You didn't find his blaster and a stack of ammo for it? You can't search the body, but it's on the ground next to him.

Just pay attention when your radio picks up beacons and frequencies and they'll lead you right to it.

Not being familiar with the Fallout series, I've been meaning to ask: exploding teddy bears?

I found my flame thrower last night, its awesome! . Also I was way off on the # of hours put in this game. When I shut it off last night I was at 60 hours. I'm not even close to finishing this game.

That's a lot of hours. I ended up finishing at just over 35 hours with 3 optional mission left to do based off achievements. I hit the level cap and found over 80 locations.

Can someone who has beaten the game tell me roughly what percent done I am with the actual story?

You're roughly half done. Probably a bit more than half.

Oh, I think I discovered what happens to make the Megaton Water Processing Plant guy disappear. I was leaving Craterside Supply and I saw somebody way over on the other side of town immediately plummet three stories to the bottom of the town. I later went to try to give the guy some scrap metal and he was nowhere to be found, even when he's normally sleeping. I went back a few saves and he was alive and well. I never did find a body, but I'm fairly certain that's what happened.

If that's true, that's amazing.

Maybe they sacrified his body to "Atom."

I finally bought the game, and this morning I got outta Vault 101 and nosied around Super Duper Mart. I'm still in that point of the game where the landscape is overwhelming and I feel lost, but that will subside like it did with Oblivion.

Okay, thanks. That was about what I expected.

Oh well, there are still at least 2 other guys who will take your scrap metal.

I guess I haven't met the others yet. Plus, I want to keep visiting this guy and delivering metal so he doesn't feel inclined to commit suicide again. Or get killed by a junkie. Whatever happened.

I did finally get one freeze/crash - really weird since it didn't even end when I popped the tray - had to hard shut down with the power button. After that I erased all my old save games up to lvl 10 (probably about 20 saves) - at least the ones I hadn't already saved over. I know the issue with Morrowind way back when was about the number of saved games and the size of the memory - not sure if it's a similar issue, but it couldn't hurt.

I guess I need to be careful reading this thread cause a lot of the enjoyment of the game is discovering new locations on my own, and now I know there is a UFO out there somewhere for me to find! I'm guessing I'm not very far into the game, though I'm approaching level 13 character wise. I just got to Rivet City for the first time yesterday, pawned off some loot, talked to Dr. Li (hmmm strange that she has the same name as my character...) so I have a location to search for my father, but instead I headed up to the Museum of Technology so I could finish the GNR quest to put the transmitter in the Washington Monument, and Three Dog would give me more info about my father (which now I'm guessing will involve him telling me to check Rivet City...)

The entire western half of the map, and a lot of the northeast corner, remains relatively unexplored still, heh!

Already can't wait to see if they do a Fallout 4

anyone get the mysterious stranger perk?
how often does he pop up?

I talked to Li before I ever found GNR - wanted to complete the research quest before continuing the main quest (only just made it there last night) - so that quest disappeared from my list completely - although I do now have the radar dish quest since I did talk to 3-dog (he hasn't said anything about father's location yet though).

It was also a little iffy in Underworld -- with the size of the world and the overlapping things to deal with like order of quests and radio frequency transmission radii, it does seem like a few of these things would be hard to counter in programming, but it does add a little to the confusion too.

There's definitely some level of enemy scaling too. At lvl 4-6 I was taking down super mutants pretty quick with a couple combat shotgun blasts to the head. Now at level 14-16, my shotgun is dealing nearly 2x as much damage as before (thanks to repair), but it takes a lot more shots of almost any weapon to deal the same damage. Humans and ghouls still go down easy though.

Graphically, there's literally nothing like firing a railroad spike and getting a bullet-time, slow-mo rotating shot of a 6 inch metal spike traveling across a room and pinning someone's head to the wall - absolutely incredible - gets me every time - I've even had the slow-mo shot for a buckshot blast (and could see every pellet) - that's detail. Also cool getting a slow-mo grenade toss, slow arc, gentle bounce, skittering between someone's feet and *boom* - see them get tossed in the air - maybe lose a leg.

I gotta say, I was sceptical about this game ever since the first gameplay videos showed up. Gameplay looked a bit clunky and I was afraid it would feel more like an Oblivion add on rather than a Fallout game. Having played the game a little though I can easily say that it casts it's own unique shadow all over Oblivion, and Oblivion was a magnificent game to begin with.

I took this as well and felt cheated. I took it right away, and by the end of the game he only came up 19 times. Waste of a perk.

So I bought the game yesterday, played 4 hours and just made it to Megaton.

A couple of things I don't understand:
1) Radiation, does it build up or is it only instant. I was in one place, and flushed the tiolets, and got like =25 Rad a time.

2) Repairing. In Oblivion I would repair items to increase my repair skill. Is that how it works here,or is it only based on SPECIAL points?

1) The radiation you get accumulates and can affect you negatively and will ultimately kill you if you get too much. You can check how much you have accumulated in the stats menu in the PIP under the RAD category. You can get rid of the radiation by visiting one of the local doctors or taking Rad-X that you find out and about.

2) In this game you can add points to you repair each time you level up but you need a duplicate of that item to actually be able to repair it. You can only repair it to a certain percent depending on the level of repair you have.

I hope this helps.

Small correction - rad-away removes radiation poisoning, and rad-x increases immunity from radiation.

BTW - when you flushed the toilets, you were actually drinking from them - I think it's normally 25 rads vs 4 hp per use. It's a lot safer (and more efficient) to use sinks or water fountains. Normally 12-25 hp to 4 rads per use. The first time I noticed it was at the water tank between Vault 101 and Megaton. Drinking water (even from rivers, streams, etc) is also a very cheap, very convenient way to heal yourself (if a tiny bit slow) - assuming you've got the meds. I normally pop one rad-x, then drink all I want, then if I need to, take a rad-away to flush my system (try never to let it get above the first major bar because then your stats start getting affected).

The repair system is handled in a very interesting way - unlike something like WoW where you'd be hard-pressed to find an identical item, most of the weapons you come across in use are one of several primary types, which makes it pretty easy to use "repair" - although with some of the larger, heavier ones, you'll often have to make a decision on whether it's worth lugging it around for a while if your repair skill is a few points shy or not. Most of the Scavengers you come across can do basic repairs, but for heavy duty/major repairs past a certain percentage, you'll often need to talk to the professional traders/repair folks in the major towns - megaton (Moira), Underworld (Winthrop), etc.

edit - you can normally get a few extra points out of almost any skill stat by a combination of several things - equipment (ie. lab coat (+ science), utility jacket (+ repair, + lockpick), suit (+ speech) - and it's very quick and convenient to switch them out - even in combat as long as you stay in the menu -I often have to go to pipboy in the middle of a big fight, put on my doctor's coat for a bonus to med - take some stimpacks (fewer than otherwise), then switch back to my armor and get back to the fight) - and meds - taking mentats will increase intel/perception - which will add a few points to lockpick or repair or speech/barter - but not as much as it did in the first 2 games - since the stats percentage rolls seem a little different than the way it used to be handled more tightly to the SPECIAL system itself.

Question about radiation...

That perk is fine - never had to use it myself - I don't ever plan on letting my rads get that high (and don't see it ever actually happening in conjunction with a crippling situation) - might possibly come in useful if I was ever hit with a fat-man mini-nuke.

I got to Megaton pretty quick, but I've been working on the book for a couple hours. I like Moira, she's an interesting character.
I've been picking up and carrying lots of crap...I assume things like scrap metal can be used to build things in the future, but is there any way of knowing what I should be keeping and what I should be tossing/throwing away (without spoiling too much)? I have been repairing wherever possible to improve quality and lower weight, and I've got lots of little food things that heal 2-10 HP each, I guess I should be using those first. (Coincidentally, this is the same challenge I had with Oblivion, I constantly had to manage my inventory.)
If a weapon's Condition drops to zero, does it disappear? I'm missing a gun, but I don't recall if I accidentally sold it or if it just rotted away to nothing.
I can see myself just wandering about more than in Oblivion, as much as I like fantasy RPGs, I like desolate post nuclear wastelands as much or more, plus it's more novel.
I'm not sure I like the level cap--I'm already halfway to level 4 (or 5, I forget) and though I expect levelling to slow down a bit, I would like to have the option to continue playing and levelling (I'm ok with stats and perks maxing out at a certain level.)