First time through playthrough without mods is a must for me. Once all the mods start piling up it’s hard to determine what is community made and what is natural tot he game. Plus New Vegas’ native content I think is pretty good.
I’ve never played Paranoia, though I read scenarios for it in The Space Gamer and it sounded highly amusing. Are the parallels really that exact, though? The computers aren’t your friend, you don’t have an army of clones backing you up even if the Lobotomites sorta do, there are no terribly-important clearance levels, and the oddball weaponry is genuinely useful. Well, OK, the Trauma Harnesses seem like something out of Paranoia. The High School simulator only somewhat fits. The scenario fits, but not the griping from Dr. Ourborous - it was Dr O wasn’t it? - about his high school classmates. I think, as I said I never played.
Yeah, I played Fallout 3 and Oblivion on my PC before I owned a console, and I spent as much time finding and installing mods as I did playing! (slight exaggeration.) I thought I could never be happy playing without mods.
Once I got a 360 and PS3, I become accustomed to sitting on the sofa and playing without mods. I know that there are very cool mods for Skyrim and Fallout:New Vegas, but I’ve enjoyed both - a lot - with nary a mod. And it forces me to play in a different style. For example, I always immediately modded so that I didn’t have to worry about weight limits. That meant I was pretty indiscriminate in what I picked up and carried. With no mods, I have to manage my inventory, and an enchantment (in Skyrim) or Perk to allow me to carry more is a Really Big Deal. In Fallout NV, it also means making a decision in what weapons to carry and what to leave behind. I got mods when i was gaming on the PC because I didn’t want to fart with inventory management, but it certainly changes the game in some fundamental ways when you do need to manage it.
I look at the goofy, imperfect, but deadly computers guiding you as similar to Alpha’s Computer. Also lots of suicide missions with important information withheld. Basically, the whole atmosphere of silly lethality as opposed to clones, clearance levels, and whatnot. OWB just feels like it has an actively hostile gamemaster (important for Paranoia :) running the show.
Part of that is that Skyrim and New Vegas are significantly better games by default than Oblivion (especially) or Fallout 3 (though that one’s decent enough sans modding).
@Gus_Smedstad In principle DLCs are independent modules to the base game, so in principle the order to tackle them doesn’t really matter. But if you do them in the order it came out, it is present in the way the it was MEANT to be unfolded by the developers. spoilers ahoy, cover your eyes Sure, chronologically Elijah went to Big MT before moving on to Sierra Madre, but in terms of narrative, you are meant to get clues about that in Dead Money before the whole story comes out in Old World Blues. end spoilers It would be a different experience if you play OWB first, then Dead Money. Just like Anna Karenina would be a slightly different story if her death came at the end of the novel rather than the beginning.
Same with Honest Heart: if you haven’t been to the Fort and talked to people about the Burning Man, the actual meeting with the Burning Man in Honest Heart makes less impact: so he is just another dude Caesar tried to kill. BFD. Scratch the surface, and you realise he is the only dude Caesar tried to kill AND survived. And depending on PC action, he can try harder to repent for his crimes or just fall back to his bad old ways.
But ultimately, DLCs are modular, so the order doesn’t really matter. But the order they came out is the way the narrative is MEANT to unfold, so that gets a big tick from me.
And because you didn’t big Arcade to the Fort the first time you meet Caesar, you missed a bit of insight into Caesar from Arcade. spoiler ahoy you earn a bit of his dislike if you say the wrong things end spoiler. Veronica similarly has something to say if you bring her instead of Arcade.
And you know this by telepathy. And don’t mind that it contradicts the recommended levels for the DLCs, which are 10 / 15 / 20 / 25, in the order Disconnected gave. Personally, I don’t agree at all with what you say about the narrative, I still feel it works better in required-level order.
It is not telepathy, man. It is just the way the DLCs came out.
What I suggested is the order it was MEANT by Obsidian to be experienced. You OTOH suggested the order you and others enjoy. Hey once the game is in your hand you can do whatever you want, just like you can read Anna Karenina any way you want. But there is clearly one way you were expected to follow.
Is anyone working on a community patch for New Vegas? Something that combines all the must have mods?
Has that ever been done for any Gamebryo game besides Morrowind? I would otherwise very much like something like that, or at least an up to date list of compatible mods with quick install instructions. As much as I appreciate Gopher’s work I really hate his idiot-proof approach to the explanations where he takes 5 minutes to explain the process of unzipping a fucking archive.
I really hated the Dead Money DLC, if that was the casino one. I liked all the rest of the DLC. My only complaint about the DLC in general:
complaint
Was that you could not take your companions into them after you finished them. The teleported to the big empty would have been great as a main base, but it would’t work if you had anyone in your party. You could also not go back to lonesome road with companions after you finished it). I never cleared that radioactive zone, I am not sure there was anything to find in it.
I don’t think that’s really a spoiler, but I agree. Yeah, the more I think about Dead Money, the more I think how great it would have been if the challenge had been more like the Treasure of the Sierra Madre movie that the designer said he had in mind. I.e. instead of interminable dark red mazes and the frustrating necklace thing, have the challenge be more about you and your companions, with numerous paths you could take in your interactions with them. So, one of them at one point in your progress suggests that, if Dean were to meet an untimely “accidental” death, that would be that much more money the two of you could split. Then you could either 1. Refuse, and then have to wonder whether that companion is going to try to plan YOUR demise now, perhaps in partnership with another companion; 2. Agree, then have a number of options as to how to bring about the death of the target companion (with different results based on how you choose to do it, and whether you are successful or not, and whether another companion figures out what you did;) 3. Agree but then double cross the companion who suggested it, perhaps with the suggested target as your accomplice. And that would be just one of many challenges faced, with the heist of the casino being much more of an Ocean’s 11 type heist to plan and execute. Ah well.
Question for anyone who knows: if I have Sneak at 100, is their any gain from something like the Stealth Suit MII in OWB? What good is adding +10 or +25 to sneak if I’m already at 100? Or is 100 just the max your skill can be, and the extra 25 points actually puts you at what the system sees as “125” in terms of detection?
It’s not “clearly” the way because almost no one agrees with this, and it contradicts the guidance given in game. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised that if you asked JE Sawyer about the recommended order, it would be the level order listed in game, not the order of release.
But hey, it’s pretty clear at this point you’re not listening.
There’s no benefit, though the Stealth Suit II has some other effects. Some things like Stealth Boys add another effect: the Stealth Field, which is not the same as Sneak. You can get away with stuff at Sneak 100 + Stealth Field that won’t work with just Sneak 100.
I never used Stealth Boys much in New Vegas, but I did at one point run around in the Chinese Stealth Armor in Fallout 3, which had a permanent stealth field. I could walk right up to a Super Mutant and hit him repeatedly with a Death Claw Gauntlet, and he’d never detect me because the attack was silent and I had to make a sound to be detected even at point-blank range with that combination. I don’t know if you can do that in New Vegas or not.
And the suit communicates with you, Black Mountain style but a little more personally.
To answer my own post, here’s the list of mods I used in yesterday’s install (latest FNV version from steam, ALL DLCS, Windows 8). All credit goes to Gopher for making the original video tutorials:
edit: I put the tutorial on a webpage, mostly for personal use in the future:
Feel free to let me know if anything’s not working.
Yeah, I always forget about the Stealth Boys in my inventory. That’s too bad about the no added Sneak advantage to the MK2 suit - I know it also serves as an auto-stimpak and auto-Med X (though I never use Med X much) supplier, and also gives some audible alerts here and there. I suppose there are disadvantages to leveling up so far before doing some of these DLCs and quests. Since the things I use most, such as Sneak, Guns, Science, Lockpicking, etc. are all at 100, armor with ++ in those areas is of no real added use to me. OTOH, I still wear the Ranger Beret from Boone since it gives me a bump in a SPECIAL skill (Perception) that is not maxed out.
I am enjoying OWB a lot, even though the Robo-Scorpions are a pain and tough to kill, even with Guns at 100 and my Anti-Material rifle or Gobi or the “dog gun.” My strategy in this one is to find a way to get as high as I can, then use the scope on my Anti-material rifle to find things out of my perception range/VATS range and snipe them and try to “pre-kill” as much as I can. But the swarming Robo-Scorpion are a challenge (which is not a bad thing.)
Yeah, the first time I played Old World Blues, I was around level 16 or so, and the bonuses from the Stealth Suit were a lot more helpful. That’s an example of what I was talking about earlier, the enemies may scale in the DLC, but the loot often doesn’t scale as well.
It’s worth noting that the proton axe and related weapons do roughly twice the listed damage against the Roboscorpions. I’m not much of a fan of melee, but run in, strike, skip back can be very effective against them. This may or may not be workable at your level, since you’re dealing with much tougher variants than the ones I fought.
There’s a case to made for using the 1st Recon Beret through the entire game. Not for the Perception boost, which is rarely important, but for that big boost to critical chance, which isn’t something you can easily replace. Think of it as +5 Luck.
Yeah, at level 40+, where I am, those Radscorpions are tough. Oddly enough, the force emmitter gun or whatever it is that you use to break the force fields seems to work pretty well with them (well, it’s far from one shot but it has no problems with their armor.)
I tried throwing those proton axes at the Rad Scorpions because my brother told me they worked well, but at my level they don’t seem to have much effect at all. I need to figure out what is most effective against them. But then, having to figure that out is a good thing - that kind of challenge is interesting and fair. (As opposed to finding a hidden speaker that will blow my head off in the 7 seconds I have to try to find it - did I mention how much I disliked the game design of Dead Money? ;) )