The Fallout New Vegas topic (might be spoilers)

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Okay I just finished the main story on Hardcore mode playing on Normal (50 hours). I was surprised. Other than a number of annoyances... technical crap errors... the game was really bad ass

Yeah I just played the story for my first go because I started to realize very early on that there was too much I didn't know about the game to make an epic run through so I figured I'd learn the game and just do the story... I'm starting a new game now that I finished Hardcore. I did the Wild Card quest-line and took over Vegas mehself

My starting build isn't advisable because It seemed to leave a lack for good perks that I would have liked but this was my starting build. Made the game tougher I guess

I played as a Guns Expert (Energy weapons too) with a high stealth rating... so I could stealth snipe the opposition.

Female

S: 5
P: 4
E: 5
C: 1
I: 10
A: 10
L: 5

Tagged Skills:
Guns
Sneak
Repair

Perks: Four Eyes and Trigger Discipline

First off this build bit ass because I had to spend 3 perks on intensive training for strength. I don't care about mini guns but the best sniper rifle around level 16 had an 8 strength requirement. That's like 6 levels with no interesting beneficial perks. Then even though with my Glasses and apparel giving me 6 Perception... I couldn't buy any perks relating to perception like the massive criticals perk (Forgot the name does 50% extra criticals). I should have thought of that but I thought the glasses were more than a stat boost... LIES! So top my not getting the perks I'd use with only getting a perk every even level and leveling up was crap-tastic. It wasn't a weak build... it just wasn't my style. I was still able to sneak attack with my sniper rifle but not to the magnitude I would have planned for.

I think this probably tops as one of my favorite games now but the game does have some issues. I noticed the games frame rate will drop to a stand-still on occasion and freeze but the music still runs which means its a game error and not my PS3. I also encountered loading screens that looped indefinitely which is another type of crash. The game has the same flaw as the last game since there is a point of no return at the end... WTF? Why would I take over Vegas for a goddamn slide show .

I'm sure I'm not the only one because I already saw a complaint but I perk for every even level is pretty lame... especially when some of the perks were massively tamed down. Like reaper's sprint isn't even a perk I'd consider anymore. 20 action points isn't even a shot from a rifle. Also Even for a high intelligence there were less available skill points upon level up and requirements were way more diverse... which I liked for specialization but disliked because I couldn't try other things like different gun types.

Hardcore mode is just a pain in the asz more than a difficulty modifier... at least til later on. Because of all of the survival maintenance you can't sleep around and wait for shops to get better random stuff... so by the end I had 25K caps sitting around in my pockets with nothing to buy. Also Hardcore was a pain because ammo has weight... and yes that makes it harder but when has a bullet ever weighed a quarter pound I had to ditch my favorite sniper during the endgame because I couldn't carry enough ammo for the thing! There are other things I didn't like but they were because it added difficulty that was annoying. Like having to use a doctors bag at the end of the game multiple times because a 3 bullet spray from a legionnaire veteran would rip my damn arms off... and stim packs do nothing in battle so the end is actually impossible without speech when taking the wild card route and diverting the power to fight the legion (That was dumb on my part because I should have known the NCR was more scary than Caesar and should have picked the other option). This is because When fighting to take over all at the end... lets just say you get knocked on your ass and if you can't talk your way out of the situation... there's 5 of the guys from the game case cover and a general and as soon as the game starts from the dialogue you is swiss cheese. It's actually a design flaw. The leveling is impossibly high for normal mode... I even tried wearing scavenged legionnaire armor at 100% repaired capacity at it made no difference... I had to actually knock the difficulty down to live through the start of the battle since there is nowhere to run when your sitting down

The only other thing that bugged me was that the game has some sort of save behind the scenes... what I mean is I'd wait maybe 24 hours and shops would restock... then if the stuff sucked I just reloaded my previous save and tried again. The only problem is somehow the game would know after doing this twice and it would revert back to the old stock from before which often was crap because I already bought everything from that selection.

My only last dislike was that unique guns couldn't be upgraded with the respective upgrade parts. So even though I found the unique sniper rifle I couldn't add a silencer or having the unique 9mm and not being able to add an extended mag generally made the unique weapons less interesting/valuable than the run of the mill ones.

Anyway awesome game... and when I find a perfect build I'll post that because I wouldn't advise copying mine so much as of right now lol. However I found that charisma was still the most useless stat because MOST situations can be handled in other way than a dialogue bonus (Except for the end glitch crap I mentioned where you practically need a 100 speech but that's a 100 speech not a high charisma). Also I did not take followers with me so the nerve thing did not apply.

Last edited by Talis on 23 Oct 2010, 7:12 am, edited 1 time in total.

I just used the motel in Novac. You get a free room for clearing out the ghouls in the quest nearby. You just talk to the lady in the office after you are Idolized for doing that mission and you have a base of operations in a place you can fast travel to... it's a good solution for getting a base early on in the game and like I said it's easy to access. I couldn't stand having to go through security clearance just to get to the strip and then have to enter the lucky 38. I travel to my base frequently to drop off equipment and manage ammo (Because of the weight I stored more ammo at my base than on me) so the 38 was a huge no for me. Also when you finish the quests for the brotherhood if you do... they give you acess to a hidden bunker which you can use as a full home... too much metal interior for me though lol.

Anyway... random note... that Deathclaw Mother was badass . I cleared out a whole quarry full of the Claw family in a quest for the Khans... little did I know I didn't have to fight them lol

Does anybody know of a place to get weapon mods? I could only find the gun runners and they never had what I was looking for about 95% of the time. I kinda felt disappointed that I couldn't craft weapon mods... that would have been better than trying to find them for sale

Other than Gun Runners, there's the merchant in the Crimson Caravan place(might require the the sneaking into Gun Runners mission to sell better stuff) and Mick and Ralph's in Freeside(They have a speech check to sell the good stuff). Don't know of any other places off the top of my head that sell weapon mods.


Well I've managed to get myself the platinum chip now. That was far easier than I expected it to be. (Female character + Black Widow perk) Just have to decide what I'll do with it now. I'm guessing the end game scenarios have opened up for me now since I can either speak with the NCR's commander at Hoover, Speak with Caesar, Give the chip to Mr. House, or use the Chip for myself to take over Vegas.

I kind of wanted to explore the Legion Fort ahead of the big battle, but I didn't like the terms of going into meet Caesar(Give you guys the Chip when the other tech bunker to access it is right under your fort? I don't think so...)

Other than that, still messing with some side missions. I'm going around trying to recruit all the companions and doing their missions. Finished ED-E's (Oddly enough I didn't seem to find out anything else...) and Rex's. Working on Cass and Veronica's missions. And yeah, now I remember Boone is in NoVac.

I'm about 40 hours in and just reached level 20. Been kind of speedy thus far.
I will say the game does offer a lot more to do than F3 and certainly runs more stable. I'm not sure why someone would complain about it being empty. I've been finding plenty of locations wherever I go and stuff to poke into.
Now there is that huge empty expanse in the western portion of the map that doesn't appear to be accessible... I'm theorizing that part of the map will open up with DLC in the future as there do appear to be entrances to that part of the map but they are blocked.

As much as there is alot to do in the game I did run into the feeling that the place was desolate and had very little to do on my own. This changed later on as I realized there is alot to do... you just start off in a slow town in the middle of nowhere. Also I did feel there were a lack of interior environments. Every interior cave or vault seems to be tied to a quest of some sort. Also the desert isn't the best place for exploration... so people seeing endless plains of sand and rock may just have been turned off instantly and not have given the game a chance.

After I gave the game a chance I saw that there was much to do and the environment isn't all that empty. But yeah I was one of those people immediately uninterested in the start of the game, but I gave it a chance and it was awesome. I did feel the game started off without any real direction and the intro plot was poorly thought up. F3 had a whole intro segment... NV just tossed you out a door and said go play with yourself. Don't take that wrong because I like F NV way better I just felt that Obsidian needed a little better story telling to pull off dumping it's players into a boring old town with nothing going on. It's likely why some players think there's nothing to do in the game... if they spend too much time there that is.

Here's my new character build... I planned ahead this time since now I know how the game works.

Female

S.P.E.C.I.A.L.

S=6
P=6
E=4
C=1
I=10
A=7
L=6

TAG
Guns
Lockpick
Sneak

Perks
Trigger Discipline
Wild Wasteland

With the special stats I'm still going to need to place at least 2 points in strength through intensive training for the higher level sniper rifles but I shouldn't have to until later since I already have 6 in strength. Luck of six is kinda pointless because I usually pick the finesse perk early so it equates to 5 points of luck... and you can't get over 10... so 6 is overkill but you need a 6 luck for the better criticals perk so that was worth sapping one point from endurance since I don't fight in close quarters. Agility is good at 7. I on my last character made it 10 because I thought action points were based on it... I later realized it is just the rate at which you regenerate them... so 7 is good enough since I don't use vats very often with a sniper scope >_<. Again I put 1 in charisma because it only affects trivial skills in my opinion. With endurance I shaved off one point when I was trying to boost perception and luck... so I hope I don't suffer from that The 10 in intelligence is just for skill points and you start with a 25 in it's related skills... so I don't have to put points in medicine, repair, and science right away.

For my tags I wasn't quite sure what to pick on top of Sneak and guns so I picked lock picking over repair this time since it started lower and a tag boost would help get that going in the level up process. Lock picking seems much less tedious in NV so this is a decent skill to have for accessing things early on... either that or I've picked too many locks in F3 and now do it with ease. I at the most break one pick on very hard locks.

For perks I was tempted to not take trigger discipline because The rate of fire damage suffers... but I figured I'd be pretty annoyed if my sniper was swaying more... I'm not sure how accuracy affects long range weaponry and would rather not find out 20 hour back in game. I also picked wild wasteland since I've played the game once already. So far it doesn't seem to do much of anything. When the guy tried to trick me to kill the geckos on the cliff... as I was raiding the cache of supplies and weird noise rang and a little head spinning icon appeared but I have no idea what happened if anything did.

I've looked ahead at the perks and this build "should" let me play how I want to. I play as a very long ranged assassin

Just for future reference (I'm only in the intro with a lvl 3 character)... how do I go about starting the sneaking into gun runners quest and where can I find the crimson caravan camp? I wasn't too worldly on my last play through so I was in the dark on many locations and quests

The Crimson Caravan compound is very close to Gun Runners. Just a bit to the northeast. You have to talk to Alice there to start it's line of quests.

Man, I been playing the game and hit level cap on Very Hard difficulty and Hardcore. Also, avoid death claws....Yes them. (Course I wish there was a Intelligent Death Claw companion ) Also, half my quests got bugged. =/ (BOS, NCR quests mostly =/)

For Zara... Have you found the Gobi Campaign Scout Rifle? I figured since you seem to be a sniper you might like it. It's a unique version of the sniper rifle. I thought it sucked initially because it is non-upgradable, but it seems superior to the normal sniper. It fires 6 rounds before a reload, weighs 4.5 Lbs, and has a faster rate of fire than the sniper meaning you can get two shots off in vats instead of just one. It requires 75 guns skill and 6 strength. the only down side is there is no sound suppressor so enemies are usually alerted to your presence after the first shot if you aren't far enough away. I'd post a picture on the location of it on the map but I don't know how to post pictures. If you'd like me to you'll have to tell me how... anyway It's in the Sniper's Nest in a foot locker with a very hard lock... for good reason

Maybe I could describe the location. From Cottonwood Cove, just in one square west on the map... it's perched on the mountain side in a shack. That's the Nest.

Anh... if you already found it... well that's cool if you did already

Nope, but I'll be sure to check it out.

Finally finished the Vault 34 thing with help from Lily. Let me just say... the Pulse Gun was totally not worth it.... but I did fine a unique carbine rifle.

I've also run into a rather bothersome glitch a couple of times now where my companions disappear completely. I was doing the quest near Jacobstown in the nightstalker cave and got into a fight with there and in the middle of it ED-E vanished completely. He didn't die since I still had his perk but he was no longer in the caves or outside when I checked. Had to reload and do that over again.

Second time was when I was doing Cass's quest investigating the Silver Rush. I decided to make Cass wait outside since having her in there sometimes triggers the Van Graffs to attack and I needed to sneak inside... so I did that and came back out and she was gone. She wasn't dead since I still had her perk, but she wasn't in Freeside anymore so WTF. Reload... Did the mission over again but had her with me, just had to be extra careful.

Still haven't found that implant doctor...

BTW, just who is the dude on the game's cover? I have yet to see this fellow anywhere. I'm thinking he's a Ranger Elite but I have seen any of them yet...

@Tallis I really like that character. Im not too into a sniper playstyle but that seems like a good one for me to try later. Does anybody know any good gun builds though? I've tried to make one but the perks are a complete mess so that character is pretty useless now for anything but hardcore (and that's only since I am halfway through the game on it). Ideally, Speech, Snewk Science, Lockpicking and Repair (for jury rigging only) are tats I'd use quite regularly, followed by guns. Skills I wouldn't use would be barter, unarmed, survival and explosives and then I would sort of use the others.

If anybody knows a good build (along with perks to take) I would really appreciate if you could post it.

Oh, and don't forget for your own builds that you can add one to any/ a few of your special stas via implants so it's not really advisable to make any ten.

Edit:@Zara He's in *skip the post if you dont want to know*






the New Vegas clinic

I've been playing for hours now. I have been wanting to play Fallouts 1 and 2, but never got the chance. My experience with the series is from Fallout 3, and I love how in that game you can make your character almost invincible (in very easy to medium mode), or at least it's easier to kill things and not get so much as a scratch from certain enemies (i.e. Radscorpions, Centaurs, even Super Mutants lower than Overlord of Behemoth level). And it seemed you could cruise through the game with boatloads of ammo and stims (of the handy infirmary in your home, which I wish was brougt back). Buit in Falliut New Vegas, I can totally see how old-school the game is. Where it's much easier to die, if you don't know what you're doing or are not careful. Sneaking past Deathclaws is a futile task. I've been trying to make it to the quarry again and again and again, but keep getting surrounded. And the getting a perk every other level is a pain, because I'd rather have my perks every level. Easier to plan out my characters thay way. So this game is going to take getting used to. One thing I do like is the reward perks for having killed a certain number of enemies or explored a certain number of locations (either getting an achievement for it or a perk). I've also been to the Strip, and you can get kicked out of every casino if you get a certain amount of chips. I've been kicked out of everyone one, but used my caps on some implants. The sub-dermal one that gives you 4 points of DT, and the health renegeration one. I also got endurance as well for more health, but I think there's a limit on how many implants you can have. My charisma is a 1 in this game., In Fallout 3 you can get away with having practically zeron charisma. But in Fallout New Vegas, you almost have to be a smooth talker for some quests. Oh well. Play and Learn, huh.

The guy on the game cover is someone you really don't want to meet. I don't remember their name but they are the elite of the NCR. They travel with the general and you see them with a hit squad if NCR is displeased with you. Lets just say... there's no way to fight them in a fair match since they tear you to shreds before you can fire twice... on Normal difficulty. They are part of the end boss if you go with the wild card quests from Yes Man and divert the power in the dam to Fight Caesar's Legion. There are 5 of them there and you start knocked on your back... as I said before you are dead before the rising animation

If the glitch persists make a new save game and maybe wait around for awhile before doing more. Usually if a companion isn't with you for awhile they will return to the spot you picked them up. For instance I had the sniper guy recruited and just told him to wait somewhere and left him (No companions for me) I still kept his perk and awhile later the game informed me he went back to novac. The only thing is it could take about 3 to 5 game days... sleeping doesn't speed this up.

To snake... I could show my build once I at least reach level 20 if you want (I'm lvl 11 right now)... that way you can see my perks and build. I could probably even predict my final 10 levels from there. Also where is that implant dude? I have loads of caps and would rather not waste my next 2 perks on intensive training but will likely have to to progress with my ideal character if I don't know

Edit: I saw it said New Vegas clinic but where is that exactly... like the strip or freeside?

Edit: Never mind. I found it just barely east of the crimson caravan in a small building with a smiley face on it

Last edited by Talis on 24 Oct 2010, 4:04 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Oh yeah... to snake... My build has a fail safe. Since my strength is going to be 8 and my guns will be 100, I have the ability to pack a light machine gun for when encounters get much too close to snipe. Haha I don't run when I'm attacked unless it's a deathclaw. Also with the perks I choose I get very frequent critical hits even without sniping so it makes those too close encounters much easier when they die faster than normal

I don't know if I'm stating something obvious but here go. If your low on caps and have a stealth boy... just go to the silver rush in New Vegas and don that cloak. Then while crouching you can take everything off the shelves and even the counter in front of the shop keeper. This only works once but can net around 7500 caps with a 35 barter (I have 25 and 10 in apparel). Also if you can crack the lock on the door there is more gear topside... which is a small part of that 7500. It doesn't give you bad karma either

Optionally if you have a high sneak skill you can swipe it all by positioning yourself and playing the wait game for the patrols to move around and swipe things when it says [Hidden]. This way is a pain though since I did that my first playthrough and spent quite a bit of time waiting. I don't think doing this affects anything other than that stuff never comes back so it's an easy load of caps