Every game has unexpected glitches and exploits that can give certain benefits to players. Some secrets are designed by developers but more often they appear as a result of bugs. Here we will describe only the most useful secrets confirmed by players for PC. Also, we didn’t include exploits from versions older than 1.1 or from add-ons.
General
This section features main secrets related to general mechanics or encounters.
- Moira’s shop at night.
You can get access to Moira’s store in Megaton at any time. For this, firstly acquire your own apartments in this city and try to buy any improvements. It’s obvious that Moira sells these themes. Open the conversation window, claim that you want to buy items for your apartments and proceed to the inventory of Moira. From this moment, you can ignore themes and explore the entire inventory including all items. This feature can be exploited even at night.
- Moving heavy objects.
Smaller items are cool if you need to move larger ones. Grab any item with Z button and place it vertically. Move your small object into a bigger one to turn in horizontally. Then push a smaller thing with a well aim to move a larger item without problems. This action is pretty easy to perform but you surely need a lot of practice.
- Killing NPCs for free.
There are a few ways to kill neutral characters without penalties. For example, you can grab any object and walk into your target with it. In-game physics causes items to accelerate and damage targets seriously. Also, you can simply throw objects at NPCs but this action isn’t too effective. It’s possible to push off target characters, so they will die after falling. And, yes, you can exploit companions. Simply hit any NPC once and let companions to finish the job. All these options don’t affect your karma or relations but you can loot bodies for cool items.
- Freeze time.
Open your Pip-Boy and switch to any map, then close the device and start hitting specific buttons quickly. You are interested in buttons related to the Pip-Boy itself and to markers. This requires several repeats but then you will see the pop-up about map markers while you are out of the Pip-Boy. So, time freezes because the game thinks you are ion the menu. You can move but cannot attack anybody which is useful for escaping, exploring or sneaking. Simply click the message when you are done to reload time.
Companions
This section features all exploits that affect your followers. Note that the more mates you have the slower the game will be.
- Charon as the second non-Dogmeat companion.
Starting conditions for this exploit are following: have any non-Dogmeat follower with you except Charon. Go to Underworld and find Ahzrukhal there. Talk with this ghoul and buy the contract of Charon so he will be able to join your team. That’s all. Charon will remain your additional companion until you fire or remove him. Note that the feature doesn’t work after first firing of Charon, so, be careful.
- All companions together.
Here we will cover the only glitch related to Sergeant RL-3 without options from Broken Steel DLC. So, at first, you should accept the robot as your teammate. Then tell RL-3 to wait, start the conversation and fire him finally. Proceed to the mate you want to hire and do it. Enter any building, wait for a week until you receive a message about RL-3’s travel. Then re-hire the robot, so you will have two different non-Dogmeat companions. Repeat these actions for each new follower. Note that this works only with the robot firing!
Experience
This paragraph features only one exploit that allows you to pass levels. You will not level-up but the number of HP will be increased for each skipped level. Achievements also will appear. So, when you are ready to level-up, open any door to enter a new location, then activate the screen with perks and enjoy! To skip several levels simply load an automatic save file created before you entered a new location. Do it again and see the screen with perks. Now you will skip two levels instead of only one. Reload again to skip three levels and so on. It’s possible to skip more than 30 levels and have even more HP.
Items
This section features a lot of exploits related to different items.
- Unlimited explosives.
The game allows you to use an unlimited amount of explosive weapons. To do this, break any weapon that reloads after a single shot. Switch to grenades or mines directly after this action. That’s done! The effect will last until next weapon change. So far as grenades are pretty situational items, you don’t want to use them forever. So keep a gun that you can break via the inventory to activate this glitch at any time.
- Increased ammunition.
The thing is that you should perform a reverse-pickpocketing. Find any hostile NPC, use the Mesmetron and give a random weapon with a single piece of ammo to your enemy. Then slay this NPC and loot the body. You will find your gun with a lot of ammo for it. Note that you should break all other weapons to be sure that NPC will use your gun. Also, it’s possible to activate this glitch on any corpse. Do the same actions: break all its weapons, put your gun with one piece of ammunition and loot the body again.
- Free repairs from Casdin.
Locate Protector Casdin in Fort Independence. He will give you a task to collect specific items. Give Casdin any item he wants and then kill or pickpocket him. You will be surprised that this item is fully repaired! However, it can be difficult to pickpocket Casdin, so you want to knock him down. Hide somewhere, activate V.A.T.S. and shot Protector’s gun. Then loot his body to return your repaired item. Leave the location and return – Casdin will be there. Don’t forget to replace broken NPC’s gun with the same one to use the feature again.
- Free repairs + bonus caps.
You can repair guns and armor for free not only with Casdin’s help. Find any merchant and be sure that there are two or more different samples of the same thing with a different condition. Buy the worse item and sell it back again. Do it until its condition is at 100%. Sell the object the last time to see it returned to its original value. So, look. Now you have the 100% item for the price of the damaged item! This feature can be exploited several times to repair guns, armor or simply earn caps from any merchant.
- Free items for the house in Megaton.
There is the hidden chest in Craterside Supply. Go to the room where a staircase is located. Find a pipe there and move to stairs. The desired locker can be spotted through holes in the nearest wall. Enable the 3rd person view and rotate the camera to see the option of activating the chest. Then simply steal any items you need for your apartments. It will be considered as stealing, although.
Skills
Here we provide only two small options that can help you to increase skills easily.
- Permanent bonus to Big Guns.
Find the Bethesda Ruins northwest of D.C. area. There are a lot of raiders but you need the exact one. He has a book increasing Big Guns skill. Search his body, leave the location and wait for 72 hours. The raider will be there again and he will respawn every 72 hours. The feature can be activated infinitely until you have the maximal level of the skill.
- Permanent bonus to Science.
This glitch works similar to the previous feature. Go to the Shalebridge tunnels full of ants. You can find this location north of Vault 87 and southwest of Abandoned Car Fort. You will find the hostile researcher in the tunnels. He holds a book increasing Science skill and can be looted as any NPC. This character respawns every 72 hours, as well.
Traveling
This section is for any features related to your movement and actions.
- Body containers.
Yes, you can use corpses as pretty useful chests! Radroaches are the best variant for this glitch as they have extremely little weight, so they can be moved easily. Kill a radroach or raider or any other enemy, loot its body and place there any items you want. Then pick up the body with Z button and transfer where you want. You should know that massive events with a lot of enemies and NPCs cause the game to clear some data, so your corpses can disappear suddenly. We mean this glitch is good for creating only temporary storages.
- Action points reload.
There’s an option of manual simulation of Grim Reaper’s Sprint perk. At first, enable an auto-saving option that will trigger when you enter any new area. Enter the room with enemies, open V.A.T.S., attack any foe and quickly come back to the previous location. Enemies will chase you but now you can load the latter auto-save to reload your action points! So, you can easily save and load several times to attack enemies through V.A.T.S. infinitely.
- Safe falling.
Probably, that’s the most common exploit. Save and load action is your friend again. So, you have to save the game near the ground at the moment of falling. Then load this file to receive a little damage. The game refreshes its memory after loading, so it will think that you are falling from a very low height. Otherwise, you can enable V.A.T.S. directly before approaching the ground to avoid serious damage. But this requires an enemy target near you.
Other minor secrets
In conclusion, here are some light hints and exploits that can be helpful:
- There are aliens, yeah! You can find the crashed alien ship southwest of Vault 92, slightly northwest of Greener Pastures Disposal Site. Try to catch a distress signal to locate this place with a powerful gun called the alien blaster.
- Stealing is bad but you can do it almost without penalties. Just hold down Z button and drag the item to any place without spectators. There you can pick up this item without making its owner hostile. However, your karma will lower anyway.
- Hit weak spots of your enemies. Humans and super mutants have vulnerable heads, ants have unprotected antennas, centaurs hang upon legs, radscorpions have weak stingers, and mirelurks – faces. You should also use pulse weapons against robots.
- Be sure to check our articles to find useful secrets and hints. We have guides to quests, weapons, bobbleheads’ locations, companions, perks, builds, and cheats. And don’t forget about funny Easter eggs described in the self-titled article.
Have a good time exploiting these secrets of Fallout 3!
