Big Town

Big Town is a town in Fallout 3

Location
It is far north of Vault 101, near the river bend, and southeast of the Moonbeam Outdoor Cinema. You can see it from a reasonable distance: it is a small town with many houses. It is only accessible using a bridge and the town is surrounded by barricades.

Background
used to be a sprawl of suburban housing, but has been transformed into a makeshift fortress, with walls made of cars, debris and rubble. The dilapidated homes are fortified with barbed wire and sandbags. The residents of Big Town are comprised of former residents of Little Lamplight, who were ushered into the town following either their 16th or 18th birthday (depending on the country/game system).

Big Town was glorified by those of high authority in Little Lamplight, and was made out to be a safe, comfortable area. In fact, Big Town is constantly besieged by slavers and super mutants, whilst the demoralized residents can do little to repel the invasions. When the Lone Wanderer arrives in the settlement for the first time, they are informed that some residents were kidnapped by Super Mutants and taken to the old police station in Germantown.

Related Quests

 * Big Trouble in Big Town
 * A Sticky Situation
 * Bittercup Runneth Over
 * Ticking Timebomb
 * Strictly Business

Important Skill Thresholds

 * With a Medicine skill of 40, you can get a karma bonus and a handful of bottle caps for healing Timebomb, who is found inside Red's house.

Loot

 * Red's Clinic contains a copy of the D.C. Journal of Internal Medicine, lying on her kitchen table. In the adjacent room with the clinic's back door and the door to the town, there will be a holotape on the table which helps The Replicated Man quest. The tape will only appear so long as The Replicated Man quest has been started, but not finished.
 * The Lucky 8 Ball can be obtained from Timebomb here, assuming the player meets the requirements before, during, and after Big Trouble in Big Town.

NPCs
Red and Shorty only appear if you complete Big Trouble in Big Town. Sticky only appears if you complete A Sticky Situation.

Bugs

 * Be careful when fast-travelling to Big Town (Xbox 360) - there have been cases when, as soon as you arrive, a random wasteland creature spawns inside the town and begins attacking you. The townsfolk will help you taking it down, but it's advisable to act quickly as they can die easily. Yao Guai, Giant Radscorpions and even a Deathclaw have been known to appear in Big Town.
 * Some players have reported that when returning to Big Town some time after completing Big Trouble in Big Town, the town was infested with Super Mutants and that all of the human NPCs were dead. This tends to occur only when you chose not to say anything that helps to fend off the Super Mutants.
 * This also happens frequently even if teach them how to defend themselves (Small Guns). If you spend too much time in the same map cell, random events still occur within it. This can lead to wandering Deathclaws and other random enemies that they can't handle stumbling into the town, killing everyone without you being able to do anything. To avoid this, either pick a defense plan independent of their encountering risk (Sneak) or never walk near Big Town while exploring the Wastes, only fast traveling there (not particularly viable).
 * Reverse-pickpocketing overpowered weapons and armor into all the town's residents has also been reported to work in a single report, but isn't viable long-term since the residents will run out of ammo eventually.
 * Enemies may (rarely) randomly spawn inside Big Town itself, as it is not seperate from the general Wasteland map. This can even occur as you enter and exit the buildings in Big Town. If this happens, Big Town is eventually doomed, as dead enemies will continue to respawn after 72 hours. You can move the bodies to stop them from respawning inside the town walls, but this only works for human enemies (i.e. Raiders) as creature corpses are too heavy to move.
 * On some versions of the game, there is a glitch to gain infinite experience in Big Town. First, talk to Bittercup. You must get on her good side for the glitch to work. After Bittercup talks to you, she will say that nobody understands her. After this choose 'Nobody understands me either.' Then talk to Pappy and choose 'You came here with Bittercup?' If not successful the first time, keep trying until a success. Keep choosing the same speech and your XP will go up slowly.(PS3) If you enter certain buildings (not the one where Bittercup is) before initiating the glitch, the glitch may not work. Note - This glitch is thought to have been fixed in the Fallout 3 patch 1.1.
 * People in the town don't speak their dialogue, but the text stays there as if they are. This means that you have to read the dialogue yourself unfortunately.