fubb i'm in the junkyard these days. hope to reach the boneyard soon :P
managed to kill a rat lol

LOL

Ok, since the wipe, i've been tihnking, unliek most noobs. THIS is what i do.

SCREW shovling shit. I begged for a sledge hammer, mined, and took my stuff into town and traded it in for (not all at once, this was over and over again)

2 Leather Jackets (1 for back up!)
4 Sledges (Back up!)
2 Hatchets
1 10mm
10mm ammo
Shot gun
Shotgun ammo
and when im not doing that, i go into ruined cities, go world/town and pick up junk lying around to sell it later :3 only level 2 though.

THINGS I RECOMEND

Get outdoors man up!
Get Science Up!
Get Repair Up!

Scavange all you can!
Don't steal!
Only kill other players if their super weak & crippled!
On that note, don't go into places like Redding and say 'Heal plox' or anything along those lines.

I gotta say that I've been familiar with FOnline few months back. I enjoyed it briefly but found getting killed by groups of PK all the time just plain annoying. I could live with it though as I suppose that's how post nuclear wasteland would be but what I could not live with was people just not role playing at all. I mean the game has no more than few built in quests, so the really enjoy it there has to be some kind of RP involved. I mean there need to be some kind of quests one could do for another. I mean if I'm a gatherer and I mine there's gotta be someone willing to pay for the ore to craft something out of it and sell it further. I'm not sure if it's better now and hope that somebody will clear it up for me but back then it was just sad and boring. Everyone seemed to try to do one of three things, and I mean one of these three things only - steal from you, kill you or call you names whilst having a character names something in the ways of "big-di*k-mega-motherfu**er-killer". I mean what the hell? Fallout in online outing in my opinion could very well be the best game EVER as it involves my most favorite atributes - it's RPG, it's post nuclear & it's turn based. Instead I got a game where people called be a d*ck all the time & stole from me after which I usually got killed by city guards after trying to protect my belongings...

Is it any better now? Is it worth giving it another go?

Ahoye, ppl.
'v'been playin this for about a month now, I'm somewhere at the 17th lvl with my 4 th character (i've given up the first 3 - veery poorly created) and lvl 3 with the 3d.
Word of adivce for newcomers, when you go mining or gathering, go with just what you really need on you (IE: hammer if you go mining) and leave guns, armor, items at the tent. When you do go to an unguarded place such as redding, gekco mine, water morks, mariposa, move fast but make sure there aren't any PKs lurking around (actually, their forum seems to be a good source of info - I hope those begginer guides will be good. Had I started playing this earlier I would have probably entered the contest).

Also don't shovel shit, it's very slow way to earn caps. it's better to loot encounters, like NCR Army VS Super Mutants (one square below Military Camp).
If you find one and manage to come back to your tent alive, you will come back with an inventory full of flamethrowers, laser rifles, FN-NALs, M60, Radios, Rocket launchers, and ammo for these guns.
Can be a bit time consuming if you are unlucky to find encounter quickly, but it worth it.

Here's another tip:
If you want to sell something to NPCs and they are out of caps, trade it for ammo instead. Most NPCs trade ammo for fixed base price so you can trade it later for caps.