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moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
So after loving up my last few playthroughs, it looks like I'll finally beat the game this time around. I'm aiming for the Yes Man/Independent NV ending and I'm currently level 38 and have not confronted Benny yet. A couple of questions:

1) Should I try to complete all of the side quests before progressing into the Yes Man stuff? The last time I got this far, I dilly-dallied around too long after receiving the Mark of Caesar and then got the Legion permanently pissed at me by doing too many pro-NCR stuff, leaving me with no way to interact with Caesar later on (beyond storming his fort and killing everyone, which wasn't really the way I wanted to handle the situation).

2) How much of the NCR/Legion stuff can I do without loving up the independent New Vegas stuff? Or should I just ignore their paths and focus on my goal? Basically, what's the point of no return for peacefully interacting with the other factions?

3) What's a good time to start the Lonesome Road? I've finished the other DLCs and all the companion quest lines, if that makes any difference.

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moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

2house2fly posted:

I dunno, I got pretty chummy with Caesar.

That DICK! posted:

gently caress Rawls.

Did you guys share the "Legion" point of view with each other? :gay: :hist101:

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
To be fair, is there any other instance in New Vegas where successfully making a speech/skill check is not a positive thing? I thought the explosives check or whatever skill I passed proved I was a savvy operator like him. I was otherwise kind to Dean throughout DM so I was really surprised and disappointed when he turned on me at the end because of that one check. Just seems kind of inconsistent and nontransparent compared to the other times you see checks come up in the game.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
I think it was the barter check actually, which I read as a way of showing my own competence rather than as a challenge against Dean. Again, this was only interaction that I "hosed up" and I wouldn't even have pursued it if it wasn't presented as a positive skill check. I was even trying to heed Elijah's suggestions by being suave and diplomatic as per my character build.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
Give it to the kids who were playing around with the Euclid C-finder, they'll probably think it's just another toy and leave it well enough alone without understanding its true purpose.

Hopefully no one with a bunch of caps or high barter comes around to Freeside...

EDIT: Second choice would be Primm Slim. If shoving a bunch of fission batteries into him is enough to make him Sheriff, I don't see why cramming a few more wouldn't turn him into some benevolent robo-dictator of New Vegas. It's science :science:

moot the hopple fucked around with this message at 23:37 on Feb 3, 2013

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

oldskool posted:

I played once without actually reading the rules (awful idea) then gave up on it for 20 hours. Eventually read the rules, played it again, and then played everyone I could play and won so much money I was basically set until I finally got around to the OWB mass income generator.

In my experience, it's really easy to win as long as you grab every card you find & use them all.

My babby-mode Caravan strategy is to buy and build a deck solely comprised of any 10's, Kings, and 6's I can find. For each caravan, drop a 6, then 10, then a King (or 10, King, six) for an easy 26. Discard a Caravan if your opponent is messing things up too much. Works out pretty well.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

thehumandignity posted:

re: Honest Hearts, I disliked the dichotomy that the game presents for you. Running away clearly is not a sufficient measure since the White Legs will obviously take whatever they can. I see no reason to think that they would leave the Sorrows in peace wherever they slink off to. I think Daniel makes a pretty decent argument that they would, but I can't remember what it is.


According to Daniel, the White Legs are able to survive only by raiding and not living off the land like other tribes. Daniel believes that the White Legs lack the necessary survival skills to pursue the Sorrows once they leave for Grand Staircase.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Kitfox88 posted:

I love how you meet him already (That animation my god, along with the line about praying for everyone who enters Zion) but having him show up halfway through the ambush instead of Chalk would have been awesome too.

I'm glad they weren't so heavy-handed with Graham, actually. He could have easily become stale and trite if he was only a badass who said Bible quotes before dropping a mess of dudes with his .45. That proposed first appearance where he just shows up and wastes your ambushers would have negatively affected my impression of him at least. I only really started liking Graham when he talks about his history and realized how much dimension and personality he has. Rather than a super John Wayne baller hardass that you're supposed to look up to, you get a sense of a man who has been utterly humbled, who has seen the consequences of his violent actions wrought all over his body.

That's probably why the decision to defend or flee Zion was so difficult for me. It wasn't necessarily that I sided with Daniel's philosophy, it was more that I was worried about what it would mean to Joshua and the Sorrows/Dead Horses in the long term. If this was any other game, I would have instantly chosen to rain down retribution on my enemies alongside Graham. But there's all these additional factors that makes the choice not so clean cut, which I think speaks highly of Honest Hearts.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
One example of Bethesda not matching the complexity of Fallout's writing is how they handled the Brotherhood of Steel, which they seemed to have taken at face value as actual, chivalrous knights. In FO3, the Brotherhood are portrayed as these altruistic good guys which is frankly just as dumb and boring as the hoorah leatherhead grunt version of the BoS we got in Fallout Tactics. The actual BoS as established in Fallout 1 and 2 are simply isolationist dicks with a hard on for technology. They might be propped up by their access to pre-existing technology and infrastructure, but they're still no better than the primitive tribals surrounding them, having themselves devolved from a legitimate U.S. military unit into this faux-medieval society replete with monarchical-style succession and parochial worldviews. In order for the player to get into their good graces in FO1, he has to save one of their kidnapped members from a gang of thugs in the Den and then survive what was intended to be a literal suicide mission/fool's errand. Even after all those great lengths, their sole motivation in helping the Vault Dweller comes from the fact that they share a mutual enemy. Though the Master and his supermutant army threaten everybody, the Brotherhood deigns to send only two paladins to rocket open the military base's entrance before leaving it up to the Vault Dweller to do the rest of the dirty work. Similarly in FO2, the BoS parcels out their tech to the Chosen One only because they'll receive the far more valuable vertibird plans in return, plus they know he'll throw a wrench in the plans of the Enclave, whom they can not defeat in a toe-to-toe fight. In both cases, they will aid the player in so far as it furthers their own goals.

So it's pretty lame to suddenly see this group rendered as pure do-gooders who accept you with open arms in Fallout 3. I supposes there's the weak in-game explanation of how the Eastern Brotherhood represents a new dogmatic shift from the West Coast Brotherhood, but it just seemed like Bethesda wanted a convenient good guy faction and force fit the BoS into that role. The result is that a lot of their defining personality was stripped away and they were left feeling awfully generic and one-note.

New Vegas did a lot to not only return the BoS to their canonical depiction but also flesh them out with some depth. In your first encounter with them (if you don't have Veronica with you), they bomb-collar you and force you to do their dirty work in classic Brotherhood dickery. New Vegas gives you a look into their inherent problems with interesting and illustrative living examples: their self-destructive obsession with technology in the case of Elijah and their stagnant isolationist principles with McNamara. The Brotherhood figures heavily into the end-game plans for each faction so your given an expansive outlook on how the rest of the world views them. And finally, they are humanized and given personal stake with the inclusion of Veronica, a Brotherhood companion who works out these doubts and problems in her quest line.

That's just one instance of how Bethesda's worldbuilding and writing just seems so lacking when compared to other efforts in the series, I'm sure people could list others.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Colgate posted:

Have you by chance even talked to people in the Citadel? Or did The Pitt DLC and talked to Ashur?

Well, yes, I actually did since it was an unavoidable part of the game. What I found was some very eye-rollingly simplistic characterization. I've admittedly not played any of the DLC because the main game was enough for me.

The point of my post is that FO3's Brotherhood lacked rounded depth and convincing motivation. I don't really care about ~~canon~~, but I do care if they take such a drastic departure to a flavorful part of the Fallout world without adding anything interesting in place of it. FO3's Brotherhood is simply reductive, unless you consider gallant knights in shining armor a wonderfully fresh development. Sure, I can accept that you can naturally arrive at the idea that helping people is better in the long run because it engenders good will, but do some legwork to show how an inherently xenophobic and self-interested organization would come around to this. Lyons and Cross and some of the Brotherhood you talk to hardly come across as people with personalities, they just shout platitudes that fit their cookie cutter noble warrior mold.

The West Coast Brotherhood may be reprehensible assholes but at least they had understandable motivation, especially for their environs. They work out of self-interest, just as all groups in California, and their dealings with the players show that they are a living group with their own goals and agency, and not just something set up and waiting for the beck and call of the player.

New Vegas actually allows for the Brotherhood to make the heel face turn, but not in the overly simplistic and saccharine manner that Bethesda did. Veronica's quest is all about getting the Brotherhood to refocus themselves, with the results having opposition and unintended consequences; she proposes something that is essentially anathema and meets as a strong response as you would expect for challenging such deep-rooted beliefs. The end game gives you the chance to reconcile the Brotherhood with the outside world, but in a way that makes sense for the Brotherhood: the boot is on their neck, most of the world sees them as potentially dangerous, and the big players want to kill them out of principle. So in those circumstances, it makes a lot of sense to sign a truce rather than face destruction.

These considerations for believability is what makes me appreciate Obsidian's work as opposed to the same old knight-errant paintbrush taken by Bethesda.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
The infamous Dean barter line sticks in so many people's craw because it was so inconsistent and misleading. If you use barter and point out that he isn't exactly negotiating from a position of power, he'll hold it against you as the worst slight imaginable and you'll be forced to kill him even if you subsequently coddle him the rest of the DLC. Yet if you pass the explosives check just before that, he praises you for your knowledge. So the game sets you up with the expectation that your knowledge can impress him. Dean even says just because he works in entertainment, it doesn't make him a fool. So my expectation when I pursued the barter line was that I would be demonstrating that I was a savvy operator like him and no one's fool, something he could appreciate just like my explosives knowledge. But nope, I'm the rear end in a top hat now.

I don't think people were careless by choosing that line, it's simply misleading and poorly conveys the intention behind it. And this is setting aside the fact that a fail state is hidden behind a passed skill check, the only time this ever happens in the game. The designers could have maybe broadcasted this possibility in a prior encounter, one that wasn't so ambiguous and crucial to an ending outcome. As it is, it feels less like keeping the players on their toes and just bullshit.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

2house2fly posted:

doesn't that Barter check result in you threatening him? I've never taken it but saw the conversation tree typed out somewhere, and the final options were something like

"You're such an rear end in a top hat that it might be worth dying to kill you"
"It won't set off my collar if I break both your legs, rear end in a top hat."
"You're a real rear end in a top hat, you know that?"

edit: it's also not a fail state, just a different result.

Nope, there's no three separate instances of inly be able of calling him an rear end in a top hat. Like Raygerio pointed out, it's the barter line and then a measured explanation of what's going on. It really reads as a laying out of your cards than lording it over Dean.

And I do consider it a fail state because it goes against the intended result of speech and barter. I made a social build to negotiate and talk myself out of fights. This is the only instance where it guaranteed a fight. I didn't gain any benefit whatsoever even though it was framed as a barter situation and I "succeeded".

It sucks that I obeyed the conventions that the game has long established at this point and was punished because "this is the one time we go against it HAHA READ BETTER NEXT TIME". Again, it's rather poorly broadcasted. Hell even Super Mario Bros color coded their mushrooms differently to let players know that power ups can be poisonous now.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Fag Boy Jim posted:

Since one of the big points of contention with FNV dialogue is that it's "obvious" that speech check dialogue is always good, having a skill-check dialogue option that, if you think about it, isn't the right thing to say fits the design ethos of DM.

My problem is that the line itself isn't that clear in tone. People are assuming that those of us who chose the barter line weren't thinking or just mashed the option with brackets around it, but I was making a concerted effort to engage Dean peacefully. The barter option and the tied bomb collar revelation that follows it read to me as an effort to be square and on the level with Dean rather than belittling, while the other options seemed outright antagonistic or seemed like I was humoring him. Hell, the explosives check before that could have been seen as a challenge to him, yet he does not lose his poo poo over that. If a sizeable amount of people got different meanings out of the line, it's still inconsistent and poorly worded, no matter what concessions you make to design ethos.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
I'm currently doing an explosives playthrough and it absolutely owns. Just picked up Splash Damage and poo poo is really crazy because I have all ranks of Demo Expert but neither Hit the Deck nor Adamantium Skeleton to mitigate self-damage. I might leave most fights with a sliver of health and a couple of broken limbs, but I'm also blowing the gently caress out of everything I come across :supaburn:

Luckily I also have Super Slam and a fully upgraded war club, so it's time to show these White Legs shitheads what's what :toughguy:

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
I've been tooling around with a Shotgun user right now and it's a lot of fun. Shotgun Surgeon and all the assorted ammo types keeps shotguns viable against all enemies, while the knock down from And Stay Back triggers surprisingly often and gives you plenty of breathing room for reloading. I'm using a Hunting Shotgun with tube upgrade (even though Dinner Bell does more damage), and most things go splat with regular buckshot. If things get hairy, I can sweep dudes off their feet with a beanbag round followed by a dragon's breath :supaburn:

I love how there's 3 distinct builds and associated perks just within the Guns weapon lists: the high-DMG low-DPS manual action Cowboy guns, the high-DPS low-DMG automatic Grunt weapons, and shotguns. Keeps things interesting after so many replays.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Paracelsus posted:

I never noticed Shotgun Surgeon doing very much for me, and sometimes armor-piercing in general seems to not work right; I'll shoot a Mister Gutsy in OWB with This Machine using both JSP and AP ammo, and neither will do very much unless it's a crit, even though the AP should cut their DT by 60%. It often feels like the only way for guns to do decent damage to armored enemies is to max out the number of crits you're doing.

A lot of the time I find damage to be really swingy and to suddenly shift dramatically for non-obvious reasons. The Hyperbreeder completely destroyed everything in HH, especially the plant enemies transplanted from Vault 22, but a couple levels later in OWB it barely scratches them despite having an extra ~15 points in Energy Weapons.

On an unrelated note, it's hilarious to take Super Slam, arm yourself with Love and Hate, pump yourself up with Rushing Water and Turbo, and then proceed to slo-mo air juggle a sentry robot.

I think the sheer inflated health of Old World Blues' enemies will minimize the effect of specialty ammo, or any Guns weapons for that matter. FWIW the last time I took a Guns character through OWB, I burnt through my 1000 round stockpile of .308 after the first few groups of roboscorpions and just buckled down with the X2 antenna and the sonic emitter for the rest of the DLC, even though I had meager melee and energy weapons skills.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

CJacobs posted:

I someday want to do a playthrough where I meet, hang out with, and do the full questlines for each companion, like a wandering problem-solving angel. It'd take a very specific playstyle and quest order to meet the qualifications for everyone but I'm pretty sure it's possible.

You can do that already. The somewhat tricky part would be keeping Boone in check so he doesn't plummet your standing with the Legion. That way you can peacefully get a new brain for Rex (which I personally consider the best result in terms of epilogues for him). Raul and ED-E just require talking to people while in your company (and they will trigger again even if you've talked to that person before). Have Lily fight some nightstalkers or throw some explosives at her to get her to low enough health to start her quest. Cass and Veronica are pretty straight forward.

The only tricky people are Boone and Arcade because you need to have them along at certain moments to increase your rep with them, and some points are mutually exclusive.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
For first minutes into a new Honest Hearts playthrough, I went into a cave and started grubbing around for cave fungus so that I could regenerate my limbs. Caught a reflection of myself in a pool of water and realized I had basically become a cave troll :smith:

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
I mainly used Boone and ED-E because they're so powerful in and of themselves, their companion perks are useful and work well in tandem, and ED-E Lonesome Road upgrades are so convenient for on the spot crafting. That said, I really enjoyed the challenge of Veronica and Rex not killing everything for me, plus it's kind of neat being able to do some of the Legion without Boone's aggroing.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
For a rather fun and interesting experience, everyone should try a Survival-only build, where you eschew Medicine and can only get your healing from food and drinks. It makes Cass' companion perk particularly useful.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Dmaonk posted:

Seconding this. The enemy design, their bugged PER and the general powerlessness of the player makes for an unfun experience. The atmosphere and writing was alright though.

I'm not entirely sure if I like Chris Avellone's design work. I think he's really great at writing and world-building and I appreciate the intention behind most of his decisions, but the execution just misses the mark for me. With Dead Money, the initial novelty of the new gameplay elements quickly wore off and wound up being just a frustrating chore. In Old World Blues, in order to curb the ubiquitous sniper build, enemies had crazy piles of health and randomly spawned around you. So instead of headshotting everything, you now had to endlessly backpedal while spamming melee swings as a train of roboscorpions chased after you. Like, there's an obvious, conscious decision to mix things up for the player, but it loses sight of whether it will actually be fun.

Just look at Alpha Protocol, which is a good game in spite of itself. The whole experience is marred by godawful gameplay; fundamental stuff that makes up a huge portion of the game, such as the combat and mini games, feels like rear end. Yet there's a worthwhile game hidden underneath because it's got a great dialogue system, story branching, and interesting characters and world. It's just that actually playing it can be a drag.

Maybe I'm laying too much blame on Avellone's doorstep since he served as the lead creative designer on those projects and I've heard him talk about those things on the internet :shrug:

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

CJacobs posted:

Most of the time when I play Caravan I hit a couple of buttons and then there is suddenly nothing I can press or click except to leave the game and I have no idea why. So uh. Yeah I don't really bother with Caravan either.

When I'm shuffling through my cards, the animation will sometimes desync with the card I'm selecting. The lag, layout, and the sheer amount of cards you can get kind of dissuades you from experimenting with your deck.

Easy mode for Caravan:

Since the goal is to score a 26, the easiest combination without worrying about ascending/descending order is playing with a deck comprised ONLY of Kings, 10s, and 6s. Drop a 6, 10, then King (or 10, King, 6) for each Caravan. Discard Caravans that go over and use extra Kings to screw opponents. As long as you buy up every 6, 10, and King you come across, it works pretty well.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Wolfsheim posted:

(10+10+6 or 10+8+8)

Wait, how does this work? Since when can you just stack dupes on top of each other (ignoring the suits rule, which I'm still not sure will work in this case).

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
Well, that doesn't really seem to help your odds at all with my proposed strategy. In fact, all things being equal, adding another card will actually decrease your odds.

The thing is, when you go 10+King+6, you NEED to be able to drop all three cards down ASAP. Any combination of two cards won't be enough to reach the 21 point threshhold where it is in contention, i.e. still safely in play. Therefore, the third card is utterly important to get down. It's an all or nothing strategy, so you need the right cards at the right time being available in your hand. Adding another number value card to the pool actually dilute your chances of getting the card you want from 33% to 25%, it doesn't increase your odds at all.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Wolfsheim posted:

But ever since the patch that lets the AI play face cards against you, they have a tendency to immediately throw every face card they have at you, so if you're slapping everything you have down betting on 10+20+6, they can either knock out your 20 with a single jack, or even quadruple it to a 40 with a second king, forcing you to either drop that entire row or use your own jack, which you wouldn't have, because your deck solely 6s, 10s and kings.

This is true, but throwing in an 8 or jack does absolutely nothing to help me in these situations.

If I throw in an 8, then I now have 3 numerical value cards. This means Queens played against me now have an effect, when before they were entirely irrelevant because order can go either way with only 2 numerical value cards. Plus, I am now hampered by the reduced odds of an additional card in the pool. The same thing with the Jack; being able to remove a king played against me is not worth it due to reduced odds. Yes I stand to potentially lose either one or two more cards than I would have otherwise when I discard a track, but it's mathematically more efficient to do that than to include a Jack to deal with Kings because it will drop my odds even further.

Trust me, I've put a lot of thought into this goofy card game and this strategy works great in practice because it stacks the odds in your favor: your starting hand will generally have enough winning cards to fill at least 2 of the 3 Caravans right out of the gate, you can complete caravans in the optimal amount of turns, you have a deck that has the best odds of getting the right pulls, and you have a face card to play against opponents. Your additions would negate several of these benefits with little return.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
Jsawyer mod has been my one stop shop for new playthroughs for a while now. It hits the sweet spot in terms of challenge and balance, makes some pretty comprehensive changes to the base game that I'm down with, plus I don't have to bother with a slew of extra mods. Sometimes I'll miss the level 50 cap and the high level perks, in which case I'll use like Project Nevada, but I've never been able to tweak PN's values to where I'd like them.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
I installed a house mod but it's located in the Deathclaw Promontory loving idiot Obsidian why'd you design a challenging area if you knew it'd get in the way of ~mods~

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

MrL_JaKiri posted:

You need more dynamite, clearly


VATS dynamiting is the best because you can watch it cartwheel in place on top of enemies' heads for a couple of seconds before exploding.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
Do some of the Powder Ganger quests so you can Yojimbo them later on during the NCR prison assault.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
The first time I beat the game, I learned that you're transported into a room with the ending slides actually projected on a wall because one of the Remnants got teleported with me and blocked all the slides.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Black August posted:

Mostly I have a hard time swallowing that a mega badass like Joshua can't take the time to just do it himself, even with political and safety considerations.

Joshua is just too busy walking back and forth from the Sorrows and Dead Horses camps when the player has poo poo to sell to do anything else :argh:

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Frankly posted:

You mean...I don't have to finish doing the dumb fetch quests for these clueless buttheads to get to wear Power Armour??

My favourite mod just got better, finally I can storm Hidden Valley with Boone in tow and murder these guys

It retains the Brotherhood faction tag meaning Veronica is still the only companion who can wear it. You will also aggro the NCR for wearing it.

You can always go to Deathclaw Promontory for fresh suits of factionless power armor if you substitute deathclaw murdering for paladin murdering.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
Jsawyer mod evened out a lot of roughness with the DLCs for me. Last playthrough I went into OWB with a guns character and could actually use my guns for the entire run when in vanilla I'd inevitably run out of ammo and have to rely on proton axing and the sonic emitter. Brought along Paciencia and Lucky because off the relative abundance of .357 Magnum and .308 in the loot tables and because of their crit multiplier, killed everything just fine.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Elderbean posted:

Playing Wasteland 2 has put me in the mood for a NV run, any recommendations for an explosives build? I mostly want to get drunk and blow things up, but I might punch things too.

Be selective of what perks you take and when you take them. Splash Damage makes it very hard to escape your own blast radius if enemies are just a couple of feet away from you. Combine this with maxed ranks Demolition Expert and you can easily get yourself killed by your own inadvertent grenade toss. You'll obviously still want these perks but it's oftentimes more helpful to mix in Hit The Deck and Adamantium Skeleton rather than taking the damage perks as soon as they're available. Another decent and overlooked perk is Heave Ho because it increases the range of not only thrown explosives but the explosive launchers as well. The carry weight perks can also nice to have since weight will be a premium in this run.

Buy Hydra. Lots and lots of Hydra.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Sleeveless posted:

The jsawyer mod does a pretty good job fixing the ridiculous amounts of good karma that get thrown at you.

Yeah, I did the usual "loot Goodsprings and Primm blind" until I checked my karma and noticed that I was insanely evil. It took me about until the half-way point in the game to work myself up to neutral karma, and there weren't any quick fixes like killing a couple of ghouls for positive karma since their karma value was adjusted as well. The bigger karma loss doesn't necessarily curtail stealing but it does make you think that jacking that single shotgun from a poor villager on the frontier is probably taking away his only means of defense and perhaps condemning him to death.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Arcsquad12 posted:

What perks should I take to make shotguns not suck? Shotgun Surgeon is an obvious choice, but how about that knockback effect perk?

Rapid Reload with 10 Agility means you can load up a full tube or stuff a chamber in no time. I know a case can be made for more effective level 2 perks depending on playstyle, but Rapid Reload on my shotgun-only run made a noticeable difference. And Stay Back, as already mentioned, is the other mandatory perk besides Shotgun Surgeon and it triggers surprisingly often. After those, I'd probably want Hand Loader for the added versatility - between buckshot, slugs, pulse rounds, incendiary ammo you have all the means to handle various types of enemies.

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

Discendo Vox posted:

If you personally object to how Caesar's abuse of Hegel doesn't match Marx's abuse of Hegel, and you want it to match the protofascists' abuse of Hegel, that's...fine?

But you were the one claiming Caesar was marxism.txt :confused:

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone

AFancyQuestionMark posted:

I am not trolling. I just find your interpretation incredibly odd and inconsistent with my experience of the game. It reminds me of a time back in high-school when a classmate kept insisting that The Catcher in the Rye was an extended analogy for World War 2. How does someone arrive at a conclusion that's so incredibly different from mainstream interpretations of a work, yet insist that it is so obvious and self-evident that no one else could possibly miss it at the same time?

See: poster who was like Confirmed Bachelor means I'm very manly but what's with all this gay poo poo they put in game????

That guy ruled

moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
If you pair melee with survival, you can heal your way through a ludicrous amount of damage with how effective campfire recipes become. I recall being able to do ridiculous poo poo at high skill levels like eating a bunch of cooked food and healing through the poison and damage of an entire cazador nest.

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moot the hopple
Apr 26, 2008

dyslexic Bowie clone
Barton's problem is I just punched the heads clean off an entire den of geckos. What makes him think his head is connected so soundly?

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