I've recently been playing Fallout 2 and was wondering if you can skin the geckos. I kill them all the time and their skins are supposed to be worth money. Can anyone Help...Please...I need money bad for some armor.

You have to free smiley the trapper from the toxic caves northwest of klamath first. You get this quest from one of the women in the same shop where you will find Sulik. After you have freed this trapper, you have to go back to Klamath and talk to smiley again. He is 'hidden' behind the wall of that same shop. He will teach you how to skin gecko's.

And if you are really in need of money, go kill some raiders and highwayman in the field. Their weapons can yield a lot of cash.

And if you need free armor, you can get a leather armor from Sulik and combat leather from the barowner in the slums of Vault City. These two guys are also a nice addition to your party.

Hope this helps

[This message has been edited by Igneous (edited May 01, 2001).]

Thanks...that helps a lot. Right now I'm in the Toxic Caves but I'm getting my but kicked by the golden Geckos...

"there's too many of them"
name that quote?

You leave those geckos alone for a while, and hunt some rats and lill geckos in random encounters to get some exp. I don't know which skills you took up in the beginning, but maybe you can speak to a guy in the middle of the other bar in klamath and he will teach you 'the art', an extra 10% on top of your melee and unarmed skill.

I always punched those gecko's in the eyes with a chance of around 60-70% to hit, put all my pionts in unarmed for the first 3-4 levels. When the suckers are blind, sulik beats the crap out of them with his sledgehammer.

Did you also pick up some rubber boots to avoid getting hurt by the radioactive waste? You can find those in a locker to the west in trapper town, in a little shack, behind the rat invested section, with 'guns' on it.

If the gecko's in the toxic caves are still to hard, you can also do this rat king quest first.

The last remedy is of course putting down the difficulty switch for battles to easy :D But I don't hope you have to use that ;)

Good luck

GONMAR, if you are playing unpatched game (don't know if they removed it in patch), when you return to speak to trapper, ask him the same question as long as you like. And watch Outdoorsman skill. :D

They fixed that one with the patch. BTW if you di install the patch do it SOON. Games saved without the patch don't work once the patch is installed. I was done with the Den and heading to Gecko and had to start all over.

Another option for the Toxic caves is to use the pipe gun to do damage at range. You can find it and other good stuff in the stack east of the bar. Also if you do the 'keep my still fire going' quest for the guy in the bar, I think you get some armor. But most of all get those rubber boots they make all the difference. Good Luck

I've got the boots and a pistol...my skills are small guns, energy weapons, and sneak...In retrospect not the best, but I'm going with it. Should I get some party members...like Sulik?

I got the patch before starting my game.

[This message has been edited by GONMAR (edited May 02, 2001).]

Well, put as many points as you can spare in small guns then, and try to find a hunting rifle in one of the random encounters at the left of the Den (Highwayman, Slavers) The bullets for that gun are not so expensive or hard to find, and you can hit the eyes of anything with not so much skill points in small guns, because of the nice range.

If you encounter for example a caravan fighting slavers you can grab a lot of equipment without losing a single hitpoint or Bullet yourself, just wait for them to kill eachother and finish the leftovers yourself if you feel like it.

The pistol you already have is nice, but not good enough untill you get a very high small guns skill to finally hit them often enough on vunerable spots. Sulik is very handy in those toxic caves, but don't forget to give him a pair of rubber boots in his inventory too.

An evil sidenote: To buy Sulik you only need 350 gold or you have to finish to chuck and Buck Evil quest, he will come for free then after you have freed him from the robot. but you can also sell him for around 1700 gold to the slaver master in the right side of The Den. You can buy a lot of bullets for that money, so you can even empty a few SMG clips on those lizards without any regret.

Good luck

Small guns and energy weapons are good tag skills. I went with speech rather than sneak but to each their own. I used a lot of armed combat early in the gun so pulling a lot of points or even a tag on armed combat is a good call. And even later on killing less creatures without wasting ammo is important.

In the middle of the game small guns in the most important and maybe the most important in the whole game. There is nothing like a sniper rifle or assult rifle to win a battle. But by the end of the game it's all energy weapons.

As for getting party member go for it. I used 4 to 5 member for most of the game. I think that some fight are just not winnable without the extra firepower. I used Sulik for a long time in the game. He's great with a super-sledge. I did know about selling him to the slavers, that's great! :D You could also join the slavers guild and make a lot of enemies and a lot of money.

It's all up to you, that's the beauty of F2.

A disagree with the part about energyweapons being the best at the end. As extremist mentioned in his other post, the gauss rifle and pistol are both small guns, and the rifle is the best weapon in the game IMHO. But it was not very clear for me too if it was an energy weapon or a small gun, so maybe there is a little confusion here ;)

Thanks for the help guys...Great Game so Far...

for the end boss, the best weapon is the vindicator minigun (not sure if that's the right name. It's the minigun that uses rare, hard to find ammo) You can kill the guy pretty quickly. If you get extremely lucky, critical hits with that can do more than 1000 damage. And nothing in the game has that many hitpoints.

i once kept my wife alive all the way to the end (the wife from some farm somewhere). no special ending for it though.
there was some bug and she was behind a door when i was fighting the final boss, so she never got hit. she was with me when we took the ship back though. NEVER give her any automatic weapon, you'll hurt yourself more then your enemies.

I still think that energy weapons are the way to go at the end of the game. The Turbo Plasma rifle is great but there is one better energy weapon. I can't remember the name at has some numbers at the end and I got it from the weapons locker in the Enclave. It totally rocked, between 70 and 150 points a damage a hit to the head and many times crits in the 300s.

Even better things you can do with Gauss Rifle, but since you probably wasted points in energy weapons, your skill in small guns won't be enough even to scratch hostiles.

But damage wasn't the reason why I posted this note. Above was the question about making XP. Since every XP point is valuable early in the game, this is my contribution to this topic. It is based on unpatched version so maybe won't work with patch!


Philosophy of stealing in Fallout 2

I hate stealing and stealers. But Fallout 2 is not real life, so... Let's explain.

Cumulating experience in the game is required to gain next level for your character. Experience points (XP) you get in these ocasions:
- solving a quest,
- successful using of Skilldex skills,
- killing something,
- special ocasions (finding some places, correct talking to some persons, helping someone, etc.).

One of Skilldex skills is Steal.
Stealing 1 item without geting caught gets you 10 XP. For successful stealing 2 items at a time, but 1 by 1 (don't push ALL), you get 30 XP. For 3 items it's 60 XP, 4 items gain you 100 XP, 5 items 150 XP, and 6 items 210 XP. So, if a person has 6 coins, if you steal them all in one move, you'll get only 10 XP. But if you move them to your pocket 1 by 1 and get successful, you get 210 XP! What are you gonna do? Pick 10 or 210 XP?
However, don't steal more than 6 items, it's too risky and you won't get much more XP. Remember that if you improve your steal skill above 90%, you won't get 210 for 6 items, so what? You'll steal 5 items then.
And save the game before stealing, because sometimes you won't get caught, sometimes will. Just make sure you never get caught.
Don't think that you can steal everything from everyone easily. If you manage to steal 3 items and gain 60 XP from some guards, consider yourself lucky. Also remember that stealing is easier if performed by standing behind a victim, if idolized in the place and if item is not heavy unless you get a Pickpocket perk. This means, you'll probably get caught every time you try to steal a sledgehammer from a guard.

Some things won't be listed in person's inventory when you try to rob him. This is because he is keeping them in hands (try to steal weapons that your NPC party members hold if you don't believe me), but if you can talk to a person, you can still try to barter for things you need. Or kill the bastard.

Steal skill can also be used to get stuff from locked desks if you can't lockpick them (a bug?!).

It is a good thing to steal things from your oponents before you attack them. You'll get experience for stealing + for killing, and a better chance of surviving a fight. So, before you wipe enemy out, try to steal stims, drugs, ammo or even weapons!

Yes, I know, stealing I suggest is boring, but my hero advanced from level 10 to level 13 with stealing only in the Vault City. I played it for 4 hours, but that's about 30.000 XP! So don't think I'm giving you ****.

A thing more, I managed to finish the game without stealing. However, it was not easy, so steal at least in first few areas.

Haven't I managed in convincing you to put tag on your steal skill while creating a hero? Do it. Now!



[This message has been edited by Extremist (edited May 03, 2001).]

Well, the whole stealing bit is good and all but it also depands on what type of character you are playing. I beat the game with a thief like character, sneak and steal tags. Stealing for that PC was an important part of the game. He also loved to 'plant' explosives on the enemy with the steal skill. But I also used a character with speech taged who did steal or fight if they could help it. They just talked to everyone. Then there is the fighter type who is into the direct approach. So it all depends on what type of role-playing you are doing.

That's one the nicest things about Fallout there is more than one way to solve almost every quest in the game. This provide more fredom and a overall better playing experience. There is lots of XP in the game so you don't need to min-max to get more. Because in the end it's all about my experience not the character's. ;)

Argh!

The point in Fallout 2 ain't about classes, you can be every class at the same time. And many quests and solving them depend on your primary and derived statistics. That's why I like it.

Just spotted Arkados' thought...
That unwanted NPC party member is from Modoc. Anyway, have you tried the bottom line in speech with male butcher's child?
Anyway, I don't understand why you can't get your wife back in bed after you're married :(


[This message has been edited by Extremist (edited May 03, 2001).]

Thanks for the info...I finished the smiley quest....got Sulik and a leather jacket(perfect fit for my character). Right now I'm walking around the den trying the random encounters. Thanks again for the help. I didn't read all the posts due to some spoilers but thanks...

I just got Fallout 2 and Tag SKilled Small Gun, First Aid and Doctor. My traits are Skilled and Gifted. Are these choices bad, ok or good?

(I haven't played Fallout 1)

Those 2 traits kinda even it out a bit. With Gifted you get the added character points but you lose 10% of your skill points and you also lose 5 skill points per level. Skilled on the other hand gives you back those 5 skill points per level for the trade off of less perks.

Persnonally I prefer to choose Finesse and Gifted. I'm not too worried about having low skills for the start and it's nice to have the extra character points to allocate. And having the extra 10% chance for critical never hurts either. With the skills I normally choose Small Guns, First Aid, and Sneak. Small guns is essential, and First Aid is useful at the start of the game (until you get enough stimpacks). Sneak is useful for scouting and avoiding those stupid geckos at the start. Then I usually put points into Steal.

Cerryl made some good point about the traits. I have used that same combo to sucess. It all depends on what type of characher you want to play. I don't the all brains and little bron type before. Just pick skills and traits that you think fit the character and go nuts. There are more than one way to solve each quest. With one character I just used speech and convinced the evil boss to just kill himself. Fallout rocks!

And Earl, be sure to pick up Fallout 1 some time. A lot of aspects from fallout I come back in Fallout II. And it is not so expensive nowadays. One of the best games I ever played.

First Aid AND doctor is not needed. You'll find an NPC doctor to come with you later and healing stuff is around enough. IMO you don't need any of them. You can steal healing equipment too.

My Traits: Small guns, Unarmed combat, steal.
Gifted, Finesse.

I agree by all means pick up Fallout 1. The only things F1 really lacks that F2 has is the improved NPC system. Now when I go back to play the first one I'm always getting mad about poor NPC control and equipment. But it still rocks!

wait until you've played Fallout Tactics and then see how much you complain about the amout of control you have over the NPCs. It is SOOOO annoying to have an NPC splatter a neutral person causing the rest of the neturals to turn on you.

Yeah, so if your doctor skills suck how the hell will you determine that the guy in front of Vault City is radiated?

Also, doctor skill (75%) will give you new option to get from Vault City's Vault doctor.

There are more things about it, but I can't remember them right now... :(

You don't need to know that the guy is radiated to give him some rad-away. Just give him 2 rad-aways and he'll get better. A number of things you do need it for is
1) In Modoc the injured Brahmin (Bess)
2) Vault City the medical computers. You need both a high science and a high doctor skill to learn anything from the computers there.

Cerryl, but the best thing about Fallout and even more F2 you can solve things in many different ways. I never taged the doctor skill and to the best of my memory I never even put one point into the skill and I beat the game several times. Maybe I miised out on a small number of things but most of them I figured out in different ways.

In regard to Fallout Tactics how is it. I read a bit about the game and I loved F1&2, Will I like FT? What did you think. I did enjoy playing X-COM but it got old after a while. Is FT like that? Is there enough to keep a role player happy? Or is it one large battle after another? Thanks