Necessary technical prep for New Vegas

[yes plz]

If you plan on going for the House or anarchy routes I'd suggest the Lonesome Road True Faction Allegiance mod. In the vanilla game the DLC only bothers to check which faction you have the highest rep with and goes with that for Ulysses's dialogue, making it next to impossible to get the content related to House or the anarchist route.

 

[Vorark]

NV doesn't need many mods, base is solid enough to stand on its own. A super light mod list is just fine.

Fixes:
Lonesome Road True Faction Allegiance
Rifle Clipping Fix

Optional enhancements:
Vanilla UI Plus
Clarity - An Orange Tint Remover -- better than Fellout, actually works in 3rd person view.
JSwayer

GOG version is pre-patched with LAA, so you won't need the 4GB exe patch. If you've got the Steam version, then grab it here.

 

[Santander02]

I always use weather mod to get rid of the fanta soda piss filter that permeates the entire visuals.

DLC rating

-Dead Money (Intriguing storyline and characters, nice atmosphere and locations, loved how the game feels like a survival horror at the beginning when you are stripped from your equipment and have to scavenge new gear from zero rather than just waltz around in your power armor, shooting lazors at everything)

-Old world blues (Fun location to explore, funny quests)

-Honest Hearts (Zion Valley is just so damn...boring, aside from the survivalist's bread crumbs and Graham's voice the whole thing is so drab)

-Lonesome Road (After so much buildup about Ulysses in the previous's DLC's actually meeting him and seeing he's just a rambling lunatic, a nowhere near as entertaining rambling lunatic like Elijah at that, was a huge let down. I shot him, left the divide and never looked back, at least there's some nice gear to aquire)

 

[Nano]

I don't care much for any of the DLCs apart from DM, but I'd rank Lonesome Road above the other two because ED-E is one of my favorite New Vegas companions.

 

[Blaine]

I don't care much for any of the DLCs apart from DM, but I'd rank Lonesome Road above the other two because ED-E is one of my favorite New Vegas companions.

Do you have autism? ED-E is cool and all, but it has absolutely no personality whatsoever.

Username "Nano"... Modron avatar... favorite companion is ED-E... you a robosexual, son? You need to get your heart right with the Lord.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

I liked Honest Hearts, if for no other reason than it's one of the prettiest places in the game (actual fucking weather helps). Also Graham and the Survivalist's story really add nice icing to the cake that is Zion. It's just that it's pretty short, even if you explore like crazy, and I wish there was more to do with Graham himself. The loot is great, the story is fine (if short). Minor complaint: the followers (Chalk and Cloud) idle-talk way too much. I mean, I thought Cass was a motormouth. I don't mind flavor talk from NPCs but it was always the same two lines over and over again.

I'm looking into modding NV but I want to start with just the basic, most important shit (bugfixes), and then I'll graduate to spit-and-polish mods. Bugfixes come first, since vanilla is pretty decent IMO in most aspects aside from bugs.

EDIT: Oh, also, the only genuinely challenging fights in HH are She and probably any time more than one Giant Cazador gets involved, because fuck those bugs. Everything else, from yao guai to spore plant to green gecko, feels trash-mob tier. Might be that I generally wait until level 10-15 to start HH though, so YMMV

 

[Blaine]

Actually, I'm playing Honest Hearts right now and I'm not seeing much weather at all, beyond differing cloud formations and heat lighting. I have bPrecipitation=1 in both Fallout.ini and FalloutPrefs.ini. Am I supposed to be seeing rain? Guess I'll need to look into one of those weather/skies mods after all.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Actually, I'm playing Honest Hearts right now and I'm not seeing much weather at all, beyond differing cloud formations and heat lighting. I have bPrecipitation=1 in both Fallout.ini and FalloutPrefs.ini. Am I supposed to be seeing rain? Guess I'll need to look into one of those weather/skies mods after all.

It rained reasonably often for me with an unmodded game, so idk.

 

[unfairlight]

There can't really be a place where people go into big buildings and give away all their money just to watch someone flip paper squares on a table.
Repeat 5 minutes later. Follows Chalk was a interesting enough character but damn did he just repeat the same lines over and over and over.

 

[Blaine]

It rained reasonably often for me with an unmodded game, so idk.

Yeah, I've seen lightning, but if there was rain I must have missed it somehow.

 

[Nano]

Do you have autism? ED-E is cool and all, but it has absolutely no personality whatsoever.

Play Lonesome Road.

Base campaign ED-E =/= Lonesome Road ED-E.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

There can't really be a place where people go into big buildings and give away all their money just to watch someone flip paper squares on a table.
Repeat 5 minutes later. Follows Chalk was a interesting enough character but damn did he just repeat the same lines over and over and over.

For me Cloud was worse with her "Salt-upon-Wounds salted the earth so that nothing could grow, what monster could do that" line.

 

[Blaine]

Play Lonesome Road.

I have. Although, the only thing I really remember about it is riot armor and flag jacket black man, which says it all, really.

 

[Drax]

I always felt that LR was unfinished, or at least not fleshed-out. The main Bad Guy made no sense whatsoever and it was railroaded as hell.
Still, I did like some aspects of it, it built a pretty solitary and opressive ambient and the upgrades to AlterE-DE were nice.

 

[Trashos]

Lonesome Road is my least favorite FONV dlc.

Obsidian tried different things with each dlc (and I applaud that). I take it that they wanted LR to be the "dungeon crawler" of the bunch. I understand that as a choice, I am just never in the mood for a dungeon crawler based on FONV's combat.

 

[Blaine]

Obsidian's solution to the shit engine and assets they had to work with was generally to make the most dangerous enemies bumrush the player at absurd speeds (Cazadors being the pinnacle of this), and also tweak VATS so that enemies have fourteen years to beat on you before you're allowed out of it.

A huge improvement overall, if very uneven at times, but... it's just shit. Weapons generally feel clunky and laggy (I don't think it's technical input lag, since I have a clean system and have played NV on three different PCs with different configurations; just the way it is); someone mentioned the magic side-dodging that enemies do, but they move around in a jerky and slippery fashion in general. Sometimes they fuck themselves over getting stuck on terrain or running half a mile to reach your location because of the seemingly poor navmesh system. That's one of the reasons I refuse to play with killable companions: If I hop up onto a rock, they might sprint off to go all the way around the mountain and rejoin me the way the navmesh tells them to, right through a bunch of enemies.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

Obsidian's solution to the shit engine and assets they had to work with was generally to make the most dangerous enemies bumrush the player at absurd speeds (Cazadors being the pinnacle of this), and also tweak VATS so that enemies have fourteen years to beat on you before you're allowed out of it.

A huge improvement overall, if very uneven at times, but... it's just shit. Weapons generally feel clunky and laggy (I don't think it's technical input lag, since I have a clean system and have played NV on three different PCs with different configurations; just the way it is); someone mentioned the magic side-dodging that enemies do, but they move around in a jerky and slippery fashion in general. Sometimes they fuck themselves over getting stuck on terrain or running half a mile to reach your location because of the seemingly poor navmesh system. That's one of the reasons I refuse to play with killable companions: If I hop up onto a rock, they might sprint off to go all the way around the mountain and rejoin me the way the navmesh tells them to, right through a bunch of enemies.

When I play hardcore mode I play more or less solo and park companions in safe spots, though I try to do companion quests so I can get their endings. I've yet to be able to get Lily's ending at all in HC because of the triggers involved though, and Veronica's rebel endings are hard to get in HC because those rogue Paladins can be kind of tough in that closed-in space. Companions in general are pretty dumb about picking fights when I'm only in [CAUTION] mode, and sometimes they lose the fights they pick (even the mighty Boone with a Gobi rifle can't do much about a handful of Cazadores dumping poison into him like there's no tomorrow).

 

[Blaine]

Yeah, the only counter to a surprise Giant Cazadore gangbang is luck or consumable spam. DT hardly matters at all, since they deal 80-100+ damage per sting.

It's best to go for the wings, although this is somewhat difficult without VATS assistance. When I do get the drop on them, I've made a sport out of trying to snipe them with iron sights when they're fly-ing around on the ground at 40 MPH, and occasionally succeed.

 

[Leitz]

The only way to play a game is vanilla.

 

[Drax]

Yeah, the only counter to a surprise Giant Cazadore gangbang is luck or consumable spam. DT hardly matters at all, since they deal 80-100+ damage per sting.

It's best to go for the wings, although this is somewhat difficult without VATS assistance. When I do get the drop on them, I've made a sport out of trying to snipe them with iron sights when they're fly-ing around on the ground at 40 MPH, and occasionally succeed.

My recipe for cazadorcide:

1. Have ED-E
2. Check when red markers start running all over the compass
3. Grab Esther
4. More or less aim at something in their general direction.
5. ?
6. Profit.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

I wonder if there's a tweak to make NCR/Legion deathsquads spawn a little less often. They're basically loot pinatas, and make scratching up caps nearly trivial. Also, Legion deathsquads have a really bad habit of killing nearby NPCs (I've had a couple of locations nearly wiped clean by a Legion deathsquad before I could put them down because the NPCs are so stupid they engage the fuckers instead of running and hiding).

 

[fantadomat]

I don't care much for any of the DLCs apart from DM, but I'd rank Lonesome Road above the other two because ED-E is one of my favorite New Vegas companions.

 

[PorkBarrellGuy]

>purple UI
Absolute heresy.

 

[Blaine]

STOP

THE FUCKING

GIANT CAZADOR SPAM

YOU ABSOLUTE CUNTS

Seriously, at this point I'm annoyed that I'm leveling up too much. Can I save some of it for the rest of the fucking game, please?

Five of them, right next to each other. First I stealth-sniped two of them, and then three more showed up! Fucking Hell! This is right after leaving a trail of Giant Green Geckos, White Legs, and Yao Guai. Without the "hollow triangles" I have to actually search for every single cave and out-of-the-way area, which means a lot more schlepping around, a lot more opportunities for the game to spawn shit on top of my head, and this is now turning into a Japanese RPG from the 1980s.

 

[Piotrovitz]

Seriously, at this point I'm annoyed that I'm leveling up too much. Can I save some of it for the rest of the fucking game, please?

project nevada, set xp gain to 33% or less, and you're all set.