Back in Fallout 3, I headed towards the RobCo plant in order to finish off Moira’s quests. I took the opportunity to explore the southwestern area of the map in general, uncovering a bunch of other map markers. Most notably, I found Tenpenny Tower (apparently infamous, with the attention given to it in some forum threads) and a Nuka-Cola crazed woman who wants me to collect them for her.

I also ran across deathclaw enemies for the first time, and they’re tough indeed. Fortunately I have a new ally — the Mysterious Stranger perk. I picked it up on the last level up, and it’s turned out to be quite useful. Every time I use VATS for targeting, there’s a chance that this guy in a fedora and trenchcoat will show up and insta-kill the enemy for me, and it seems to happen around 10% of the time.

I then stumbled across Vault 112 inside an old garage, and apparently it’s part of the main quest to find my father. I guess I’ll pick up there tomorrow, having still not entered the RobCo plant…

Next up in Fallout 3, I found the settlement of Paradise Falls, which was filled with slavers. The front guard gave me the opportunity to join them and enslave other people, or to bribe him to be let in, but I went in with guns blazing instead, rescuing a bunch of people after a huge firefight in the inner part.

After that I felt it was time to do the DLC content, and headed off to its map marker. I found a few new places along the way, including the town of Andale, which was an odd, incestuous (literally) perversion of 50’s culture. Eventually, I got to the Outcast base and did the Operation: Anchorage missions. Not much to say about them since it was pretty much just a linear series of firefights in a simulated Alaska. I did get some power armour as a final reward, though.

I then resumed Moira’s quests, planting an observer to study mudlurks, and finding out the true history of Rivet City. I’m at level 12 now, and surviving pretty well now.

Fallout 3 spoilers, of course (since I know at least one other person out there is also playing it right now ;) ):
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Continuing on in Fallout 3, I headed back to Megaton and started doing some quests for some annoying woman putting together a guide to surviving in the wasteland, which involved heading to a nearby supermarket and clearing it out of bandits. It’s a sign that I’m finally getting better at surviving that I can take on a group of them now, albeit not all at once.

After that it was mainly just some exploration, discovering the area of Grayditch, taking care of the super mutants with the missile launcher I mentioned earlier (a tough fight, but there were only two of them and I could dodge the missiles), and I went back to the Springvale school, where I’d earlier been chased off by bandits.

This time I was able to clear the outside and inside of the school of bandits, and cleared out an ant nest underneath the school as well. Allegedly there’s another Vault down there somewhere, but I can’t figure out how to get up this ledge I saw. I guess I’ll have to come back later.

Between the supermarket and the school, I’ve been able to collect a fair bit of equipment, sell off a bunch of it for bottle caps, and repair my weapons and armour enough that they shouldn’t be in danger of falling apart for a while. I’m still only level 4 now, but my survivability is gradually getting better and better.

Getting back to other older games I still have yet to finish, I resumed playing Fallout 3 tonight. I hadn’t really gotten very far before, but today I managed to explore a bit further and ran across two more towns, Big Town and Arefu, where some besieged survivors have been holed up and tasked me with helping them out, of course.

Getting around has been rather dangerous since I went with a high-INT/CHA character who’s not so good at the whole fighting thing, and I died a few times to relatively weak monsters, but at least once you’ve reached a marked place you can fast travel to and from it without having to risk traversing the wasteland again. I also ran across a couple of super mutants north of Big Town, one of whom had a rocket launcher. I’m not quite ready for them yet…

I found one of the bandit settlements harassing the towns in a cave, took out a few of them, and saved for the night while still in there. There’s a few radscorpions I still have to kill, and I’m running a bit low on ammo…