You realize, of course, that the hardcore mode you are asked about in game when leaving the house of the doc has NOTHING to do with the difficulty level?

North of Goodsprings and west of Primm are the radscorpion capitols of the Wasteland.

The northwest side from Goodsprings past Vegas is the Cazador capitol of the Wasteland.

These are places you should not be.

Play it safe. Snipe ants from the safety of the Tipton Highway. Shoot a Viper Gunslinger in the face.

For money. For .357 lever-action rifles. For a napalm launcher.

Oh, there is a place near the hidden valley of the BOS called SCORPION GULCH.
One dozend big ones and 3 dozend small ones i think.

The only way I'm walking in there is with a Mini-Nuke launcher.

I can actually tell you where to find one of those, if you think you can live to tell . .

I'm sure I can. If I could survive REPCONN's HQ and get the Q35, and survive most of the Vaults - I can survive the MNL.

Remember where you started?
Good Springs?
And when you went south and then right along the road to primm further down south?
Go back there, but don't go south, follow the road north. do the quest that asks you to take out a pack of deathclaws in the quarry.
there in one of the two big radioactive ponds, you should find a man. dead, of course. who should have in his belongings the fatman.

Wait, the quarry where the Khans have that makeshift encampment? It's in there?

SON OF A BITCH I ALREADY CLEARED THAT OUT gotta go find it gotta go find it

Yep, that one.
one of the radiation ponds.

Tonight the Scorpion Nest turns into radioactive wasteland.

...Again.

Have fun.
The doc of good springs just shot me to death with the THIRD laser pistol <.< . .
OK, admittedly, i swindles him out of medical supplies and threatened the stre owner so he gave me armor which i then used to equip some powder gangers to attack the village.
this was, all in all, after i had stolen just about anything i could find in tat village.
yeah, this time i'm gonna go for really bad bastard . . gonna join the slavers, gonna help the cannibals, gonna befriend the drug runners . .

I find myself continually befriending the Khans no matter what I do. It seems really easy to do, despite the fact four of them were right there at the prologue. Ah well.

I think this time I'll chase Benny a little further than New Vegas. Had a ball hunting down Fiends with the unique spiked knuckles. Cook-Cook went from 90% to 10% in one good punch.

Oh, I know.

Believe me, I know.

Fallout and Deus Ex will be about it for me, but I'm eagerly waiting on either/both of 'em, trust me. I'm telling myself it's a good thing I don't have any awesome new games right this second, because I've got enough on my plate, otherwise (grad school and Spy Games, for instance)...but I can still sigh wistfully, can't I?

Is there any way to continue on with Mr. House's quest line without destroying the BoS?

Also, does anyone know if there is a way to get BoS to actually join you in your bid for NV, or do you just have to pick between ignoring/destroying them?

Not if you're with House or the Legion. You can if you strike out on your own or side with the NCR, though you lose rep with NCR if you broker a truce between the two.

House flat out told me that he wanted them destroyed, not allied when I reported that I'd had an alliance with them. He would brook no disagreement.

Darn, guess I'm going to have to create a major save point so I can go back. Now to decide which way I should go first.... Think I'll strike out on my own.

Side with the Head Elder and not the Head Paladin when you do, according to VaultWiki - otherwise they won't get involved.

\

Yeah, tbh, I just use explosives on the damn things or don't bother at all.

If it's animal or vegetable, kill it with fire.

If it's mineral, kill it with high explosives.

Got it... but till I get a desktop up and running not going to be able to play it.

Laptop just can't handle it.

Wow, I take out House and now all the robots in Vegas are after me. How am I supposed to install Yes Man without getting ripped to shreds? Did I miss something? Oh, and then I managed to get to him by putting on my BoS armor and running to him, and it didn't update about his death... annoying.

Radscorpion Gulch/Canyon. Oh yeah. That didn't go well.
Went from ~ 80 stimpacks and quite rediculous levels of ammo (level 10) to running my ass off popping drugs to keep alive before stumbling into centaur city (!!!) at Black Mountain.

After the non-fraggin-stop monster radscorp spawns (the bark ones are ok when you're down to using 5.56mm regular) those tentacle beasts didn't have a damn chance with my eye-rolling frenzied shoot-from-the-hip assualt.

It was still better than trying to fight my way though thte rest of the Radscorpions.

Black Mountain Radio is hilarous, Mr Vegas a little too easy listening for the post-apocalypse.

Energy weapons seem dead-set sexy from the mid-game, but I've got 10 points in it, so that's going to need to change. BIG drawback if you're going to take bounties, though. Cook-Cook was a rarified pain in the ass (sniper/speaker build) until I lured him into Violet's little trailer-park and kneecapped him from the delicious cover.

Going energy/explosives will make things a LOT easier (as will the "extended effect" perk. That makes big booms) if you're strong enough to carry the supplies (LOVE mines, forgot how I needed them when I started F3, fell in love with them again)

Going "cowboy" (Perk) and bloody mess, gunslinger, etc (Rapid reload FTW) is a lot of fun too - you can make a pretty grizzled Clint Eastwood at chargen and have him cut a bloody swathe through the wastelands.

Going super-hero strength or Hulk-ninja also very viable - the bumper-sword combined with the ranger takedown makes for an awesome "FINISH HIM" loop. (Ranger takedown, knock's target back/prone. Power hit prone target with a bumper sword. Screencap)

Ghouls are a LOT more radioactive this time around, be warned. I love the space suit (rad resist) and cowboy hat with a chainsaw look....

Explore! Kill the Legion! (for a giggle, reverse-pickpocket a legate with some explosive. They hate that) get 10 luck and hit the caravans for more suckers... And it's obvious it you chat to the Guy that runs the Rangers where the next expansion packs are likely to go.

Tir. (Needs moar 50 cal!)

PS: Also, needs vehicles. A HORSE, motorcycle, even. Maybe even a rideable security-bot. Tame deathclaw (feed it gamblers), Mr Pinchy!

yah, i really wanted to ride one of thse galactica looking motorcycles ._.
there's three pristine looking ones right in front of the saloon in good springs for fucks sake <.<

Might've bugged. If you can bolt in, off him, then bolt to Yes Man that should fix it. I hope. I haven't gone indy yet. I've been a bit busy lighting bugs on fire with a Heavy Incinerator. >.>

Cook-Cook wasn't bad for me, but I sniped both flamers out of his hand and make him get close with a knife. By then I swapped to my unique knucks and got a massive pair of hits in through VATS. He went down like a chump. It's easier for me to scope in realtime with the .308 and take out weapons(or heads) when I'm at long distance. Fiends really don't stand a chance!

Re: Scorpion Gulch: I found my Fat Man and trucked on down there to lay radioactive justice upon the critters, only to find I had no mini nukes.

I did, however, have Annabelle and a full load of rockets! It was high-explosive justice.

Found out what it was. Apparently if you let him live, all the bots attack you and you can't take over. You have to kill him. I was hoping to be "good" about it and let him watch my reign, but it seems to have not worked.

Also, if you plan on going it alone, you need to convince the Khans fairly early, because it (seems to) require you going right into Ceaser's throne room, which is difficult when you are an enemy of theirs. Edit: But complicated by the fact that you have to get past deathclaws for another part. I guess to the one part early, and then save the last part for when you're level 30 and ready to handle deathclaws... or maybe my low energy weapons skill just wasn't cutting it.

P.S. It was rather funny, as soon as I started the final assault, I managed to break an arm and realized I ran out of doc's bags. In the fight towards the legion, I managed to bust the other arm and my head. So yeah, no way I could win the final battle, but luckily I had a speech skill of 90... which is 10 points shy of being able to avoid the final battle. But I had Benny's suit, and alcohol, and mentas. I was at 99 speech! And I was litterally 13 xp from leveling..... so I killed ED-E so I could level and get those last few speech points. So sad. One or two more kills along the way, one more meeting people magazine, one more speech skill book, on more kind of alcohol (assuming they stack), any of those and ED-E wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself for me. I never did figure out how to fix him up anyway.

And poor Rex! Made me sad that he vanished when I told him to go to lucky 38 and never got a chance to fix him.

Except in the collateral sense in that it slows Stimpack heals to a Heal-over-time, which makes it no longer a purely safe counter against something like critter poison. Consequently damage is a bit more 'hardcore' in that you cannot just pop into your inventory when you're taking weapons fire, heal up to full with 4 stimpacks and keep going.

And not being able to heal your limbs with stimpacks is a serious issue. It means you have to actually care about limb damage. It means you need to be careful to take the time to hit a doctor when a limb is damaged if at all possible, because doctor bags are hard to come by (As are the parts for making them). Also means you need to be careful to sleep every so often, as that will heal an injured but not damaged limb.

He dies within a year due to foreign pathogens anyway. Disconnecting him is the karma-free option.


If you smoke Benny in the Tops, you get a pardon from both NCR and CL so you can continue the game. If you're talking about the part in the quarry, you can get to the camp along the backside - there's a path through the bluff behind the encampment. I followed the face north from Goodsprings, fried a few several scorps and the path showed up right where I needed it to be. You won't snag a fatman, but you don't have to deal with 'claws either. You can head back around to the town on the other end.



Awh! I'm doing a runthrough with Raul right now. I should head back and fix ED-E as well.

I couldn't figure out how to disconnect him I guess. I talked to him and said "I'll let you live but disconnected." figured it would do it automatically, didn't realize there was something that I had to do, though I did look around a bit and didn't notice anything. Do I need to attack the device instead of him or something?

I must have spent at least half an hour looking for a back way in, but never managed to find one. I'll have to look again another time.

Not sure either. I'll find out when I get to that point - I made a run straight up to Gun Runners to grab my .308 and then explored a bit. Snagged the Marksman Repeater from Nellis, Annabelle from Black Mountain, and the Q35 from REPCONN HQ so I can go back to actually doing quests.

*sigh* i am THIS close to giving in and lowering the difficulty to more manageable levels . .
I managed to mostly take over Good Springs with the Powder Gangers in tow . .
And then the Doc shot me with his THIRD laser pistol, when i wanted to raid his house <.<

Powder gang isn't worth the trouble. Far more fun to shoots them.

Well, this time around i'm going for the ultimate badass . . as in REALLY evil . . don't care about karma, only do quests for loot and XP, help the cannibals, the drug runners, the slavers, the warmongers . .
After i did the getting vegas to myself way while trying to be really good, i STILL got a kinda bad ending . . so now i am curious as to how hellish i can make it when going COMPLETELY EVIL.

Caesar wants the cannibals in power in Vegas IIRC, so it sounds like you'll bring plenty of terror to the wasteland.

Probably, but i'm also finding some logical errors with the game . .
Playing evil, i have a bad rep with the NCR.
But i have to give them the word of the atrocities commited by cesars legion in that little town.
And when i try that, the whole squad of NCR people is starting to shoot at me . .

I think the point is not to go crazy sexy evil until after Tipton.

I bought a GT 9500 just to run F3. Will I actually have to upgrade to a GT 9600/140 to run NV??

You shouldn't; it's the same engine running both games. Things are a bit sharper and you might have some lag if there's a lot of mobs around, but it clears out fairly quick.

it was enough that i decided to help the powder gangers take over good springs and then helped the powder gangers in the NCRCF hold their own against an NCR onslought . .

not going to read the previous 4 pages.

anyone else think there's a lot more content in New Vegas than in fo3?

maybe it's just my memory going.

EDIT: hardcore mode or gtfo, rly.

Hardcore is ONE thing.
Hardcore and VERY HARD is a completely different beast alltogether . .

I have to say, at least on the vanilla game, pre-mods, "This Machine" a .308 M1 Garand is an awesome general purpose weapon. Sure it does less damage than an anti-material rifle, but again, its general purpose awesome. Ok with generic .308, it becomes that much better with .308 handload jsp, which oddly appears to increase its damage without reducing its penetration. Most things go down in 1 or 2 shots with a decent firearms skill, even moreso with a crit build. It's downsides are (without downloading a mod) it doesn't have a scope, so is less precise at extreme range if trying to iron-sight it.

I'm enjoying the game, though I think I'm near the end missions. Basically just wrapping up my chosen allies and then making the push to finish out the story.

I'm still getting the sense that I haven't seen ALL the locations, or done all the missions, especially considering I've probably lost a good quarter of them due to picking their opposing side.

I'm not so fond of the way the reputation system is currently setup. You jump a bunch of faction dudes out in the middle of the desert and it still somehow manages to get back to the main-faction that you've killed them, lowering your reputation with them. I suppose I'd prefer a system where you take a rep hit if you fail to prevent them from 'calling it in' or something. Its something of a disconnect with the way its portrayed:

For example, many times you'll get missions like "go find our missing patrol and see what happened to them", where 90 percent of the time the patrol is already dead, killed by some other party. Yet, the quest giver faction has no clue who did it until you tell them, contrasted with "I kill 4 guys in the middle of the desert and somehow their buddies dozens of miles away know what I did."

If you have a silenced weapon and can kill the target with one shot while remaining hidden you should suffer no faction loss. At least that is what I've read.

Agreed. This is a problem you get in basically all of their games, the fact that everyone magically knows where and when and by who's hand everyone has died, unless you have to go out and check (And then they at least know where thanks to quest markers)

Finished my first run through a little while ago. Took the 'independent' route, heh end montages/clips are nice, though it made me go "Wait...what? Oops guess I missed that quest" a few times during the wrap up.

also, I'm not sure if its due to intentional limitations on processing requirements, but I found the Strip to be rather...underwhelming. Sure its pretty, but its so empty. Aside from drunk NCR troopers, there are only a few other wandering souls (at any given time, I've tried day and night). Inside the casinos are maybe a dozen or two people.

Again, I'm sure its because they don't want your frames per sec to drop to crazy low levels, but its like "What, you guys rebuilt vegas with a few hundred people? Seriously?" No idea how they'd fix it without killing your rig though.

I don't think there is a way to fix it without killing your rig.

Going through Freeside into the Strip makes me grin a bit, since it's starting at Fremont Street and working your way down Las Vegas Blvd to get into the Strip itself.

I found the most wonderful thing last night while exploring the wastes - A crashed Vertibird! Exploring the wreckage (and killing the myriad of robots) netted me one Tesla Cannon.

The 'bird is just south of the Old Nuclear Test Site, and you can see Searchlight Airport from there.

Oh, right. Anyone have any idea where Mick and Ralphs (or whatever that shop is called) is inside freeside? I've somehow been completely unable to find it.

Edit: Anyone else find the independent ending a little odd? The first frame talks about how NV becomes an independent power that brings order and all kinds of goodness, but then near the end, it suddenly talks about how everything is in chaos and horrible and so on.

I want to say it's near the East gate, but I'm away-from-game so I can't confirm.

I live in Las Vegas. Rural underpopulated Las Vegas has historical roots.

I used to live up by Nellis. Turning Searchlight into a radioactive dead zone is too good for the town.