I find myself repeating the same advice to new players in game so I thought I come here and post what has worked for me and will work for everyone in regards to getting started from scratch, once you have the game up and running. A word of warning this process does take a decent amount of time to get the most out of it, but in relative terms it is a very fast way to get yourself set up with a lot of gear and levels for your main character.
There is a TL/DR version at the bottom for the lazy-eyed
Step 1. Make a new character, which i will now refer to as your "alt" (alternate character). This alt should have 10 strength, 8-10 intelligence, 10 endurance and 8-10 agility (you can mix and match the other stats to your liking), and have at least Outdoorsman and barter tagged, i recommend tagging repair also but you can tag a weapon skill if you really want (this character if all goes right will never be in combat anyway).
Choose whichever traits you like, but try to avoid small frame (as it reduces carry weight), bruiser (as it drops 2 AP), and loner (as you can't have a brahmin follow you). I personally took skilled and bonehead, its up to you though really.
Step 2. Get this alt to level 2 putting the skillpoints into outdoorsman (there are many ways to get enough XP in the hub to do this without fighting), then a new quest will appear on your world map labeled "A Tent in the Wasteland" (it should be a small yellow circle just to the southeast of the Hub), once you get the quest, travel to the next location (to the west usually) with rats (take at least a melee weapon), on the ground outside of the house you will find a sledgehammer, take this and hold onto it for later and finish the quest. A tent will be given to you once completed (you have to pick it up), set this tent up right beside the Junktown mine (just to the west of junktown) and store anything and everything you feel like keeping here for now.
Step 3. Take the sledgehammer you picked up earlier (or any other sledgehammer or supersledge) and only that sledgehammer and go to Junktown mine. If the mine isnt being pillaged by players (which does happen on occasion), then mine minerals and ore indiscriminately until you are holding just under double your carry weight (your character can walk when overweight unless he is carrying over double his carry weight) watch out for thieves while doing this as your stuff can be stolen out of your inventory quite easily here (two ways to avoid this; mine some ore and put it in your spare hand, so it cannot be stolen, though any minerals you get will be at risk, another way is only mine your carry weight so you can just outrun thieves if they try anything). Store the ore and minerals in a pile at your tent for now, and repeat this process for as long as you can stand to (the longer the better the end result) but you can move onto step 4 after 1 haul if you like and continue this when you have time later.
Step 4. When you have amassed a glorious pile of minerals and ore you are in the final stretch of getting started out, the hard work is done and you can relax a little. Go out and find some wood (i think you need 5) and a tool (or craft the tool) then upgrade your tent by using the wood at the fireplace and then "talking" to the fireplace and upgrading it to have a primitive workbench (this is where the tool and extra wood are used), you can make a map too, so your main character can get to this location (once he reads the map). Move all of your ore and minerals to within 1 hex of this new workbench so you can use the pick up all hotkey and still craft (this step can be done earlier if you can be bothered, to avoid having to move your piles).
Now you have some choices, and others opinions will vary on what to do with your pile of ore and minerals, I will share what has worked for me, I encourage others to share on ideas for what should be crafted to start out, or other methods that have worked for them etc;
Firstly, i turned enough ore into metal parts (or minerals into gunpowder) to level up my alt to level 6, getting outdoorsman to 100, barter to 125 and repair to 50 as bare minimums for now (barter is max at 125, getting repair to 100 is also important, but pushing outdoorsman to 175 should be your main goal after these minimums). Once you have these minimums, you can get the support perks; pack rat, strong back and ranger, ranger in particular will make any new tents that he creates have workbenches at them, which is important for utilising the ingredients you farmed in safety, packrat and strong back will greatly increase your carrying capacity for future mining.
Once I had those support perks I set up a new tent (outpost because of ranger), again next to Junktown mine, and transferred all of my minerals etc to the proper workbench there, I made a map of this location and gave it to my main and sent him here to level up from the crafting XP, because I had no professions on my main, I simply mass crafted .44 ammo until I could make no more, and then turned the rest of the metal parts into spiked knuckles, I then used my alt (with 125 barter) to sell the .44 ammo to the general store in the Hub market and bought a bunch of guns, caps and drugs for my main, and the spiked knuckles at the gunshop just south of the general store for other things my main would use.
This process, got me a base with almost everything my main character needed in abundance, while leveling him up to the point where he could easily go out farming for himself (In particular being high enough leveled to start doing the daily quest at gunrunners for ammo and stacks of big guns). As I got further along I started being able to craft things that I intended to use instead of sell, and from all the loot that drops from the gunrunners quest you can basically trade what you dont need for what you need etc. Later you can start accumulating and being rich and also should have enough caps to reroll if you wish to perfect your builds or if you feel mistakes were made.
TL/DR Version;1. Make an alt with; 10str, 8-10int, 10end, 8-10agi, tag outdoorsman, barter and repair, and take skilled and bonehead as traits.
2. Have him do the tent in the wasteland quest and set the tent up next to Junktown mine (or any public mine really, junktown is just easiest).
3. Mine both ore and minerals from junktown mine until you can no longer stand to, storing them at the new tent.
4. Use your main character to mass craft .44 ammo and spiked knuckles as they can be sold at the hub easily wit your alt's barter skill for items that your main character needs, and the XP gained from crafting these items will level up your main character enough to do most things (caravans, GR quest etc).
5. Profit. Dump what you learned here and do whatever you want with the freedom of a big stack of gear, caps and XP.
Topic: Getting started out (utilising mining) (Read 6046 times)