They key aspect of Hardcore mode is ammo having weight. Having to drink, eat and sleep is barely noticeable, since there's plenty of everything everywhere. I'd say you should play at whatever difficulty you favour, and if you find the hunger, etc. annoying, just install a mod that removes those, while keeping the ammo weight. It's really a game changer.
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Fallout New Vegas |OT| Obsidian does what Bethesdon't
- Thread starter disappeared
- Start date
Unless the DLC content changed things, not really. You do so much damage it doesn't matter. Toss in Sneak . . . boom.
I forgot there's no ammo weight in normal mode. I've been taking it for granted, hardcore mode or no. Actually, that brings me to one of my complaints about New Vegas: the really generous weight allowances. I must admit that most of the time I've used most of my allowance, but I always felt I was carrying too much stuff. Too much ammo, too much food and drink and maybe an unnecessary extra weapon. Most of that stuff I never end up using before I found more of the stuff to add to the reserve. Base allowance of 150 is just too much.
Unarmed does deal a lot of damage, but I wouldn't want to play an unarmed build with sneaking. I'd want her to go in punching stuff. Besides she'd have high STR and heavy armour so sneaking wouldn't be very effective.
Unarmed does deal a lot of damage, but I wouldn't want to play an unarmed build with sneaking. I'd want her to go in punching stuff. Besides she'd have high STR and heavy armour so sneaking wouldn't be very effective.
Metroidvania
People called Romanes they go the house?
You do a lot of damage sure, but you can't sneak forever once the enemies get to higher levels unless you're super methodical about it, which makes clearing areas take forever. Sneaking through the main "storyline" is fine, but try doing the Quarry Junction or a cazador populated area and expect to load your last save a few times. At least, that was my experience.
Yeah, and getting up to 400 with 10 STR + Strong Back + Burden to Bear + NCR courier dustier + hoarder trait was just kinda silly.
But then again, I was usually running around with either 15 wep repair kits and extra combat armor for my Elite Riot Armor or carrying 2-3 extras of the 4 guns I was using.
I hope the next Fallout either keeps Jury Rigging or has a armor repair kits, without combat armor, repairing some of the unique medium armors is costly as shit.
Unarmed and Melee builds are both extremely powerful, but yeah, stick it to Power Armor and just rain them blows. I usually go for long reach melee weapons and try to hit a bunch of enemies with each swing. I love it
Carry weight is something that always feels abundant in all Bethesda games, and, even then, more weight is the first mod people install. New Vegas is a little smarter with the stats balance, but it's still way too much. I feel like you shouldn't ever be able to carry three different sets of armor at the same time...
afternoon delight
Member
Playing this build without Power Armor made for a very long game, but my Zatoichi character prevailed. So many missions were that much harder or slightly impossible too, like the mentioned Quarry Junction. Untouchable.Unarmed and Melee builds are both extremely powerful, but yeah, stick it to Power Armor and just rain them blows. I usually go for long reach melee weapons and try to hit a bunch of enemies with each swing. I love it
Edit: I'd also suggest anyone considering a build like this should recruit Cass for the Whiskey Rose perk.
I'm not huge into mods, but I highly recommend the Sawyer mod with Hardcore mode. I'm at work, so I can't go into detail, but here is the link for the Sawyer mod thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=457133
And this is the general Fallout 3\New Vegas mod thread:
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=426315
Thanks!
I'm an obsessive min/maxer and don't really want to start on this until I have a build planned out.
I cannot find with google and "perfect" builds or really any builds that take all of the DLC into account.
Can GAF recommend me a build that's considered the "best" or point me to somewhere that has a bunch of premade builds I can scan through?
I cannot find with google and "perfect" builds or really any builds that take all of the DLC into account.
Can GAF recommend me a build that's considered the "best" or point me to somewhere that has a bunch of premade builds I can scan through?
Old Gimlet Eyes
Member
Pretty much any build can be succesful, Water_Wendi even did a full pacifist play through....Basically pick the character you want to roleplay and go from there. By then time you are fully leveled and have gone through most of the game, you will be a beast stats wise. Check that OCD at the door and enjoy the greatest RPG of this generation.
Imp the Dimp
Member
45h so far and this game is ridiculously good. How the fuck does it have a lower metacritic score than F3 when it's better in virtually every aspect?
I've got one complaint though: The Mojave Wasteland is not as open-world as it was in Fallout 3. Rocks, mountains and especially invisible walls shape your paths quite clearly. It's somewhat similiar to Kingdom of Amalur without loading screens between the different areas. Not too big a deal but invisible walls are kind of an immersion breaker. You can go only where Obsidian wants you to go unlike Morrowind in which you could jump on every mountain and take ridiculous shortcuts.
Playing the PC version (Ultimate Edition) with tons of visual mods FYI.
I've got one complaint though: The Mojave Wasteland is not as open-world as it was in Fallout 3. Rocks, mountains and especially invisible walls shape your paths quite clearly. It's somewhat similiar to Kingdom of Amalur without loading screens between the different areas. Not too big a deal but invisible walls are kind of an immersion breaker. You can go only where Obsidian wants you to go unlike Morrowind in which you could jump on every mountain and take ridiculous shortcuts.
Playing the PC version (Ultimate Edition) with tons of visual mods FYI.
Blue Ninja
Member
Yeah, that's my main gripe with the game as well. Once you really start exploring the Mojave the way they intended you to, though, it feels immensely big.
And once you're done with that, hop on out of the map and you have an entire empty wasteland to climb through and explore, it's pretty awesome. :lol
XeroSauce
Member
Adding tose mods that add random encounters/locations to the world really helps to spice up the Mojave.
Adding to the hardcore talk above, I'm finding myself using weapons until I run out of ammo for them, and then tossing them away. Makes me feel somewhat badass as I fire 25 rounds of 5.56m from a rifle, toss it while switching to the shotgun/revolver and continue fighting. It helps me keep my weight down while also letting me scavenge for multiple ammo types.
Imp the Dimp
Member
When should I tackle the add ons? And in what order should I play them?
I would just play them in the order they were released. Lonesome Road, Dead Money and OWB are all tangentially related and have a sort of order to them even though they don't follow a linear storyline. The only one that doesn't really have an order is Honest Hearts.
Oh and as for when, I saved them until I could tell the main campaign was winding down, but then I had a bunch of weapons and armor I didn't get the opportunity to use. I think I've seen most people recommend waiting until you are level 20 or so to start doing them.
I would try to slowly beat them as I go before getting to New Vegas. I feel that they work better that way, instead of just 5 minutes before of the final choice.
Play them in release order: Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road.
RoninChaos
Member
How long does it take for the game to pickup? I need to know how much initial play time I need to carve out for this game just to get started.
Metroidvania
People called Romanes they go the house?
Depends on what you mean by started.
If you wanna rush the main quest, stuff starts getting "interesting" around the time you enter New Vegas. But there are a lot of good sidequest hubs like Novac, the NCR major camps, and Helios One. A lot of the other towns have quests that span from town to town.
I wouldn't rush the main storyline too far in, or you can miss a fair amount of content if you align yourself with a faction too early.
The game really picked up after I left Goodsprings and started to get into some side quests. Lots of excellent side quests in NV. Like, Metroidvania said, don't stick to rushing the main story.
moojito
Member
It seems to me there were a lot of missed opportunities for quests. Maybe I've just played too much WoW, but when I stumbled upon ranger station charlie, I was really disappointed that there was nothing there at all, quest wise. When the guy there said the main ranger dude was off scouting, at least I could have been sent to go and help/rescue him from a deathclaw attack or something.
Even a very mmo-esque "go and kill 5 deathclaws" would have been fine.
Even a very mmo-esque "go and kill 5 deathclaws" would have been fine.
Eek.
What's the point of such quests? I do agree that there's room for more quests, but the amount the game has is enough.
moojito
Member
It just seems an awful waste to have this interesting ranger station there, all the buildings and surrounding area, and have nothing at all to make it worth visiting except a tiny bit of flavour text from the single interactable npc there. Given that it's right on the way to novac and people would be passing it fairly early on in the main quest it would have been a great opportunity to let players know that it's worth stopping by places like that, as the chances are there'll be another quest for you there, or something to do.
edit: another place that could use some quest love is the huge radioactive town near the airport. And the airport itself, come to think of it. Not the one in new vegas itself, but the to the south.
Metroidvania
People called Romanes they go the house?
This is a good point, but I'm sure at some point you have to cut off quests, and Obsidian's never really struck me as the filler quests type. (at least, for marked ones. The kill X creatures quests were moreso the challenges)
There are an unusual number of unmarked quests, such as the one in the radioactive town. You get told by the sargeant guarding the place that the Legion invaded undercover and set off a nuke, but there's actually his remains along with mini nukes in one of the irradiated buildings, along with collecting irradiated dog tags to turn in.
The south airport only having a few radscorpions is a bit odd. It would have been cool to find Boomer parts for the bomber there.
Related to that, I do think there are a large number of set pieces designed more for theme than actual story-related content, but IMO, that was Obsidian trying to match Fallout 3's exploration focus. And most of the non-quest related caves and such were where a good number of the unique weapons were located, IIRC.
RoninChaos
Member
To be more specific, when will I hit something interesting? How long does that take? Like in Fallout 3 I felt things didn't get interesting until you got to big town and actually did some quests. Is there something similar in this or does it take a few hours to get into some fun stuff?
Well, I think the things get cool I'd say about Nipton. That's the first town you hit after Primm. Novac and the REPCONN Test Site are pretty interesting too, and that's not too far away either.
The game has a slow beginning (I don't mind, but I know a lot of people do), but far the line it becomes incredibly engrossing thanks to the many factions and important characters you meet and New Vegas itself and its outskirts are full of stuff to do.
If you're feeling like the game drags on a little, try to hold on, because it does get epic.
Empty Space
Member
I'm going to sit down and do a second play through of the game tomorrow will all the add-ons and visual mods there are. My first question were the damage values of energy weapons ever adjusted post patch? I seem to recall them being terrible in New Vegas at launch. Also are there any content mods that don't break the game on Hardcore? I was looking at the two Bounties mods and they look interesting. Project Nevada seems cool too, but that one I'm guessing isn't balanced at all.
I'm ready to start a new game myself. I'd look at the Josh Sawyer mod if I was you. It actually makes Hardcore mode worth a damn.
If you're also going to use Project Nevada with it then disable PN's Rebalancing mod, as I believe they conflict. Personally I'm just using Project Nevada's Core, mainly for the useful sprinting ability.
If you're also going to use Project Nevada with it then disable PN's Rebalancing mod, as I believe they conflict. Personally I'm just using Project Nevada's Core, mainly for the useful sprinting ability.
hemtae
Member
There was a lot of rebalancing in regards to the weapons. Energy weapon ammo got some armor piercing.
Also theres a rebalance module for PN. I don't like it but most of the values are changeable.
EW got a lot of balancing done, I think they got a little more DT ignore and some DPS done.
I know some people like the NV Bounties mods but I think they're pretty boring, and the second in particular is full of popular culture references which range from great (
like finding Walter and Pinkman from Breaking Bad at a Jet lab
fighting a Freddy Krugger merc with a Deathclaw claw :/)
Project Nevada I feel is probably the quintessential mod for New Vegas. The balancing is great if you're looking for some extra challenge, tweakable (in-game!) and it's modular, so if you don't want extra guns or implants, you just tick them off in installation.
I don't see myself playing the game without PN, just the same as I don't see myself playing it without MTUI. If anything, to limit a little the ridiculous amount of loot you get in the game, so you're forced to scavenge and make use of skills like Survival and Repair more intelligently.
Did you try out Sawyer's mod zkylon? Didn't like it?
Haven't really looked at what Nevada's rebalancing does but Sawyer's seems on-point. Doesn't look like it does anything with loot drops but some of the other tweaks seem to offset that, at least on paper. But I haven't actually played with it yet so it remains to be seen how the execution is in-game.
Haven't really looked at what Nevada's rebalancing does but Sawyer's seems on-point. Doesn't look like it does anything with loot drops but some of the other tweaks seem to offset that, at least on paper. But I haven't actually played with it yet so it remains to be seen how the execution is in-game.
Was gonna get around trying it but got some PC issues and ended up buying a new PC and reformatting the whole thing. I reinstalled FO:NV again but since I beat the game about 5 times already and tested a load of mods (FO:NV's my favorite game since Bloodlines, I think), I decided to let it rest for a while.
From my experience, PN-Rebalance is a must-have for anyone interested in the game being a little more challenging and interesting. It doesn't make the game so much harder as it does make some skills like Survival a little more important and balanced, and forces you to scavenge a bit for Stimpaks and such.
If JESawyer's mod does about the same thing it could be a fitting replacement, but as far as I'm aware, it's more combat specific than PN-R (PN-R provides separate loot table sliders for healing items, weapons, ammo, etc.). I think JES's mod also plays a little with the hunger, thirst and sleep stats, too.
What I like about JES's mod is that it's like a "gameplay director's cut", so I think it will feel pretty good knowing that you're playing the game as Josh intended it to be, unrestrained from the usual accessibility stuff. I really like that idea, and that's why I went and bought GRA and Courier's Stash even if I wasn't really interested about them.
Sawyer's mod does a lot of stuff with various karma tweaks and other things, but seems principally geared towards making Hardcore mode much more of what it should have always been, as well as just increasing general difficulty.
Base carry weight is reduced by 100, FOD/SLP/H20 rates are doubled (and he balances it nicely as the initial threshold is increased to 400, then +150 afterwards), he gave weight to things like stimpaks along with creating different types of them and making the best one a rarity and the rest of them a lot less useful, base health is quartered and HP buffs are reduced on level-up, and experience rates are halved (with a max cap of 35 with all the DLC, and perks are also adjusted accordingly).
It's gonna be a treat to mess around with it.
Base carry weight is reduced by 100, FOD/SLP/H20 rates are doubled (and he balances it nicely as the initial threshold is increased to 400, then +150 afterwards), he gave weight to things like stimpaks along with creating different types of them and making the best one a rarity and the rest of them a lot less useful, base health is quartered and HP buffs are reduced on level-up, and experience rates are halved (with a max cap of 35 with all the DLC, and perks are also adjusted accordingly).
It's gonna be a treat to mess around with it.
Yeah, sounds like it's pretty much the same as PN-R, even moreso if he took the trouble to rebalance the loot tables. I'm interested to see how the values differ between mods...
Empty Space
Member
I appreciate the replies and am sorry my post was a jumbled mess I made it fairly late at night after already being up like 20 hours. I guess I'm going to grab Project Nevada and set the sliders to my liking.
One more quick question any suggestions on what level or order I should tackle the DLC?
One more quick question any suggestions on what level or order I should tackle the DLC?
Release order: Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and Lonesome Road. Dead Money is pretty tough on higher difficulties, so you might want to be at least level 20 (you can try at a lower level if you're playing on Normal, though).
Empty Space
Member
Awesome thanks for the help that was exactly what I was going to do.
hemtae
Member
She may be able to get a pardon depending on how far she is in the story line. Or she can go on a killing spree.
Your friend might want to equip herself with an NCR uniform. Restraining from sleeping outdoors and travelling with a full entourage (I suggest Veronica+ED-E if your friend's at odds with Boone) is also advised.
Imp the Dimp
Member
Game keeps crashing when I enter Sunset Sarsaparilla Headquarters. I collected 50 Sunset Sarsaparilla star bottle caps and want to hand them in but the game keeps me from entering. I recall that I had similar problems the first time around when I wanted to enter the headquarters but this time it ain't working at all.
hemtae
Member
Is there any other reasonable course of action?
Empty Space
Member
Your friend should probably start saving often those troops are going to harass them for a very long time and are going to get some Desert rangers in riot gear at some point. Your friend should also avoid pissing off the Legion aswell or they will send roving bands of troops in a similar fashion.
So I'm going to say I'm genuinely impressed by the changes the mods have have made to the game. I actually actively avoid playing at night, because while not pitch black its far easier to miss a random enemy. Then there's the increased lethality of pretty much everything. I'm terrified of nightstalkers and cazadores which while kind of dangerous when I played the game on console are something I actually run away from now. Food not restoring health has made me super cautious too, but I'm not really struggling to keep hunger and hydration low. I suspect radiation might be real hassle at some point in the game. If I'm remembering right there's actually a limited amount RADAway in the game. Explosive have also gone from useless to vital in dispatching large groups of enemies unaware. The one thing I wish I could remember to start doing is picking up the supplies for doctor's bags.
I'm really happy with all the mods I grabbed. I actually liked how the game feels so much I might try and mod Fallout 3 in a similar manner.
afternoon delight
Member
Agreed, Sawyer's mod plus some other tweaks is making this game so much more for me, I can't even finish Portal 2 because I keep playing FNV.
Trekking down the Lonesome Road for the first time ever, and I fucking LOVE the scenery/feeling so far. It may be a bit much, but I wish there were more of the windstorms, debris, 'hollowness' aesthetic in the whole game, not just one area. Next generation weather dynamics for FO4 hopefully?
My melee character also enjoys the Ranger Helmet's "Sneak Vision" capabilities, because sometimes the contrast in this game at night is a little off for my preference. Also, upgraded ED-E will now replace Cass as my companion because it's like a happy, chirping omnitool of useful things.
Edit: Also, this is my third playthrough, and I never knew you could really kill
Mr. House.
If you're playing on PC, try bringing up the console (tilde key ~) and type "coc SunsetSarsaparillaHeadquarters" without the quote marks, then press enter. Maybe that'll work.
You won't have any problems finding RadAways. Just make sure to bring a lot with you whenever you enter a Vault. Not gonna say which one for the sake of mystery
And if you ever play FO3, be sure to install Fallout Wanderers Edition to have a New Vegas-hardcore-like experience.
Really?Agreed, Sawyer's mod plus some other tweaks is making this game so much more for me, I can't even finish Portal 2 because I keep playing FNV.
Trekking down the Lonesome Road for the first time ever, and I fucking LOVE the scenery/feeling so far. It may be a bit much, but I wish there were more of the windstorms, debris, 'hollowness' aesthetic in the whole game, not just one area. Next generation weather dynamics for FO4 hopefully?
My melee character also enjoys the Ranger Helmet's "Sneak Vision" capabilities, because sometimes the contrast in this game at night is a little off for my preference. Also, upgraded ED-E will now replace Cass as my companion because it's like a happy, chirping omnitool of useful things.
Edit: Also, this is my third playthrough, and I never knew you could really killI loved the obituary notice, and I can't wait to see how much of it was sarcasm and how much of it was truth- oh I'm excited for the endgame.Mr. House.
I killed him on almost every playthrough. I don't know why, because I really like the character. It probably has to do with him asking me to wipe out the Brotherhood.
And yeah, LR has awesome atmosphere and mood. I think I like it better as a sidenote in the Fallout universe, though, since Fallout is meant to be post-apocalyptic, not apocalyptic per-sé (something Bethesda got terribly wrong in FO3).