Get Hole in Head. Big Hole. VERY Big. Huge! Let's Play Fallout 2!

[Cullen]

It's like a kiss to build a dream on.

The Game

Released in 1998 when I wasn't even in Kindergarten yet, Fallout 2 is naturally the sequel Black Isle Studios' Fallout: A Post Nuclear Roleplaying Game. Fallout 2 is an iterative sequel in the purest sense, HEAVILY reusing existing assets from the previous game plus a few new things here and there to create a bigger and more fleshed out experience. And boy is it, I'd say this is about 4-5 times the amount of game that Fallout 1 is. It is also a complete mess from top to bottom, with a myriad of bugs, terribly balanced gameplay that's arguably worse than the first game, scripting errors out the wazoo that can result in quests breaking in unpredictable ways and quite possibly the worst random encounters I've ever seen in an RPG. And despite all that, there's something about it a'int there? This LP will not be using any mods and will mostly be a vanilla experience, in as much as the Steam version running through its SFall player is accurate to the original release of the game. Based on my experience compared against old guides, the unmodded Steam version is just as broken as the officially patched versions of when the game was new, just with faster load times, so this'll be relatively close to a pure Fallout 2 experience.

The LP

This isn't going to be anything too fancy, we'll mostly be focusing on a single character's playthrough optimized towards clearing as many quests as possible. There are surprisingly few mutually exclusive questlines in Fallout 2, often you can follow an evil questline to its near conclusion where you then roll on your insidious benefactors for a bigger payout plus positive Karma (somehow). Shameless opportunism is the name of the game in Fallout 2. When there are multiple resolutions to a questline that yield the same or similar rewards, I'll do my best to acknowledge or address them as we go. We may occasionally switch off to a separate file to show off more specific things my main character can't properly address. And while I won't be doing too much with it, famously playing as a low intelligence character modifies the progression of the game pretty heavily, so I'll try to fit in at least a bit of that.

The Videos

Part 1, The Chosen Blunder
Part 2, Spiritual Guidance
Part 3, Rodent of Unusual Size
Part 4, Buffy the Gecko Slayer

Full LP Playlist

Like old CRPGs? My Screenshot LP of Lands of Lore may be to your liking. If you enjoy games that are beautiful, broken messes, then Fear & Hunger will also tickle your fancy. Or tickle your something at least.

[Cullen]

Our journey begins with quite possibly the worst tutorial level of all time! The amount of stuff there is to learn in the Temple of Trials is so understated that frankly you'd be better served just reading the manual (assuming you bought this when it was new) rather than slamming your head against this mess of a level. Thankfully once you know what to do and how ineffectual trading blows is in this game compared to Fallout 1, you can dash through here in just a couple minutes, but we're trying to do as much as we can so I figured I'd engage with the level in mostly how it was intended.

If I weren't running Gifted, I would instead take Small Frame and still max out my Agility while reducing my Strength and Endurance to 4 and 3 respectively. Intelligence would have to settle for 7 since that's adequate for most quests that check it while Perception, Charisma and Luck could comfortably chill at 6. This stat spread would still allow me to relatively easily engage and complete every quest, though we'd need to stock up and utilize Mentats more often. More on that later!

If I weren't using Finesse, I'd pick Good Natured instead. A bunch of Skill points in useful skills with only 2 skills we care about actually losing anything is a more than worthwhile trade.

One thing I didn't mention about Endurance is that it also provides bonuses to your Poison and Radiation resistances. I didn't mention it because barely anything in the game inflicts Poison or Radiation on you, and these things do not apply amounts worth worrying about. A slightly more useful aspect of Endurance is that high levels of it increases your Healing Rate stat, allowing you to recover more HP when time passes which can be a handy way to save on Stimpacks while traveling. It's still not worth investing much into the stat for.

I like to tag Unarmed as it's used in several quests down the line and it gives us an immediately useful offensive option for the early game, which is quite hellish if you don't engage in sequence breaks. Many people will point out that you can raise Unarmed to 100% for free, and I'd counter that 100% in a skill is still really unreliable in Fallout 2 in comparison to Fallout 1, and you don't really get reliable hit rates until the 130% marker. Also most of the free raises are in the endgame if you're on a conventional route, and I need a good fighting option now. One nice thing is that most of those free boosts can still be gotten even after you clear the 100% marker with no reduction in the efficacy, which is really nice as it essentially gives us double skill points compared to investing our level up points.

Were I to tag something other than Unarmed, then Lockpicking is the obvious one as that allows us to get a number of goodies in one of the first major areas. I can do without those much more than I could do without being able to actually hit my enemies, so I usually pass on it. You only really need around 80% Lockpicking to clear most of the locks in the game anyway, so the Tag becomes irrelevant for it very early on.

Of the shitty skills, Barter, Gambling and Sneak are easily the most useless and should never be invested in. Gambling and Barter got nerfed HARD in the transition to 2 and take ridiculous amounts of investment to actually do anything. Barter also only discounts the goods you are purchasing, it does not boost the sale value of your own items. Sneak can be used in a few areas, but most places where Sneak is an obvious thing to do usually has independent Perception checks from the NPCs in the area that prevent Sneak from working. It also does not give any bonus to your Steal skill if you're Sneaking while Stealing. I'd toss Throwing on here (heh) as well, but there are actually a couple things Throwing can do that make me hesitate to say it's completely useless. But it's not worth investing in.

You unfortunately cannot skip the Temple of Trials when starting a new game, but you can run through it within a matter of a few minutes if you just run from all the Ants and Scorpions.

If you miss the chance to talk down Cameron, just walk behind him, quicksave, and attempt to Steal the key until it finally works.

[Cullen]

Part 2 is out! We clean up the rest of our business in Arroyo and set out into the wide and wild world.

I did find out what exactly Combat Difficulty does, on Rough enemies get a 20% flat bonus to their accuracy, a 1.25X multiplier to their damage, and the Intelligence required for an enemy to potentially use Aimed attacks is lowered to 3, meaning most enemies in the game can potentially perform them. The damage buff they receive is definitely the most prominent thing, since that multiplies with critical damage bonuses they get.

Just to clarify on something I said regarding Steal EXP, I mean you hit diminishing returns in a pure mechanical sense as the game literally awards less EXP after six successful steals in a single attempt. Were it to scale endlessly upwards, it could very easily be worth the "risk" to grind it out for awhile. With our paltry Steal skill, 4 times on a non-aggressive mark is the best we can manage.

There's a funny interaction that can happen with the quest to rescue Smoke. There actually isn't a time limit on rescuing him, but the quest to do it will become unobtainable after 90 in-game days. If you accept it beforehand though, you can wait forever to rescue Smoke though the Experience for doing so becomes unavailable. If you wait 11 months in Arroyo without leaving it, Nagor will claim Smoke will have been cooked for food, but you can still rescue him.

Speaking of 90 in-game days, all Arroyo quests become voided at that point and Hakunin will no longer craft Healing Powder for you. The Elder will also not give you the money or flask if you delay that long.

The EXP gained in Arroyo is really quite marginal, if you paid attention you'd notice that even the simplest quests in Klamath are giving us double or triple the payout. You can comfortably ignore these quests without setting back your character growth if you just want to get on with it, but this wouldn't be much of a completionist playthrough then, right?

It does not take much positive buzz to make the Dunton's think you're not worth getting in on their cattle wrangling scheme, but for whatever reason Arm Wrestling them, win or lose, gets their trust.

I'll mention this in the next video, but the quest to save Sulik's sister is probably the most infamous piece of cut content in this game. Despite it being his whole reason for joining you and encounters with slavers happening multiple times in the game, this plot thread is dropped as soon as he joins you and cannot be pursued further. There IS dialogue in the game files that seems to be in reference to Sulik's home village, which is likely as far as they got with implementing the quest before it got cut.

If you complete the wrangling scheme, you get the same EXP you'd get for scaring off the Dunton's plus some Beef Jerky and negative karma. Not a big deal either way, but I went this route because I needed to scare off Torr regardless and it's a really funny way to resolve the quest.

Despite participating in the cattle wrangling scheme just to double cross the Dunton's and being responsible for Torr running off, this whole affair netted us positive Karma. Such is the way things go in Fallout 2 sometimes.

Saving Torr is easily the best way to go about freeing Sulik, as it saves you the money spent on freeing him while still giving you Experience. Note that you can also pay Maida directly to free Sulik rather than giving him the money to pay off his debt, but for some reason this route doesn't award EXP. Speaking of Sulik!

Companion: Sulik

"Most people have evil spirits. You? You have stupid spirits. Go see shaman. Get hole in head."

Weapon Skills: Melee Weapons, Unarmed Weapons, SMG-type guns

Secondary Skills: Outdoorsman

HP by Level: 85, 93, 103, 113, 123, 134

AP by Level: 9, 10, 10, 11, 11, 12

Sulik also gains bonus crit rate and melee damage as he levels, but the resources on these are inconsistent so I won't list them here since I'm not confident in them. Every companion has their own SPECIAL statistics, but the only one that really matters is Strength because it affects carry weight and weapon accuracy for gun users. Sulik has 225 pounds of carry weight by max level.

Sulik is your first possible companion and by some measure is easily the best. He's durable, strong with melee weapons at a stage of the game where those are dominant, and his SMG gun type means he's actually able to use the extremely powerful .223 pistol in the end game, or the HK G11 if you're willing to risk him bursting it into your back. Sulik also has a very high Outdoorsman skill, starting at 75% and finishing at 85%. When a party member has a tagged secondary skill like Outdoorsman, the game will actually check their stat instead of yours when using it if it happens to be higher. This is why Outdoorsman is pretty useless for the player, as having Sulik and a Motion Sensor (+20% to your Outdoorsman if it's in your inventory) means you hit the effectiveness cap of 95% for Outdoorsman without putting a single point into it or even reading a book.

Just past that though, Sulik is very consistent across the whole game and is a welcome force in your war on the wasteland. Set him up with a Combat Knife early on for frequent hits on the Geckos and Rats we start against, and then switch him over to an SMG so he can engage at a range. Once the 223 pistol becomes available, slap that in his hands and watch him blow apart enemies from across the map. If you didn't tag a close range combat skill, Sulik is practically mandatory for actually doing combat in Klamath if you go there first as the guns you can pick up in this town suck a fat one. Even if you don't plan to use Sulik long term, his high Outdoorsman makes him indispensable for traveling with minimal headaches until you get the car, so definitely grab him for that. We'll be swapping out companions as we go along this playthrough, but Sulik will be with us full time from here on out, and it's an instant reload if he dies.

[Cullen]

Part 3 is out! For a first town, Klamath is pretty rich in things to do, so we'll be here for a minute as we resolve all the quests here. It's pretty easy to tell which areas in Fallout 2 got a bit more time in the oven than others, as you'll find a large number of quests with variable outcomes in them, with not too much in the way of buggy or annoying mechanics to work around.

Losing out on the bathhouse isn't a big deal, as there are many more brothels we can exploit in this game to work our way towards porn stardom.

None of the ground work in learning about Vic is really necessary, you can just saunter to his helpfully labeled home straight out and be done with it. Of the things there, the radio is the only necessary thing to grab for intended quest progression. Note that we'll find other radio's with the same item model later in the game, but only this radio specifically can be used for the quest regarding Vic.

Whiskey Bob's still is one of a handful of genuinely timed quest in the game, and also the only one with a backup solution if you screw up. Or you could just sell out Whiskey Bob's still to Sajag immediately, it doesn't matter too much. Regardless, this one is pretty easy to complete since you'd have to go out of your way to waste the day you're given to do it. There's only one timed quest where you could potentially fail it if you aren't aware of it in advance, and ironically it's the one that gives you an in-game month to complete it.

As you can see, even with our skill in Unarmed, Geckos and the like are still pretty evasive. They have weirdly high armor class for this stage of the game, we generally stare down better odds once we start squaring off against human opponents. Golden Geckos can really ruin our day right now and it's in our best interest to avoid them.

If Whiskey Bob does damage your reputation, it's hilariously easy to fix as you can just buy a round of drinks for the patrons of the Golden Gecko until you're a beloved figure of the community.

Slim Picket will continue to train you in Outdoorsman until you hit 28%, if you so desire. Since Sulik effectively caps the skill for us anyway, I decided to go without it. If you do intend to make use of his training, refrain from reading that Scout's Handbook we got until you've gotten all the training you can from Slim!

The real reason Slim wasn't giving me the key is because I already had it, and for this one instance the game decides you can't have two copies of the same key. Oh well. In addition to screwing him for the key, you can also steal it from him, or hilariously use the Barter interface and purchase it for a single dollar. You can also kill him if you want to be a dick. Do note that once we complete the Rat God quest, Slim will no longer speak with us, so be sure to get his training before then!

The overwhelming majority of quests in the game are unavailable to a low intelligence Chosen on the account of them being borderline non-verbal and most quests requiring some degree of inquiry or negotiation to start. You can kind of half complete some quests, and other major quests only care that you get the final item or kill the intended target. Funnily enough, low intelligence (either starting that way or abusing chems to induce it temporarily) is also the way to complete the game as fast as possible, as a late game multi-step quest simply cannot be completed as a low intelligence character, resulting in a couple NPC's completing those steps for you if you take care of their normal quest for them.

[Cullen]

Part 4 is out! This will be the last we really do with Klamath as there is no point in returning here once you've completed all the quests. The Toxic Caves, on the other hand, will have some merit to revisit later, so keep those in mind!

Routing the rats in North Trapper Town is fairly straightforward with any build and worth the effort. If you're incapable at combat, just let Sulik handle everything as a Sharpened Spear or Combat Knife will let him easily punch through everything here.

The payoff for getting the Fuel Injection System is a ways off, but it'll definitely save us a major resource strain later, so be sure to grab it! One niche thing you can do with it is sell it for a temporary cash boost before buying it back later. Sold items will stay in a trader's inventory indefinitely, so you can always buy it back later. Or kill the trader, whatever you prefer.

John's Pugilism training is naturally best taken when you're already over the 100% marker for Unarmed or Melee. If you care more about combat than quests, or you're willing to delay speech checks for later, you can also pump your Unarmed/Melee to 120% and let John boost you up to near capped accuracy for those strikes with a much lesser point investment.

You must get the location of the Toxic Caves from Ardin Buckner in order to access them. There's a handful of locations in the game where simply knowing the geographical location as a player is insufficient, you must be informed of their existence by an NPC.

Aside from the damage, taking exactly 15 steps through toxic goo in a row will have another negative effect later down the line. Only the goo in the Toxic Caves have this effect.

Smiley can help you in combat against the Geckos, though naturally if he dies you'll get no rewards for this quest. Best to just deal with all the combat before you get him, since you can't control his tactics.

The Buffy Easter Egg is a pretty nice cache of supplies, though with the way I approach the Den it's actually pretty unnecessary. The money will be very useful though.