Remember. It's Chaotic EVIL not Chaotic Stupid.

The thought of turning the Wasteland into a giant, Cazador-infested Little Lamplight, though...

...has a psychotic sort of evil all of its own. If it makes you feel better, assume that all the children are those of a union between you and one (or more) of your followers. Thus the wastelands is full of your hellspawn, you, your followers, and Cazadors.

Heh heh. Good times.

Since I've already played through the game... oh... 4 times over by now? It's time for yet another character!

This time I decided to take the Cowboy approach (both the perk and in my approach). Going to focus on revolvers and use light armor. Definitely going to need hand loader for this run. It will be good going once I can get my hands on a .44, right now I'm still using a .357, but I managed to get a cylinder for it. Wish it had been a long barrel instead.

I should check the wiki to see if "That Gun" correctly counts as a revolver for the perk, otherwise I'm going to be using a ton of ammo trying to convert my .308s into 45-70.

Go for the mysterious magnum.

I didn't like the .44 revolver. The .357 was a wonderful piece - fast, accurate in close, blew heads off like a champ - but the .44 was just ponderously slow. Had fun throwing a scope on it, though.

I enjoy that piece for 2 reasons.

1 - You can smuggle it into casinos

2 - DUN! duh dun DUN dun...


And while I do generally prefer the .357 over the .44 as a piece (and I generally prefer the cowboy repeater over the trail carbine, even though both are repeaters) they have nothing on the Ranger Sequoia... except for more easily obtainable ammo.

I think the Mysterious Magnum is the strongest revolver you can find too.

Math time!

Mysterious Magnum - Damage 42( with all related perks 55.86)
DPS 102 (135.66)
Crit damage +42, crit chance multiplier x1



Ranger Sequoia - Damage 63 (83.79)
DPS 104 (138.32)
Crit Damage +62, Crit Chance Multiplier x1.5

Close in DPS because of the fire speed, no contest in the damage per shot.

Ah, right, i allways forget that there are two different mysterious magnums . .

You might be thinking of the one you could glitch off the actual Mysterious Stranger from FO3 that did like 1000 damage per shot. This one is from an NPC as part of a side quest if you pass a barter check.

Yah, i read the article on the wiki, i forgot that these two have different kinds of damage.

For extra fun, you can actually convert the base rule system from Dark Heresy/RT/DW to work for a Fallout system. Rules for: Lasers, Plasma, chain weapons (ripper), power weapons (power fist, FO2 version), projectile weapons, hit locations, called shots, melee combat, broad "archetypes', power armor, etc. Basically, you stick it in a post-apocalyptic wasteland with no space travel and you have Fallout =P

More or less, yes.

As an aside... I found the cazador's un-radiated species of origin. They don't sound like fun.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarantula_hawk

Ye gods. I'm also amused that it does name F:NV in that Wiki article.

I'm still more afraid of deathclaws, however. Especially given that their *cough* species of origin is the Tarrasque. True story. Check out the Fallout Bible.

Deathclaws are the spawn of Satan. Even with Power Armor and Melee weapons like the Thermite Lance and Oh Baby I can't make a solid dent in their health before getting owned. And my char is meant to take a beating and dish one out, too!

Levels and perks help. So do drugs. At level... 22? I took out the entire Death Claw promontory along the east side of the colorado using a ballistic fist, combat armor, and lots of drugs! Psycho, med-x (or slasher for both) help a lot. Turbo can help too.

This is good, though. Deathclaws are *meant* to be feared. I was disappointed when I was able to kill one in fallout 3 with just a combat shotgun at level 5.

Yurp yurp.

They're meant to be feared, but it gets goofy at a point. When the environment is 30% by biomass top predator, 40% second-tier predator, 25% herbivore and 5% plant-life, you have a problem.

I dunno, I tend to snipe them from atop the next mountain.

Sniper Rifle pops deathclaw heads just as easy as any other creature.

And even better, their buddies then run over to see what happened to the dead one, and stand there nice and still for a few seconds. More headshots!



-k

LOL, Atkins wasteland.

Yeah, I decided to try my luck at the deathclaws in the quarry with Raul and the eyebot. Found that the hunting rifle with the long range scope would pop the heads off most low-end deathclaws, while seriously injuring your average one. The -BIG- deathclaws? I used good ol' Annabelle and some HE rockets.

I started to feel rage when, as a level 16 or 17 character, I tried to complete "return to sender" and ended up battling deathclaws and casadors constantly when going away from main quest areas of the map. I was running around with leather armor and various small arms, the most "special" of which was simply "that gun". I got so pissed off because there were so many of them and they're really tough. I started out with, like, hundreds of 10mm and 5.56 rounds, and maybe like 30 .357, and by the time I finished that quest I was out of ammo, using the Bladed Gauntlet to fight the casadors, and using energy weapons and flamers looted from dead enemies that I had no skill in. I used like 20 Antivenoms over the course of the quest. But I finished the quest, and am finally ready to head into New Vegas for the first time.

The only upshot to this tremendous expenditure of resources was gaining a couple of levels, and finding mark 2 combat armor and helmet in a cazador area. After fighting, like, 10 of them and being obliged to punch the couple end ones.

Lots of saves and reloads. I was, like, pulling my hair out.

Yeah. I sort of ignored the main quest line and snuck past the deathclaws into New Vegas pretty early. Maybe level 6 or so? Gun Runners and the Med Clinic are great places to acquire caps and just as quickly spend them.

Also, I love Recon Armor for the stats. Hate how it looks.

I highly recommend to anyone who hasn't tried it out yet... making a melee/unarmed character. (Tag both really, you need both for various perks). Pump up melee to 50 for the special VATS attacks and get a baseball bat for good times (Grand Slam special). You can also use a stealth boy early on to sneak by the cazadors up north and get Chance's Knife. I murdered deathclaws hard with my melee/unarmed (both 100 and before slayer perk, after purifier and the others) with a ballistic fist and super sledge.

I guess that's one of the things I liked about NV even if it was kind of frustrating, when they said "don't go into this area" they meant it. It added a nice level of immersion for me.

I always liked sitting at the Goodsprings Cemetary and just looking out towards Vegas.

Dirt, hills, giant Radscorpions - and all I have is a Varmint Rifle.

So many suicides because of Radscorpions.

I have gotten trapped on cliffs by a pack of radscorpions about 6 times while playing. I considered my chances of evading past the horde and escaping much lower than the odds of me surviving the fall jumping off the cliff. I've been right 1 time. The rest? Suicides.

Turns out I was only level 13.

Red Rock Canyon has got the look pretty right.

I did appreciate how the no go zones really were no go zones.

Next time I will make a melee character. I am tempted to base the character on Kenshiro but someone had that idea first. Maybe I can go for Oliver Stone post apocalyptic Conan. Like, read his unpublished script.

It was hilarious how, after struggling through the wasteland doing NCR quests, attacking the man with the checkered suit in New Vegas was super easy.

I had gotten used to such extreme challenge that I showed up with like 5 guns in top maintenance. I had literally bought all the 10mm and .357 ammo from one of the gunrunners and had hundreds and hundreds of rounds. I was expecting some monster challenge and instead it was really easy, like Neo's security checkpoint shootout in The Matrix. The 9mm pistol wielding unarmored guards could barely damage my character because I kept blasting their heads off with 1 or 2 HP shots.

I felt like I was watching some ridiculous John Woo casino shootout. I remember thinking, "9mm pistols? Who uses those anymore?"

It amazes me how many radscorps are around the Goodsprings/Primm/Nipton triangle. Step off the road and you are done.

Heh, with my latest character i made my way to new vegas and gunrunners trought the mountain passes west side of the map and got some desand guns and then went back and started from Goodsprings, made the game so much easier.

I like cutting through the Primm Mountain Pass, since I only have to deal with a single Blind Deathclaw, then I can sneak north through Novac and make it into town. If I need some quick cash, I can go to McCarran and pick up the three bounties and expose teh spai. Everyone wins!

LOL, that blind deathclaw surprised and absolutely pwned me the first time.

Punches in bunches proved more effective than most firearms against it.

I miss the Jinxed quality on a 10 luck character who focused on unarmed combat. You've never seen such hilarity in FO2 until you've tried it (well, combat hilarity)

I remember trying something like that. The problem was that your critical glitches when using unarmed tended to create crippled limbs. Poor Dogmeat got crippled that way almost immediately and spent the whole rest of the game fleeing from combat.

Sounds like a candidate for save scumming.

Bloody Mess + Jinxed?

I'll usually sneak south of Primm and grab the Cowboy Repeaters from the NHP shack guards before heading across. It was a shock to me as well when I came up on the pass and I see a dead guy on the rocks and a Blind Deathclaw sniffing around it.

I think i rather take on the couple dozen cazadors then a dethclaw

If you helped the people of good springs or primm or something, you can get yourself a stealth boy.
use thatto sneak by the blind deathclaw and you're golden i'd say.

Ohhhhh. I love me some riot shotgun. And here I thought I'd wasted a perk on Shotgun Surgeon.

Well, yes and no. The hunting shotgun is absolutely amazing... at close range. I wouldn't try it something with armor though, even with shotgun surgeon. On the plus side, deathclaws were reduced from DT 30 to DT 15... you could almost hurt them with that pellet gun =P

There's also a fan add-on you can put on which makes shotties less useless. I used it and found shotguns were quite handy (although still limited by range), and kept one on me almost until the end (when I switched them out for all of the biggest, loudest weapons I had stocked up, regardless of my skill level).

You'll end up taking on both going up 15. I'd rather take 95 in.

I din't go up the 15, i took the back road throught the mountain passes to the red canyon and i "only" had to fight about three dozen cazadors to get there.

LOL at the 15 sucking. It does in real life also.

Up around Mt. Charleston Jacobstown, right?