3521

Varmint rifle was great with scope, night vision, sneak attack bonus and plentiful ammo & repairs.

3522

It really does sound that way, because nothing you describe about your experience is familiar to me. I’ve never touched my guns skill (specializing in energy weapons), and the varmint rifle was absurdly powerful, oneshotting many early enemies from miles away. I did miss fairly often, but they would usually not notice the whiffs, so the hits were plenty. I also haven’t done anything to my sneak skill.

3523

At which level did you end the game Chris?

And the Varmint rifle wasn’t that good, imo :P

3524

I’m curious about this as well. I couldn’t get rid of the varmint rifle fast enough. It was useless to me unless I just wanted to attract the enemy’s attention.

3525

Oh I forgot to mention it was one of the earliest weapons with a silencer.

3526

Yeah, I recall using the varmint rifle in the big shootout in the starter village, and my bullets did little more than make the thugs angry. I even died once and eventually hid behind some furniture while the villagers defeated the gang.

I guess I should just have lowered the difficulty at that point, but I thought it should get better since I had started with fairly low weapon skills.

Naeblis: I finished at level 30 which I reached during the final encounter, so 29 going in.

3527

The Varmint Rifle was given to you, for free, within 2 minutes of starting the game. Ammo for it was cheap and plentiful, and the weapon itself was common enough that you could keep one in pretty good condition. As a primary weapon for the first third of the game or so that’s a pretty nice return.

I did specialize in guns from the start, but that’s fairly standard for a Fallout game. You pick a combat specialty early on and jam points into that.

What did you specialize in? I beat the game at like level 22 or 23 without too much trouble.

3528

Speech, science, lockpicking mostly – even took that sweet talker trait that lowered my weapon skills some more. So I wasn’t surprised that my weapons weren’t terribly effective early on, but even so the varmint rifle was about the worst I remember.

Perhaps weapon skills have some absolutely enormous nonlinear influence on weapon effectiveness, relative to level? That’s my best guess now. If that’s true they shouldn’t be lumped in with all the rest IMO where you might never bother to raise them past 50 or so, thinking that’s decent enough.

3529

I shuffled weapons in my inventory much more, there wasn’t any weapon i had for that much time in the first 20 hours. After, i got for most of the game the 10 mm smg, the hunting rifle, the service rifle, and one shotgun. Until pretty late i didn’t get the sniper rifle.

3530

I loved the sniper rifle unique that you got for being able to pick the 100 lock…and then I got a laser gun all gussied up…and it was much better.

I loved the variety of weapons and choices on how to play this game. I think I must have played a different game than Chris. I started with Speech (along with science and lockpicking) and didn’t put much in to it after it got to 50. So many fun combat options and quests to make you super strong. Yeah, you start weak, but you can become strong pretty quick.

To be fair, it took until my later levels to be able to clear out the most annoying guys (the poison flying bugs and the super deathclaws), but by level 20, I was walking through fields of deathclaws like they were butter. Especially after giving Cassie a bad ass gun I got from the gun merchant in north vegas.

Definitely played a different game than Chris…

3531

I managed to kill Caesar and other such bosses while below level 20 without any fancy gear. Sure it took some time and a huge amount of explosives (I love tossing unlit dynamite on the ground, and then blowing up a whole crowd of people) but he died in the end.

On a side note: I fired up the game after the latest large patch. I immediately came across two epileptic Brahmin half buried within a house.
Sigh I guess I’ll wait to play the game again after the next patch… if there even is going to be another patch.

3532

Yeah, the varmint rifle is great against things like powder gangers, non-golden geckos, ants, coyotes, stuff like that, say to level 10 or so. You don’t need huge gun skill, just aim carefully at long range outside VATS, and take head shots at 95% in VATS. I’m spending about 5 skill points a level on guns, spreading the rest around speech, locksmith, science, repair, etc.

Cowboy repeater is fine for radscorpions and other mid-level foes, then the sniper rifle or the gobi variant for higher level foes. I also carry a 10 mm SMG in case I get swarmed, and I still haven’t gotten the silly anti-materiel rifle. I never bothered with shotguns or assault rifles, and the hunting rifle is too slow. Pistols are OK at close range, especially Maria, but I chose to specialize in rifles, since they work fine at point blank range unless swarmed by foes in which case the AP cost in VATS is too high.

From its stats the plasma caster looks like it should be a good gun, but I haven’t played with energy weapon specialization, so I have no experience of it. A pistol or laser repeater of some kind seems like it might be a good idea if you get swarmed.

I’m not a big shooter player, but the combat difficulty level seems fine to me. Any easier and really you might as well just not have foes at all. Cazadores I can do without because their patrol patterns are so fast you have to get into VATS with them unless they get stuck on some landscape, but most other foes are pretty easy to deal with except deathclaws, which is how it should be, I think. However, I’m still only 2/3 through it because I didn’t feel any urgent need to plow through the game, and despite liking NV better than some other Bioware and Bethesda games, it still has plenty of issues and annoyances.

3533

I actually, in retrospect, did not like NV even without the bugginess issues, but I do like the way Obsidian streamlined the weapon skills(splitting big guns into guns, energy, and explosives) to prevent the Fallout/Fallout 2 syndrome of there being no energy or big guns for the first 2/3rds of the games but all the best weapons being either energy or big guns.

Chris, which NPC were you using? Getting Boone very early made coasting with the varmint rifle significantly easily in my playthrough. If you were trying to do it solo I can understand having trouble.

3534

I think i min-maxed pretty well my character so i could have both a kickass gunner and still get speech and science to 100, and in its own way is very rewarding to complete hard quests with just a dialogue.

3535

I believe that was a change made by Bethesda in Fallout 3, not a New Vegas change. It keeps throwing me though - I tend to assume that I can’t use grenade launchers/missile launchers effectively because I haven’t been putting points in Big Guns, even though my explosives skill is reasonably high.

3536

I picked up ED-E as soon as I could, and he basically handled combat for most of the game. Cass joined later, too. The trouble started when they got overwhelmed and I had to try winning the fight – that was always very tedious and difficult.

3537

Was everyone else playing on easy or something?

For me, the varmint rifle, even with guns skill being focused on, QUICKLY became outclassed. The cowboy repeater was totally useless against anything that was armored. I could fire that thing in to the side of a giant rad scorpion all day long and it would barely even notice.

The sniper rifle was a nice jump in power, but even it did not do that well against deathclaws, even with armor piercing ammo. Yes, if i was good i could take down a single deathclaw with a sniper rifle using ap ammo, but more than one? forget about it.

Maybe it isn’t low level weapons that are so powerful as much as boon’s awesome sniper rifle doing most of the damage?

3538

Just for reference

In pistols, i used the .357 revolver, the weatherd 10 mm pistol, later the hunting revolver, and the ranger sequoia.
In rifles, cowboy repeater, hunting rifle, a bit of service rifle and This Machine (though good, when i got the garand i also got the sniper rifle, and the later was better suited in the long range role), and Trail Carbine. And the Varmint, during the first 4 levels or so.
The ratslayer seems interesting, but i didn’t found it in my game. Marksman carbine and antimaterial rifle were only used int he grand finale.
SMGs, i used for a pair of hours or three the 9mm smg, after that it was my old mate the 10 mm smg for the rest of the game. The 12.7mm was used briefly in the last two or three enemies in the Dam.
And shotguns… almost all of them. i love shotguns! Except the unique ones, i didn’t find unique shotguns.
Heavy weapons, i used briefly the LMG and Minigun in the last two hours of the game, knowing it was a waste to end the game without using the rare ammo.

So lots of weapons, and that’s without using unarmed, melee, explosive (except a few dozens dynamite sticks) and energy weapons.

edit: sigh, now i want to play it again…

3539

Here’s what I learned slaying Deathclaws…

  1. Sniper rifle, followed up being a shotgun surgeon with the Cowboy Repeater is a GREAT option. Unless you’ve been to Vegas and gotten even better guns.
  2. Once I got plasma and fully modified laser rifle, they got even easier, especially with Cassie carrying a high powered rifle. I still don’t have my energy weapons score above 60 something.

The first time I had to clear out that big area of Deathclaws, I had to save and reload a lot. I had Boone and the Gobi with the Cowboy Repeater for the close work. Took me awhile to figure out good sniping spots to make that area much easier (pathing issues make this pretty easy once you find a good spot to stand sadly enough).

The second time I came back to that area from the back end, I had to fight my way through giant radscorpions AND deathclaws…and it was VERY EASY. This time I had Cassie with a high powered weapon I bought in Vegas and myself with so many awesome guns I had a selection. I went with the fully modded laser rifle for long range and…well, things didn’t really get close to us, but if they did, I went with The Thing (? I forget the exact name).

Equipment, and ability to use it properly (shotguns are only decent until you select Shotgun Surgeon), is pretty much how effective you’re going to be in NV. Which I really liked.

Also, modded laser rifle with sights…perfect for getting the poison flying bugs. You missed? So what, fire again and again and again. I never VATed them unless somehow I stumbled upon them…

3540

FO3’s change was making the heavy/energy weapons available earlier on so they were viable initial choices, New Vegas did them one better by getting rid of Big Guns as a skill and moving the heavy weapons into the other categories as appropriate(which, in addition to eliminating the need to use 2 weapon skills, also made explosives significantly more useful).