Completing Fallout 2 without firing a shot

[bji]

Hey all. Please accept my apologies if this topic has already been discussed; I used the search feature but didn't find anything in the first page so I gave up.

I have just started Fallout 2 after completing Fallout as a bruiser who used the super sledge 80% of the time and .223 pistol the other 20% of the time. There is something very, very satisfying about the super sledge. Although the knockback can be annoying, it's kind of fun watching your victim slide 30 spaces across the screen after a good critical.

I've decided that rather than doing the same thing in Fallout 2, I'd try something a little different and harder. I'm going to try to complete it without firing any weapons. I'll just use unarmed combat and keep a set of throwing knives to pick off anyone who runs away (only because I hate chasing enemies down).

Is this possible? Is it possible to develop hand-to-hand fighting skills sufficient for beating any enemy (or group of enemies) in the game? I don't intend to avoid combat - I intend to play just as I would normally with respect to picking fights, but I will never wield a weapon except for throwing knives.

I have already "completed" Arroyo and a little bit of Klamath this way, but it has been slow going at times. I like the extra challenge and I don't mind the slow pace, but I don't want to set myself up for something that I can't actually pull off. At the moment my punches and kicks are doing between 4 and 9 damage, whether targeted or not. This is working OK for rats, scorpions, geckos, etc, but I am not sure that it will be sufficient for anything bigger.

I specifically don't want to use any weapon that requires power or ammo - so I don't want to use the power fist. Brass knuckes would be OK though.

Once I scrape together enough money I intend to pick up my first NPC (I forget his name, the one in the bar in Klamath), and will probably have to lean on NPCs for most of my destructive power until I advance my fighting skills (assuming that it is possible to, with time, do real damage using just hand-to-hand). I don't like to use NPCs too much, but I may have to make an exception given the extra challenges that I am presenting myself with.

Any thoughts or hints? Spoiler-free as much as possible would be best. Thanks!

 

[alec]

You can get Sulik (the NPC in Klamath) for free!
But I won't tell you how because you specifically said 'no spoilers'.

HtH characters rock in FO2, but they only do so if you equip a PowerFist. I know because I played most of my FO2 games that way.

Throwing knives? Bwahahahaha! Don't bother. They suck. No matter what you do or whatever skill you raise. Useful against rats but that's about it.

PowerFist. Seriously. And you're in for one hell of a game.

 

[TheRatKing]

If you are only going for unarmed (without power/megapower fist), then your best weapon will be spiked knuckles, very inefficient even against low-level baddies. Without firing a shot, your best bet is to take melee and use the super sledge or some other weapon (or just use power fists).

 

[Josan12]

I'd guess the martial arts attacks are just about good enough to get you through the game, but i've never gone the whole way thru the game that way. I'd imagine it'd be tough, but fun. But no power fist as it 'neutralizes' your martial arts skills. No brass knuckles either. Also, the stat reqs are quite high for some of the higher level kicks and punches.

THrowing knives are craaaaap. But you might be able to treat yourself to a grenade or two ....

 

[bji]

Well I've been playing Fallout 2 for a while now using just unarmed combat and, so far so good.

It started out pretty slowly; it was somewhat demoralizing getting my butt kicked by mutated rats, but eventually, after getting to level 8 or 9, things started picking up. Now at level 11 (almost 12) I am able, via the stronger punches and kicks that are available at higher levels, to kill groups of opponents without too much difficulty. Of course I have to play tricks sometimes, such as standing behind doors so that only one opponent can get to me at a time. But I have no doubt that once my character gets a little strong I won't even need to do that.

I've been using Sulik mostly as a mule (yes I did figure out how to get him for free!). I take ammo out of all weapons I have him carry for me becaus I want him to use only unarmed combat also. His unarmed skills are pathetic and for most difficult fights, I leave him at the gate and pick him back up when I am done.

It seems that critical attacks are the absolute key to making unarmed combat work. My criticals are devastating - when I get a good hit, which is quite frequent now, I can immediately blind or cripple opponents (or knock them out, which I tend to do with groups, then pick them off one by one). So I am going to focus my perks on criticals over just about everything else.

 

[Kanhef]

As mentioned in the manual, the better punches and kicks have a bonus to critical chance as well as damage. At level 12, the secondary attacks are armor piercing as well (ignores DR, but not DT). Aimed attacks have a critical bonus equal to the to-hit penalty – 20 for legs, 30 for arms/groin, 40 for head, 60 for eyes – so you can probably skip More Criticals and Slayer and raise your skill level instead. Bonus HtH Attacks, Action Boy, and possibly Bonus HtH Damage may be more useful.

 

[bji]

As mentioned in the manual, the better punches and kicks have a bonus to critical chance as well as damage. At level 12, the secondary attacks are armor piercing as well (ignores DR, but not DT). Aimed attacks have a critical bonus equal to the to-hit penalty – 20 for legs, 30 for arms/groin, 40 for head, 60 for eyes – so you can probably skip More Criticals and Slayer and raise your skill level instead. Bonus HtH Attacks, Action Boy, and possibly Bonus HtH Damage may be more useful.

Thanks very much for the advice.

It's my understanding that Slayer + 10 luck means 95% chance of criticals with every successful hit. Are you saying that this same thing can be accomplished with raised unarmed skill level?

I have already raised my unarmed skill level to about 160, and am getting frequent criticals, but nothing like 95% of the time (more like 15% - 25% of the time, depending upon what I aim at).

 

[Kuj2]

It's my understanding that Slayer + 10 luck means 95% chance of criticals with every successful hit.

Slayer in itself guarantees crits with every unarmed punch or kick - it doesn't do the LK roll, it just sort of happens

 

[bji]

Done

Well I finished Fallout 2 with purely unarmed combat recently. By 'purely unarmed' I mean that I never wielded any weapon (not even brass knuckles and certainly not a power fist) except when in the boxing ring. Also I stripped all party members of weapons (well, ammo actually, since I wanted them to act as mules without having usable weapons) so that they were always forced to fight purely unarmed as well.

I was going to write a bunch of strategy hints here that I learned while completing the game, but I think in the end it's more fun if you discover them your own instead of having me tell you the most effective techniques right off the bat.

That being said, I will share one technique because it's just so much fun. When fighting groups, use your Better Criticals and More Criticals perks to your advantage and aim for the head. By the mid game you should frequently be able to knock opponents out with a few shots to the head, and by the end game (after you get Slayer) it's virtually guaranteed on the first punch. Once they're down, steal their weapon - or, if you have enough cash and don't need their weapons, just steal their ammo, making sure to unload their weapon and take that ammo too. When they wake up, they'll come at you with unarmed attacks which you will easily shrug off. In this way, it's pretty easy to beat just about any group in the game. Groups of Enclave soldiers are hard even in the end because they will get 4 or 5 energy weapon shots on you and do 50 - 60 damage in the first few turns while you are busy knocking guys out. But even Enclave patrols are surmountable most of the time.

Note that I am NOT recommending sneaking and stealing weapons from opponents before the fight, which I think is just cheesy. But during the fight, I think it's a valid strategy since it uses action points and it's more 'realistic' - believe me, if I was unarmed and someone came at me with a combat shotgun and I knocked them out with a jab to the face, you'd better believe the first thing I'd do is take their gun away!

The only real serious challenge is Harrigan. I softened him up using the turrets and took his last 200 hit points 4 or 5 at a time with lots and lots of punches and eventually, punching and running after both his legs were disabled and he couldn't run to me and hit me in the same turn. I think that for a challenge I'll load my save and try beating Harrigan without any assistance from the turrets, but I suspect that will be a very difficult and time consuming process.

One non-combat-related hint: don't spend too much time worrying about money. You will only need maybe 10,000 total during the whole game to pay people for quest items where necessary, and aside from that, you'll only ever need to buy stimpacks and armor. I spent ALOT of time gathering weapons from dispatched enemies, and trading them for weightless items like drugs, or high value-per-pount items like the best rifles. I would literally spend half an hour running to, say, all of the dead bodies scattered throughout the casinos in New Reno after I'd killed all of the crime families (except my homies the Wrights), filling myself and my mule (Marcus) with weapons and then running back to the weapons shop to trade items back and forth until I'd converted all of the weapons into the highest value-per-pound items I could get. I wasted WAY too much of my time in the game worrying about gathering money resources which in the end I didn't need at all. I finished the game with about 40,000 caps and dozens of each type of drug, and hundreds of Jet canisters. Never used any of that cash, and gathering it all was a total waste of time.

By the way, when you do need to carry money around, a note: I was getting frustrated with the lack of money available to convert the heavy weapons I was carrying around into weightless cash, until I realized that I can just convert weapons into drugs too, which work basically the same as cash as well. You can trade a gun for 4x RadAway and then treat that RadAway as cash, trading it later for stimpacks or armor or whatever you need. So while actual caps can be hard to come by, there's more than enough drugs in the game to act as a money substitute.

 

[bji]

Oh and on an unrelated note, there were only a few places in the game where I got 'stuck' and had to consult walkthroughs to figure out what to do:

- When I first got to Modoc, I didn't have the car, and I found out that I had to head west to look for Karl. I didn't know that he was in the Den and pretty much immediately after I headed west to look for him, I got the 'pariah dog' random encounter area and the 'toxic waste dump' random encounter area. I spent HOURS combing through these two locations looking for that stupid Karl. I was so sure that he must be in of those places because they were immediately to the west of Modoc, right where I was supposed to be looking for him. Such random bad luck to get these two random encounters right to the west of Modoc at that point in the game.

- For the life of me I could not figure out how to get an invitation to Westin's farm in the NCR. Somehow I missed the path through the Vault City quests that would get me onto Westin's ranch, and I had the bad luck to, the very first time in New Reno, sleep with Bishop's wife as almost the first thing I did in town (I guess I'm just that kind of guy). Of course, since I wasn't working for the Bishops yet I couldn't get out of the second floor of the casino, even after figuring out how to get the contents of all of the safes, including the quest items I needed to get me into Westin's ranch. So I reloaded an earlier save and gave up on the idea of sleeping with Mrs. Bishop. Of course I forgot about what I'd found in the safes and so later on I didn't even consider sleeping with Mrs. Westin as a means of getting onto the Westin ranch. I once again spent HOURS trying everything I could think of to get into the Westin ranch (including planting enough dynamite just outside the gate to kill the guard right inside but no matter what I did, he just got knocked back by the first explosion and I could never hit him again with another explosion to kill him), and eventually, gave up and consulted the walkthrough for the hint I needed to get in.

- In the Enclave, I did not realize that the reason that a few bots would randomly turn hostile to me was because I had K-9 as a party member (who I didn't even NEED, I just had him along for kicks). As a result, I spent a LONG time figuring out how to shut down the reactor, and eventually, consulted the walkthrough.

It was a fun play through in any case. Although, by the end, the game had gone on so long, I was just kind of rushing to get it over with. But still, an incredible game with an amazingly complex collection of quests.