[Fallout] low intelligence (SPOILERS)
Eric Tilton
Short version: This is moderately long, but I'm very curious to hear
others opinions on playing a low intelligence characters. Further
details below.
After reading the "how do I get power armor as a moron" thread, and in
anticipation of the impending release of Fallout 2, I went back to
replay Fallout 1 with a dramatically different character. The first
time through, I'd played a highly intelligent and agile character
(mainly so I could get two shots off in a round of combat), so I saw
lots of a dialogue options and had plenty of options for solving
quests. I decided that this time I wanted to play a very dumb and very
lucky (int 2, luck 10, str 7, ag 6) character. (With the "bloody mess"
trait, too, of course.) Very lucky, so that I could see most if not
all of the random encounters (which I've succeeded at), and very dumb,
so I could see what it was like to play this way.
I've been happy with having high luck; between high markmanship skills
and plenty of critical hits, I've had no problems blazing my way
through the wasteland. I found the alien blaster early on, which gave
me a significant advantage. I also have been taking perks that seemed
appropriate, like better criticals, and mysterious
stranger. Mysterious stranger has been very cool, since he shows up
with appropriately bad-ass weapons for whatever random encounter I'm
in. Much more useful than any NPCs :).
Low intelligence has been entertaining ("wubba" has been my favorite
dialogue option), but I feel like I'm wussing out on it. Because I
want to get various quests (I because I wanted power armor and the
turbo plasma rifle), I've been popping mentats. Mentats boost my IQ of
2 to an IQ of 4, which has gotten me through pretty much everything
I've needed, and I finally got to the point where between an IQ
boosting operation at the brotherhood and the "smooth talker" trait,
the mentats are no longer necessary (because I have an effective IQ of
4 for dialogue naturally).
This isn't too bad on the face of it; I can pretend I'm playing a
character who has some amount of sense, but was incapable of
communicating. Having gotten out of the vault, he's discovered ways
of compensating for his limitations. There's been penalties for his
ways -- I was addicted for a while (popped too many things at once at
the Glow), but this doesn't seem to have had any practical effect
other than feeling briefly nauseous (I went cold-turkey during the IQ
raising operation, and wasn't an addict afterwards. [Which raises a
sub-question -- what are the actual pragmatic effects of addiction in
Fallout?]). I did notice the amount of recovery time from Mentats
seemed to increase over time, which added a nice feeling of urgency to
my quest to find other ways to compensate; I think I got into the
brotherhood just in time. (It was no longer enough to simply travel to
another map location for the mentat aftereffects to wear off.)
However, I can't help but feel like I've wussed out. I tried to go as
far as I could in each location before popping a mentat, but I ended
up resorting to them anyway. I couldn't seem to get *any* subquests
as a low IQ character. Someone else mentioned in the power armor
thread that there was a low IQ subquest, but I was unable to find it.
What other approaches did people take to playing this kind of
character?
thanks,
-et
--
Eric Tilton, Evil Time-Traveling Geniuses for a Better Yesterday
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/ (ego-boosting home page)
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tilt/games.html (freaky games obsessiveness)
Steve Metzler
> Spoilers below.
...
> Low intelligence has been entertaining ("wubba" has been my favorite
> dialogue option), but I feel like I'm wussing out on it. Because I
> want to get various quests (I because I wanted power armor and the
> turbo plasma rifle), I've been popping mentats.
Aagghhh! That's cheating :-)
But, I understand this because it was indeed frustrating at times. I made
it all the way through the whole game to the very, very end with INT 3 ...
and no Mentats! As you said, you couldn't get any quests. Consequently, I
had to waste a lot more people than I normally would just to get their
gear. But, I found that Combat Armour is nearly as good as Power Armour
(you can do the whole Glow this way, and still catch only about 15 rems. A
single Rad-Away takes care of that).
Finally though, I had to pop 2 Mentats to be able to hack my way into the
Vat computer at the Military Base (even though I had Science = 92% or
something to that effect!) so I could arm it to self-destruct. Technically
then, I cheated as well ... anybody got other ideas how to get into this
computer with low INT?
Steve
Domin 'Alien' Wnek
Steve Metzler wrote:
> Aagghhh! That's cheating :-)
>
> But, I understand this because it was indeed frustrating at times. I made
> it all the way through the whole game to the very, very end with INT 3 ...
> and no Mentats! As you said, you couldn't get any quests. Consequently, I
> had to waste a lot more people than I normally would just to get their
> gear. But, I found that Combat Armour is nearly as good as Power Armour
> (you can do the whole Glow this way, and still catch only about 15 rems. A
> single Rad-Away takes care of that).
>
> Finally though, I had to pop 2 Mentats to be able to hack my way into the
> Vat computer at the Military Base (even though I had Science = 92% or
> something to that effect!) so I could arm it to self-destruct. Technically
> then, I cheated as well ... anybody got other ideas how to get into this
> computer with low INT?
>
> Steve
You can just set explosives to blow it up - the same effect.
--
Domin 'How do I become the Avatar? Or Han Solo maybe?' Wnek
Lady of Decay Productions Homesite: http://www.kki.net.pl/decay
ICQ: 2293474
Nathan Mates
Steve Metzler <smet...@indigo.ie> wrote:
[Late-game spoilers for Fallout. Bail out now!]
Last chance...
>Finally though, I had to pop 2 Mentats to be able to hack my way into the
>Vat computer at the Military Base (even though I had Science = 92% or
>something to that effect!) so I could arm it to self-destruct. Technically
>then, I cheated as well ... anybody got other ideas how to get into this
>computer with low INT?
Didn't the keycard being carried by most of the Cathedral-robed
techs near that computer get you to the dialog screen with the
computers? [Use that keycard on the computer.] You still might have
to guess at the codes as those may randomize between games, but if
you're playing the save and reload, that's not too much of a problem.
Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/ <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? -R.A. Heinlein
Richie Young
>Vat computer at the Military Base (even though I had Science = 92% or
>something to that effect!) so I could arm it to self-destruct. Technically
>then, I cheated as well ... anybody got other ideas how to get into this
>computer with low INT?
I think you can waste some of Purple Robed minions (who are in the
computer room by the vats) and grab a security card of some kind.
Use that card on the computer and voila you gain access.