I didn't know you were playing too, Helmut.  Havin' fun yet?  I'm playing my modded F3.  Currently wandering around in DC entering many, many shops, townhouses and apartments.  Courtesy of the DC Interiors mod.  I also have several quest-type mods installed, one of which I've finished.  I also have a couple of new places to trade, and a new Vault to visit on the agenda.  Fun.  Fun.

Helmut, have you decided whom to side with?  Just what all did you do in Fort Independence, huh, huh?

@ Helmut - I vaguely remember the proprietor of the tavern in Megaton offering to help you find your father for a lot of caps (which I didn't have, either), so I broke into his terminal and found the info out for myself anyways.  I agree that everywhere does seem pretty bleak, and it would be good to have a lot more variety in scenery (I feel spoilt by the uniqueness of the major cities from Morrowind).

@ xtal - I'm very vanilla (PS3 version), just lining up helmets (Helmuts?) by picking them up and placing them on a shelf.  Then I have to grab another part of them and tilt them around until I get them looking in the same direction.  It's a labour of love, and I do it like a hunter mounts the heads of his kills on a wall.

@ Scout - those claw things (Deathclaws?) are bloody tough as nails, they scare me.  One silently came up to me as I turned a corner in the mobile command centre in Adams Airforce Base, and freaked, pressing everything at once on my controller.  Fortunately it was friendly, and I didn't shoot it as a knee-jerk-response.

I didn't get much done last night - I rescued two kids from Germantown Police Station, and taught them all to shoot (although they only talked to me 'normally' after that, so I don't know if I was to do something else while they fired all of the ammo off practicing).  I decided I wanted a decent gun that didn't have ultra-rare ammo, and found the Lincoln Repeater in the wiki.  I tracked it down, and despatched many a ghoul to get it.

Another gun of interest is apparently on the Mothership in one of the expansions (but aside from that I can't remember where).  I trundled off to the crashed alien ship, and was subsequently sucked up and probed (sounds like a pr0n script).  I was locked in a cell with a new friend when I called it quits last night.  What little I've seen of the Mothership looks good, and the visual break from the rest of Fallout 3 is most welcome.

As a side note, I'm restricting myself to carrying at most five firearms at a time (one for each occasion) - otherwise I could easily walk around with a dozen or so (one for each ammo type - initially in case I ran out of ammo of the gun I was using, then I could swap to another...  but now I have a bazillion rounds of everything, I feel pretty comfortable easing off).

I bit the bullet and started Point Lookout (I didn't know at the time, I just wanted to inspect the River Boat).

I feel like I'm in a 'hills have eyes' movie or something - very creepy place.  I've saved the ghoul in the mansion, found a chinese spy, and taken some fruity drugs.

The walk back after you take the drugs was amazingly interesting - smault-tec bobble-heads, the etheral bone saw, the nuka-colas that explode to baby laughs, the corpse on the operating chair labelled 'Mom', the floating corpses of the people you know, the guy who wants you to detonate the bomb, and Megaton's bomb itself - really well done, I must say.  I've been playing long enough that all of these things had an emotional affect.  Definitely a high point narrative-wise in the game.

Welcome back to FO3 Scout [Image Can Not Be Found]  I haven't had a chance to play any further yet, so still at Point Look Out, and I think I'll do the Pitt next, before searching for all of the bobble-heads.  Damn, I forgot to check whether I still kept the Schmault-Tec bobble-heads from that awesome vision.

I only did Anchorage a little while ago - you have to inspect a transmission or something, and I had to crawl through a subway line to get there, in DC.  Then, of course, I could fast-travel there.  Upon emerging, a group of Outcast ask you to help them to fight some Muties, and then lead you to their base.

And like Spike says, just make it your active quest on your Pip-Boy, then look at the World Map to see where you need to go.  And the local map is invaluable if you're already roughly in the area!

@ Helmut - that's rhetorical, right?

Helmut said:

It's just hard (if you haven't been following all that closely) to determine where the main quest ends and all the DLC begins. I take it the addons are a worthy addition to an already fun game? Shhh (funner than Fallout 2 that's for sure)

I didn't install the add-ons until I was close to finishing the main game, but had I installed them earlier I'd have found that the transition from the base game to Broken Steel in particular would have been seemless.  The others close to that as well. The nice thing is that once you've installed all the add-ons you can play them in any order, or move back and forth between them and the base game.  If I got bored at Point Lookout, and I did, I could go back and do something in Pitt, or wander the Wasteland for a bit.

I'm leaning toward buying New Vegas as soon as it is released, but I know that if I just wait 6 months or so there will be add-ons and I could install the whole thing at the same time.  I don't know if I'll have enough will power to wait.  A GOTY edition will also save $$.  We'll see.

I loved Broken Steel the best.  Pitt second.  Lookout third.  Zeta fourth.  Anchorage dead last.  Simulations…blah.

@Scout:  have you yet met any Super Mutant Behemoths or Overlords?  SO much more fun than the garden variety Mutant.