Vegas baby! Vegas

[Malakili]

OWB on a small sale until August 7th as part of the Quakecon promotion - 25% off.

[Jeff Kelly]

So I've now finished Dead Money as well. OWB is definitely the stronger DLC. At first I liked it because it was a rather nice change of pace. The constant backtracking and avoiding of traps and speakers gets old really fast, though. You are also only able to reach the best ending if you have at least 75 in Barter, Speech and Repair an 85 in Science and you encounter a lot of "very hard" locks and skill tests on the way. You#ll also have to follow certain dialogue paths with your companions otherwise they might be too upset with you to listen to you.

If you have a high repair skill the ghost people will become less and less of a problem as you recycle more and more spent microfusion cells and blast them with the holo rifle. Otherwise you'll use a lot of .357 bullets with your police gun.

The assault rifle didn't seem to work for me. I only did very little damage with it.

The finale in the casino is actually pretty well done. By the time you get there, though, you're quite fed up with the DLC game mechanics of either avoiding or shooting speakers and redirecting holograms to enjoy it really.

[Fabricated]

All the DLC is on sale on Steam now for ~$2.50 off.

[caladein]

Now 50% for today (last of the Quakecon daily sales).  Also, FO3 and DLC are 66% off.

[Fabricated]

Dead Money is officially not fun. God help you if you didn't take a mess of points in melee. Focusing on the worst elements of gameplay (melee, stealth) doesn't make for a fun DLC. Also some of the major decisions aren't telegraphed well enough (i.e. what you need to do to have more choices regarding Dean).

edit: more specifically, ignoring the gameplay problems it just seems too short. You get like 30 minutes of characterization apiece for your teammates, then whammo time to make some big decisions.

[Rendakor]

Good to know that it's melee focused; I just bought all the DLC since they're 50% off, and I'll make sure to use my unarmed character for it.

[Fabricated]

As mentioned Dead Money gets the "survival horror" feeling better than just about any survival horror game released in the last several years. The ghost people bug me; I'm more bothered by seeing them than I am Deathclaws in the Mojave, and the Ghost People are no where NEAR as deadly as them. If you're just a ridiculous glutton for punishment or the survival horror/RPGFPS king, playing Dead Money on hardcore will suitably kick your balls in. It's just cruel.

[Jeff Kelly]

I'd suggest only starting Dead Money if you're either a melee/unarmed character with sufficient skill (the ghost people will be tough regardless the bear claw fist ist a deadly weapon when used by them) or if you're high level enough to have sufficient skill points in repair so that you can scavenge and craft stuff.

You'll find enough junk to craft almost anything (especially weapon repair kits and doctor's bags) and you'll find a lot of microfusion cells that you can recycle. Also pick up any Sierra Madre Chip you find because you can redeem them for ammo and stimpacks at the Casino terminals (if you find the recipes)

"It is advised you enter the add-on with 100 Science, 75 Lockpick, 75 Speech, 50 Barter, and 70 Medicine.

Players who wish to get the most from the various skill checks should also note that certain locks and terminals may be Very Hard (100).

Skill checks in the Sierra Madre: Speech 25, 50, 65, 75, 80, 85. Science 60, 75. Medicine 60, 75. Explosives 25, 60(either/or with Science 60). Sneak 75. Barter 25, 50, 75(either/or with Sneak 75). Lockpick 75(either/or with Barter 75 and Sneak 75). Repair 35, 100. Intelligence 6, 7. Perception 6, 8. Also note that one conversation option requires an INT of 3 to access it. You can lower your Intelligence with negative status effects and addictions, but addictions cannot be cured in Dead Money and will be with you until you return to the Mojave." Fallout Wiki

You'll also only get the best outcome if you watch what you say to your companions and how you treat them.

[Jeff Kelly]

I have now finished Honest Hearts. I liked the territory of Zion its very nicely done. I just found Honest Hearts to be too short given the number of locations you could visit.

[Sky]

So I grabbed some sale DLC and went back into the game.

[Malakili]

So I grabbed some sale DLC and went back into the game.

[caladein]

That SYS save was added in with a patch that came out just before the Summer Camp sale last month.  If you finished the game before then you'll need to go back to an earlier, manual, save to do any DLC.

[Rendakor]

None of the DLC allow a post-game? Bleh.

[Jeff Kelly]

No and they never will. Obsidian has stated that no future DLC will allow you to continue playing after the end.

[Sky]

That SYS save was added in with a patch that came out just before the Summer Camp sale last month.  If you finished the game before then you'll need to go back to an earlier, manual, save to do any DLC.

Well, fuck. That's dumb.

[Rendakor]

No and they never will. Obsidian has stated that no future DLC will allow you to continue playing after the end.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I can't believe you people are having trouble without melee in dead money.  I did a pure guns playthrough and had zero issues.

[Ingmar]

"having trouble" != "not enjoying"

It isn't that it is hard, really. It is that it is annoying and/or tedious.

[Lakov_Sanite]

I'm not arguing dead money wasn't tedious, it was but mostly due to the traps. I just didn't find the zombie guys hard or tedious at all. I think having a super high crit rate helped though, limbs were blowing off left and right.

[Tebonas]

Yes, I believe it was the crit rate. My character was a high crit rate build as well and not even the ghosts stood up again after their head blew up. I don't remember when I got the Holorifle, but from that moment on it was a walk in the park (thanks to Commando and Laser Commander finally kicking in).

Thats one very specific build, though. For most others the DLC was built to be as tedious as possible.

[caladein]

Yeah, high crit or Bloody Mess would do the trick.  I would just go in with VATS Surgical Strikes and hope it hacked something off.

[Ingmar]

Ah yeah, I would guess Bloody Mess basically breaks the DLC.

[Rendakor]

Just starting Dead Money; first ghost was annoying because I was (literally) unarmed. After I finally crit him and took his bear trap fist, things got easier.

[Fabricated]

Take the light steps perk if you haven't already. It'll make the first half of the DLC trivial and the latter half easier.

[Jeff Kelly]

Wanted to do the achievements so I equipped my char with a saturnite fist superheated and an upgraded proton axe. Should have used those in OWB and Dead money. One hit killing everything is  .

Veronica with a saturnite power fist superheated is an unstoppable killing machine. Between us two we killed 20 nightstalkers (for the "bleed me dry" quest) in less than a minute, one- hitting them left and right.

[Jeff Kelly]

On my first play through I didn't play the Caesar missions (I normally don't like playing evil). This time, though, I did. I have to say even that story line is done brilliantly.

1. Caesars legion actually uses the historically correct pronunciation of the latin words (that nobody today uses because it sounds utterly stupid to us). This made me realize for the first time ever that Caesar and Kaiser (german for emperor) are actually the same word.

2. His philosophy, while being twisted, is internally consistent and even somewhat logical for the situation 200 years after the great war. He even quoted Hegelian dialectic to explain his motivation.

Nicely done. Caesars legion are still dicks though

[Zetor]

I just got the DLCs from the 50% sale and played through OWB and Dead Money... kind of odd that DM was the first DLC and OWB the 3rd, should be the other way around - both from a playability and narrative POV (two of the main DM characters kept referencing the Big MT all the time).

I have to say that the "them's good eatin" perk from OWB is a godsend when playing Dead Money in hardcore mode. All those thin red paste / blood pudding drops make surviving a hell of a lot easier (maybe even trivial?).

[Sheepherder]

This made me realize for the first time ever that Caesar and Kaiser (german for emperor) are actually the same word.

Tsar.

[jakonovski]

Keisari!

[KallDrexx]

How much does 1 SPECIAL point actually affect you?

I'm in the original FO3 and running around on Point Lookout, and that Mansion was hard.  I took 2 Med-X during that quest and ended up addicted, and there doesn't appear (or I haven't discovered yet) any doctors on the island, so I'm stuck with -1 int and -1 Agi (and I'm small guns so I'm pretty sure that affects me)

[Jeff Kelly]

1 point of a S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute gives you two points in the skills they correspond to and they also modify derived values from action points to carry weight

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_3_SPECIAL

[Rendakor]

Just finished Dead Money. While the story was cool, the actual gameplay was fucking annoying; the last segment in particular. The traps and ghosts didn't really bother me, but the invincible holograms and the stupid collar-speakers-head-explody bullshit...   

[caladein]

Yeah, I picked up a mod to disable those collars after three, maybe four minutes of going inside a building.  Such crap.

[Shrike]

  I took 2 Med-X during that quest and ended up addicted...

Oh, you're so going to love your new "companion" in Old World Blues. Such an enabler.

I think I spent half the DLC addicted to MedX. Good thing I had a metric ton of it.

"Do you like me?" <injects MedX>. "You're my best friend ever!" <twitches> 

[Riggswolfe]

  I took 2 Med-X during that quest and ended up addicted...

Oh, you're so going to love your new "companion" in Old World Blues. Such an enabler.

I think I spent half the DLC addicted to MedX. Good thing I had a metric ton of it.

"Do you like me?" <injects MedX>. "You're my best friend ever!" <twitches> 

Lol. Yeah but I still love her!