oh man I'm having a crazy time with this mod, combined with other difficulty mods like brutal difficulty (on Very Hard receive 3x damage, deal 1x damage), Famine, good old Hardcode Mode, and a house rule not to do DLCs since they provide critical services like trading, repair, and healing. Some key points
Victor is the bane of my existence and is extraordinarily lethal, appears without warning, and is extremely resistant to early game weapons. Finally managed to kill him or at least his early-game version with some Pulse Grenades (you can get some in Sloan)
Without doctors and with YUP removing Fixer's bug where it permanently cures addiction, addictions are permanent, so decide in advance what chems or alcohol are worth taking and getting addicted to and which aren't - or just take Logan's Loophole
Faction armor doesn't disguise you in this mod, which is probably for the best otherwise it would devolve into a minigame of trying to do quests while wearing faction armor
Looting everybody's pockets and homes means food is in plentiful supply, so Survival is a decent skill to provide healing and staying topped up on HP isn't too hard
However limb damage is atrocious, I didn't take Small Frame but I'm walking around with full HP but 5 crippled limbs right now. Doctor's Bags are in incredibly short supply. Maybe Eye for an Eye will be a perk worth taking in this game mode, or Adamantium Skeleton
I predict Guns will be way better than EW because the only trader, Gun Runner Vendortron, sells Guns ammo only
Weapon mods are unobtainable without modding the game. But I have AWOP locations which can provide some as well as the setting where NPCs can occasionally drop them as well, which is a nice in between
Power armor will never be wearable, so the best armor will be Combat Armor Mk II - keeping it topped up will probably only ever be possible with Jury Rigging
Jury Rigging will become a very useful but not game breaking perk, for once
Glad to hear you're enjoying the challenge and that people still play this mod. A few tips that might help:
Autodocs should still be able to cure addictions and heal crippled limbs once you gain access to one.
Besides Vendortron, there's the Commissary system in LR. Now I'm realizing I don't remember if I tested the Sink in OWB or the Hologram merchants in DM.
For weapon mods, JIP's bNPCWeaponMods setting causes actors to sometimes spawn with mods on their weapons if it's enabled in its configuration .ini file.
Thanks for the response. I'm up to the Boomers now, however I haven't found in a key inside the tunnel. Did I miss it? Also, approaching the gate, the Boomer Guard still runs up and goes "Hold it!" and takes me to Pearl without a choice, after which I teleport into the barracks and they are only hostile from there on. I can't even kill the guard before he does this because he seems to be invulnerable. I had a look in FNVEdit to try and cheat and find out where the key is but I couldn't find it within the files.
That's kind of funny that you get teleported inside the Boomer barracks where they all attack. The Boomer guards at the front gates were all hostile in my testing so there must be a scripted interaction I missed somewhere.
I had to double check but it looks like the Key is added to this dead Ghoul in the Train Tunnel within the mod's startup script:
[ACHR:00171610] (Places WastelanderGhoulM2DEADNellisTunnel "Wastelander" [NPC_:0017160F] in NellisTunnel "Train Tunnel" [CELL:001024D9]) If for some reason it doesn't spawn, you have my permission to add the key with the console: Player.AddItem NVNNellisGateKey
Great, thank you! Possibly a mod conflict with how it was working on my end, I wouldn't worry about it on yours. I wasn't checking the ghouls for the key, my bad - thanks for that tip.
Without doing the DLCs, there are no Auto-Docs that can heal the player, so it was definitely tough.
The Living Desert is a great mod and works very well with this one, adding a lot more patrols and caravans that all become dangerous encounters. Finished the game now after visiting and fighting most Mojave locations. Some final observations
The best armor ended up being Legion Centurion Armor because it has great DT and can be repaired with any Legion armor and is easily obtainable from Aurelius of Phoenix
The best helmets like Combat Helmet were hard to keep repaired, sometimes wearing the NCR 1st Recon Beret was a good choice instead
Cannibal was probably the most valuable perk in the game, the post-fight healing was crazy good
Crippled limbs were a huge problem. I had to collect ingredients for Doctor's Bags, Weapon Binding Ritual, and Healing Poultice, and eventually took Adamantium Skeleton which helped a lot
I thought Sneak would make things easy, but it was only moderately helpful - a lot of fights were loading into an interior and immediately being jumped by like 10 guys
Hordes of enemies ended up being quite common so Explosives was a valuable skill to spec into - nothing like taking out 12 White Gloves with a single grenade
Thanks for a unique playthrough experience! A lot more fun than "kill everyone at your leisure" playthroughs because the automatic hostility makes things a lot harder when combined with other difficulty tweaks.
Yes, I was definitely thinking of doing the DLCs, which should also be able to be completed without issues in this mod, in order to gain access to a reliable Autodoc.
Thank you for playing the mod and reporting your observations so thoroughly. Some of it matches up with my own findings during testing while some strategies hadn't occurred to me. But it could help me potentially refine the experience even better.
Fallout: New Vegas usually has some base case way to do a quest so this is why I am posting this here too because I've seen other people make posts where they end up killing these characters before they get near into the forced dialogue that is required. You cannot finish That Lucky Old Sun if you kill Mr. Fantastic before he can do the forced dialogue as there isn't some sort of quest item to loot of his dead body that gives you the Western Terminal password. You also can't start it either if you kill Lt. Haggerty before she can do the forced dialogue when you approach the main door of HELIOS One. As a side note, I was able to at least start the quest anyways by talking to Lt. Haggerty (had to reset because I realized I couldn't activate the switch at the end of the quest) because there also exists a bug (I will end up submitting a separate posting for that) where if you stay inside the chainsaw attacking animation (by holding down left click or the attack button) you can bypass forced dialogue. It sounds counterintuitive but somehow that was able to let the forced dialogue "catch up"? before they became hostile as they usually did (because I am playing with the Nightmare Mode mod on). This is funnily notable when you come back to the Vikki and Vance Casino and walk past to get behind them and sneak attack critical them all by retreating to the back of the casino (they will begin to walk towards you after you come out of the chainsaw attack animation and you can shoot them during that). By chainsaw I also mean other automatic firing melee weapons.
Yes, all actors loaded in the game should be affected as long as they meet the requirements like their AI having enough Confidence and Aggression to attack and being able to detect the player.
Can this be extended for all mods we have? It seems that npcs that are added by mods, while seemingly hostile on the radar, are not actually attacking the player.
I want to use this mod mid game without my followers going hostile. They are the only ones I need. Can I do it? Is there a console command or something to make them non hostile after this mod makes them hostile to me?
An interesting concept~ A major part of our resupply come from buying, so this will severely limit our arsenal. LR's commissary, DM's vending machine, OWB's The Sink merchant interface, will be our major resupply.
A suggestion for your alternate start: Either Zion or Sierra Madre
Start in Zion right outside of the passage. If chose to start with the HH slide, you will be in that caravan but they soon die anyway. This will provide some light clue about how to proceed.
Start in Sierra Madre after the starting DM prologue. The slides will provide some clues. And when we return to Mojave we are soooooooo public's enemy number one.
OWB and LR is not suitable because they are too highlevel~ A start without equipment and skill will get player killed in short order~
43 comments
I had to double check but it looks like the Key is added to this dead Ghoul in the Train Tunnel within the mod's startup script:
[ACHR:00171610] (Places WastelanderGhoulM2DEADNellisTunnel "Wastelander" [NPC_:0017160F] in NellisTunnel "Train Tunnel" [CELL:001024D9])If for some reason it doesn't spawn, you have my permission to add the key with the console: Player.AddItem NVNNellisGateKey
Without doing the DLCs, there are no Auto-Docs that can heal the player, so it was definitely tough.
The Living Desert is a great mod and works very well with this one, adding a lot more patrols and caravans that all become dangerous encounters. Finished the game now after visiting and fighting most Mojave locations. Some final observations
Thanks for a unique playthrough experience! A lot more fun than "kill everyone at your leisure" playthroughs because the automatic hostility makes things a lot harder when combined with other difficulty tweaks.
Thank you for playing the mod and reporting your observations so thoroughly. Some of it matches up with my own findings during testing while some strategies hadn't occurred to me. But it could help me potentially refine the experience even better.
Fallout: New Vegas usually has some base case way to do a quest so this is why I am posting this here too because I've seen other people make posts where they end up killing these characters before they get near into the forced dialogue that is required. You cannot finish That Lucky Old Sun if you kill Mr. Fantastic before he can do the forced dialogue as there isn't some sort of quest item to loot of his dead body that gives you the Western Terminal password. You also can't start it either if you kill Lt. Haggerty before she can do the forced dialogue when you approach the main door of HELIOS One.
As a side note, I was able to at least start the quest anyways by talking to Lt. Haggerty (had to reset because I realized I couldn't activate the switch at the end of the quest) because there also exists a bug (I will end up submitting a separate posting for that) where if you stay inside the chainsaw attacking animation (by holding down left click or the attack button) you can bypass forced dialogue. It sounds counterintuitive but somehow that was able to let the forced dialogue "catch up"? before they became hostile as they usually did (because I am playing with the Nightmare Mode mod on). This is funnily notable when you come back to the Vikki and Vance Casino and walk past to get behind them and sneak attack critical them all by retreating to the back of the casino (they will begin to walk towards you after you come out of the chainsaw attack animation and you can shoot them during that). By chainsaw I also mean other automatic firing melee weapons.
A suggestion for your alternate start: Either Zion or Sierra Madre
Start in Zion right outside of the passage. If chose to start with the HH slide, you will be in that caravan but they soon die anyway. This will provide some light clue about how to proceed.
Start in Sierra Madre after the starting DM prologue. The slides will provide some clues. And when we return to Mojave we are soooooooo public's enemy number one.
OWB and LR is not suitable because they are too highlevel~ A start without equipment and skill will get player killed in short order~