Fallout 3/NV/TTW things you might not know [*SPOILERS*]

[Risewild]

After I found out that some people might not know about some things on either Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and of course TTW I decided to write this post to give the chance of others to learn about stuff.

• Terminal Hacking Trick

• Brahmin Tipping

• Disarm Trapped Terminals and Toilets

• Revelation Quote secret safe

• Megaton's Hollowed Rock

• The Pitt inconspicuous apartment

• Swank from The Tops

• Using Melee/Unarmed Special Attacks outside VATS

• You can block the guards chasing you from accessing to the Overseer's Office in vault 101

• The game loads disabled plugins (.esm and .esp files) in your Data folder

• Ini Tweaks to remove the intro videos and images

• Drink water continuously

• Destroy mines

• Silent Kills with loud weapons

• Console Command click

• FO3 Slides Voice Over

• Spawn the 5th Behemoth

• Jefferson Memorial No Fast Travel

• Museum of Technology secret areas

• Museum of Technology hanging plane

• Free Alien Power Cells

• Explode enemy grenades

• Pipboy shortcut keys

• Gob's Saloon

• Rivet City usable beds

• Glitch to loot Dad and Colonel Autumn

• Easy Wasteland Survival Guide Mirelurk Observer quest

• You can skip the G.O.A.T.

• Lucas Simms dialogue changes if the Player is equipped with a vault suit

• You can save Lucas Simms from Mr. Burke

• T-Rex skeleton in Point Lookout

• Which came first, Operation Anchorage or The Pitt?

• Escape from Vault 101 without killing

• Amata kills Officer Mack

• You can avoid being locked out of a terminal, even without the "Computer Whiz" perk

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Terminal Hacking Trick
 
Here is a little-known trick when hacking terminals in game. This works in both Fallout 3, Fallout NV and of course TTW.
When hacking a terminal, one can use the <[{()}]> to erase one of the dud options and/or replenish the times one can try a word to unlock the terminal.
I am lazy and do not like to waste resources so I will just quote deadboy:

if you find a pair of <>, [], {}, () on the same line, don't have to be together, it will erase a bad passphrase or replenish the Number of tries you get also, if you can find something like <;:#<$> that's actually able to be used twice. Once for each of the left hand side of the pair.

Here is a video showing how to do it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3AsIdAIAj8

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Brahmin Tipping

You can tip Brahmin (Well, more like throwing them like you were the incredible Hulk)

 
Another not-well-known trick is cow-tipping. If you sneak up on a Brahmin and activate them without a weapon drawn, you will push them over. No, I'm not kidding. There is even a first-person animation for it.

One note, we can't tip Packed Brahmin.

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Disarm Trapped Terminals and Toilets

And another fact, not as obscure as the other ones (I believe), but many people do not know that one can look behind trapped terminals and defuse them.
One can also disarm trapped toilets, by removing the Microfusion Cells from the water tank.

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Revelation Quote secret safe

On Dad's Medical Office in Vault 101 (the same room where we can find the Medicine Bobblehead) there is a framed quote of Revelation 21:6 on a wall, not everyone knows that it can be activated and unlocked by a normal difficulty Lockpick skill (skill needed 50) and inside one can find random stuff and also a Rock-It Launcher schematic, 300 caps, and an audio recording.
Also it's possible to get this before the player leaves the vault for the first time without need to use console commands, all one needs is to make both his/her Perception and Luck stats 10, Tag the lockpick skill, pick the trait Skilled and equipping a Vault 101 Utility Jumpsuit, it will be more than enough to have 50 Lockpick skill (it will be a total of 52), once one gets out of the vault 101 cave for the first time, the player can alter the stats and traits if he/she so desires to.

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Megaton's Hollowed Rock

South of the entrance to Megaton there is a Hollowed Rock that contains some goodies (A Sniper Rifle, some ammo for it, a Stealth Boy and a note).

Rock LocationShow

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The Pitt inconspicuous apartment

In The Pitt, if you are facing Ashur's Building, to your left is an apartment building you can enter and explore from the street on the same side as the exit from the steel yard tunnels.

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Swank from The Tops

When you go into the tops casino to get benny, go talk to the guy on the left at the counter, Swank.  he's benny's second in command, and has a dialogue set to allow you to never get frisked at the door, turn off hostility from other chairmen when you gank benny, and even send him up to his room where you can encounter him at your leisure. You can pass the dialogue with speech checks (i think 35's the highest) or evidence of benny's passage through the mojave.
I mention this because I've run into more than a few people who'd never spoken to swank in their lives.

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Using Melee/Unarmed Special Attacks outside VATS

Using a Melee or Unarmed weapon it is possible to make special attacks outside of V.A.T.S., even without having the skill of 50 (required to perform them in VATS).
All one has to do is start a power attack (hold attack button) while moving forward.

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Block Vault 101 Guards from entering the Overseer's office

You can block the guards chasing you from accessing to the Overseer's Office in vault 101
When you're escaping the vault 101 if you do not want to kill the guards chasing you for some reason, if you manage to reach the Overseer's Office in vault 101, you can quickly close the door, and the guards will not open it for some reason.

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The game loads disabled plugins (.esm and .esp files) in your Data folder

This is not really about ingame secrets, but the Game still loads/indexes disabled plugins (.esm and .esp files) that are just sitting in your game's Data folder.
So if you play with 120 active Mods and have 40 more inactive mods (or again .esm and .esp files) sitting in your Data folder, it will cause problems for your game.
Always get rid of disabled mods you do not use.

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Ini Tweaks to remove the intro videos and images

Changing the following ini settings will stop the main movies and titles pics from displaying:

SMainMenuMovieIntro=0
SIntroSequence=0
sIntroMovie=0

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Drink water continuously

Not sure if everyone knew this, but you can press and hold your assigned Use key on a water source to continually drink form it.

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Destroy Mines

Something else a lot of people don't seem to know... you can shoot mines, bottlecap mines and other mine types to destroy them if your skill isn't high enough to disable them.

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Silent Kills with loud weapon

You don't need a silenced weapon for stealth killing. If you're in stealth and your first shot from a loud gun instantly kills a target, no other enemies will hear it. If you miss or the shot fails to kill, however, you will alert enemies. Enemies may also become suspicious upon seeing the corpse.

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Console Command Click

Something else a lot of people don't seem know is that when you click on things in the console, you can use the mouse wheel to rotate through the various references under your cursor.

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FO3 Slides Voice Over

Not sure how many have noticed this. I honestly never paid attention to it. But started a new playthrough and in the vault during the X years later slides the voice overs are what's happening. After the birth one you hear the overseer in conversation to let you in the vault and Moriarty's conversation with James too. Each section hints at the main story or next section of the tutorial. 
Not sure why I never noticed before and I'm sure most of you have. Thought I'd add that though.

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The 5th Super Mutant Behemoth

There is a railway Supermutant base outside the tracks from Evergreen Mills. There you will find a couple shopping cart cages. In one of the cages is a Teddy Bear. When you take the bear it will cause the 5th Behemoth to spawn and come investigate.

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Jefferson Memorial No Fast Travel

Did you know that while the Enclave has control over Project Purity and thus,the Jefferson Memorial,you cant fast travel there? As in,the game disables the map marker for it until you complete Take it Back! in which it get's enabled again. Obviously,only if you have Broken Steel installed.

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Museum of Technology Secret Areas

After I just read on the PN thread someone having troubles finding a "secret" area on the Museum of Technology I thought that maybe there are people that do not know about two "secret" areas.
They are both located on the room with the big Rocket on display and they can both be accessed by a small ledge leading to them, here are some pics to show where they are:

Small room areaShow

Here we can see the small area in the distance:


It is located in the first flight of stairs and can be accessed by this ledge:


And the next area can be accessed from the next flight of stairs, here is a picture showing the area:


It can be reached through a ledge just like the first one.

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Museum of Technology Hanging Plane

In the Museum of Technology's Virgo Room there is an airplane hanging from some chains, it is possible to break it in pieces and drop it on the ground by shooting at it from a certain angle.

This is the planeShow

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Around 100 free Alien Power Cells

Here's something I found out about recently:
Not far to the east of Fort Bannister, there's a big ol' crater with an overturned truck in it.

PictureShow

 
...and it turns out in that truck there were 96 alien power cells.

PictureShow

LocationShow

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Shoot enemy Grenades

Did you know if a target has a grenade equiped and you shoot it whether in VATs or not,it instantly explodes?

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PipBoy Shortcut Keys

f1 f2 and f3 are your keyboard hotkeys for your status, items, and data tabs in your pipboy.

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Gob's Saloon
Some people might not know that if the player manages to kill Moriarty without causing a commotion, a few days after, Gob takes over the Moriaty's Saloon and paints over the word Moriarty in the Saloon sign the word Gob.

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Rivet City usable beds

In Rivet City there are two beds in the common room the player can sleep in for free, that also come with free, safe storage.
Enter the common room and turn left into the smaller room. The bed against the wall at the end straight down from the door, and the bed immediately to your right are both player owned, and the footlockers at the foot of each one are player owned, safe storage.

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Loot Dad and Colonel Autumn

During the quest "The Waters of Life" when both Dad and Colonel Autumn are exposed to the radiation, it is possible to loot their corpses.
By crouching next to the glass, switching your camera to third person view, keep your character looking forward at the corpses while spinning the camera slowly so you are looking downward at your player characters face.
This might take a try or two, but this is (I believe) the only way to pickup Dad's Wasteland Outfit, and a way to loot Colonel Autumn's 10mm Pistol and armor earlier

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Easy Wasteland Survival Guide Mirelurk Observer quest

The Wasteland Survival Guide quest from Fallout 3 can be annoying, specially the Mirelurk part of it, to get the optional objective the player can't kill any Mirelurks.
Here is the way I always do it and I consider it the easiest way of doing that quest:
The Anchorage Memorial has on it's South side a locked metal door (25 lockpick needed to unlock if memory serves me right)

Picture of where the door isShow

All one has to do is unlock that door, and sneak down the corridor and turn right, there will be a mirelurk egg clutch there, place the device in it and sneak (or run if you got detected) back and out of the door, return to Moira and it is done.
Another way is to just clear all the Mirelurks before accepting the quest and then just have a walk in the park to place the device and return.

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It is possible to skip the G.O.A.T.

When the player enters the classroom and an automatic dialogue starts with Mr Brotch, the player can pick an option that goes something like this "Come on, I don't really need to take this stupid test, do I?" and Mr Brotch will just let you pick your tag skills, after that, you can leave the class and continue to the next part of the tutorial.

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Lucas Simms dialogue changes if the Player is equipped with a vault suit

If the player reaches Megaton for the first time wearing a vault suit, Lucas Simms will say:
"I'll be damned, you're from that vault, Vault 101. *chuckles* I ain't seen one of those jumpsuits in a long time."

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You can save Lucas Simms from Mr. Burke

If you accept exploding Megaton for Mr Burke and then tell Lucas Simms, Simms will go and arrest Mr Burke. But once he turns his back to Burke, Burke will kill him. You can save Simms if you kill Burke before he has time to shoot, if you do, Lucas Simms will thank you for saving him and commenting how he must be getting slow.

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T-rex skeleton in Point Lookout

In Point Lookout there are the fossilized remains of a T-Rex sitting on the bottom of the sea, just south of the Coastal Grotto, under a Buoy. There is also a safe, a gun and a few ammo boxes.

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Which came first, Operation Anchorage or The Pitt?

This is something that most people that ever opened the Fallout 3 DLCs files in GECK will know, but I think there might be many users around here that never did it, so I will share this information:
Which Fallout 3 DLC came first, Operation Anchorage or The Pitt?
That is an easy question, Operation Anchorage was released first and The Pitt released second of course, but which was made first? I ask because I would like to know why everything in the files of The Pitt DLC in GECK start their name with "DLC01..." and in the Operation Anchorage DLC in GECK start their name with "DLC02...". All the other DLC files have stuff starting with the correct name.
Conspiracy theorists, do your thing!

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Escape Vault 101 without killing anyone

It's possible to escape Vault 101 without killing any guards. You can just run from them. The previous tip on how to lock guards from the Overseer office helps with this too.

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Amata Kills Officer Mack

If the player refuses to take the gun that Amata offers the Lone Wanderer at the start of the ESCAPE! quest. She will use it and accidentally kill Officer Mack, when he and the Overseer are interrogating her in the Security Office. This happens if the player waits long enough, while the interrogation is happening.
Amata will then run away and will give the gun to the Lone Wanderer if talked to later, before going through the Overseer Tunnel.

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You can avoid being locked out of a terminal, even without the "Computer Whiz" Perk

All you have to do is close the terminal before you fail the last try. If you do this, you will be able to try and hack that same terminal again, and again and again... and as many times as you want.

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If anyone remembers of other things people might not know, please post them and I will update this post to include them .

[paragonskeep]

Of note on this. Highly recommend to "use" 3 of your tries first prior to using the above due to hitting the "allowance replenished" when you still have all 4 tries. 

[RoyBatty]

And you can always close the terminal to reset it and try again.

[Gribbleshnibit8]

[quote=RoyBatty]

And you can always close the terminal to reset it and try again.

[/quote]

That's for noobs

[LaEspada]

Wow, I never knew that... All my life,...

[Puppettron]

you're gonna be madder when you find out that's a mechanic that existed in fo3 vanilla

[Pokepunch]

Hm, that's strange, I always assumed this was common knowledge.

[Puppettron]

i thought so too, and then i find people who didn't know every year.

[Risewild]

[quote=Pokepunch]

 

Hm, that's strange, I always assumed this was common knowledge.

[/quote]

Me too, but then I remember how I found it out and it was randomly while playing Fallout 3 when it came out and when my mouse slipped and bit and I clicked on a ( or [ or something . So I only found it out by accident back then .

[gluttoncreeper]

Never knew that trick. Nice to know.

I use this NV mod (extremely lazy version): 

http://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/41580