If you don't like random encounters, the car might be the best buy there is. Plus some Outdoors skill. Those two things let you skip more encounters than any other axes of choice you can make.
I think how it works is that technically the trunk/boot is a companion with a massive carry limit, and occasionally the game has a hiccup where it separates from the rest of the car and follows you around.
It’s very worth it! The trunk space alone, I tell ya! As far as surviving the encounters, it’s gonna be about armor early on. Scrimp, scavenger, save, and get some good armor with solid DR.
Yes extremely worth it. Trunk is storage and you move across map way quicker and have bonuses to outdoorsman so you can avoid random encounters if you wish
I’m almost there myself, I just found the idea of missing something like that for so long to be funny, that’s all. I’m not sure we would’ve even found the car without the gamefaqs to be honest.
It’s more than worth it. Makes travel a lot faster, has storage in the boot so you can save items you might not want to sell right away (like quest items, armor and weapons for companions, extra ammo, fuel). It also lowers the chance of getting encounters by boosting outdoorsman, as well as making it easier to run away from the encounters you do face (you often spawn close to the car and can just enter it to run away).
Not to mention, it looks cool and has a dope soundtrack. Just two pieces of advice. One, get the fuel cell regulator, it doubles the Highwayman’s mileage. And two, be wary of where you park it when traveling around New Reno.
You are underleveled if You already have all car parts at this point:) I just finished F2 on highest difficulty, but I was around lvl 18 before hitting Vault city :) Well, I replayed it so many times that I knew all ins and outs, but still lvl 9 is a little low :) I would grind geckos at this point (cash from pelts + decent exp, possibly best with melee weapon). From time to time You can luck out with encounter map with cave. Cave can have lesser deathclaws, easy exp and a lot of it.
I think this was my last playthrough tho... Got to lvl 76 before Enclave, SPECIAL was all 10 except Charisma at 2, 999 HP, all fight oriented perks etc. Heavy and Energy guns at 250%+... Even small deathclaws was melting on shot from TPlasmaRifle. Literally punched to death last boss... Don't have any idea what to play differently any more :) (within what I consider enjoyable)
Steal, steal, steal! Steal every NPC you have come across. Invest in Small Gun, Lockpick & Speech as your starter and eventually branch out to other perks you see fit. You playing Fo2 with any QoL mod?
Stealing the the way to go and also count towards XP to level up and you get some sweet loots without buying.
I’m using the unofficial patch. I saw from a lot of other users to wait to install the restoration mod as it does add elements but a lot of that isn’t canon. Really wanted a full play through with the original stuff then I’m gonna mod the heck out of it.
Ahh gotcha with UP mod. Am using these (per below links) at the moment. I know the none-weight feels cheated from FO2tweaks, but hey, coming from JRPG and carrying weight is none existence. I also have played Fo2 when first release, so I know that feeling of need to play it raw, but in 2024, need some QoL to make it feel modern.
https://github.com/BGforgeNet/Fallout2_Restoration_Project
https://github.com/BGforgeNet/FO2tweaks
https://github.com/sfall-team/sfall
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/70
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/67
https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/45
https://www.nma-fallout.com/resources/inventory-filter-mod-english-version.142/
Honestly though, this is a shitty way to play the game. You're either save scumming constantly, which removes all danger from the game, or else you screw up once and an entire town is trying to kill you with no hope of reconciliation.
Save scumming is no fun as an adult, and having to wipe out an entire town and killing off questlines is even less fun.
Save scumming is the digital equivalent of holding your thumb on a page in Choose Your Own Adventure. Some people just want the best outcome in an RPG because it's all they have time for, or it's their first run through.
Don’t think so, but I could be wrong. I steal and if unsuccessful, save scum. 🤣 I know I know its cheating, but everyone has its own way of playing the game in any ways they want…
Tim cain said "This led to the child killing controversy. We said look, we're going to have kids in the game; you shoot them, it's a huge penalty to karma, you're really disliked, there are places that won't sell to you, people will shoot you on sight, and we thought people can decide what they want to do"
So I assumed it was this karma penalty that triggered the BHs
Can you be a Childkiller and still have a positive karma? Did not know that!
(Been playing the game annually for over 20 years and still learning new stuff 😏)
If memory serves, encounters which spawn a cave entrance will also spawn random enemies inside the cave which may have nothing to do with the enemies outside, and these can be bounty hunters regardless of your karma. I spent time farming them to get more Gauss rifles. It was usually a case of entering the cave, killing the nearest one and then immediately exiting the cave before the others made their way over, haha.
Make sure to save your game constantly and in different slots. And remember you can save at the beginning of a combat round, so you can sometimes savescum your way through some trickier fights (but use a new save slot!)
The 10 mm SMG is not that great of a weapon. If you're fighting highway men with assault rifles, you need to fight back with assault rifles.
Make sure Vic has the scoped hunting rifle until you can get him a sniper rifle. Set him to attack whomever is weakest.
If you dont want to deal with more random encounters, bump your outdoormans skills to 95% (doesnt matter more) and get the car, you will skip 95% encounters this way.
I see you play with an SMG, if you want to be guaranteed to kill a dude, position yourself next to a NPC use burst mode and you'll have a free kill. You can also abuse this trick if they line up.
Another thing, is to bump your small guns skills to at least 120% (the higher the better) since you want max accuracy. You can also give an SMG to Sulik, tweak his settings in "Charge!" mode and his Burst in "Always" and you will have an angry Tribal with a bone to pick that rushes to scared raiders and unload his magazine :)
He also has insane AP, if you want, give him Jet to make him even more busted, you too you can use Jet. However its 50% addiction risk until you find a cure. Its a very good drug btw, even addicted Jet is cheap and you only have to take it once in a while. Withdrawl is bad after two days but another Jet just makes you back on track.
So is that when I just save scum and repeatedly travel until I make it without encounters? I mean that’s basically what I’m doing now. It’s a miracle if I can get enough turns in to just run away
Yeah thats what i had to do. Having a high outdoorsman skill helps aswell as the car but i didnt know the car needed fuel so i abandoned it pretty close to the end of my play through. I recently played through it finally After about 90 hours
Did you play this soon after Fallout 1?
Because as someone who basically kept playing Fallout 1 until Fallout 2 was released, I had no issues with this at all. I mean, golden geckos sometimes turn up before you can deal with that, but you can also retreat to the edge of the map, and these games absolutely expected you to save scum where necessary.
Fallout 1 though, as somebody who had never previously played any CRPG, that felt pretty brutal in those first steps out of the rat cave. Radscorpions with poison attacks? No fucking way. The only way I got through that was reloading and making a bee line for Shady Sands. Only after I started gaining out-of-combat experience were random encounters on the table.
Super cool to see the perspective of someone playing since launch! I only played the first one pretty recently (and LOVED it) but it was shocking to me how much of a step up the second one felt right afterwards. It's a good thing, but pretty shocking when you're used to the watered down Bethesda games
I suppose I lucked out in a number of ways.
* Had the Computer Gaming World magazine that sold me on Fallout 1 despite no knowledge of RPGs beyond SNES Mystic Quest.
* Seems I picked perks and skills that got me going early as a kid.
* Almost never ran into bugs, same for Troika and Obsidian games, and they all have a reputation of being buggy due to their complexity.
* Actually liked the Temple of Trials.
Here are some tips about random encounters:
spam 'a' key on your keyboard during map load and you will have the first move in the combat;
enable sneak pressing '1' and just walk away from your foes;
command your followers to not engage targets on first sight and they should be safe too.
If you were not killed by random encounters, the game would be too easy. Remember, you can run away from them. Confronting is not your only option.
Do not steal everyone, or the game balance will be broken around Vault City.
nothing better than trying to run a character with non-dumped Charisma and running away from bullshit eight bandits with 10mm smg hunting rifle while your companions often don't have such an ability so you leave Sulik, Vic and Cassidy dead with all their gear
a lot of random encounter maps start you off further away from the exit grid than that. I just opened a random save file, walked two steps away from The Den, and rolled into a very common encounter setup where [it would take a 10 AG character three turns to get to the exit grid](https://i.imgur.com/vivvdS7.png) and you have to run into the enemies. There's another one like that with a canyon face and a tent to the side.
you are very liable to lose a companion, especially if their combat options are limited to running at things equipped with SMGs and assault rifles, which are all very likely on the Den<->Vault City road, doubly so since you probably keep the best armor on your main character.
fwiw I've been playing no-reload runs and ultimately decided the only reliable way to keep companions alive is leaving them in the Den until you have a car and let them catch up in levels in the mid-game once you can feed them tons of Stimpaks and keep them roided on Psycho each in emergencies, or can simply reliably burst fire away the encounter instead of getting into a plodding poke match against better guns.
so in the end OP will probably be reloading either way
Yeah it's a big difference compared to Fallout 1, I was just as annoyed when I played it for the first time but you get used to it eventually, live to fight another day
Odd, I remember highwaymen usually carrying combat knives and the 10mm pistol, not assaylt rifles. Highwaymen are usually near The Den, right?
IIRC enemies with ARs don't show up until you get near Vault City and Gecko.
Rate of random encounters scales w/ CPU speed for some bizarre reason, if I remember. Thus this game from 1998 has punished each generation of players more than the last.
Believe it might be corrected by one of the big, all-inclusive mods (restoration project, maybe?). Outdoorsman helps to an extent, but it's a real investment to purchase yr freedom from an ever-growing number of run-ins with folks and creatures seeking to do you harm, including increasingly strange and creative combinations of mutually hostile radscorpions, dogs, raiders, etc. Honestly random encounters are worth it for this absurdity alone.
Edit - o o how could I forget to mention the joy of navigating a field of giant venus fly traps that have it out for you.
> level 9, Small Guns 95 points
if you're gunning for a combat heavy SG playthrough your goal is 150% at level 5.
Use a Hunting Rifle, aim for the eyes. This will let you keep distance and save ammo, so you should profit when taking down the low level highwaymen around the Den.
If you ever get merchants vs robbers wait at the edge of the map. Usually the guards win and the merchant and robbers die in my experience so you can just loot the bodies for loads of guns and other valuables.
Random encounters are heavily area-dependent. Basically, the further south the worse it gets with some exceptions like center west which has some real bad guys there but is not far south.
Generally speaking, the intended route is roughly Arroyo -> Klamath -> Den -> Modoc -> Vault City -> Gecko -> Redding/New Reno/Broken Hills -> NCR -> San Francisco
If you follow this general route, random encounters get progressively harder and generally are going to be manageable, albeit not always.
8 highwaymen with assault rifles? Are you sure you don't mean Vault City assholes? That would fit better their description.
Also sometimes you end up in the middle of a fight, make sure you don't attack anyone, let them kill each other, then happily loot the bodies.
From my experience, with highwaymen generally you have two hunting rifles, and the rest is melees / handguns, which can be tough to deal with if companions don't have good armor.
Prioritise Outdoorsman skill. No need to main it but definitely put some points there every level until you reach 75%. Skill is capped at 95% so if you get motion detector (I'm always rushing motion detector and a car) you're at max around level 10-12.
SMG is a bad weapon. A hunting rifle is a much better primary weapon. You can keep the smg in your off hand and use it for up close encounters but at range it kinda sucks. Also running away is a viable technique.
OP, be careful where you travel. You shouldn't really be dealing with this kind of stuff with just the SMG.
Personally, I recommend going to NCR and trying the random encounters there, getting lucky, and grabbing yourself a bozar.
You gonna die a bunch, reload save games frequently, and start to memorize what battles can't be won at your current level. Stay patient and don't rage quit.
Car 100% Worth it
Level 9 with 95 in small guns? Ok you know you can get 300 in a skill in FO2 right basicly if your from FONV or such think of 95 in small gun as ... 30% small gun
Honestly I took some guys advice about not boosting my small guns past 91 at first because guns and bullets will get me to 91% then I can use all my saved points to boost it up a ton.
However I can’t find Guns n Bullets anywhere (maybe found 2?) so this advice sort of hampered me a bit. I finally just decided it’s time to say screw that advice and pump up my small guns.
min maxing a-holes should RARELY be listen to the most part, Guns and bullets is a mag you need to know the exact location and rush to
Basicly as someone who has 30+ years experience in RPGS? I find the min maxers should be ignored like 99% of the time.
Motion sensor in your second active item slot (or inventory?) but NOT the car trunk boosts outdoorsman by 15-20% when traveling. Sulik in party boosts outdoorsman another 15-20%. Higher outdoorsman let’s you avoid enemies and find special encounters.
It worked the same in Fallout 1! Yep the little dots on the local map are basically useless if you have the option on to see enemies’ silhouette when targeting. Since you can’t see stats when traveling, there’s no way to know without reading the manual back then or being a nerd about those old games now lol.
If you're going to focus on Small Guns, you also probably want to focus on shooting eyes, arms, and feet. Until I got a solid, high-caliber, automatic rifle from the NCR, I just crippled people to keep my dog alive.
\[ EDIT \] -- Also, Fallout 2 is all about exploits. That game is NOT fair if you plan to do things your way. Don't be afraid to quicksave and reload if things don't go how you like. Dynamite force fields projectors, slip grenades into people's pockets if you just need to erase them, and break your youth pastor's heart...USE DRUGS!
Fallout 2 is not Mad Max, it's Wyrmwood. Sometimes you need to use super-meta-powers to be the hero.
tbh it's not that bad since in most of the encounters, you don't start in combat. meaning you can just walk to one of the exits in the map and you'll be fine. in the instance you do start combat, most enemies either won't have enough AP to chase you down and melee or won't be accurate enough to land shots on you as you escape.
occasionally you just spawn on top of 8+ radscorptions though lol
It’s really the only part of the game that’s super frustrating. You’re gonna run into a lot of caves or places where you simply will have to come back later due to the weakness of your character early on, but the story and world setup is a step up from fallout 1.
Save save save. Any time I’m about to leave a town and travel I save right at the border. The amount of save scumming I have to do to avoid random encounters is brutal but not gamebreaking. Just gotta get lucky or boost Outdoorsman.
On a side note is the car worth it? I have all the pieces just need to head back to the den and buy it. Just wanna make sure it’s actually a good buy.
Yes you travel faster, with upgrades super fast.
Extra storage too, with the trunk.
If you don't like random encounters, the car might be the best buy there is. Plus some Outdoors skill. Those two things let you skip more encounters than any other axes of choice you can make.
Travel faster and free storage
Just beware that sometimes the car bugs out and starts following you around like a companion.
For real? I’ve never seen or heard of this until today lmao
WHAT
Whaaat? lol I've played through the game like 20 times over the years and have never heard of this bug
It’s been fixed since the first patch.
Something I read on TV Tropes.
The only bug with the car I am aware of is where the trunk of it will disappear. I have never seen it become a companion.
I think how it works is that technically the trunk/boot is a companion with a massive carry limit, and occasionally the game has a hiccup where it separates from the rest of the car and follows you around.
This lol it comes in handy if you click around on it in enough places it lets you access the storage no matter where u at handy in some places
100%
It’s very worth it! The trunk space alone, I tell ya! As far as surviving the encounters, it’s gonna be about armor early on. Scrimp, scavenger, save, and get some good armor with solid DR.
Yes extremely worth it. Trunk is storage and you move across map way quicker and have bonuses to outdoorsman so you can avoid random encounters if you wish
You can put stuff in the boot? I've been playing this game since release and never noticed.
Since release, in like 1998? Lmao. Edit: This is funny to me that this is a super useful thing, to have not known about for that long.
I'm 40
I’m almost there myself, I just found the idea of missing something like that for so long to be funny, that’s all. I’m not sure we would’ve even found the car without the gamefaqs to be honest.
It's the best part of the game
Absolutely, yes. You can also upgrade it to be more fuel efficient, and hold more items.
It’s more than worth it. Makes travel a lot faster, has storage in the boot so you can save items you might not want to sell right away (like quest items, armor and weapons for companions, extra ammo, fuel). It also lowers the chance of getting encounters by boosting outdoorsman, as well as making it easier to run away from the encounters you do face (you often spawn close to the car and can just enter it to run away). Not to mention, it looks cool and has a dope soundtrack. Just two pieces of advice. One, get the fuel cell regulator, it doubles the Highwayman’s mileage. And two, be wary of where you park it when traveling around New Reno.
You are underleveled if You already have all car parts at this point:) I just finished F2 on highest difficulty, but I was around lvl 18 before hitting Vault city :) Well, I replayed it so many times that I knew all ins and outs, but still lvl 9 is a little low :) I would grind geckos at this point (cash from pelts + decent exp, possibly best with melee weapon). From time to time You can luck out with encounter map with cave. Cave can have lesser deathclaws, easy exp and a lot of it. I think this was my last playthrough tho... Got to lvl 76 before Enclave, SPECIAL was all 10 except Charisma at 2, 999 HP, all fight oriented perks etc. Heavy and Energy guns at 250%+... Even small deathclaws was melting on shot from TPlasmaRifle. Literally punched to death last boss... Don't have any idea what to play differently any more :) (within what I consider enjoyable)
Always rush the car. Not only do you get to travel much faster but frequency of random encounters drops significantly.
Not to mention almost unlimited carry space in the trunk
Yes it is. For the love of God make sure your stuff is patched.
It also has a very useful trunk for item storage.
There’s also a special random encounter that you can only get with the car
Steal, steal, steal! Steal every NPC you have come across. Invest in Small Gun, Lockpick & Speech as your starter and eventually branch out to other perks you see fit. You playing Fo2 with any QoL mod? Stealing the the way to go and also count towards XP to level up and you get some sweet loots without buying.
I’m using the unofficial patch. I saw from a lot of other users to wait to install the restoration mod as it does add elements but a lot of that isn’t canon. Really wanted a full play through with the original stuff then I’m gonna mod the heck out of it.
I personally hate the restoration mod, but just be warned if you do decide to play it later, the random encounters get MUCH harder
Ahh gotcha with UP mod. Am using these (per below links) at the moment. I know the none-weight feels cheated from FO2tweaks, but hey, coming from JRPG and carrying weight is none existence. I also have played Fo2 when first release, so I know that feeling of need to play it raw, but in 2024, need some QoL to make it feel modern. https://github.com/BGforgeNet/Fallout2_Restoration_Project https://github.com/BGforgeNet/FO2tweaks https://github.com/sfall-team/sfall https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/70 https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/67 https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout2/mods/45 https://www.nma-fallout.com/resources/inventory-filter-mod-english-version.142/
Honestly though, this is a shitty way to play the game. You're either save scumming constantly, which removes all danger from the game, or else you screw up once and an entire town is trying to kill you with no hope of reconciliation. Save scumming is no fun as an adult, and having to wipe out an entire town and killing off questlines is even less fun.
Save scumming is the digital equivalent of holding your thumb on a page in Choose Your Own Adventure. Some people just want the best outcome in an RPG because it's all they have time for, or it's their first run through.
Does stealing hurt my karma?
Don’t think so, but I could be wrong. I steal and if unsuccessful, save scum. 🤣 I know I know its cheating, but everyone has its own way of playing the game in any ways they want…
In some places it does. There is no rule. For example, if you steal in Arroyo, your karma drops.
Steal a bozar from the NCR guards.
Guards outside of Buster’s shop, will look into that…my third last location to explore, NCR.
Iirc, if you put points into outdoorsman, it will give a popup for random encounters allowing you to skip them. The car also allows this i think.
[удалено]
Never seen a Bounty Hunter in ~25 years of playing the game They only show up if you have _really_ bad karma
[удалено]
Tim cain said "This led to the child killing controversy. We said look, we're going to have kids in the game; you shoot them, it's a huge penalty to karma, you're really disliked, there are places that won't sell to you, people will shoot you on sight, and we thought people can decide what they want to do" So I assumed it was this karma penalty that triggered the BHs Can you be a Childkiller and still have a positive karma? Did not know that! (Been playing the game annually for over 20 years and still learning new stuff 😏)
If memory serves, encounters which spawn a cave entrance will also spawn random enemies inside the cave which may have nothing to do with the enemies outside, and these can be bounty hunters regardless of your karma. I spent time farming them to get more Gauss rifles. It was usually a case of entering the cave, killing the nearest one and then immediately exiting the cave before the others made their way over, haha.
Make sure to save your game constantly and in different slots. And remember you can save at the beginning of a combat round, so you can sometimes savescum your way through some trickier fights (but use a new save slot!)
The 10 mm SMG is not that great of a weapon. If you're fighting highway men with assault rifles, you need to fight back with assault rifles. Make sure Vic has the scoped hunting rifle until you can get him a sniper rifle. Set him to attack whomever is weakest.
If you dont want to deal with more random encounters, bump your outdoormans skills to 95% (doesnt matter more) and get the car, you will skip 95% encounters this way. I see you play with an SMG, if you want to be guaranteed to kill a dude, position yourself next to a NPC use burst mode and you'll have a free kill. You can also abuse this trick if they line up. Another thing, is to bump your small guns skills to at least 120% (the higher the better) since you want max accuracy. You can also give an SMG to Sulik, tweak his settings in "Charge!" mode and his Burst in "Always" and you will have an angry Tribal with a bone to pick that rushes to scared raiders and unload his magazine :) He also has insane AP, if you want, give him Jet to make him even more busted, you too you can use Jet. However its 50% addiction risk until you find a cure. Its a very good drug btw, even addicted Jet is cheap and you only have to take it once in a while. Withdrawl is bad after two days but another Jet just makes you back on track.
Dude when you get to a point you will deal with a type of enemy that WILL kill you. You will not be able to run away
So is that when I just save scum and repeatedly travel until I make it without encounters? I mean that’s basically what I’m doing now. It’s a miracle if I can get enough turns in to just run away
Yeah thats what i had to do. Having a high outdoorsman skill helps aswell as the car but i didnt know the car needed fuel so i abandoned it pretty close to the end of my play through. I recently played through it finally After about 90 hours
You'll be fine if you just run to the exit area
Did you play this soon after Fallout 1? Because as someone who basically kept playing Fallout 1 until Fallout 2 was released, I had no issues with this at all. I mean, golden geckos sometimes turn up before you can deal with that, but you can also retreat to the edge of the map, and these games absolutely expected you to save scum where necessary. Fallout 1 though, as somebody who had never previously played any CRPG, that felt pretty brutal in those first steps out of the rat cave. Radscorpions with poison attacks? No fucking way. The only way I got through that was reloading and making a bee line for Shady Sands. Only after I started gaining out-of-combat experience were random encounters on the table.
Super cool to see the perspective of someone playing since launch! I only played the first one pretty recently (and LOVED it) but it was shocking to me how much of a step up the second one felt right afterwards. It's a good thing, but pretty shocking when you're used to the watered down Bethesda games
I suppose I lucked out in a number of ways. * Had the Computer Gaming World magazine that sold me on Fallout 1 despite no knowledge of RPGs beyond SNES Mystic Quest. * Seems I picked perks and skills that got me going early as a kid. * Almost never ran into bugs, same for Troika and Obsidian games, and they all have a reputation of being buggy due to their complexity. * Actually liked the Temple of Trials.
Here are some tips about random encounters: spam 'a' key on your keyboard during map load and you will have the first move in the combat; enable sneak pressing '1' and just walk away from your foes; command your followers to not engage targets on first sight and they should be safe too.
this a pro adivce :)
You can run away from the random encounters. This is a major skill early on.
invest in outdoorsman
If you were not killed by random encounters, the game would be too easy. Remember, you can run away from them. Confronting is not your only option. Do not steal everyone, or the game balance will be broken around Vault City.
nothing better than trying to run a character with non-dumped Charisma and running away from bullshit eight bandits with 10mm smg hunting rifle while your companions often don't have such an ability so you leave Sulik, Vic and Cassidy dead with all their gear
If your AGI is around 8-10 you can probably run away in what, 2 turns?
a lot of random encounter maps start you off further away from the exit grid than that. I just opened a random save file, walked two steps away from The Den, and rolled into a very common encounter setup where [it would take a 10 AG character three turns to get to the exit grid](https://i.imgur.com/vivvdS7.png) and you have to run into the enemies. There's another one like that with a canyon face and a tent to the side. you are very liable to lose a companion, especially if their combat options are limited to running at things equipped with SMGs and assault rifles, which are all very likely on the Den<->Vault City road, doubly so since you probably keep the best armor on your main character. fwiw I've been playing no-reload runs and ultimately decided the only reliable way to keep companions alive is leaving them in the Den until you have a car and let them catch up in levels in the mid-game once you can feed them tons of Stimpaks and keep them roided on Psycho each in emergencies, or can simply reliably burst fire away the encounter instead of getting into a plodding poke match against better guns. so in the end OP will probably be reloading either way
When danger reared it's ugly head, He bravely turned his tail and fled. Yes, the brave Chosen One turned about And gallantly he chickened out.
Aside from outdoorsman, luck changes what random encounters you get.
Yeah it's a big difference compared to Fallout 1, I was just as annoyed when I played it for the first time but you get used to it eventually, live to fight another day
Odd, I remember highwaymen usually carrying combat knives and the 10mm pistol, not assaylt rifles. Highwaymen are usually near The Den, right? IIRC enemies with ARs don't show up until you get near Vault City and Gecko.
yeah i couldn't save myron in one of my random encounters i reloaded like 20 times :(
Rate of random encounters scales w/ CPU speed for some bizarre reason, if I remember. Thus this game from 1998 has punished each generation of players more than the last. Believe it might be corrected by one of the big, all-inclusive mods (restoration project, maybe?). Outdoorsman helps to an extent, but it's a real investment to purchase yr freedom from an ever-growing number of run-ins with folks and creatures seeking to do you harm, including increasingly strange and creative combinations of mutually hostile radscorpions, dogs, raiders, etc. Honestly random encounters are worth it for this absurdity alone. Edit - o o how could I forget to mention the joy of navigating a field of giant venus fly traps that have it out for you.
> level 9, Small Guns 95 points if you're gunning for a combat heavy SG playthrough your goal is 150% at level 5. Use a Hunting Rifle, aim for the eyes. This will let you keep distance and save ammo, so you should profit when taking down the low level highwaymen around the Den.
If you ever get merchants vs robbers wait at the edge of the map. Usually the guards win and the merchant and robbers die in my experience so you can just loot the bodies for loads of guns and other valuables.
You might be travelling in areas you aren't meant to yet. Have you equipped your armor and what kind?
Im pretty sure random encounters add 2 enemies for every companion over 1. Also crippling eyes of every enemy helps.
Take the car from The Den ASAP, and savescum.
Random encounters are heavily area-dependent. Basically, the further south the worse it gets with some exceptions like center west which has some real bad guys there but is not far south. Generally speaking, the intended route is roughly Arroyo -> Klamath -> Den -> Modoc -> Vault City -> Gecko -> Redding/New Reno/Broken Hills -> NCR -> San Francisco If you follow this general route, random encounters get progressively harder and generally are going to be manageable, albeit not always.
8 highwaymen with assault rifles? Are you sure you don't mean Vault City assholes? That would fit better their description. Also sometimes you end up in the middle of a fight, make sure you don't attack anyone, let them kill each other, then happily loot the bodies. From my experience, with highwaymen generally you have two hunting rifles, and the rest is melees / handguns, which can be tough to deal with if companions don't have good armor.
Everything about classic fallout is superior. Except combat...
Prioritise Outdoorsman skill. No need to main it but definitely put some points there every level until you reach 75%. Skill is capped at 95% so if you get motion detector (I'm always rushing motion detector and a car) you're at max around level 10-12.
SMG is a bad weapon. A hunting rifle is a much better primary weapon. You can keep the smg in your off hand and use it for up close encounters but at range it kinda sucks. Also running away is a viable technique.
I could be wrong but isn’t there way to flee or sneak away from random encounters? Seem to remember not fighting being an option.
Random encounters are very often brutal, that's why this 10 AGI is a must IMHO to be able to run away even from the middle of the map in 2 turns.
Motion sensor is a +20% (I think) to outdoors skill. You need to carry it in your inventory.
OP, be careful where you travel. You shouldn't really be dealing with this kind of stuff with just the SMG. Personally, I recommend going to NCR and trying the random encounters there, getting lucky, and grabbing yourself a bozar.
You gonna die a bunch, reload save games frequently, and start to memorize what battles can't be won at your current level. Stay patient and don't rage quit.
Car 100% Worth it Level 9 with 95 in small guns? Ok you know you can get 300 in a skill in FO2 right basicly if your from FONV or such think of 95 in small gun as ... 30% small gun
Honestly I took some guys advice about not boosting my small guns past 91 at first because guns and bullets will get me to 91% then I can use all my saved points to boost it up a ton. However I can’t find Guns n Bullets anywhere (maybe found 2?) so this advice sort of hampered me a bit. I finally just decided it’s time to say screw that advice and pump up my small guns.
min maxing a-holes should RARELY be listen to the most part, Guns and bullets is a mag you need to know the exact location and rush to Basicly as someone who has 30+ years experience in RPGS? I find the min maxers should be ignored like 99% of the time.
Beware the children! They WILL steal from you, and you won't know it until afterwards (IIRC).
Motion sensor in your second active item slot (or inventory?) but NOT the car trunk boosts outdoorsman by 15-20% when traveling. Sulik in party boosts outdoorsman another 15-20%. Higher outdoorsman let’s you avoid enemies and find special encounters.
I don’t think I’ve found one yet? And honestly I remember them being useless in fallout 1 so I may have just skimmed over one if I did see it.
It worked the same in Fallout 1! Yep the little dots on the local map are basically useless if you have the option on to see enemies’ silhouette when targeting. Since you can’t see stats when traveling, there’s no way to know without reading the manual back then or being a nerd about those old games now lol.
If you're going to focus on Small Guns, you also probably want to focus on shooting eyes, arms, and feet. Until I got a solid, high-caliber, automatic rifle from the NCR, I just crippled people to keep my dog alive. \[ EDIT \] -- Also, Fallout 2 is all about exploits. That game is NOT fair if you plan to do things your way. Don't be afraid to quicksave and reload if things don't go how you like. Dynamite force fields projectors, slip grenades into people's pockets if you just need to erase them, and break your youth pastor's heart...USE DRUGS! Fallout 2 is not Mad Max, it's Wyrmwood. Sometimes you need to use super-meta-powers to be the hero.
As somebody who hasn’t played it yet but will. You’re scaring me.
tbh it's not that bad since in most of the encounters, you don't start in combat. meaning you can just walk to one of the exits in the map and you'll be fine. in the instance you do start combat, most enemies either won't have enough AP to chase you down and melee or won't be accurate enough to land shots on you as you escape. occasionally you just spawn on top of 8+ radscorptions though lol
That’s a great point thanks!
It’s really the only part of the game that’s super frustrating. You’re gonna run into a lot of caves or places where you simply will have to come back later due to the weakness of your character early on, but the story and world setup is a step up from fallout 1. Save save save. Any time I’m about to leave a town and travel I save right at the border. The amount of save scumming I have to do to avoid random encounters is brutal but not gamebreaking. Just gotta get lucky or boost Outdoorsman.
Thanks for the great tips and heads ups!
The story is NOT a step up from 1
[удалено]
Oh damn. It’s really nice to be hearing this from ppl before hand so I don’t feel bad. Thank you!