Pariah Dog!

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Fallout 2 - I am being followed by the bane of my existence. The Pariah Dog, from a certain special encounter, is following me. My luck is set to 1, and everyone suffers critical misses seemingly every shot. Apparently the only way to get rid of it is to kill it, but it has 750 hp! And with all these critical misses, I drop my weapon, drop all my ammo or shoot myself constantly. I need a plan to get rid of this thing! I've been to the Toxic Caves, hoping that the acid will hurt it, but it doesn't. The guide I read recommends the Sierra Army Depot's electric floor, but I'm about level 8. Please, someone... Help...

 

Critical misses happen a lot less when the odds of hitting are low. If you have high enough weapons skill, it should only take a few minutes to kill it by yourself with small arms, especially if you can make targeted shots (use a scoped hunting rifle). If you can get your hands on a flamer or a bozar (and have about 125% in big guns), it'll take even less time. The pariah dog has a lot of HP, but it is easy to hit and doesn't absorb much damage.

 

Reload an earlier save.

 

That's the best you can do and pray that you won't run into it. I got it once and killing it didn't help (the corpse followed me around... Bug or not it was a real pain).

 

I hope that's not all I can do... I only ever keep one save. I don't reload for any reason other than death, and my last save was after getting the pooch anyway. I'll just try shooting it in the face and hope it stays dead. Thanks.

EDIT: On a related note, what's up with the accuracy of my hunting rifle? It's scoped (the one from New Reno), and usually when I aim I get 95% chance to hit anywhere, but sometimes it's just about a 65% for a chest shot. I have about 125% in small arms. Is this because of that damn dog? I think it happened before I got it, but definitely not to this extent.

 

The scoped hunting rifle is designed for long range. It's much less accurate at close range.

 

This is why its always a good idea to pair the scoped rifle with a close or mid-range weapon. I recommend pairing it with a .44 revolver for the early game. The optimal ranges for these two weapons overlap perfectly and, if you want, you can get by with it all the way to San Francisco.

Back to the Pariah dog, he's not hard to kill if you pair a scoped rifle (the pariah dog likes to run away) with a good submachine gun. Make sure your chance to hit is always high, since this lessens the chance of critical failures. The goal is to knock the dog out (for this, head shots actually work better than eye shots), get close, and burst like crazy. Alternatively, you could knock it out, cripple its legs, and then try to kill it with head or eye shots. Once its legs are crippled, the Pariah Dog is a sitting duck, but you should probably keep taking a few head shots here and there to keep it unconcious. I've never had problems with being followed around by the corpse of the pariah dog. Killing it worked just fine for me.

 

Managed to gun it down - took much less effort than expected. Maybe the Restoration mod reduced its hp or something, because I'm sure I only did about 150 damage to it. But now it's a corpse, and I can progress.

Thanks for the advice re the hunting rifle - I've now paired it with a .223 pistol, since they both use the same (common) ammo.

 

Maybe you scored a fatal critical hit, although I find it doubtful, given your luck score (since you need at least a 6 to take Better Criticals and unlock insta-kills).

A good choice. A .44 revolver with a speed loader isn't a bad idea, either. It does a little less damage, but you can get in an extra targeted attack each round, depending on your action points.