Here is some early tips, anything with a * are deemed essential, anything else is optional but highly recommended to conserve food and caps.

• Get the Educated perk at level 4*
  
• Use stealth to your advantage, and reload saves if a battle goes poorly, conserving ammo is key, as well as maintaining a high food stock
  
• Dont drink any Nuka-Colas until they are ice cold ones from the Nuka-Cola Machine in your house
  
• Barter as much as possible, to avoid spending caps unnecessarily, and to keep your weight down.
  
• Strong back perk is a lifesaver, get it in the simulation
  
• Only loot high caps/mass items, this becomes more important in the mid-end game, when laser rifles and plasma rifles show up, but keep this attitude of only expensive and light items in mind.
  
• VATS is your friend, use it for quick reaction timings around corners, stealth kills, long distance kills, or general ways to avoid taking a lot of damage really fast.
  
• Dont be afraid to look up a guide if you are lost on something I did not cover in detail.

When selecting special traits, put 9 into intelligence (essential!), and 9 into strength (optional but recommended), distribute the rest according to personal preferance. For your tag skills, put one into a combat skill, I recommend small guns because of their prevelance throughout the early game, and the good ones later in the game (mainly Lincoln's repeater). Put one tag on a support skill, which includes things like medicine, repair, and sneak, personal preferance is here, but I highly recommend repair because I stimpacks are for cowards, and repairing is essential for high value looting. Place your last tag skill in one of the secondary skills, which includes lockpick, science, speech, and barter. The method of gameplay I use, barter is never necessary to have 30k+ caps, so speech or lockpick is recommended.

When the vault goes crazy, the next bit is fairly straight forward. Keep pressing the top dislogue option with Amata to get a perfect condition pistol, and some ammo. When the conversation is done, grab the stims in your room's first aid box, as well as your baseball bat, and bash the brains of the security guards in. Use the drinking fountains for healing throughout vault 101, and make sure to be dodging their melee attacks. The gun guards are an optional enemy force to face, they dont have anything that special that you need at this point. Make sure to use your repair skill to keep the condition of looted items high for selling shortly after.

When it comes to dealing with the overseer, it is up to you whether or not you confront him, if you do decide to, the lockers inside the room with him has some good loot for your taking. Go to his office now, lockpick the door, then hack the terminal. Once hacked, immediately leave the terminal and go across the hall, go into the overseer's (and Amata's) rooms and loot their dressers. Once you have the stuff, go back into the office, loot the lockers there, and then go into the terminal and open the tunnel. At this point, leave vault 101, there is nothing else really in there that is of interest.

By pre-Megaton, I mean the quests, not the town.

Once you leave the vault, use your level up to push your explosives to 25 and your repair to 30 if it is not already, then go straight to megaton, following your quest arrow. Enter town, and DO NOT START the power of the atom quest, or talk to anyone there besides the one person I am going to mention. Now go to Craterside supply (I am assuming you have a basic knowledge of the game if you are playing on very hard), and start the wasteland survival guide (rad section), this earns you a Armored Vault 101 jumpsuit, which is far better than the security armor you are using now. Next, sell all your garbage you picked up from Vault 101 to her, losing all that extra mass.

Leave megaton, and go directly east, to be exact, go straight east, to the Potomic river on your map. Your route should take you along the south fence of the super duper mart, keeping you safe from the random raiders there. I would like to note, DON'T KILL ANYTHING AT THIS POINT, try to minimise gaining experiance until I say so. Once you hit the river, jump in, and swim south, keep swimming until you get to near the bottom of the map (there should be a boat in the river, enter it, and lockpick its contents, and take its weapons). Once looted, head east, swimming around the Jefferson memorial, and hitting dry land on some rocks (around the bridge to the broken bow entrance). Once on land, walk around to the Rivet city front door, and hit the button, you should get access immediately (you will), and enter the old pre-war boat. Go straight down to the science lab, and pick up the intelligence bobblehead. Now you can gain experiance however you want to. Talk to Zimmer in the lab and start The Replicated Man Quest, then go to the Capital Preservation Society, and talk to Mr. Washington, starting his quest, make sure to get the location of the national archives from him.

Once all that is complete, its time to head off to Megaton.

Go up to Luca Simms (and save before talking to him) and start the quest Power of the Atom, make sure to get the speech check, or reload the save and talk to him again until you get it. Once you get it, do talk to Walter up in the water treatment plant, start his side quest (which you complete while you run around town, just fix the pipes with your 30 repair skill you should have if you followed my earlier part of the guide).

Go up to Moriarties saloon, and pump Moriarty about Silver, so you can go to her house on your own time and kill her for caps. Then go talk to Burke in the corner of the saloon. His speech check is not important, so pass it on your own volition, but make sure to get two things from him: Tenpenny Tower map marker, and info about Leo Stahl and his drug stash. Once that info is aquired, head down to the centre of town, and drink from the bomb crater water until you hit 600 rads, you should get a quest pop up after you hit it. Then enter the Brass Lantern, and SAVE, then talk to Leo Stahl. Convince him with a speech check to come clean (reload until aquired), and you should recieve the drug stash key.

It is optional to tell Lucas Simms about Burke and his plans to destroy Megaton. If you want their stuff, including an early game Chinese assault rifle (with no ammo to boot and in terrible condition), then tell Simms about Burke, but I would keep him alive, better off that way in the end.

Then head up to the water treatment plant, and tell Walter you fixed the pipes (which you should have by this point), grab Leo's drug stash in Walter's office in the back of the plant, then head down to Craterside supply. Complete the Rad portion of the quest and pick up the Super Duper Mart section. Head out of the store, and defuse the bomb in Megaton, talk to Simms (or Harden if you had him killed, you cruel person), then go upto your house (which should be on the left path if you are entering town). Talk to the robot, and get 5 free purified waters, and stash any junk you dont want to get rid of.

Then head over to Simm's house, enter it when he is eating dinner (or if you had him killed, use his key on the door), steal the hunting rifle in his house, and the Strength Bobblehead. Once those are gotten, wait till 6 am, then leave town.

Along the south side of Megaton, there is a rock surrouded by 2 or 3 trees, 'open' it, and take the stuff stashed there.

Next, place a map marker on the Tenpenny Tower map marker you got earlier, and head STRAIGHT in that direction, making sure to use your 10mm pistol to dispatch anything that gets in your way (the 10mm pistol quickly will fall out of use due to its low damage, and uncommon ammo. It is only useful during the next few sections because of the 100+ rounds you got from Vault 101). You should hit Fort Independance on your way if you went in a straight line, start their unmarked quest, and continue your journey to Tenpenny Tower. When you arrive, make sure to let Roy Phillips finish his arguement, and let him leave in peace (DO NOT ANGER HIM).

Give Gustavo 100 caps as an entry fee, and then SAVE before talking to him inside the perimeter. Convince him to let you take care of the ghouls, and complete the speech check (save reloading etc.) to get some free weapons.

Head straight out to the Warrington Train Tunnels after getting the weapons and quest from Gustavo. Using your weapons and sneak skill if you are going for a stealthy character (like I do often, although, aggressive also works with this method), kill the feral ghouls and make your way through the tunnels. It is a maze, so I would recommend looking up a guide if you get lost, on how to do the quest. Anyways, make you way to the final area, where Michael Masters should confront you, convince him to let you past, and then talk to Roy. Roy is a scamp, so eventually convince him to let you help him get into the tower- by force that is. He'll tell you the whole plan, and once he does, leave the metro via the quick exit on the level where Michael first met you was.

Head back to Tenpenny tower, and then talk to Herbert 'Daring' Dashwood, talk to him about his adventures, and he should tell you about some things he did around the tower, including stealing a metro key. Choose the speech option 'I dont have time for games old man' or something like that, and you will recieve the key from him for free. Next, go to Megaton, and drop off ALL unneeded items at your house, including all your weapons except one. Then go back to Tenpenny tower, go talk to Anthony Ling, and if he has combat armor in stock, skip to the next paragraph. If he does not, wait a few days, checking in with him until he has it in stock.

Go to the metro access around the back of the tower, and save your game before entering. Enter, and use your presumed 25 science skill to hack the terminal, and let the ghouls into the tower, or blow up the generators (I just hack the terminal). Leave the room, and go to the front of the tower, Roy will give you a ghoul mask and ask for your help inside the tower, then enter the tower WITH THE GHOUL MASK EQUIPPED.

Inside, loot all the guards, people, and chests. Loot everything really, and make sure while you are there you loot the following items specifically.

• Dr. Banfield's Key, and loot his medical box now with it (if you cannot, then wait till the attack is over and loot it then)
  
• Herbert Dashwood's Key (second floor sometimes), and loot his safe now with it
  
• Anthony Ling's Key (and use loot his shop's chest with the key now)
  
• Lydia Montenegro's Key (and loot her shop's chest with the key now)
  
• Margaret Primrose's Key (loot fridge in her shop after attack is done)
  
• Shakes' Key (loot alcohol cabinet in bar after attack is done)
  
• Gustavo's Key (and loot the weapon shop, which should be the locker in the guard sleeping quarters to the left if you leave the tower)

With all your aquired weapons, and combat armor, you are now strong enough to face the next section of the game.

Go to Megaton now, and start the Quest Aiding the Outcasts. Follow that quest marker south, and enter the metro it guides you to eventually, make sure to use your ghoul mask from now on when entering a metro, or the Dunwich Building, it is good practice to get into, especially for late game when reavers start to spawn. Keep following your quest marker, and help the outcasts reach their base, where they WILL let you enter it. Follow their suspicious motives and agree to help them with the simulation program.

Go back to Megaton quick, and drop off all your armor, and as much stuff as you possibly can, keeping only the neural interface suit the outcasts give you, and maybe some food/weapon. Also, make sure your Karma level is what you want before you enter the simulation, for the level 7-8 achievement for GFWL (if you use it). This should take you to level 8 or 9, from the level 4-6 you are now.

Enter the pod, and complete the DLC however you want, however here are some tips that you should follow, or consider, as well as possibly do.

• Get all the intel cases, there is 10 in total, 4 in first mission, 2 in each subsequent one.
  
• Try stealth, it helps a lot in this DLC due to the lack of food for healing
  
• Pass the Gauss rifle speech check with the armory master
  
• Pass the Jingwei Speech Check
  
• Try the glitch that allows you to have more than the allowed weapons and ammo, which is just, drop what you want to have illegally, and go to restock ammo, or switch ammo kit, then pick up the dropped items after.
  
• Use this DLC as an opportunity to put your earned skill points into your combat skill of choice, and points into repair (small guns still recommended as always). It is a VERY good idea.

After you leave the simulation, go to the armory, unlock it and loot everything. Equip the T51-b armor, and shocksword, and when the outcasts attack you, kill them quick with the sword. Loot everything you feel like, keeping in mind the cost/mass efficiancy of each item, with laser rifles being one of the most cost efficient.

At this point, you should have the best armor in the game, high primary skills, and some ammo and weapons, as well as food and money. Use these to your best advantage in helping you survive in the cruel wasteland. Try to follow my general early game tips as well, that have their own section, they should help. I might create a full guide on how to have a very powerful character in Fallout 3 on Very Hard, but that will take some time. If anyone reads this, thanks for doing so, and I appreciate any feedback.

Yours Benevolently,
Sarah