Whats your preferred way to play fallout New Vegas

[zerrodefex]

• I love the Machete, so I always visit the Abandoned Shack just north of Goodsprings to pick it up. Annoyingly it is not always there in every playthrough.
  
• I always pick up ED-E before leaving Primm. I make sure to stop by Lone Wolf Radio on the way to pick up those Scrap Electronics and Sensor Modules that are hard to come by early in the game.
  
• I always enter Primm at night and try to stalk and kill each Convict one by one with the Machete. If I lack a Machete I'll use a Knife or Cleaver.
  
• I always take a detour on my way from Nipton to Novac and pick up the Ratslayer. Ratslayer and That Gun (with the mod that fixes it's damage) are always in my inventory along with a 10mm SMG and a Machete.
  
• I try to only do the sidequests directly on my route when first going to Vegas, since I'm in a hurry to catch up with Benny and get my vengeance. After getting into the Strip and dealing with him I'll start exploring more and doing sidequests.
  
• I've never gone for any ending other than Wild Card. The only thing that changes is how far I play along with the other factions before screwing them over and taking power for myself.
  

Edited January 29, 2011 by zerrodefex

[MercsRus]

I've never gone for any ending other than Wild Card. The only thing that changes is how far I play along with the other factions before screwing them over and taking power for myself.

 

You speak like a true conquer in the words of Napoleon

The best way to keep one's word is not to give it

Or

Are you more like MacArthur

There is no security on this earth, there is only opportunity

[Leignth]

1. Grab as much ammo as possible.

2. Disintegrate, dismember, or dismay any enemy I come across.

3. Kill the King of "The Kings".

4. Burn Mr.House with a laser pistol.

5. Whenever you enter a building drink one Nuka Cola.

6. Assassins Creed a "Templar" assassin.

7. Repeatably stab Ceasar with a knife.

8. Always shoot someone in the head (Especially with a Sniper Rifle).

9. Get addicted to every alcohol possible.

10. Play Fallout New Vegas 24 hours a day.

[manlyMAN0890]

I play on normal. suck it.

 

I do whatever I want, as a merc or a good guy. In dialogue, if what I perceive to be the best option is a skill check, I load the save or the auto and find ways to level up just to get that extra oomph.

 

My bread and butter is guns. I carry a gun for every situation, and I take the time to make sure I have the latest when I have the caps for it.

 

Aside from Aid and non-weighted items, I pick up whatever cost money. Miscellaneous items are a bit iffy, I tend to weight the pros and cons of picking up a sensor module. But if I can sell it for fat stacks, I grab it.

 

I tend to carry a lot in weight until I make a drop off at one or a few vendors. I eat heavy food when I get injured to make way for inventory space, And I cook food items whenever I have the pit and the items for it.

 

You'd think from this information that the barter skill is a must. It's not. Money's always needed, but barter is just a speech check with monetary gain. I raise it only when I need it.

 

I carry clothes that boost my stats, excluding combat skills like explosives, guns, or melee. Handyman suit, naughty nightwear, roving trader hat, you name it. My armor is recon.

 

I don't do companions. I work alone. I let companions with quests attached come along for the ride, but only until they have what they need.

 

When I want to start a fight, I sit back from a distance and scope out targets until I'm noticed. Then it's VATS time. When I'm out of points, I get up close and personal. Oh Baby! But when an NPC tries to start a fight, I make sure I'm the first to draw. But when an enemy makes me mad, really mad, I pull out a shotgun and blow up every one of their limbs.

 

I choose perks that have to do with accuracy, such as Concentrated Fire. Finesse is a good one too, coupled with silent running. I want to hit them first, and hit them hard, and the fewer the shots the better. At 20 I'm going to pick out the Grim Reaper's Sprint. Strong Back is a good perk, too. I like to feel comfortable knowing I have space to rent. I would pick Fast Reload and Quick Draw, but I'll be saving those for later. I play with the cap raised to 60. I also pick Night Friend for vision.

The more damage I can do to it, the better. I have the Entymologist, Wasteland Purifier, and Hunter perks so far. Restricted to perks that raise damage against types of enemies.

[CaptainChaos]

0. Game set to Hard Core (only way to go) but Normal Difficulty (after 20th level played around with very hard but feels weird to do it so late). My only concern with Fallout 3/NV is that I find it extremely challenging on early levels, not so challenging on mid levels and not hardly challenging at all after 20th level. So far I "only" died about 10-15 times give or take until I could figure out the relative strengths of certain monsters (giant rads, moths, etc.). If i set it to very hard in the beginning, i just feel like it's unfairly hard and if i set it that way at the end it feels like i cheapened my progress, so I haven't figured that out yet for myself. I wonder if any of you have any thoughts on that?

 

1. I play a Thief/Sniper. High agility, charisma, luck, perception - low endurance, intelligence, strength. Focus on lockpicking, speech, stealth first, guns second, other skills third (60/30/10 kind of way). I try and play a helpful wisecracking good guy that beats the crap out of evil types but wises off to authority figures even if they are good; though i can be charming to nice good people if they are nice.

 

2. I always try and "break" the game by going in the opposite direction that I am supposed to travel. As soon as I was 9th level I headed North from Goodsprings, sniped the rad scorpions with about 200 rounds from the varmint rifle and found a way through, died once from a giant moth i couldn't sneak past, tried again, with the a stealth boy, traveling at night only, drinking radioactive water (forgot to bring enough with me b/c i had to sleep during the day a few times) and avoided all enemies, but then made it to New Vegas!! For me, it was the most exciting part of my whole FNV experience! I felt like i completely outwitted the game story b/c they make it so difficult to do that. In F3 I avoided the entire story line until i was 20th level and accidentally stumbled upon dad, lol.

 

3. I usually play gun only character b/c i don't think energy weapons have long range sniping ability? I usually carry the best sniper gun, a heavy close combat one (if possible silenced) and a back up hand gun which also lets me move around faster (also silenced if possible). Though one day I would like to experiment with goo inducing energy weapons.

 

4. I used to play solo but the companions do keep you company (the game is spooky without them). I lost Cassidy early on and felt so bad, I didn't travel with anyone else for a long while!

 

5. I try mods to stop re-spawning b/c i think it's both cheap and annoying to have to clear out the same terrain twice - what's the point of exploring if i can go back to the same cave/valley again and again? but neither of the two i tried appear to work. The one I used in F3 worked like a charm. Kinda unfortunate.

 

6. I usually grab everything not nailed down b/c everyone seems to want everything eventually - scrap, tin cans, electronics. I loot areas multiple times if necessary to carry it all back.

 

7. Finally, i explore every last nook and cranny of the game if I haven't closed out the quests (tho sometimes I reload just to try out the other speech, whatever option). In a month, I am appalled to say I clocked in 160 hours. As soon as the snow melts though, i promise to find a life! lol...

Edited February 6, 2011 by CaptainChaos

[manlyMAN0890]

If you think it's unfair Captain, you're in the clear in my book. If you think it's unfairly balanced(and it certainly is), you can use that as your solo justification. At least that's the way I see it.

 

I play it like I told you in pretty much every rpg/rp-action game, aside from the ones that don't require much effort. In Oblivion I use the bow.

 

If somebody could buckle down and make some fisticuff gore-kill animations for any of the rpgs on this sight I'd be switching to hand-to-hand easily. Srry, I got my hands on the Splatterhouse game. Although repetitive, I haven't been able to get the interactiv splatterkill animations out of my head since. In a good way.

[Gopher]

I play like I did in FWE. I treat bullets as deadly (even though they are not yet). So I carry a sniper rifle, that gun (or sweet justice if I have finished Bounties) and a pack full of mines. I wear an armorerd bounty hunter duster. When ever I explore I do not use the radar, and I always have a back up plan (usually a choke point with 3 or 4 mines set in it, if I run into some fiends, I sprint back to my safe point and if anything makes it to me, That Gun takes care of them).

[drakeelvin]

Nice post imho, my thoughts below.

 

0. Game set to Hard Core (only way to go) but Normal Difficulty (after 20th level played around with very hard but feels weird to do it so late). My only concern with Fallout 3/NV is that I find it extremely challenging on early levels, not so challenging on mid levels and not hardly challenging at all after 20th level. So far I "only" died about 10-15 times give or take until I could figure out the relative strengths of certain monsters (giant rads, moths, etc.). If i set it to very hard in the beginning, i just feel like it's unfairly hard and if i set it that way at the end it feels like i cheapened my progress, so I haven't figured that out yet for myself. I wonder if any of you have any thoughts on that?

 

I agree with you that NV starts out pretty hard, is quite easy in the midgame, but then at the end there are some challenges where the difficulty kind of goes way off the scale. This includes endgame encounters but also optional stuff like hunting the legendary beasts, special deathclaws, etc. And what I find compounds the difficulty is the game engine is messy: The camera jerks around throwing you in and out of cut-scene mode; prompts to click "OK" popup in mid-battle sometimes; creatures and people get stuck in terrain; and sometimes the camera gets jammed in 1st person mode and this can't be undone without a save/reload. In big fights this game engine really does suck in two ways: it makes fighting (mainly aiming) unnecessarily hard, and the engine is very unstable quite often missing or ignoring mouse clicks or just suffering from such severe lag that clicks aren't recognized until seconds later. Ad nauseum. Me, I got myself a kill gun for those situations just to avoid the hassle.

 

1. I play a Thief/Sniper. High agility, charisma, luck, perception - low endurance, intelligence, strength. Focus on lockpicking, speech, stealth first, guns second, other skills third (60/30/10 kind of way). I try and play a helpful wisecracking good guy that beats the crap out of evil types but wises off to authority figures even if they are good; though i can be charming to nice good people if they are nice.

 

Really annoys me that the best rifle in the game requires strength of 8 when the max scale is 10. It is unreasonable. Heck, strength 6 for the Sniper Rifle is unreasonable as well, it should be around 4 STR, and the AM rifle around 6 STR. I am a well below average strength person in RL and hoisting 20lbs above my head with one arm is not a challenge for me. IMNSHO needing +3 STR points for a gun character means more than half your available points are gone to a skill that is otherwise useless, or else you have to implant STR and possibly add a +STR item as well. (And, adding 10.00 to weight per point of strength is not imo all that useful as compensation either, not to mention it seems out of whack that the strongest person in the world can only carry 50lbs more than an average person.)

 

For my sneak/sniper characters I usually drop charisma down to 1 and add at least 1 to every other ability, and put my extra into AGI. If I'm sharpshooting my companions don't miss the extra DT very often.

 

2. I always try and "break" the game by going in the opposite direction that I am supposed to travel. As soon as I was 9th level I headed North from Goodsprings, sniped the rad scorpions with about 200 rounds from the varmint rifle and found a way through, died once from a giant moth i couldn't sneak past, tried again, with the a stealth boy, traveling at night only, drinking radioactive water (forgot to bring enough with me b/c i had to sleep during the day a few times) and avoided all enemies, but then made it to New Vegas!! For me, it was the most exciting part of my whole FNV experience! I felt like i completely outwitted the game story b/c they make it so difficult to do that. In F3 I avoided the entire story line until i was 20th level and accidentally stumbled upon dad, lol.

That is cool, gj!

 

3. I usually play gun only character b/c i don't think energy weapons have long range sniping ability? I usually carry the best sniper gun, a heavy close combat one (if possible silenced) and a back up hand gun which also lets me move around faster (also silenced if possible). Though one day I would like to experiment with goo inducing energy weapons.

Plasma weapons can do a lot of damage at long range. The Gauss Rifle has I think by far the best scope in the game and as I often say it one shot kills a deathclaw from 3 mountains over. Early on you find Laser Rifles and they can be equiped with quite a nice scope mod. Fiend territory is full of energy weapons and those guys respawn.

 

4. I used to play solo but the companions do keep you company (the game is spooky without them). I lost Cassidy early on and felt so bad, I didn't travel with anyone else for a long while!

Takes time to learn to work with companions for sure. Companion AI is terrible. I always give my companions the best armor I have and I use the 2nd best because companion AI for healing and general common sense is somewhere between 0 and 1 on a scale of 10.

 

Also, Cass has a wimpy default weapon, shotguns do poor damage. Give Cass a decent Pistol, Revolver or Rifle, then thrown in lots of ammo and watch her massacre stuff. Later you can give her a Trail Carbine or Brush Gun just for going against hard stuff. It is generally better to finish off one enemy at a time rather than randomly injuring a bunch of them because few will run away when hit and they always bull rush you. When I find my companions running ahead I'll try to follow and support them by shooting their targets or drawing adds away from them.

 

5. I try mods to stop re-spawning b/c i think it's both cheap and annoying to have to clear out the same terrain twice - what's the point of exploring if i can go back to the same cave/valley again and again? but neither of the two i tried appear to work. The one I used in F3 worked like a charm. Kinda unfortunate.

I never figured out the logic of some spawns, sometimes I'll enter a building, clear it, then step out a few minutes later and its like a zoo appeared. Alway be prepared for a potential ambush setup by the game engine when you return back to a zone you just cleared.

 

But overall I found the spawns seem fairly reasonable, even seemed a bit slow in places later when you can clear stuff fast. It does add some life to what would otherwise remain dead areas.

 

6. I usually grab everything not nailed down b/c everyone seems to want everything eventually - scrap, tin cans, electronics. I loot areas multiple times if necessary to carry it all back.

 

7. Finally, i explore every last nook and cranny of the game if I haven't closed out the quests (tho sometimes I reload just to try out the other speech, whatever option). In a month, I am appalled to say I clocked in 160 hours. As soon as the snow melts though, i promise to find a life! lol...

 

One things NV could use is a recipe book that can be viewed anytime, not just when you are at a campfire or bench. There are some printable lists on the web.

 

Just to keep myself sane I have a shortlist of recipes that I use for over 90% of my stuff and I have the ingredients memorized: food, water, anti-venom, repair kits, tanned gecko hides, and thats pretty much it. Ammo components don't weigh anything even in hardcore so I just keep them all. There are some other pretty useful recipes as well but I haven't added the parts to my memory list. But you can make good money off some of them. I do weapon repair kits for caps, the recipe is one of the harder ones to remember but worth it: with a high repair skill you can buy, fix and resell the highest value weapons (or fix worn down ones you found) and make a LOT of caps in profit. And tanned hides though low cost do add up and are quite plentiful so I always collect those White Horsenettles and loot/buy every jar of turpentine I can. Etc.

 

Again, nice post :)

[manlyMAN0890]

I said I don't play with companions, but it was great to have Veronica around! She can kill most enemies in the game with just one hit from her power fist.

 

For having a karma level, it is a huge dilemma for me to find an appropriate ending for being the good guy. I want all of the factons, most of them anyway, to just "get along" when I'm done! Benny's tribe used to kill each other in fights to the death for the right to lead the pack, but then he turns around and say Mr. House doesn't have the right to rule for saving Vegas from the holocaust. And then Mr. House wants the Brotherhood destroyed, but they also want to harness technology for weaponry. I just want the good guys to have a happy ending, kill off the Legion, tell the NCR to f--- off, and for Mr. House to step down.

 

I believe Alistair said it best, "I love how the Blight just brings people together."

[Seviche]

There's a plot to this game? With an ending you say? How interesting. Snark aside, I did the "No Gods No Masters" and the NCR endings. After that I didn't care. Kill the Brotherhood for you Mister House? Suck it. Help the Legion? No way in hell. Thusly, I've really finished the game, and now it's just screwing around.

 

Mostly I spend my time making new characters and seeing how the different stats and skills change the game experience. Here's a pro tip; charisma is THE dump stat. In a game where you'll shoot your way through 99% of the encounters, having a crappy barter and speech skill means nothing. Seriously. That's why I only play Ghoul characters; to justify having a Charisma of 1. I played a sly talker my first play through and talked my way through the final fight. Booring. My second play through I shot my way through the game. It didn't change things much. It was still fun, but speech challenges just meant I killed a few (very few) less people.

 

So now I see how long it takes me to get a decent gun. I play a character than can only use small guns (like pistols) and see how far I can go. I see how long I can last wearing clothes instead of armor. I see if hardcore mode really is hardcore and if it's fun eating and drinking in game (not the way it is now). I like seeing how long it takes to get a decent frikkin' weapon as an energy-weapon specialist (a long, long, really stupidly long time. I hate slow-ass dodge-able plasma unless it's the defender). I like seeing how a melee or explosives character deals with things at the beginning, and other such stuff. The plot really doesn't matter to me anymore, as the plot is done. I've beat the game, now I'm trying to beat the engine, and the rails that Obsidian installed in the game. As expected, I've found many holes in everything.

 

No matter the character, my favorite weapon is the lever-action shotgun, until I find or purchase a riot shotgun. Slugs or buckshot is how I like to deal with enemies. I also carry a modded-varmint rifle as my sniper rifle for when the target zone must be thinned out a bit. A backpack mod is a must as I like to play characters with a low strength. On the rare occasion that I do screw around with a high-strength character, my weapon of choice becomes the light machine gun. Just 'cause it's awesome!

 

I also refuse to use VATS. It slows down my killing, you see, and I'm a busy person. Bullet time is the way to go. I still get the crap shot out of me (as cover doesn't work in this game, either you can get shot or you can't shoot them) and I don't have that retardo-death-cinematic-cam thingie. It's not like seeing their head pop off from shooting them in the leg is going to make it any more awesome (or make more sense) when it's in slow motion.

 

Hmm, this wasn't supposed to be a rant. Oops.

Edited March 28, 2011 by Seviche