Let's Sperg Fallout: New Vegas DSP Edition - DSP Tries It: Surviving the Wasteland

[draggs]

Shoulda got the New Vegas Bounties, Phil getting into shenanigans all over the wasteland thinking he's the best bounty hunter ever

 

[Judge Dredd]

Shoulda got the New Vegas Bounties, Phil getting into shenanigans all over the wasteland thinking he's the best bounty hunter ever

It's part of the Someguy series. It's on the list in the OP. If you want to see it, I can do it. Do you want just the New Vegas Bounties 1-3, or the whole Someguy series?

 

[draggs]

It's part of the Someguy series. It's on the list in the OP. If you want to see it, I can do it. Do you want just the New Vegas Bounties 1-3, or the whole Someguy series?

Bounties is good for me, they were my favorite ones of someguys stuff

 

[Judge Dredd]

STAT UP
The Christmas mod awarded me a number of skill books, all of which I read. Maybe a dozen in total. Normally I’d consider this cheating, but when you remember I’m getting 7 skill points per level, instead of 23, I’ll take whatever help I can get. It’s not the skills that are making DSP overpowered at this point in the game anyway. It’s damage resistance.

I stopped by the New Vegas clinic to buy some implants. The subdermal armour to add more DR, and the various stat boosts. When DSP left, he’s ambushed by detractors. Battle hardened high tier mercenaries that look the part.



He dispatched them quickly.


KILL BENNY
As I said. Even completely naked, DSP has enough damage resistance to match raider armour, and with combat armour? Well, it’s possible for him to walk through into The Tops, gun down Benny, and walk out and barely fall below half health. This didn’t seem very DSP though.

After some thinking, I settled on a plan. Walk inside with some holdout weapons, including tin grenades he scavenged from long ago, use a stealth boy and shove a live grenade in the bodyguards pockets. Benny, injured by these blasts, still threatens DSP with his four bodyguards. It’s far less than that Benny, or more, depending on how you count.



DSP gunned Benny down, and took the platinum chip. After some talking and an unskippable cutscene, the real game starts. Hostile factions now shoot on sight.


DLC: HONEST HEARTS
First, time to do some DLC. I should have done this sooner. Let’s do Honest Hearts the way DSP did, but without any do overs.

For those who haven’t played New Vegas or Honest Hearts, there’s a whole backstory about warring tribes, religion, the burned man… We won’t be doing any of that.

DSP got a radio transmission asking for people to go on a caravan run to Zion valley. On arriving, the caravan was ambushed by tribals. Everyone was killed except DSP. As he made his escape he was attacked again, but was saved by a good tribal named Follows-Chalk, which DSP gunned down, failing the main quest.

Suddenly, DSP telepathically knows the location of the map showing the way out of Zion. The whole DLC can be completed in about 20 minutes using this route.

We get an ending. The White Legs trash the valley, the caravan company goes bankrupt, and the Sorrows tribe is wiped out. All in a days work for Phil.

A couple of bonus images that didn't fit in the rest of the post.


I'm level 30 and I've maxed out guns and science. I thought DSP was bad with computers. I remember reading he bought an expensive server thinking it was a gaming PC because it cost so much. I'm no expert on DSP lore though.

Skills I'm thinking of getting:

• Explosives because it'll be funny (and very DSP) to see how often he hurts himself. Especially if I take the improved splash damage perk which is more of a hindrance than anything else.
• Melee weapons because of self defence hatchet.
• Unarmed because Street Fighter pro player.

I'm open to other suggestions.

If you want me to play the DLC, now is the time to say so. Dead Money and Lonesome Road are linear. Old World Blues crashes a lot and I don't know what choices Phil would make.

Since we're going independent, how would Phil treat specific factions?

 

[UncleTusky]

Since we're going independent, how would Phil treat specific factions?

Omertas: That sounds like an Honest and Authentic Italian Name, gotta support them.
White Glove Society and The Chairmen: Opponents to an Authentic Italian business, can't have that.
Great Khans: Kat likes world music apparently, suck up to them.
Kings: The Elvis gag is funny, don't kill them but also don't help them resolve their problems with gangs or NCR.
All the minor gangs: Phil is a coward, avoid unless you can pick off individual members. Do NOT liberate the prison where they have the NCR sheriff.
Boomers: If you're really in character as Phil you'll never make it through the artillery fire when you first travel out there. If we ignore that for plot's sake, support them.
Brotherhood of Steel: They're book smart not street smart, but they have a ton of firepower. Support them but pick smartass answers in conversation and rob them blind when nobody is looking.
Enclave Remnants: Hyper-powerful remnants of a dictatorship? Gotta support them!
Freeside: Ignore, they're poor people who can't help you.
Novac and Goodsprings: Ignore, not even worth stealing from them.
Primm: Install Primm Slim as the new sheriff, the other solutions here sound like actual work.

I forget if you automatically become Vilified by NCR and Caesar's Legion by picking Yes Man or Mr. House, but don't antagonize them more than necessary to progress the plot. Caesar's Legion are authentic Italians and California has Disneyland (his dream honeymoon destination.... yes, really) after all.

If you want me to play the DLC, now is the time to say so. Dead Money and Lonesome Road are linear. Old World Blues crashes a lot and I don't know what choices Phil would make.

I don't think the DLC is worth it. You could have Phil try to escape with all the gold in the Sierra Madre's Vault or side with Elijah but it's not worth playing the whole DLC for a fifteen-second joke.

 

[Boris Blank's glass eye]

If you want me to play the DLC, now is the time to say so. Dead Money and Lonesome Road are linear.

Dead Money would be a good fit for his personality: falls for a get rich quick scheme, is forced to go through a bunch of loops, then survives everything - only to get trapped in the vault.
But gets out and carries on with the rest of the game, so THE PIGROACH STILL SURVIVES EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE.

 

[RussianParasite]

Speaking of pigroach, I think his rad resistance should be as maxed out as possible.

Also, even Phil knows that suporting any other faction instead of taking New Vegas for yourself makes you a cuck. Independent/yesman arc all the way (everyone hates you already anyhow).

ETA: I love this idea and the thought of DSP bumbling around the Fallout universe makes me

 

[Judge Dredd]

Speaking of pigroach, I think his rad resistance should be as maxed out as possible.

It is. If it has any kind of survivability bonus, he has it. So much so that I didn't get a level 8 perk I wanted until level 21 or so, simply because there was some other survivability perk to take. He even loses rads over time.

The extra perks mod has a perk that randomly spawns friendly roaches once a day. I'm torn on if I should take that or not.

Caesar's Legion are authentic Italians

This sounds like some DSP lore I don't know about.

I love this idea and the thought of DSP bumbling around the Fallout universe makes me

Thanks.

don't antagonize them more than necessary to progress the plot

One fun/unusual thing about this playthrough is how apathetic some of the decisions are. Phil has no ideology beyond himself, but he's not malicious or evil either. I didn't mention this in the post (maybe I should have) but the NCR hostage negotiation at Boulder City is a great example. Walk in, get the information you need, make a minimum effort at negotiation, and when it fails shrug your shoulders and walk off. It's not Phil's problem, so why bother doing anything? If I didn't ape the decision from the TIHYDP, I'd have probably had him walk away from Ghost Town Gunfight as well.

 

[millais]

This sounds like some DSP lore I don't know about.

His maternal grandfather was from Foggia, Italy, so he thinks that makes him a 100% full blooded Italian-American (actually most of his ancestry is Polish and he only has 1/4 from Italy). Because of his lack of an interesting personality or life story, he latches firmly onto this imagined Italian-American identity so he has something to talk about in relation to food and culture and lord over the average Amerimutt.

 

[UncleTusky]

Caesar's Legion are authentic Italians

This sounds like some DSP lore I don't know about.

Phil is extremely proud of being of Italian descent despite having an English surname and never even taking a semester of Italian in university. From what we can tell from his ramblings + a google search his mother's maiden name was Salvagno. So based on the fact that his mother is more than 0 percent Italian, he's gradually retconned the story from "about one-fourth Italian but the rest is mostly Polish" (this is probably the truth or reasonably close) to "100% Italian and Burnell was anglicized from Burnelli". One of his fans even edited a Wikipedia page to claim he's descended from a specific region in Italy.

Of course because Phil is a lolcow with a planet sized ego this Authentic Italian heritage shows up in his online presence in autistic and hilarious ways. Like any number of people he equates "northeast Italian American" with "real Italian" and seems to believe that pizza + pasta are the entirety of Italian food. I worked with some Italians in school and this is silly, in their description there is a real culinary split between Northern and Southern Italy and Northern Italian food is not generally served in America. We also got some mildly idiotic bits in his LPs like when he decided to talk like Tony Soprano in his "Godfather" LP and almost couldn't locate Italy on a map in his "Bully" LP.

The real hilarity comes from his his authentic Italian sauce (or as I've affectionally dubbed it, 'tism sauce) which is probably the thing he's proudest of in this world. Have you ever seen a five-year-old try to "help" in the kitchen or make something by himself, only to botch it because he doesn't know what he's doing? It's basically that only coming from a nearly forty-year-old man. There's a discussion in his subforum but suffice it to say he does practically everything wrong and it's so bad even his live-in maids can't pretend to like it.

EDIT: I swear I will NOT be ninja'd on a DSP thread one of these days!

EDIT X2: If we're going to work the 'tism sauce and Phil's other culinary habits into the LP you could try this:

1) Never put a point into Survival. Survival mostly works on campfires and cooking is Phil's kryptonite.
2) If you have multiple healing items and one gives you a debuff, always pick the one that gives a debuff. If you can't use a healing item which gives a debuff, pick the packaged stuff like Blamco Mac & Cheese over apples or purified water. When Phil's not making 'tism sauce he mostly lives off of processed food, takeout, and boil-in-bag/frozen stuff.
3) Do not hoard healing items and eat more than necessary. Phil only buys exactly enough groceries to last one week (when he lived in CT he refused to move up his scheduled shopping day when a blizzard was projected to hit the state and had nothing in his pantry when it hit and he got snowed in) and eats multiple CostCo muffins (which come in at a whopping 500 kcal each) as a "midnight snack".
4) Alcohol should be used liberally and stimpacks should be a last resort. NEVER go to the New Vegas Implant Clinic or whatever it's called. Phil has a drinking problem and has not had a regular GP's or dentist's visit in probably 10 years at this point.

 

[Rebel Wilson]

You might as well cheat and turn on god mode, because Phil has never done anything wrong and does everything correct. In any tactical engagement he always makes the best possible decision and any damage taken is obviously a glitch and should be invalidated.

This is the correct way of playing. There is that perk in fallout 2 that can make enemies spontaneously explode and have their guns malfunction seemingly at random. This accurately reflects the reality of the chosen one, Phil.

 

[Boris Blank's glass eye]

This is the correct way of playing. There is that perk in fallout 2 that can make enemies spontaneously explode and have their guns malfunction seemingly at random. This accurately reflects the reality of the chosen one, Phil.

That was two traits, Bloody Mess and Jinxed, the latter of which increases the rate of critical failures for everyone, including the PC.

 

[Lurkio]

This is the correct way of playing. There is that perk in fallout 2 that can make enemies spontaneously explode and have their guns malfunction seemingly at random. This accurately reflects the reality of the chosen one, Phil.

Eh, god mod might be a bit too much. Phil has had some close calls and taken a few hits in the past, but always manages to scrape by. That's what makes DPS, well, DPS. Every time it seems like it's all over for him, when he's down, beaten, and bloodied, he manages to get up and pull some shenanigans and come out, maybe not on top, but well enough to keep moving forward.

DPS ain't invincible, but you can't keep him down!

 

[Judge Dredd]

DLC: DEAD MONEY

Upon hearing a message inviting him to the Sierra Madre, Phil arrived only to be gassed, fitted with an explosive collar, and forced to go along with a plan to rob an old world casino.

I like the idea of Dead Money. The heist, treasure, the setting, the enemies, even the vending machines are all fantastic. The overall execution is lacking. The whole beeping collar and poisonous fog mechanics are more annoying than fun by the end. It’s a linear adventure that can range from difficult to trivial, depending on your build.

This run was on the difficult side due to the DSP build being guns, and me missing one of the tapes that allows you to buy ammo at the vending machines. I did go back and get it at the end of the DLC though.

Phil also picked the DLC to get addicted to alcohol, which didn’t help.

Because DSP is a low intelligence character, there were lots of fun dialogue options. Like when you meet Dean Domino, you can respond to him by saying “Uuh”, which seemed like a very Phil thing to do. There’s also the option to call Christine a bitch, which I did.

I also had fun taking the lazy way out of most situations. Instead of getting food for Dog, just lock him in the cage. The best had to be Christine though. She’s afraid to go down into the room she needs to be in due to a traumatic event. There are basically two ways for Phil to do it. Hack the terminal so she can do it remotely, or trick her into the elevator and lock it behind her. The former required effort, so lie it is.

At the end all of the team mates turned hostile, something I don’t think I’ve done before. I didn’t do anything fancy like trying to escape with all the gold (plus I’d amassed an obscene amount of wealth anyway), but I did try and trick Elijah into locking himself in the vault. DSP didn’t have the stealth for it, but he did have the skill to hack the turrets which made the boss easier.

I want to mention VATS bugging out at one point, resulting in Phil shooting over somebody's head at point blank range like that scene in The Naked Gun.




WILD CARDS: SIDE BETS
Wild Cards didn’t go as I expected.

First, the Brotherhood of Steel. Phil stumbled across their bunker. A bunch of Brotherhood Paladins pointed lasers at him and demanded Phil strip to his underwear. Phil refused. The paladins never stood a chance.

Phil didn’t finish the job, but they won’t be getting a good Yes Man review. I had to return later to blow them up to finish Side Bets.

Great Kahns were also straightforward. Phil is vilified due to the “banned for life” trait, so they won’t even talk to him. They just tell him to fuck off. Well, that’s another off the list. Kill them all it is.

The White Glove Society. These guys were up to something, acting as if Phil wasn’t good enough. I used a stealth boy to sneak into the kitchen. I used a KO dart on a guard, only for Phil's robot companions to shoot him to death. That was on them. When another guard asked what he was doing, Phil failed the speech check and had to kill him. That was on Phil.

In the basement he found men cooking beef with flamethrowers, and human skulls in the freezer. Nothing unusual there.

The Gomorrah. Seemed like a harmless casino. Got a pass from Phil.

Phil got to the Boomers by popping some MedX and strolling through the bombardment. Everyone was amazed he survived. So a typical day for Phil. He killed some exploding ants, repaired some solar panels, and delivered some scrap metal. He didn’t listen to the history lecture, that’s boring.

He raised the bomber from the bottom of the lake, and in return the boomers promised to support Phil at the battle of Hoover Dam. What? A battle? Phil isn’t interested in any battle.

I did try to do the low intelligence medical favour, but couldn’t get it to trigger. A low intelligence character can agree to help the medic treat injured boomers. Use a kitchen knife on one of the patients, and you somehow save his life by randomly chopping at the injury.


NEW VEGAS BOUNTIES
Phil got a call, telling him that there’s an opening to be a bounty hunter. Phil accepted. Arriving at Randall's tiny shack to take contracts.

His first job was to kill an NCR ranger with syphilis. That is, kill a man who also happened to have syphilis. Phil wasn’t going to give him syphilis and wait for him to die. That would be weird.

So far the mod went as I’d expected. Take a job, kill a guy, get paid. The mod is well made, but I do wonder if it was made by a teenager because there’s so much edge I expect Shadow The Hedgehog to appear.

I found some new, better vests. Unfortunately they don’t have any real protection, so I couldn’t use them. They’d break almost instantly, and even with Phil’s high DT, it’s not enough for the games tougher enemies.



Phil has way over 300k caps, plus some gold and lots of pre-war money from Dead Money. My new plan was to make as many coin shot shotgun shells as I can. I’m using a mod that allows you to use pre-war money as a throwing weapon. It’s great fun watching people ragdoll across the map and exploding into a shower of gibs and caps when they hit a solid object. Not effective as a weapon, but fun for killing low level enemies.


Detractors. Never giving Phil a break.

Eventually, Phil returned to complete a contract, only to find Randall missing, and a note pinned to the wall. It said Randall had been killed, and Phil was next.

Suddenly, an ambush as a contract killer burst through the door to kill Phil, but before he could draw his gun another man burst in. Detractors. aka. The contract killers from the High Value Target trait. Add in Phil’s two robot companions, you have about 9 people crammed into a little 10ft by 10ft shack. The combat that followed could be described as a clusterfuck.

The picture doesn't do it justice.

Much shooting later, and Phil is the last man standing, standing knee deep in corpses, but standing nonetheless.

Taking Randall’s gun, Phil sets out into the wasteland for revenge. The man responsible was stupid enough to sign his name. The Judge. Phil tracked down his men, interrogating them for information until he arrived at The Judge’s base. A small bunker in the mountains.

Phil strode into his office, not intimidated by his armed guards. The Judge wanted to negotiate, believing he had the upper hand. Phil raised the big iron on his hip and signed a 50,000 cap contract to work with The Judge. Business is business.

The mod ends here. It says to be continued, but I’m already getting mod conflicts, and with over 50 hours of play time, I decide to end this Let’s Play sooner rather than later.


WILD CARDS
Unplugging Mr House was straight forward. I do think it’s weird that once disconnected, you can’t put him back in the pod.

The assassination of president Kimble goes off without a hitch, and happens off screen. The NCR doesn’t like Phil, and saying so to Yes Man is enough to fail Return to Sender progress to the end of Wild Cards. For once, Phil would be justified in saying "There was nothing I could do!".

Last part of Wild Cards. Help the Followers of the Apocalypse set up some drug shipments, Phil got some of their people off drugs by killing their dealer and giving the addicts a bunch of drugs, and he donates the maximum amount of supplies allowed.

But the Followers still won’t support Phil. Bugged support mechanics. No one screws over Phil and gets away with it, so she had to die. This took me a few tries because even with a stealth boy and the silenced weapon, the Followers would turn hostile. After a few tries, I eventually used the poison dart gun (a mod weapon) to do it without the Followers turning hostile.

All that’s left is the final battle for Hoover Dam. I don’t have much to say. Phil’s wealth combined with many hours of play meant I had a large amount of powerful ammo. Mini nukes, 50 cal machine gun, 20mm autocannon. The biggest threat was Phil getting caught in his own blast.



With the Legion dead, Phil hands the NCR his terms of surrender. They open fire. Nothing a mini-nuke and an army of robots can’t fix.


THE END
Here’s the video of the full ending, in potato quality to save null’s disc space.

CLOSING THOUGHTS
I did take Lady Killer, but got no use out of it. Either it bugged, or I never got to a quest where I could use it. I also took Mysterious Stranger, and was going to make a joke about it being his paypigs. He only appeared twice throughout the playthrough, and never anywhere to make much difference.

I completed the game with lots of caps, and lots of rare weapons I never used. Phil retired with money to burn.


POST SCRIPT
If you’re still reading this, thank you. I hope you had fun. This run was the opposite of the moviebob run. In that run the gameplay was slow and miserable, but gave me material to work with. The DSP run was fun but didn’t have much to write about. Most of the quests either didn’t happen due to being vilified, or had the shortest, laziest path to completion. A lot of the funny stuff, like Phil throwing money at his problems, stepping on landmines, or facetanking a ludicrous amount of damage would’ve worked better as a video. As a result, I'm disappointed with how this Let's Play turned out, but I didn't want to leave it unfinished.

I have others things I want to work on now, but I’ll leave this as a preview of what I want to make in the future if I have the time and motivation.

 

[Monkey_Fellow]

It’s Christmas. I have some free time, and Cyberpunk 2077 is broken, so let’s play Fallout New Vegas again. This time as DarkSydePhil.

My DSP lore is weak. Pretty much all my knowledge on DSP comes from the Down The Rabbit Hole episode, and the bankruptcy saga. So if I get anything wrong or miss the obvious, please say so.

For anyone somehow unfamiliar with Fallout: New Vegas. It’s a first person shooter RPG. Widely considered a classic thanks to lots of moral choices and viable character builds. Whereas games like Mass Effect have choices limited to obvious good/evil choices with obvious villains. New Vegas is more nebulous and less clear cut. The plot has you as a courier, shot in the head and left in a shallow grave, your quest for revenge ultimately decides the fate of a three way battle that will decide the fate of the region.

Spoiler: My opinion on DSP

I like Phil. I don’t hate him. The This Is How You Don’t Plays of Resident Evil: Remake and Forza 3 are funny to me, and they wouldn’t exist without Phil.

Compared to my favourite lolcows like MovieBob, ResetEra, and Jim Sterling, DSP is a chad. From telling one of his fans to stop false DMCAing in his name, to getting a real girlfriend. What’s more, as bad as DSP is at games, he has the determination to stick at them until he wins, which is more than can be said for games journalists.

This run will be modded with quest mods, and will act as a review of said mods.

I don’t know who to have Phil side with during the main quest. I’m thinking Independent, but I'll put a poll.

Spoiler: Rules and load order

I will be playing on Medium difficulty. The story mods can be difficult, and this isn’t some kind of challenge run. This is just for fun, with the difficulty coming from the unusual build. It’s not like you want to read about me dying a lot anyway. Plus, New Vegas is easy to break with enough knowledge and/or mods. The house in A World of Pain has a full autodoc in it, meaning a full heal, full addiction removal, and radiation removal is just a fast travel away. I will avoid those kinds of exploits.

Hardcore mode is a tedious chore once you’ve beaten it a couple of times. Especially if you put any points into survival. It just means carrying around a few more items and using them when a meter ticks over.

I try to keep my load order small to keep stability and prevent conflicts. I won’t list every mod, but here’s the main load order.

Gameplay mods
A Perk Every Level
Alternative Start
Extra Perks
Extra Traits
Just Vanilla Sprint
NIF-Bashed Weapon Pack

Quest Mods
A World of Pain
Alien Exterminator
Autumn Leaves
New Vegas Railroads
Rags to Riches

I’m thinking about the Someguy series (New Vegas Bounties, The Inheritance, etc.) but I’m not sure yet.

I also installed some Christmas themed radio stations.

THE BUILD
Special stats are all 1, exception for Endurance and Luck, because nothing can stop Phil. Not demonetization, not bankruptcy, nothing. Perception and Intelligence will stay at 1 because he fails to notice seemingly obvious things in the games he plays.

Skills, I’ll go for Barter first. I think Phil has a business degree, and he always manages to make money even if he seems to waste it.

Other than that, I don’t know where to put points. I was thinking of making a shotgun build, simply because I’ve never done that.

Traits, I’m going for Banned for Life and High Value Target.
Banned for Life makes you vilified by all the major factions. In exchange you get 2 overpowered companions. I will be dismissing them as soon as they arrive.
High Value Target makes armed hit squads come after you. Tough guys, but lots of cool gear if you beat them. They will be the Phil detractors.

Thanks to Alternative Start, I also get to choose a backstory. There is no “YouTuber” option, so “Village Idiot” it is. Starting wealth will be broke. AWOP has a box of starting items. I’d choose “Home Buyer”, but there’s no option to default on the mortgage, so I’ll choose “Pocket Warehouse”, which gives you an item to carry a lot of stuff.

I drop all the DLC equipment in a box in Doc Mitchel’s house and I'm ready to start.

It’s only later I learn I’m more screwed than I originally thought. Village idiot not only gives you -4 intelligence (not a problem because I was at the minimum of 1), but it also gives you -3 skill points per level. So each level up I have 7-8 points to spend. Ouch. This will be made worse by the honour rules I'll get to later.

View attachment 1799654

TUTORIALS
Starting off with such bad gear, I decided to go through the tutorial for the free weapon, ammo, and xp. Got the stash at the pass full of geckos, the usual New Vegas tutorial stuff.

I kill Joe Cobb before starting Ghost Town Gunfight, in keeping with DSPs original plan to side with Cobb and betray him. I remember hearing it was possible to do that by starting Run Goodsprings Run and shooting him in the back, but I don’t know if that’s true. Killing Cobb changes some dialogue. I didn’t finish the quest here. I wanted to do some mod stuff first.


A WORLD OF PAIN
A World Of Pain is possibly my favourite New Vegas mod, or is in the top 5. The premise is as simple as it gets. It adds a lot of dungeons to New Vegas. They are themed as sewers, vaults, bunkers, what have you, but they are lite on story, heavy on combat. All made with vanilla content and well balanced.

Monster Mod adds even more. They drop the pretence entirely. You go into clearly marked “Rumble” areas, fight through a gauntlet of bad guys, fight a named enemy at the end, grab the key to open a chest full of loot. While people talk about New Vegas for the dialogue and choices, sometimes you just want to shoot stuff in VATS.

Most of my first session was spent doing dungeon runs. It was tough at times, but I won’t bore you with detailed descriptions. It was fun to play, not so much to write or read about.

There was one moment I want to share. During a dungeon, I was near death and looting. Someone ran around the corner, startling me. I swung at him with a crowbar. Turned out it was Malcolm Holmes, a friendly NPC who starts the quest Legend of the Star. He didn’t get the chance. Turns out that smashing a NPC in the face makes them hostile. The fight was on. He was attacking with his fists, me with a crowbar. After a few swings he ran away, only to attack again when I tried to leave.

View attachment 1799655

Nothing much has happened plot wise. The gist is that there’s rumoured to be a massive underground complex called the underground, which is full of deadly monsters, but houses a trove of valuable pre-war tech to anyone who can find it and survive long enough to claim it. I did a quest chain to get the key to the west entrance. The LakeLurks are too much for me to make much progress, but even so I assume that entrance won’t lead to the treasure. Maybe it does, but I doubt it.


MORE VANILLA
Second session started and I completed Ghost Town Gunfight. Went to Primm, reprogrammed the robot to be the new sheriff as per the This Is How You Don’t Play. Repaired EDE with parts. Went to Nipton, killed the Legion there. All interspersed with dungeon diving.

I’m about level 11 when I realise I’m in more trouble than I initially realised, again. My honour rules/build is survivability perks, luck based item/money finding perks, and then anything I want, in that order. I only broke this rule once early on to get Shotgun Surgeon (ignores 10 armour when using shotguns) in order to kill Radscorpions for a mod quest.

The problem is I’m still getting loot and survivability perks, with a backlog growing faster than I can take them. I’m level 13 and I still have no accuracy perks, and with 1 perception VATS is of limited use. However, the build kinda works so far. DSP might lack in ability, but he's tough to take down and (almost) always stays standing by the end.


Current play time: 8 hours.

Thanks for making me revisit this game again. Used to play it all the time, I installed some mods graphic update mods and it is just as great as I remembered it to be