Vegas baby! Vegas

[Sky]

Wait, you mean the vaguely-psychotic sniper with the missing wife? I was supposed to consider that guy companion material?!

Boo! Boone and ED-E all the way. I even wore the sniper beret and shades for most of the game.

[Engels]

Ya, cept Boone with ED-E is nearly cheat mode. I gave them up for other companions just because fights were too danged easy.

[climbjtree]

I just reinstalled the game and downloaded OWB and Lonesome Road. I'm started a fresh playthrough and I'm curious if there are any must have mods or any that significantly improve gameplay - any suggestions?

[caladein]

On the interface side, I would strongly recommend MTUI and Faster Terminals.  Wouldn't play without them.

I also really like Nevada Skies.

[Zetor]

If you like listening to ingame radio instead of winamp, CONELRAD radio (mentioned on the last page) is awesome.

[KallDrexx]

So New Vegas came up on my queue, and for some reason after playing FO3 I wanted to try unarmed.  Well that was stupid.  1 on 1 I can kill people, as after 3 hits with boxing gloves they usually go unconcious.  However, sitting there 10 minutes punching an unconscious person until he dies isn't exactly exciting.  So I'm going to reroll, probably as a sniper.

In the mean-time, is Old World Blues a good DLC?  If the content is good I guess I should buy it before rolling, so I can use the Skilled trait.  Any other DLCs I should get before starting?
 

[koro]

Boxing gloves and the like deal Fatigue damage, which only knocks people out; it's for pacifists who don't want to kill people (which technically violates the definition of "pacifist", but whatever). Brass knuckles, power fists, etc. deal normal punchy damage without going through the "beat on them through the fatigue damage until they finally die" part and are actually extremely good.

As for DLC, I haven't gotten to OWB yet, but from what I've heard it's generally considered one of the best, if not the best New Vegas DLCs. The only NV DLC I've played so far is Dead Money, and I hated every stinking minute of it (if you're not stealthy, using energy weapons, or have a lot of melee weapon skill, it is an absolutely atrocious chore). In fact, I shelved my Explosives-using character after I finished it.

[Ingmar]

Dead Money is the worst of the four, OWB is the best (assuming you like the sillier parts of Fallout games.)

[KallDrexx]

Boxing gloves and the like deal Fatigue damage, which only knocks people out; it's for pacifists who don't want to kill people (which technically violates the definition of "pacifist", but whatever). Brass knuckles, power fists, etc. deal normal punchy damage without going through the "beat on them through the fatigue damage until they finally die" part and are actually extremely good.

Well I usually would take my gloves off after they were unconscious but my damage was still pretty bad.  Since its still early I haven't found a be for with brass knuckles or anything yet.  I'll probably must shelve my unarmed character until I do at least one playthrough, so I have the world more figured out.

Thanks for the dlc info

[rattran]

I think the vendor in the first town sells brass knuckles, I certainly had a set before the first group fight there. And yeah, OWB best, Dead Money worst dlc. I'd skip Honest Hearts as well. It wasn't terribad like Dead Money, just very, very meh.

[Ruvaldt]

My main complaint about Honest Hearts was that it was too short.  The area that you're in feels big, but there just wasn't much to do unless you wanted to aimlessly explore, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I've already got a huge landmass to explore with the base game so it felt redundant.

Dead Money was one of the worst DLCs/expansions I've ever played in any game.  It achieved the feat of making F:NV not fun, which seemed impossible, but they somehow managed it.

[Kageru]

The "Legion Hit Squad" mechanic is some of the worst game balance I've seen in a long time. Level 8, just got a cowboy repeater, and it hits you with a group of 4 high level opponents who track your position and wear armor sufficient to block 90% of your damage (on hard) while having better weapons than you. Virtually impossible on hard, still challenging on easy. And it's quite normal that most players will trigger them at quite low levels since the temptation to shoot the bandits who butchered and crucified an entire town is sort of natural. Bleh.

On the other hand the regular bethseda quality control can be used against them. Wear faction armor and they don't show up (even if they are enemies of that faction) or in my case duck into a house and they evaporated...
 

[koro]

Legion hit squads still do a number on my current Energy Weapons character, and that's with me in some decent armor and armed with some really good weaponry (the unique Gauss Rifle, the unique Recharger Pistol added by Gun Runners' Arsenal, and the unique plasma rifle; the latter two upgraded via the Weapon Mods Expanded... mod to be kind of ridiculous).

The grenadier I played last laughed all the way to the bank with them, though: two 40mm grenades from my grenade rifle and they're a bunch of small piles of meat.

Edit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtKEfEtzIic

[KallDrexx]

Wow, is money that ridiculously inflated in NV or what.  I'm 4 hours in my gameplay and I already have 1800 caps, with a bunch of random stuff I could still sell and nothing to buy, and I still only have discovered the first town....

*Edit* and this is with 1 charisma and no points added to speech or barter (except the 5 points from the skilled trait). 

Also, not taking the Skilled trait seems dumb, as I still seem to level fast even with the 10% xp hit.

[shiznitz]

Yeah, XP is not something one has to worry about.

[Shrike]

Wow, is money that ridiculously inflated in NV or what.  I'm 4 hours in my gameplay and I already have 1800 caps, with a bunch of random stuff I could still sell and nothing to buy, and I still only have discovered the first town....

1800 caps isn't anything. Trust me, you'll spend that on ammo later on and not think twice about it.

Wait until you see the weapons in Lonesome Road...and they're worth it.

[brellium]

I am so contemplating replaying FONV again just to run though Big MT again

[koro]

If anyone's interested, J.E. Sawyer posted the personal bugfix/CHALLANGE MOED mod that he uses for New Vegas.

http://diogenes-lamp.info/jsawyer_fnv_mod.zip

Full changes are in the readme, but some of the stuff it does includes:

[Megrim]

Quick question:

Is this game worth getting for someone who last played Fallout 3 and thought it was fairly meh?

[bhodi]

The game is way better than fallout 3 IMO. The gameplay is basically the same, however there is an actual plot with objectives instead of walk outside the vault and try and figure out what's happening in the world.

[Rendakor]

The game is way better than fallout 3 IMO. The gameplay is basically the same, however there is an actual plot with objectives instead of walk outside the vault and try and figure out what's happening in the world.

Pretty much this. If you disliked the core gameplay in FO3, you won't like Vegas. If your complaints were story related, buy Vegas because it's awesome.

[Hawkbit]

Seconding Thirding the responses above.  If you found merit in FO3 gameplay but didn't like either the setting or story, buy NV. 

[Megrim]

Thanks guys. Is there more in the way of loot and gear to find as well? Because I liked the open-world aspects of FO3, roaming around finding stuff, and largely ignored the storyline.

[Hawkbit]

For that, it feels more true to the original Fallouts.  NV really feels like a desert wasteland, with people wearing scraps of whatever for armor.  Weapons you can mod, there's different types of ammo. 

To me, it felt like there was a lot more reasons to ignore the story and explore in NV.  I never did actually finish the game, but I had a lot of fun.

[Ruvaldt]

Is there more in the way of loot and gear to find as well?

From my experience, yes.  It's hardly Diablo, but I found myself getting upgrades and upgrading weapons/armor much more, and further into the game, than I did with FO3.  Also, there are distinct differences between weapons beyond just "this one hits for more damage."  FO3's loot was one of the things that I really felt was lacking as it seemed I had pretty much mined it of equipment after only around 8 or 9 hours aside from bobbleheads and crap like that.

That open world you mention also seemed more robust to me in F:NV.  Most of the time I would go to a location in FO3 only to find that it looked pretty much like everything else and didn't have anything unique going for it.  That's rarely the case in F:NV and the world feels more alive/interesting, though not quite as alive as we've since seen in Skyrim.

[Ingmar]

That's rarely the case in F:NV and the world feels more alive/interesting, though not quite as alive as we've since seen in Skyrim.

Well, nobody hit Skyrim with a nuke...

[Tebonas]

That's rarely the case in F:NV and the world feels more alive/interesting, though not quite as alive as we've since seen in Skyrim.

Well, nobody hit Skyrim with a nuke...

...yet.

Give the modders some time.

[Ruvaldt]

I am eagerly awaiting the dwemer hydrogen bomb disarm quest.

[KallDrexx]

I'm loving New Vegas so far, much better than FO3 (and I enjoyed FO3).  Although I'm mixed on the faction system.   I think it feels a bit forced and is kind of aggravating.  I still don't understand why me taking control of a huge army of upgraded securitrons puts me in bad standing with the Legion, after I've already proven trustworthy by them (and they wanted House taken out of the picture anyway).  I had to load back before I gave the Yes man the chip so I didn't lose the faction and quests, and their quest system doesn't let me get rid of quests from the quest log so I'm stuck with a bunch of quests that I can't do.

Note for anyone using Guns and about to go into Old World Blues.  Take a shotgun with you, cause rifles seem to do dick to the enemies there. 

[Ingmar]

I still don't understand why me taking control of a huge army of upgraded securitrons puts me in bad standing with the Legion, after I've already proven trustworthy by them (and they wanted House taken out of the picture anyway). 

You don't understand why a group of powermongering conquering crazy people wouldn't want someone besides themselves to have control of a powerful army of stuff that could stop them from moving west?

[Tebonas]

Now explain why the NCR is equally stupid.

[Ingmar]

The same reason basically; they want Vegas in the NCR, you are stopping them and also parking a very powerful army right on their border essentially.

[KallDrexx]

It makes sense when put like that, but in the game it's just two different arcs, where when you get to a part of the one arc it's suddenly "Caeser now hates you".

[Tebonas]

See, I want to use that army of mine to help defend the dam and then join the NCR. Hell, I'm on whatever side the Desert Rangers are.

[koro]

In other news, Bethsoft and Interplay reached a settlement with regards to the Fallout MMO, which which continues to limp along bleeding money with nothing to show for it.

Everyone I know elsewhere on the internet goes insane with excitement over the MMO prospect, but I just can't. I trust the remnants of Interplay to release a decent Fallout game less than I do Bethesda, and I have a pretty low opinion of Fallout 3 as it is.