Is there any major (game breaking, got to know or else you are going to waste countless hours) difference between Fallout 1 and 2 which one has to know to not ruin his game in F2? Something which is taken for granted in 1 and it does a 180 on 2, etc?


I have played F2 before but never for long enough to get anywhere.

Good to know, thanks.

Nah, I don't install mods in my games. Ever. I am proud to say that since the 80's I have never installed a mod to a game, apart from a texture mod for C&C Renegade which stayed on my PC for exactly 3 rounds/battles. (the mod, the game was there for almost 8 years)

I'm kind of purist myself, but check what the Restoration Project is about. It's not just another community mod, it tries to include all the missing content, that wasn't there mostly out of budget and dead line issues. A lot of the content (graphics and text) is already included in the files of the vanilla version, but never used in the game. It's worth to take closer look even if you usually don't use mods, like me.

Btw, Fallout 2 also shares the flaws of its successor, mainly the tendency to corrupt save games. Save often so that you can fall back to an older file when it happens.

:) It's not going to happen. I don't use mods. I don't care what they fix. Since the game isn't broken, I am not going to use a mod for it. If the game required a mod to work, I wouldn't have the game.

Saves games, yeah, I tend to save often in RPGs and in several slots. Though the 10 limit on the first one was a bit of a bummer.

I can think of a few differences you need to know. NPCs are much more effective and more controllable. Some of them are completely useless, but others can hang with you in combat well into the late game. They can level up several times during the game, and there's a chance it will happen when you level up while they're in your party. Human NPCs can change their armor, up to and including power armor.

It can sometimes be hard to tell what is just vendor trash and what you need to keep. Some seemingly unimportant items will come in handy later. Completing the game absolutely requires two items from different locations on the world map, but at least those are unusual enough that you should figure out that they're important. There are also some early locations where you won't have the skills and/or equipment to do everything so you may have to return much later.

In the late game, the hardened Brotherhood power armor and the Turbo Plasma Rifle are not the pinnacle of combat effectiveness the way they were in Fallout 1, and late game enemies are a lot tougher. The TPR got nerfed a bit in Fallout 2, the AP cost went up by 1. It's still arguably the best energy weapon, but there are small guns that can be more effective against your toughest opponents and Fallout 2 also adds some excellent big guns. And yes, there is even better armor available.

Thank you.
I am not going to take any NPC with me. I don't like them in RPGs.

Well actually the game is broken in lots of little ways. It's playable, sure, but not everything works the way it was intended.

I also think it's wrong to characterize killap's Fallout 2 Restoration Project as a mod. He's gone to great lengths to limit the scope of the RP to bugfixes, mechanical fixes, and restoring content that was planned by the original developers but had to be cut due to time constraints. Extensive documentation is available.

Finally, if you go out and buy the boxed copy of the Fallout Trilogy that's been available for the past several years, you'll find the F2RP on it (with no mention of thanks or recognition for killap, BTW). In my book that makes it semi-official at least.

For some of the NPCs you get xp for adding them to your party, helpful in the early game, but you can always drop them off right after. Or sell them into slavery if you want to play that way. You might acquire one involuntarily that refuses to leave. Actually, there are two, but you'll only get one of them. They die pretty easily, though, and can be sold to slavers. The nicest way to get rid of them is to keep them alive long enough to reach the one person who can remove them from your party, leaving them alive and free but very unhappy.

Sounds like you might plan on playing with a low Charisma. Keep in mind you can permanently lose up to 3 CH over the course of the game, but 2 points are voluntary and all give some advantages in exchange. Dropping to 0 or less won't kill you, and will still be treated as a CH of 1 except when you do something to raise CH.

Oh, one important difference I forgot. The merchants restock at intervals from a couple of days to a week, and will add items they didn't have earlier. With guns and ammo in short supply in the very early stages, that becomes important. Some merchants will get much better items later in the game. Sometimes it's caused by a trigger event, others I believe are intentional to keep players from taking shortcuts. For example, one particular town should have the best Small Guns weapon in the game by the time you get there if you play through following the story line, but not if you make a beeline straight there as soon as you can afford it.

I had not played F1 for the UI was too bad. It was better in F2 so I had played it.