Fallout 3: The Third Way
It’s very easy in Fallout 3 to stumble in to situations you just aren’t ready for. What’s left of the world has had a good long while to get used to the kill-or-be-killed side of post-apocalyptic living, meaning by the time you arrive on the scene they’ve all formed little gangs to handle gun toting loners like, well, you. Raiders and slavers travel or camp out in groups, wild dogs and mole rats with the size and temperament of boars roam the land in packs, and super mutants have turned the buddy system in to the stuff of nightmares. For the times you find yourself out-gunned and out-classed (something that happens quite often early in the game), there are a few options available for attempting to stave off death.
1. Run. This is the least likely to work. If wild animals are after you, you can bet on them being faster than you. If it’s raiders or mutants, they’ll chase you down for sport. You’ll just die tired.
2. Fight. The VATS system helps even things out, but until you’ve leveled up a bit nearly every fight is going to leave you cut to little ribbons. If you opt to stand your ground, make sure you have plenty of stimpaks and keep a safe place you can recover at within limping distance.
3. Improvise. There are all kinds of things you can use against enemies to take them by surprise. Wrecked cars will explode with just a few bullets put in to their engine, and the various residents of the Wasteland tend hate each other as much as they hate you and will happily tear each other apart upon meeting. There’s every chance you’ll die in the process, but hey, at least it’ll look cool.
Evergreen Mills is in the Midwestern part of the map - make your way north from Tennpenny Tower and you almost can’t help but find it. In a past life it was a quarry of some sort, but now it’s crawling with Raiders, each armed to the teeth and considerably better fighters than the rabble scraping out a life in the Wastes. When I find the camp, I’m at the point skill-wise where I have a choice: I can try to kill them all and loot the place, but it’ll cost me in stimpaks, ammo, and wear on my weapons that I can’t necessarily afford, or I can try to make my way around the camp, hopefully not tip off any of the guards, and come away with nothing. Not trusting my skill with a rifle to be high enough to pick them off from a distance, I’m making my way through the rocks above camp when I notice the solution to all my problems: in the middle of the quarry is an electrified pen, and inside the pen is a Behemoth, a twenty-foot tall super mutant that can kill with a punch and soaks up damage like a sponge.
I hide in the rocks till night settles, watching the guards through the scope of my sniper rifle in opes of a gap in their patrols big enough to squeeze through. At midnight I turn on a Stealth Boy to max out my sneaking ability, put two rounds in to the pen’s generator to blow it up, and skid down the rocks in to the camp proper. Despite my added sneakiness, one of the Raiders spots me just as I make it to the Behemoth’s cage, but by then it’s too late. With the gate open, the Behemoth is free, and he’s angry.
The fighting lasts till sun up, but only because some of the squirrelier Raiders were smart enough to stay out of arm’s reach for as long as they could. Their friends aren’t so lucky - the ground is littered with bodies that were decapitated by a single punch. After a long night of sustained gunfire, the Behemoth still has over half his health left and shows no signs of slowing down. I’ve been watching the whole thing from a safe distance, taking shots every one in a while at the Raiders he can’t get to. After a while the quarry is quiet again with all of its residents dead, leaving the place ripe for looting. Over the course of the fight, I’ve only been hit two or three times and used up maybe a clip of precious rifle ammo. Not bad for a night’s work.
Of course, around now is when the flaw in my master plan becomes apparent. If I leave my hiding place to have a go at all the lovely bodies loaded down with all the ammo, weapons, and bottle caps I’ll need for a while, the Behemoth will turn me in to jelly. I can hit him from range with my rifle, but I don’t have nearly enough ammunition to put him down. The strongest weapon I have is a combat shotgun and forty-nine shells to put in it, meaning my only choice is to get as close as I can while avoiding his reach. I take a shot at his head, causing one of his health notches to fade a bit. He roars back, stomping the ground and kicking a corpse a good dozen feet or so in frustration.
It’s going to be a very long day.
Originally published at Expertologist. You can comment here or there.