solid weapon skills).

You might also have chosen too low stats/skills (melee weapon for knifes) during character generation, but this is a vast topic, best covered in the tips for character generation in various walkthroughs.

Don't give up, the first encounters can be the hardest. It'll get better (and on some occasions worse ;-)
Post edited October 01, 2013 by DeMignon
Posted October 01, 2013
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TrollumThinks: As a result, the rats slowly took me down to near death. Is this normal or am I missing some important combat tips?
Well...it's normal for a first-time player. You just haven't quite figured out how things work yet. It also depends a whole lot on the kinds of skills you chose. A strong character with some melee skill will breeze through the rats, but a science and diplomacy character will find it much more difficult.

The best approach (which you've already figured out) is kiting -- punch and retreat, so the rat uses up its action points chasing you.

If your character has the best chance-to-hit with the 10mm pistol, I wouldn't worry about ammo too much. You'll be finding enough as things continue, and the pistol will crush the rats quickly.

Alternatively, you could simply sneak and/or run out of the cave without fighting the rats at all. You can come back later and clean it out when you have better equipment. You don't have to fight.
Posted October 01, 2013
It helps if your character has many action points so he can attack more often. With 8-9 agility you get 9 AP, enough to attack 3 times per round.
Posted October 01, 2013
I'm writing all of this down.
Posted October 02, 2013
Thanks for all the advice - +1 to you all, wish I could mark more than one as the solution :)

I'll give it another run through.
Posted October 05, 2013
Once your character gets out of the rat caves, and the game really opens up, you'll understand the combat system much better. Things like, as mentioned before, acquiring action points, learning the distances in ranged weapons, how to target specific points, knowing how much damage your character can take, and the different kinds of known damage.
Posted October 05, 2013
Thanks,

I've been to Shady Sands and Vault 15 now so it's getting a lot better.
Another thing I found, while messing round with options/preferences is that moving the combat speed slider a lot to the right really helps.
Instead of a 20 minute slog through syrup, it becomes a 5 minute jaunt through rat-town. Less waiting for things to happen and more attacks per minute (it's still the same number of turns but it feels better to me).

Thoroughly enjoying the game now :)
Post edited October 05, 2013 by TrollumThinks
Posted October 06, 2013
My advice, if you have small guns tagged, just use the pistol to kill the rats anyways. You actually get ammo fairly quick in the game so there's little point trying to conserve it.

If I'm wrong on this, someone please correct me. AP ammo didn't work as it's supposed to so JHP ammo is better whether your foes are armoured or not. There's AP ammo on the corpse right at your starting position so just use that to kill the rats.

Seriously, don't worry about ammo
Posted October 06, 2013
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TrollumThinks: Another thing I found, while messing round with options/preferences is that moving the combat speed slider a lot to the right really helps.
Yes, that definitely helps.

IwubCheeze is right about the ammo, too. AP ammo is flatly inferior to HP (if I remember correctly, the Rocket Launcher is the only exception to this). I don't remember whether FMJ is good or bad, though, for ammo types that have both FMJ and HP.

But yeah, don't worry about running out of ammo. You'll soon have a lifetime's supply stockpiled.
Post edited October 06, 2013 by UniversalWolf
Posted October 08, 2013
I think you can also choose to just run out of the cave and let the rats live.

You can use the doctor and first aid skills to restore some health. There's a limit on how often you can use those skills before resting though. Both skills are depleted until rest after 3x success


(the start of Fallout 2 is even harder btw)
Posted October 09, 2013
Yes, definitely turn up the combat speed in options, it makes a huge difference, obviously. I do recommend killing the rats, you get XP for each rat (though not a lot, it does make a difference), and if you clear all the rats, you get more XP. There might also be a spear to use off of the body outside of the vault? I forget.
Posted October 10, 2013
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drealmer7: Yes, definitely turn up the combat speed in options, it makes a huge difference, obviously. I do recommend killing the rats, you get XP for each rat (though not a lot, it does make a difference), and if you clear all the rats, you get more XP. There might also be a spear to use off of the body outside of the vault? I forget.
ofc but you can also choose to come back later for the xp.

What I was trying to say is that there are multiple ways to tackle this and violence isn't the only answer. (even though violence is often the most convenient one)
Posted October 10, 2013
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gnarbrag: What I was trying to say is that there are multiple ways to tackle this and violence isn't the only answer. (even though violence is often the most convenient one)
And that's true for just about every obstacle in the game, as well.
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Fallout SeriesFallout 1 - am I going about combat wrongly?(14 posts)solved(14 posts)solved
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