On-going multi-mod review

[djmystro]

I have freed up some time recently after finishing the latest update of ‘A World Of Pain’ and figured I would try a load of other peoples mods for a change. I also decided to write a detailed ongoing review of what I saw for anyone who is interested.

I will mainly be playing content mods, that is to say mods that add places to explore, things to kill and stuff to loot. I am less interested in just making things look different personally and prefer the extra gameplay.

I will be running the following mods:

FOOK – New Vegas:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=34684

Lots of gameplay changes, new locations, enemies and loot.

Weapon Mod Expansion:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37576

More Weapon mod kits.

WME for World Of Pain:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39044

Weapon mod kits for the ‘M’ weapons in AWOP.

An Open World – No Borders:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39130

A new WIP area outside the games borders.

Tales From The Burning Sands Chapter 1:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37172

Puce Moose’s first NV mod. Should be a head-scratcher.

Valley Of The Giants:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37577

Adds a new area filled with giant enemies.

New Vegas Interiors Cottonwood Cove:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36680

New interiors at Cottonwood Cove & Overlook

New Vegas Interiors West Vegas:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35180

Several new interiors around outer west Vegas.

Zombie Apocalypse:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37067

Adds hundreds if not thousands of zombies to the wasteland.

Talon Company in New Vegas:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35087

Brings back the Talon Company from FO3 and spreads them around the wasteland.

New Vegas Bounties:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=37310

Loads of people to hunt down in a voice acted quest.

Serial Killer Merc Beta:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39264

Adds a faction of serial killers to several AWOP locations.

Goodsprings Filler:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=35121

New quests and NPCs around Goodsprings. On top of playing through this one I will also be looking to see how it conflicts with my own mod and how badly.

Rust Town:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39454

Adds a new village to the wasteland, should be conflict free with 0.3 version of AWOP but I wanted to check as well as play through.

Purge Cell Buffers:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=36805

Boosts performance, reduces lag

A World Of Pain 0.3 Main esm:

http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38719

My mod. It’s awesome.

I will also be using a free program called Game Booster to help ensure all those extra bad guys don’t slow me down too much and I have created one big merged patch to cover the lot (using FNVEdit).

I am downloading Mo Beta (http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38983

) but will not be using it on this playthrough due to it’s incompatibility with WME.

Now in all probability some of these mods will not play well together. I can already imagine problems arising when target A from NV Bounties can no longer be found coz he’s been turned into a zombie. I’ll try to take this into account as much as possible before I begin any kind of critique.

To be honest I don’t know what to expect from this lot combined but I’m looking forward to it.

[djmystro]

Well it ran perfectly first time. No slow down but I haven’t got out of Goodsprings yet. Leaving Doc Mitchell’s house I was confronted pretty much immediately with a wave of zombies. The new settlers from Goodsprings Filler put up a bit of a fight but I shot one by accident turning Goodsprings hostile in the mess so I loaded up and started again.

This time I made a break right straight into a group a zombies with no-one better to pick on. Ran out of ammo in seconds so dived into Chet’s place to resupply a little. By the time I’d gotten out the new Goodsprings folk had pretty much cleaned up and there were only a few zombies left in the town itself.

I went into the saloon to start the Sunny Smiles tutorial quest. On the floor was a load of ‘Talon’ marked gear (presumably from Talon in NV) but it was all owned by the Goodsprings faction coz it was in their building though no-one was touching the stuff which was a bit odd. I used ‘setownership’ in the console to grab a 10mm P90 for later and moved on.

There was a terminal in the building related to the NV Bounties quest which hinted at a location near Novac so it’ll be a while before I get there. I also took the time to check the location of the ‘Valley Of The Giants’ which popped up as a quest during the intro. It looks like it’s around Cottonwood Cove so again, won’t be seeing that anytime soon.

I stepped out back and shot the Sunset Sas bottles then activated the next stage of the Sunny Smiles quest. As soon as we got outside of the town limits we were swamped by zombies. We took out one group who seemed much more interested in Sunny than me using up all my ammo apart from a few dozen rounds for the varmint rifle. About five seconds later another group of about ten zombies came running up. I ducked into Frankie’s Guns & Ammo from AWOP expecting them to follow and get blown to pieces by Frankie and his bodyguard. No luck there so I bought all the ammo I could and stepped back out just in time to see Sunny get turned into a zombie, ending two quest lines. It looks like I won’t be following any conventional paths in this game.

I wandered around a bit shocked, used up the last of my ammo again in a few seconds and decided to call it a night. I’ll pick it up from there tomorrow.

It looks like I’ll either have to console some starting money or cheat unlock a few places to get through this game.

[MadMax08]

that zombie mod sounds pretty ridiculous. might have to give that a shot if possible.

 

by the way, love A World of Pain. might come in handy for my machinima...

Edited January 17, 2011 by MadMax08

[yoba333]

Yeah, really great job, I love AWOP.

[djmystro]

Before continuing I decided to add another mod, IWS or Increased Wasteland Spawns (http://www.newvegasnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=38623) which I had forgotten about the first time round. I set it to the highest spawn capacity and left the indoor settings alone to see what would happen.

I started a mod for FO3 a long time ago where the concept was to drop equipment everywhere to help survive the Zombie Apocalypse mod. If you are familiar with the ‘M’ weapons from AWOP, this is where the idea originated. I figure I’ll end up bringing out a version of AWOP at some point with this aim in mind. I mention this because now I am trying to decide what should be in the starter box. I’m gonna guess that I’ll need at least 2000 rounds of SMG ammo and about 500 5.56mm rounds to start to make a dent in this lot so I’ll add these using console commands for now.

I already have a cool SMG thanks to the Talon mod and Frankie has a modified Caravan Shotgun for sale so i’ll add 1000 caps to cover that and some stimpacks too, then I think it’s time to go and pick a fight.

Once I reloaded, right outside of Frankie’s store a new fight was going on between some zombies and a giant rat. I added the extra supplies and headed back into Goodsprings to check out the saloon again. I vaguely remember something about a clue to the Tales From The Burning Sands being there. In that short amount of time the dozen or so NPCS that had previously been defending Goodspings had either been killed, turned into zombies or, in Easy Pete’s and a random Bighorner's case had taken to hiding in the nearest building. The only things left in the fight were a few Bighorners and Victor but the zombies had thinned out and the stragglers were easy to pick off.

I couldn’t see anything else new in the bar though that’s unsurprising given that on one hand the area had already been heavily modified by Talon in NV, NV Bounties and maybe others and on the other I always seem to have to look around for an hour to find anything in a Puce Moose mod. I didn’t have the patience so I decided to check out the schoolhouse to loot the safe and see if IWS had affected the local mantises. I couldn’t see anything different but I got a bit distracted by the five or so zombies that came through the door after me a few seconds later. I let a few mantises get in the way and picked them off as they fought each other.

I noticed the accuracy on the P90 was pretty dire. In FO3 all the weapons had terrible accuracy spraying bullets off at mad angles. This has been fixed in New Vegas with min accuracies for most weapons being zero as opposed to 2 or 3 in FO3 (meaning that even at best the weapon would still fire off target). It looked to me like the P90 follows FO3 settings. This is very bad for Zombie Apocalypse as the zombies almost always swamp friendly players and so you have to pick them off accurately. It’ll do until I find something better though.

I headed to Sunnytime Cigs HQ to see if IWS affected the interior spawns but everything looked normal so I blasted Smokey, the boss gecko and headed for the exit. I figure I’ll loot up on some supplies for a while and pick up the review again later when I next stumble across an important location.

[djmystro]

[This post contains spoilers]

I cleared out a load of AWOP locations for the loot and found I was having way too easy a time, mainly because all that extra ammo I gave myself at the start was way too much. The zombies in the New Vegas Zombie Apocalypse are much more sparse and spread out than those in the FO3 version I had been playing a while back. Also I set the difficulty to normal rather than extra hard for this playthrough. For future reference about 500 9mm or 10mm rounds feels about balanced (assuming you have AWOP and access to Frankie’s Guns & Ammo.

Everything seemed a little more relaxed than I had expected, many NPCs in the wasteland were still owning their little space and I got to go around picking off the same Powder Gangers as usual.

My next surprise came when I entered Primm Sewer, an AWOP location that has been modified by the Serial Killer Merc mod. Rather than the usual motley assortment of Powder Gangers I was confronted by a crew of serial killers in hockey masks carrying Riot Shotguns. I had little problem with the first few, aiming for the head as usual but got wiped out by the boss ‘Maiden’ who took about thirty slug rounds point blank without really taking a scratch. At this stage I was at level 8 with a guns skill of 80.

This was gonna take some careful planning so next time through I took out the Serial killers one by one, looting their shotguns and ammo as I went so they could not resupply from each others corpses. I also grabbed the default armor off one coz it had a DT of 25, lucky I always aim for the head. Once everyone was dead apart from Maiden I took out her weapon in VATS rather than waste ammo on her and grabbed it as it fell to the floor. Next I took her on a merry run into the ghoul occupied sector of the sewer.

Maiden stopped around the sandbagged area and starting shooting at me with a single shotgun, not much of a threat so I popped a stealthboy and ran around the ghoul area gathering a crowd of pissed off ghouls behind me. I dived into the water at the end of one of the tunnels and the ghouls could no longer attack coz they were underwater. In a few seconds they all lost interest and went after Maiden. She wiped ‘em out but they tore her up pretty good and she was easy to finish off.

All in all an awesome challenge and I enjoyed having to think outside the box and I’m looking forward to the next Serial Killer area.

[djmystro]

I exited the sewer to Primm where the place was swarming with Escaped Convicts from IWS. None were well armed though so they were easy to dispatch. Maybe one or two more than usual inside the building. Grateful as I am for the extra spawns I had hoped for a little more from IWS on max spawns but maybe I’m judging too early. I have noticed extra enemies in previously deserted places (and not including zombies) but I felt a few more would not have hurt. Of course they could have been killed by the zombies already, it’s hard to say.

Either way I had hoped to be in a state of near constant combat in this game (I used to have FO3 running like this) but that outcome was looking unlikely.

I headed over to the Emergency Railyard Station to catch the train to Rust Town. In and around the valley were loads of zombies, ghouls and bighorners all having a big ruck. A load of dead molerats lying around revealed the fight must have been going on a while. I think I killed about 50 ghouls & zombies myself in that location alone which was a lot of fun. All the 12 gauge ammo from Primm Sewer (or Serial Sewer and it is now called) came in very handy. I should say though I grabbed just under 800 rounds of Riot Shotgun ammo of each variety (so about 3200 rounds in total). Even by AWOP standards that’s a lot of ammo but given all the stuff I’ve added to fight it’s probably gonna be a big help.

I eventually got the train to Rust Town, a very well designed town with a player house and lots of friendly NPCs about to cover all the main jobs (repairman, doctor, gun vendor etc...).

I checked out all the unowned places, the Armory looked especially well done. No quests yet though so I ammo’d up at the vendor (who had a good but not excessive selection of guns & ammo in stock) and headed back out to the wastes.

I remembered there should be a location around Primm called Toxic Cave from FOMM (not the same Toxic Cave by Primm that AWOP adds, that’s just a co-incidence). I used the console to add ‘explorer’ perk to find it quick and headed there. It turned out it was just south of Firetooth Caverns.

Inside was a nice little cave with a few beasties in it which led to another, much bigger radioactive dumping area. This area had been very well designed and the giant radroaches that live down there have cool glowing eyes. There were a lot of places to search and a nice surprise along the way which reminded me of a bit in the first Resident Evil (though I don’t want to give too much away). Unfortunately I did not have the required science or speech skills to intereact with the main computer and could not progress deeper into the level . I guess I’ll just have to come back later.

[taquinvol]

Slight spoiler: you've already found the Burning Sands quest starting "hint".

[djmystro]

Thanks for the tip taquinvol, It came it very handy.

[More spoilers ahead)

I went on a run through some local AWOP levels (Ivanpah to Nipton and back) to grab some more loot, in the last but one interior, Pit Stop Bomb Shelter I ran into a second mob of serial killers. This one was led by a boss by the name of Silent Bob who could kill you with one hit of his nailboard. I’m guessing these killers are based on your Jason, Michael Myers variety. His gang were armed with unlootable .22 SMGs, though you could still grab the ammo which given .22 ammo is unusually rare should make a nice change.

I got killed several times attempting this area and finally beat it by running straight through with a stealthboy on into the next area, the Ant Caves. Silent Bob and much of his gang followed right into an ongoing fight between a gang of Vipers and a load of giant ants. I dived off a nearby ledge and left them all to it, hiding as I went from the really big ants that roamed the cavern bottom.

Eventually Silent Bob, with a little goading followed me down and the ants wore him down enough to beat, though I had to make a save halfway through. Reminded me of good old FPS shooter bosses, running backwards in a mad panic firing as fast as you can and praying you don’t bump into a wall.

I then went on a run through The Underground from AWOP to level up a bit so I felt safe to free roam and also because I’ll take any excuse to have a look around that place. I probably levelled up at least three or four times and by the time I got out I was at level 18.

I went back into the Toxic Cave from the FOMM mod and found a nice extra level and another area that looked like a WIP (which I had to tcl to get to). I look forward to seeing more work of this standard.

I rechecked Goodsprings bar and found a note relating to NV Bounties. Turns out the terminal I encountered in the second post is from Tales From The Burning Sands so sorry for any confusion caused there.

The NV Bounties note pointed to a location not far from where I had just been so I went and activated my first Bounty quest. The location pointed to an area far north of Goodsprings but I ffelt confident enough to go for it. I got poisoned a load of times by all the extra Cazadors from IWS and was ambused by more serial killers at Bonnie Springs. A high-ex rocket taught them a lesson in superior firepower.

I encountered more serial killers at the Fiend House from AWOP which was not far from the bounty target. A holy frag dealt with this gang as they pooled together in the same corridor.

The bounty in question was alive but easy enough to kill. I used a Varmint Rifle (modified of course) to give him a chance but he didn’t take it so I looted his unique looking rifle and went to claim my reward. Next bounty is around Boulder City if I remember right and that’s a long way away so next I think it’s time to stop off at the Valley of the Giants.

[djmystro]

Went to the Valley of the Giants where there was a huge deathclaw (3-4x normal size) fighting a simliarly proportioned Super Mutant Behemoth. I was at level 22 and nothing I did made a scratch, whichever one won the fight moved deceptively fast and crushed me with one blow. Oh what I would give for a Browning M2. But I don't got one so I guess I wont be seeing the rest of these badguys till I hit level 30 and find or add a mad gun.

I left and rumbled a couple more Serial Killer altered locations. I dealt with the new threat at the Canyon Station with C4 and high explosive rockets. At the Viper's lair however things were not so simple. I cleared the level apart from the boss who seemed to have a 50% chance of scoring a killing blow with his chainsaw. I crippled both his legs with no obvious cripple effect which annoyed me after the amount of time it took but I killed him in the end by exploting a navmesh loophole and jumping up on places he had to run around to and constantly slamming him with the modifed Gauss Rifle.

I then found the next stage of Puce Moose's Burning Sands mod. I have not got far into it yet, somehow I managed to spend an hour looking for a note I already had in my inventory. After a lengthy search for an egg timer I synthesized a new bomb, caused a lovely big explosion and wen't on a search for Firefies (like Bloatflies armed with Incinerators). Unfortunately I think the one I was looking for (spicy?) was no where to be found. Either that or I misunderstood the instructions. One of the fireflies was under attack from zombies and another could easily have flown off somewhere and been killed. I really would like to see an optional version of a Puce Moose mod with quest markers for people like me who don't have the time to waste looking around the same place for ages. I know his style though and I somewhat doubt it will happen (though I will suggest it when I endorse). The mod was looking great though and if you prefer puzzles to firefights then this is the mod for you.

I chose to go after the next NV bounties target instead but the second quest objective turned out to be right at the top of the map through unexplored territory. A distance like that would probably take several hours to traverse clearing out buildings on the way. Unfortunately I have to get back to work on my own mod so I'll have to put the review on hold. Boulder City is in dire need of a big new underground location.... Or two...