Earning Caps in Fallout 3

After seeing several people asking all sorts of questions involving money I figured I would make guide for it. I will mostly go into how to make money as soon as you leave the vault but also vendors that are the best to use, and various other things.

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1: Leaving the Vault: How to get caps early and some methods of making caps

The start of the game is probably the hardest part of the game, you have barely any supplies, zero caps and in this game without caps you will find yourself low on a lot of essentials.

So here is a good strategy to work with: As soon as you leave the vault head straight to Megaton, there will usually be a traveling merchant outside, sell all the junk you got when you were in the vault, now turn around and head for Springvale.

Some of the destroyed buildings have safes or containers that have several nice things in them to sell or use so stock up what you find. Then head North and look for the only intact house in the neighborhood that is Silver's.

There are a few ways to go through this, if you tagged Speech you can convince her to give you the money which is a whopping 400 caps, if you are evil you could always kill her and ransack the place. This encounter is mainly for the main quest but it is avoidable and the quick windfall should help nicely.

Then there is the infamous Power of Atom quest, make sure you have high enough speech before attempting it for a higher reward for the good and evil sides to the quest.

Now by the end of this you probably will have a nice sized wallet but we aren't finished here. If you have decent repair skills you can fix the water pipes in Megaton for Walter which can get you around 100 caps and you can sell scrap metal for about 5 caps each.

Also you can use repair on those horrible weapons you see in the game, the 32. Pistol and Chinese Pistol mainly as they are a main weapon of Raiders early game. Grab them, repair them, sell them and you get a nice chunk of caps for it.

Another thing. Ammo, ammo is worth more then its weight in caps, have a ammo to a weapon you don't have yet? Sell it, or ammo for a weapon type you don't use, sell it!(Missiles for example are nice to have money wise) also sell melee weapons if you don't use melee. Doing this will give you plenty of cash to buy what you need.

Notice those Prewar Books laying around? They have a purpose! Near the bottom of the map south of The Citadel there is the Arlington Library, you will probably first find this in the Wasteland Survivor Guide. There is a scribe there who will buy prewar books from you for 100 caps a pop! So make sure you pick up each prewar book you see and store them.

Another thing is mines, disarm them, sell them, frag mines lend decent profit and you can find loads of them in raider camps.

After the Blood Ties quest you can sell Blood Packs for a small profit if you finish it in a way where the Family is still alive.

Nuka Cola is everywhere, drink it for health and you get a single cap, you could also sell it around 10 caps a bottle, but do NOT sell Quantum Bottles to a common merchant, you can make more profit selling it to the people in Girdershade.

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Should I raise Barter skills? If not what skills should I raise?:

It is not worth raising Barter skill, maybe put a spare point or so but do not dedicate to it. If you must, hunt down skill books or the bobblehead found in Evergreen Mills Bazaar. But you will make more then enough money for Barter to be useful. And since Barter is not required to make money that means you really should not get the Master Trader perk, get the Scrounger perk and sell ammo you find.

So raise Speech over Barter, convincing a guy to cough up a better reward will be more worth it in the end.