Not hard to figure out. My greatest advice is to get one REAL LIFE friend to help you with the game, or someone over the mic to guide you.

Press buttons

I'M GETTING OUT OF THE VAULT BUT HOW THE -blam!- DO I GET OUT MY WEAPONS? am i just able to punch my way through? EDIT: ok i found it out. I feel dumb now

A lot of tips here are sending you to your death. Not going to say which ones, you need to see some of them for yourself, so I will tell you to save often. If you have it on PC, go easy on the mods for your first run through. A few armour, weapon or housing mods to store your stuff will be okay but avoid monster mods or things like that until you've played through at least once. I hope you have a high tolerance for annoying things when you get to Little Lamplight. You'll see what I mean when you get there. All I will say is there is a mod that allows you to kill everyone there, you may want to use it. On my third playthrough I wiped that place out with a minigun, couldn't take them anymore. Deathclaws are not your friend. They look cute and cuddly but they will tear you up at low level. If you see one, do not fight it until you are at least in the mid 20's and have a couple of decent guns and some decent armour. If you have modded gear it may not be too bad but at low level they are still a challenge. In base game gear they are instant death. Take your time. It is quite a big game and there is a lot to see and do, don't try and squeeze it all in as fast as possible. You won't get quests that send you everywhere so some places can only be found by exploring and if you miss them, you may miss out on some fun quests. Super Mutant Behemoths are not your friend. If you see one and you are not prepared, you are screwed. All of them , apart from one, only appear when they are coming to fight you. The other is in a big electric cage in a Raider base so is an easy kill from a distance. Or you can let it loose to kill Raiders. If you can, kill Mr Burke. He has a silenced 10mm and that is quite handy. It's a bit spoilerish but that gun has come to my aid more times than I count. Don't sell every weapon or armour you pick up. Take them back to your house and stock pile them. You need to repair weapons or they break and doing it at a vendor can get quite costly. Keep a good stock and invest in the repair skill, it saves you caps.

Shoot on sight.

Get the unique weapons and armor at the max level so you could get the best stats. At least that's what I did for a better end game.

Get the DLCs, and invest in small guns. Then energy weapons or melee.

I liked playing good karma, but I did do a quick short run where I blew up Megaton, just for the experience. [spoiler]watching it go off from as high up as I was, pretty cool, I think it was night time, awesome view[/spoiler]

Good karma

Remember you can fast travel, I know one person who didn't find out about it until they had finished the game and spent a week tring to get into rivet city and another who kept forgetting to use it If you are after achievements or trophies then at some points it's best to save and take the action you don't want for example at set levels you can get 3 achievements or trophies for having good, neutral or bad karma, another would be Megaton, save, blow it up for the reward then load save and disarm

STAY AWAY FROM DEATHCLAWS UNTIL YOU GET TO HIGHER LEVELS

Max intelligence makes the game so much fun.

Once you get through the first couple hours of it, it starts to pick up. Took me a few tries to really get into it. Overall it's a great game though, especially for it's time.

Try to do lower level quests at the start. A lot of things can kill you at a low level. I also recommend a high small guns skill and invest in a hunting rifle. You can usually find a lot of ammo for it and its fairly reliable. If you get stuck, look up the fallout wiki online. Hope these tips help.

Watch out for Deathclaws until you get a good weapon