Advice for beginners

Advice

Pregame

• First, read the Game Rules.

• Review the list of in-game Commands and the list of game Abbreviations.

• FOnline 3 is significantly different from the original Fallout games in terms of mechanics. Old builds, perks, weapons, quests, and NPCs will not behave similarly and are balanced for a multiplayer platform.

• Research and plan out your character's build. It is very easy for new players to treat this like a single-player Fallout game with no real thought put into builds. Rolling a poorly planned build will get you killed frequently and may severely limit your game experience.

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Be sure to review the FOnline 3 Build Guide (v 5.0.0) and plan your build. You should know the 8 level perks, Perks Synergies, S.P.E.C.I.A.L., and Class Perks before making a build.

• Creating a well-rounded character (with all 4-6's in SPECIAL) is one of the worst mistakes new players make. No matter what the character is for, specialized builds are important. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats offer many benefits as well as critical weaknesses. For instance, having a high luck stat will increase critical rating while lowering melee damage. When making a new build, it is a good idea to review Class Perks to make a plan before beginning.

• You can delay choosing a Level Perk, but you must choose it before you reach the next perk level. If you have an unspent perk and gain a new perk-giving level, your saved perk will be lost. Temporarily delaying your choice of a perk can be useful if you cannot afford its requirements with your current skills; you may be able to get it in the next couple of levels, before reaching the next perk. Your last perk needs to be chosen before level 30.

• You require at least 4 Intelligence to interact with some NPCs. However, for most merchants and quest givers, 2 Intelligence will be enough.

• Use of Drugs is an effective way of enhancing your build and is popular among most players. They lead to addictions in Chem Reliant characters.

• Communicate with other players. The best way to communicate with other players is on Fonline 3 Discord server or in-game chat using the "/g" function.

• You might be especially interested in Discord's Help_Channel where people share builds and other helpful guides. If you are not sure where to start, be sure to check Carnack's Beginners starter guide, as of patch 5.5.1, it is one of the best comprehensive starting tutorials available right now.

• Changelogs and fixes can be found in News on Discord.

Basics

• When you exit the game, your character remains in-game for 3 more minutes before it disappears. In that time, other people can see you, kill you, Steal from you, and shove you into an Exit Grid, so be careful where you log out. Most players choose to log out while on The World map.

• Once you're in the game, you may want to know some useful Hotkeys. Hotkeys can also be seen in the game by pressing F1.

• You can also turn Hotbar on using Shift+F4 shortcut.

• Rockside is a starting area everyone ends up in first. Don't leave it as soon as possible! It's a place where you can level up very easily since experience gained is significantly faster than in the wasteland, scaling with each major patch.

• While you are in Rockside you can Reroll for free allowing you to experiment and test multiple builds much easier than it is outside.

• It is also filled with opportunities for leveling. Players can kill creatures, complete quests, and obtain gear significantly easier than in the Wasteland.

• Some classes require level above 100 and you won't find an easier place than Rockside to get those level in the beginning. It is generally advised to level up to at least 300-500 lvl as it will make game outside of it significantly easier.

• Remember, once you leave Rockside, you wont be able to return.

• First Aid is a critical skill as it lowers the cooldown required to use it while also increasing the maximum amount of hitpoints recovered from use. Ideally, a player should aim to have at least 200 First Aid as soon as it is available.

• To keep your gear from breaking, get Engineering help with armor, and adequate combat skill help with Weapons. Armor deterioration is directly affected by engineering skill and luck, whereas weapon deterioration is directly affected by the associated weapon skill (e.g., Small Guns skill reduces small gun deterioration rate). At Luck 20, equipped armor no longer takes damage.

• Outdoorsman is a valuable skill for newer players. Having a score of 100 will provide you significantly more encounter prompts while traveling on the world map, and will allow you to obtain the Ranger Support Perk which discovers all world map and all public locations. Outdoorsman skill also slightly increases movement speed on the world map.

• If you're choosing a ranged weapon skill (Small Guns, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, or Throwing), be sure to invest in that skill to at least 180 and incorporate the perk Bonus Rate of Fire. It reduces the AP cost of your attacks by 1, enabling you to squeeze out more shots from your AP pool.

• Beware when you're in towns without guards (most Northern towns!). Players and gangs there will kill you without hesitation. You should try to do some quests to gain your first levels.

• Guards punish assault with deadly force but will ignore theft unless the thief fails in their attempt, in which case they will be attacked. Keep your most valuable items in your hands where they cannot be stolen. (Note that open carrying of weapons can trigger some NPCs to become hostile, so keep your weapon in your second hand slot or inside your inventory.)

• Pay attention to your reputation. Attacking or stealing in a guarded town may make town NPCs hate you. Killing slavers will get you hated in Den, killing NCR police patrol will make you hated in NCR, and so on. Of course, animals are usually reputation-free, so you can kill them guilt-free with no change to your reputation. Killing friendly NPCs inside towns increases your raider reputation. With a large raider reputation, bonuses will be applied to your character, but your encounters become marked. This will make hiding from PVP difficult, so be careful.

Survive

• In the beginning, trust nobody. Newbie-abuse is very popular.

• If a player puts a bomb on you in a guarded town, do not try to drop it from your inventory, as guards will attack you for having it. Your best bet is to quickly leave and drop it on the world map.

• Even in guarded towns, do not idle in public or let anybody stand or walk next to you. Keep moving and stay on guard.

• If you do idle in a public area, do not bring anything you don't wish to lose.

• Random encounters are deadly at the start of the game. Even rats can kill you if you don't run fast enough, and guns will often explode in your face with gun skills under 100.

• Once you have obtained your first weapon and gun skill of 200 or more, look for creature encounters. Human NPCs are tough for a new player to kill since they're armed, and don't provide as much XP as monsters. Spore Plants, Rats, little geckos, Radscorpions, Brahmin, Molerats, Pigrats are good targets.

• In the wasteland, you may find Resources in random encounters and some public locations. These raw resources can be crafted into usable items and equipment.

• Craft your own gear. You start the game with limited gear, but you can collect resources and craft your own. Everyone can craft basic weapons and Ammo.

Grow Stronger

• Obtaining a Folded Tent, by whatever means, should be your first priority. The wasteland is harsh, but having Tents makes it more survivable. Each character can have 10 tents. The first tent is a reward from the Quest. The location will show up after the player leaves Rockside.

• Once you hit level 24, you can craft your own Folded Tents. The raw materials you'll need are 5 Brahmin Hides and 1 rope, and you'll need 50% in crafting. You may find some of these resources sold by some traders, but the best way to obtain them is by harvesting them yourself in the wild.

• Once you have a tent, you can begin gathering resources for crafting and hunting for equipment. Look for NPC encounters commonly known as "versus encounters", where two factions fight and the victorious one is often the non-aggressive one, for example Vault City Patrol versus Raiders around Vault City. The town patrols almost always win, and once they're done looting corpses, you can loot the rest and get whatever is left over.

• The easiest way to level at the beginning is looting the Trash Cans in The Den, find a Melee Weapon, and go to the Strange Farm to kill rats. Get a Companion with 150 PP to help you as a meat shield. But remember, Companion kills don't give you XP. For a good hit rate, you need a minimum of 200% in a weapon skill. Better is 300%, or it gets broken very fast. To loot locked chests, you need 200% in Robbery. On Sundays, you get multiple XP bonuses, helping you level very fast. And as soon as you have a nice level to pick a Class Perks, your big adventure starts.

• Accumulate Currency. After your tent is built, begin saving up your currencies. There are many currencies among many factions in the wastelands, whichever faction controls a city, will enforce its Currency in it so it's a great idea to collect all types of them.

• Remember, not all currency is created equal. Economy is dynamic and value of each currency will change as events occur in the game.

• Do not spend currency at merchants. If you want an item from a trader, find out what that trader will buy and barter those items. Your funds are best saved for buying Vehicles, Bases, Harvesters, Junk Machine, Mining Machine, trading with players, and other things.

• A note on the economy. Most of the currencies in circulation are already in the hands of other players. To get around this, check back at the shops every hour because the storekeepers' supply of cash is periodically refreshed. If you get lucky, you can find individual traders who haven't been relieved of their wealth yet, and some of them carry upwards of 10,000 currency or more if wealthy players have made huge purchases there!

• When looking for rare items such as Implants, Bases, or rare crafting materials, be sure to check out the player shops located in NCR.

Loot for the Win

• Level up a few levels and put all your points into Robbery. Since Random Encounters in city ruins have a fairly high chance of spawning Footlockers, you can unlock them and find valuable loot. Be wary of traps around the footlockers. You can find good armor and weapons, plus many other items including Drugs and Ammo. You will also find Blueprints which you use for superior crafting, or sell to other players for a quick buck.

• A popular Footlocker hunting area is the small city ruins near Brotherhood of Steel-Base and Junktown. Most of the time, you only encounter neutral Junktown Scouts or BoS-Patrols, making this zone appealing to weaker characters. But beware: PKs hunt players here a lot too!

• Infinity mines can provide good exp, loot, parts, and even Implants at lower levels.

• Better loot can be found in Dungeons and other activities. Check Loot Drop it increases with every major patch (5.X.0). But mind this locations are open for other players.

• Patrol hunting is also profitable and popular activity that can bring you lots of equipment and many valuable items.

You Can't Skill Wrong, Reroll is the Answer

• Players can always Reroll to fix a build or try another one.

• Remember that you can drastically reduce reroll's cost by having at least 150 Barter down to 10k caps. If you cannot reach it, use Learning alongside Barter books.
  

• In Rockside reroll is free so you can experiment a lot there for free.