Fallout 2 Episode 3: Geckos are rad.

Hello everyone, here we go again into the radioactive world of Fallout!

Last time we killed some plants and talked to the local hippie of our village, this time we're entering the first town in the game and doing some sidequests!

Because sometimes I forget that there's an actual story in this game.

Somewhere...

Anyway, last time I finished the post with this picture here:

_{The black squares are places that have not been explored yet}

Which is the world map of the game, the little green arrow represents our position and traveling from one place to another takes several in-game hours or even days. Sometimes you find yourself in random encounters as you move through the map which can range from completely manageable to completely insane.

The rate at which you enter random encounters depends on certain things, like the processing speed of your computer (for some reason) so if your pc is somewhat decent expect to enter one of them every 2 seconds.

It's mostly random so sometimes you find none and sometimes you do nothing but find random encounters, I was extremely lucky this time and found no encounters at all while moving from Arroyo to Klamath.

Arriving in Klamath we see this guy here:

Let's try talking to him.

"Hello there, I haven't seen you in Klamath before. I'm Aldo, the town greeter. (hic) It's my job to greet anyone new in town and to answer any questions they might have about our bucolic little burg. Welcome to Klamath. (hic) Who might you be?"

->"Uhh, thanks for the greeting. I'm just a traveler."

"Well stranger, since you're (hic) new to these parts, you probably don't (urp) know that it's (hic) customary to tip the town greeter before asking any questions and such."

Since I'm supposed to be looking for this Vic guy, I'll give him some money and see if I can ask about him.

"Thanks for the money, friend. (urp) Consider yourself officially (hic) greeted to the town of Klamath. Do you have any questions about our fair (urp) metropolis?"

->"Aldo, I'm looking for a trader that sells beforetime things. You know, really old stuff."

"Old stuff, huh? (urp) Well the only (hic) trader I know who trades much old stuff is (hic) Vic."

I then ask him where exactly can I find Vic.

"Well now (hic), I haven't seen Vic for a while. I don't rightly (urp) know where he might have run off to. You might talk to (urp) Jenny over at the bath house. She and Vic were pretty (hic) thick. Heh, heh, heh. Get it? Oh my, I haven't lost my touch."

->"It's nice to know that no matter how low you sink, you can't lose something you never had. Goodbye Aldo."

After that little exchange I enter the first building I can find, I later learn that this place is called Buckner House.

"You see an older man with a scraggly beard and a big red nose."

This description makes me think this guy looks like Santa or something.

_{Stranger danger, Stranger danger!}

This guy's name is Whiskey Bob, and his sole purpose in this game is to give us money. After we finish a sidequest that is.

"Always nice to find another drinking buddy. Wanna buy me a drink? Talking always makes me thirsty."

->"With a nickname like yours, Whiskey Bob, maybe you should be providing the drinks."

"Fair enough. You're a sharp one, there's no denying it. Here's some booze. Now in return, you get to listen to my little problem."

Whiskey Bob explains that he has a moonshine still outside of Klamath that needs to be fueled, he says he could do it himself but that a Gecko bit his leg he can't get there before the fuel runs out or before the Gecko's get him. He asks us to refuel the still for him and that he'll give us 50$ for the job.

->"I'll do it, not that I have anything else to do right now" like saving her village or something

"You'll do it? Great. Remember, you gotta do it soon or my hootch will go bad. See you back here soon."

So we head out with the promise of money, into the Gecko infested lands. This time, they're hostile.

_{Going into the monster filled desert in the middle of the night...}

This is where we begin, right outside of the Gecko's turf.

_{What's the worst that could happen?}

And this is where Whiskey Bob's illegal alcohol operation is being done. Right in the middle of Geckoland.

There's several ways in which we could get to point A to point B, we could stealth around the Geckos for example, or we could try to fight them all to the death, but they fight back and they're actually more dangerous than a Giant Ant so we'll pass.

My favorite way of doing this is running straight into the Geckos and skillfully dodge them as I make my way to Bob's Moonshine place.

_{No it's not called running away, what are you talking about?}

Somewhere around this part I remember I can just use right-click to highlight my enemies so that I don't have to be telling you guys "they're in the trees" every 5 seconds.

I manage to get to Bob's shack not before upsetting 5 Geckos, if I remember correctly, and one of them is a Golden Gecko. No, it doesn't make them rare, it makes them more dangerous; At this point in the game you don't want to be bitten by them.

_{We're safe I think.}

After I enter the shack I remember Geckos lack the intelligence needed to open doors so I just simply close the door on their face and leave it unlocked, they can't really turn the handle or anything. This allows me to go around this little shack and pick up the items I need to refuel Bob's still.

_{Sometimes my ideas aren't that good.}

And then I realize that they're just waiting outside to bite me to death after I open the door. Goodie.

First things first, let's fix Bob's still.

_{I can hear them banging on the door}

There's some firewood inside I can pick up to refuel the still. This solves the first problem, the next one is figuring out how will Sara make it out alive from here.

I get another idea.

I Open the door and quickly run to the opposite wall, allowing the Geckos to overrun the place, in their rush to have dinner they leave me a path for me to run through so I take this advantage and proceed to perform a tactical retreat back to Klamath.

I'm able to return to Klamath in one piece with and without being bitten by the Golden Geckos. They're not much of an issue later on when your character has weapons and stuff but right now they're a threat because they can give Sara radiation.

_{Don't be fooled by the happy guy next to the radiation thing, it's a serious thing people.}

In most fallout games radiation is a different kind of damage the player character takes by exploring some irradiated areas or by fighting irradiated creatures, like the Golden Gekos in this case. In most recent games radiation just slows your character down and decreases some stats here and there (Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas) or decrease your maximum health (Fallout 4), while in the original games radiation still decreases your stats it can also kill you if any of your stats are decreased to zero.

Golden Geckos do radiation damage with every attack, if i remember correctly, and at this point in the game we don't have the means to heal radiation damage. We could go back to Hakunin in Arroyo but that leaves us open to random encounters so we'll just try to avoid them yellow lizards until we can kill them easily.

Anyway, after returning from Geckoland I find this guy here:

He looks like he needs help, so we'll help him. Because that means XP or money for us.

The first thing he says to us is just:

"Me Torr"

_{He's kinda weird.}

->"Uh... sure, Torr I can help you guard the brahmin."

"You hep Torr. Moo-moos field. (points east of here) dark yes? (smiles)"

->"I'll help you guard the Brahmin tonight, Torr."

This little exchange immediately teleports us to the moo-moos where we are instantly attacked by a giant scorpion.

We can easily get rid of the scorpion, and then I talk to Torr for more information on the Bugmen terrorizing his moo-moos.

I don't know why but I find Torr a loveable character for some reason.

Moving the camera a little I find these guys in the shadows being suspicious.

_{Standing in the shadows doing nothing but staring at two people fighting scorpions, nothing weird with that. Right?}

But they're not bugmen so therefore, not important. Let's see how many scorpions are there right now...

_{I don't think I have enough antidote for this...}

There's a lot of them but we can take them easily by just luring them out one by one since giant scorpions don't do teamwork, apparently.

I'm still hit a lot of times and poisoned by 5 different scorpions at the end but we succeed in protecting the moo-moos.

Finally, Torr congratulates us on our victory and we're awarded some experience for our troubles.

_{He's just so lovable for some reason.}

With my mission done I return to Klamath and ask Bob for the 50 bucks he owes me.

---

I'll stop here today, putting everything I did on Klamath is going to take two more posts since it's a lot of text and pictures.

As always, thanks for reading, any criticism is appreciated and I hope you guys have a wonderful day. See you later!