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Fallout 3: Broken Steel Walkthrough and Achievement Guide
GameShark.com takes you back to the Capital Wastes to break some steel.
Date: Friday, May 15, 2009
Author: Brandon "Devil" Cackowski-Schnell

If you want to obtain your Karma changes through deeds, rather than perks, the same actions for raising and lowering Karma still apply. Killing innocent civilians (basically anyone not already marked as hostile towards you) will lower your Karma, as will stealing, pick pocketing and accessing the terminals of others. To raise your Karma, either donate caps to the Atom Bomb cult people in Megaton, or give purified water to the beggars hanging around outside of Rivet City and Megaton.

Honestly, the Karma aspect of these achievements will be the least of your problems as getting from level 20 - 30 requires more experience than getting from level 1 - 20. You won't get to level 30 on the Broken Steel main quests alone, even on Very Hard, so here are some tips for getting as much experience as possible, and nabbing these final Karma achievements:

1. Up your difficulty - you'll get the most experience from everything if you play on Very Hard. Upping your difficulty makes the game harder, but for a level 20 character, it's totally doable. If you absolutely can't hack it, take advantage of the fact that all of the DLC quests end with speaking to someone, with the exception of blowing up the Citadel at the end of "Who Dares Wins". With this in mind, you can do all of your killing on a difficulty level that's more manageable for you, then switch to Very Hard for when you have the conversation that ends the quest. You won't get a lot more experience, but you will get some.

2. Use perks wisely - the new perks in the DLC are, by and large, useless, so instead, take all three ranks of Swift Learner if you haven't already. This gives you an extra 30% experience from everything that gives experience. That means hacking, lockpicking, speech challenges, everything. Also, if you haven't used "Here and Now" yet, you don't need to get to level 30. Instead, get to level 29, pop "Here and Now" and instantly jump to level 30. That's a savings of 4400 experience points.

3. Get your rest - sleep in a rented bed, or in your bed whenever possible to get the "Well Rested" status and an extra 10% on experience. You can also take the "Deep Sleep" perk at level 22 to get the "Well Rested" status whenever you sleep in any bed.

4. Do everything - If your science skill is high enough to hack a terminal, hack it, even if you've already taken out the turret it controls. If you don't need to open the locked door because everyone is already dead, open it any way. If you've already disabled the robots either from sneaking up on them and disabling them, or through the terminals, blow them up anyway, ditto for turrets. You get experience for destroying disabled robots and all it takes up is time and ammo.

5. Go solo - leave the followers behind as they will poach kills and take experience from you. Dogmeat usually doesn't do enough damage to outright kill enemies, so he's a safe companion, however on the higher difficulty levels he dies a lot, so having him around may not be worth the hassle.

6. Farm it out - Once Broken Steel is over you'll have the option of doing two repeatable quests, one to get Super Mutant blood and one to get parts for repairing Liberty Prime. Both will give you a small amount of experience for bringing the objects back. The Super Mutant farming has the added bonus of getting experience for killing Super Mutants, as it's not like they're going to let you set up a Super Mutant blood drive. There are plenty of places on the Mall that are crawling with Super Mutants and your new Tesla Cannon will make short work of them. The Outcast Outpost from Operation Anchorage usually has a dozen Super Mutants hanging around. If you haven't done so already, and if Megaton is still around, you can speak to Walter in the Water Processing Plant and receive a quest to repair three leaks around Megaton. Once you do this, you can give scrap metal to Walter for money and experience. Seeing how you come across a good number of robots in your Broken Steel travels, you can get a boatload of scrap metal which translates into a decent experience bump.

Now that you know how to wring the most experience out of the new quests, lets get to them.

Death from Above - 30 pts: Completed "Death from Above"

However you choose to end "Take it Back" after the ending cut scene, you'll awaken two weeks later in the Citadel where Elder Lyons will tell you that the Enclave is on the run and he needs your help to wipe out those eugenic bastards once and for all. He'll tell you that you have to talk to Scribe Rothchild about operations against the Enclave. Talking to Elder Lyons some more will give you an update as to what's been going on with the Purifier, as well as the Enclave since you've been asleep. Lyons will also tell you that you can speak to Scribe Bigsley at the Purifier if you want more information on operations there. If you had any followers with you at the end of "Take it Back", they'll be with you, however you'll have to speak to them to get them to come with. Once you have everyone, use your compass to make your way to Scribe Rothchild.

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