• Fallout New Vegas Walkthrough
• Fallout New Vegas Starting Special
• New Vegas Attributes
• Fallout New Vegas Starting Skills Reddit
• Fallout New Vegas Tag Skills

A high agility gives you more AP for vats, and determines your starting small guns skill. I'd recommend taking this to 9, then boosting it to 10 with an implant. Fallout: New Vegas Walmart. Two types of statistics define your character in Fallout New Vegas, and that are attributes and skills. Your character’s attributes are represented by the acronym S.P.E.C.I.A.L. And determine the.

TL;DR

• Default difficulty is fine for casual players. Hardcore is bad if you're using companions and not modding the game.

• INT is good. All weapon types are viable mains. Lockpick, Medical, Repair, and Science are good. Hauler is good.

• Play the DLC in release order (Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and then Lonesome Road) starting at about level 20, then gain 5-10 more levels before moving onto the next.

• If you're modding, get a UI fixer (MTUI), New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE), an unofficial bugfix patch (YUP or UPP+), and the Fallout Mod Manager (FOMM). Don't add anything else unless you want something specific, and add them one at a time.

Character Building: SPECIAL and Traits

Fallout: New Vegas. The initial skill is determined as follows: 2 + 2 × Perception + Luck/2. Example: A starting Perception of 5 and Luck of 5. 2 + 2 × 5 + 5/2 = 15. Lockpick in Fallout: New Vegas operates in much the same way as Fallout 3, with your Lockpick skill determines which locks the game will allow you to attempt to pick. Oct 15, 2010 Fallout New Vegas Skills Guide. Since Fallout New Vegas S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Attributes determine the starting value of your skills, if you have the attributes set, it will help you focus on the skills.

• Don't neglect Strength (carry load), Endurance (max HP), and Intelligence (skill points per level.) Charisma is a safe dumpstat. High Luck can make for easy money grinding at casinos, but if that doesn't interest you then it is also a safe dumpstat.

• Don't put anything to 10, there are implants that can permanently upgrade stats, and the max is 10 even with buffs/chems/etc.

• If you have an Intelligence of 2 or 1, the game changes in some pretty significant ways, but this is better suited for a second run than a first.

• A high Charisma/nonviolent character is also viable, but also better saved for when you know what you're getting into.

• Wild Wasteland is serious about making the game sillier, including most of the shout-outs and goofy events/locations. Everything else depends on your build, but if you can't decide, Hoarder (from the DLC) is excellent and the downside is extremely easy to avoid.

• Don't play on Hardcore if you plan on using companions and not modding the game. Their AI is questionable and there are several bugs that can kill them dead with very little recourse, especially melee companions, and especially especially the good, good robot dog.

• The hard part's over now, you can skip the next section if you want.

Skills and Perks

• For combat skills, pick one and go all-in. Whether it's Melee, Unarmed, Guns, Energy Weapons, or Explosives, pick one, and pick out perks that support it and work well with it. It doesn't hurt to be putting points into a secondary weapon type, but focus your combat perks on whatever you intend to be best at. (Do note that some of the best Melee perks require Unarmed skill, and vice-versa.) Explosives are a bit expensive to be a main if you don't know what you're doing, but exploring the right areas can take some of the edge off.

• Survival is a garbage skill that does nothing of value, even in Hardcore mode. Most of what you'd want it to do is actually behind Medical, Science, or Repair.

• Speech and Barter can be worth putting a few points into even if you don't lean into them. If you're just shy of making a check, fancy clothes, a magazine and chems/alcohol can close the gap.

• Make sure to level at least one of Lockpick and Science, most good loot is locked behind one or both of them.

• Perks that increase skill point gain are not retroactive, so take them early. Avoid XP-boosting perks, there is more than enough to comfortably hit the level cap with even a modicum of exploration.

Gameplay / Exploration

• There are no missables, although you can't do everything in one playthrough. There is no way to totally fail most quests (except contradictory ones from different people - kill this guy vs rescue this guy) so pick a character archetype to roleplay and just do it. You might 'fail' some quests but you really won't.

• Much like Fallout 3, if a container isn't 'secure' then the game may or may not remember what you stored in it. Containers in your personal houses and rooms are secure, containers elsewhere generally aren't. The first accessible ones are the blue Mohave Express drop boxes, which will freely hold and transfer an infinite amount of stuff between them once you find two or more. (There are five, one each in Goodsprings, Primm, Novac, Freeside, and the Strip.)

• Karma is basically a nonissue, it's faction reputation that's important. The only companion (and really the only NPC) who gives a shit about Karma is Cass, who'll leave if it's too low for too long, but several care about faction reputation.

• If you are wearing a faction's armor, people will think you are a member of that faction. For example, you will be attacked if you return to Goodsprings wearing Powder Ganger armor.

• At a certain point in the main plot, there's a one-time event where negative reputation with the NCR and the Legion will be cleared. Outside of this, there isn't really an easy way to repair your reputation with a faction once they start getting violent.

• Run from Cazadores until you get lots of poison antidotes or have done the Old World Blues DLC. The poison is bugged and can infinitely stack every time they hit you. This is also one of the fore-mentioned enemies that can kill companions dead extremely quickly.

• Armor uses Damage Threshold (which subtracts points of damage off the top) now instead of Damage Resistance (which reduced all damage by a percentage). This makes Deathclaws even deadlier than before, if you can believe it. Use AP ammo on them, preferably from an extreme distance. There's no Dart Gun equivalent to neuter them anymore, either.

Building a Combat God

• Wanna just play the game for the story and absolutely roll over everything even remotely challenging? Or, alternatively, wanna stand a fighting chance at max difficulty? This is how. Mechanical and location spoilers follow.

• 5 STR, 8 PER, 7 END, 1 CHA, 9 INT, 5 AGI, 7 LUC. Tag Energy Weapons, Repair, and Science. Take Hoarder and Wild Wasteland.

• Key perks early/mid perks are Educated, Comprehension, Toughness, Meltdown, Vigilant Recycler, and Jury Rigging.

• Make Overcharged and Maximum energy cells at repair benches once you have Jury Rigging to easily repair the damage to your weapons.

• The Plasma Caster is the best all-round energy weapon in terms of damage, fire rate and ammo usage. You'll find it in the Silver Rush in New Vegas. Steal it or kill everyone inside.

• The Pulse Pistol in Vault 34 (where the Boomers live) eviscerates robots.

• Northwest of the strip is a little town called the Horowitz farmstead. Just north of that is an extremely deadly Wild Wasteland-specific unique energy weapon, wielded by a unique enemy. Use the ammo carefully, you're not getting any more of it.

• Don't use a melee companion, Meltdown will kill them dead fast.

DLC / Modding

• Play through the DLC in release order, so Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues and then Lonesome Road. They're individual side stories but each one also contains buildup for the last one and they're all pretty awesome in their own ways. Dead Money recommends level 20 or higher, but it can be done at as low as 10-15 if you're a combat monster. It does have some high Speech and Lockpick checks, so pump those skills first if you plan to go in early.

• Before even starting the game, if you're on PC, you're going to want a UI fixer (MTUI), the New Vegas Script Extender (NVSE), New Vegas Anti-Crash (NVAC), an unofficial bugfix patch (YUP or UPP+), and the Fallout Mod Manager (FOMM). These can be added quickly and painlessly even if you don't want to fuck around with modding.

• If you want to mod more, add one at a time, make sure it works, and unless all of the mods you're using are explicitly compatible, be prepared for some odd crashes and fiddling with load order. Good places to start are Project Nevada, Weapon Mods Expanded, and The Someguyseries (New Vegas Bounties, et al.) for gameplay, and Fellout, Interior Lighting Overhaul, Fallout Character Overhaul, and one of the several texture replacement mods for visuals.

index ... basic tips ... even more advanced tips

by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright June 2013

Introduction

OK... I've been playing this game a while now, and here are some advanced tips and tricks.

Keep in mind that I still love energy weapons, so these advanced tips apply best to energy weapon users who like sneaking. There is no particular order to these tips, but the early ones are useful at the beginning of the game.

Building Character

Note: This is a change from the beginner advice. The important SPECIAL attributes now are:

o Endurance -- So you can buy all the bumps from Doc Usanagi. I go with 9 (because I'll buy one from her) but you can get by with less because you can also get bumps using the Intensive Training perk when you level up.

o Intelligence -- Max intelligence means max skill points. Once again, I go with nine, and this is my first buy from Doc.

o Perception -- It's real nice to see things. And it helps on some skills, and it gives a few nice speech options when talking to NPC's.

These are top priority. Bottom priority are:

o Luck -- I take it down to one, and I may add one or two bumps late in the game with Intensive Training.

o Charisma -- Nice but not necessary. I take it down to one as well, and I may add Intensive Training bumps late in the game.

And in between are:

o Agility -- It gives you running speed and lots of action points in VAT mode. And with high speed another tactic becomes viable: Shooting while backing up. Backing up gives you many extra shots on enemies such as scorpions and geckos who will chase you and try to close.

o Strength -- It's nice to carry lots of stuff, and it is needed for full weapon potential. Recharger and Q-35 need 2 or 3 and the YCS/186 needs 5. I start with 3, or so, and put the rest of the optionals into agility.

I select Science, Speech and Energy Weapons as my tagged skills. I take the Good Natured trait -- it cuts into energy weapon skill but it adds to speech, medicine, repair, science and barter which I use a lot -- and the Trigger Discipline trait which trades better accuracy for speed in weapon use -- I like hitting.

When I walk out of Doc's door, I'm ready for the Fast Start Tour.

The Fast Start Tour

There are two goals to this Fast Start Tour:

o acquiring the really good energy weapons

o getting your intelligence bumped at Doc Usanagi's as a first or second level so you're on the road to max skill points.

Secondary goals are to establish a home base at the Novac motel, establish your merchant network so you can sell lots of stuff, discover landmarks that will make later exploring easier, collecting ammo for your Q-35, and wealth to spend on Usanagi's implants.

Rather than going south towards Primm, start by heading northeast to Sloan. You should be able to dodge your way there with little shooting. Discover it, then move across the highway and discover Neil's Shack at the base of Black Mountain. Talking to Neil is optional at this point, and hard to avoid.

Now comes the tricky part. Work your way up along the left side of the switchback road to a pass over the hills north of Black Mountain proper. You'll know it when you get there. It's full of bear traps, an NCR corpse, and rumbling/tumbling rocks! Dodge and disarm all of that and head north for REPCONN HQ. When you discover that you've gone through the trickiest part of the fast start. Once again, if you're doing it right there's no shooting required on this section.

Go in the HQ and grab the Q-35. How to do so was covered in the basic tips, but here it is again. Take the guided tour to get the planet exhibit door unlocked for you, get the ID on a desk in the room above the exhibit, come back to the lobby and head to third floor, get a room key card in a metal briefcase laying in the hallway on the third floor, open a door on the second floor, jump through the hole in the floor to get to the Q-35 on the first floor. Yeah baby! Oh, and loot the two Brotherhood of Steel corpses nearby the briefcase while you're up there.

Q-35 now in hand, take the bridge north of REPCONN HQ to the railroad station and pick up fistfuls of pre-war money there. Keep going north to discover Cassidy Caravan Wreckage, south of the McCarren walls. This is a place you will return to often. It is the starting point for the Fiends vs NCR Tour which produces lots of loot and energy weapon ammo. It is also a good place to spawn pesky Legion Assassins if they are bothering you. You can lead them into the first fray point on the tour. (If you're loaded down, fast travel back to Goodsprings and sell/store stuff before you continue. You'll be picking up a lot of loot at the two fray points.)

Head west to get to the first fray point. Fiends and NCR troopers will duke it out next to the wall. Here you get into shooting for the first time. You fight Fiends with NCR help, then loot all the corpses when the battle ends.

Continue east and circle around the McCarren wall. There will be a second fray point at the southwest corner of the wall. These two fight spots respawn regularly, come back any time you need more loot and energy weapon ammo.

Fallout New Vegas Walkthrough

The Fast Start Tour now heads north. Discover McCarren and keep heading north, the way should be barren and quiet. Discover the South Cistern, then head east and discover the Freeside's North Gate and Crimson Caravan. If you're loaded down with stuff, see Blake, the merchant in Crimson Caravan. Sadly, he reloads money very slowly so he's pretty much a one-shot merchant. The two critical places you want to discover in this area are New Vegas Medical Clinic, home of Doctor Usanagi, and Gun Runners, home of Vendortron, your merchant with the mostest... money. Both Doc and Vendortron reload money often, plus, the wandering merchants walk by the south and west Crimson Caravan walls regularly as well. Plan on selling a lot of loot around here.

From here you head south along 95. Stop at Durable Dunn's Sacked Caravan, south of the medical clinic, if you want to pick up combat armor from some Van Graff Thug corpses. And continue along 95 until you get to Novac, home of the big dinosaur statue. Take a small detour to discover Gibson Junkyard just north of Novac.

Once in Novac, make a quick stop at the Mc Bride house and solve their Nightkin problem, then talk to Jeannie May Crawford and get the key to your room at the motel. Head to the room, and get some well-earned rest and recovery in your bed -- sleeping here heals all wounds and limbs, and being well rested gives you an experience bonus. Use the safe and the suitcase to store stuff.

Your Fast Tour is complete.

Getting a Recharger Pistol

The Q-35 always comes from REPCONN HQ. The recharger pistol can come from many places. Once you are over 8/10th level they will be part of the loot on many of the Bright Follower corpses scattered around the land. You can search them. If you want to search a whole lot of corpses in a hurry, head up to REPCONN Test Site, just west of Novac.

If you want to get a recharger as a 1st level, plan on some excitement and working up some good timing.

Gloria Van Graff at the Silver Rush in Freeside has one on display on her wares table. When you first come into the Silver Rush you have to watch her do some 'puppy kicking' (showing that she's a ruthless person). When she does that she walks away from the table. When you hear 'Show's over.' move to behind the table before she gets back in place, sneak, steal the gun, then jump over the table so you don't get close to her or anyone else and sneak out. Voila! You're a first level with a recharger pistol! Note that it takes an energy weapon skill of 50 to get full effectiveness, but it's quite useful from Day One.

Getting a Plasma Defender

Like the recharger pistol, these will spawn on Bright Follower corpses once you've reached 8/10th level. If you're collecting at REPCONN Test Site collect a few and repair them to make one in top condition.

Getting the YCS/186

This is found on a combat-armored mercenary at an unnamed campsite north of Horowitz Farmstead in the northwest. He's got company and they are a tough group to tangle with.

The sneaky way is to approach them from the east and post on a rocky outcrop next to the cliff that marks the north border of the map. Start shooting into their group. You're far enough away that they can't spot you, so they mill around where the shots are landing. Bring plenty of ammo, you'll miss a lot, but they will go down, and you have a weapon and combat armor.

That's what I have on the Fast Tour and weapon acquiring. Next I will talk about stringing quests together.

Spawning traveling merchants

Traveling merchants must be spawned. You must travel near some specific geography for them to appear. One will show up as you do the Fast Tour. One will show up when you near the Boulder City memorial. Another shows up when you discover Mojave Outpost. A pair show up when you get near the bridge that is west of Legion Raider Camp and south of Ranger Station Charlie.

Spawning this pair must be done delicately. Immediately after they spawn they are walking into an ambush of four legion soldiers, and after that there are other hazards on their road to Novac. They will usually survive the ambush, but if you don't mind angering the legion you can give them help by attacking the soldiers. If you don't want to anger the legion, there are more subtle ways of helping.

One is to wait and watch for other Legion enemies to come nearby and attack the Legionaries before getting close to the bridge. The NCR and a nightstalker pack come through that area. (Working the nightstalkers is a wild and wooly art of its own!)

After the ambush attack is complete, loot the corpses, sell to the merchants, then fast walk out to somewhere else, a good choice is Novac. This will keep the merchants from encountering the other hazards. If you fast walk to Novac, they will show up there, too, and you can do a quick body count to make sure you've been successful. After they reach Novac they will move back and forth between Novac and the Crimson Caravan compound near Vegas. They don't go near the bridge again.

Quest Strings

These are quests that fit together. Doing them this way will save you a lot of unnecessary running back and forth.

Rescuing Raul and Tabitha on Black Mountain

Raul is a good repairman alternative to Major Knight at Mojave Outpost. He is also a potential companion with hot pistol skill. Tabitha is the villain leader of the super mutants on Black Mountain, but she can be reformed, and doing so completes a 1,000 point quest. Don't start this until you have 60 science skill (or 50 plus a Programmer's Digest), and be sure to bring the Q-35, you'll need its knockdown power.

Head to Neil's Shack again, but this time sneak up the center of the switchback roads to the fence just outside the compound at the mountain top. This is a tricky climb, much trickier than finding the north pass was. Take cover under the rocky outcrop just under the fence, save your game, hold your breath, then run up to the fence briefly to provoke the nightkin and back to cover so you only have to deal with one at a time. There are two nightkin on the ground and a sniper in the radio tower to deal with.

Once they are dead, head for the Storage Building. Inside you will find Rhonda, a damaged Mr. Handy robot. Fix Rhonda with Science skill, lead it outside, and Tabitha will meet you and be Oh So Grateful! Quest completed, 1,000 points gained, and the Black Mountain super mutants are no longer a threat.

Head into the Prison Building next to the Storage Building and free Raul for even more points. There's a lot of good loot up here, including Anabell, an expensive named missile launcher, on the sniper corpse.

Fallout New Vegas Starting Special

Helios One and the Boomers at Nellis

One of the quests at Nellis is fixing solar panels. You can either fix these with high repair skill, or you can salvage parts from the solar arrays at Helios One. So, go to Helios One first, solve that quest and pick up five scrap solar arrays while you are doing so, then head for Nellis to solve their problems. If you're going to do Brotherhood of Steel quests, start with them before you go to Nellis, one of the early quests takes you there.

'Mary Worthing' around Freeside

There are a bunch of quests in the Freeside area. Most involve running around talking to people and solving their personal problems. (the Mary Worthing, from the comic strip of that name) Learn the quests and you can learn the ways to solve them which cut down the running around dramatically. Example: Santiago is both a deadbeat and a suave talker. Pick up quests from both James and Francine Garrett before talking to Santiago and you can solve parts of two quests with one short conversation.

Getting Primm a new sheriff

Get Primm their new sheriff before you piss off the Powder Gangers. The best candidate is Meyers, who's in the NCR Correctional Facility. Talk to him, get him on his way, then mess with the Powder Gangers. Part of finishing the Meyer's sheriff quest is talking to Major Knight at the Mojave Outpost. This is a good excuse to add Mojave Outpost to your merchant network.

Vault 3 and Motor Runner

Diane of the Great Kahns at Red Rock Drug Lab wants a drug delivery made to Motor Runner. Col. Hsu at McCarren wants his head on a platter. There's an air filtration component in a locker in Motor Runner's room that the Brotherhood of Steel wants. Kill three birds with one stone. Run a couple of quick Diane quests to get to the Vault 3 delivery quest. Get a speech skill of 65 so you're invited, not shot at, when you go inside. Deliver drugs, collect the filtration component, then kill Motor Runner and the other Fiends inside at your leisure.

Tactics for various locations

Next are tactics for dealing with various locations on the map.

Approach Scorpion Gulch from the Helios One side

Scorpion Gulch sits between Hidden Valley and Helios One, and it's appropriately named. It is filled with Bark and Radscorpions -- good experience and loot if you can handle it. There are two ambush caves in the gulch. If you come from the Hidden Valley side and move through to the Helios side they will spawn behind you... a pain in the butt, literally. Come in from the Helios One side and they will spawn in front of you.

Sneaky Genocider

One interesting informal quest is how many of a tribe can you kill before they become aware of your skullduggery and shun or vilify you? This is taking your skill at sneak killing to a new level. Basically, you kill people without letting others see you do it.

At one time or another I've exterminated many tribes -- Khans, Brotherhood, Legion -- without getting a mar on my tribal status with them. In the case of the NCR I've completely wiped out McCarren, the embassy, and various ranger outposts, but I was never able to wipe out the command tent at Camp Forlorn Hope, and I didn't want to wipe out Mojave Outpost... there's a valuable merchant there!

Game-to-game this skill is useful for dealing with The Legion. I routinely kill stragglers wandering the hills south of Novac and wipe out whole bases.

Want Recon Armor?

Speaking of being genocidal sneaky... If you want recon armor you can buy it or...

Take the Brotherhood of Steel quest where you go out and talk to three scouts stationed in the wilderness. Hmm... all alone you say... out in the lonely wilderness? And, yes, dressed in recon armor (sneak +5). Approach them, get their reports, cap them and loot, and bring their reports back to Hidden Valley with the BOS none the wiser. Repair the three sets together and you have a set of your own in respectable condition. With the Forlorn Hope scout you have to be more careful of your positioning than with the others, there are NCR and Legion who can see him, and they will blab if they see you doing the dirty deed.

Gecko Buffet

You can hunt gecko many places, but one of the most satisfying is Cliffside Prospector Camp on the cliffs above the Colorado River. You start on an unclimbable bluff and below you are a half dozen fire geckos waiting to be harvested. Kill them, jump down to loot, then fast travel back to the campfire, and cook away.

Across the river from Cliffside is one of two primo deathclaw challenge spots, covered next.

Deathclaw Challenges

Deathclaws are an issue for the sneaky, it's real hard to be sneaky around them and real hard to survive their swatting when they close. But if you're feeling brave (and have enough beer in you to spit in Darwin's face) two places that will test your Deathclaw Mettle are an unnamed canyon across the river from Cliffside Prospector Camp and Dead Wind Cavern, near Ranger Station Charlie.

The unnamed canyon is thick with deathclaws. At the far end to the south is substantial loot in the form of good guns and Remnant power armor on two corpses. (Although some times these corpses do not spawn. If they don't show up the first time, go away and come back later and they will be there.) This place will test your outdoor deathclaw dealing skills.

My tactic for the ones near the canyon entrance is to annoy them, have them give chase, then run back into the river. They will get discouraged when I hit the water. I come out and shoot them up as they head home. Those too far away for the lake tactic I deal with in classic fashion: I stand on a cliff far away and shoot into a mob that can't find me. It takes a long time and a lot of ammo, but they will go down.

Dead Wind Cavern can't be treated this way. Most of the deathclaws are in the cave. You do have to sneak! Bring high sneak skill, recon armor, and stealth boys, lots of stealth boys! And bring the YCS/189 or the Q3 with max charge ammo, you need lots of punch.

There are a couple of nooks to hide in inside the caves. Use those to bring down the majority of 'claws, then pick off the rest one-by-one. The hardest to deal with is Deathclaw Momma. Rrraar! And Ouch! About the only way you'll take her out is with a surprise critical hit as the first shot.

New Vegas Attributes

Notable loot inside is Mercy, another named weapon.

Fallout New Vegas Starting Skills Reddit

Conclusion

These are some tips and tactics that have made my advanced play more enjoyable. Have fun with them.

--The End--

Fallout New Vegas Tag Skills

index ... basic tips ... even more advanced tips