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Actually it turns out that Bethesda acknowledges energy weapon damage isn't balanced well and JE Sawyer himself states there will be a patch to address this: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1141220-screenshot-evidence-that-overchargemaxcharge-means-nothing-to-dt/ (JE Sawyer posts on the 2nd page). No comment about ammo availability but it's a start at least.

Naw it's just immensely in favor of guns, e.g. you can buy 700 5mm ammo at a time, 150 .50 caliber at a time, etc. Gun ammo is so plentiful you don't even look at the "surplus" type ammos, there's just so much of it everywhere. The only bullets that are even a little hard to come by are .50 cal, but then there's only one gun that shoots them and it doesn't need all that much to do its job. For energy weaps, granted you can recombine the low ammo into high ammo, but still, their damage is terrible and ammo consumption is unpleasant, guns are just way better in pretty much all ways (which is bad).

Yeah guns pretty much trump energy weapons across the board, which is a bit sad.

Sure, but it wouldn't be as funny. I really enjoyed the history lesson the Keeper of the Story gives you and although it wasn't realistic, it was pretty fresh and funny.

The problem isn't with the aforementioned critter being too weak, it's that the best guns are immensely powerful, moreso if you powergame. Not that there's anything wrong with powergaming, but if there's a balance problem it's really with these guns themselves. Sniper rifles in the real world are certainly very effective when used the right way, but grunts don't carry them into close quarter battle because in that context they are terrible. FONV simply doesn't portray these guns in anything like a realistic way. It's a little better than it was in FO3, at least stuff like the minigun is worth looking at, but sniper rifles are stupidly powerful in pretty much all situations, not just sneak attacks at very long range. Melee in general is just a great deal harder to play, and Survival feels like it's only barely implemented - all poisons derive from the same major components (cazador poison glands and horse nettle, because NOTHING ELSE IN THE WORLD is poisonous)

I have that problem with requiring a reboot sometimes also, not just with FONV but all Bethesda engine games (Oblivion did it too).

Well you were using one of the very best weapons in the game, it has immense base damage and x5 crit modifier.

Crashes happen to me a lot also, shrug, just F5 a lot.

Major oops: I highly recommend Cannibal. Fun and extremely useful.

I have since discovered that that info is completely wrong, Ninja applies a 15% multiplicative bonus to your base crit chance. You may want to look at this mod. For a level 20 perk that has the hardest prerequesites of all of them, it should probably give more benefit than Boone's sissy hat.

Searching by keyword is useful, if you know what specific thing you're interested in.

Nah I didn't find that to be true, it's just a tiny bit rough until you find your first brass knuckles or (edit) SLEDGE hammer and it gets much easier from that point on - granted that ranged (in particular, Guns) is just much much easier all the way through, but it's not like melee/unarmed is impossibly hard, even at level 1.

Not really getting how you plan to get by with a low Int but okey doke, have fun :)

That's really what irritated me though, Veronica stresses over and over that this particular Elder is the most progressive in the entire Brotherhood, and even he is too dumb to take food when starving (literally). If it had been presented without the context of "...and the entire Brotherhood is a lot dumber than this" it wouldn't have bothered me too badly, this presentation just seemed vindictive.

I didn't have any trouble with this at all once I stopped and read the directions, if you follow them exactly you might get brushed by one shell on the way in to the first safe spot and you only need to wait for the lull between barrages to run to the next. I wasn't even wearing any armor or other protective gear the last time I did it and I don't think I took any damage at all.

By the way I don't want to take too much wind out of your sails, but getting to level 30 using any particular setup is simply a matter of time, you can just farm easy stuff like bighorns. The bigger challenge is defeating the harder encounters with that kind of setup, e.g. the crashed vertibird or various deathclaw infestations.

I give you the thumbs down for skillbuff clothing, what kind of ironman has to put on a nightgown to talk to some schmoes! Eat the missed skill check like a man! (or make party time mentats etc). You might as well wear a sissy 1st Recon Beret! (which of course you should because it's +5% crit chance) Perks to dump: Life Giver (30 raw HP does not compare well to Intense Training/+1 Endurance or Strength) Unstoppable Force (dead/paralyzed/knocked down enemies do not block) Nerd Rage (20% or lower health required, if something got you to 20% health then another 15 damage threshold is probably not going to save you) Maybe you're thinking you can run around at 20% health all the time and have the benefit of Nerd Rage all the time, but the kind of things that can easily hurt you through your normal 10 DT (15 vs melee), probably will finish you off anyway despite another 15 DT, e.g. armor piercing attacks. Purifier is pretty iffy, most of the affected critters are not all that hard to kill or bypass. Super Mutants and the top tier Glowing Ones will be the only things it'll really be helpful for, and I dunno if that's really a great expenditure for a perk. Especially for melee characters, I think Silent Running and high Sneak is pretty much mandatory. I've played a few melee characters up to around 20 and it's just so much less painful if you can at least sneak and pick your battles, and in my experience it's almost impossible to land a melee sneak attack without it. I don't see how you're going to fit 10 Luck in without giving up something highly valuable elsewhere. Melee characters that are headed for Ninja and Piercing strike need a buttload of skillpoints, for Melee and Unarmed, and Sneak, and you will probably want to get Survival to at least 50 for poison crafting and for bigger (much bigger) benefit from food crafting. And then there's some form of unlock-stuff skill, Science or Lockpick. And you probably want 25ish Explosives so you can disarm mines and not have them blow your feet off. Better Criticals applies to all criticals, which includes sneak attack criticals (pretty sure) so imo if you are into sneaking (and you should be, as melee) then you're much better off with this perk rather than Bloody Mess. IMO 9 or 10 int would be of much more value than max Luck, especially since you're taking the various crit perks; +20% crit chance once you get Ninja, so the difference between 5 Luck and 10 Luck is less than it appears. occurs to me that Ninja has 80 sneak required anyway, it'd be a shame to not take Silent Running and get some real use out of all those skillpoints

I think both games have a very different feel to them, which is fine, considering their settings are 2100 miles apart and there is no more instant long-distances communication or unified culture. I loved Fallout 3 and also love Fallout NV, both are great games. I strongly dislike how the Brotherhood is depicted in NV but otherwise I really appreciate all the color and effort and detail that went into the setting and level design and backstory. The whole chunk of content involving the Boomers, including their home Vault, was some of the freshest stuff I've seen in a video game in quite a while, I laughed out loud a few times.

Geckos respawn around the water well every three (?) days, probably the poor dog got mashed by them at some point.

Odd thing for you to complain about, looking at your last several verbose postings, but okay.

This challenge early on exists because you don't have gobs of stuff. If you have infinite carry limit, you will collect gobs of stuff and there goes your challenge. If being required to carry a larger variety of gobs of stuff will add challenge for you, have fun I guess :)

I don't know if that's some kind of performance art or if you're genuinely angry for some reason I cannot fathom. If you were looking for someone to have a fun little flamewar with, I apologize, I'm the wrong person. Keep searching, I'm sure you will find that person.

You seem to be confused as to who was saying what to whom. Also I don't think you control my freedom of what I can post or where, but thanks just the same. Dunno what you're on about with the "sticking you in the eyes" nonsense.

It's a staple of pretty much all RPGs and imo it's extremely forgiving as it is - it wouldn't be terribly practical to carry a thousand rounds of ammunition, multiple rifles and pistols, and a month's worth of food even for an ultra-fit person, and in Fallout (and pretty much all RPGs) you can do it with minimal strength. You're not even affected until you're carrying over your max (even with 1 strength I think this is 150 pounds). The whole concept of weight would have to be redesigned from the bottom up to give you what you're looking for, and the Long Haul perk would need to be removed. I haven't seen a mod that does this, although I've never actually looked for such a thing. TBH I don't really understand what you're asking for, if you wanted hardcore mode to be more hard core but are also willing to ignore carry limit - nothing wrong with that, just utterly contradictory to each other. Set your max carry weight to 20 pounds or less, with 5 strength, before you become encumbered and you'd at least be in the ballpark of the real world.

Jeez, it was one post that pertained directly to the thread topic. If you think it was such a terrible spoiler, report me and move on.