Keep anything that has no weight. It takes up no room. Pre War money is sort of useless, but you can sell it for some money or use it later in the rocket launcher.

Darts you will need to keep. They are used in the dart gun, which is a VERY powerful weapon against fast creatures (target leg, almost guaranteed disabling of that leg) then you switch to a gun, and blow them away.

There is no real way to know what you need and don't need unless you use the fallout wiki, or just wait until you get far enough to know for sure. Be sure to get you house in either Megaton or Tenpenny Tower as fast as you can so you can store extra stuff there.

Do i make the dart gun? And if so what do i need?

You need the schematic, which I forget where it is. But I think it takes a toy car, a Radscorpion gland, a paint gun and surgical tubing.

I just checked and you can find the schematics here:

* A schematic can be obtained from Hannibal Hamlin for completing the Head of State quest for the slaves.
* A schematic is at the Boutique Le Chic in Tenpenny Tower and if the player sides with ghouls during the Tenpenny Tower (quest), it can be purchased twice. Once from Lydia Montenegro and another time from Michael Masters, the ghoul who takes over. If you do purchase the same schematic twice you will only be able to use one of them, the extra dart gun schematic will remain in your inventory under misc, which you can still sell to any one of the local traders through out the Wasteland. Note:Buying the seconds schematic will upgrade your dartgun to v.2 on the Playstation 3 and 360 version. You can actually get both for free.
* A schematic can be found at the MDPL-05 Power Station next to the skeleton of a dead engineer.

I would look at the recipes for the weapons, and keep a mental note of those items. Or just write it down.

Pre-war money did not have any uses that I remember.

Also if you don't ave the megaton house yet, I like to use the superduper mart to store items, and I believe you can sleep in the bed there.

Just some general, non-spoilerish, hopefully helpful information:

There are 7 weapons you can make in the game, and each one requires different materials. You can easily find this info at the Fallout Wiki if you want to know beforehand, but in my opinion it's more fun not to.

To make a weapon, you have to find its schematic first. These are sometimes available from vendors, as rewards for certain quests, or can just be found in some special locations.

Each of the 7 weapons has 3 schematics. The more you have for a particular weapon, the stronger it will be when you make it. Some of the weapons have more than 3 actual schematics in the game, but you don't need more than 3 because it won't make a difference after that point.

As for random items you come across that you should hang on to for rewards later on in the game (I'm not including the weapon-making in this):
Scrap Metal
Pre-War Books (the ones that are actually listed as such)
Blood Packs (depending on how you play a certain quest, shouldn't be too hard to figure out which one)
Sugar Bombs
Sensor Modules

And, if you plan on getting the DLCs:
Teddy Bears (The Pitt)
Cameras (Broken Steel)
Yeast (Point Lookout, but not really something you need to worry about beforehand because you only find it in Point Lookout anyway)

Thanks for the help guys, I kind of like knowing what to hang onto to because in games like this I get pissed if I had something and then find out I needed it. I hate unnecessary backtracking.

I have the Megaton house so I will store there.

Don't forget to save Nuke Cola Quantums if you haven't done the quest with them yet.

Yes, this is very important.

I don't know about some other people, but I feel the schematic made weapons are just for novelty. The Rock-It Launcher is pretty unique but not very useful. The flame sword is cool but I'm not a fan of melee weapons. The railway spike rifle is disappointing. Not nearly strong enough as it should be. The dart gun may be the most useful but does not work fast enough.

The best weapons are the rare ones --the Lincoln Repeater, Blackhawk Magnum, weapons like those are the ones I prefer.

love the lincoln repeater because the ammo is so easy to find and you can just use regular hunting rifles to fix them!

What's the address for the wiki?

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Fallout_3

I rarely use the schematic weapons either, though a lot of people swear by the Dart Gun. The Deathclaw Gauntlet was great when I briefly used it, but I'm not really a fan of weapons that require getting that close.

As far as schematics weapons, the Shishkebab weapon is pretty good especially towards the beginning when you don't have as much ammo. It's the only thing that got me past the Them quest the first time, and I killed lots of supermutants with it too.

But if you aim for the head and the victim is near a wall, there is nothing so cool as watching the rail gun nail the victims head to the wall. AWESOME.

not killing the family is the way to go

actually you can hit them anywhere and both legs get disabled automatically
plus there's some slow damage accumulation of a few points

funny...I always aimed for the legs, not realizing that you did not have to....

I just finished that part, and I saw the same things you did, although your actions were different than mine.

I forget who AlanP is on here, but he sent me a message on PSN yesterday giving me a hard time for playing F3 all day. It's funny, I started playing at about 8AM and the next thing I know it's 1230...at night!!!

Today I met my first Deathclaw.

Awesome. Dart guns are best on deathclaws.

Do you have any followers? Fawkes is an amazing bodyguard.

Don't worry, it's natural. It pretty much consumed my every waking, non-working hour for a few weeks.

Yeah, same here. 140+ hours and I still need a lot of things to do in the game.

Oh, and I'm a man I only use an Assault Rifle to kill Deathclaws. (And a lot of stimpacks of course).

I haven't seen a dartgun yet, but I've passed up a hell of a lot of darts. I didn't realize that they didn't weigh anything, or I would have been keeping them.

I've come across two supermutants who I thought might be Fawkes, both in cages and both came after me when I let them out. Really, other than slaves, anybody I let out of a cage attacks me. The only sidekick I've found is Dogmeat, and I just sent him back to the vault.

So where is Fawkes?

Looked it up on the Fallout Wiki.

Projects for tonight: Dartgun and Fawkes (although I think Chiron might be a more likely companion later)

Yeah all ammo weighs nothing, so always pick it up. Caps are also weightless, as well as stimpacks, and other aid items.

Fawkes you find during one of the last quests of the main game. You need good karma for him to join you.

Yeah, you'll find Fawkes from playing through the main storyline. It's unavoidable.

I don't use followers because I'm a solo wanderer (translation: having someone constantly following me is not only annoying, it creeps me out), but when I did try having one I preferred Charon. At least he can sneak along with you.

Keep in mind that any kills your follower makes won't count towards your earned XP. Even if you make every hit except the final killing blow. One of the many reasons my followers stay parked in my Megaton house.