Fallout 3

(Semi-Copied over from "Last, Best Hope of Humanity")

The best advice I can offer for this achievement is to play the game Good, as it is much easier to get Bad Karma then Good Karma. When you get to Level 7, you can get the other two achievements, "Mercenary" (Level 8 Neutral) and "Reaver" (Level 8 Bad), as well.

Upon reaching level 7, you can either get more XP until you are just on the brink of Level 8 or you can play it safe, save at the start of the level, and work towards 8 and each side of karma.

To get karma, here are some tips:

For Good karma, give Purified Water to the tramp outside of Megaton. He will be to the right laying on some rocks just outside the gate. You can get purified water from Wadsworth at your house. (NOTE: You will only have a house if you have completed "The Power of the Atom".)

For Bad karma, well... this one is easy! Murder, steal, massacre, hit people, whatever you want to do.


ANOTHER TIP:

A friend of mine recommended saving the "Power of the Atom" quest until you reach one of the levels before those in the achievement (7, 13, 19). Once you get to the level, either blow up the bomb or disarm it, and depending on which, you will get XP and karma for completing the quest. The one problem with this is that you might not have Tenpenny Tower in order to blow the bomb up at level 7.


Good luck!

** MINOR SPOILERS BELOW. **

To get this achievement, you need to reach level 8 with positive karma.

Getting to level 8

Straightforward enough, but there are ways to achieve this more quickly. First, avoid companions.

Second, look out for the NPCs who request certain types of items, and then watch to see if redeeming those items provides XP. Two such "standing orders":

* Scrap metal in Megaton. (Easy to find everywhere.)
* Pre-war books at the Arlington Library. (Excellent per-book XP.)

Lastly, I recommend hacking every terminal, picking every lock, and attempting (almost) every speech challenge. All provide nearly guaranteed XP, without the hassle of shooting an Albino Radscorpion or Super Mutant Overlord a half-million times.

Karma

To maximize good karma, always focus on being kind, charitable, avoid killing innocents, and go out of your way to help innocents. (Kill raiders and muties, free/protect wastelanders, etc.)

If you need a karma boost, I have two suggestions:

* At the Church of the Atom (Megaton) or Saint Monica's Church (Rivet City), donate caps. If you have a lot of cash lying around, it will be very easy and quick to get into "positive" karma.
* In Megaton, give away your scrap metal rather than requesting payment. (You still get the XP.)

Got some advise from another member on Trueachievements so apologies if I've repeated what they suggested.

After visiting the Super Duper Mart for the side mission for the survival guide you probably at some point picked up some frag mines. After you've given Moira the food and medication she'll give you a mission to get a frag mine but before you go you will notice a merc standing by a door way. Go thorough the doorway and then do a 180. To the left of the door you'll notice shelving, you need to facing it. Equip the frag mine then toss it on the floor. Hopefully your XP is high enough to disarm it. Then repeat the process. You'll notice that you get XP everytime you disarm, ok admittingly its only 6 or 12xp but providing your karma is either good, bad or neutral your level will rise accordingly and you dont even have to venture out in the big wide world. (Warning it does take a while but it will knock out a few chievs)

If you don't have any problems with a glitch/mechanic abuse, there is a way to get XP retalively fast after you leave the vault.

The first thing you should keep in mind as you start your game is that it is advisable to keep your character barely good (try stealing things without being caught, saving often, and loading the most recent save when you realize you are neutral) if you are going for all the leveling achievements (the end part of the guide will be assuming you are). Also, make explosives one of your tag skills as you will need a skill of 25 to do this method. Having an intelligence of at least 4 is advisable.

First, go to Megaton and the Craterside Supply (Talk to Lucas Simms at the entrance of Megaton if you are unsure of where this is) and talk to the shop owner, Maria. Tell her you will help with her book and choose to talk about Minefield.

After you finish talking with her, make "The Wasteland Survival Guide" your active quest. then travel to Minefield which should be where your objective marker is. Disarm two mines and fast travel back to Megaton.

Go to the Craterside Supply and make the frag mines you picked up your active weapon. As you walk in, you should see a mercenary leaning on a wall. Head directly behind the wall he is leaning on, crouch, then throw a frag mine and pick it up.

You should keep this process going, getting 5 XP each time you pick up a mine (up to seven with the swift learner perk maxed out). I would advise getting the swift learner perk as quick as possible to increase your speed of leveling up.

One thing to note is that past 5 pm, Billy Crealy will visit the shop and wander, along with his girl. I recomend waiting until 8:00 am when this happens. Eventually, the mercanary will want to go to bed regardless, and you will have to wait until 8:00 am for him to come back.

When your are 35-45 XP from the level you want, then stop. Save, then if you are going for good karma, just keep going until you you level up. If you are going for neutral karma kill both the mercanary and Maria.

If you are going for bad karma, kill the mercanary, then steal everything in the shop. If you are still not bad karma, attempt to hack the computer then back out. Continue to hack in and back out until you are at bad karma or you are confident killing Maria will bring your karma down enough to be bad karma (if she has not run out). If she has ran out, hack the computer succesfully and you will level up.

The video below (which all credit goes to ablestmage on youtube) detail the method of throwing the fragmine and picking it up so you can understand. Please leave comments telling me how I can improve my solution. I am always open to suggestions.

I found the fastest and easiest way to do this for every required level was to get to level 7, 13 and 19 at minimal Good Karma, save, then find a terminal to hack. Crack the computer, then exit out and mash "A" to select it till the terminal opens, back out again and keep doing it while periodically checking your level. Because your mashing A it counts as multiple bad karma gains. As soon as you hit Neutral, save the game on a separate save from your first and go kill raiders, mutants and animals or do quests until you level. Then reload the save in front of the terminal and repeat step one until you hit evil and level again.

The easiest and best way to get the good, neutral, & bad karma achievements for all levels is to play the game with good karma and when you are about to level up go to Moriarty's Saloon in Megaton and go to the back room where his terminal is and save. Once you have saved with Good karma going to the wasteland and level up to get the good karma achievement. Then load the save you just made and using the terminal in Moriarty's Saloon, spam the button you used to enter the terminal as fast as you can until you enter it this will give you bad karma. Keep doing this until you have reached neutral karma in your Pip-Boy. When you have neutral karma go out into the wasteland and level up, this will give you the neutral achievement. And yet again load the safe you made and spam into the terminal until you have bad karma then go out into the wasteland and level up, giving you the bad karma achievement then you can load the save again and just play as usual that way you remain with Good karma when it comes time to do this again. I hope this helps...