For longer shots, a lot of the time not using VATS is better, at least that's been my experience. The hunting rifle might show 10% in VATS, meaning you'll average 1 hit in 10 shots from there obviously...but outside of VATS, if you take your time and aim (hold LT), and time it right if the guy is moving, I can get a hit probably half of the time.

make sure you have the lockpick skill, it one of the most important skills in the game. especially early on, there are a couple of safes in springvale. pick up those bobby pins!

Can I repair my sniper with my hunting rifle?

No, 2 totally different weapons. You'll find lots of each along the way though (more of the hunting rifles though).

Oddly enough, you can repair the lincoln repeater with normal hunting rifles, despite the fact that it uses entirely different ammo. I think this is the only exception in the game, at least that I can think of.

For lockpick: while it is important, try not to invest any extraneous skill points in it until you know for sure you want the next level. Like Science and Explosives, the locks are only restricted every 25 points: So you're really not getting any benefit from having a lockpick skilll of 49, it's basically the same as 25.

For skills, early on, I think the following are most useful:
Repair: this is useful for the entire game. It helps you consolidate the stuff that you're carrying, it helps you get better weapons early on, it helps you save caps and repair stuff to get more caps.

Explosives: Maybe not super useful later on if you don't use grenades/mines, but I recommend at least getting it to 25 for an early, important Megaton quest.

Lockpick/Science: A lot of the safes will open with terminals, so concentrating on one or the other early on is useful. Just try to do it in increments of 25, as stated above.

You'll want at least one combat skill, and early on, I think Small Guns is the most useful. You may want to specialize in melee weapons or unarmed combat, but you'll get shredded early on with the crappy armor you start with. Big Guns are few and far between, as is their ammo, and Energy Weapons are expensive and rarer early on.

Medicine is useful, but mainly for the speech options, you'll eventually find plenty of stimpacks and a place to rest. Barter's not that useful, you can get clothes that help with that and you'll have lots of caps later. Sneak is great later on, not sure how good it is in the beginning, maybe worth a few points. You can pretty much save and retry before any speech challenges, so I never found a need to consciously raise it.

If you don't mind finding out about the perks, I would also recommend looking at all the perks that will be available and what level they're available, then tailoring your skills to that. This is also useful before you leave Vault 101, when you have a last chance to change your SPECIAL stats, keeping in mind that there are bobbleheads that can raise each SPECIAL by 1, and most skills by 10, and I think enough skill books to make up 50 skill points in every category (if you take Comprehension early on)

That was all helpful. I only wanted to add that with basically no points in melee other than skill books, if you can get the shishkabob early on, you can kill almost anything with it (except maybe Deathclaws). First time through it's how I killed super mutants when the only ammo I had was for my 10 mm handgun. It also helped me do the giant ant quest without burning through ammo.

Thanks a lot, everyone. I let Amata keep the gun because I thought she was going to be coming with me. And I didn't load up on Repair, Explosives, or Science. I loaded up on Speech, Melee Weapons, and Big Guns -- which from what I'm reading seems to be a mistake.

I think maybe I'm going to restart the game. I skipped taking the G.O.A.T. and apparently you get an Achievement for taking it.

The beauty of this game is that you can play it any way you want... it'll just be a little tougher...

In addition to having to get up close, the drawback with melee and unarmed is that you can't aim for body parts in VATs.

Also, don't miss the bobblehead in the Vault.

dammit, i put a lot into big/small and speech too. I'm aboot 3 hours in, and really could restart without much hassle. And then I could get that first bobblehead in the vault too.

I chose Speech, Small Guns, and Lockpick. Speech was fine for me, since I'm trying to be a nice guy and talk my way out of things.

There's also an achievement for speech - I used it a lot - but unless a "roll" option comes up that lets you choose speech (and succeed) it doesn't count towards the final count - 87 hours and I think I got 39/50 needed for the achievement (although in some dialogues I chose "agility/intelligence/other" instead of speech modifier).

Quite frankly, I maxed out several of the skills fairly early on (and still wasted books afterwards by reading them) there will be a plus next to your skill after that - but I'm not sure if it indicates anything like never letting that skill get below 100% even with a negative modifier like drug withdrawal or what.

I raised some skills like unarmed/melee, etc - 30+ points just by reading books and never putting points into them except maybe a handful at the very beginning. I don't think any of my skills were less than 50 at the end of the game.

For the Megaton quest - I thought you could do it if science was high enough even without explosives, but it's been so long now, I've probably forgotten. By the end, you'll definitely want to have either lockpick or science (or optimally both) to 100% or else you'll never be able to hit VH doors or safes or computer terminals. Alternatively, in many areas, there are computers that unlock doors/safes - if your lockpick is high enough you can tackle them directly, or if your science is high enough you can hack.

IMO - hacking is a lot easier because you get infinite tries unless you accidentally go too far - no worrying with the lockpick/supply of bobbypins. I posted some details on it a few pages back. Just keep guessing till you have one chance left - intelligent guessing that is based on the letter locations in the words. When there's just one chance, go through and find all the closed hyphens, parentheses, etc - get rid of as many bad options as you can - hopefully different ones than the ones you already chose, and hopefully also resetting your choices. If you do that and still fail to choose the right one, just exit out and restart with no penalty.

Or, if you have decent enough skill in both, you can hack the terminal, making sure NOT to unlock the safe via the terminal, then lockpick the safe for extra experience and to help get the achievements.

About the speech thing: it's cheating, but what I did was basically save before conversing with characters. If there was a speech challenge, my speech (especially in the beginning) was pretty low, but it still gave me like a 25% chance at the lowest... just keep on trying it, and reloading if you don't get it (you can reload during a conversation, even though you can't save during a conversation). That way, I didn't have to upgrade my speech all that much.

There are also times when a successful speech challenge will result in a negative karma hit, but that should be fairly obvious.

Make a save right before you leave Vault 101... IIRC, you can change everything (appearance, stats, skill point allocation, etc.) then, and you can just load that up when you want to start over, without going through the initial Vault 101 stuff again.

Except you can't go back and get the bobblehead if you missed it.

I've done that with games in the past, but have become too lazy to do that these days. I actually put a decent amount in speech and have many 100% options, including many of Moira's book quests, though I still do the quest just to try it out.

I've also concentrated a lot into Small Guns, as those are my primary weapons of choice. With my speech and barter skills, plus clothing, I buy ammo at a nice discount and have hundreds of rounds, with no worrying of running out. If they had a weight on ammo, I'd be screwed.

I have to give props on the developers for not putting weight on ammo. Sure it's not realistic, but it'd be a pain (of Mass Effect inventory management proportions) to have to drop off ammo.

I also appreciate the seemingly endless lockers and storage spaces.

Yeah, in retrospect, I liked some of the non-"speech" options that Moira's quests gave me more - like the "agility" or "perception" options. They fit my character more.

I'm also more of an energy weapons guy when it comes to skills. Granted you don't find them as early on (other than the alien blaster), but if you wait till the endgame to pump the skill points, it's too late.

Sooner or later I'll have to try a bruiser/big guns character though (ended up with big guns around 70%+ thanks to books and stat mods though) - this edition of the game - vs. fallout 1/2 will make melee/unarmed a bit more fun IMO.

I'm a little curious about making a super lucky character as well - I'm not sure how much luck really figures into it though since they don't have random encounters and I've yet to see a weapon critically fail - maybe just a better chance of critical hits? I had plenty of those though with luck at 6 or below.

Luck gives a boost to all skills, I think a half point for every two points of luck, as well as the increased crits. There are also a bunch of items that increase Luck, including one that doesn't need to be worn. I would think it would also affect the frequency of Mysterious Stranger, but he seems to show up a lot even with my Luck=7 (after nearly being scared away from this perk because of posts on this board).

Still doesn't seem all that good compared to stuff like:
Strength (+2 per level to melee and damage, but more carry weight)
Intelligence (+2 to Med/Repair/Science and more skill points per level up)
Agility (+2 per level to small guns/sneak, plus more AP)

So, I started over and now with saving before big decisions I've been having some fun.

Explosives and lockpicking was definitely the way to go in the beginning. As was repair to fix those pipes.

Yeah, I'd tag, small guns, repair and locksmith for your first 3.

I dropped my charisma to 1, and Str to 4.

I boosted INT to 8, Perception at 6, agility and luck at 7 each.

Now INT is +9 (got a bobblehead), str is +5 bobblehead, perception is at 8 and agility is at 8 and luck at 7.

How important is Dog Meat? I have heard that there is a glitch, where if you kill dog meat, you gain a additional follower slot? I would rather have Fawkes and Charon then Charon and dog meat.

Dog meat just melee's and its a problem for me, because I am a long distance bomber, and dog meat goes rushing in and getting clobbered from the bad guy AND me.

I got him a long time ago, but after only having him with me for an hour or so, I realized he was trouble, so now I just leave him at my house. When I go home to drop off some loot, he's there to greet me.

For the followers: I understand that you can use them as pack mules to hold your stuff, but do they use the armor/weapons you gave them, and if so do you need to give them ammo? I realize the stuff won't degrade, and that their default weapons are endless, just wondering if they actually benefit from the stuff you give them.

Very close to the end now. Just finished up my last achievement-granting sidequest, and got all the bobbleheads. Now to destroy the two Super Mutant Behemoths that I haven't tracked down yet to get that achievement, and finish the game.

No, they won't use your weapons/armor/ammo, etc.

I actually tried with Charon but no, they will only work as mule.