Fallout 1 Fixit- Best order to tackle the most content? (Mostly Purist) [Some Spoilers]

[LunarNova]

Hello all. I just recently started playing Fallout 1 and am having a blast with it. Going through the game completely blind with max difficulty really is enjoyable for me.

Skip to TL;DR if not interested in my story

That being said, I know there is a time limit for getting the water chip for the vault, and I also figured out on my first character that Super Mutants take over certain parts of the wasteland. Specifically I went to Necropolis. Was asked to fix a water pump, and talk to Set. Found these Supermutants, went to sell a bunch of loot, and came back to find Set dead with a bunch of hostile super mutants, etc. etc. That's when I figured out they start to take over some of the wasteland (this was before I installed the Fixit mod).

I then decided I was going to start over again as I learned about skills, perks, and SPECIAL to realize that I took some rather useless paths, and missed a lot of content/quests.

TL;DR

Blind first playthrough, messed up a bunch of stuff, realized Super Mutants take over certain parts of the game, got stuck in the military base after asking someone to take me to their leader.

Now my real question is; what is a decent order to visit areas in the game before they get taken over by Mutants, or something else happens? I plan on a couple, or so playthroughs through the game, but I was just wondering for efficiency and time sake. This is just how I like to play through most games, so I learn the most about the game and characters. I've also been holding on to a bunch of skill books, since I was afraid that I would pass too much time by reading them all to get the bonuses.

Some minor questions would also be that if I solve the water chip issue (or let the caravans deliver water) does that affect invasions? Should I have a minimum skill/SPECIAL to access the most content (I already know int<5 makes your character stupid an unable to do many things). Lastly would be what places, and how much time would I have to visit places that majorly change as time passes?

Thanks for any help you can provide me, and I am trying not use too many outside sources as I don't want to get too spoiled on the games story.

P.S. if anyone was wondering, "Why don't you just look up the answer?" I couldn't word the question in a way that google didn't completely misinterpret what I was asking, or giving me different fallout games entirely (even if I checked the verbatim option which seems to do literally nothing at all).

Thanks again and have a nice day everyone.

 

[Tiny Tim]

A few vanilla advices from the top of my head, as spoiler free as possible. Correct me if i'm wrong, veterans.
1.Time passes slowly, except when traveling, resting, reading books etc. So don't rest that much, preferably not at all ( use stimpacks to heal). Walk only to towns without randomly exploring the world map unless you have tons of time. Also, try to not travel through mountains ( you'll notice that it takes more time ) .
2.Always save before taking a ride with the caravans, and check the dates before and after. That's because sometimes the game skips time ( it should take 2-3 days and not a month) and even though this doesn't affect your time limit for the water chip, it does affect in game events such as the one i'll write next. You can check the time and date anytime by pressing the "?" button
3.The Supermutants will take over necropolis around march 25 or 30 days after killing all the super mutants at the watershed, unless you have basically stopped them by then.
4.The game isn't that big, so you should be able to go to every place in any order you like without too many problems ( with a few exceptions, see below), and also go back and forth quite a while. However, a simple route would be something like this:
Shady Sands, Vault 15, Shady Sands again, Raiders, Junktown, Hub ( buy more time here) , Necropolis ( at some point after that back to the vault), Boneyard, Brotherhood, The Glow, Brotherhood again, and then the two endgame areas ( one of which is the military base where you got captured) in any order you prefer.
5. One exception to what i said before is exactly what happened to you. Getting caught early by the mutants is a situation that should be easily avoided, but it can fuck up your game if it's your first playthrough and it happens. The developers likely didn't finish this properly, and while it can be finished ( i've done it), it can be really tough to escape. Glorious though, but you would have to reload 100 times if your character isn't ready for some stuff.
6. Necropolis is, i believe, the only real time limit you'll see ( as in you'll lose its content) in game. The other stuff will matter story-wise when the game ends but not much gameplay-wise ( you'll see some signs and changes here and there but not dead towns).
7. To access most content, you'll basically need an intelligent person with high speech. For a first playthrough i'd go with my generic vault-dweller build
guns, speech and lockpick tagged ( guns raised to 130% or something), gifted trait which is a bit overpowered, very high inteligence and very high agility for combat. Also, raise science and repair as higly as possible with books from the hub library ( around 90% ). You should be able to do almost anything anyway you want to then.
Also speak to everyone and ask for jobs etc. Do as many quests as you can.



About the water merchants, i believe that after the patch there is no real penalty to it, you just buy time to get the waterchip. Invansion dates stay the same. But i'm not 100% sure.

 

[naossano]

Time doesn't go as quickly depending on what you do.

- When you travel Worldmap, it litterally swallow the time you have left.
- When you sleep, it takes quite some time.
- When you read some books or use some skills, it creates an ellipse each time.

So, what i usually do is to travel to one location, do everything in can do in this location, then move to the next location. I don't make useless trips. That is what eat the most time and as said in this very sentence, if they are useless, there is no need to do them. Avoid resting if possible. Eat stimpacks if you need healing. If you don't have healing items, you may sleep a bit, but just enough to be in fighting shape, not full life. (you might also need to sleep if you want to talk to an npc and he doesn't want to because it is night-time) About books, give some to you followers, in case you might need them later. Use those you need when you need them, and sell those you don't need. Don't read all you grab, but if you need the skills, take the skills.

Avoiding those action, you should be able to play the game in *real-time* (combat is turn-based, time is scaled, but there is no or few time skipping) which should give you plenty of time to do as much quests as you want, investigate about the water chip, get many levels, and have fun.

About location order, i would say explore all settlements, cities, towns, villages, first. Plenty of quests there that don't involve fighting, plenty of traders, plenty of items. Should the mutant invasion happen, they would be hit the most. Be sure to explore Necropolis (for the Water chip), and Adytum, Boneyard (first city invaded if you installed the mutant invasion). You can go the The Glow or the Brotherhood of Steel a bit later. Of course, the Cathedral and Mariposa Military Base can be done at the very end.

Only the timer for the water chip is in the vanilla game. Mutant invasion comes with FIXT. So, if you installed it, better not buy water from water merchants. If there is no mutant invasion, buying water has no side effect. But getting the water chip within the given time is not an hard time if you avoid actions that eat time.

About the rest of the content, obviously, you won't be able to get all the content on one playthrough. Some of the content depends on your character build. Some depends on your ingame choices. You can be a violent, a sneaky guy, a diplomat, a good guy, a bad guy, a man, a woman, a scientist, a complete moron, always successfull or a well-intentioned failure, and the game will react to it. That is what makes Fallout Fallout.

PS: If you save Tandi from the Khans, you can bring her with you until you geck the chip and are required to go back and drop her as Shady Sands on the way to Vault 13. So you don't have to go back twice.

 

[LunarNova]

A few vanilla advices from the top of my head, as spoiler free as possible. Correct me if i'm wrong, veterans.
1.Time passes slowly, except when traveling, resting, reading books etc. So don't rest that much, preferably not at all ( use stimpacks to heal). Walk only to towns without randomly exploring the world map unless you have tons of time. Also, try to not travel through mountains ( you'll notice that it takes more time ) .
2.Always save before taking a ride with the caravans, and check the dates before and after. That's because sometimes the game skips time ( it should take 2-3 days and not a month) and even though this doesn't affect your time limit for the water chip, it does affect in game events such as the one i'll write next. You can check the time and date anytime by pressing the "?" button
3.The Supermutants will take over necropolis around march 25 or 30 days after killing all the super mutants at the watershed, unless you have basically stopped them by then.
4.The game isn't that big, so you should be able to go to every place in any order you like without too many problems ( with a few exceptions, see below), and also go back and forth quite a while. However, a simple route would be something like this:
Shady Sands, Vault 15, Shady Sands again, Raiders, Junktown, Hub ( buy more time here) , Necropolis ( at some point after that back to the vault), Boneyard, Brotherhood, The Glow, Brotherhood again, and then the two endgame areas ( one of which is the military base where you got captured) in any order you prefer.
5. One exception to what i said before is exactly what happened to you. Getting caught early by the mutants is a situation that should be easily avoided, but it can fuck up your game if it's your first playthrough and it happens. The developers likely didn't finish this properly, and while it can be finished ( i've done it), it can be really tough to escape. Glorious though, but you would have to reload 100 times if your character isn't ready for some stuff.
6. Necropolis is, i believe, the only real time limit you'll see ( as in you'll lose its content) in game. The other stuff will matter story-wise when the game ends but not much gameplay-wise ( you'll see some signs and changes here and there but not dead towns).
7. To access most content, you'll basically need an intelligent person with high speech. For a first playthrough i'd go with my generic vault-dweller build
guns, speech and lockpick tagged ( guns raised to 130% or something), gifted trait which is a bit overpowered, very high inteligence and very high agility for combat. Also, raise science and repair as higly as possible with books from the hub library ( around 90% ). You should be able to do almost anything anyway you want to then.
Also speak to everyone and ask for jobs etc. Do as many quests as you can.



About the water merchants, i believe that after the patch there is no real penalty to it, you just buy time to get the waterchip. Invansion dates stay the same. But i'm not 100% sure.

Thanks for the info. This playthrough I think I have everything down, since I have 2 months to explore Necropolis and I'm already at the hub and have done about every quest up until there. I don't ever need to heal through other means so far, I have like 130 stimpacks (stealing without having to reload the game very much and abuse it). But I have -12 karma now, and assumed it's because I stole a lot, and I'm not sure how to raise it back up, if it was possible.

 

[naossano]

Doing *good* quest help a lot. You can also kill raider, but it eats time if you travel worldmap.

Having a too low karma might prevent you to get power armor rewards. (but it is still possible to get some others if you slaughter the brotherhood of steel. Expect some challenge) Although, power armor might not be needed if you choose to infiltrate instead of fight your way to the main enemy hq.