Hi there,
after reading some heated debate discussions on whether Navarro runs are considered to be "game breaking" or "cheating", and while I would say it's more "exploiting" than "cheating", since the developers did give you the option to go there right from the get-go, I was simply curious for all the FO2 players out there -- when is the ideal time in the game where you go loot Navarro for that wonderful Advanced Power Armor, nice energy weapons, bonus xp, and a even a cyberdog ally, if desired?

When I first played FO2 I was curious enough to try a Navarro run, just to see how difficult it would be to get to there from game start, and oh my it was quite a pain in the arse. I had to make a stop to the NCR just to pick pocket a Bozar from a guard (I always do this when I eventually get there anyway), and use that to go kill Chris at the Navarro outpost. Imagine all the saves/reloads I had to endure due to random encounters along the way! I'll admit that the game became incredibly easy after acquiring the advanced PA and weapons from the armory in the base. The rat den quest became such a joke that I rushed to the rat god and killed him while only focusing on the mole rats who swarmed me and not much else (they can't even do any damage to you in that godly armor- you're completely invincible), and after doing more of the early quests I just felt way too over powered and I didn't feel any satisfaction from the game anymore.

So I started a new game and played it normally, and didn't end up reaching Navarro until I had already had a car (which makes getting there waaay easier), cleared out the Military base and acquired hardened power armor on my own, so I didn't feel nearly as much of a cheater by the time I upgraded to the Advanced PA. Honestly the only reason why I did it then and not later on was because with Adv. PA you can carry more weight than with the T-51b variant, and because I was doing a solo run and thus couldn't use anyone to camelback my gear, I had to make every square inch of room in my inventory count so the Adv. PA definitely came in handy by that point. But keeping in mind this was after visiting (and mostly doing every quest) in Arroyo, Klamath, The Den, Modoc, Vault City, NCR outpost, Vault, 13, Vault 15, and Military Base. I was definitely well equipped by that point and didn't even really need to visit Navarro, I just wanted to for kicks mostly and since I had already reached San Fran I figured why not.

I'm just curious, regardless on your stance whether you think it's considered cheating to do Navarro runs early in the game or anywhere up until the end, when do you ideally decide to go and loot their base for all of the goodies and XP? I'd just like to get a sense of the overall demographic of people who do it earlier as opposed to those who do it later on and where their justification comes into play (but lets please try to keep it cordial and not be jerks to those who have conflicting opinions please).

From a story standpoint, you don't get the quest to infiltrate Navarro until you talk to the Brotherhood of Steel representative in San Francisco, so it should come after you first reach SF.

Right, but then the question becomes this -- what if you just high tailed it all the way to SF from Arroyo? Unless you mean legitimately getting SF to appear on your map marker by other means, in which case I think would be totally valid (and thus not considered performing a "Navarro Run", per se)

I will admit, I sorta resent how easy it is to become so powerful in this game early on. FO1 did it better by making you do a quest for the BoS (and even beyond that you couldn't have negative karma in order to acquire the Power Armor, so it wasn't nearly as easy to become so strong if you were evil). I really do think FO2 is a much better game still, because it fixed so many of the clunky interface issues from the first (like trading, which takes absurdly long at times due to the 999 cap limit during transactions) and ridiculous AI shenanigans from the first game (like NPC allies blocking your path without being able to push them out of your way and forcing you to either kill them or reload a previous save), but FO1 had much more coherent flow for an RPG regardless of these nuances.

I like that FO2 isn't as linear as the first because it makes replaying the game more dynamic in scope, but I guess devs weren't thinking about really challenging the player after they finished FO2 for the first time, because then it becomes obvious how easy of a game it can be to exploit and what it all comes down to is having the self reserve to not heavily exploit the game -- something I've never been too good at when it comes to video games!

Now you're getting to why so many people (me included) believe Fallout 1 is a better game.

Personally I would never do a Navarro run right at the beginning because that's jumping close to the end, and the end is by far the worst part of Fallout 2, so you're skipping all the best bits. For FO2 they jacked up all the weapon types with "even better" guns and stuff, which seems cool on the surface, but unbalances the combat and loot even more.

I've played FO2 through many times, and my opinion is that it's never better than at the beginning, because that's where you still have to scramble a bit for weapons, ammo, and armor. The middle of the game is still pretty good, but even there it starts to get a lot easier, and once you get to SF and Navarro it just gets silly. When I re-play FO2 I always have a great time until I get past NCR and New Reno, and then I realize it's downhill the rest of the way.

So when is it legitimate to go to Navarro? Anytime you want, I would say. There's nothing stopping you hitting it first thing.

You also get Navarro on your map once you get the 4th Dream from your Shaman, head back to the village and talk to him.

By that stage most people would have likely already visited SF though, and you don't actually get a "quest" to infiltrate it as such (and also no helpful hints from the Brotherhood, so it's similar to a blind Navarro run except it's marked on your map).

The main issue with FO2 seems to be that it's too easy to acquire vast amounts of free, good guns, or to easily sell lots of them for vast amounts of cash (which you can use to buy vast amounts of good guns). Awesome guns is fine, but when you waltz into a city and can just buy the best of everything straight up with little effort, it does make the game feel a tad easy. There probably shouldn't be crap-loads of power armor for sale in SF, and the crazier guns should be harder to come by or more expensive (or both).

And I still don't get why you'd give tribal recruits access to the best armor you have. That's just asking for trouble.

For an improved challenge, I'd recommend playing with the RP, activating YAMM and setting combat to hard. This way enemies can still rip you to shreds even when you're wearing PA Mark II.

Okay, perhaps I should't have said that FO2 is "much" better than FO1, because you're right about the fact that it's totally unbalanced, and unlike the first game where ammo felt more scarce, it's just everywhere in FO2. Heck, even random encounters became absurdly silly, because half the time you can just watch two factions tear each other to shreds then loot all the corpses of the defeated group, and many a time I found combat shotguns, decent armor, and other rare drops that can really make the game unpredictably easier at any point in the game, especially the beginning. I much preferred it in FO1 where random encounters became more of a "life or death" sorta thing and the drops were never as good, but then again I also liked how FO2 would let you skip the encounters if your outdoorsman skill was high enough (I never bothered with outdoorsman at all in FO1 because I didn't really deem it useful in any way).

And I wish you didn't mention FO2's end game being the worst part, you see I'm getting very close to the end game now and I just have New Reno and NCR then I'm done with nearly every listed quest in the game, then I'm going to head over to the Enclave base and be done with FO2. I was hoping that part would at least be worthwhile considering how many hours I've poured into the game just trying to do everything :-(

But I digress that FO1 is such a brilliant game, but I only wish that it was longer by having more places to visit with things to do, and I wish that it incorporated more of the technical improvements which were introduced in FO2. So I'll rephrase my initial statement concerning which of the two games are better; FO1 from a gameplay/balance standpoint, FO2 from a technical/immersive standpoint. While FO1 ultimately had a better cohesive development phase from beginning to end without ever feeling too difficult or easy, FO2 did a better job of not turning off the player due to technical drawbacks like getting stuck between NPCs, being able to cruise around in a car to revisit landmarks more efficiently, less annoying encounters, menus etc. I still haven't beaten FO2, so I can't really say which game is ultimately the best, but I'm at least 80% through it now and my impression so far is that it really is great in the sense that I'm not hindered by the first game's technical limitations, but I can't help but feel like I'm just eager to finish everything and beat the game instead of enjoying where I'm at. Whereas in FO1 I really enjoyed taking my time to soak in everything, explore everywhere, talk to everyone, etc. If only FO1 was a bit longer then I'd say it's easily better in other words, but right now I think FO2 has a more lasting appeal due to the fixes and amount of content, even if it isn't really as challenging.

I don't think you'll be completely bummed out by it if you've never done it before, but it doesn't hold up over time the way the ending to FO1 does.

Still, if you're asking my advice about when you should go to Navarro for the first time, I'd say leave it for the end. Sure, if you go there early you can get boatloads of goodies that will make the rest of the game a breeze, but FO2 doesn't become more fun if you make it easier by doing that.

Good point, I really should have just saved Navarro for the very end because now everything is too easy. But then again everything was already too easy when I had a super mutant and death claw fighting at my side. You know what I'm just going to start a new game and do it solo this time, then save Navarro for the very end. That way I can proudly say that I completed FO2 like a champ my first time through. And just for an extra challenge I'll bump the combat difficulty up to hard, just to make it interesting ;-)

Solo is a pretty fun way to play FO2 (and FO1) IMO. You can probably dump all your Charisma points into something else, since the primary benefit of CHR is the ability to recruit more companions. You may get more negative reactions from NPCs, but then you'll get to see some different dialogues and it won't make anything unsolvable.

Pure sniper is a solid choice for a solo character, but almost anything will work.

Awesome, thanks for the advice! I always go with a sniper character in FO1 (with fast shot perk) and it is IMO one of the deadliest builds in that game, so I'll try it out in FO2 (and I'll keep that in mind regarding the charisma points being practically obsolete for solo runs). Also I heard melee is more effective in FO2 and I'm really tempted to put my tag skills into small guns, steal and melee for my solo run. After the first 5-10 levels it's quite easy to get that skill up along with the rest of the crucial ones (science, lock pick, repair, outdoorsman, etc). Plus steal is handy early on in the game since it can grant you a lot of bonus xp for each item you successfully pickpocket, allowing you to level up efficiently from the start. So I may just stick with that and divide my points between small guns and melee (and then eventually tag big guns when I reach a high enough level).

You should try a pure sniper without the Fast Shot perk. If you have high stealth and weapon skills you can hit your targets in the eye (or whatever) from across the screen and they won't even be able to detect you.

Okay, that will be interesting because I've never played Fallout 1 or 2 without ever using fast shot perk before. So what would you recommend that I use in place of Fast Shot? I'm also using Gifted as my other perk btw

You don't need any perks at all if you don't want. Gifted is far and away the most powerful, and I know quite a few people who won't ever use it because it makes the game too easy. I'm not saying you shouldn't use it if you want, though.

For a pure sniper you'll want lots of AG, PE, and LK, and lots of skill with Small Guns and Sneak. Learn how to target specific body parts when you shoot and get the best rifle you can find. You can use the rest for whatever you like; Speech if you want to overcome some of the effects of a poor CH, or Science, or Doctor.

Thanks UniversalWoif, you sure know a lot about the Fallout games! I ended up going with Finesse as my other perk, I did some research and some people said it's great if you have fairly high Luck for scoring criticals. Here is my character setup incase you or anyone is curious.

Perks/Traits:
Gifted
Finesse

Tag Skills:
Small Guns
Lockpick
Speech

Strength:5
Perception:9
Endurance:4
Charisma:4
Intelligence:9
Agility:9
Luck:7

Here's my reasoning - Gifted is quite obvious, you mentioned already that it's the best skill tag in the game and I agree, it far outweighs starting with lower skill stats due to having a higher SPECIAL. And I mentioned that Finesse adds a significant boost to my critical success rate, which in my opinion is worth the trade off for doing lower regular damage. I tagged small guns because that's all you really have access to in the beginning of the game, plus it's very beneficial for a sniper character. Lockpick I also tagged because you can easily access locked rooms/lockers early on in the game if you tag it and I hate having to remember to backtrack for those items later in the game. I also tagged speech because I hate dealing with failing speech checks in general and even though you said you can always find workarounds to this I just didn't want to have to deal with spending points on it later in the game when combat becomes more important so I figured it's best to just take care of it from the start.

As for my SPECIAL, it's quite obvious based on my character build but I'll give a quick rundown. Strength at 5 since Power Armor boosts it to 8 (Adv. PA boosts it to 9) plus the red memory module gives me max strength by end game. Perception, Intelligence and Agility for same reason as strength (memory module boosts it to max, although I forget which color corresponds to which but I know the locations of each so w/e). Charisma and Endurance I left at 4 (I also know I can upgrade Charisma to 5 with a memory module but that wasn't really important to me) so that I can recruit at least one ally incase I need to complete a quest or do something specific in the game, plus I figured it'd help me pass speech checks if I didn't leave it too low. Endurance is not really important to me since once you get Power Armor it becomes rather moot. And then Luck at 7 for landing criticals against enemies.

I'm also really glad you reminded me to give points to Sneak because I just got the Here And Now perk in my game and can put a lot (or all) of those points towards that skill. I was initially going put those points towards Doctor to get to 75% (for combat implants once I reach Vault City). But I may divide up those points between Doctor and Sneak instead. I only have a pistol so far so it's not like I really need my sneak at a high level at this point in the game anyway (I literally just finished all quests in The Den, so I still have time to figure it out). Overall I'm very happy with this build. Does it make the game pretty easy? Yes. But I'm playing with combat on "Rough" setting so it should be a fair compromise. If nothing else I can keep replaying the game, try not using Gifted (or any optional perks), and modify other things to make the game even more ridiculous if need be.

Lastly, I'm curious as to how I should go about acquired Perks/Traits during this run-through. So far I've taken Awareness (always useful) and Here And Now, but I'm wondering if I should take Bonus Move (which I always did in FO1 and I thought it was very useful for luring enemies around corners then blasting them with a Gatling Laser). I am going to take Tag and use it towards Big Guns in FO2 (it's all about that Bozar, baby), but what else should I do? I'll definitely take the Sniper perk when I reach level 24... Any others that I should do though? Probably Action Boy...