Back years ago, playing Fallout, in days before Fallout 2 had launched, I somehow managed to find Necropolis first (I hadn't memorized the world map yet), and with a level 2 character not only repair the pump and find the water chip, returned back to my vault in under 40 days.
Then I found Junktown, cleaned out Gizmo and the Skulls, found Dogmeat, and then went exploring.
I was doing great; it was pretty cool. I was levelling like crazy, getting all kinds of crazy luck. I'd made it to level 15 or 16, had great karma, had tons of caps and plenty of 10mm ammo and some spiffy customized leather armor.
Then I rendom encountered into 12 Super Mutants in the northwest of the world map, all of them with Gatling guns or Gatling lasers. My sequence sucked. I was cut down on the second burst.
I'd been playing for hours, and hadn't saved once.