[FO1 ^ FO2] What does outdoorsman do?

[Maior]

I know in Fallout 2, outdoorsman gives the choice of whether or not you want to engage in an encounter. But since the original Fallout does not have this option, what does outdoorsman do in Fallout? Does it simply reduce the frequency of random encounters, in which case making it more difficult to level up from them?

 

[Argonnot]

Um, no, its used to locate water when your dehydrated... or maybe it isnt. Who knows?

 

[Silencer]

My dehydrated what?

 

[Maior]

so its about useless in FO1? that's what i thought but i could never figure it out

 

[Duckman]

Haha. It's not your dehydrated Sliencer!

It's mine!!

 

[Maior]

Help.

 

[Hellion]

At certain points when you travel, you might suddenly exit the game map and enter a random wasteland location with the message "you lose X hit points due to your inability to detect water" or something along these lines. If your Outdoorsman is high enough, you get a message saying that you found water and don't miss any HP.

These random events don't occur if you have water flasks on you AFAIK.

 

[Brother None]

Does it simply reduce the frequency of random encounters?

Yes, it does. Plus it lowers the frequency of dehydration encounters, and you start out with 3 water flasks.

Worst. Skill. Ever.

 

[Maior]

Oh, by random encounters, I meant combat random encounters.

I'm just wondering because in one of my playthroughs I used falche to make my outdoorsman as low as possible because I wanted to maximize the number of random encounters I got, and thus, xp gain.

 

[Bullseye]

I have always thought that outdoorsman will (besides the fact you dehydrate less fast) make you go faster while travelling around the map. I didn't know about the amount of encounters you get.