Welcome to New Vegas (first impressions)

[Doc Hill]

share you filthy monkey, or I'll set you aflame!

[jimmypneumatic]

Gameplay aside, anyone have some feedback on stability of the game itself?

NV does lockup for me, seemingly for no reason, which is hardly a surprise considering other gamebryo ilk all suffer the same symptom. Certainly doesn't freeze as often as FO3 did. I crash 50% of the time when i alt tab out (which i believe to be a side effect of steam, however). It's playable, even on slightly less than the minimum system reqs on XP, although the game chugs when all hell breaks loose.

Edit: I'm using the suggested amount of RAM (2g), and a 1.8GHz dualcore intel... I'm going to overclock it to 2GHz and see if that makes a difference.

[rad resistance]

Only problem with my copy was saving issues.

[Stalagmite]

I awaiting Blargh's impressions. Not because I idolize the turd it's just interesting reading what he has to "say" in most cases, even if I do have to strain my noggin at times to decipher what he's jetting out.

[SenisterDenister]

The only problems I've found so far were some clipping issues. I fell through the earth once and then got stuck half-way in a rock, besides that its been smooth sailing.

[Stalagmite]

The only problems I've found so far were some clipping issues. I fell through the earth once and then got stuck half-way in a rock, besides that its been smooth sailing.

Why not take it a step further and just say that the damned engine itself Bethfails?

[Aonaran]

share you filthy monkey, or I'll set you aflame!

Here be spoilers:

Alright, here goes. You're gonna wanna have a stealthboy. More than one would be good, but I managed it with just the one. You'll start off in the Legion camp "Cottonwood Cove". In case you don't know where that is, just follow the highway East from Nipton to Searchlight and from there all the way to the Colorado River. Once in Cottonwood Cove, go due East across the river to the opposite side of the bank. SAVE. From there, follow the easterly bank due north until you start seeing red tics on your radar, or you see a large, pronounced ramp headed to the top of the cliff-face. This is an unmarked location called "Deathclaw Promontory". Fun Place.

Chill out in sneak until you're "Hidden", then SAVE and activate your stealthboy and slowly work your way up the ramp. It helps to do this at night, but again isn't necessary. The deathclaws will see through your stealthboy, but it at least gives you a head start. At the top of the ramp, go immediately right and bunny hop your ass up off the "dirt path" and onto the jagged rocks as soon as you can. You'll likely be detected the moment you reach the top of the ramp, so this might be a mad dash type situation. Jump your ass off til you are as high on the jagged rocks as you can get. At this point, you should be safe, and won't need to sneak anymore. SAVE.

Keep the Colorado River on your right as you work your way along the rocks going South, paralleling the dirt path on your left. This route should dead end into a sheer rock face. Once you reach the rock face, snake your way left, still along the rocks, and try and perch yourself on the shelf of rocks on emanating from the rock face. This might take a try or two, and you don't want to fall below, so SAVE beforehand. (The trick to making this jump isn't to jump from the rocks your on onto the shelf, but rather to jump straight against the cliff face, then hold forward to "grip" the surface, and walk "against" the wall a couple of feet to the left and spam the jump button til you get on the rock shelf. That might be a shit explanation, if so I can try and clarify further).

Once on the rock shelf, you shouldn't be able to progress any further without dropping down to the dirt path below. You'll know you're in the right place if you go to the Northeastern most point of the tiny rock shelf, and look to your right. The dirt path below should snake off to the right and into a crevice in the canyon wall. SAVE YOUR GAME.

Alright, here is the ball-tickler, folks. While on the rock shelf, have your back facing the sheer canyon wall and look forward. There should be a triangular pile of rocks in front of you, just outside the mouth of the crevice. On the far side of this rubble pile are the bodies of two dead prospectors, one in T-51b and the other in Advanced Power Armor (suit only, the helmet can be found in Silver Peak Mine on the road to Jacobstown).

SAVE, as this will take several tries. Seriously. Hop down off the rock face, locate the bodies on the far side of the rock pile and boogey your ass back onto the nearest rocks you can find. Next, just get back to the rocks you came here on, and find a way to jump, or "climb" down the cliff and get into the Colorado as quickly as possible (Deathclaws don't swim, ya'lls).

This should help:



The first red X is where you should start sneaking, the second where you make your mad dash from the ramp onto the rocks and so on and so forth.

[jetbaby]

Gameplay aside, anyone have some feedback on stability of the game itself

Playing on the lolbox, of course, but I've had maybe three or four freezes on load screens and one freeze on trying to open my Pipboy. Could be memory-leak related

[Aonaran]

At least it freezes on loadscreens, right after the AUTOSAVE so you don't lose your shit. That killed me in Fallout 3...

[Stalagmite]

I get an occaisional crash but that's abouttit. Not enough to sway my opinion any but enough to realize it's time for a break when it does happen.

LOL I'm going to play as Django on my next game.

[Retlaw83]

I can't decide if Vault 11 is more disturbing than it is funny, or more funny than it is disturbing.

[Tofu Man]

Personally I think guns are pretty shit [I haven't found much special ammo, however], but plasma seems to wreck things quite regularly. I have decent [~50-60] Energy and bad [~30] small arms and I just roll around with a 10mm pistol or shotgun to use on trash and a plasma rifle to drop heavy hitters. Things like Deathclaws, though, are nigh upon invulnerable and it takes half of my ammo and a lot of running to get them to go down no matter what i use.

You must be earlier on than me, soon enough down the road you'll realise the plasma rifle is just useful early on. Though I've made some progress now my outlook remains as it was so far. You get the laser/plasma gun/rifle family pretty early in the game and they're all very mid-low end (the lasers then are really low end) and then there's a big gap between those and the next tier.

The only EWs that "worked" for me during this period were the RCW (laser tommy gun sorta thing) which is basically hold the LMB and hope the foe dies before you run out of ammo (or you're fucked, at least with 4 END and light armor) and the multiplasma (or whatever the hell it's called) which I couldn't really use because it cost more caps to shoot than the caps I made off the corpse.

All through this I could have been using far superior guns, namely the elephant gun, the sniper, the hunting rifle, the auto shotgun, the lever-action rifles, the all-american and whatnot.

The EWs do pick up again (a bit) when you start to be able to use max charge ammo exclusively but by that time you'll gotten your hands on the gauss or the caster which, with their high STR requirements, are a bit moot for someone who chooses a INT based build and the EWs over the GUs because of their lower STR req.

In other news, the pulse gun (not the same one as in Fo2) is pretty badass, if only vs bots and power armor.
Here's hoping that when I find the pulse rifle (if there even is one - Y2Kwatchacallit, I'm looking at ya ) it'll be the end-all fucking gun it's supposed to be.

[Tofu Man]

I can't decide if Vault 11 is more disturbing than it is funny, or more funny than it is disturbing.

Don't vote 4 Walter.

I liked the gist of that one except for the all too dramatic ending.
22 must look great if you have the gfx card for it. Though the fungus thing is stretching it a bit.
3 is meh if you pass a speech check at the door. Otherwise it's just a shooting gallery.
Hated 34. God damn ghouls and their "INACCESSIBLE" door traps. Cheap fuckers.

Overall these so far have been a bit, I dunno, lacking. Finding a vault used to be an event in and of itself and these just don't seem up to par somehow.

[Retlaw83]

Overall these so far have been a bit, I dunno, lacking. Finding a vault used to be an event in and of itself and these just don't seem up to par somehow.

I agree with that. And especially after finding places like the Thorn, I was looking forward to encountering a still functional vault with normal people in it, though that seems a pipe dream.

[Tofu Man]

(...) I was looking forward to encountering a still functional vault with normal people in it (...)

, working computers unlike the ones on the surface that contain valuable info, history on the world before the war, some info on the experiments, people that tell you something you don't know yet, pre-war tech goodies not available anywhere else in the game-world, hopefully some quests, and so on. In essence, its own little world. (and they're supposed to make the outside world look like shit, not the other way 'round)

Finding a vault in a Fallout game needs to be something special and quite unlike: "here's some badly lit corridors and closed doors, here's some baddies for you to shoot, here's some unsatisfying loot and here's a computer log that tells you why you were shooting these specific bad guys. There you go, close the door on the way out."

[Retlaw83]

(and they're supposed to make the outside world look like shit, not the other way 'round)

It's always been my opinion that, with the various experiments and literally living in a hole in the ground, vaults pretty much sucked ass to live in. Safer than the wasteland, but still pretty miserable.

[jetbaby]

(and they're supposed to make the outside world look like shit, not the other way 'round)

Not really. The vault program was devised as a horrible societal experiment by a bunch of crazies. Very few Vaults were intended to survive, the bulk were "I wonder what would happen if...." scenarios.

[Stalagmite]

(and they're supposed to make the outside world look like shit, not the other way 'round)

It's always been my opinion that, with the various experiments and literally living in a hole in the ground, vaults been pretty much sucked ass to live in. Safer than the wasteland, city, but still pretty miserable.

That's what all the cheeful propaganda videos are for.

Anyway I'm on my second playthrough. Much better this time 'round on very hard, I'm actually taking the time to do all the quests in the surrounding areas and I'm already on level 8 before I even reached Novac.

I actually wrote down all the perks I'm gonna choose all the way up until level 26. Nothing like careful planning.

[SenisterDenister]

I'm level 16 and I haven't even made it into New Vegas yet. I mean, I've been around it at Fort McCarran and Gunrunners and Crimson Caravan, but that's all I've been to around there. Currently in Vault 11 working for the Brotherhood of Steel.

[Kashluk]

If you do even half of the side quests available you will most likely have a +20 level character by the time you get the Platinum Chip. At least I was. And I still have most of the map unexplored.