I'm not sure how to divide my skills, I will favor guns, repair, lockpick and some more. Should I max one of these first or divide them more even on lvl up? Is about 80 enough on skills? Also is it needed to have high science if I go for high lockpicking? Thanks for any tips.

Well, I try to raise:

- weapon skill (Small Guns for me) to 50 by level 10 or so (or melee, unarmed, big guns or energy weapons)
- science to 75 as soon as possible
- lockpick to 75 as soon as possible, but after science
- medicine to 50 or 55 by level 10 (for quests)
- sneak to 50 by level 10 or so
- explosives to 50 by level 10
- repair to 45 by level 12-13
- barter to 50 by level 15
- speech to 50 by level 15 (sooner if I'm a Charisma-focused build)
- I try to get both small guns and energy weapons to 60+ by level 18 for a particular perk

So I tend to tag Science, Lockpick and Medicine during the GOAT. Then focus on getting the other skills up quickly, without letting anything lag too far behind.

In most places you can get around terminals by using Lockpick on a door instead but if you have Mothership Zeta, you'll want a Science skill of 75 in order to obtain a unique weapon. There's not much reason to raise Science above 75. I can only think of two Very Hard locked terminals and you can use Lockpick on those doors.

Yep, I go for 75 specifically for Mothership Zeta. But it also provides alternate access to a lot of things - like being able to turn enemy turrets against their owners, or disabling enemy robots via the terminal. (I don't remember if those specific cases require Science of 75 or just 25/50.)

There's also one more big place where you'll want 75 Science. The "Steelyard" in Pitt - with 75 Science you can activate a set of protectrons to help you clear out the trogs in the lower part of the trainyard. So I'll generally only have to kill 1, maybe 2, before I can sneak over there and activate them. It doesn't help you with the rest of the Steelyard, but there's a few other turrets that can be hacked and used against the enemies. Turrets are especially useful against the trogs, as they are out of reach.

You can hardly go wrong with concentrating on guns, locksmith, and repair. (Probably the three most important you could choose, other than, maybe, sneak.)

Locksmith will definitely get you around lack of science skill, in almost all cases. The instances it don’t, is not “game-breaking”.

I normally (unless there’s a certain perk requirement I’m shooting for) go with dividing my available skill points by 4. Take that result and apply it to your “3 main” and split the remainder amongst the “other” skills you find interesting. Of course that’s not a “hard and fast” rule. If it takes an extra point or two to raise my sneak or repair (or whatever I’m shooting for) to an even “0” then I usually go for it.

At some point you’ll start looking at the skills you’ve neglected, and maybe wishing you’d invested a little more heavily in other skills. But in the end it’s a moot point. The game can be beat with just about any combination of preferred skills. It all depends on your preferences and style of play.

Thanks for the info, the skills and lvl system seems much easier than Oblivion.

The 4 on each seems like a nice idea.

Fallout 3's leveling system makes a wonderful amount of sense compared to the horror that was vanilla Oblivion. Even with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul mod, I still found myself doing stupid things repeatedly (sneaking near a sleeping NPC) in order to bring up skills so that my stats could improve at a reasonable rate. Neat idea that gamesas had for Oblivion... bad execution.

I've done things similar to Blamin in the past as well, pick 3 skills, always give them 3-4 points at each level up, then spread the rest of my points to other skills.

(Part of the fun of Fallout 3 is hitting a lock that you can't do yet, or a quest trigger that you don't have to skill yet for, etc. It svcks, but at the same time it's part of the challenge.)

In general I think it best to try to get big increases a few skills, vs small increases in a lot.

Early on it might be some tough trade-offs. But I'd focus on a kill-skill (like Small Guns) and Repair. Maybe through a small number of points into other skills like lockpick, just just a small number. At least that's generally what I do.

Once your kill-skill is high then I tend to shift to other things. Note that in this game it often doesn't pay to get a skill to 100, but rather just get it near 100. Because S.P.E.C.I.A.L. affects skills and you can find bobbleheads and skill books.

whatever build you chose, [unless you're deliberately looking for an extra challenge] you should always include repair and give it as much attention as your weapon skill

Or invest in the trader caravans early. For 2800 (total, 700/trader) caps you can end up with four traders with 65-75 repair skill. That's good enough to get you over the hump until your repair skill has time to get that high in the late teens.

I actually liked Oblivions leveling system better than Fallout's. Only the skills you used got leveled, and you didn't have to wait to level to level skills. It could have been implemented a little differently but overall I found it more enjoyable. But oblivion ain't got [censored] on Fallout's perks. Perks are awesome.

Oblivion seems more "realistic" to me. In that in Fallout 3 you can, for example, get to 100 skill in Big Guns without ever having fired a big gun.

Although Oblivion could stand improvement in the skill - attribute - character level relationships, in my opinion.