YES…WALK ON YOUR MANY PENISED-FEET.
Yes, it’s true, the weird PA announcements in Old World Blues get tired after a while. But I think he’s got a point, Honest Hearts was much worse because your followers had much, much less to say. After about the fiftieth time I heard Follows-Chalk tell me “bet you don’t have anything as tough a Yao Gai,” especially since Yao Gai are pansies compared to New Vegas deathclaws, I wanted to tape his mouth shut.
jeffd
4423
Ugh, one thing that is really starting to annoy me is the degree to which they made the enemies bullet sponges. They aren’t very hard (I’m level 38, nothing is very hard at this point) but they are just going through my ammo reserves like nuts. I’ve actually turned the difficulty down because it was annoying me so much!
Bullet sponge enemies = lazy design, plain and simple.
That’s why you should have gone melee/unarmed. So you could hit them with those ten wriggling, disgusting, sensual appendages.
Which enemies, specifically?
I’ve mentioned before that the thing I really hated about the Point Lookout expansion for Fallout 3 was that they just cranked up the HP and damage of the enemies to a ridiculous degree, even though their equipment was still crap. It’s funny how I could have accepted the idea that some new non-human opponent might have tremendous health and damage, the way Ghoul Reavers or Albino Radscorpions did with Broken Steel, but when it’s clearly just another set of tribals in basic 5 DT Badlands armor toting cheap weapons, it really pissed me off.
I felt the same way at first, started Old World Blues at 34 and the enemies would just soak up hits. Once I upgraded the sonic emitter it became much less annoying. I also pumped points into unarmed which has helped out a ton. Super-heated Saturnite fist ftmfw.
I generally prefer to shoot things, but I did add some points to melee because the proton axe (or advanced version) is often a good choice against the roboscorpions.
jeffd
4428
Unfortunately my character explicitly avoids lasers & melee combat. He’s a cowboy!
As for what enemies: pretty much everything I’ve encountered soaks up a ridiculous amount of hits. It’s ridiculous. The scorpions being tough I can understand, but the lobotomites? wtf?
Sepiche
4429
That’s odd. I’m playing OWB at level 26 and I’m not noticing anything taking unreasonable amounts of damage. For reference I tend to switch between the named .45 from HH and a 12.7mm SMG and everything falls pretty quick.
I was level 20-something when I did OWB, and the lobotomites died as easily as a standard wasteland raider (a single headshot in VATS using a marksman carbine or sniper rifle usually finished them). For the roboscorpions and Trauma Harnesses, though, I had to switch to heavier weapons and/or AP rounds.
That was pretty much my experience. My issue with the lobotomites wasn’t so much how much damage they took, but how much damage they do at long range with crap weapons like pistols and caravan shotguns. It’s not so much the per-shot damage, either, it’s that those frakkers never miss.
Into Old World Blues now (maybe some spoilers ahead). Have to say that it’s unique, if not entirely enjoyable. First thing that struck me was the relatively massive xp I got for all the chit-chat near the beginning; it seems a little out-of-balance when considering the effort put into it. The biggest issue is having those robo-scorpions spawning on top of me. I don’t mind having them come at me in waves if they need to, but here I am, strolling along, and suddenly there’s a robo-scorpion on top of me with a bunch of others spawning all along the path I was following. I was fortunate enough to be able to back my way between a truck wreck and the cliff wall to keep them from ganging up on me, take out my Gauss rifle and proceed to make piles of scrap metal out of them. However, if I hadn’t found that tidy little defensive position, I would have been toast in a couple of seconds. That’s got to be a misplaced trigger for spawning.
In general, though, I do find that the enemies in OWB tend to be more perceptive, are much tougher to kill (I’m playing at level 38 right now), and are overall a bit more tedious to fight. I miss my one-shot sniping kills. Aside from some cliff-top shooting gallery of robo-scorpions with my laser rifle+ (multiple hits required), and some lobotomites with my sniper rifle+ (multiple hits required), I’ve definitely not had an easy time with my stealthy, gun-toting character. Not sure if either of the two weapons I managed to get from Doctor Klein are going to be better in the long run; I tried them out a couple of times but other of my weapons seem to be better.
Still, interesting characters to start it off and a different type of plot makes it worthwhile. Will have to see how it comes together.
This may be a level-balance thing, or a character build thing. I started Old World Blues at level 20, I think it was. According to the Vault, most enemies in Old World Blues have variants based on your character level, i.e. Roboscorpions have Mark 1-5 variants, and I was fighting Mark 3’s and 3b’s. It may be that higher-level enemies are harder to kill, compared to increase in player power.
Second, I was Guns / Criticals / Cowboy, and I was getting one-shot sneak attack kills on Very Hard with the hunting rifle and particularly the hunting revolver, which gets the Cowboy bonus. Not against Roboscorpions, but against lobotomites and nightstalkers.
The K9000 is actually a very, very good weapon, particularly once you find a couple of mods for it. It’s not a sniping weapon, but it delivers a lot of DPS at mid to short range. The sonic pistol is kind of iffy, both because of low DPS and because it has an absolute range limit beyond which it has no effect. It is required to progress through some areas, though, and it does have some powerful effects against robotic opponents on a critical hit. The base version does paralysis, which is pretty nice, but it’s difficult to get a sneak critical because of the limited range.
I’m going for a level-balance thing over the character build. At level 38, my skills a pretty much up there but I was fighting up to mark 4b’s. Reminds me of the bullet-sponge comment recently. Outside OWB, in the Mojave and previous DLCs, I didn’t have any troubles. At least with the animal friend perk I don’t have to kill any of the nightstalkers. Went through the Z-9 Crotalus DNA Preservation Lab and just listened to them rattle away.
I haven’t found any weapon mods yet for the unique weapons in OWB, so perhaps that’s part of the problem. I’ve been seeking out the modules and exploring first thing, ignoring the push to keep on track that Doctor Klein insisted upon when giving me my mission. Hope that doesn’t cause trouble.
Sarkus
4435
Supposedly you have more success with AP rounds in OWB if you stick with a gun you imported, though I found that the guns in the DLC (the Brush rifle, for example) were much better then what I brought in when it came to the new enemy types. I went in at a high level and the roboscorps were a pain either way to begin with, but the other new energy weapon you can get (not the one the brains give you) is actually pretty effective against them. Plus, the upgrades really do pay off for all the unique guns in the DLC.
Seeking out the SINK modules is generally the smart thing, except that the quest points you into some really hard areas early on. Even though some of the modules are in much easier areas, you don’t get map markers for them until you get the harder ones.
RedHerb
4437
I just got done with OWB. I really enjoyed it. Mainly because I found it to be hilariously, one of funniest pieces of gaming this year. In fact I’ve really like all the of New Vegas DLC and I think they deserve more praise then they’re getting.
I loved the little village you go to and the way the interior represents one the of characters. It’s subtle and only something you would get if you talked at length with the scientists (something you absolutely should do!). It’s something which makes exploring empty spaces worth it.
I will say, however, this once again suffers from some overly repetitious dialogue, like the stealth suit. Speaking of which, I’m pretty sure that little minx of a suit used up an awful lot of my stimpaks. Although I was sucking them down at a pretty high rate to begin with.
Soma
4438
That stealth suit will automagically administer stims when you are low on health, just like the medical power armour in Fallout 3.
I’m catching up on Old World Blues in anticipation of the new DLC (the achievements for the last DLC are already out on Steam…) I just can’t find the 35th and final location in Big MT…
Speaking of the stealth suit, I got really irritated that it would administer Med-X every time I entered combat so that I ended up a junkie in short order. So, I won’t be wearing that outfit anymore, at least not before I clear out my inventory or addictive drugs.
RedHerb
4440
Explorer perk!!! A perk that shows you places to go that you didn’t find by actually exploring.
Other then that. I think you go to all, if not most, of places to collect the upgrades for your sink. Which being a quest gives you a quest marker for that local. So do those quests buddy…FOR SCIENCE!!!
