| Key Points |
Here is some info on making the game go more smoothly.
Unarmed: Apart from using raw skill points, there are five places where you can enhance your skill:
There are six tools with which you can "enhance" your effectiveness, although only 2 are generally useful. Spiked knuckles from the Duntons' corpses very early in the game, and you can upgrade a Power Fist to a Mega Power Fist in the basement of Eldrige's shop in New Reno. Plated boxing gloves are useful only in the context of the boxing match, and they do roughly double damage of normal gloves. Actually, they aren't that useful, as your wins should be from good criticals instead of raw damage. At any rate, these can be found in the basement of Bishop's casino. Unarmed skill is handy to the very end: Frank dies in at most 5 combat turns with proper use of the mega power fist and appropriate perks/drugs, and it is impossible to kill large numbers of enemies in one turn with ranged weapons. Incidentally, secondary punches and kicks are a waste of action points. In theory, they are good, but generally multiple primary punches do at least as well, especially when targeted to the eyes.
Toxic Caves: You will want your unarmed combat to be pretty good here, so you can punch golden geckos in the eyes, but you should visit this place before getting Sulik, so you don't have to take care of him. Rubber boots can be found in the Trapper Town gun shop, and these protect your feet from the radioactive goo. Once on the lower level you should travel on the lowermost route to the right side, thereby avoiding most of the geckos. Try to lure the ones you must encounter into combat one by one, so you can take them out with eye-punches without too much of a problem. Once you have rescued Smiley and return to Klamath, you should get him to teach you how to skin geckos, so you have a temporary source of income. Then return to the caves with Sulik in tow to carry your gecko skins, since they are heavy. There is an elevator on the lower level of the toxic caves, and you will need good repair skill to get the generator going, and an electronic lockpick to open the door. This will require you to come somewhat later in the game: The first electronic lockpick I found was in a refrigerator in the basement of New Reno Arms (where Algernon lives). When you get out of the elevator, there will be a sentry bot which will kick your butt if you don't have good armor and good combat skills. If you're not saving and reloading, this can wait until you have a good enough cushion of hit points to survive a mistake or a critical hit. Try to get into the door opposite the elevator, wait for the bot to come to you, and punch out its sensors. There is a decent cache of guns, ammo, and armor there. In particular, you will find a Bozar and combat armor mk II.
Car: If your charisma is bad, it is essential you get the car from the Den as early as possible so you can lug heavy objects around. You will need a fuel cell controller, and you will want a fuel cell regulator. The fuel cell controller can be found on Skeeter in the Gecko junkyard (enter Gecko, go to the top), and you have to give him a tool kit for it. The tool kit can be had from Valerie (of Vault City) in "exchange" for pliers and a wrench. Pliers can be found in many places, the first of which is in the rat caves of Klamath. A wrench can be found in the Vault city courtyard, but only if you find Curtis' Nixon doll in the bar area and give it back to him. The fuel cell regulator can be found in Trapper town in the car right on the other side of fence from the exit grid. You have to go through the rat caves to get there. You can get a turbocharger from Ratch in the outskirts of NCR.
The mega power fist is possibly the most useful weapon in the game. While you need a ranged weapon against turrets and large groups of range-attack enemies in open spaces (Enclave + poor planning), this can take care of anything else. Punches to the eyes will often score criticals of over 100 points, and will sometimes cause direct kills. I have had no trouble taking out the old military base with just a mega power fist and bridgekeeper's robes. Well, I change the robes for power armor once I can get to it.
The scoped hunting rifle is probably the most useful gun in midgame, giving you a +20% bonus to your chance to hit if you are more than 8 hexes away from your target (and a severe penalty if you are too close). With this, your small guns skill does not need to be very high at all for you to take out say, the turrets at Sierra without getting killed. Since there is one turret which you cannot attack by popping in and out of cover, you need to take it out without getting close enough for it to do serious damage, and an increased chance to hit helps keep the number of combat turns down. In principle, I tend not to use my skill points to increase my small guns skill, since it can be boosted with books. While this is probably not prudent in the sense of my aims in writing this page, it lets me raise my other skills, and the scoped hunting rifle lets me snipe when I need it done.
San Francisco: I've had trouble with game stability here, specifically when entering Chinatown from the Hubologist camp or the Shi temple. I have not been able to identify the cause of this problem, but it may be a result of the fights in the ring. It is best to visit these places as seldom as possible: You can get by with visiting the Shi temple 3 times for quests, and the Hubologist camp once to lay waste. You can also hold off on the karate until you are ready to go to the Enclave, though I'm not sure how much that will help. Incidentally, the karate match is not very difficult if you have won the match in New Reno (you get a bonus to damage resistance and unarmed skill); I have heard people complain of Lo Pan pulling a .223 on you when he's hurt, but I've never had a fight with him last more than 2 combat rounds without his dying as a result of a death blow to the eyes. Heh. Never underestimate the value of Better Criticals and good unarmed skill. San Francisco is pretty much the best place to go for buying stuff. The two shops offer just about any kind of useful equipment (excluding armor) and weapon, and while the prices aren't very good, gambling skill makes that a question of real-world convenience. The Hubologist camp has lots of mutated fruit in the living quarters, and if Myron is sufficiently advanced, you can get lots of super stimpaks from them. Also, you have a small, positive chance of scoring some Jet Antidote in the tanker gun shop, even if you didn't complete the Jet quest. This helps if you ever make the mistake of taking Jet.
More later.