Any tips for Fallout New Vegas?

[zinfamous]

wait a tic..how does one switch ammo types? I realized that I haven't been doing this and have no idea how to....

One of the annoyances is that there don't seem to be any hotkeys to assign weapons, toss dynamite or whatever. Switching to your pipboy menu and shuffling through all the other menus to equip a new weapon during battle, eat a buff or whatever, is very annoying.
Though it looks like one of the mods posted earlier addresses that--Project Nevada? Only it looks like such a huge overhaul I don't want to install it in the middle of a game. :\

 

[shortylickens]

wait a tic..how does one switch ammo types? I realized that I haven't been doing this and have no idea how to....

One of the annoyances is that there don't seem to be any hotkeys to assign weapons, toss dynamite or whatever. Switching to your pipboy menu and shuffling through all the other menus to equip a new weapon during battle, eat a buff or whatever, is very annoying.
Though it looks like one of the mods posted earlier addresses that--Project Nevada? Only it looks like such a huge overhaul I don't want to install it in the middle of a game. :\

Hit the 2 key.
Its a holdover from the shitty console controls. On the 8 way digital gamepad you push up, up left, down right and such to switch weapons. But what was up is now 2 and its to switch ammo.

OR, go to your submenu, click on Ammo, and click on the exact type.

And make sure you have a good mix of armor piercing and hollow point cuz it will matter against some enemies.

 

[Mopetar]

Speech is probably one of the most useful skills to get early on as you can talk you way through most situations and get better rewards. Barter can also be useful, but isn't as necessary. If you didn't dump a lot of points into Charisma, you can use a campfire to make party time mentats which boost Charisma by 5 points, effectively increasing both speech and barter by 10 points. Magazines can effectively boost this by another 20 points, and certain clothing can further boost these stats, allowing you to temporarily inflate both scores by a staggering amount. This is very useful before selling off a lot of high-valued loot.

After that, moderate levels for science or lockpicking can help you get some decent loot, but aren't completely necessary. There are several situations where having a high enough skill in either will allow you to get at some loot, so it really isn't necessary to go after both. It's easier to temporarily boost science than it is lockpick, so that may influence how you choose to invest your points, but it doesn't matter too much in the grand scheme of things.

Once you get those up a moderate amount, I'd pick any of guns/energy weapons/explosives as your main combat path. There are some finer points to each, but in general, any of them can get you through the game. Guns is probably the easiest route as there are plenty of different guns and ammo is easy to come buy. Explosives takes longer to develop and the ammo is more expensive, but it's incredibly devastating in terms of damage. Energy weapons work best with a crit build, but that takes some forethought in terms of character development and isn't all that great until later in the game.

There's enough stuff to do in this game that you likely won't see all of it on your first playthrough so don't worry about trying to do everything. There are also several different ways to play the game as well so you can do things a lot differently the second time through.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

wait a tic..how does one switch ammo types? I realized that I haven't been doing this and have no idea how to....

One of the annoyances is that there don't seem to be any hotkeys to assign weapons, toss dynamite or whatever. Switching to your pipboy menu and shuffling through all the other menus to equip a new weapon during battle, eat a buff or whatever, is very annoying.
Though it looks like one of the mods posted earlier addresses that--Project Nevada? Only it looks like such a huge overhaul I don't want to install it in the middle of a game. :\

No mods required. In the inventory menu, hole 1, or 3-8, and click on an equippable or usable item to hotkey it.

 

[zinfamous]

No mods required. In the inventory menu, hole 1, or 3-8, and click on an equippable or usable item to hotkey it.

oh snap. that makes me happy.


...it looks like I screwed the ed-E quest. I talked to the scrapyard lady and went through a series of conversation before I repaired ed-E. Brought him back, and I could no longer bring up that old conversation stream while ed-E is in my party. Most characters will have those earlier topics grayed out and you can just re-click them. oh well.

Spoiler

I progressed further with Come Fly With Me, getting the materials and info from her with the new conversation, but that never allowed me to access the earlier conversation. I suppose I won't be able to complete that quest?

 

[shortylickens]

oh snap. that makes me happy.


...it looks like I screwed the ed-E quest. I talked to the scrapyard lady and went through a series of conversation before I repaired ed-E. Brought him back, and I could no longer bring up that old conversation stream while ed-E is in my party. Most characters will have those earlier topics grayed out and you can just re-click them. oh well.

Spoiler

I progressed further with Come Fly With Me, getting the materials and info from her with the new conversation, but that never allowed me to access the earlier conversation. I suppose I won't be able to complete that quest?

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/ED-E_My_Love

There are tons of people you can talk with to complete the quest.

Keep in mind you need to wait several days in game before their conversations do anything even if you have Ed-E in the group.

 

[Mopetar]

Unless you're playing hardcore, companion quests aren't all that important since they can't permanently die.

Don't worry so much about messing up on the first play through. There are so many different paths for many parts of the game that it would take a few different play throughs to see them all. Just enjoy the ride and have fun with.

 

[zinfamous]

Unless you're playing hardcore, companion quests aren't all that important since they can't permanently die.

Don't worry so much about messing up on the first play through. There are so many different paths for many parts of the game that it would take a few different play throughs to see them all. Just enjoy the ride and have fun with.

yeah, I'm not too worried about missing things. I'm very familiar with FO1 and most of FO2 (got burned out--never finished, heh), so I'm expecting to miss almost half of it on the first run through.

I don't know if I have it in me to play this type of game all the way through, again, though. This is the type of game that sucks me into a particular play style, and I would end up just creating the same character again, or a weaker one as I try to do something else but inevitably find myself going into the same old habits, creating a hybrid, and of course ineffective character. :\

 

[Mopetar]

Even if you stick with the same character type, there's enough stuff to explore for another play through. I've played through the game twice and have been doing a third in my spare time using FAQs and wikis to max out my character as best I can in everything. Because the level cap is so high you can max out (or get close enough) in the majority of skills so don't worry too much about starting out with a hybrid as you can eventually get enough for just about everything.

 

[zinfamous]

all of the DLC is end-game content, right? Would I be missing out on extra perks or msisions in the regular game by ignoring those until finishing one playthrough?

I suppose it would make sense to just save it for the end, anyway, or if there is extra content for initial playthrough, would add that much more value for a 2nd.