4141

SPOILER>>>>>>>>>>>

Try using a stealth boy to sneak into the area. Then get up high, either on some of the equipment or on the cliffs TO THE LEFT as you enter. From there, assuming you have some decent weaponry you can shoot at them and they can’t get to you. After shooting awhile you will have to risk moving to another high spot in order to get them all. There is a “main” deathclaw you will have to kill to complete this.

4142

Good tip Scuzz, thank you.

4143

I think a danger with this game as with any game is getting “burned” out playing the DLC’s or extra content that has nothing to do with the actual plot. There is a fine line between enjoyment and overkill.

4144

Skipper and flyinj - please note, there is no post-endgame content. If you decide to finish the game first, I would recommend keeping a save just for dlc.

4145

Roger that, thanks for the tip, Pogue.

In other news, operation “Skipper Makeover,” has been an initial success, thought not fully battle tested yet. I picked up Boone, regained Ed-E, switched to the gauss rifle for extreme range, and went with overcharged ammo in it. The net effect = devastation on anything I fought in the little time I had with it tonight. Legion death squads used to be tough, with this set up they are gravy, plus I get the little tune from Ed-E and Boone talking about the beauty of killing legion folks. Great tips guys, thank you.

I’ll try the deathclaws again tomorrow.

4146

The save just before the end is now automatic.

4147

I actually played the hell out of this when it came out, I think it was a nightly experience for me five weeks running at one point, and I beat it three times and started a fourth play through before finally moving onto something else.

I’m hankerin’ for a hunk a NV now again though, but I wonder about mods? Are there any “must install” no brainer type mods that everyone likes? Graphical updates I can install to take advantage of my new 570 card, maybe?

4148

I’m playing on Normal at the moment.

I’ve been tempted by the challenge of hardcore mode for that extra level of tension but 2 elements put me off.

  1. Companions can die
  2. Ammo has weight

These two aspects seem more of an annoyance that add to the experience.

How many of you play hardcore mode? How do you find it?

4149

I really liked hardcore mode, and I’ve only ever played the game that way. You just have to be smarter about how you approach combat and manage equipment, but it gives the game world more “weight”, I felt. Also, managing hunger and thirst was a welcome addition, as it makes finding some of the random “garbage” in the game suddenly feel like a treasure trove. “Pure Water!? Holy crap FIVE bottles of it!?”

4150

Just use a mod to keep companions alive.

4151

Frankly it was mostly just an annoyance. Relatively soonish into the game food is plentiful as well as water. Limb damage just means you need to fast travel to a doctor more often. Ammo weights make some weapons prohibitive to use (e. g. missile launcher) without adding anything really.
It also didn’t help that back then the game didn’t register that my upgraded ED died, so I couldn’t progress into the scenes where you have to go alone, since the invisible ED ghost apparently still hung around, so I had to reload a much earlier savegame after figuring out why I wasn’t allowed to progress.

4152

Playing on Very Hard HC I’ve only had companions die when I was going to easily die myself by charging into combat way beyond my ability. Well, that and the broken cazador poison crap where it appears to last a really long time and stimpaks do a very iffy job of keeping your companions alive through it.

Different experience myself on the food and ammo limits. I found it makes the game far more enjoyable to not be able to carry infinite ammo for weapons forcing me to choose one or two to take along and leave the rest on companions or back at home. Food as well becomes more meaningful as with no instant heal stimpaks, you tend to rely on it combined with heal-over-time stims to keep you alive in tough battles. Water does get annoying as they chose to make every drink besides it cause you to get more thirsty which is pretty damn stupid. Solved by a great canteen and bottle mod that allows me to fill all the bottles on me at most water sources radiated or not and auto-drinks a sip when needed.

I’d recommend it myself. It just feels better to have to manage your inventory a little more carefully. If you don’t want to have to do that, regular mode is there for you.

4153

I like it. The two things you mention are both positives for me. Weight management is a significant aspect of the game, and both the reduced total weight allowance and balancing bringing enough ammo against weight improve the game. That companions can die means you have to give them intelligent orders. Sometimes that includes telling them “wait here” because it’s too dangerous for them.

More than anything else, I like the restrictions on healing. No instant healing means damage means something more than depleting your stockpile of stimpacks, and no limb restoration through sleep means that limb restoration items (i.e. Doctor’s Bags) have value. There are plenty of them in the Wasteland, but in practice I don’t get crippled limbs very often even playing Very Hard with Small Frame (+bonus damage to limbs).

Exactly. Water and food items are complete junk outside hardcore mode. The Survival skill is kind of iffy even in Hardcore, but at least it means cooking Gecko Steaks has some value.

I’ve never fast-traveled to a doctor to repair a limb in New Vegas. I always had enough limb restoration items around. And yes, ammo weight does definitely add something, as I outlined above. I do agree that it makes Energy Weapons tougher to play, because in terms of damage-per-ammo-weight, the conventional weapons tend to be better. I can’t really say about missile launchers, because I always found them pretty marginal anyway.

4154

The above makes me think of a different topic: Weapons I never found viable.

Shotguns. In Fallout 3, the Combat Shotgun was the premier close-quarters firearm. At any given stage, shotguns have low DPS, low range, and extremely poor performance against armored enemies, though Slugs or the Shotgun Surgeon trait can help that. They just don’t have any advantages, any at all. In theory they might have a large alpha strike, since they tend to have a relatively high total DAM provided all 7 projectiles hit, but in practice they never have enough for a one-shot kill so it comes down to DPS again. Maybe they’re useful at Normal difficulty, where they might one-shot things?

Grenade launchers. Low DPS, and since they fire in an arc, the shell almost never lands where you think it will. I suppose they could be useful against long-distance targets behind cover, provided anyone actually stayed behind cover long enough to use one.

Incinerators. Same problem as the grenade launchers.

Grenades. Even more difficult to aim than the grenade launcher. Pulse grenades are the notable exception, since they have such a huge area of effect that you don’t need to land close.

Miniguns. They look awesome, and have high DPS, but perform poorly against armored opponents, and are very heavy. They’re iffy in VATS, since their AP cost is high. When you fire them manually, they take a while to spin up, so you really only want to use one if you have a lot of close, unarmored targets to take down in a hurry. You can pick one up very early in poor repair, which you can remedy with Weapon Repair Kits, but generally the “horde of zerglings” situation just doesn’t arise - when you’ve got lots of targets, they’re often things like well-armored Legion troops.

Missile Launchers / Fat Boys. These are very situational, you’ll almost certainly miss, so you need a target where a near miss counts as a hit. So, shoot from above, or where the target is next to a wall, and don’t fire one off indoors. I got a fair amount of use out of these in FO3, but not in New Vegas. I just didn’t get as many opportunities, probably because the environment is less urban, so it’s harder to get elevation on your targets.

If you found the any of the above useful at Very Hard, particularly shotguns, I’d like to hear how, provided you can break down why a conventional pistol or rifle couldn’t do the same job more easily.

As an example of my own, I found the Silenced .22 hard to use when I first played. It has low DAM, and it seems like it’s not going to kill anything on Very Hard. Yet this last playthrough I found it deadly at low levels taking down thugs in the Bison Steve. With hollow point ammo it can one-shot stuff even at Very Hard provided you shoot your target in the head. The main secrets are that you must be undetected, and you really must aim manually. VATS won’t give you good odds at the ranges where sneaking is practical at low levels. Eventually your opponents get too tough, but below level 6 or so it’s a good weapon.

4155

Grenades and Grenade Launchers are probably my primary weapon. I can consistently take out groups of 3-4 enemies with 2 grenades.

I also took Grunt, the +20% explosive damage perk (can’t recall the name off hand; it has 3 levels) and the one that makes your explosions bigger, so I’m sure that affects it a lot, but I will say that 40mm launchers and frag grenades are awesome in my opinion.

Nothing can compete with a sniper rifle in NV, though. Even a scoped Varmit rifle can easily be 1 shot kills at long range because you always get sneak attack critical s.

Chris Woods

4156

I don’t play at Very Hard, but Incinerators were my go-to energy weapon in the early to mid game. Way more effective than laser pistols and I don’t think I even found laser rifles until I already had plasma. Also, plentiful ammo.

4157

On my last runthrough, I tried to pick up as many of the unique weapons as I could - the Ratslayer wound up being a viable weapon all the way through the endgame. Scope + nightsight + silenced + increased critical? It makes 5.56mm ammo into a genuine threat!

4158

My response is the same as the others who covered all the bases. Hardcore is about making a few more choices when traveling, and being wary of exposure in fighting (for you or your companions.) It does not go well with up close fighting companions (without a mod that makes them “essential” which is easily found at the NV Nexus.) Essential means they act just like non-hardcore, they get up after the fight if they went down at any time in battle.

The traveling choices involve narrowing down to maybe 2 weapons plus ammo for an outing or two, max. You also carry food/water more often, which again forces you to balance things a bit. Not eating/drinking/sleeping when the timer comes due starts to hurt your stats and can eventually kill you.

The biggest change though is healing. Nothing heals directly, only over time. This forces you do play tactically, and was a brilliant design decision if you ask me. You can game it a bit by stacking benefits, but the game even tries to limit that. A stack would be eating food/drinking Sunset Sarsaparilla/using a Stimpack. This also makes good food/drink/healing much more valuable, and doctors bags and Hydra actually have a good use.

After trying it, I’m not sure I would ever go back. It’s challenging in a good way.

4159

I did my first play through on hardcore. My subsequent play throughs (none of which have hit the end game) I’ve done without it. I think if I do another I’ll go back and give it a try again. The healing differences and the need to prioritize carrying make it more interesting, and it gives Survival a real purpose. But it can be annoying. Worth doing though, as you can always bail out back to Normal.

4160

In other exciting news some patch since I last played improved the caravan AI. Have my opponents playing kings and jacks on my cards like crazy - makes for a game I actually have to pay attention to.