Fallout: New Vegas

[PapaSmurf]

Don’t you need like 8 or 9 strength to wield a super sledge though?

That’s what makes melee such a tough build for me to figure out. I need the endurance to survive, I need the strength to wield weapons, but getting the skills I need is very tough without high int too.

[Mink_Staccato]

Don’t you need like 8 or 9 strength to wield a super sledge though?

That’s what makes melee such a tough build for me to figure out. I need the endurance to survive, I need the strength to wield weapons, but getting the skills I need is very tough without high int too.

If you drop the other skills down to 4, you should be fine. I’m doing a completely unarmed ninja run right now, where I’ve forbidden myself to ever fire (or swing, for that matter) a weapon or do anything that would lower my karma (so no stealing, pickpocketing, lockpicking or lying). Thrown weapons are allowed though.

I started with a 9-str, 9-end and a 6-int. It was a little rough-and-tumble there at the beginning, but I’m doing just grand now. True, my skills are not as maxed as they could be, but it’s not really a problem. My tag skills were unarmed, speech and sneak.

~mink~

[Wolff]

Drop charisma to 1

Start with 6 Strength, 9 Endurance, 9 Int, or less Int and more Strength if you don’t care about boosting a bunch of skills.

Lvl 2 Raise Strength
Lvl 4 Educated

Get strength Implant

Grats you now have 8 or 10 strength.

I still think charisma is a super dump stat because your companions still kick alot of ass even with it at 1. Tag speech to counteract the low charisma. Barter I generally find useless since there is so much loot to be sold.

There isn’t much to “figure out” get yourself a decent melee weapon some easily attainable early ones are combat knives, tire irons or machetes. If you explore at all you’ll find a “named” cleaver fairly early on.

Run up to any enemy shooting you and attack their weapon arm outside of vats. You’ll either break their arm or the weapon they are carrying.

Wildlife is a different story, you won’t be able to toe-to-toe with giant radscorps or deathclaws for abit.

[Grifman]

Don’t you need like 8 or 9 strength to wield a super sledge though?

That’s what makes melee such a tough build for me to figure out. I need the endurance to survive, I need the strength to wield weapons, but getting the skills I need is very tough without high int too.

Sell all the loot you don’t need and

SPOILER

buy implants to upgrade stats and get the dermal armor to help you survive better

[Grifman]

melee/unarmed is a combat focus though and it is more perk heavy than any other combat specialization (probably, i am actually too lazy to count them all).

If melee/unarmed at max has a much harder time dealing with end game enemies, it means the weapons aren’t balanced. Nothing more, nothing less. It is annoying that the weapons aren’t balanced in FNV (and they clearly aren’t even ignoring melee/unarmed), but i can’t really complain when they haven’t been in every fallout game i’ve ever played except maybe tactics.

I’ve read that the boxing gloves are very effective against even deathclaws. The gloves don’t do damage, they just “fatigue” the opponent, virtually knocking them out, making them easy pickings. At least that’s what someone claimed :)

[TheWombat]

I’ve read that the boxing gloves are very effective against even deathclaws. The gloves don’t do damage, they just “fatigue” the opponent, virtually knocking them out, making them easy pickings. At least that’s what someone claimed :)

Tyson vs. Deathclaw. I’d pay for that. Wait, do Deathclaws have ears?

[Eric_P]

i folded like a piece of paper and bought this last night

so far, so fun

[Alistair]

Face-Off: Fallout: New Vegas

Quite a damning comparison of different versions for those interested in the tech. He goes out of his way to say content is king but is pretty harsh on the engine.

[Tom_McNamara]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-fallout-new-vegas-face-off

Quite a damning comparison of different versions for those interested in the tech. He goes out of his way to say content is king but is pretty harsh on the engine.

Great breakdown. I find myself preferring the color saturation on the 360. The PS3 appears to default to higher gamma, which means slightly washed-out textures but higher clarity in low-light situations. The 360 also appears to have much less distracting “edge glitter” than the PS3, thanks to AA.

The PC is arguably the best platform because of the modding community alone, but it appears to require a non-trivial amount of initial tweaking to avoid performance quirks. Moreso than FO3 ever did. However, the 360 has an exclusive on all DLC, for now.

[Joe_M]

Neither of the PC tweaks I’ve used were any more difficult than installing a mod (of which I’ve happily installed several). There’s the mouse acceleration tweak and the d3 dll? I don’t know what sort of arcane tweaking people are doing but I feel left out!

[TurinTur]

The game needed an important but easy to do tweak, to copy one dll file, Tom. I don’t have any perfomance quirks once that is done. Some people are tweaking a .ini file to erase the mouse acceleration but honestly, it only annoys me (and only a bit) in the main menu, and it’s not like i am going to stay in menu lots of time. I press Continue and that’s it.

[Paul_cze]

mouse acceleration is freaky in pipboy ingame too, so I definitely disable it. Takes 20 seconds to do it, although the fact that Beth/Obsidian could not do it themselves boggles the mind.

Then there is dll, and installation of mods: Darnified, Inventory Sorters, Realistic Death and Dismemberment Physics and Slower Lever Rates 1.3…
All in all it takes some 5-10 minutes and results in much better game.

[Sarkus]

The PC is arguably the best platform because of the modding community alone, but it appears to require a non-trivial amount of initial tweaking to avoid performance quirks. Moreso than FO3 ever did. However, the 360 has an exclusive on all DLC, for now.

I don’t know where that guy is coming from with the claim that getting the game to run requires significant effort on the PC. I’m not even running the lastest video drivers and all I’ve done is try the .dll thing mentioned earlier. And all that does is trick the game into thinking your video card is a DX9 card and therefore it doesn’t try to run what is by all accounts a very poor DX10/11 to DX9 conversion thing.

Different people may have different issues, but most people have not had to resort to major effort to get the game to run. And as the article notes, a big part of this is simply the fact that the engine isn’t very current.

[TheWombat]

I’m curious, do people really see a need to slow down leveling? I finished my first run through at 53 hours and level 24. Are people actually hitting the level cap before finishing, on their first play through? Geez, they must be doing every single quest at every location… Unlike in FO3, where the initial cap was 20, this game seems pretty decently paced.

[pg1]

Anti-material rifle is sick.

[Paul_cze]

I’m curious, do people really see a need to slow down leveling? I finished my first run through at 53 hours and level 24. Are people actually hitting the level cap before finishing, on their first play through? Geez, they must be doing every single quest at every location… Unlike in FO3, where the initial cap was 20, this game seems pretty decently paced.

I am completionist, yes. Ideally balanced for me was for example Fallout 1, where level cap was 21, but even when you did every quest in the game you could only reach 18 or so…21 was reachable only through repeated killing of deathclaws/supermutans.
So if it is similarly difficult/impossible to reach 30 here, I prefer that. And Slower Level Rates ensures that.

[maxle]

I’m curious, do people really see a need to slow down leveling? I finished my first run through at 53 hours and level 24. Are people actually hitting the level cap before finishing, on their first play through? Geez, they must be doing every single quest at every location… Unlike in FO3, where the initial cap was 20, this game seems pretty decently paced.

I was level 29 when I finished at 41 hours. I overlooked a fair number of locations and quests.

[Grifman]

I’m curious, do people really see a need to slow down leveling? I finished my first run through at 53 hours and level 24. Are people actually hitting the level cap before finishing, on their first play through? Geez, they must be doing every single quest at every location… Unlike in FO3, where the initial cap was 20, this game seems pretty decently paced.

Yeah, I think I need one. I’m level 14 and I haven’t even entered the strip yet. And I’ve picked up about half a dozen or more open quests. I think I need one that sets experience gain at about half the normal rate.

[Strollen]

I’m curious, do people really see a need to slow down leveling? I finished my first run through at 53 hours and level 24. Are people actually hitting the level cap before finishing, on their first play through? Geez, they must be doing every single quest at every location… Unlike in FO3, where the initial cap was 20, this game seems pretty decently paced.

I agree I think the pacing is fine. I finished my first one at level 22. In my second one I am level 9 and by avoiding most NCR related quests I suspect I’ll finish around the same level, and still have plenty of stuff to do for a 3rd playthrough next year.

[TheWombat]

Yeah, I think I need one. I’m level 14 and I haven’t even entered the strip yet. And I’ve picked up about half a dozen or more open quests. I think I need one that sets experience gain at about half the normal rate.

Well, once you hit the strip you can complete the game in no time flat, really. If you want to. The only way anyone can hit 30 I think without completing the game is to be a true completionist, or actually grind Deathclaws or something. In which case, it ain’t the game’s fault.

To each their own, and that’s why we have mods, but I think they got the pacing just right this time.