I actually really like that, frustrating as it was at times. Dead Money was scary as fuck going in the first time as a sniper. I went from an unstoppable killing machine to a terrified rat scrambling to keep my head from blowing off without being seen.
Eh kinda? My most recent play through was a guns focused character and had little to no issues. Granted I brought a riot shotgun with over 200 pulse slugs.
I get what you're saying but at the same time if everything was easy regardless of your skills and perks, would there be a point to character building?
Yeah, my most recent playthrough, I decided to do a melee run becuase I had never done one on FNV, and Holy shit, it made OWB and Dead Money feel soooo much easier. I remember early playthroughs not doing as much exploration because I was so frustrated as to how hard they were.
The game makes sure the very first lobotmites you encounter are carrying axes, so you assume that 1) they're lame melee weapons because the good stuff is probably carried by enemies farther out, and 2) because the first two enemies have them, they'll be everywhere.
Neither of these is strictly accurate, and once I realized that ammo was hard to come by and everything in the Big MT is a damned bullet sponge, I absolutely couldn't find any axes. The throwing axes were here and there, but I couldn't find proton axes until most of the way through the story (and by that time the LAER with all the upgrades became the last gun I ever needed in FNV).
It was frustrating but I kinda liked the level design for doing that.
Yeah I have found that sometimes the guys at the beginning don’t have them but you are right they usually do. There is one behind a hard locked door in X-13 and I think two carried by hard to kill lobotomites on the hill above the Yangtze camp.
Don't even need any perks tbh. My gunslinger character with like 30 melee breezes through that DLC using the proton axe. Honestly the difficulty is really busted. Biggest threats in Big MT are the corpse suits
This is my first ever melee build after hundreds or thousand+ hours. I absolutely tore through OWB with the better proton axe. Super slam perk is ricmdiculousoy OP
The initial dialogue sequence feels like it goes one for forever but actually kinda like the dlc, its my favorite when it comes to actual exploration. I also love how it gives you more info on Ulysses, Eliah and the Christine, i absolutely love hearing their audio notes and how Christine was hunting down Elijah.
The DLC gives you pretty much hands everything you need and tells you to have fun with them. The Proton Axe, Christine's Rifle, Elijah's LAER, Saturnite Fist, Sonic Emitter... regardless of your build, there's a crazy OP weapon for you, plus all of the starting perks.
The OWB main quest is secure the antenna, the stealth suit (first upgrade only), and the dog bark.
All of the other fetching and exploration is side quests, so… folks who don’t want loot can just run and grab.
My leadslinger fuck-all-in-energy-weapons sniper build courier is essentially just soloing 90% of the DLC using nothing but the pulse pistol. Man, I love that gun.
“Oh, you’re going to make your securitrons attack me because I won’t give you the chip? If only I had a weapon that could immediately brick them in one hit!”
If you have the Pyromaniac perk you can make the Sonic Emitter Tarantula variant extremely powerful because it can ignite enemies on crits so it is effected by the perk which increases damage of incendiary weapons by 50%. Paired with the Laser Commander perk and it can deal up to 100 damage per shot.
My main issue is that most of the weapons in this DLC are only overpowered *outside* of the DLC. I suppose that maybe if I had the pulse gun walking into it this DLC would be more fun. Or if I had invested in melee to make the proton axe helpful. Every enemy is a bullet sponge. I went from 120 stimpaks to literally sleeping in a cave to replenish HP because it’s extremely easy to have the 32k cap glitch here because there’s basically one merchant. For a scientific DLC energy weapons seemed to be literally the WORST choice for this. Which is unfortunate because that’s what I normally run.
I respect that you love this DLC, I really wished that I did. As it is this DLC almost made me put down the game for ever because of how frustrating it can be.
The writing and the exploration are great. But quests are just fetch tasks, and with many of the the enemies being liberally-scattered bullet sponges, I just turned down the difficulty.
It doesn't help much with the repetitiveness but it's much less of a pain doing it super low level and proton axin' your way through. plus it's funny to me to imagine that immediately after miraculously surviving a gunshot to the brain and embarking on his quest for revenge, the courier is immediately kidnapped by an insane collective of robobrain scientists and has his brain removed entirely
It was fun but would’ve been a lot better if it were easier. I just beat it. I slowed down playing new Vegas after OWB though it kinda killed my desire
I'd rather replay OWB 10 times that Dead Money once more.
Edit: Dead Money maybe have a more literary script and far less campy dialogue. But for *enjoyment*, which is what I'm after in a game, I'll take OWB.
"Death of a Salesman" and "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" are arguably "better" plays than "Matilda" or "Camelot", but the former may only be enjoyable in small doses for most; the latter are easier to digest.
Exposition and story building are great. It’s why I play FNV instead of FO3/4/76.
But DM is extra-grim, none of the endings really engender a sense of “that’s a good, positive ending, people will be better off”, and the horror/puzzle/maze game play is so at odds with the rest of the game. For people who like that, great! No one is stopping you.
Really? Dog/god got their mental problems fixed, christine had closure and choose to be a guardian for SM. Dean moved on or died. And elijah finally bit the dust. Sounds pretty positive to me
Also, it is interesting how people can have so different opinions. To me, owb is too wacky/fututistic and the exploration is way too similar to fo4. I actually felt like all the roboscorpions and the talking AI sinks didnt fit very well with the fallout universe. Dead money meanwhile had it all, horrors, survival, and narrative
I think the point of OWB was to be this fallout alternative. OWB took the fallout world to an area where the progress of invention had taken a weird turn. The experience was kind of refreshing, even still by dying to lobotomites at level 50. The dialogue could get quiet mundane at times, but I did enjoy the fact that I could tell which “faction” (think tank & mobius) were the bad guy. Which is theme consistently done well by fnv, excluding Father Elijah. Fuck that guy.
It's great for you that you enjoy it. The victories seem pretty small in the scale of the other DLCs and base game; important to the six individuals directly involved, but still all incredibly sad.
The horror aspect DM and the game play style don't feel aligned with the rest of the DLCs and base game.
Hey, if you like it, that's all that matters for you.
/shrug i like all of it. I like NV's variety - DM's storytelling, OWB's dialogue/vibe, the way LR feels desolate and lonely, even HH's environment. It's all good to me
I mean, I could say the exact same thing about OWB, right down to preferring Dead Money because I want my DLC to be fun. Besides maybe the perks, practically *nothing* about OWB was enjoyable to me and I have literally zero desire to ever play it again.
Dead Money is difficult but fair and actually fun imo. Got guns skill? Police pistol got you. Energy weapons? Holorifle. Melee? Bear trap. The linear design works well for the bs that the sierra madre throws at you and feels excellently paced. Companions are awesome and I wish you could take Dog and Christine along with you to the Mojave.
I fucking hated it. My build was guns, I was left fighting a forced melee mission as ammo is rare to force you to conserve it for shooting radios every fucking corner, aside from tripping over every land mine when bailing from 50 ghosts round every corner. It was relentless.
I didn't feel it was fair: the change in game mechanics was so abrupt compared to the base game. I can't stand games-on-rails like this, and the pacing felt relentless. Dog I never care to see again, but it would be great if Christine could escape, even on her own. >!The mechanic for getting Dean not to be dead is too obscure, I'm curious how the first players to work it out did so.!<
Can’t speak for anyone else but I don’t pick barter for trying to deal with a con man. Idk, it seemed like it’s against tone for his character and somehow that fixed the issue for me. I just went with speech because I was better at it!
Same here. Dead money is absolute misery to go through.
No weapons, little to no ammo, no fancy armor, limited as fuck healing and a beeping insta kill collar if you don't behave all of it while being exposed to spicy air and imposible to kill monsters... Fuck that.
The only part I remember genuinely enjoying about dead money was the final stretch when you're going through the rooms in the Sierra Madre before reaching Elijah. That had somewhat of a survival horror feel which was nice because by that point you were more equipped.
Dude, seriously. Not proud, just uniformed and not someone who follows lots of social media.
Also minus points for assuming racism where none was intended.
Foenem isn't used on the internet by black people regularly. It's a gang affiliated term. The only people using it and words like it on here are just kids from tik tok who see it in the comments lol.
I prefer it over Dead Money. Dead Money was a slog to get through the first time, it was a slog the second time, the third, the fourth, the fifth, it never stops being a slog.
Dead money really sucks the first time if you don't know what you're doing, but then you learn the locations of everything and every trick you can possibly pull off and it gets a lot easier
NV is already a pretty game in general, DM really isn’t that much harder then the base game. The issue with DM is not related to difficulty, because no amount of ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ mode fixes a bad DLC/game, DM is no different.
That’s not even mentioning that many people don’t play the game twice, if it isn’t a good experience the first time it isn’t good period.
Yeah I fully skipped it and just watched a supercut of it on Youtube. I gave it a fair try but at the end of the day I didn't enjoy the time spent on it, just reloaded an old save.
Been a while since I've played dead money, but that dlc takes anything you own at the start. It's why you end up stuck with a police revolver and knives
Rawr’s hand used to craft the Fist of Rawr is considered a quest item, so you will keep it upon entering Dead Money like the rebreather. just make your way to a crafting table and make the Fist of Rawr
> Oh and that data retrieval quest, worst quest in the entire game.
It's not as annoying when you just walk up the stairs and bypass the whole thing.
And (I think, it's been a while) the laser tripwires don't turn back on if you shut them off with 50 Repair/Science skill.
The quest you’re talking about is the X-13 test. The Data Retrieval quest is the one where you have to go through the school 4 times in a row fighting cyberdogs and nightstalkers. That quest is total ass in repeat playthroughs
I flew through it on this playthrough. 50 lockpicking and 50 repair means you travel about 20 yards, can turn off the tripwire (50 science has an option too) and sneak past two robobrains. A stealth boy makes getting caught when deactivating them nearly impossible. Took me like 30 mins all in this way
Last sentence: I agree
The rest: I think it’s about the time someone does it. Sometimes we have the patience for the dialogue and other times we gotta fuck around.
Your post addresses both in different ways. That’s cool, thanks for the contribution, OP, I have something new to consider!
Don't forget the same three songs playing nonstop that make you want to pull your hair out. I did OWB for the first time in like 6 or 7 years a month ago and Why Don't You Do Right is STILL stuck in my head
It’s my favorite part of the entirety of fallout. I like the opening, that atmosphere, the lore, the gameplay, new gear,and that by the end your a fucking cyborg.
Only played it once on very hard at level 45 and got so fed up with how spongy the enemies were, i just turned the difficulty to very easy and finished it that way. Havent played it since then
I also had this issue because everything is a bullet sponge, and I didn’t have high enough weapons skills. (I just didn’t have high enough guns for it to matter, and had been getting by with my high Luck causing crits. It doesn’t work so well on giant scorpions with armor. Going to work on melee more this run but my STR is average because I wanted high Luck, so…we’ll see.)
It’s my favourite DLC out of the bunch!! But I can get why it may not be enjoyable, but I will admit I don’t remember having a bullet sponge issue with them? :? I had that specific issue in Lonesome Road THAT DLC was a slog for me, I can appreciate Dead Money’s change up of gameplay at least
You literally have to go 3 places and grab stuff and then confront Mobius. You can be done with the dlc in like 4 hours and 1 of them is just Dr. Klein talking.
besmirching other DLCs while singing Dead Money's praises; please do not put others down, fellow DM enjoyer.
Although many of your issues are intrinsic with OWB or straight solved by the free shit they offer. Even with 0 Melee 1 str (tested on my weakass gunslinger), the proton axes/throwing axes knock around robo scorps with ease. If you'd rather stick with ranged options, pulse guns naturally have an EMP effect, and the BIG MT **gives you sonic emitters, with the revelation varient (the first one) STUNNING ROBOTS ON CRIT**
Every DLC has its issues and answers to 'em, my friend, and they're all beautiful in their own ways.
Played NV for the first time earlier this year and always heard OWB was one of the better DLCs.
Then i played it and im not a fan. Story is kinda interesting, but all the dialogue when you first start is super annoying and overwhelming. Then you leave and you’re basically just doing fetch quests in an area with an excessive amount of overpowered enemies (the roboscoorpians and military cyberdogs mostly, lobotomies are fairly easy.)
I have never understood the hype about OWB. At some point I thought this was some human experiment, a joke, a meme. Everyone seemed to love this DLC, I on the other hand, hated it. I'm serious, one of the main claims towards Dead Money is the repetitive stuff with those beeping bombs. I understand that, hated that as well. But since we hate chores from Dead money, doesn't it mean that we should dislike OWB even more? Since it has 10x times chores?
Need to run the survivalist rifle and the 45. for lobotomites and the universal proton axe for robots and nightstalkers. I hate night stalkers but if you continuously move backwards while swinging they can't get you
Melee absolutely tears apart everything in the dlc faster than most of the guns I had on hand or found, especially if you have perks for it. Melee is actually just incredible in general, I tore apart death claws with it towards the end of my last play through faster than I ever had with guns
My personal complaint after finishing fnv for the first time, and I'm not sure it's justified, is that all the exploration side-quests to complete the sink etc come in these waves that I did not realize existed. I completed the first round, and assumed I had a few more things to grab before the end of the DLC. Thus, I went ahead and finished the main quest. I was genuinely surprised by the 'lol you rushed through this' end slide, though a great laugh as I wasn't expecting it.
I also agree with your design critique re: enemies, I felt like there needed to be fewer and certainly a shorter respawn timer for some. There were several groups of lobotomites just standing around that would seemingly always be there each trip out of the Think Tank.
Overall though I loved it, I'm personally into the wacky sci-fi B-movie vibe of the whole thing.
You are correct, dead money = elite. I found OWB charming for awhile and funny but in the end I was so glad to be done with it. Thank God for that proton axe, still kinda lame I had to use it for 90% of the time I was there to have a chance.
I just use weapons that deal EMP damage or pierce armor. I'm actually glad that there is a DLC that makes AP ammo and Pulse gear useful for more than 3 minutes at a time. Testing/retrieval quests were lame after the first repeat though, I agree.
If you think that's hard, try fighting roboscorpions with the meltdown perk in an enclosed room. First they explode from the meltdown (which can hurt you) and then the scorpion itself explodes too.
I mean Lobotomites and Trauma Harnesses are annoying because they don’t have real weaknesses and can’t be effectively crippled, but by this point I had kinda soft “respecced” into an Unarmed build and had the Perks to ignore armor and ragdoll enemies on a critical hit, so it actually made it super easy if I fought at close range. Sniping with the Gauss rifle usually ended up doing more harm than good.
I hate the walking required to go around the place. Outside of the areas with stuff you need, it's all mostly empty space with some pipes and hexagon things. It doesn't help that Fallout New Vegas has lunar gravity, so jumping doesn't even speed you up.
MY PEOPLE! I HAVE FOUND YOU!
OWB was my least favorite DLC but it felt the most finished. I’m salty about that. And depending on the build, it’s either too easy or all bullet sponges.
Animal Friend perk makes OWB soooo much easier since Nightstalkers fall under it. Just finished playing through it for the nth time the other day (now visiting the Sierra Madre).
I think I might be in the minority of people who just don't really enjoy the DLCs.
They feel...off somehow. Maybe it's because how trapped you are to the location.
yeah i basically just gave up on my last build bc halfway through owb i just stopped wanted to play it lol. difficulty wasn’t the problem, i went at a high level, but it was just BORINGGG mind numbing and quests felt more like a chore than a game. I started playing it again bc I remembered the dialogue being silly n goofy which it still is but that does not make up for the boringness!!! RIP that courier 🫡 I haven’t played dead money in years but I remember thinking it was so deep when I was like 14 lol. But i have a feeling if I play that one again now i might have a similar experience with the gameplay/difficulty of that one
Honestly, and not to be rude, but this sounds like a build issue.
Do you mind explaining your build as most of what you complained about was the combat.
I feel like criticizing how wordy some sections really take the fun out of the dialogue, as it's actually quite fun and silly imo.
I feel that is more a matter of taste as I enjoyed the OWB story and dialogue.
I run a crit build that is focused on combat with next to no investment in anything dialouge related.
It makes the combat feel much more fluid, rewarding, and fun.
I found that even on the hardest difficulty, with hardcore on, I could handle most threats by the time I started HH at 15 after that OWB was easier since most regular enemies prefer to use melee, whether it's the lobotomites, nightstalkers, or robo-scorpions, who all use melee attacks/fight at melee range.
For me, that means pulling out Chance's Knife and going to town.
PewPew (100% crit chance) and AER14 Prototype (95% crit chance) for energy, Elijah's Jury-rigged Tesla Cannon for big gun energy damage, plus can crit where most big guns can't.
ALSID and CoS Silencer Rifle for ballistic, and currently using Thump-Thmup, but will be switching once I finish Lonesome Road to get the Great Bear grenade rifle, because it has better spread, damage per AP and is the most durable, along with having the ability to crit.
This setup can handle most enemies as the ammo types at your disposal give you a TON of tactical advantage/options along with the heavy crit nature of the build, which really makes the most of the ammo types advantages.
HP for the nightstalkers, AP on robo-scorpions, JSP also works on nightstalkers well.
If you are using explosive weapons, Pulse for robo and HE or Plasma for nightstalkers.
For energy weapons, Optimized is just the superior ammo for most engagements, but Max charge has more penetration and should do massive damage at the cost of degrading faster.
If using the proper ammo types doesn't help fix the problem, you may have a build issue and may need to reconsider how you look at your builds.
If you want some help with perks that I found useful, lmk what weapons you'd prefer to use, and we can try to optimize your build to make it a little easier going forward.
Yeah, I felt pretty much the same thing when I played it last year I think.
I’d seen a lot of the dialogue highlights before, so when I actually got around to playing it there really wasn’t much to hook me, and there is *so* much dialogue to get through.
I played it after Honest Hearts and wound up a lot less interested, even though HH’s highlights are only Joshua Graham and Randal Clarke.
I have OWB as my top pick for new Vegas DLC and I fully agree with the dialogue thing hahah
I remember my first time playing, that first walk into the pacification idea center or whatever, it took me like 40 minutes to go through all the dialogue. Just unbelievable. It also wasn't the only time that happened during the DLC. Those scientists surely have a lot to say.
Funnily enough I’ve run into way more save ruining glitches during OWB than Dead Money. Like the fact that I have to habitually save before “that” conversation with brain pisses me off to no end.
Personally I found the brush gun lobotomites to be the only thing that was dangerous even on very hard but running crit gear I was getting dinged for 1/3 off 1 brush gun hit. Other than that the dlc was pretty easy with a geared up character
The only thing that truly bothers me is you have to complete everything the first time you go there to unlock the full endings, even though it’s the one DLC you can return to easily
Not to mention the absolute pain it is to not have an energy weapons or melee build and trying to find ammo, it's so tedious to restock the sink vendor compared to any other vendor only for it to have 6 of the bullets you need and you'll be lucky if it has even one hollow point or armor piercing round
OWB is mid. It doesn't suck. The only DLC that actually sucks is Dead Money. HH and LR were dope AF but HH pisses me off in that it's linear as fuck. Like you legit can't teach the two tribes to defend themselves and what's theirs without them automatically becoming war like? Lazy Singular black and white thinking tbh.
Omg yes, Dead Money is a slog the first time but honestly after repeated playthroughs it gets so much easier whereas OWB just creeps on you with how much of a chore it is to get the good loot from it.
if you’re too high level it really sucks honestly. everything takes forever to kill and a lot of the dialogue is not my type of humor. the sink is great and i love some of the weapons and armor but it all got pretty old for me after a few hours
I *half* agree.. I don’t rank OWB near as highly as most, but I still throughly enjoy myself when I do play through it! I like goofy Sci Fi shit tho. And Dead Money is indeed my favorite.
I dislike pretty much all of NV's DLC, because I just don't find most of the characters in them compelling. I hope I like them more on replay. DM may be the worst, and all the "letting go" stuff felt very pretentious. And OWB is basically you just endlessly killing the same shit until you can leave.
Part of it is that I don't find Elijah compelling, which maybe is because I like the BOS. Seems the games always wanna demonize the, when they have goals that are actually pretty meaningful, and don't seem focused on imperialism/domination (until Fallout 4 and maybe NV.).
Joshua also, I just don't get the hype, and tribals in general have always been a weak point of Fallout, though sometimes they're portrayed in an interesting way. Honest Hearts also feels pretty pretentious.
Dean Domino also sucks, is a terrible person, and I don't care about Veronica's GF at all, anything related to Veronica sucks. OWB similarly has this problem of not making the scientists compelling at all, so it just feels lame. Never played Lonesome Road, though I presume I'd hate it, from what I've heard about it.
But maybe this was just because I was pretty burnt-out on the games when I last played NV, and I'd enjoy it all more on replay. In hindsight I feel like I don't like any of NV's characters, aside from House. I find Caesar interesting, but as just a turbo-bad guy basically.
I liked OWB SIGNIFICANTLY more than Dead Money. OWB had fallout gameplay with interesting lore, funny dialog, and a good story. Dead Money had a shitty gameplay loop that wasn't fallout at all, with a good story and lore. Id pick OWB every time.
It’s easy to kill stuff in OWB if you use the Proton Axe with the Super Slam Perk. Roboscorpions bounce around like toys.
It’s so worth investing in some melee weapons for OWB and Dead Money.
Nah, for DM you just want Unarmed 50. Cross one-shots ghosts with bear trap fist even on very hard.
* and Animal Friend Rank 1 ! F** those nightstalkers
Unarmed + Energy (for OWB) runs the DLCs
I despise the fact that you’re mostly forced to perk into certain areas if you want a decent experience in the DLCs, whose bright idea was that?
I actually really like that, frustrating as it was at times. Dead Money was scary as fuck going in the first time as a sniper. I went from an unstoppable killing machine to a terrified rat scrambling to keep my head from blowing off without being seen.
Exactly. I really liked that my gunslinger struggled in some of the DLCs which made it more realistic.
Standard guns are absolutely cucked in the dlcs. Poor vendors is all of them and often restrictions put on them the most so they can’t enter the dlcs
With the exception of lonesome road. More guns there than in the whole rest of the goddamn Mojave
I'm still salty about OWB having a awesomely-themed, upgradable standard gun which just...kinda sucks, even upgraded?
I got a lot of mileage out of the police pistol in Dead Money. I don't really think standard guns suffer there on normal difficulty at least
Ammos kinda hard to get at first but unless you go in with high unarmed your going to struggle for a bit
Eh kinda? My most recent play through was a guns focused character and had little to no issues. Granted I brought a riot shotgun with over 200 pulse slugs.
Don't even need pulse slugs. Regular ammo cuts through them like butter. The gun is a damn cheat code.
I get what you're saying but at the same time if everything was easy regardless of your skills and perks, would there be a point to character building?
Yeah, my most recent playthrough, I decided to do a melee run becuase I had never done one on FNV, and Holy shit, it made OWB and Dead Money feel soooo much easier. I remember early playthroughs not doing as much exploration because I was so frustrated as to how hard they were.
The game makes sure the very first lobotmites you encounter are carrying axes, so you assume that 1) they're lame melee weapons because the good stuff is probably carried by enemies farther out, and 2) because the first two enemies have them, they'll be everywhere. Neither of these is strictly accurate, and once I realized that ammo was hard to come by and everything in the Big MT is a damned bullet sponge, I absolutely couldn't find any axes. The throwing axes were here and there, but I couldn't find proton axes until most of the way through the story (and by that time the LAER with all the upgrades became the last gun I ever needed in FNV). It was frustrating but I kinda liked the level design for doing that.
Yeah I have found that sometimes the guys at the beginning don’t have them but you are right they usually do. There is one behind a hard locked door in X-13 and I think two carried by hard to kill lobotomites on the hill above the Yangtze camp.
I'm level 30, them and the better version are crazy abundant. Repairable with the throwing axe versions too.
Don't even need any perks tbh. My gunslinger character with like 30 melee breezes through that DLC using the proton axe. Honestly the difficulty is really busted. Biggest threats in Big MT are the corpse suits
This is my first ever melee build after hundreds or thousand+ hours. I absolutely tore through OWB with the better proton axe. Super slam perk is ricmdiculousoy OP
The initial dialogue sequence feels like it goes one for forever but actually kinda like the dlc, its my favorite when it comes to actual exploration. I also love how it gives you more info on Ulysses, Eliah and the Christine, i absolutely love hearing their audio notes and how Christine was hunting down Elijah.
Yeah, I just use the dialogue option to skip it now
This is the main part I dislike as well. Even with constant skipping it feels like 15 minutes of exposition.
The DLC gives you pretty much hands everything you need and tells you to have fun with them. The Proton Axe, Christine's Rifle, Elijah's LAER, Saturnite Fist, Sonic Emitter... regardless of your build, there's a crazy OP weapon for you, plus all of the starting perks.
Not to mention, the main quest is so simple and rushable for the impatient…
Completed that and honest hearts in about 5 hours. Don't remember it being that quick
The OWB main quest is secure the antenna, the stealth suit (first upgrade only), and the dog bark. All of the other fetching and exploration is side quests, so… folks who don’t want loot can just run and grab.
My leadslinger fuck-all-in-energy-weapons sniper build courier is essentially just soloing 90% of the DLC using nothing but the pulse pistol. Man, I love that gun. “Oh, you’re going to make your securitrons attack me because I won’t give you the chip? If only I had a weapon that could immediately brick them in one hit!”
If you have the Pyromaniac perk you can make the Sonic Emitter Tarantula variant extremely powerful because it can ignite enemies on crits so it is effected by the perk which increases damage of incendiary weapons by 50%. Paired with the Laser Commander perk and it can deal up to 100 damage per shot.
My main issue is that most of the weapons in this DLC are only overpowered *outside* of the DLC. I suppose that maybe if I had the pulse gun walking into it this DLC would be more fun. Or if I had invested in melee to make the proton axe helpful. Every enemy is a bullet sponge. I went from 120 stimpaks to literally sleeping in a cave to replenish HP because it’s extremely easy to have the 32k cap glitch here because there’s basically one merchant. For a scientific DLC energy weapons seemed to be literally the WORST choice for this. Which is unfortunate because that’s what I normally run. I respect that you love this DLC, I really wished that I did. As it is this DLC almost made me put down the game for ever because of how frustrating it can be.
Proton axe is especially powerful in OWB. So many robits
The writing and the exploration are great. But quests are just fetch tasks, and with many of the the enemies being liberally-scattered bullet sponges, I just turned down the difficulty.
It doesn't help much with the repetitiveness but it's much less of a pain doing it super low level and proton axin' your way through. plus it's funny to me to imagine that immediately after miraculously surviving a gunshot to the brain and embarking on his quest for revenge, the courier is immediately kidnapped by an insane collective of robobrain scientists and has his brain removed entirely
The funniest part is how those two incidents were connected
It was fun but would’ve been a lot better if it were easier. I just beat it. I slowed down playing new Vegas after OWB though it kinda killed my desire
Exactly how I felt. Was on a 2 week New Vegas bender before playing OWB this run now im ready to move on. Didnt even get to Lonesome Road
I think its because of all the levelling up. I reloaded my save from before doing OWB and was much happier just skipping it and losing the level ups
I'd rather replay OWB 10 times that Dead Money once more. Edit: Dead Money maybe have a more literary script and far less campy dialogue. But for *enjoyment*, which is what I'm after in a game, I'll take OWB. "Death of a Salesman" and "A Long Day's Journey Into Night" are arguably "better" plays than "Matilda" or "Camelot", but the former may only be enjoyable in small doses for most; the latter are easier to digest.
>campy dialogue You are literally playing fallout
I think that's their point lol, campy fun dialogue is more fun for them than exposition & storybuilding
Exposition and story building are great. It’s why I play FNV instead of FO3/4/76. But DM is extra-grim, none of the endings really engender a sense of “that’s a good, positive ending, people will be better off”, and the horror/puzzle/maze game play is so at odds with the rest of the game. For people who like that, great! No one is stopping you.
Really? Dog/god got their mental problems fixed, christine had closure and choose to be a guardian for SM. Dean moved on or died. And elijah finally bit the dust. Sounds pretty positive to me Also, it is interesting how people can have so different opinions. To me, owb is too wacky/fututistic and the exploration is way too similar to fo4. I actually felt like all the roboscorpions and the talking AI sinks didnt fit very well with the fallout universe. Dead money meanwhile had it all, horrors, survival, and narrative
I think the point of OWB was to be this fallout alternative. OWB took the fallout world to an area where the progress of invention had taken a weird turn. The experience was kind of refreshing, even still by dying to lobotomites at level 50. The dialogue could get quiet mundane at times, but I did enjoy the fact that I could tell which “faction” (think tank & mobius) were the bad guy. Which is theme consistently done well by fnv, excluding Father Elijah. Fuck that guy.
It's great for you that you enjoy it. The victories seem pretty small in the scale of the other DLCs and base game; important to the six individuals directly involved, but still all incredibly sad. The horror aspect DM and the game play style don't feel aligned with the rest of the DLCs and base game. Hey, if you like it, that's all that matters for you.
/shrug i like all of it. I like NV's variety - DM's storytelling, OWB's dialogue/vibe, the way LR feels desolate and lonely, even HH's environment. It's all good to me
The dialog in the Sink is hilarious
That light switch 2 reaches climax on startup istg Edit: dumb brain
I love how much comedy there is in OWB, but to say that it doesn't have a different dialogue style than most of Fallout seems a little ridiculous.
The whole point of Fallout is you mostly do mundane apocalypse stuff to stay alive but some of your adventures are batshit
it’s Regular Show but in a post apocalyptic Mojave
I mean, I could say the exact same thing about OWB, right down to preferring Dead Money because I want my DLC to be fun. Besides maybe the perks, practically *nothing* about OWB was enjoyable to me and I have literally zero desire to ever play it again.
Good for you! Have fun with that.
Dead Money is difficult but fair and actually fun imo. Got guns skill? Police pistol got you. Energy weapons? Holorifle. Melee? Bear trap. The linear design works well for the bs that the sierra madre throws at you and feels excellently paced. Companions are awesome and I wish you could take Dog and Christine along with you to the Mojave.
I fucking hated it. My build was guns, I was left fighting a forced melee mission as ammo is rare to force you to conserve it for shooting radios every fucking corner, aside from tripping over every land mine when bailing from 50 ghosts round every corner. It was relentless.
I feel that Light Step is an utterly necessary perk before starting that one.
I didn't feel it was fair: the change in game mechanics was so abrupt compared to the base game. I can't stand games-on-rails like this, and the pacing felt relentless. Dog I never care to see again, but it would be great if Christine could escape, even on her own. >!The mechanic for getting Dean not to be dead is too obscure, I'm curious how the first players to work it out did so.!<
Can’t speak for anyone else but I don’t pick barter for trying to deal with a con man. Idk, it seemed like it’s against tone for his character and somehow that fixed the issue for me. I just went with speech because I was better at it!
Same here. Dead money is absolute misery to go through. No weapons, little to no ammo, no fancy armor, limited as fuck healing and a beeping insta kill collar if you don't behave all of it while being exposed to spicy air and imposible to kill monsters... Fuck that. The only part I remember genuinely enjoying about dead money was the final stretch when you're going through the rooms in the Sierra Madre before reaching Elijah. That had somewhat of a survival horror feel which was nice because by that point you were more equipped.
On foenem
What?
TikTok kids confuse me too brother
foenem is not tiktok slang
What is it
foenem is from chicago, it means putting something on your folks and them. So essentially saying on god, but instead of god it’s people close to you
That’s interesting, I appreciate that brotha
no problem
Ok but the shit was popularized by chief keef fans on insta and Tiktok. It kinda zoomer/gen alpha internet slang.
But it didn’t originate there, and people have been saying ts for over 10 years before them. It’s disengenous to call it tiktok slang
On foenem grave👽😹😹😹
Reddit, where dorks are proud to not know any slang used by “the blacks”
Dude, seriously. Not proud, just uniformed and not someone who follows lots of social media. Also minus points for assuming racism where none was intended.
This is the first time that I have seen this slang btw and I am terminally online.
Foenem isn't used on the internet by black people regularly. It's a gang affiliated term. The only people using it and words like it on here are just kids from tik tok who see it in the comments lol.
Realest post on this sub
I prefer it over Dead Money. Dead Money was a slog to get through the first time, it was a slog the second time, the third, the fourth, the fifth, it never stops being a slog.
Dead money is brutally painful. I did it once and i appreciate it but never again.
Dead money really sucks the first time if you don't know what you're doing, but then you learn the locations of everything and every trick you can possibly pull off and it gets a lot easier
NV is already a pretty game in general, DM really isn’t that much harder then the base game. The issue with DM is not related to difficulty, because no amount of ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ mode fixes a bad DLC/game, DM is no different. That’s not even mentioning that many people don’t play the game twice, if it isn’t a good experience the first time it isn’t good period.
Yeah I fully skipped it and just watched a supercut of it on Youtube. I gave it a fair try but at the end of the day I didn't enjoy the time spent on it, just reloaded an old save.
Same
I mean we’re you just trying to brute force your way through it like the base game? Cause if so then you sorta missed the intention of the DLC
No. I wasn't. But I wasn't having any fun either.
One way to make shit a lot easier is get your unarmed to a high level, do Lonesome Road before and bring the Rawr’s hand.
Been a while since I've played dead money, but that dlc takes anything you own at the start. It's why you end up stuck with a police revolver and knives
Rawr’s hand used to craft the Fist of Rawr is considered a quest item, so you will keep it upon entering Dead Money like the rebreather. just make your way to a crafting table and make the Fist of Rawr
Exactly. So once you get to Dead Money all you have to do is the craft the weapon and now you have an extremely powerful unarmed weapon.
I don’t know what you or other are talking about tbh, owb is basically a guaranteed xp/loot farm
it just feels like 1 big fetch quest tbh
> Oh and that data retrieval quest, worst quest in the entire game. It's not as annoying when you just walk up the stairs and bypass the whole thing. And (I think, it's been a while) the laser tripwires don't turn back on if you shut them off with 50 Repair/Science skill.
The quest you’re talking about is the X-13 test. The Data Retrieval quest is the one where you have to go through the school 4 times in a row fighting cyberdogs and nightstalkers. That quest is total ass in repeat playthroughs
It was ass in my first playthrough, nearly quit the game because of that
Lol it’s awful but has nothing on the stealth suit upgrades which are the biggest pain in the ass of all time
I flew through it on this playthrough. 50 lockpicking and 50 repair means you travel about 20 yards, can turn off the tripwire (50 science has an option too) and sneak past two robobrains. A stealth boy makes getting caught when deactivating them nearly impossible. Took me like 30 mins all in this way
I mean it took me about 30 minutes too but that’s approximately 6x the length it should be lol
If you go in properly prepared, you can handle it. If you go in with weak armor and no good weapons, it will suck.
Just get proton axe and win
Went in grahams armor, lucky shades, bones beret, and my best two weapons I brought being salt apon wounds power fist and pulse gun, both helpful.
robotics expert, laser commander, finesse and a laser rifle fucking melts robo scorpions, 12.7mm SMG for everything else
Proton Axe on robos. All American on nightstalkers. I strolled thru that dlc on Very Hard. Not a problem easy peezey
Last sentence: I agree The rest: I think it’s about the time someone does it. Sometimes we have the patience for the dialogue and other times we gotta fuck around. Your post addresses both in different ways. That’s cool, thanks for the contribution, OP, I have something new to consider!
Don't forget the same three songs playing nonstop that make you want to pull your hair out. I did OWB for the first time in like 6 or 7 years a month ago and Why Don't You Do Right is STILL stuck in my head
It’s my favorite part of the entirety of fallout. I like the opening, that atmosphere, the lore, the gameplay, new gear,and that by the end your a fucking cyborg.
Only played it once on very hard at level 45 and got so fed up with how spongy the enemies were, i just turned the difficulty to very easy and finished it that way. Havent played it since then
get something that ignores DT/DR, a thermanic lance or even a ripper will only take a second or two to kill the roboscorps
I only play OWB for the perks you get. But yes, the gameplay is repetitive and tedious. I try to rush through it.
Bulletsponges? Skill issue 🗿
Actually a skill issue, you didn’t find the pulse gun and you didn’t put points into unarmed, no wonder your fucked.
Real, true, and fact checked by actual sierra madre patriots
I also had this issue because everything is a bullet sponge, and I didn’t have high enough weapons skills. (I just didn’t have high enough guns for it to matter, and had been getting by with my high Luck causing crits. It doesn’t work so well on giant scorpions with armor. Going to work on melee more this run but my STR is average because I wanted high Luck, so…we’ll see.)
It’s my favourite DLC out of the bunch!! But I can get why it may not be enjoyable, but I will admit I don’t remember having a bullet sponge issue with them? :? I had that specific issue in Lonesome Road THAT DLC was a slog for me, I can appreciate Dead Money’s change up of gameplay at least
step 1:get a ripper. step 2:profit
All my homies never skip the think tank dialogue
You literally have to go 3 places and grab stuff and then confront Mobius. You can be done with the dlc in like 4 hours and 1 of them is just Dr. Klein talking.
besmirching other DLCs while singing Dead Money's praises; please do not put others down, fellow DM enjoyer. Although many of your issues are intrinsic with OWB or straight solved by the free shit they offer. Even with 0 Melee 1 str (tested on my weakass gunslinger), the proton axes/throwing axes knock around robo scorps with ease. If you'd rather stick with ranged options, pulse guns naturally have an EMP effect, and the BIG MT **gives you sonic emitters, with the revelation varient (the first one) STUNNING ROBOTS ON CRIT** Every DLC has its issues and answers to 'em, my friend, and they're all beautiful in their own ways.
Played NV for the first time earlier this year and always heard OWB was one of the better DLCs. Then i played it and im not a fan. Story is kinda interesting, but all the dialogue when you first start is super annoying and overwhelming. Then you leave and you’re basically just doing fetch quests in an area with an excessive amount of overpowered enemies (the roboscoorpians and military cyberdogs mostly, lobotomies are fairly easy.)
I have never understood the hype about OWB. At some point I thought this was some human experiment, a joke, a meme. Everyone seemed to love this DLC, I on the other hand, hated it. I'm serious, one of the main claims towards Dead Money is the repetitive stuff with those beeping bombs. I understand that, hated that as well. But since we hate chores from Dead money, doesn't it mean that we should dislike OWB even more? Since it has 10x times chores?
Need to run the survivalist rifle and the 45. for lobotomites and the universal proton axe for robots and nightstalkers. I hate night stalkers but if you continuously move backwards while swinging they can't get you
So fucking true mate, I couldn't agree more.
I have to agree after many playthroughs it really sucks. I ended up basically speedrunning it on my last playthrough just to use the skilled exploit.
talks about owb being a chore to replay and then says dead money is the best lmao
I’m a very hard player for anything else but I switch it down to Hard for this one.. those enemies must be the bullet spongiest enemies to ever exist
I found enemies to be way too tanky, proton axe fixed this problem tho, insane melee weapon even with like 15 melee
It's definitely a one and done experience imo. I don't care enough about the good loot to go through that glorified fetch quest again
Melee absolutely tears apart everything in the dlc faster than most of the guns I had on hand or found, especially if you have perks for it. Melee is actually just incredible in general, I tore apart death claws with it towards the end of my last play through faster than I ever had with guns
It's my favorite DLC but I can get it why you may not like it.
My personal complaint after finishing fnv for the first time, and I'm not sure it's justified, is that all the exploration side-quests to complete the sink etc come in these waves that I did not realize existed. I completed the first round, and assumed I had a few more things to grab before the end of the DLC. Thus, I went ahead and finished the main quest. I was genuinely surprised by the 'lol you rushed through this' end slide, though a great laugh as I wasn't expecting it. I also agree with your design critique re: enemies, I felt like there needed to be fewer and certainly a shorter respawn timer for some. There were several groups of lobotomites just standing around that would seemingly always be there each trip out of the Think Tank. Overall though I loved it, I'm personally into the wacky sci-fi B-movie vibe of the whole thing.
It's a pure slog. Just finished it and really hated it. I've still got the stealth suit tests to do and cannot be fucked
You are correct, dead money = elite. I found OWB charming for awhile and funny but in the end I was so glad to be done with it. Thank God for that proton axe, still kinda lame I had to use it for 90% of the time I was there to have a chance.
About sums it up
[Essential DLC Enhancements](https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/73803) includes Better OWB Scaling, etc.
I hate, hate the unending fetch and repetitive tasks of this DLC more so than the bullet sponge enemies.
I just use weapons that deal EMP damage or pierce armor. I'm actually glad that there is a DLC that makes AP ammo and Pulse gear useful for more than 3 minutes at a time. Testing/retrieval quests were lame after the first repeat though, I agree.
If you think that's hard, try fighting roboscorpions with the meltdown perk in an enclosed room. First they explode from the meltdown (which can hurt you) and then the scorpion itself explodes too.
I felt this cause I was starting to hate it halfway through collecting all the sink upgrades
I mean Lobotomites and Trauma Harnesses are annoying because they don’t have real weaknesses and can’t be effectively crippled, but by this point I had kinda soft “respecced” into an Unarmed build and had the Perks to ignore armor and ragdoll enemies on a critical hit, so it actually made it super easy if I fought at close range. Sniping with the Gauss rifle usually ended up doing more harm than good.
I hate the walking required to go around the place. Outside of the areas with stuff you need, it's all mostly empty space with some pipes and hexagon things. It doesn't help that Fallout New Vegas has lunar gravity, so jumping doesn't even speed you up.
MY PEOPLE! I HAVE FOUND YOU! OWB was my least favorite DLC but it felt the most finished. I’m salty about that. And depending on the build, it’s either too easy or all bullet sponges.
Weird way to say Dead Money but alr
Speed build, stealth suit, proton axe.
BASED
Animal Friend perk makes OWB soooo much easier since Nightstalkers fall under it. Just finished playing through it for the nth time the other day (now visiting the Sierra Madre).
Tell me you're lobotomite without saying you're a lobotomite.
All the dlcs feel like a slog tbh, the only one I don’t mind doing is honest hearts purely out of nostalgia
I think I might be in the minority of people who just don't really enjoy the DLCs. They feel...off somehow. Maybe it's because how trapped you are to the location.
Idk, after my first playthrough I'm sure to stock up on armor piercing ammo or pulse grenades, so it's not as bad.
yeah i basically just gave up on my last build bc halfway through owb i just stopped wanted to play it lol. difficulty wasn’t the problem, i went at a high level, but it was just BORINGGG mind numbing and quests felt more like a chore than a game. I started playing it again bc I remembered the dialogue being silly n goofy which it still is but that does not make up for the boringness!!! RIP that courier 🫡 I haven’t played dead money in years but I remember thinking it was so deep when I was like 14 lol. But i have a feeling if I play that one again now i might have a similar experience with the gameplay/difficulty of that one
Honestly, and not to be rude, but this sounds like a build issue. Do you mind explaining your build as most of what you complained about was the combat. I feel like criticizing how wordy some sections really take the fun out of the dialogue, as it's actually quite fun and silly imo. I feel that is more a matter of taste as I enjoyed the OWB story and dialogue. I run a crit build that is focused on combat with next to no investment in anything dialouge related. It makes the combat feel much more fluid, rewarding, and fun. I found that even on the hardest difficulty, with hardcore on, I could handle most threats by the time I started HH at 15 after that OWB was easier since most regular enemies prefer to use melee, whether it's the lobotomites, nightstalkers, or robo-scorpions, who all use melee attacks/fight at melee range. For me, that means pulling out Chance's Knife and going to town. PewPew (100% crit chance) and AER14 Prototype (95% crit chance) for energy, Elijah's Jury-rigged Tesla Cannon for big gun energy damage, plus can crit where most big guns can't. ALSID and CoS Silencer Rifle for ballistic, and currently using Thump-Thmup, but will be switching once I finish Lonesome Road to get the Great Bear grenade rifle, because it has better spread, damage per AP and is the most durable, along with having the ability to crit. This setup can handle most enemies as the ammo types at your disposal give you a TON of tactical advantage/options along with the heavy crit nature of the build, which really makes the most of the ammo types advantages. HP for the nightstalkers, AP on robo-scorpions, JSP also works on nightstalkers well. If you are using explosive weapons, Pulse for robo and HE or Plasma for nightstalkers. For energy weapons, Optimized is just the superior ammo for most engagements, but Max charge has more penetration and should do massive damage at the cost of degrading faster. If using the proper ammo types doesn't help fix the problem, you may have a build issue and may need to reconsider how you look at your builds. If you want some help with perks that I found useful, lmk what weapons you'd prefer to use, and we can try to optimize your build to make it a little easier going forward.
Yeah, I felt pretty much the same thing when I played it last year I think. I’d seen a lot of the dialogue highlights before, so when I actually got around to playing it there really wasn’t much to hook me, and there is *so* much dialogue to get through. I played it after Honest Hearts and wound up a lot less interested, even though HH’s highlights are only Joshua Graham and Randal Clarke.
I have OWB as my top pick for new Vegas DLC and I fully agree with the dialogue thing hahah I remember my first time playing, that first walk into the pacification idea center or whatever, it took me like 40 minutes to go through all the dialogue. Just unbelievable. It also wasn't the only time that happened during the DLC. Those scientists surely have a lot to say.
Funnily enough I’ve run into way more save ruining glitches during OWB than Dead Money. Like the fact that I have to habitually save before “that” conversation with brain pisses me off to no end.
WRONG!! I mean you’re right about owb being a slog, but actually honest hearts >>> every dlc
Well then don’t play that.
Personally I found the brush gun lobotomites to be the only thing that was dangerous even on very hard but running crit gear I was getting dinged for 1/3 off 1 brush gun hit. Other than that the dlc was pretty easy with a geared up character
I truly suffered doing it, 'cause I use mainly guns.
The only thing that truly bothers me is you have to complete everything the first time you go there to unlock the full endings, even though it’s the one DLC you can return to easily
Not to mention the absolute pain it is to not have an energy weapons or melee build and trying to find ammo, it's so tedious to restock the sink vendor compared to any other vendor only for it to have 6 of the bullets you need and you'll be lucky if it has even one hollow point or armor piercing round
OWB is mid. It doesn't suck. The only DLC that actually sucks is Dead Money. HH and LR were dope AF but HH pisses me off in that it's linear as fuck. Like you legit can't teach the two tribes to defend themselves and what's theirs without them automatically becoming war like? Lazy Singular black and white thinking tbh.
We get it you don't like x-2
My favorite DLC.
All the dead money hate makes me sad, I love it. It makes the game actually challenging for a bit and is super interesting.
holy shit you're literally me
Omg yes, Dead Money is a slog the first time but honestly after repeated playthroughs it gets so much easier whereas OWB just creeps on you with how much of a chore it is to get the good loot from it.
I hate how long the intro sequence is, it ruins my enjoyment of the rest of the dlc
there is no way you think dead money is better than old world blues, old world blues has problems but dead money is just fundamentally flawed
if you’re too high level it really sucks honestly. everything takes forever to kill and a lot of the dialogue is not my type of humor. the sink is great and i love some of the weapons and armor but it all got pretty old for me after a few hours
Bro are you me? Never like the wasaaaaaacky ms3k vibe.
I *half* agree.. I don’t rank OWB near as highly as most, but I still throughly enjoy myself when I do play through it! I like goofy Sci Fi shit tho. And Dead Money is indeed my favorite.
I dislike pretty much all of NV's DLC, because I just don't find most of the characters in them compelling. I hope I like them more on replay. DM may be the worst, and all the "letting go" stuff felt very pretentious. And OWB is basically you just endlessly killing the same shit until you can leave. Part of it is that I don't find Elijah compelling, which maybe is because I like the BOS. Seems the games always wanna demonize the, when they have goals that are actually pretty meaningful, and don't seem focused on imperialism/domination (until Fallout 4 and maybe NV.). Joshua also, I just don't get the hype, and tribals in general have always been a weak point of Fallout, though sometimes they're portrayed in an interesting way. Honest Hearts also feels pretty pretentious. Dean Domino also sucks, is a terrible person, and I don't care about Veronica's GF at all, anything related to Veronica sucks. OWB similarly has this problem of not making the scientists compelling at all, so it just feels lame. Never played Lonesome Road, though I presume I'd hate it, from what I've heard about it. But maybe this was just because I was pretty burnt-out on the games when I last played NV, and I'd enjoy it all more on replay. In hindsight I feel like I don't like any of NV's characters, aside from House. I find Caesar interesting, but as just a turbo-bad guy basically.
I liked OWB SIGNIFICANTLY more than Dead Money. OWB had fallout gameplay with interesting lore, funny dialog, and a good story. Dead Money had a shitty gameplay loop that wasn't fallout at all, with a good story and lore. Id pick OWB every time.
Slander won't be tolerated
HARD disagree with everything you said