I have a few questions…
Now that the game’s out, do you think one of us should start a general discussion FONV thread? (This one was about anticipation of the game, and is named as such)
I have just arrived at a point where I have the option of swapping Boone for Cass. Is Cass a better companion? (I’d kind of rather have some eye-candy than a matcho man)
Can companions be swapped at will? (In other words, could I swap Boone for Cass now, then later go and find Boone and swap them back?)
It seems the consensus is that Boone is the best. I think I’ll stop using him for awhile, as I want to at least shoot people myself. Each companion has an associated quest. So far it seems like you can miss some of Boone’s conversation starters and thus his quest. You need to bring him on things relating to the Legion or army life.
I like Boone’s perk, haven’t used Cass much but hers seems limited. If you want eye candy, you should look for Lily.
I found a super-mutant called Lily… Are you pulling my leg? :dubious:
I noticed that the same thing happened with the Civ V thread. I think it’s one of The Game Room’s bad habits.
Sure, go for it. I’d love to discuss some of the things I’m having trouble figuring out, or seeing if others went different ways than I did in some of the quests. I’m currently in Vault 22 and there seems to be two ways you could go, and I’m not sure which would be ‘best’. I’d also like to ask some questions about some of the NV quests, especially the gun-runners side quest. Still haven’t figured out how to complete the Ed-E My Love Quest, and it’s bugging me that it’s still on my list when I can’t seemingly do anything about it. Plus, I’d like to see what mods people are using, if there are any out there worth getting (I haven’t checked nexus lately, there wasn’t a lot the last time I was there)
-XT
I agree it might be time for a new, official FONV thread, and maybe another like we had with FO3’s “what are your favorite in-game moments?” Once in FO3 I was standing in the middle of the road admiring the artwork on a billboard when bullets started snapping around me. Two super mutants had ran up while I was daydreaming. Hasn’t happened in FONV yet, but since then, I always do my sight seeing from cover.
I think I found the robot from the first half of the official trailer last night. Poor little guy is broken and I don’t have the science skills yet to fix him.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcXjTYLrQ0A
I rebooted my character last night after getting the gamer’s guide and checking the attribute levels I needed in order to get the perks I wanted throughout the game. My initial charisma was too low and I would have had to burn three other perk opportunities to get it up to a level I needed just to get the Animal Friend perk. I guess that’s called character mapping. It took an hour or so, but now I know how to distribute my skill points and perks on every level up.
Kinda disappointed there’s no Nuka grenades in FONV, but there’s the grenade gun to look forward to. Throwing dynamite takes longer than throwing grenades did in FO3, but I love 'splosions, so I’ll live with it. I killed a pack of scorpions by getting them to chase me into a narrow pass where one well-timed stick of dynamite took out four of them at once. I was able to walk up to the lone crippled survivor and calmly put it down with my 9mm. That felt good (c’mon, it’s a hateful, bloodthirsty giant arachnid!).
Any others playing as grenadiers? There’s a few perks I plan to take to make life easier in that regard. The Pack Rat perk makes anything under 2 pounds weigh half as much. Grenades and dynamite weigh half a pound each, so this will help a lot in Hardcore mode. It’s available at level 8 and requires Intelligence 5 and Barter 50. I plan to carry most of my stuff and not rely on my followers as pack mules, since they can be killed.
I wish I was as into my real-life research paper as the FO series, I’d have been done months ago. At least I’m off the XBox and on the computer tonight. Must…open…master’s…folder…on…desktop…(passes out).
If you want to start a new New Vegas thread, do so and I’ll close this one (if it doesn’t sink by itself).
That one’s nice for a lot of reasons, especially when you get to the New Vegas ruins and raid the Sunset Sasparilla factory. Lugging around all those 1lb bottles can get to be a pain, even though they’re the best thing short of stimpacks for healing.
While this one is still open, did anyone else…
[spoiler]…feel like a total shit for leading Cass to the Van Graff thugs and then tossing her under the bus just for some caps and some XPs? No? I didn’t really either. I was a bit surprised by the attack on the Legion guys afterward and the fact that I didn’t seem to lose any faction rep with them. Picked up a whole pile of weapons and armor to sell from that little adventure as well.
I did try and heroically protect Cass, but though I reloaded 3 or 4 times they all ened me in dying horribly, so I don’t see any way to protect her and live. My character from FO3 could have wiped the floor with the whole group, but this guy is a lot weaker without decent armor and a Gauss Rifle (or the perk that gets you all your APs back every time you kill someone). Ah well…it was nice knowing you Cass…[/spoiler]
-XT
The Grim Reaper’s Sprint perk is available at level 20, but only gets you 20 action points, not all your APs back like in FO3, when you exit VATS after killing someone. No minimum attribute or skill level required.
Having perks available only on even-numbered level-ups will make my choices of perks more important and I’m not going to be the demi-god I was at level 30 of FO3. It’s hard not to think of this as an expansion pack, but overall the changes I’ve noticed are for the better (more challenging) with the exception of not having a house of my own early on like at Megaton. I am a pack rat and like to craft, so I wanted safe storage for my ingredients ASAP.
To get a house I
Left Doc Mitchell’s house and immediately lit out for Novac, where you can rent a permanent hotel room for a one time fee of 100 caps. Lots of storage, a bathroom sink to drink from, workbench and ammo tables across the street at the gas station and a campfire for crafting in the hills to the west of town (look for a small grotto near the radio tower). There’s also caravans and a female doctor in a white tank top wandering around town, so it’s a really good set up.
The easiest, but longest route to Novac was to go south down I-15 (out of Goodwater) then east on the secondary road near the bottom of the map, then back up north via I-95 (the other highway on the east side of the play area) until I reached Novac (only the first five letters of the hotel 's “No Vacancy” sign are lit up at night :p) . I tried to cut through the mountains between Goodwater and Novac via Primm pass, but got owned by a Deathclaw every time. Like Sunny says, sticking to the roads is a good travel policy.
Dressing as a Powder Ganger helped in a few areas where I just wanted to pass through.
Oh, I like the technique of bashing geckos in the head with a re-bar club instead of shooting them. They grab their heads in pain on the first hit, then I finish them off. It’s actually pretty twisted, but the little guys never seem to learn. That club has saved me a lot of ammo so far. Can’t remember where I got it.
Yeah, I’m taking a break from the paper I’m researching. It’s neat to see the Wiki pages for this game evolve and there’s a ton of info out there already, but I’m bored and on break, sue me.
There’s a doctor in Vegas who does implants. +1 to any stat (4k each), sub-dermal armor (8k) and regeneration (12k). There’s a limit how many you can have but I have 3 already so its not super-low, and of course the best thing is those implants will never be useless or upgraded so it should be money well spent. Got my strength to 6 with one of them to be able to use the heavier rifles with no penalty for example.
I’ve just discovered the hard way that Deathclaws are a lot tougher than F3, and like most of the other mutated wasteland creatures, they soak up bullets like a towel soaks up water.
It’s almost funny going “Hey, look, there’s a ‘Fire Gecko’. Well, I’m a long way away and this scoped rifle makes short work of regular Geckos, so I’ll just sight him up and… Oh dear, that didn’t do very much damage at all, did it? And now he’s coming this way. That’s OK, I’ll just reload and shoot him again, and again, and again, and I now appear to have run out of ammunition and AGH IT’S JUMPING ALL OVER ME AND IT’S ALL SCRATCHY AND BITY! GETITOFFGETITOFF! Crap, now my armour is ruined, most of my limbs are crippled, and I only have three stimpacks left. Marvellous.”
Even when packing serious firepower- I mean, Laser Tommyguns, Grenade Launchers, Sniper Rifles, and other such things which are otherwise capable of thoroughly ventilating ones opponents, I’m finding that even at level 15 I’m sizing up every potential engagement and weighing up if it’s worth getting shot/bitten/clawed up to salvage some useless armour and ammunition in a calibre I’m not using. It’s surprising how often the answer has been “No.”
So, all in all, definitely a more enjoyable experience than F3, which was starting to become a bit of a grind towards the end IMHO.
Against extra tough opponents, I’ve found armor piercing 308 (especially using This machine), armor piercing .50 cal, 12.7 SMG and magnum 12 gauge riot gun+ the shotgun perk to work well.
Spectralist: Do you have the 12.7 SMG, the 50 cal sniper rifle or the LMG yet? If not, that sould lighten your bank account in addition to the already mentioned implants. You can have as many as your endurance I believe.
Where did you get your sniper rifle? I know you can get one if you do some of the quests for the Powder Gang, but I sort of screwed that up and never got the rifle. I’ve seen a .50 cal for sale, but it’s way out of my price range unless I sell everything, and there didn’t appear to be much ammo available for it. I have tons of .308 though, so if I could put my grubby little hands on a couple sniper rifles in that caliber then I’d be pretty happy. Currently I’m using the level action rifle that shoots a .357 round (great for close work), That Gun which shoots a .556 round and the Tommy Gun laser (which is just cool to use).
-XT
I looked for it for a while but failed to loot it off anywhere. I resigned myself to buying it from the gun runners.
This machine (that’s the actual name) is really good. Look for it by talking to various people in the terminal at Mccarran.
If you want to do some fund raising, bring Boone in the Fiend territory west of New Vegas. Guns will often have a 100/1 caps/weight ratio.
iirc I picked up a .308 sniper rifle in the Recon 1 tent in McCarran. It was just lying there looking all abandoned and forlorn. Wasn’t even red on mouseover, so…
I got most of my money from killing Fiends inside their vault, Vault 2 or 3 or whatever, and most of my awesome guns from raiding the armory of Vault 34. The former was much, much easier than the latter though - Vault 34 was a pain in more than one way.
What perks are you guys taking and what do you think of them? Only one I’m a bit dissappointed so far is Lady Killer, only saved 500 caps with it once but other than that it hasn’t done much for me. Jury Rigging on the other hand is my favorite new perk, it really makes it way easier to keep the more expensive and exotic weapons in pristine condition. Was a bit doubtful about rising Repair to 90 just for it but it’s been worth it. I’ve also taken Toughness x2 and that with subdermal armor implant means I’m running close to 30 DT in Recon armor. Submachine guns and lasers and such all pretty much just bounce off. 
Strong back is very convenient (+50 carrying capacity). Comprehension doubles the skills boost from magazines to 20. I have jury rigging too. Explorer. Weapon handling (-2strength requirement).
I think next turn I’ll take another rank of toughness for the same reason you do (although I prefer Chinese stealth armor: 12DT +5 sneak and it can be fixed with pretty much any kind of normal clothing, including hats).
Are there any mod upgrades for the sniper rifle btw? I’m definitely going to check out Vault 34 tonight…it’s listed as unexplored on my map. The only other vault I’ve seen (and I’ve explored this one) was Vault 22. Where aprox. is Vault 2 or 3? Is it in Fiend territory? I’ve been hitting them around the edges since they have all the cool energy weapons.
Has anyone gotten a house yet? I have the Presidential Suite at both Lucky 38 and The Topps, but not sure I trust putting a lot of stuff in there (plus it’s a bit more of a pain to get into either of them than my room in NoVac). I really miss my personal vault mod from FO3…
-XT
I got a quest to kill a Fiend boss from Hsu in Camp McCarran that marked the location of Vault 3. And yeah, it is in Fiend territory. I did the three bounty quests for Fiend heads first but I don’t think they are pre-requirement for it.
When you head to Vault 34, make sure you have lots of RadAway and maybe some sort of rad resist suit - I used a space suit for +40% rad resistance. Think I took a total of 1200 rads in there even with that, used up all my RadAways and had to limp to a doctor to cure the rest afterwards, but I have poor direction sense and I didn’t find one particular door for ages so YMMV.
Oh, and I found a mod for the sniper rifle that reduces its weight by 5. Not very awesome, especially since the strength requirement stays the same, but that’s the only sniper rifle mod I’ve seen so far.
Done…