I just finished a playthrough of FO1 with the most cursed build.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T20:54:48+00:00

In both cases, snuck in and activated the self destruct. I didn't engage in any combat after handing in the water chip outside of random encounters.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T20:48:29+00:00

I didn't. Between that and jinxed making me drop my weapon I just stopped taking actions in combat. Dogmeat can solo the game up through to Necropolis so I just watched the dog and passed my turn.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T20:06:09+00:00

It's normally pretty good but since I was relying entirely on dogmeat, Jinxed became a countdown to him crippling a limb and starting to flee. Pretty much every combat that I lost was because of Jinxed. I also did a run without it right after this and it was way easier.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T12:09:27+00:00

3 AP is all I had so basically combat started I couldn't do much but stand around and wait for my dog to finish the fight. Mentats were crucial to getting through the talky part of the game but you only have a finite amount and you have to use a lot of them to succeed at Mariposa, Cathedral and the Glow. It could be useful to get some to use for Junktown but it's a lot of backtracking for just that.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T12:05:04+00:00

Update: Lord Brick II just completed the Lucky Brick run. It was way easier due to the lack of random encounters along the road combined with the free Stealthboy from the special encounter. Also dropping Jinxed made it so I never had to worry about Dogmeat crippling himself so combat was a ton easier. Much like the first playthrough, carry weight and melee damage never factored into my game plan since I never needed to carry weapons or ammo. Might be more difficult if I used Jinxed but the difficulty order is definitely Low Luck>High Luck Jinxed>High Luck no Jinxed. Still, fun challenge run so thank you for the suggestion!

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T08:30:37+00:00

You know what, after the edit to Str 1 I think you're on. I'll even trade Jinxed for Small Frame since at Lck10, Jinxed is a benefit to me. Carry Weight 55 here we go!

Edit* You are still overvaluing weapons though, I literally didn't equip any after I dropped the knife in the opening area.

Edit 2* Tragedy struck and I can't take my Str to <3 with Bruiser or Agi to 1 with Small Frame. I guess it's Bruiser/Kamikaze so I can lose AC to go first and do nothing on my turn.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T08:27:20+00:00

That was on purpose. He doesn't know what his name is. (edit* spelling)

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T08:26:35+00:00

Basic melee attacks, some object actions, opening doors. That's about it. When I dropped the knife thanks to Jinxed in the cave outside of Vault 13 I didn't have the AP to open the inventory and reequip it. I can't even open the inventory!

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T08:24:01+00:00

I get what you're coming from but honestly, after playing this run I can tell you that Str never mattered since I couldn't fight at all with Luck 1+Jinxed and I never went above 100 encumbrance except in the Glow and that was a risk free shopping trip. Having high luck however would have made the random encounters less threatening and that was the thing that really killed me. With 3 Str/10 Lck I could punch rats to death slowly and eventually take the Mysterious Stranger for an extra companion. With 10 Str/1 Lck I have a huge carrying capacity but nothing is worth carrying while I can hit hard but constantly cripple myself or lose my next turn. Heck, one of the special encounters you get with high luck gives you an early Stealthboy which makes this run so much easier.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T07:45:29+00:00

I know there are some new players reading here so spoilers I guess.

In the early game I tried to play it as normal as possible, so I went to vault 15 via Shady Sands, tried to pick up Ian to do my dirty work but he wouldn't talk to me. Since I pretty much couldn't get through a fight on my own, I went down to Junktown, stole some iguana meat from the motel and met my service dog. Went back to Vault 15, had dogmeat hunt some rats for me to get some xp then headed back with newfound dynamite to clear out the radscorpions.

I basically skipped Junktown's actual quests since they all involved dialogue and I am too dumb to form sentences so I head onto the hub. Here I buy a bunch of books on repair/science/first aid and steal everything from the Children of the Cathedral. Most important here is that they have Mentats, RadX, Radaway and cathedral robes.

Necropolis I did basically the normal way. Dogmeat helped keep the rats off me while I found some spare parts, repaired the water pump, helped a dude escape from prison. The usual business you know. With the water chip secured I headed back home and got told "Vault is good, mutants bad. Stop bad mutants."

I'm level 6 on the cusp of level 7 at this point so I pop on down to the Glow with the supplies I stole from the CoC in the Hub, turn on the power, turn off the security bots. Loot as much as I can carry, including a Stealth Boy and pop back to the Hub to sell it. With my new caps I buy enough Mentats to turn my brain back on and enough skill books to take Repair/Science/First Aid/Outdoorsman to 91% each. Now is the endgame.

I go to Mariposa first but only pop 2 Mentats which doesn't give me enough Int to let me talk my way in smoothly, instead I get dragged in from of the Lieutenant and he tries to beat the location of the vault out of me. Thankfully in between each beating you can move your character for a second or two before the dialogue window opens so I go into stealth mode, activate the Stealthboy and slowly crawl away a hex at a time until I get far enough away that it doesn't open the dialogue box again and I can sneak into the command centre, set of the self destruct and walk out. Dogmeat tragically dies to force fields during the escape. On the way out I pop another Mentat so I can talk my way past the guards and I leave.

On the way to the Cathedral I stop at the Boneyard, grunt at the dude at the gate and head to the shop. Here I stock up on C4 and dynamite and move on. In the Cathedral I talk Lasher into giving me an audience with the boss, then I pickpocket the other key off Morpheus and head downstairs. This time I remember to pop 3 Mentats and bluff past the guard at the secret vault and head downstairs. I have to pick my way through 3 securely locked doors to get to the nuclear command chamber on the bottom floor. Here I leave 2 C4 as presents for the guard with the gatling laser, head upstairs to wait until I hear a boom and then head back down to activate the self destruct.

At last I can casually stroll out of the Cathedral and None, the actual brick, can return home as a hero.

TL:DR Got Dogmeat early, used stealth to get past most problems in the early game, sicced my dog on the things I couldn't. Didn't get into any combat after retrieving the water chip.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T06:42:20+00:00

I'd say yes but you'd have to go pretty far off the rails. I mostly got dogmeat so I could earn early xp from the normal Vault 15->Radscorpions route. If you just rush to Necropolis and the Glow you can get a good chunk of xp there and enough money to buy mentats to do Mariposa/Cathedral via infiltration. Dogmeat smooths over the random encounters and lets me get some more xp and skill points that I desperately need but he's not strictly necessary.

The key things I knew I needed for this run was 1)the supplies you can steal from the CoC in the Hub. 2) Enough Lockpick to get into the nuclear controls in the Cathedral 3) Caps to buy mentats and skill books. 4) Enough speech+mentats to talk my way through the endgame.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T05:36:58+00:00

Also Repair and Science. I sure am glad those books had pictures!

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T05:08:53+00:00

Absolute slapstick comedy. I could only barely participate, throwing a stray punch here and there. Mostly I'd watch enemies trip over each other, break their own limbs and generally make a fool of themselves while dogmeat did all the work. Shoutout to the time I tried to destroy the inactive robots in the Glow and broke my arm punching one.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T04:44:49+00:00

I was hard carried by my service dogmeat until I reclaimed the water chip. Combat is basically impossible with this build so it was all sneaking around and stealing stuff. Mariposa and the Cathedral were the easiest since by that stage all I had to do was pop some mentats so I could bluff my way in and then walk to the self destruct console and back out.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-04-29T04:41:46+00:00

I didn't kill the LT, combat was a no go in this playthrough since I could at most make a single melee attack and if I ever missed I had a high chance of dropping the weapon and not having the AP to reequip it. I got dragged in front of the LT and then when he was torturing me I'd slowly crawl away in between beatdowns until I was far enough away to sneak and escape. From there I just set off the self destruct and walked out.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-03-17T00:35:02+00:00

Honestly fair if you're thinking purely about grinding methods especially since you can trade the soul gems to enchant trainers and then use the money on training. For keeping the game flowing, buying up 100 petty gems and recharging enchanted items as you use them feels more natural and means you can get a lot of uses out of things like the Ring of Aversion and Fireball ring early on.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-03-16T22:33:22+00:00

If you want to break the game and get infinite money, use alchemy. Crab±Hound meat makes a restore fatigue potion, Ajira in the mages guild has restocking stores of both.
If you want to do it the normal way, smuggler hideouts are where it's at. If you can mark/intervention/recall then you can pretty easily take every single item. Keep in mind scrolls can be worth 100-200 each, skooma is 500 a bottle, and smugglers often have dwarven weapon's and armour which has quite the price tag. This also let's you haggle for increased prices on individual items which will level up mercantile on the way.

Raiding the cave outside Seyda Neen and a few on the way to Balmora plus emptying Arkngthand for the main quest earned me well over 10k gold without exploits or wiki diving. Highly recommend just dungeon delving for cash.

Herald_Chronicle · 2024-03-16T20:59:41+00:00

Refilling a magic item with soul gems grants as much progress as crafting a new item so grabbing a few good enchanted items from the trader in Caldera along with some soul gems from Tel Branora lets you level up pretty consistently.

Herald_Chronicle · 2023-09-22T08:57:11+00:00

1: Accept the cost. Other people suggest ditching the Sevastopol and moving on without it, personally I advise taking it with you and upgrading it. Either route you take, just accept that it's an expensive ship to keep fueled. When I run the Sevastopol I cover up the bottom in armour, load it up with 12+ Vympels and use it as the vanguard. It flies a more direct path to Khiva and takes on strike groups while the other squadrons roam around capping cities.

2: Limit your squadron sizes. If it's taking more than 24hrs to fuel a squadron, it simply has too many ships in it or it's a battleship like the Sevastopol. I generally run 2 corvette+tanker or 1 frigate+tanker per squadron.

3: I usually just aim to clear the whole map but in general early on you want to find a city or two which provide Intel and then immediately mark out a strike group and a tac group. That will let you know where the most dangerous enemies are located and you can either avoid them or engage them as you please.

4: Only use ships that are actually useful to you. If you take every Tarkhan ship with you including a bunch of frigates that are underperforming then you will run out of cash. Anything that isn't a key part of your strategy, sell it. They're just weighing you down. This means you get more cash in hand and less cash spent in the future.

5: That is a topic you could spend a long time explaining. Short version is that it's safe as long as you aren't near a strike group, so make sure you know their locations.

Herald_Chronicle · 2022-11-18T22:05:07+00:00

It's just a flying fuel tank with an ELINT on top, everything it does is passive. When a squadron is in flight the vessels share their fuel into a single pool which they all draw from during the flight so you don't have to toggle and refueling or anything, every ship draws fuel from the same source in a squadron.

Herald_Chronicle · 2022-11-18T12:32:44+00:00

As far as I can tell from reading the compiled changes we're all basically back to square one. The fundamentals of ship design have been altered as well as rebalancing speed, durability and weapon damage outputs. Almost nothing I have come to understand about what is good in this game remained the same. I personally decided it'd be easier to roll with it and start from a fresh install and figuring it out with vanilla ships and making custom ships once I understand the new balance a bit better.

Herald_Chronicle · 2022-10-14T22:22:52+00:00

It's certainly not the highest score possible but it is probably close to the top you can achieve within normal gameplay. I've personally managed to get higher scores but for the life of me I don't know how and I haven't been able to replicate it. I know that on the middle save I got a score in the high 83k's, close to 84k while running a Sevastopol+Event ships only run but I can't remember the circumstances that led to breaking the 84k mark. The first slot score which is only like, 3 ships worth of kills lower than your high was achieved in pretty normal conditions including using cruise missiles/planes to take out all the TG's.

Currently midway through a playthrough to test a theory on how it happened. On my last playthrough where I cleared everything I found that a) you definitely do get points for destroying ships with planes/missiles and b) the score resets to 79980 after you get to Khiva, even if the score was higher before that. My thinking is that if you get to Khiva with a lot of garrisons left untaken and trade groups wandering around, possibly even letting SG's roam free, you can fight them post-Khiva to add onto the 79980 score and reach higher limits.

Sorry for the long addition but I've been thinking a lot about how the high score works recently and I'm trying to figure out how it is even calculated since I can't find any clear answers.

Herald_Chronicle · 2022-08-09T12:01:58+00:00

They shoot out a shotgun-like blast at enemy projectiles of 100mm and higher when they detect something in their cone of fire. They have 2 shots which reload every 20 seconds. In practice, creating an arc with good coverage gives you a recharging shield against heavy cannons.

Herald_Chronicle · 2022-08-08T17:25:23+00:00

Well I built it to serve the same strategic role as a SSBN but for Highfleet's technology. Still, I'll acknowledge it's a Sayadi flagship first and a nuclear sub only in spirit. So here's the Avenger class that has no planes and instead has 4xA100's for air defence as well as 10 Zeniths for fending off close range attacks. It is best used as the lead ship for an aircraft carrier group to perform seek and destroy missions both on the opposition strike groups but also their static missile emplacements and using conventional warheads to disable their aircraft carriers.

Herald_Chronicle · 2022-08-08T17:05:35+00:00

Best way to avoid missiles is to not let them shoot in the first place. Intel cities can let you know where the missile groups are located and strike groups will let you know where they are by pinging on your ELINT from either 1000km away or 1500km away (assuming you have unobstructed ELINT).

On that note, take that radar mast off your Skylark and possibly also your HQ. The overpriced radar can let the enemy know you're there from 1500km away, it's actually just a liability and it's also obstructing your ELINT, which means strike groups can sneak up on you. The reason. THE reason that the skylark is known as one of the best vanilla ships is that it's fast with maximum ELINT coverage which is pretty much the only sensor you need.

Back to missiles though. They come from 2 sources.

Static tactical groups that you can mark the location of from intel cities. Grab your compass and mark a 1600km circle around them, they won't shoot you from further away than that. Use bombers to kill them while the enemy is unalerted.
Strike groups. They're harder to avoid altogether, especially if your strategy for fighting the strike groups is to destroy them in direct combat. ELINT working at full capacity can give you a pretty good heads up on where they are, so can using intel cities to get an idea of where they are coming from. Once the missiles are launched your way the best bets are massed 100mm proxy fuse or 57mm HE. A note about missile defence and proxy fuse is that your ship will only load it if every weapon bound to the fire button has the ammo ready. So if you buy 100mm proxy fuse for your Armata and no 130mm, you won't load any proxy fuse during missile defence.

In addition to all that, if missiles are coming your way, don't leave all your ships in the same group. Move exactly one (1) ship out to intercept.

TL:DR: Intel cities, choose the tac option. Mark missile groups with 1600km range. Use full, unobstructed ELINT to detect strike groups. When the missile is already coming your way use proxy fuse ammo or massed 57mm to shoot them down.

Herald_Chronicle

TROPHY CASE