I think everyone hated Dead Money. I hope it is a lesson on what NOT to do for game content. I wish I could put a recommendation on DLC in steam. I would tell everyone to stay away from that DLC.
Come to think of it, that’s another reason not to do Dead Money first. Because you might quit and never return to the game.
At this point I don’t think I’m getting to you either. You just wave away the narrative reason as if it doesn’t matter and focused on the gameplay reasons. And I’ve said it before, there is a story in F:NV, much more than F3. You will miss that if you only focus on gameplay.
Combat wise Dead Money is going to be tough, even at level 40 (because for a time you can’t really kill ghost people, and they @#$% took away all your fat loot), and it is the very worst part of Dead Money. The conundrum is that the shitty combat is wedded to an interesting story about Vera Keyes.
I WOULD be surprised if JE Sawyer comes out and says the order DLCs came out ISN’T the recommended order because that would be a admission of serious screw up in releasing DLCs out of order.
PS: I do wonder how many F:NV players care about the narrative, or how many of them just want a wasteland simulator/sandbox.
I am playing Old World Blues, it is the last DLC for me (I played Honest Hearts, Lonesome Road, Dead Money, and now OWB.) I think if I had it to do over, I would have played OWB before Dead Money. I would have liked to have had all of the background info on the characters in Dead Money that you get in OWB before Dead Money - I think it would have added some depth and interest to Dead Money and made it less of a drudgery than it was (for me.)
I think the only way to lessen the drudgery of Dead Money is to not play Dead Money. I played OWB before Dead Money and the connection didn’t add anything other than knowing who this guy was. Its not like you actually met him in OWB, just read some journal entries.
Finished OWB, easily my favorite of the DLCs. Without spoilers, I like that it didn’t require a super bloodfest bad guy boss ending. A great combination of interesting locations, cool loot, humor, story, and challenge.
Now that I’ve finished all the DLCs and have maxed at level 50 (no more +61 or other progress indicators, and no more perks!) I supposed it is time to finally go into New Vegas, LOL!
I’m enjoying OWB but man is it kicking my butt. I got lured into a false sense of easiness by playing Honest Hearts first. It’s forcing me to switch between energy, guns, and fist weapons even though I had only intended to specialize in guns.
I never used the melee weapons in OWB. My melee is the only skill that is still down in the 30s. My strategy was finding high places and scouting with my sniper rifles and killing as much from distance as possible. I killed most nightstalker packs from outside VATS range with Christine’s silenced sniper rifle. The robo scorpions I hit with the riot shotgun, grenade launcher, Fido, Elijah’s LAER, they were just tough ( I was in my level 40s when I played that DLC.)
I left my favorite sniper rifle back in NOVAC, because I thought it was smart to empty my inventory as much as possible. Ha. My strategy now is to use Psycho and Med-X before a big fight, which is working so far, if I don’t run out. I got addicted to both but luckily there is a “doctor” in this DLC.
Yeah, i used both my Christine sniper rifle (which you can find within OWB) and my anti-material sniper rifle a lot in OWB. I’d take my time, find a tall spot and scan the direction I needed to go and take out as much as I could. The stimpacks are few and far between (but realize you can make 5 stimpacks at any chemistry set!) so I stocked up on Sunset Sas.
I maxed my melee skill and just shishkebabbed my way through the mobs. There was plenty of running backwards waving it around but I saved on my ammo. Now I’m up to Lonesome Road.
OK, so I have finished all of the DLC, and almost all of my outstanding quests. I’m at level 50, so no more perks or leveling up. One of my last quests was fixing Rex, and I have t say he and Boone are great companions - Rex is pretty damned tough (I took the brain that gave him extra damage) and I really like the way he offers the perk to highlight containers that hold useful stuff; I’ve found hollowed rocks I had passed by a dozen times in the past and would have never noticed.
And so, level 50, I am finally entering the Strip for the first time! LOL! I think I am getting my money’s worth out of this one. ;)
A fair amount goes out of these games for me when I don’t have any advancement to look forward to, so I prefer to visit all the content in multiple plays rather than doing everything with one character and hitting the level cap.
Yeah, I am probably odd in that I almost always play these games (e.g. FNV, Skyrim) with only one character and do all of my exploring, etc. with that one character. A major part of the role playing for me, in these games, is the sense of discovery, and when I play a second character it is a let down for me (oh, yeah, I know there is a hidden cave behind those trees, and I know what’s in it…)
I agree that the sense of discovery is a large part of these games. While I try and do different things on a second playthrough, there always seem to be big sections that I feel I have to do with any character. In New Vegas, for example, doing the tutorial and the starting town quest seems required just to get off the ground.
On the other hand, often on a first playthrough I’ll end up blocking things off. The first couple of times I played, I pissed the Powder Gangers off a lot very early, so I couldn’t do “I Fought the Law” at the prison. Similarly, first time I played, I killed off Motorunner to early, so I couldn’t do part of the Red Rock Canyon quests. So later playthroughs let me do stuff I couldn’t, the first time around.
On my second play through, I try to role-play an evil character, as it can take me into areas and quests I hadn’t seen on my first playthrough as a nice guy. It can be tough, though. Fallout NV maybe not so much, but in Fallout 3, you’re tasked to do some pretty dark stuff. Muahahaha. ;)
So, just another Saturday night?
I played Honest Hearts, OWB, and Lonesome Road DLC. My overall favorite is Honest Hearts.
Here’s the thing. I leveled up quite a bit, now I’m maxed out at 45 and not done with the main story. I don’t own the Dead Money DLC (didn’t plan on playing it after reading the comments here), would that increase the level cap by five? Can I increase it through other means (ie, via an add-on or console command)?
As someone said earlier in the thread, it’s hard to stay motivated to keep playing when you’re at the level cap. :/
Project Nevada includes the ability to configure your own level cap. You don’t need the bulk of the modules to increase the cap, just the Core and Rebalance bits. You’ll probably want to create a new, manual save before adding mods into the mix (especially ones with scripting) as you never know what may happen a few hours down the line.
For that matter, there are minimalist mods that only change the level cap. It’s a single value, and I’ve done it myself with the GECK - I wanted to play with Chris Sawyer’s mod, but I didn’t want his level 30 cap.