Fallout 3 EP6: It’s My Way, or the Subway

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 21, 2013

Filed under: Spoiler Warning 145 comments


Link (YouTube)

I am amused by the whole “item collection” idea, particularly the ones that aren’t in any way encouraged by the gameplay or story. A lot of people seem to do this, and everyone picks different stuff. In Morrowind, I collected the paper lanterns. I also collected money, because the game would let you drop piles of coins and I liked to decorate with these treasure heaps. In Oblivion, I collected odd clothing. In Fallout 3 I collected Sugar Bombs. In Skyrim… I don’t remember collecting anything. Hm. Interesting.

So what useless items did you hoard?

 


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145 thoughts on “Fallout 3 EP6: It’s My Way, or the Subway

  1. NonEuclideanCat says:

    I think at one point I collected every single Teddy Bear into a single room in the Megaton house. Damn near crashed my xbox every time I opened the door to it.

    1. Naota says:

      Skulls. Human skulls. My abode in Skyrim is packed (almost literally) to the roof with skulls. Sure the lag is incalculable at times, but seeing Lydia wade through a waist-high sea of skulls to sit down on a chair heaped with bared craniums and dig into a hearty bowl of skull-and-something soup when it occasionally surfaces from beneath the bonemass just has a certain charm to it.

      Seriously, I’ve got enough of the things to start my own Bonehoard. Now to find some Burricks.

      1. sab says:

        I could really do with a screenshot of this.

  2. silver Harloe says:

    Useless item hording.
    Well, in Morrowind, I “acquired” a house (I had a mission to kill the inhabitant, then just started living there), and the floors on all three levels were covered with carefully arranged sets of armor: chest piece in the middle, pauldrons to the sides, legs and boots just below, and helmet just above. I really wanted mannequins, I guess :)
    Of course, one might argue that armor isn’t useless… except it really was. I never actually used the piles to switch what I was wearing. It was more like a fashion show than a collection of useful things.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      It’s been years since I played that thing without something like a hundred mods (and probably a year or two since I played it at all, though I’ve been thinking of having another go at it), to the point I probably don’t even remember some locations or NPCs aren’t in the vanilla game. Anyway, I usually live in one of the big modded houses that offer an armoury/gallery/collection room with mannequins and shelves where I arrange all sorts of arms and armour on display.

      However there was one useless item I was hoarding in that game: Dwemer coins (unless there is some “dwemer vending machine” mod that I’m unaware of), then I put them all in that big treasure chest in my bedroom. I remember also starting an armour collection in a modded house in Oblivion but I didn’t play that game quite as much as I did Morrowind. Don’t think any other games triggered that particular behaviour.

    2. Veylon says:

      Ah, you had the same idea as me. I, too, moved into the abandoned house and started storing things (pretty much everything) in various barrels so that I could sell it later when the merchants had some gold.

      I took me quite a while to realize that A) I was stockpiling far faster than the merchants reloaded, B) I didn’t need the money for anything, C) I was burning twenty minutes at a time teleporting back and forth from the latest massacre and sorting everything out, so really D) I was just hoarding.

      It’s really hard to break that RPG tendency to take everything sometimes.

  3. Mailbox says:

    I remember this conversation. It’s so true that people start obsessively collecting a particular item just for the fun of it.

    Fallout 3 – Nuka-cola + Quantum (I never drank any.) Pre-War Money
    Skryim – Gold Bars, Silver Bars, all the various gems, arrows

  4. Forumrabbit says:

    I never collected anything that didn’t have any monetary value.

    I did hoard weapons like everyone else though; never knew when I might need a 2 handed hammer/short sword/silver weapon/daedric/minigun/flamethrower/baseball bat etc even if I wasn’t skilled for these weapons, and I always like to have a range of weapons handy in any bethesda game I play.

    Well… now that I think about it I inadvertantly collected torches, only because I never knew when I might need 20 torches on hand and it’s not like they took up carry space anyway.

  5. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

    I collect trophies.

    I’m playing New Vegas right now, and Vulpes Inculta’s armor and helmet are hanging proudly on my wall, right next to Aurelius of Phoenix’s armor, next to the armor of the Vexiliares who was part of the first assassination squad sent after me.

    I’ve got Benny’s suit in the closet with his gun, I’ve got a Bright Brotherhood robe in another room.

    Basically, every quest I spend some time thinking “what piece of vender trash will best memorialize this encounter?”

    And it is for this reason that I am greatly annoyed I can’t get the armor to be set up like a manequin or something (for this, I do in deed like Assassin’s Creed II and all its subparts).

    1. StashAugustine says:

      I did the same thing with the trophies. One of my closets in the Lucky 38 was full with Caesar’s armor, Benny’s suit, Salt-Upon-Wounds’ clothing, etc. I’d also collect weapons from the DLC’s- lugging that Automatic Rifle through Dead Money was a pain.

    2. KremlinLaptop says:

      Mods, my dear man, mods! I have a very cool underground hideout (Actually two of them now) in New Vegas with mannequins and a friggin’ TROPHY room. A room just for trophies! Benny’s suit and pistol are on a mannequin there.

      Mods in question:
      http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/48574 Adds an underground hideout and a questline to get some very cool guns.
      http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/37884 The underground hide-out with said trophy room.

      1. KremlinLaptop says:

        This is going to get really awkward when he says he’s playing on the console.

        My talk of amazing mods for Skyrim annoyed one friend so much it was the prime motivation in getting him to buy a gaming PC. He’s logged a ridiculous amount of hours just playing Skyrim now.

        1. anaphysik says:

          As someone who plays all of his games on a graphics-card-less laptop, I find the term “gaming PC” a little demeaning <_<

          That snark aside, an underground hideout /does/ sound like a cool end-game house to have (especially since my character (Irrfarnando the Third!) just went full-on super-scientist by arming Archimedes-II :D ). Right now I'm using http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/34748 as my house, which is nice but also appropriately 'rustic' for the early-game.

    3. newdarkcloud says:

      I did something very similar in Fallout 3. I always collect unique items and variants of standard weaponry.

      It’s resulted in several instances where I will literally kill someone just to get their weapon or armor.
      The asshole from the Nuka-Cola Challenge? I’d normally ignore him, but he has a unique Sawed-Off Shotgun called “The Kneecapper.”

      It’s the best thing to collect because you’ll never finish the collection.

      1. Keeshhound says:

        Or just finish the challenge, then off him.

        Or you can Black Widow him into going off and getting killed, whereupon he will have both the Kneecapper and several Quantums on his corpse.

  6. Mintskittle says:

    Ah, the hoarders game. Good times.

    Fallout 3 – one each of every non-melee weapon and armor set, arranged in the Megaton home. Pistols on the desk in the bedroom, rifles and shotguns leaning against the second floor railing, heavies scattered around the first floor. Armor sets placed at all the chairs, suits tucked under the seat, helmets on the seat. The shelf by the stairs was cleared and held every mini-nuke I could find. It holds 30 if I remember correctly.

    Morrowind and Skyrim – Everything Dwemer. Also, Potion ingredients. In Morrowind, you could get paper, and I liked to set up an alchemy room, where every table was covered in paper, arranged into neat rows and columns, each with one piece of potion ingredient on top, all alphabetized. Haven’t done that for Skyrim.

    I honestly don’t remember if I did anything for Oblivion.

    Didn’t play New Vegas long enough to get a house, so pass on that one.

    1. gyfrmabrd says:

      I went for one of every named/unique melee and ranged weapon, and a set of most armors. Oh, and a pair of each vault suit, because. And, of course, hats. All the hats. Arranged neatly on the shelves.
      And a couple of knick-knacks, like the “Honest Abe” Action Figure, which was a great addition to my bedroom desk. (Even though I eventually had to put it upside down, because eff you, video game physics.)

    2. Fawstoar says:

      Man, you actually collected interesting things. All I had were literally hundreds of scrap metal.

  7. Daemian Lucifer says:

    Sod off shotgun,the best name for a weapon.Ever.

    Yes,I know its sawed,but I always prefer to pronounce it like its sod.

    1. Nidokoenig says:

      Considering how most shotguns in games are just obnoxiously loud ways to punch people, it seems fairly apt.

      1. Klay F. says:

        And this is why the ballistic fist is scientifically the best weapon ever! :P

        1. newdarkcloud says:

          Everyone loves the Ballistic Fist.

          1. Fawstoar says:

            Displacer fist? Anyone? Anyone… at all?

            1. Bryan says:

              Displacer … Moose?

              1. Daemian Lucifer says:

                Shamoose.

    2. Hitchmeister says:

      Speaking of sawed-off shotguns, Rutskarn was either unaware of, or forgot about, at the time this was recorded, but there’s the Kneecapper(http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/The_Kneecapper) which is the one significantly better sawed-off shotgun in the game. It’s still not as good as the combat shotgun, but it’s a nice trophy.

      1. Keeshhound says:

        And both are shamed by Point Lookout’s Double-barrel Shotgun. Especially when used against the player.

  8. McNutcase says:

    Teddy bears. All piled up on the bed, to make it less horrible to sleep on.

    And pre-war clothing, particularly nightwear and hats of every type.

    Oooh, and I’d forgotten this was the “how hard is it to break a sledgehammer?” episode! To paraphrase my response from two years ago, it’s actually really easy, especially if it’s old and you’re abusing it. And whacking people-shaped entities is definitely abuse.

    1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

      As has been pointed out to me several times -despite people’s usual intuition, the anvil usually outlasts the hammer. So breaking the hammer seems entirely plausible to me.

      1. СТАЛКЕР of ЗОНА says:

        The thing with hammers, axes, shovels, etc. of ye olde times variety is that the wooden handle is easy to replace.

        And if you actually break anything aside from the wooden handle, you most likely have way bigger problems than replacing a tool.

      2. Ringwraith says:

        Well, an anvil is just a solid lump of metal after all. Not a lot to break when it’s just one solid piece. Whereas a hammer is at least two pieces, meaning the join is the weak link.

  9. Nicksaurus says:

    I collected all the paintbrushes in oblivion because they weren’t affected by gravity so you could build sculptures out of them.

    1. Soylent Dave says:

      Oh good, I’m glad it’s not just me.

    2. Viktor says:

      Depends on the playthrough, but I did that once in Oblivion. I had a massive pile of them behind a counter. Because I like to make Havok cry.

  10. Soylent Dave says:

    “hoard” is the homonym you’re going for there, I think (unless you’re collecting armies, I suppose..!)

    I always end up collecting weapons and armour. Obviously a few of each is sensible, collecting one of each (especially the cosmetic variations of armour with the same name that crop up here and there) is hideously time consuming.

    Mostly because the armour is so heavy. I never do anything with it, either. I just collect it, like some sort of dungeoneering hobo.

    In Skyrim I added skulls to decorate my houses, and matching weapons with enchantments of different colours, so they looked pretty on my weapon racks.

    Occasionally I kill stuff and complete quests in these games, usually I’m too busy collecting things and muttering to myself about encumbrance.

    1. Shamus says:

      Always, always get hoard / horde wrong. I look it up, I memorize the right way around, and then the next time I have to type it I second-guess myself and do it wrong again.

      Terrible.

      1. Kiiratam says:

        Dragon hoard = good.
        Dragon horde = bad.

        Alternately: You hoard oars.
        ‘Horde’ contains ‘orde’ as in ‘order’, or an organization.

        For myself, I always used to collect dead cats in Icewind Dale 2. Now, it does unlock an easter egg in the final dungeon, but you only need one dead cat (or person) in your inventory for that. I’d carry around every one I found (five or six, as I recall).

        In most RPGs, I have a tendency to stockpile some gems for emergency funds (even though I’ve never had it come up). I also keep any pelts described as being especially luxuriant. I mean, who doesn’t love to roll around in a pile of furs? (Besides PETA, and people who are against fur, irrespective of the fact that all these winter wolves tried to kill me first).

        1. Grudgeal says:

          Me too. I have no idea why, but after that first one (and someone pointing it out) I started obsessively hoarding dead cats. I think I had five or six by the end-game.

          And if you really want to get that easter egg rolling, pick up a dead man and a woman on a character with high Intimidate when you go to the easter egg location.

        2. Asimech says:

          So… (you might not want to read this if you have trouble remembering ‘hoard’ and ‘horde’ correctly)

          The Horde Order hoards oars?

        3. Paul Spooner says:

          You know, that’s a really interesting point. Most RPGs don’t have the notion of calamities that befall the player. In the real world, stocking up a small chest full of gems against your cottage burning down or having to pay off some mooks is just good sense. In an RPG you almost never need to do this though.

          I have had a few times where I was saving up money, just in case, and then was able to purchase a useful high level item with it. But it’s not like saving “emergency funds” is a commonly rewarded activity, even though it probably should be.

        4. I hoard out my companions = negative karma.

  11. Spammy says:

    It’s not quite a collection habit, but in New Vegas I always had to have a teddy bear and an 8-ball in my inventory. One for sentimentality and one for luck. I hoard guns (I had basically every weapon in Human Revolution in my inventory by the endgame, I was just missing the laser guns), so in NV I was always battling the weight limit. I always tried to take 8-balls though so that no one in the wasteland could ever play a complete game of pool.

    Oh, and I also made Cass carry a teddy bear too.

    1. bit says:

      I was racking my brain about this, but oh yeah- I collected every single pool ball in the game in New Vegas. I put them all in a big pile on the pool table in the penthouse. I also liked to have one of literally everything hanging around, which is what I do in most games.

  12. drkeiscool says:

    Hey Shamus, is there some way you could link to the old Spoiler Warning pages too? I didn’t watch them when they first came out, and it’s interesting to compare your written commentary from now and then.

    1. Deadfast says:

      I’ve added links to the original posts to the drink chart.

  13. Dues says:

    I collected plungers so that I could fire them out of my trash cannon later.

    At one point I came across a janitor’s closet filled with plungers and I imagined I heard a chorus of angels descend. They were playing the music from Rayman Raving Rabbits.

  14. Supahewok says:

    I suppose I’m in the minority here, in that I never collected anything based on whimsy. If it didn’t have a monetary value while having weight, it didn’t get an inventory spot. Anything that I didn’t need that had a monetary value, got sold. This goes for every Bethesda game/New Vegas/Human Revolution/every D&D videogame I have played, ever.

    Guess that makes me boring. But I honestly just can’t comprehend picking up something of no value while there was stuff that was valuable lying around. It just… doesn’t work for me.

    1. Daemian Lucifer says:

      Ill join you in the camp boring then.

      I even had a self imposed rule in new vegas and skyrim never to pick up anything that isnt worth at least 10 moneys per unit of weight.Of course,when I accumulated plethora of moneys,I stopped collecting even those things.

      The only worthless(sort of)stuff that I picked up was books in old world blues.But thats only because you could turn books into skill books.

      Though if any game lets you hoard sheep,plush or real ones,I admit Ill do that.South park told me to.

      1. Lame Duck says:

        While I did collect some valueless things in New Vegas, I also had the 10 caps per pound guideline for things I intended to sell. However, I continued to collect stuff even after I had hundreds of thousands of caps because it would completely gut the experience of playing the game for me otherwise. I don’t know how to play New Vegas without looting being a big part of it.

      2. Deadfast says:

        I admire your restraint. I think I have something I can only describe as obsessive looting disorder. I think the most ridiculous extent I ever went to was loading a dead body with about 200 kilos of weapons in STALKER and then slowly dragging it across an entire level for about 10 minutes just so I could sell them all.

    2. Syal says:

      Same here.

      But I did spend three in-game months in Morrowind standing in front of the Creeper trade-selling items so I would get everything my 100,000g item was worth.

  15. Mogatrat says:

    Didn’t collect anything in Fallout 3, but I ended up collecting harmonicas in New Vegas. It seemed natural and a good fit for my cowboy-like Courier. I didn’t have many by the game’s end, though, they’re a relatively rare item – maybe 15 or 20.

  16. BeardedDork says:

    In Skyrim, I spent hours organizing books alphabetically and across houses on my book shelves and weapon trophies in all the weapon racks. In Morrowind I placed every single light source I came across in the game around the light at the Seyda Neen lighthouse.

  17. Cannibalguppy says:

    Human bodyparts. I loved collecting them from the flesh-heaps :D

  18. Mr. Son says:

    In Morrowind I liked to collect pillows and skulls. …And books, and brooms, and-… Well, let’s just say I’m a horder and loved that perma-corpse in Balmora perhaps a little unwholesomely.

    In Oblivion… I dunno. I’d need to fire up my save and go look at my storage house. And can I say? LOVE being able to buy a house. Especially the one with the huge basement full of boxes. …Just need to scatter a few perma-corpses around and it would be perfect.

  19. anaphysik says:

    In New Vegas right now, I’m hoarding teddy bears & harmonicas.

    1. Sabrdance (MatthewH) says:

      I don’t hoard harmonicas, but I always try to carry one (preferably taken off a dead man or collected in the wastes -not bought). Current playthrough I haven’t found a good one.

      But of course, that’s becase it’s New Vegas, and Harmonica seems like a good archetype.

      1. anaphysik says:

        I also always keep a harp on me.

    2. StashAugustine says:

      I just kept a teddy bear on all of my beds.

  20. Yanni says:

    Ordinator Helmets and Vampire Dust in Morrowind

    Daedra Hearts and Vampire Dust in Oblivion

    Power Armour Helmets in Fallout 3

    Daedra Hearts and Vampire Dust in Skyrim

  21. Some_Jackass says:

    Fallout 3: Anything baseball related (baseballs, gloves, etc) and my megaton house became the new baseball hall of fame. Even went as far as to take random clothing and hats and display them as if they were 2077 uniforms.

    New Vegas: Pre-war money. I put them one at a time into my bathtubs and let it overflow just so I felt rich every time I walked into the room.

    Oblivion: 2 things:
    1-Books. Then I painstakingly fought the physics engine and arranged them onto a bookshelf (and beyond) the right way (It got annoying to the point where I threw a couple into my fireplace out of frustration). Even kept them organized.
    2-Every Sigil Stone I collected was thrown into a closet. I don’t know why.

  22. Tomulus says:

    System Shock 2: pot plants
    Morrowind: Ash statues
    Oblivion: Welkynd stones
    Fallout 3: garden gnomes
    Fallout new vegas: garden gnomes!
    Skyrim: probably gems?

    Also, one each of every armour, weapon and anything shiny… I need help.

    1. Trithne says:

      Play System Shock 2 multiplayer – You can throw items into other players’ inventories and they only get a tiny text notification at the top of the screen for a second. I lost count of the amount of times I’d go to pick something up in a multiplayer playthrough only to drop it and discover my inventory completely full of potted plants.

  23. Geromy says:

    My suite in New Vegas is full of gnomes and t-rexes, standing on various furniture. Fifteen minutes well-spent, I think.

  24. Nidokoenig says:

    In Fallout 3, I collected Deathclaw hands. I mentioned back during the original run that I started off making a gauntlet out of each one from when I killed my first one at around level 5 with a pair of spiked knuckles and lots of drugs. Later on Deathclaws became so common it felt like a waste of time and I just collected the hands. Ended up with dozens and dozens of them. Fun fact: the raw hand that drops from the Deathclaw is a left hand, and about three times the size of the right-handed gauntlet.

    In Morrowind, I’d go out of my way to collect rings and amulets. Then I’d enchant them with the most powerful spell they’d hold, using a rat soul gem and my three rings of Fortify Enchant 500 for 3 seconds. Since the cost of casting spells went down as your Enchant skill went up, this meant the cost to cast it at normal Enchant levels was usually more than the soul power, making them hilariously expensive paperweights.
    Besides that, I pretty much collected EVERYTHING. I’d appropriate Nads Tharen’s apartment in Vivec, since finding his corpse was a quest and thus his corpse was permanent, and corpses have infinite space. I set a Mark over him so I could just loot until I was overencumbered, Recall and then unload everything. On one save file he has so much stuff on him that pressing “Take All” crashes the game.

  25. Jexter says:

    In Skyrim I collected rare weapons and armor, if that counts. At a certain point, those items just seemed to valuable to sell off, so I just stuck them on a mannequin somewhere, or in a display case. A mod that added dozens of mannequins and displays to Sky Haven Temple came in real handy for that.

  26. Klay F. says:

    In the Fallout games I always hoard the unique weapons, 8 balls, and the glowy versions of Nuka Cola.

    I never actually use the unique weapons even though the vast majority of them are VASTLY better than the regular counterparts. For the glowy Nuka Colas, I keep all of them by my main bed so I can use them like night lights.

    1. I only use unique weapons under the following conditions:

      – It can be repaired by me with lesser weapons.
      – The ammo isn’t unique.
      – I have decent-to-absurdly-high skill with said weapon type (my small guns crit-stacking characters do so love the Maria handgun in FNV).

      The above will be overridden if the fight is getting desperate, which is usually when the alien blaster comes out.

  27. Jokerman says:

    I suppose the only thing i have really collected is books in oblivion and Skyrim.

  28. Xanyr says:

    In the immortal words of Mumbles “I didn’t collect SHIT”

    1. czhah says:

      I also belong to the boring didn’t-collect-squat club. I don’t collect things in general, unless you count limited use items that I keep saving for the rainy day, and never end up using. The only self-imposed rules that I’ve followed are playing solo in some of the Infinity Engine games and One City Challenge in CIV III and CIV IV.

  29. Cerberus Public Relations says:

    Pre-war books, Nuka-Cola (and Quantum) in my fridge, and 1 of every weapon. It was a pretty interesting house. Stack of books, flamer, stack of books, shotgun, etc.

  30. Cupcaeks says:

    I collected various eye-wear. It was a bit of a side effect of having the ‘Four-Eyes’ trait in Fallout: New Vegas. For the first few hours of the game, glasses seemed pretty rare for me, and I didn’t want to just kill NPCs for theirs. After finally finding myself a pair, I was like, “I need to find more in case these break,” which never actually happened, but it didn’t stop me from hoarding every pair I could get my hands on. I remember having a drawer full of nothing but glasses in Novac. It became somewhat of a compulsion by the time I got around to playing Fallout 3, even though there was absolutely no reason for me to have them that time around.

    Other than that, I also hoarded any pre-war food items I could find and just ended up sticking them all in a fridge.

  31. Cain says:

    My gateway hoard in Fallout 3 was Lawn Gnomes.

    1. MrGuy says:

      The epic HL2 E2 achievement has ruined gnome collecting for me.

      If I don’t have to worry about it falling out of a car, it’s not enough of a challenge.

  32. hborrgg says:

    Probably not so original, but I tend to collect guns and weapons in a lot of games. And I mean more than I could ever possibly need to use, yet constantly complaining about the lack of hotkey slots and leveling-systems that keep trying to railroad me into using a single type of weapon.

    The other thing I love to collect is money. Even when I’m already a millionaire and there is nothing to spend it on I will always make sure to comb every single inch of dungeon for any gold coins I might have missed. I also like to fill up my inventory with gold armor and tools when playing Minecraft adventure maps.

    Fallout 3 in particular I collected that serum at the very end (didn’t tell anybody about it, didn’t use it, put it in my house).

  33. Guvnorium says:

    I collected every book I came across in Skyrim. Didn’t matter if I already had ten copies- I needed more!

    Also, this is related: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vcx6UbMCtfI

  34. In Fallout 3, after I’d maxed out my skills, I’d collect and display skill books.

    The glowing Nukas were another favorite, just as a light source, which is the best reason to get the perk that converts regular cola to Quantum.

    Pencils, because they were light.

    Pre-war money because it weighed nothing, made your home look like a cash vault, and because (I think) it was the original Wasteland that had the cool mechanic of pre-war money and whatever the game currency was be worth different things to different people depending on how tied they were to the old world.

    I also tossed the occasional unique weapon around as home decor. I only have a few I actually use, so the rest become pieces that I hope party guests will comment on.

    Edit: I wanted to collect Nuka-trucks, but every time I thought about it, my inventory would be full to bursting with stuff I didn’t want to drop.

    It’s kind of weird to think that the actual endgame of these Bethesda RPGs is re-arranging the world for your own amusement and/or to satisfy any OCD tendencies. “I have defeated all of mine enemies, and now I shall mold the world unto my will! I shall arrange it in alphabetical order from Megaton to the Republic of Dave!”

  35. Blargh says:

    In New Vegas, my Novac house came pretty close to crashing my computer. I collected as many unique weapons as possible, and left them lying around the bedroom, then collected every drink I could, and always dumped out the alcohol, extra nuka-colas, special nuka-colas, etc into the tub. That overflowed and ended up covering the floor of the bathroom, and they would roll out whenever I opened the door.

    By way of contrast, Breezehome in Skyrim has the one chest in the bedroom which contains every uniquely named item I’ve come across, and every book I’ve found, plus the requisite 30000 pounds of dragon bones/scales. I haven’t put anything out on display.

  36. P_johnston says:

    Dino toys in new vegas. They were weightless and semi-rare so I just always wanted to see how many I could find.

    1. I almost did that, but then I’d realize it would eventually result in me heisting the dino-souvenir stand just to complete my collection.

      Did you rob the place eventually, along with the proprietor’s hotel room?

      1. P_johnston says:

        no It seemed to easy. I only collected the ones I found out in the wasteland.

  37. rayen says:

    I collect weapons. In Morrowind i was especially Obsessive Compulsive. I had a dedicated room with all the weapons i had stacked neatly, by type, material and whether or not it was enchanted. Then the legendary weapons with one of a kind designs, were used to decorate.

  38. Talby says:

    I collected old world money in FO3. I figure my character pined for the days before the war.

  39. Protcol95 says:

    In Skyrim I have a tendacy to collect intact books even if I already have a copy of them. My dragonborn is a redundantly educated one.

    Edit: Also I hold onto all bounty notes. Guess it’s my character’s resume.

  40. Artur CalDazar says:

    I can’t quite recall what I collected in FO3. I know for a time I gathered Pre-War books.

    Well, in FNV I collected Pre-War money, in Oblivion I did not collect anything, and in Skyrim I hoard so much that it is hard to pick any single thing that I really collect.

    Aside from Dwemer materials that is, especially bowels. I have so many, so very many.

    1. Foodle says:

      I’ve seen Dwemer Bowls, but no bowels. Sounds yucky.

      1. Artur CalDazar says:

        Right after typing that I had I feeling I’d made a mistake, so I checked I’d used the right “hoard”.
        Damit.

  41. Uscias says:

    In New Vegas I collected coffee mugs and all the ingredients for brewing black coffee. So now i have a room full of mugs and a fridge full of black coffee.

    1. Alphadrop says:

      No mugs for Muggy?

  42. Torsten says:

    I collected cameras in Fallout 3. In NV I was just hoarding unique items in general. In Skyrim I dont really collect stuff, though musical instruments tend to find their way into my bag to be sold in the next city.

  43. Damian says:

    I collected everything. EVERYTHING. It took me many trips to get every tin can in the Save Mart, but I did. What a relief it was when I finally caved and started modifying my carry weight.

  44. Even says:

    I tend to hoard, but always with the priority of items of value. Crafting materials, rare and unique equipment and useful consumables are what I usually gather the most. If it doesn’t have any weight, I tend to pick it up regardless. The odd one out may be books in Skyrim. They’re probably the first non-gameplay item with weight I’ve gone out of my way to gather up. Hunting for unique books, getting all the books in a series and just building up the collection for no real benefit.. and I don’t mind. Might be something do with some of them actually being good reading and being inspired to gather more.

  45. Kreek says:

    i usually collect unique weapons

    i never sell them, or even use most of them (unless they are energy weapons, i always use energy weapons) but i collect them and store them

  46. Jjkaybomb says:

    I usually wind up collecting a ton of “useful” food items, and then finding a box to shove it all in when I can’t carry or craft it anymore. I wouldn’t really call it collecting. More like needless over-hoarding. But with putting anything that’s glowy and cool on display.

    The only time that I remember purposely keeping a loot object as memorabilia from a quest was from Skyrim, the Dark Brotherhood quest. The silver platter from the first quest looked pretty enough to put on display, so I decided not to sell it. And in the last quest, I didn’t receive any money from the last job, so I stole a sweet roll and jokingly took that as “payment.” It was only proper to display said sweet roll on that original silver platter. Felt like it tied everything together nicely.

  47. Lupus_Amens says:

    In any elder scrolls game my house turns into an armory,

    and in fallout I end up with a huge pile of teddy bears, oh god the teddy bears…

    1. Lupus_Amens says:

      Oh and the alchemy in morrowind which gave you a billion different bottles, any house in that game, mod or otherwise would get every ledge filled with beautifully differently shaped and colored bottles.

  48. Foodle says:

    Yeah, hoard all sorts of stuff in Skyrim. My son is partial to baskets of skulls. We both grab anything that’s not nailed down early in the game when the character is low level and scrounging for funds.

    When my character is high level I start to hoard interesting armor and weapons, especially the daedric artifacts or gear from unique enemies. I too have given weapons different types of enchantments to get various attractive glow colors for decorating purposes.

    I keep lots of crafting supplies, tons of soul gems, and massive amounts of alchemy ingredients. I like to keep completed bounties and such in an end table and looted journals on a bookshelf, although the tend to fall over because they’re not as thick as regular books.

  49. Thomas says:

    I adore the conversation at 15:17
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67k5bbN9_aU#t=15m17s

    The casual tones are perfect, out of context it sounds like some demented comedy sketch of a conversation between Genghis Kahn and Mao. “Oh you drag the bodies into a pile? I wish I’d known…”
    ————————————-
    “…I just drag their bodies in a pile so I can sort through them more easily”

    ‘…well I wish I’d known that because -well I use “are they in their underwear”…’

    ‘I strip them naked…and that’s my marker, to know a bodies been looted’

    ‘…I look for the naked people- I didn’t realise you could drag the bodies’

    ‘Remember those times when you…gun them all down in the same spot’

    1. StashAugustine says:

      In New Vegas, meeting with Benny, I got swarmed by a bunch of thugs in his room. I didn’t know you’d get the Lucky 38, so I thought I’d be using Benny’s apartment as a base. So I dragged all the bodies in the bathroom and tried to fit them in the bathtub. But they didn’t quite fit, so I spent about 10 minutes trying to dismember them so they’d fit.

  50. Hal says:

    In Oblivion, I loved to collect gems. What I tried to do was arrange a bowl and load the thing up with gems. Unfortunately, the hit detection on those things was awful, and once you had enough in the bowl they’d be dancing around like colorful grasshoppers. Eventually it gets bad enough that they knock the bowl off whatever stand its on, and you’re lucky if the entire collection doesn’t clip through the floor and into . . . “Oblivion.”

    I still collect gems in Skyrim, but I haven’t tried putting them on display. They just go in the safe in the Solitude house.

    1. Jakale says:

      Same, though I had to start only taking flawless gems when I’d go over my carrying weight.

      1. Paul Spooner says:

        This seems like a huge oversight in this kind of fantasy simulator game, but why can’t you have employees? Hire a few guys to wait outside the entrance to the cave, then when you give the “all clear” they come in with wheel barrows and sweep the cave for anything valuable and haul it all back for you.

        It would introduce opportunities for all kinds of interesting mechanics.
        Training your employees, maybe help them to become better at fighting, or stronger, or even better at evaluating the value of objects. You’d want to pay them well so they come with you, and protect them so they don’t run off. You’d want to do a survey of the dungeon beforehand, just in case the guys are stealing valuables, and then you could investigate, or just fire the lot of them and find someone else.

        Coupled with enchantment, this could have some really intersting effects. Cast a “mark” spell on something really valuable and leave it with the rest of the vendor trash. Then periodically cast a “find” spell to see if one of your employees has made off with it.

        Man. These fantasy games could be so much more awesome.

        1. Jakale says:

          That sounds like something the Rune Factory game series might do, or maybe the Recettear bunch.

          I can imagine why adding a micromanaging mechanic like that into a wandering adventure game may not be the most appealing thing, especially since it would mean they’d have to make every trap disarm-able or at least a one time only thing, plus the potential issues with having enemies spawn around your hires while your character isn’t around. Overall, probably more suited to its own dungeon diving business game where those things don’t absolutely have to be worked around by the programmers, but rather turn them into challenges the player overcomes.

  51. anaphysik says:

    Wow, it’s really amusing to see that so many of us collected teddy bears. ^_^

    My first in New Vegas was liberated (i.e. stolen) from a Goodsprings home, the owner of which had sadistically left the teddy bear upon a stove D:

    (That is, discounting the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Barnabas_bear that I console-commanded into my inventory. He’s travelling the world with me! ^_^)

  52. Lame Duck says:

    I have a tendency to collect useful resources way beyond the limit of what is actually still useful, so in Fallout 3 and New Vegas I would have a fridge full of food, drink and drugs that I will never have any need to use. I also collected one of every type of weapon and piece of clothing in Fallout 3. I don’t think I collected things that were completely worthless though.

    Because New Vegas, unlike Fallout 3, actually encourages role-playing, what I collected depended on the character I was playing as. I still collected every unique weapon/clothing, but I only collected one of every type of weapon that was appropriate for that character and displayed them on the table in the kitchen of the Lucky 38 (when not using them). For example my mercenary cowboy guy collected (fully modded) old West type guns, such as revolvers, rifles, certain kinds of shotguns etc. He also collected Old World money that he stuffed in the safe in the Lucky 38 suite and toy cars and Nuka Cola trucks. My intelligent/charismatic scientist girl collected energy weapons, pre-war books and teddy bears.

    Edit: I’m never going to, but if I were to ever play Fallout 3 again I would collect purified water.

  53. TheAngryMongoose says:

    Btw, can you start linking the original blog posts with the new ones? I feel they were part of the genuine Spoiler Warning experience.

    In Fallout 3 I collected Chinese Swords and Pre-War money. I know Pre-War money was basically just bottlecaps (Weightless, and worth money at any vendor), but that gigantic pile of cash on my table brought a smile to my face every time I came home…

  54. monkeyboy says:

    In fallout Vegas I tried to take a souveneir from each memorable encounter, one of each weapon, and all the unique items.
    My big thing though was hats. I killed people just because they were wearing neat hats and displayed them at the Luck 38.

    One of the dialouge options when fighting Lanius is basically “Nice hat, I’ll wear it when you’re dead,” Really validated my character concept.

  55. Bropocalypse says:

    The completely useless item I collected? Energy cells.

  56. swenson says:

    I collected Garden Gnomes. They’re ridiculously heavy… but it was so worth it to have a little line of them around the first floor of my house, watching me… watching me…

    …on second thought, I think I’m going to sleep somewhere else from now on.

  57. groboclown says:

    I gathered every pencil I could find. It even got me in trouble at that tower (can’t remember the name off hand – the one where you watch the bomb go off) – I was murdering everything without setting off the guards (even the big man in charge, then wore his clothes in front of everyone without even a peep), then I stole a pencil and set the whole place on high alert.

  58. The Rocketeer says:

    Absolutely anything one-of-a-kind or very limited in number was liable to end up as a curio in my house, be it named armor or weapons, oddities like intact garden gnomes, or anything else that struck my fancy; I collected Buffout, of all things, and carefully arranged missiles and mini-nukes on a desk. Like most other folks, I’d arrange them around my Megaton house. Me and my brother both collected Nuka-Cola Quantum (and, in New Vegas, Victory and Quartz), and my brother was fond of single cigarettes, which I remember being difficult to find.

    Right now in New Vegas, I’m playing through trying to collect every single weapon and armor in the game, with very few exceptions, such as items that must be given away in a quest.

    BUT! Without a doubt, one of my favorite rituals in either Fallout 3 or New Vegas, is to hoard Pre-War Money and fill bathtubs with it. It takes 100 stacks to fill a bathtub to the rim with Pre-War Money, but it will take a bit more than that to make it look nice and stuffed. I can’t account for why it brings me joy, but if you need it explained to you, you aren’t my kind of people.

  59. hewhosaysfish says:

    I collected things of which I thought there was a finite number in the Wasteland. Unique weapons, named character’s named gear, quest items, one of each Vault jumpsuit, etc.
    I suppose you could call them “trophies”.

    I also collected vast amounts food, water, spare guns (of the types I used), spare armour (of the types I wore), crafting parts and so-on. Far more than I could ever need. Not because I wanted a collection but because of the strange mad part of my brain that kept inisting that I might need them. I might have over a thousand stimpaks on my person, hundreds of Ice-cold Nuka Colas in my vending machine, 500 units of ant meat in my fridge, 300 of mirelurk meat, 70 punga fruit…. and I would still get that nagging feels that if things got really, really bad then the extra 5hp from this Mac & Cheese I just found could mean the difference between life and death.

    I remember during the Human Revolutions season when Shamus confessed how he initially picked up and sold all the guns one at a time so that the excess guns wouldn’t turn into just ammunition. I don’t remember saying anything at the time but I cringed because I knew that instinct.

    On a less neurotic note: in Morrowind I tried collecting a copy of every book in the game (and sorting them alphabetically, like my own little library). On my previous playthrough I had been reading every book I could find but it wasn’t until I started systematically trying to gather them all in one place that I realise just how many there were. My quest ended sadly, when I accidentally overwrote that save file with another character before by collection was complete :(

  60. Mersadeon says:

    Hm. In Morrowind, it was light sources in general for me – paper lanterns, regular lanterns, candles and the like. In Oblivion, it was Welkynd Stones. Basically, Oblivion turned into “Welkynd Stone Hunt” for me. I was filling rooms with those. You could not take a screenshot of my in-game house without having at least 10 Welkynd Stones in the picture. Fallout 3: The glowing fruits. And glowing things in general – Nuka Cola Quantum of course (also, about one third of all Whiskey bottles were glowing strangely I think). In Fallout New Vegas it was 10mm Pistols. In Skyrim… I don’t really remember. I don’t think I collected something in Skyrim. Not enough glowy things.

  61. Tse says:

    Of course the Chinese assault rifle is better than the American. Even the worst version of a Kalashnikov is better than the US equivalent from the fifties.

    1. WJS says:

      Um, what 50s equivalent? Did the US even have an assault rifle before the M16 in the 60s?

  62. Fang says:

    I always collect armour, and weapons of the rare variety, normally putting them into separate chests/containers on my first run through of RPGS(New Vegas, and Fallout 3 are the only 2 sadly, other than ones that I can’t see a good reason to/no strange weapons).

    My 2nd run through of Fallout 3 tho I was collecting every chessboard I came across. I had like… 20-30, before I deleted it off my computer.

  63. Wedge says:

    In my current NV playthrough I’m collecting every drug I come across, even though I don’t use any of them (except whiskey, which I managed to get addicted to the first time I drank any. I don’t even)
    My roommate did the garden gnomes in FO3. Had a whole pile of them out front of his house in Megaton.

  64. AyeGill says:

    I… actually didn’t collect anything in Fallout 3. Huh. I mean, I picked up absolutely everything even slightly valuable, doped myself to crazy heights to carry it back to town, then added everything the vendors couldn’t afford to the ever-growing pile.

    In New Vegas, I painstakingly collected one of every gun, including the unique ones. I didn’t manage to get everything from the DLCs, but I think every gun/energy weapon/explosive in the vanilla game eventually found itself in my collection.

  65. Alex says:

    Bent tin cans. Yes, my life was hell. I didn’t really hoard them, but collected them for sale. I made bank with those little things.

  66. AJax says:

    I remember collecting a lot of pre-war money in Fallout 3 and never ever selling it for some reason. I don’t know but it actually gave me this “souvenirs from the old world” kinda vibe. Also it didn’t cross my mind that it was a faster way to gain caps for some reason. :/

  67. Paul Spooner says:

    Satellite dish: Actually, yes, they are pretty much totally interchangeable; It’s basically just a big parabolic reflector. Unlike antennas which are tuned to a specific frequency, parabolic reflectors work well on a large range of frequencies. Of course the reciever at the apex is specialized, and the coating on the dish may not work for all electromagnetic frequencies. But then again, adding an antenna and some reflective coating is easy. You can even line it with aluminum foil (or little mirrors) and make a solar furnace!

    Sledge hammer: I don’t know about you, but I break my sledge hammer fairly often. It’s the wooden handle that breaks really… though you should still be allowed to swing the head around like a rock. The iron head though, man those things take a long LONG time to wear out. Still, eventually it starts to mushroom.

  68. Jakale says:

    Quick question, it won’t come up very often, and probably not for a while after this, but what all are we counting for the Overpowered Item drinks?
    The DLC stuff later is pretty obvious, but we now have both a mini nuke launcher and a super sledge, so I wanted to check on that. I figure plain old power armor probably doesn’t count.

    1. Shamus says:

      I think items that seem “broken” by the standards of the game. The nuke, while ridiculous, is balanced by ammo scarcity and extreme loading times. Sledge seems pretty reasonable in terms of power.

      I think the Shish KeBab (or whatever it’s called) is the only OP item we’ll see in the vanilla game.

      Any other opinion / suggestions?

      1. Jakale says:

        I was going to count the laser gatling gun, even though Josh can’t really use it effectively. I never ran into it myself, though, so I don’t know if the ammo availability balances it out.

      2. newdarkcloud says:

        You could consider the Dart Gun OP as it destroys an enemy’s legs.

        Also, Lincoln’s Repeater and The Terrible Shotgun.

        And maybe the Deathclaw Gauntlet?

        1. Shamus says:

          I didn’t use any of these. Anyone else want to support or object to these?

          1. The dart gun basically nerfs any melee opponents, since it’s an insta-cripple for whatever limb it hits. Shoot a deathclaw’s legs and it’s reduced to limping speed. It’s one of the reasons they were even more fearsome in New Vegas.

          2. Even says:

            I wouldn’t count any of them as overall OP. Just against certain enemies.

            Lincoln’s Repeater is the most powerful rifle in vanilla FO3. It will demolish most targets with little armor and HP, but it still hardly wins the game for you.

            The Terrible shotgun is the most powerful shotgun, capable of doing a ridiculous amount of damage if you can get the crits rolling. Downside to it is the very limited effective range due its massive spread, since it calculates damage per pellets.

            Dart gun again is only really OP against enemies that count on melee to their damage.

            If you carried all of them and used them for their suitable roles, then you’d probably have a somewhat OP gear selection, but none of them are really game winners on their own.

  69. Flavius says:

    Morrowind was a collector’s dream come true: with such a variety of items, it was easy to find something to enjoy. My favorites were Dwemer bowls (which I loaded up with gems,) Dwemer balloon goblets, light sources, and books and schematics.

    However, if you look at all the clutter items you will find there is a lot of variation in common items (there are 13 varieties of common plates, and three kinds of silver plates, for instance,) which was lacking in later games. And tying it in with immersion, not only did it make the world seem truer, but also offered a poignancy to the ruins, specifically Dwemer ruins, that the later games also lacked. The Dwemer may have been a profane, unknowable people, but I felt a greater kinship to them than the Aleyids in Oblivion (who the game suggests were more or less just jerks) because of the mundane items that the Dwemer left behind: not just weapons and armor, but tools, furniture, tableware, and coins.

    1. 1d30 says:

      I found myself wandering through Dwemer ruins thinking about what it would be like to live there when it was populated. The beds were just metal frames, and there was furniture but it was only the metal parts remaining.

  70. newdarkcloud says:

    In Fallout 3 (and really Oblivion/Skyrim too), everything I collected had a purpose besides all the unique weapons I gathered. Despite knowing I’d never use them, if I came across an item (weapon, armor, or otherwise) that seemed unique I would store it in my “armory” filing cabinet next to my bed in Megaton. I also had a separate container for loot/spare parts, another for collection quest items, and one more for weapon crafting components.
    In New Vegas, I had a similar setup, but I divided my components into fireplace/workbench/ammo bench containers.

    In Oblivion and Skyrim, I made a point to try and get at least one copy of every book I encountered in my travels in some vain attempt to get a good library going. My only self-imposed rule is that I couldn’t steal from libraries and book stores because that whole almost be cheating. I had a cupboard I dedicated as my “library” in my Imperial City house and in Breezehome. I also had a “supplies” chest full of useful adventuring stuff like soul gems, potions, arrows, and repair hammers.

    So yeah, I unknowingly got into the habit of sorting through my inventory every time I came home.

  71. arron says:

    I collect deaths. I’ve got a save where I’ve killed pretty much everyone (NPCs) in the game. It’s looking pretty empty apart from the ones that you can’t kill (only render unconscious). And with the Cannibalism perk, I’ve eaten a large number of them as well :)

  72. Adam says:

    Once I got to the point where the rest of Skyrim no longer interested me (less time than most would expect) I was powerful enough not to really need food, so I just started collecting/buying/stealing/killing people for their cheese wheels. Then I dropped all of them at the top of a hill overlooking a bandit encampment, FUSRODAH’d them, and giggled as a wave of rolling, tumbling cheese engulfed them.

  73. Von Krieger says:

    I too collected teddy bears, grabbing them up gleefully and adding them to an ever growing pile atop my bed in Megaton.

    Though that changed a little bit when I stumbled over a random bit of scenery dressing.

    In one of the abandoned/ruined/wrecked vaults, in one of the bathrooms, there is a child-sized skeleton huddled up in the narrow space between where the bathroom stall door ends and the wall begins.

    I did not have the heart to take that bear. I started carrying several around with me, placing one wherever I encountered a child-sized skeleton, remembering that past discovery.

  74. Olly says:

    My favourite hoard in Fallout 3 was when I played the game with a self-created set of rules that I called “The Nuka Cola Challenge”.

    These rules were:
    Have to play as “Sierra Petrovita” (make character look like her),
    Have to have the SPECIAL stats of teh NPC Sierra (or as close as possible, this meant having +1 to each of her stats),
    Only wear clothing (she’s a civilian after all),
    Only use 1 handed guns (no melee!),
    Can only sleep if already at full health,
    Can only heal by using Nuka drinks or by paying doctors, and finally
    If you see a Nuka related item you MUST pick it up, even if you have to drop other items to do so!
    Nuka related items can only be dropped in your house (shrine/museum).

    Those last 2 rules led to a fantastically over-decorated Nuka themed house in Megaton. Was my favourite playthrough of Fallout 3.

    Oh, the overall objective (obviously) was to collect 50 Nuka Cola Quantum :D

  75. RCN says:

    My first character in Fallout 3 was female and, somehow, this led me to hoard all types of clothes from the game. I got all kinds of pre-war stuff, and remember walking in the radioactive wastelands in a nice pink dress and bonnet blowing up Super Mutants and raiders.

  76. Microwaviblerabbit says:

    In Fallout 3 I collected Metro Tickets and Pass Cards. Every time I left my house I could only have a single card for each line, so two as there is no white card. On top of this I would try to estimate how many tickets my journey would take before the war. That way I would be paying for the upkeep (lights, water, repairs) of the system. Some one must have been doing maintenance, and I did not want a vengeful ghoulifed repairman causing a cave-in.

    In New Vegas I tend to role-play, so each character has defining traits in item collecting, especially money. I use the casinos to change currency based on allegiances, so when supporting the NCR I turn all my caps and Legion Money into NCR Dollars. Plus on my Legion play-through I anti-collected drugs and alcohol, gathering them up and then destroying the contraband by dumping it on dead bodies and burning them, usually in Nipton.

    In Skyrim I stockpile potions to cure diseases, potions to cure poisons and strength potions. In my current 100 hour+ playthrough I have used 2 strength potions, a single potion to cure diseases and have never cured a poison. Worse I am a vampire and so am immune to diseases and poisons, but continue buying cures to keep up appearances. On a similar note, I live in Riften and have furnished my house with wooden dishes and the worst armor and weapons I could find. I need to look poor, and my housecarl never leaves to safeguard the large quantities of gems and 500,000 gold stashed there.

  77. 1d30 says:

    Rocks in Fallout 2. Definitely a lot of things in Morrowind: paper lanterns, anything limeware or Dwemer, but not Moon Sugar or Skooma. That got used as a currency at the creeper merchant.

  78. WJS says:

    I like that raider with the grenade early on. Dude clearly made his reflex save.
    There are, in fact, 139 boxes of sugar bombs placed in the world, although they also appear in the “generic food” levelled list, so there will be more in containers/merchants.
    And yeah, WTF is with the chinese pistol? It uses the same ammo as your starting gun, but does less than half the damage and has 8 times the spread! Sure, there’s a place for NPC weapons that will never be an upgrade for the player, but that’s just pathetic. Also, why pick such an iconic gun to be the “chinese” pistol?

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