The Nearly Ultimate Fallout 2 Guide Version 1.3 Written and coded by Per Jorner Let me enlighten you, grasshopper. Fallout 2 is cool because it's a nonlinear, nonclassbased kickass postnuclear computer roleplaying game with a high replayabillity value. Fallout 2 allows you to play your character the way you want. If you want to play a goodie-two-shoes, you can. If you want to play an evil bastard, you can (Yes, you really can hit children in the groin with a sledgehammer). If you want to play a moron who can hardly talk because of his low intelligence, you can. --Shadowman Table of contents 1. Introduction 2. Preparations 3. Character design 4. Area walkthrough i. Temple of Trials ii. Arroyo iii. Klamath iv. Toxic Caves v. The Den vi. Modoc vii. Ghost Farm viii. Vault City ix. Gecko x. Raiders xi. Broken Hills xii. Redding xiii. New Reno xiv. Golgotha xv. The Stables xvi. Sierra Army Depot xvii. New California Republic xviii. Vault 15 xix. Vault 13 xx. Military Base xxi. San Francisco xxii. Navarro xxiii. The Enclave 5. Endings 6. Encounters 7. NPCs 8. Car 9. Stupid 10. Combat 11. Items 12. Addenda Introduction "Hey, stranger! Need a guide?" --New Reno prostitute Welcome to my Fallout 2 guide/walkthrough. This guide exists because I realized that if I wanted the kind of complete Fallout 2 guide that I envisioned, it pretty much meant writing it myself. That turned out to be quite an undertaking, but on the other hand, as far as I'm concerned Fallout 2 is the best computer game ever made. This guide is an attempt to provide a thorough presentation of the things you can do in Fallout 2: quests to perform, places to go, people to eat. It is not, on the other hand, an attempt to compile reams of game data such as documenting every karma point gained or lost, because it wouldn't be much fun. For game mechanics, detailed item stats and such, consult the manual and/or available in-game information. The basic assumption is that players want to squeeze as much out of their game as possible - which is another thing that makes writing this guide worthwhile, because Fallout 2 is a game that just keeps on giving. There are details and aspects you won't notice until your second, third or fourth game, playing different characters with different attitudes. Or until you read this guide, anyway. I've been playing the game using the UK edition, patch version 1.02e plus the "children patch". To my knowledge there is not a single significant difference between the UK and US versions except for the children thing. I've also used Falche2 Character Editor 2.10 and Inventory Editor 1.01 extensively to try out situations and features; moreover I've used Fallout 2 DAT explorer v1.42 to unpack game files, Fallout Items Mode Editer 1.1 to check out some item details, Fallout Utility for Critter tinKering 0.62 to check out some critter data, and the script decompilers by TeamX and Noid as well as the scripts that came with the Fallout 2 Mapper to check lots of things. Since trainers, utilities and mods aren't part of the game, I won't deal with them specifically. I don't recommend cheating, other than momentarily for the purpose of experiencing things that you wouldn't normally see, or in a last-ditch attempt to save a doomed character. Virtually every piece of information or advice presented here has been verified in personal testing or playing experience, although I have of course consulted rather a lot of existing walkthroughs and board postings for snippets of information and things to try out. Sadly, many guides are either poorly written ("klammth this place stinks btr get sum quest!!! i need the xp!!!!!"), give embarrassingly bad advice ("So that's why I always tag Throwing, First Aid and Barter"), include patently false information ("If you keep the Pipe Gun in one of your active item slots it will give you Agility +3, it doesn't work for all characters"), or are glaringly incomplete ("I've heard there is a place called New Reno in this game but I never found it"). Hopefully this guide should avoid those pitfalls with some margin to spare. Of other Fallout 2 writings I would recommend those of Whitechocobo666, author of the Endings FAQ, the Perks FAQ, the Weapon/armour FAQ and the Evil Walk-through; Steve Metzler, whose Steve's Guide to Fallout 2 was my original source of inspiration; Chris Avellone, co-designer of the game and maker of the Fallout Bible; and also Cristian Golumbovici. General credit goes to the people on the No Mutants Allowed message board. Special thanks to S�bastien Caisse a.k.a. Red! for checking scripts and stuff for guide version 1.0. Please note that spoilers abound. The first time you play a game like this, you really shouldn't be using any kind of walkthrough whatsoever. If you don't care enough about the unique experience of finding out and doing things on your own to abstain from spoiling it, you probably have better things to do with your time than play the game at all. So, in case this is your first game, don't read beyond Preparations. If you spot typos, have something to contribute or want to complain that my inclusion criteria are arbitrary, please mail me. If you have a gameplay or technical question that doesn't have anything to do with the guide itself (unless it hints at a deficiency therein), please turn to a message board; there are several on the net. I'm sorry, but you must understand that I'm not a one-person helpline. At least do a couple of string searches before you decide the answer isn't in the guide already. Comments and additional information have been colour-coded in the following imaginative manner: A green star marks straightforward, reliable information or advice. A yellow star signals some measure of uncertainty or speculation, but information given can be expected to be correct in broad terms. A red star is used for highly speculative information as well as massively peripheral or trivial comments. A blue star is used for general comments appearing in the Area walkthrough section which have a wider application than the specific context where they are brought up, such as character design, combat strategy or general game behaviour. Preparations "I'll get you during my next save game." --The Chosen One First of all you should find out if you need to patch your game. Originally this game existed in five different versions: the US edition, two UK editions (normal and low violence), and two localized editions in German and French respectively. Before playing you should locate, download and install the patch (v1.02) for your version, since this will drastically improve performance and gameplay from the unpatched version of the game. This is all in the readme file, by the way. Always read those. In the walkthrough, notes that are only relevant to the unpatched game will be marked with red stars, i.e. as being largely uninteresting. If you have any kind of budget re-release or new localized version I don't think there should be any need to patch the game, but for your own sake you should make sure. Install the patch before you start playing, since saves made in the unpatched game will be invalidated. There is an unofficial save game converter, but I think it only works on US saves and not on any of the European versions. You can use the US executable with the UK version if you are bothered by the CD lock of the latter. To my knowledge there are no harmful consequences to this. As an aside, there are a few known purely textual differences between the US and UK versions concerning "sensitive" words: "drug" has become "chem", and "addiction" has become "reliance" (but the "Addict" tab in the main interface is still the same). The reason why is anyone's guess, but if you've been wondering where I got this "chem" word from, that's the explanation. There is no official patch for the English Low Violence edition (marked ELV on the CD), but it's been reported that using either the US or UK patch works fine, even though it says in the readme that "applying a patch from any of the other versions will severely corrupt the game". You might want to go for the US patch, because of the CD lock thing. (Actually what I'd really recommend is not having anything to do with that product in the first place.) I also strongly recommend, if you have any other version than the US one, that you download the so- called children patch. This set of files, which is not technically a patch at all, will add the in-game children which have been removed from these versions (for some obscure reason of law or policy which apparently did not apply at all to Baldur's Gate, where you can roast kids with Fireballs all you want). You don't need any additional code, it's all there already. If you don't have the kid files, you'll miss out on a few quests, be exposed to invisible pilferers and be confounded by bodiless voices, which is all bad. You have been warned. The contents of the children patch are simply the kid graphics files which have been copied raw from the US CD, and what's been done to the UK version to remove the kids is simply keeping those same files off the CD.