Fallout 3 exploits

Exploits are "holes" in the game programming which allow a player to do something which the developers did not intend and which alter the balance of the game in a way that benefits the player.

Exploits No Longer Available After Latest Patch

 * With the Mister Sandman perk, you can knock any sleeping essential non-player character unconscious as many times as you like. You get experience for the "kill" each time. Unavailable in patched game and GOTY version.
 * Listen to Bittercup rant about how she has been with all of the men in Big Town. In this rant you find out specifically about what happened with her and Pappy. End the conversation with her and talk to Pappy. A couple lines in you'll have a speech option that will never go away and can continue to gain experience (amount varies with difficulty level of when you start talking to Pappy) with each success. Unavailable in patched game and GOTY version.
 * At Rivet City: Every night, the doors to the market lock (normal). They can be picked with relative ease for a decent amount of experience. After unlocking all the doors, go back outside and wait until midnight. This WILL cause you to lose karma. Unavailable in patched game and GOTY version.
 * At Museum of History: The second section of the feral ghoul infested section, where all the Abraham Lincoln artifacts are found, there are 2 gates that are locked (very easy). There is a nearby terminal that allows you to lock the archives section (aka lock the gates) even if they were picked. This can be done indefinitely for 20XP per door, with no chance of failure. Unavailable in patched game and GOTY version.

Duplicate Sydney's Ultra SMG & 10mm Ammunition
choose the following dialogue options:
 * There is an exploit in all versions of Fallout 3 that allows you to receive unlimited copies of Sydney's 10mm "Ultra" SMG in perfect condition, along with 50 10mm rounds. To trigger the exploit, after receiving the gun once (You must have the note from Little Moonbeam's father)
 * 1) "Since we're done now, why don't you tell me about yourself?"
 * 2) "Nice gun. I've never seen one like that." (she mentions her father and re-triggers the option to ask about him)
 * 3) "That's all for now, I guess" (taking you back one step in the dialogue tree)
 * 4) "So, whatever happened to your father?"
 * 5) Last, "Sydney, I found a note from your father. He didn't abandon you."
 * You should then receive the Ultra SMG and ammunition again. The above steps can be repeated as many times as you want for a limitless supply of both the gun and 10mm ammunition. You can also exit the dialogue and come back to repeat it again at a later time.

Duplicating Weapon Ammunition

 * If you find a group of enemies (raiders will work best) and kill one of them, you can place a weapon (like Firelance) and one round of ammunition (like alien power cell) on the body, and then break the other enemies weapons. One will then grab the weapon and ammunition to use it against you. After killing your enemy, he/she/it will carry your weapon, as well as more ammunition than you left.
 * Now a better way to do this (above) is to find a single raider and use the Mesmetron to stun them. Now take their weapons (or they will probably still use it) and give them a weapon with one ammunition and then tell them to walk it off. (Make sure he pulls out the weapon or it won't work) Then kill him, and take the gun then the ammunition (Recommended: take the gun first). You should now have more ammunition than before.

NOTE: Certain weapons such as the alien blaster and Mesmetron have limited ammunition, this can be highly useful.
 * As long as the weapon you want the ammunition duplicated for is more powerful than the weapon the enemy is using, than you will not have to break any of the enemies weapons. They will still get it from the body.

Chinese stealth armor
Requires Operation Anchorage

See Multiple Headgear: Tower of Hats or Multiple Headgear: Nth Degree Skill Exploit

Infinite Fingers & Ears

 * With the Lawbringer or Contract Killer perk, you can knock an essential non-player character (e.g. Shrapnel and Rothchild) unconscious as many times as you like. They will spawn an ear or finger each time they are knocked unconscious.

Infinite Random Items

 * When given a random item from a slaver at paradise falls you can talk to them again, repeatedly, and you will continue to get more items. [PATCHED]

Bartering for Bottlecap Profit & One Free Repair

 * 1) View a vendor's inventory to see if the vendor has two copies of the same weapon or armor, or to see if they have one copy and you have another. The condition of both items must be different, and the vendor must start with at least one of the items, the one with the higher condition. -Sell your copy of the item to the vendor now.
 * 2) Of the two different copies of the same item now in the vendor's inventory, select the copy of the item that is in the worst state of repair; the worse the state, the more money you make per transaction, and the faster this process goes.
 * 3) Buy it, then sell it back again. You'll notice when you bought it, its condition or value increased; repeat this until the item is at 100% repair in your inventory. It should only take 2 sell/buy cycles to do.
 * 4) Then sell the 100% condition item back exactly like in the previous step (if you had to do it). You will notice that during the previous step and this step, whenever it's in your inventory, it is at the improved condition and value and when it returns to the vendor, it returns to the proper original value again. This means when you sell it, it sells for 100% condition price, but when you buy it back, you purchase it for its imperfect condition price, which should net you a free profit.
 * 5) Buy it back, sell it again as many times as you require to deplete the vendor's bottlecaps along with any and every item they have that you want.

Obviously this exploit will not work if you try to use an armor item to complete the process if they do not carry or restock armor items. One, they will not start with the one item they need to start with for it to work, and two, the armor you sell to them will disappear instantly. Same goes, replacing "armor" for "weapons."
 * It is recommended that when you're done, you buy back the broken item you used, as it is relatively cheap, and it will once again appear at 100% condition in your inventory; a relatively free 100% repair.
 * Purchase the broken item first.
 * Both copies of the exploit item you use would have to be the last items you buy, though, as once they're out of the vendor's inventory, the vendor exploit will be done working.
 * EDIT* Does not work for Xbox Platinum Hits.

Ghost Item Duplication for Bottlecaps
PC: This trick will essentially let you "duplicate" items when interacting with a vendor for the sole purpose of making it seem like you have a lot of a valuable item, thus cleaning the vendor out for all their caps/ammunition/whatever item they are selling that you want. It might take some patience, but quite lucrative, especially at lower levels. This exploit makes use of the pause between high stacked item (6+ of any particular item, enough to bring up the "how many do you want to move" dialogue box) to trick the game into thinking you're moving a large amount of another item. It does not, however, actually duplicate that item.

HERE'S HOW:
 * 1) Gather a large number of any particular item (ammunition works best for this).
 * 2) Find the non-player character you wish to get caps/items/ammunition/etc. from.
 * 3) Ensure the item that you have a lot of is ABOVE the item you want to "duplicate".
 * 4) Enter trade with the non-player character.
 * 5) Tricky part. You need to click on the stacked item (the 300 10mm rounds in this example), and almost immediately after, hit "O" for "all". If done correctly, you will still see the "how many do you want to move" dialogue box AFTER you've hit the "X" key. Simply hit "X" again, and the item that was below the stacked item (the assault rifle in this example) should appear in the non-player character's side of the barter screen, with however many of the stacked item there were (300 in this example... 300 assault rifles x the 50 cap value = A LOT of caps), allowing you to basically get whatever you want from the vendor for "free".

EXAMPLE: You have a assault rifle in fairly good condition, worth 50 caps. You also have 300 10mm rounds. Your inventory needs to look like this for this exploit to work:
 * 10mm round (300)
 * Assault rifle

NOTE: Even though you supposedly traded the vendor 300 assault rifles, when you look at their side of the barter screen after you've traded, you will notice the phantom assault rifles are gone, and the vendor only has however many assault rifles you actually had.... which was 1. So you can't duplicate hard to find or rare items for repair purposes this way.

Skipping levels

 * Keep in mind that this skips a level. You do not level up twice (meaning you will only be able to set points for 1 level up). With that being said, this glitch is only useful if you want a faster way to get the Achievements for reaching level 8, 14, 20, and 30.
 * Skipping levels still rewards you with the boost in Health for both levels. Maximum HP increase per level is (EN / 2) + 3.
 * You must gain enough XP to level up. You need to go through a door (to load a new area) before the Perk screen appears. Once through the door the Perk screen will automatically pop up, and you will have skipped the next level.
 * You can skip multiple levels. Once you have successfully skipped a level, just load your autosave, turn around and go through the door again before the Perk screen, and repeat.
 * You can also level up past level 30. You will get the health boost for each level past 30. You cannot continue leveling up after level 30 on the Xbox 360 or PS3 using the above "level skipping" method.

Quick Spawning Experience
Requires Operation Anchorage

See Operation: Anchorage exploits

Multiple Headgear: Tower of Hats
Requires Operation Anchorage You'll need the Chinese stealth armor for this exploit. While wearing this suit, it appears that you may wear any number of hats, head-wraps and helmets and the effects will stack. It should be noted, however, that if a helmet or mask is equipped which covers the face-slot, such as those of the various power armors or hockey masks, any glasses which you are wearing will be unequipped.

You will continue to wear all equipped headgear even if you change clothing. While wearing different clothing, however, if you equip another piece of headgear, all headgear which you had previously had equipped may be unequipped. Which equipment will and won't cause this to happen requires further testing.

While the skill and stat bonuses from headgear stack as normal, the math for how the DR adds up requires further testing. However, it is possible to attain at least a DR of 41, which - even accounting for the added carrying weight of the various headgear - makes this armor arguably the best in the game in terms of the weight:DR ratio. (Observed on the PS3, current patch)

Multiple Headgear: Nth Degree Skill Exploit
Requires Operation Anchorage

You need the Chinese stealth armor and two hockey masks. Equip the armor, equip one of the hockey masks, then repeatedly equip the other mask. If you check your unarmed stats, it will have been raised by 10 instead of 5. Keep on tapping to raise it by 15, 20, 25, etc. Skill value will stop rising eventually, but this exploit can still increase the damage of unarmed weapons high enough to deal up to 2000 damage with a power fist. . The exploit works with any skill or S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat that it raised by headgear, providing that you have two copies of that headgear, or a different headgear to equip first. However, the Unarmed skill is the only skill that continues to raise weapon damage after you reach 100 skill points.

However, the bonus is not permanent, if the original equipped headgear is unequipped, your stats will revert back to their current value(s) without the exploit (e.g. the base values based on allocated Skill points and the related S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat's current base value). Due to the temporary nature of this exploit, it will not help you to qualify for perks which have a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stat requirement, but it can help you qualify you for those with a skill requirement.

Big Guns
At the Bethesda Ruins, there is a raider that spawns every 72 hours that has a copy of U.S. Army: 30 Handy Flamethrower Recipes on him\her. The raider in possession of the skill book will be holding a flamer.

Science
Within the Shalebridge Tunnels (the mutated forager ant tunnels, as opposed to the neighboring "invader ant" tunnels) is an evil non-player character called the "Ant Researcher", who contains a Big Book of Science skill book on his corpse. Every 72 hours, another Ant Researcher respawns within the Forager Ant tunnels. Kill him, leave the tunnel, wait 72 hours, then re-enter and kill him again for the book. Repeat as many times as necessary.

Temporary Boost then Skill Point Reallocation
If a perk has a required skill level (e.g. Entomologist has a science requirement of 40), allocate your skill points to the number required, select the desired perk and return to the Skill point allocation screen. You can now reset your points and put them to whatever you want - the perk is still selected even though you no longer meet the requirement. This glitch was originally discovered for New Vegas but also works in Fallout 3.

see also: Multiple Headgear: Nth Degree Skill Exploit

Infinite Fingers & Ears for Karma
See Infinite Fingers & Ears above.

World Objects
NOTE: This requires you to not be encumbered

The player and all non-player characters take damage from being hit by any object at a high speed, including items that may be placed in your inventory (weapons, aid, apparel, etc.), and objects that can merely be moved around but not taken (oil drums, tires, etc.). This allows killing of any non-player character without Karma loss/gain, or a change in social status (aggressive/friendly) between you and other non-player characters associated with the victim. To do so, simply hold up or place the object in front of you so that it is between you and the target, then run into it as fast as possible. Larger objects (e.g. shopping carts or oil drums) do more damage when used this way, as opposed to smaller items like bottles of whiskey.

Contracted Companion Kills
You can also simply attack an non-player character as much as you want, dealing up to their total HP -1 in dmg; as long as you don't kill them. If you have a follower with you, they will begin to attack them, and usually can finish them off. When the non-player character dies, as long as you were not the one to deal the final blow, you should not lose any karma. With an non-player character such as Fawkes, this becomes quick and easy.

Careful, however, as sometimes, if you accidentally attack or hit an non-player character, it can be enough to turn them hostile in the eyes of your follower(s); even if you stash your weapon after the initial, accidental hit, and even if the non-player character goes back to friendly status with you, the initial hit may be enough to make your followers become hostile to the target independently and they may continue to be hostile to the non-player character (and vice versa) until the non-player character, or your follower is dead.

Companions
NOTE: Be aware that having more companions will increase the processing load on your system. You may experience low frame-rates, stuttering, freezing, graphic glitches, game glitches, corrupt save games and system instability. Obtaining three companions is very simple If you have good karma, as you just need to recruit Dogmeat, Fawkes, and Star Paladin Cross, however, the game starts to lag a lot more.

Karmic Loss-Less Kills
See Contracted Companion Kills above.

Dogmeat and Knock-Down
See Access Dogmeat's Inventory with Knock-Down Below.

Sergeant RL-3 Approach
With this glitch, you can get as many companions as you want, how many times you want. This means you can do this glitch prior to Raven Rock, then after it, without a problem. It works rather slowly, so patience is necessary.
 * 1) Have Sergeant RL-3 in your party.
 * 2) Go to the companion you want to hire and tell RL-3 to wait. Then talk to him and choose the dialog option, "not just yet, I want to talk about something" and then fire him.
 * 3) Adjust your karma as necessary (i.e. hack a private computer for bad [Underworld or Megaton]/give away purified water for good [outside Megaton or outside Rivet City])
 * 4) Hire the companion you want.
 * 5) Go inside a building and wait 7–8 days. You should receive the message "Sergeant RL-3 has returned to Canterbury Commons" which opens a companion slot.
 * 6) Adjust your karma as necessary (see step 3) so that it is neutral
 * 7) Rehire Sergeant RL-3
 * 8) Repeat steps 2-7

Puppies! Approach
Requires Broken Steel''
 * 1) At level 22, get the Puppies! perk.
 * 2) Kill Dogmeat (if he's in your party) this will free up his companion slot
 * 3) Add any follower (must have correct karma).
 * 4) Repeat steps 2-3 until you have enough followers

NOTE: This approach does not require waiting days for RL-3 to return, so this may be a more favorable approach for those with Broken Steel added on.

Protector Casdin

 * 1) Go to Fort Independence and get the "Outcast Collection Agent" job from Casdin.
 * 2) Supply Casdin with any item he will accept.
 * 3) If you kill Casdin and loot his body or pickpocket him, he will have the items you gave him, but they will all be fully repaired, and theoretically, more valuable than when you gave them to him. A fully repaired plasma rifle nabs you around 1799 caps. All you have to do is find a vendor with that much. Alternatively, you can spend lots of caps on weapons or repairs and then sell the plasma rifle to make your money back.
 * 4) An easy way to retrieve your items is to use the Victory rifle or the Gauss rifle (Requires Operation: Anchorage)
 * 5) Get to a hidden status on his left side
 * 6) Save in case of a miss; a missed sneak attack critical that hits his body even on the arm or leg will kill him with high enough skills.
 * 7) Either manually or with V.A.T.S., target his Ripper, it's his default equipped weapon.
 * 8) When you shoot, he should get knocked down, be careful in V.A.T.S. for Mysterious Stranger. Helpful elsewhere is counter-productive here. Killing him means the exploit's over.
 * 9) While he's knocked down, you can loot him like a dead body and pickpocket freely.
 * 10) He will automatically equip the strongest helmet and armor, which you will never be able to get back without a better armor at 100% (which he'd repair), the best armor he can take, though, is the Tesla armor and there are infinite of those. As long as you never give him ammunition, he should never have ammunition as he starts with a default Ripper weapon and no other weapon or ammunition, and therefore, he should never equip any ranged weapon, however more powerful, due to not having ammunition.
 * 11) Every once in a while you need to replace his original Ripper with a working one, because once it breaks, you can't do this anymore.
 * Note: You can only do this with items he will accept, this does include the alien blaster, though, just don't give him the ammunition, or he'll equip it and it could be lost. Also, the rewards are flat rates for each item, so just give all items at any condition for the most items at maxed condition. A Tesla Helmet will always get 3 stimpaks, whether at 5% cnd or 100%.

Note: He may not permanently keep all the items you give to him, so be certain to do these repair runs in common, short bursts with a small number of items, and be certain to retrieve your items immediately.

One Instant, 100% Repair
See Bartering for Bottlecap Profit & One Free Repair above.

Haley's 100% Repair Glitch Exploit
Requires Point Lookout'' FYI you can just walk outside then right back in and it will rasie by 5 but if you go over 100 it will go back down to 15 and you have to do it all over again, if it doesn't work the first time fast travel away then go back it should work.
 * With every successive "visit" to Haley's Hardware, Haley's Repair skill increases by 5 points (3%) up to the maximum 100 points allowing vendor-repair-only items to be fully repaired. The increases in skill are permanent and are an inevitable consequence of frequent visits to his shop throughout the game. It requires that the shop be re-loaded by the player's system. This is achieved by walking far enough away to load a new cell, and then walking back and re-entering the shop. The end of the dock to the south is far enough away. Alternatively walk up to the vending machine and open it then close and walk back in.
 * The glitch for raising Haley's Repair skill is caused by his suit, removing it causes the glitch to stop working. So don't reverse pickpocket him for it if you want make his repair grow higher.

Increased Movement Speed Exploit
(Needs Verification for other platforms) You can effectively triple or even quadruple your movement speed by using two-handed melee weapons to your advantage.

TIP: Do this in third person as it is easier to pull off

If you have a two-handed melee weapon equipped and is un-holstered you need to:
 * 1) Run forward and jump (you need to be holding the move forward button the whole time for this to work)
 * 2) When coming close to hitting the ground you need to press and hold the block button
 * 3) When you see your feet touch the ground and just as you hear your feet hit the ground you need to release the block button and keep pressing the jump button as fast as you can
 * 4) Repeat steps 2-3

This is very difficult to pull of because of the timing involved but the payoff is well worth it in those long haul quests to locations that you have never visited before.

This may even work in Fallout: New Vegas but I will be testing to see if this works sometime soon.

Access Dogmeat's Inventory with Knock-Down

 * 1) Get Dogmeat as a companion.
 * 2) Obtain a weapon with knockdown, preferably Victory rifle from the unmarked location Sniper Shack. If you don't have a high enough lockpick skill, use Dogmeat's fetch function, and he can bypass the lock to get it for you.
 * 3) Now, it's easiest to tell Dogmeat to wait for you so he's no longer your follower, he tends to carry out a regular non-player character AI at that point, and becomes far less likely to become fixated on you and follow you around/watch you constantly.
 * 4) Get hidden behind Dogmeat to one side.
 * 5) Using freeaim, preferably, target one of Dogmeat's legs. This is important. If you hit him in the body, with a low enough health and high enough small guns, Dogmeat could die from the shot. Save if you use V.A.T.S. in case you miss, because you can also hit his torso or head with a miss in V.A.T.S. with the same potential killing effect. Also, if you have the perk, Mysterious Stranger is a threat.
 * 6) Shoot Dogmeat and get the sneak attack critical. He will be knocked down. While he's knocked down, you can access his infinite inventory like he's any other World Object Container. Place as much as you want or don't need, or need to put into his inventory, and now you have more free space.
 * To retrieve the items, ask him to fetch again and ask for any type of item, he will give back EVERYTHING at once.
 * WARNING: If you're crouched while accessing his inventory, it's like pickpocketing. This means placing grenades or mines will make the first one go live. The move is a one-hit-kill move, and this would be counter-productive!!! To bypass this, stand while you're placing items. As the knock-down effect also has a horizontal knock-back affect, he can also be pushed fairly far away from you; so standing and walking, as opposed to crouching and "crawling," may be necessary to get to him before his inventory is no longer accessible. To avoid having to walk a lot to get to him in time, tell him to wait by something he'll run into, like a wall, and make sure he faces the wall.

With this, you can get back under an encumbered state and quick-travel again to, say, your Megaton/Tenpenny Tower House, and then once in your room, ask for everything back and allocate it where you want or need it.

Body Containers and Speed Walking
Simply find a near-by enemy (raiders and Talon Company or Regulators are plentiful among the wasteland; bugs, mainly the radroach, are extra light and tend to be the best possible container if one is near-by), walk up to the enemy and activate the body for its storage, and now proceed to dump any and all excess loot you know you don't directly need but want to keep for other reasons (selling, collecting, etc.). When you're done, use the grab function (Click the right thumbstick for the 360 and PS3, and the Z key on the PC) to pick up the container/body, and now proceed to carry it across the place you're in.

Notes:
 * There is an exception with some non-player character and critter body containers, such as super mutants, deathclaws, brahmin, and ghouls of any sort; the bodies are incredibly heavy in the eyes of the physics engine and will not move very easily if at all when you try to grab and carry them. For those with add-ons, trogs are particularly heavy, but will drag at a faster pace than walking encumbered, try using wildmen, Wild Bill, or the pre-dead slave bodies, they appear to be part of the permanent game world, and seem to never disappear. Ant bodies behave more-or-less the same result as a trog body.
 * If you grab a character by the head, it creates a very weak grab point, and they will drag in a way which slows you down; they may also hit things which will cause you to lose your grip point. To avoid this, simply grab much closer to the center of gravity, the chest and back primarily, as close to the center as possible. Grabbing attached limbs is not as big as a problem until you grab things like the hand and feet, in which case, the problem is nearly, if not equally, as bad as grabbing the head.
 * Human bodies are heavier; what this means is, though they carry at a fast speed, they also dangle a little below the cursor. This is a blessing and a curse; you can actually carry out a fight while trying to hold on, though to keep the grab, I believe you must not use V.A.T.S; however, the fast paced combat may force you to lose your grabbing point anyway. When walking, the drooping body can catch the ground when trying to go up inclines, making you grab it again; try switching to a far, third-person P.O.V. and looking up. With the camera so far zoomed out, you can still see most of what you could originally see.
 * Bodies aren't world objects, and as a result, aren't permanent containers, they can disappear. If you take them too far, or too many people die in the close vicinity, the game may start deleting the oldest bodies to help cope including your container body, so save often and save before you put stuff into a body, and use a few slots. All the problems for the body (with the contained items) disappearing aren't specifically clear without use of a G.E.C.K. Though refilling a body can take time, it is recommended that you save before you dump things in a body; the physics engine can do some spiffy things, and make retrieving your container difficult after a fight, or more commonly an issue: after reloading a save.
 * Combining this with holstering your weapon and putting on lighter armor during transit, you can reach a rather remarkable speed-walking pace, which can half traveling time (though using a knock-down effect weapon and Dogmeat is even faster and safer).

Note: With the walking method, you must spend time walking through each cell between where you went and your destination/central-drop point, this leaves certain non-player character's open to being spawned, attacked and killed while you walk at a fast pace in the same cell(s).

Moving Large/Heavy Objects
To move a larger object, grab a smaller object. The best choice would be a barrel.
 * First get the barrel vertical
 * Move the barrel into a bigger object and move it so that it is laying down horizontally against the bigger object.
 * Now push the barrel into the bigger object, with some good aiming. The bigger object will move without a problem.

Friendly Talon Company/Hitmen
This makes all the mercs that spawn outside buildings and metros friendly to the player.
 * Only works if the player has not been confronted by hitmen yet.
 * 1) First get Very Evil or Very Good karma.
 * 2) Go to a building where the Hitmen spawn often (Lucky's is a good one).
 * 3) Save while in there and walk outside. If you're lucky you'll hear the sound of guns being drawn. You have to quickly go into your Pip-Boy 3000 menu and fast travel somewhere random in the Wasteland. It has to be somewhere far enough away so the Hitmen don't follow to talk, the nearby metro is too close.
 * 4) Fast travel to the metro next to Lucky's and run to Lucky's.
 * 5) The hitmen will walk towards you as you get close and will say something like "And now its time for you to die" or "surprise" but will remain unhostile.

Falling Without Dying
If you fall off of a high place (such as the Tenpenny Tower), one can save their game before hitting the ground. When this save is loaded, one will harmlessly fall to the ground. This can also be used with V.A.T.S. If a person is near you while you're falling, you can enter V.A.T.S. the moment before you hit the ground, attack the person, and walk away with only 10% of the damage you would've gotten.

Sometimes you can also fall great distances, and hit little notches along the way down if you fall against something all the way down, like a Highway support; however, this requires the object you fall against to have notches or something(s) sticking out of it, all the way down its side, for you to hit regularly to break your one big fall into a bunch of harmless smaller ones. Most highways don't have these in their supports, so saving before testing is recommended.

HP

 * If you save your game then die right away, then reload your game and quickly open your pip boy, you will be able to use unlimited stimpaks, and boost your health up like: 900/240[PATCHED]