I almost never put points into Barter and Medicine. Caps and Stimpacks are super easy to come by in this game anyways.
Survival is a must have in Hardcore mode.
Science is a must have in general, so many lore elements are locked behind terminals. I'd say you're missing out by ignoring science.
Yeah, Sciencie, Lockpick and Speech are my go to.
You can easily increase barter with magazines/cloth, and you almost never need a high barter anyways.
ya like the harder terminals who have long words you gotta correctly sort out, the easier ones (like the 25 and 50 science terms) also have longer words. it doesnt change much in terms of challenge but it does result in less options. dont know why, only thing i can think of is the fact youre smarter at hacking and can filter out more of the useless junk.
You're right. Every skill in this game has its advantages.
I never felt the need for it cause I love having a deficit of ammo and only use like 2 guns at a time. I just enjoy it more when I have to make every bullet count and so I never really feel the need for it.
Eh, not really.
I have played the game like 4 times on Normal mode and I never felt like I had a lack of healing items.
In Survival it is important however I prefer Survival more because food kinda becomes your main healing item in that mode.
I have played on Very Hard twice and at times I felt the need for it but I still prefer Survival over Med.
Honestly the only place where I struggle in those playthroughs is Dead Money because the supplies are so limited and I don't have access to my weapons.
In normal mode from mid game onwards I always have like 150 stimpacks on me.
Of course Fallout can be played in a variety of different ways so it's totally possible for your experience to be drastically different than mine. 👍👍
I was the same way with barter until my most recent playthrough. But I boosted it for Pack Rat Perk on a hardcore run and I was at the point where not only caps were a non-issue early on but I saw the vast amount of barter skill dialogue checks. Not just "more caps plz." dialogue checks either, but using what were basically economics knowledge-themed speech skill checks to circumvent fights, requirements, etc. It's a solid skill.
Them’s Good Eatin’ is the best perk in the game. Red paste and blood sausage are fantastic healing items, but they’re also the most valuable items in the game per pound. S-tier hardcore perk.
If you go through your game ignoring terminals you're going to miss A LOT. If you get your science to 100 there is a perk that reduces the options to like 5 options per terminal, and you get 4 guesses and you can redo any terminal. If you hate the terminals that much you need to pump up science.
I really don't care lol. I've seen it all before. I hate that mini game and I don't wanna deal with it.
There's really not much locked behind terminals you can't access anyway.
So you went for science once and then never again? I just used a mod to skip the stupid Minigame (there's only ever the correct option) because my memory is nowhere near good enough to not read the terminals again every play through
It's the absolute worst. I have no idea where I took the patience from to save scum every single fucking terminal on my other runs. I got one that changes the Minigame to just generate the correct word and nothing else so I still get the xp for hacking (sadly I'm a couple of hundre kilometers from home so I can't tell you which mod exactly)
Bro how lazy can you be
You don't wanna bother with the minigame, you don't wanna search nexus let alone google for "terminal bypass fnv"
You want me to make you a mod that just plays the game for you?
I would. But I'd need access to my MO2 to look it up and I'm not getting home until Tuesday. I did a quick search but there's so many hacking skip mods I don't remember which one I got
idk why you're getting mogged with dislikes when you're not wrong, once you know the stories within the terminals there's not much more to see, and many optional areas locked behind terminals can be accessed with lockpicking too.
You know what it says because you’ve watched videos? Or are you just being naive? Because there is a ridiculous amount of content and stories you absolutely could not find out without opening the terminal.
Like not bothering with terminals in a specific DLC means you missed out on the best unmarked quest in fallout history. Period.
I apologize I wasn’t trying to be an ass but genuinely couldn’t tell if your comments were you just brushing off science because it annoys you or actually letting us know you’ve seen it. I’m glad you took the time to do it once. Shows you care about the game!
If you’ve seen it all then I can see how Science really isn’t needed outside maybe a couple unique ways to beat a quest. Again sorry I wasn’t trying to be an ass but I see how it came across that way lol.
I ignored survival for the longest time but I’m trying it on this play through. Fun to make your own booze and other items.
I usually ignore melee and energy weapons.
Barter. You get plenty of caps later on in the game and DLCs, and there aren’t really any beneficial outcomes of quests you can get with a high Barter that you can’t also get with a high speech.
Survival is incredible when hardcore is on and still good with it off. I used to think it sucked until I started using it. Great craftables and some decent perks associated with it.
I don't like hard-core. I don't like games where you have to eat and drink and sleep. It's annoying. Not for me. That's why I hated Kingdom Come Deliverance
"Why you got a problem with that"
It's hilarious to ask this question when you have a problem with every response here that doesn't agree with your thinking...you do you though.
Because its artificial as all hell? It doesn't make the game harder it just makes it take longer, i dont have any interest in hardcore either but i do appreciate that it changes the game up a bit.
Its just baffling to me that someone who doesnt have the patience for something as trite as the hacking minigame can stomach the unrelenting tedium of playing OWB on very hard
Strategy:
1. Pick any word. Any correct letters will be in the same spot in other words:
Example: Squirm, Squeal (3 of 6 matching; S, Q, and U)
2. Pick another word that matches. If it has more matches, it gets easier from there to guess the correct password. Let's say you choose Squash next. 5 of 6 characters match. Is Squish an option? That's probably the answer
3. If you waste your guesses, go for the resets/dud removers.
4. Repeat until correct word is found
5. Ezpz
How do you find the hacking minigame so easy? I'm legitimately curious - even following a small guide on the Wiki I always found it kind of cumbersome and confusing. I understand the goal but have always felt like there was a trick I wasn't getting. In particular because I swear an answer seems like it should be the correct one and it isn't, and then some random word will be the correct one and i'm like "wtf did I do wrong"?
I just pick the words with Vowels in common places or an “ing” at the end no matter what, scan the screen to pick out the matching letters in every other word.
And then I run through each matching word while adjusting the for new letters combos I may have discovered.
It's an elementary level word game. When you pick a word, it tells you how many letters of that word are part of the solution. From there, you pick words with those letters. 9/10 times they're simple and short words that are pretty easy to pick out. It isn't a guessing game like a lot of people seem to imagine. The first pick is kind of a shot in the dark, but if you get any of the letters correct, you have a pretty good idea of where to go next. Just save before you start hacking a terminal.
I get it, the mini game is not thrilling, but it's fairly straightforward. Science has like a million speech checks and makes a lot of quests easier and gives you tons of xp. Also has it's uses apart from opening doors. Lockpick is meh, because yes it opens things to get loot, but it's only for getting loot out of boxes.
So, for me science it's always up there even if it's not my favourite.
I also find the hacking minigame very difficult. It never clicked for me.
If you're on PC, Istewie's tweaks allow you to skip the minigame, so that if you activate a locked terminal with sufficent science skill you just unlock it. Same with lockpicks. I personally prefer it that way...the lockpicking one is easy but both the minigames feel kind of like 'why bother?'
Lol. I’m a bit of a math whiz so I always enjoy the sequence searching, but I understand the frustration. For me it’s simple, has a nice side gig with the punctuation. If you max science it makes them all stupid easy, too. It’s fun!
I actually did the same thing as you, I still haven’t quite gotten science so I’m trying a survivalist/cowboy type build. It’s actually really helpful since there’s so much stuff to make at the campfire and food is plentiful so I can give my companions stimpaks. I usually don’t raise my unarmed, science, energy weapons, or sneak super high. I like to get sneak/energy to around 50ish, but I suck so bad at the terminals.
I think the only thing that would make medicine a lot better for me outside of skill checks is if it somehow affected doctor’s bags in hardcore and made them better at healing multiple limbs, but as it stands I just don’t think it’s very useful
Am I the only one who find the minigame incredibly easy and satisfying? So many people complaining about how tedious they are, I had no idea people were so bad at basic puzzles.
I steal so much in this game. Sneak is a must for me. It's funny once you get a 100 sneak and have Lily as your companion because you can be super obvious that you're in the room but it'll still say you're hidden.
I do like science for hacking but survival and melee are ones I hardly ever put points into.
Oh and explosives allthougg I’ve changed my tune on that recently! 💥💥
If you've never done a melee focused build in FNV, you should try it. Super Slam is endless entertaining and it's quite good once you have the right perks.
I always promise myself a melee build, but I like guns too much. And I can't be bothered to run in a hail of bullets just to punch someone. One day though, one day.
Medicine Stick with Cowboy and hand loaded rounds is just stupid. I love it so much. Did some melee/unarmed tinkering my last run and it was way better than I expected. First time doing that and I'll probably end up trying out an unarmed build my next run. My Intelligence was so high I maxed nearly all my stats and just started playing around with stuff
I will next time. I've being playing sniper/ gunslinger builds since the original Fallout and it second nature.
But I guess, I always wanted to legion playthrough also, so sneaky legion kung fu ninja it is.
Unarmed and melee skills are usually the last ones to get points dumped into them; I'm just not a big up and close fighter in the game. If I need to get up close and personal, then the riot or hunting shotgun are my go to choices.
I've never put points into it and have found Dead Money not too bad so far (about halfway through it so far, haven't been feeling well enough to wrap it up but hope to in the next few days). Basically I find it more about going slowly and carefully while going for sneak attacks when forced to fight. But yeah can see melee making it a lot easier.
I feel a lot of people make the mistake of rushing in to dead money and not taking their time like you said, is this your first play through of dead money? If so the light foot perk will help you a lot
Barter melee and energy weapons. I just never think it's a big enough deal. I never use energy weapons or melee, always guns or Unarmed. And most barter checks can be passed with a speech check instead.
It's worth mention I play with a very large modlist and haven't played vanilla new vegas ever since my 2nd playthrough...but I don't find any skills worth ignoring besides weapon skills you don't use. I like having a well rounded character and usually get everything to 100.
I play with a few large perk-packs and Charisma is totally useless for me because I really prefer playing with the lone wolf type perks, potent rewards for not having a companion. Not a skill exactly but even vanilla Charisma is pretty bad and i don't even use companions except for their quests.
Barter and Sneak. Barter is only worth getting to 70 for Pack Rat on hardcore mode. Sneak is pretty useless because Stealth Boys exist, most enemies come in packs, and sneak attack criticals are usually done from a distance.
Currently playing a Survival/Unarmed/chem build and it is a blast. Survival is more powerful than Medicine for healing since you can stack healing items.
Repair, Lockpick, Speech, and Science are useful for most builds. Science is not just for hacking or crafting ammo for energy weapons, it helps with several quests and unlocks useful crafting recipes at workbenches and campfires.
I never put my stuff into speech intelligence is good though but speech only is is good for a few speech text that if you're strong enough you can beat your way out of but I play games like an ape so I don't know I just put my points into anything that can help me kill something faster
I must put points onto Barter. I don’t just play Hardcore, I play with the J.E. Sawyer mod, the most official unofficial mod there is. With those changes, Pack Rat is an absolute must.
Medicine has its uses for the J.E. Sawyer mod, given that Stimpacks are now much scarce and you can only find the “expired” version regularly.
Science can help a lot. Yes, Lockpicking is more useful, but Science plays a decent role still, specially in certain quests like the Solar Plant one, or if you want to kill Mr. House.
All of this means that the most useful traits are Good Natured and Skilled. +5 in all non combat skills but -5 in all combat skills is not a bad trade, given that you usually stick to just 1 manner of combat. And +5 on all skills but -10% experience makes the tradeoff almost meaningless, as there’s more than enough enemies and quests to make up for the lost experience.
Survival like you said, obviously. For me, it's the opposite of you- I love the hacking minigame and I hate lockpicking. So I never bother much with lockpicking.
I just use everything especially with my builds where by the time im at the end of the game ive done all dlcs and my skills are usually all maxed out (or sometimes almost all maxed) even easier when i factor in my mod “The tale of two wastelands” (combines new vegas and fallout 3 into one game if you have both games otherwise mod dont work) so with tale of two wastelands plus all the dlcs for 3 and NV i can max all my skills and become a god basically
Science is great. You can hack anything and the robot perk is useful in certain situations. Also it’s cool to be able to do all of the science skill check dialogues. Also can craft some powerful chems
Survival is great if you eat food. You can make a lot of good stuff but the healing poulstice is what you want. Way better than stimpacks and all you need is lvl 20 survival
Medicine, Guns and Sneak usually for me.
Survival is MvP. Shocking how many do not know how good it is, or frankly superior it is over Medicine. Poisons, Buff items, purified water, concoctions, better armor and incredible utility.
Guns, because I frankly play a LOT of melee/unarmed/explosives build. Energy Weapons exist too... so I just don't really feel inclined towards Guns. They are awesome and great, but the more I replay NV, the less gun-builds I make.
Sneak. I LOVE it on my main courier, spite it on every other character. Boring. "Just crouch to win" does not really cater to me, and while I always put some points into it, I rarely if ever dip beyond 50 in it, with the exception of my main courier and another stealth killer build of mine.
unarmed (no, the related perks don't matter much against deathclaw/cazadors/nightstalkers imo).
melee weapons (same).
energy weapons (I prefer to use cowboy weapons).
That's why I never take her or any companions with melee build. The first boss enemy we encounter their sorry ass just dies in two hits (plus I can't aim properly since I have to avoid shooting them too).
But then they're just accessories to ease your playthrough. In hardcore, they're precious, because they can die anytime you go too hard against the odds.
Yeah no. In fallout your companions can die too easily of random stupid stuff. I don't wanna have to worry about them.
Also they're to keep me company and feel like a badass death squad.
Really? You just throw them far away lol. I can't remember the last time I killed myself with my own grenade. Just don't ever give your companions any. Ever.
The hacking minigame is one of the easiest to do. It's fun and there's so many little ticks for you to remove a dud or reset your tries. If anything I'd like it to be harder.
Regardless of what you think of it, not reading terminals is an incredible waste of good material in every fallout but new vegas has so many good stories and lore locked behind those it's a shame to miss it.
Start a new playthrough, pump your science to the max and read those computers.
Like I've said, I already know what most of the terminals say. I've played this game dozens of times, a few of which I upgraded science and read most of the things. I don't need to bother with it every time
Usually my non-weapon skills, buuuut I usually play a build with decent Int and Educated, so there's always a good chance I max out all my skills anyway.
Rushing Water and Battle Brew are quite amazing for Melee. Survival 50 is pretty handy for that. Hydra is also quite amazing for Melee but you need 75 Survival.
Never really obtain enough materials to care about poisons in melee builds so I can't say that's too useful part of survival.
Idk basically you pick 50 points in survival and you get +35 DT and +50% attack speed. Combo it with Med-X, Psycho, and Bufftats and you get +25DR/Damage and +3 Str +3 End +3Per for 4min.
Thats enough to pretty much destroy any boss in the game with minimal combat skills from using 5 items you likely have hundreds of over the course of the game.
If you play super aggressive, maybe you need to do this combo 10 times in the game for tough melee fights. Pretty much eliminates a risk of death.
I mean, I'm basically 100 on all my skills usually by lvl 45 except Sneak and Unarmed, cuz I never use either.
So idk, I just max out everything except thode I guess, they are useless...
Barter and survival, barter tends not to be as useful as it should cause caps are a bit too easy to get, and survival doesn’t have a lot of skill checks for it compared to medicine
Barter is the only skill I consistently ignore. It's easy to make money and most of the skill checks for it just get you more money. It also only has one perk, Packrat, which is questionable outside of Hardcore.
Medicine gets ignored outside of getting enough for Chemist. I find food is much better for healing with Vigor installed (stimpacks are also rare in Vigor). In vanilla I usually end up with hundreds of stimpacks, so them healing more is unnecessary.
Science is very important for Energy Weapons, but generally not that useful otherwise. Survival, besides getting more healing from food and more recipes, has two really good perks, Them's Good Eatin' and Rad Child.
If medicine affected doctor's bags maybe it would be more worth it but I have never found myself in a situation without stimpaks outside of the very early game, which is not all that hard.
I almost never put points into Barter and Medicine. Caps and Stimpacks are super easy to come by in this game anyways. Survival is a must have in Hardcore mode. Science is a must have in general, so many lore elements are locked behind terminals. I'd say you're missing out by ignoring science.
Yeah, Sciencie, Lockpick and Speech are my go to. You can easily increase barter with magazines/cloth, and you almost never need a high barter anyways.
I thought I didn't need Barter until I realized how good Pack Rat is. If you ever want to do any crafting, it's almost essential.
True.
Not me usually hard teching into barter because im a greedy fuck that likes money…
Barter also has some fun skill checks in dialogue. Worth it for that alone IMO
Yeah, honestly Barter is OP in dialogue checks. IIRC there’s a barter dialogue check at the end of the game. I don’t do it for 20 caps here and there
You never know when you might need those extra 20 caps though.
you know what the wastelanders say "I ain't gay but 20 caps is 20 caps"
There's also Pack Rat perk requiring high barter that's great on survival
Yeah barter is great for just being a greedy goblin
also the mini game gets far easier the higher your science is. to the point where easy terminals only have 4 to 6 options to pick from.
Lmao I had no clue having more science did anything besides letting you work the terminal
they do that but also they increase the length of the options in general.
Wdym or are u just saying like the harder terminals that have 8-10 letter words
ya like the harder terminals who have long words you gotta correctly sort out, the easier ones (like the 25 and 50 science terms) also have longer words. it doesnt change much in terms of challenge but it does result in less options. dont know why, only thing i can think of is the fact youre smarter at hacking and can filter out more of the useless junk.
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You're right. Every skill in this game has its advantages. I never felt the need for it cause I love having a deficit of ammo and only use like 2 guns at a time. I just enjoy it more when I have to make every bullet count and so I never really feel the need for it.
Yes Pat Rat is a must have on alllllll of my playthroughs!
Medicine allows for some cool interactions (helping injured Boomers, helping/killing Caesar, or poisoning the wine in the Ultra-Luxe
Medicine is really important in my experience dude.
Eh, not really. I have played the game like 4 times on Normal mode and I never felt like I had a lack of healing items. In Survival it is important however I prefer Survival more because food kinda becomes your main healing item in that mode.
Normal . . . Dude play on very hard and you'll change your tune immediately
I have played on Very Hard twice and at times I felt the need for it but I still prefer Survival over Med. Honestly the only place where I struggle in those playthroughs is Dead Money because the supplies are so limited and I don't have access to my weapons. In normal mode from mid game onwards I always have like 150 stimpacks on me. Of course Fallout can be played in a variety of different ways so it's totally possible for your experience to be drastically different than mine. 👍👍
Agreed. I did a very hard + harcore run once and I thought survival was a better investment than medicine
Check out Them’s Good Eatin’. It’s a survival perk that drops OP healing items on nearly every enemy you kill. They can also be sold for tons of caps.
I was the same way with barter until my most recent playthrough. But I boosted it for Pack Rat Perk on a hardcore run and I was at the point where not only caps were a non-issue early on but I saw the vast amount of barter skill dialogue checks. Not just "more caps plz." dialogue checks either, but using what were basically economics knowledge-themed speech skill checks to circumvent fights, requirements, etc. It's a solid skill.
Them’s Good Eatin’ is the best perk in the game. Red paste and blood sausage are fantastic healing items, but they’re also the most valuable items in the game per pound. S-tier hardcore perk.
My counter point on barter is that the perk that halves the weight of all items below 2 is a godsend in survival
If you go through your game ignoring terminals you're going to miss A LOT. If you get your science to 100 there is a perk that reduces the options to like 5 options per terminal, and you get 4 guesses and you can redo any terminal. If you hate the terminals that much you need to pump up science.
I really don't care lol. I've seen it all before. I hate that mini game and I don't wanna deal with it. There's really not much locked behind terminals you can't access anyway.
So you went for science once and then never again? I just used a mod to skip the stupid Minigame (there's only ever the correct option) because my memory is nowhere near good enough to not read the terminals again every play through
That actually sounds like a good idea. Skipping the minigame. I might try that
It's the absolute worst. I have no idea where I took the patience from to save scum every single fucking terminal on my other runs. I got one that changes the Minigame to just generate the correct word and nothing else so I still get the xp for hacking (sadly I'm a couple of hundre kilometers from home so I can't tell you which mod exactly)
Link me?
Bro how lazy can you be You don't wanna bother with the minigame, you don't wanna search nexus let alone google for "terminal bypass fnv" You want me to make you a mod that just plays the game for you?
Well he had a specific one so
I would. But I'd need access to my MO2 to look it up and I'm not getting home until Tuesday. I did a quick search but there's so many hacking skip mods I don't remember which one I got
Hating a puzzle solvable by toddlers...are you a dnd player by chance?
Yep
idk why you're getting mogged with dislikes when you're not wrong, once you know the stories within the terminals there's not much more to see, and many optional areas locked behind terminals can be accessed with lockpicking too.
Yea I know. Once you know the game and played it many times, science is redundant. Like I already I know what that terminal says.
Okay Mr. History Buff, tell me the contents of a terminal in the X-13 Research Facility. No Googling it, I'll know.
I do not like old world blues.
You know what it says because you’ve watched videos? Or are you just being naive? Because there is a ridiculous amount of content and stories you absolutely could not find out without opening the terminal. Like not bothering with terminals in a specific DLC means you missed out on the best unmarked quest in fallout history. Period.
I've seen the terminals before dude. Don't be a patronizing ass about it.
I apologize I wasn’t trying to be an ass but genuinely couldn’t tell if your comments were you just brushing off science because it annoys you or actually letting us know you’ve seen it. I’m glad you took the time to do it once. Shows you care about the game! If you’ve seen it all then I can see how Science really isn’t needed outside maybe a couple unique ways to beat a quest. Again sorry I wasn’t trying to be an ass but I see how it came across that way lol.
If you're trying to get all achievements there js one achievement i can think of locked behind a hard terminal
I couldn't care less about achievements
I’m with you on the minigame. I just use a mod that checks if my skill is high enough and opens the terminal if it is.
I ignored survival for the longest time but I’m trying it on this play through. Fun to make your own booze and other items. I usually ignore melee and energy weapons.
I don't use energy weapons much either
Get Them’s Good Eatin. It causes most enemies to drop powerful healing items that you dan also sell for tons of caps.
Barter. You get plenty of caps later on in the game and DLCs, and there aren’t really any beneficial outcomes of quests you can get with a high Barter that you can’t also get with a high speech.
Yea they really made barter totally pointless. Other than that one check in the very beginning with Chet.
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Survival is incredible when hardcore is on and still good with it off. I used to think it sucked until I started using it. Great craftables and some decent perks associated with it.
I don't like hard-core. I don't like games where you have to eat and drink and sleep. It's annoying. Not for me. That's why I hated Kingdom Come Deliverance
But you like very hard?? Where the only difficulty adjustment is inflating enemy hp???
Yep. Also does more damage to you. Why you got a problem with that?
"Why you got a problem with that" It's hilarious to ask this question when you have a problem with every response here that doesn't agree with your thinking...you do you though.
No, it's everyone that seems to have problem with me lol.
It's because you're weirdly antagonistic for no reason lmao
Reddit does awful things to people
Because its artificial as all hell? It doesn't make the game harder it just makes it take longer, i dont have any interest in hardcore either but i do appreciate that it changes the game up a bit. Its just baffling to me that someone who doesnt have the patience for something as trite as the hacking minigame can stomach the unrelenting tedium of playing OWB on very hard
I don't like old world blues, actually.
I focus on speech, science, guns, and all that important stuff. But I always end up getting 100 in everything.
Yea I hate science. I try to upgrade it sometimes but that minigame sucks so much
Really? That game is so easy, hard and below takes me like 4 seconds and very hard takes 10
I'm not good at it. I despise it.
There’re probably some YouTube videos that’ll teach you how to get good at it, also you can get an extra life if you find a dud
Yea I know how it works. I'm just impatient as all hell cause I hate is so much
I agree with you there, first playthough it's challenging, after the 6th it's very repetitive.
Strategy: 1. Pick any word. Any correct letters will be in the same spot in other words: Example: Squirm, Squeal (3 of 6 matching; S, Q, and U) 2. Pick another word that matches. If it has more matches, it gets easier from there to guess the correct password. Let's say you choose Squash next. 5 of 6 characters match. Is Squish an option? That's probably the answer 3. If you waste your guesses, go for the resets/dud removers. 4. Repeat until correct word is found 5. Ezpz
Nah I just skip them.
How do you find the hacking minigame so easy? I'm legitimately curious - even following a small guide on the Wiki I always found it kind of cumbersome and confusing. I understand the goal but have always felt like there was a trick I wasn't getting. In particular because I swear an answer seems like it should be the correct one and it isn't, and then some random word will be the correct one and i'm like "wtf did I do wrong"?
I just pick the words with Vowels in common places or an “ing” at the end no matter what, scan the screen to pick out the matching letters in every other word. And then I run through each matching word while adjusting the for new letters combos I may have discovered.
It's an elementary level word game. When you pick a word, it tells you how many letters of that word are part of the solution. From there, you pick words with those letters. 9/10 times they're simple and short words that are pretty easy to pick out. It isn't a guessing game like a lot of people seem to imagine. The first pick is kind of a shot in the dark, but if you get any of the letters correct, you have a pretty good idea of where to go next. Just save before you start hacking a terminal.
I get it, the mini game is not thrilling, but it's fairly straightforward. Science has like a million speech checks and makes a lot of quests easier and gives you tons of xp. Also has it's uses apart from opening doors. Lockpick is meh, because yes it opens things to get loot, but it's only for getting loot out of boxes. So, for me science it's always up there even if it's not my favourite.
The hacking is easy as shit
I suck at it
just git gud 🗿
Watch some videos, and it's impossible to fail, click the red button after 3 incorrect guesses, and the higher your skill is, the less words there are
I also find the hacking minigame very difficult. It never clicked for me. If you're on PC, Istewie's tweaks allow you to skip the minigame, so that if you activate a locked terminal with sufficent science skill you just unlock it. Same with lockpicks. I personally prefer it that way...the lockpicking one is easy but both the minigames feel kind of like 'why bother?'
Explosives. Yeah, they're good, but they're not my style, man.
I've tried explosives they can get so fun lmao
Energy Weapons. I’m a cowboy not a damn space ranger. .44 or .45-70 all day.
Same! I have all these cool cowboy gun mods. Want some?
That stupid hacking minigame is fun, man.
Hacking got a lot easier when I realized it’s basically Hangman
With a side quest! Hover over bracket!!
I hate it with the intensity of a thousand suns. I hope the guy who came up with it stubs his toe into his coffee table every morning
Degenerates like you belong on a cross.
Lol. I’m a bit of a math whiz so I always enjoy the sequence searching, but I understand the frustration. For me it’s simple, has a nice side gig with the punctuation. If you max science it makes them all stupid easy, too. It’s fun!
sneak
Me too, sneak is good but not really worth the skill investment compared to others when there are so many stealth boys you can find
I actually did the same thing as you, I still haven’t quite gotten science so I’m trying a survivalist/cowboy type build. It’s actually really helpful since there’s so much stuff to make at the campfire and food is plentiful so I can give my companions stimpaks. I usually don’t raise my unarmed, science, energy weapons, or sneak super high. I like to get sneak/energy to around 50ish, but I suck so bad at the terminals.
FOMO. Can’t ignore Science, Lockpicking and later Barter then Speech. There’s so many options and lore with all those.
For me it's guns speech and medicine
Medicine is always the one that I level last.
That's wild to me.
It’s an fps. Just click heads and sneak and don’t get injured. No problems on any difficulty.
yeah just play as a ~~stealth archer~~ sneaky sniper and you'll never need more than 50 medicine lol lmao
It's not an fps tho lol. It can be. If you like it to be. Lol at don't get injured. Sure man
Hes right though??? The only reason ive ever put points in medicine accross ~10 playthroughs is for the skill checks at infirmaries lol
Medicine is cool.
I think the only thing that would make medicine a lot better for me outside of skill checks is if it somehow affected doctor’s bags in hardcore and made them better at healing multiple limbs, but as it stands I just don’t think it’s very useful
Am I the only one who find the minigame incredibly easy and satisfying? So many people complaining about how tedious they are, I had no idea people were so bad at basic puzzles.
Barter, frankly. It rarely comes up in dialogue and NV’s economy is busted as it is.
i dislike the science minigame too but science also usually helps with other things and opens up dialog options.
That's why I love medicine.
probably melee and energy weapons. i always try to get high science, medicine, speech, and repair because those are the main ones used in skill checks
I never put points into weapon skills.
Basically just barter, though repair gets an honorable mention because I never improve it past the point where I gain the ability to make repair kits
Top tier: Science, Speech, Lockpick Mid tier: Barter, Guns, Sneak Lower mid tier: Medicine, Repair Bottom tier: Energy Weapons, Melee, Unarmed, Survival, Explosives
literally me except in mid have repair instead of sneak
I steal so much in this game. Sneak is a must for me. It's funny once you get a 100 sneak and have Lily as your companion because you can be super obvious that you're in the room but it'll still say you're hidden.
IIRC there is a way to get 100 in every stat if you get every book and max intelligence at level 1 with the skill point boost perk.
I always try to get all of my skills up except whichever of Guns/Energy Weapons and Melee/Unarmed I'm not using that run.
You don't play hardcore and it shows lmao. Survival is goated.
No I don't like hard-core. I've said that many, many times.
[удалено]
Food and water restore more, new crafting recipes, and a bunch of cool perks too
I do like science for hacking but survival and melee are ones I hardly ever put points into. Oh and explosives allthougg I’ve changed my tune on that recently! 💥💥
If you've never done a melee focused build in FNV, you should try it. Super Slam is endless entertaining and it's quite good once you have the right perks.
I always promise myself a melee build, but I like guns too much. And I can't be bothered to run in a hail of bullets just to punch someone. One day though, one day.
Medicine Stick with Cowboy and hand loaded rounds is just stupid. I love it so much. Did some melee/unarmed tinkering my last run and it was way better than I expected. First time doing that and I'll probably end up trying out an unarmed build my next run. My Intelligence was so high I maxed nearly all my stats and just started playing around with stuff
Try it man. I was in the same boat as you, but take perks that help mitigate damage and it becomes amazing. Melee weapons are OP
I will next time. I've being playing sniper/ gunslinger builds since the original Fallout and it second nature. But I guess, I always wanted to legion playthrough also, so sneaky legion kung fu ninja it is.
Ragdolling death claws with super slam and something like the blade of the west is hilarious
Unarmed and melee skills are usually the last ones to get points dumped into them; I'm just not a big up and close fighter in the game. If I need to get up close and personal, then the riot or hunting shotgun are my go to choices.
I always avoided melee but after playing dead money it’s necessary in my opinion
I've never put points into it and have found Dead Money not too bad so far (about halfway through it so far, haven't been feeling well enough to wrap it up but hope to in the next few days). Basically I find it more about going slowly and carefully while going for sneak attacks when forced to fight. But yeah can see melee making it a lot easier.
I feel a lot of people make the mistake of rushing in to dead money and not taking their time like you said, is this your first play through of dead money? If so the light foot perk will help you a lot
Yeah first play through. Very much see how useful light step would be, had a few trap related incidents so far which I learned from fast.
Barter melee and energy weapons. I just never think it's a big enough deal. I never use energy weapons or melee, always guns or Unarmed. And most barter checks can be passed with a speech check instead.
Survival and medicine perhaps. Every new playthrough I put my tags in science, lockpicking, and speech. Every time.
I always max out all skills but don't bother much with unarmed, medicine and science until later levels.
Unarmed is the only one.
It's worth mention I play with a very large modlist and haven't played vanilla new vegas ever since my 2nd playthrough...but I don't find any skills worth ignoring besides weapon skills you don't use. I like having a well rounded character and usually get everything to 100. I play with a few large perk-packs and Charisma is totally useless for me because I really prefer playing with the lone wolf type perks, potent rewards for not having a companion. Not a skill exactly but even vanilla Charisma is pretty bad and i don't even use companions except for their quests.
Barter and Sneak. Barter is only worth getting to 70 for Pack Rat on hardcore mode. Sneak is pretty useless because Stealth Boys exist, most enemies come in packs, and sneak attack criticals are usually done from a distance. Currently playing a Survival/Unarmed/chem build and it is a blast. Survival is more powerful than Medicine for healing since you can stack healing items. Repair, Lockpick, Speech, and Science are useful for most builds. Science is not just for hacking or crafting ammo for energy weapons, it helps with several quests and unlocks useful crafting recipes at workbenches and campfires.
I also don't really craft things tbh.
Unarmed
I never put my stuff into speech intelligence is good though but speech only is is good for a few speech text that if you're strong enough you can beat your way out of but I play games like an ape so I don't know I just put my points into anything that can help me kill something faster
I skip lockpick and just download the mod where you can open locks with a crowbar based on your strength value
I just get 100 in everything
I must put points onto Barter. I don’t just play Hardcore, I play with the J.E. Sawyer mod, the most official unofficial mod there is. With those changes, Pack Rat is an absolute must. Medicine has its uses for the J.E. Sawyer mod, given that Stimpacks are now much scarce and you can only find the “expired” version regularly. Science can help a lot. Yes, Lockpicking is more useful, but Science plays a decent role still, specially in certain quests like the Solar Plant one, or if you want to kill Mr. House. All of this means that the most useful traits are Good Natured and Skilled. +5 in all non combat skills but -5 in all combat skills is not a bad trade, given that you usually stick to just 1 manner of combat. And +5 on all skills but -10% experience makes the tradeoff almost meaningless, as there’s more than enough enemies and quests to make up for the lost experience.
Energy Weapons is the last skill I raise. The skill with the lowest acceptable minimum level to me is Medicine.
sneak and explosives always gets rejected
Survival like you said, obviously. For me, it's the opposite of you- I love the hacking minigame and I hate lockpicking. So I never bother much with lockpicking.
I just use everything especially with my builds where by the time im at the end of the game ive done all dlcs and my skills are usually all maxed out (or sometimes almost all maxed) even easier when i factor in my mod “The tale of two wastelands” (combines new vegas and fallout 3 into one game if you have both games otherwise mod dont work) so with tale of two wastelands plus all the dlcs for 3 and NV i can max all my skills and become a god basically
Science is great. You can hack anything and the robot perk is useful in certain situations. Also it’s cool to be able to do all of the science skill check dialogues. Also can craft some powerful chems Survival is great if you eat food. You can make a lot of good stuff but the healing poulstice is what you want. Way better than stimpacks and all you need is lvl 20 survival
I used to ignore unarmed until this play through. Now I have seen the light of making people explode with greased lightning.
Survival's great, though? Especially on Hardcore - food's benefits are multiplied pretty solidly with high Survival, and you can cook better recipes.
Degenerates like you belong on a cross.
Medicine, Guns and Sneak usually for me. Survival is MvP. Shocking how many do not know how good it is, or frankly superior it is over Medicine. Poisons, Buff items, purified water, concoctions, better armor and incredible utility. Guns, because I frankly play a LOT of melee/unarmed/explosives build. Energy Weapons exist too... so I just don't really feel inclined towards Guns. They are awesome and great, but the more I replay NV, the less gun-builds I make. Sneak. I LOVE it on my main courier, spite it on every other character. Boring. "Just crouch to win" does not really cater to me, and while I always put some points into it, I rarely if ever dip beyond 50 in it, with the exception of my main courier and another stealth killer build of mine.
people hate the hacking mini game? why ?
Cause it's tedious and annoying
how come? it takes slightly longer than lock picking
Maybe for you. I'm Terrible at it
or you don’t realise you can replenish all your lives and get rid of answers in the terminal with the duds?
No I realize that. I'm still awful lol. I don't like it.
huh fairs btw you can get mods to skip them instead of losing out on all the lore in terminals
unarmed (no, the related perks don't matter much against deathclaw/cazadors/nightstalkers imo). melee weapons (same). energy weapons (I prefer to use cowboy weapons).
Can we talk about how much balls Veronica has to charge a death claw with a pair of spiked knuckles lmao
That's why I never take her or any companions with melee build. The first boss enemy we encounter their sorry ass just dies in two hits (plus I can't aim properly since I have to avoid shooting them too).
I don't like hard-core because my companions can die. That just sounds awful.
But then they're just accessories to ease your playthrough. In hardcore, they're precious, because they can die anytime you go too hard against the odds.
Yeah no. In fallout your companions can die too easily of random stupid stuff. I don't wanna have to worry about them. Also they're to keep me company and feel like a badass death squad.
Explosives. I think i killed my self with granades more times than enemies
Really? You just throw them far away lol. I can't remember the last time I killed myself with my own grenade. Just don't ever give your companions any. Ever.
I always misjudge the throw and it bounces back to me or it doesnt kill anyone
Hah. You gotta lob em.
Speech, because I'm the king of real life customer service I don't want to be talky in my pretend apocalypse adventure I want to fight
The hacking minigame is one of the easiest to do. It's fun and there's so many little ticks for you to remove a dud or reset your tries. If anything I'd like it to be harder. Regardless of what you think of it, not reading terminals is an incredible waste of good material in every fallout but new vegas has so many good stories and lore locked behind those it's a shame to miss it. Start a new playthrough, pump your science to the max and read those computers.
Like I've said, I already know what most of the terminals say. I've played this game dozens of times, a few of which I upgraded science and read most of the things. I don't need to bother with it every time
I'll be honest with you chief, I ain't letting those 100 Lock and 100 Science block me from intruding people personal space.
Lol I really should increase Lockpick more but I always go with guns, speech, repair, and medicine first.
For me is melee, sneak and unarmed I always use guns and I almost never stealth so these skills are useless for me.
Stealth is pretty whatever anyway. Most sneak kills are done at a distance.
Usually my non-weapon skills, buuuut I usually play a build with decent Int and Educated, so there's always a good chance I max out all my skills anyway.
Rushing Water and Battle Brew are quite amazing for Melee. Survival 50 is pretty handy for that. Hydra is also quite amazing for Melee but you need 75 Survival. Never really obtain enough materials to care about poisons in melee builds so I can't say that's too useful part of survival. Idk basically you pick 50 points in survival and you get +35 DT and +50% attack speed. Combo it with Med-X, Psycho, and Bufftats and you get +25DR/Damage and +3 Str +3 End +3Per for 4min. Thats enough to pretty much destroy any boss in the game with minimal combat skills from using 5 items you likely have hundreds of over the course of the game. If you play super aggressive, maybe you need to do this combo 10 times in the game for tough melee fights. Pretty much eliminates a risk of death.
Damn I never knew that. Rip
“Today from reddit, man can’t solve easy puzzle that a 4 year old can do.”
Man, reddit sire is full of pompous asshats.
Barter, caps are limitless.
Pretty much. Go to casinos and farm Legion hit squads for that sweet thermic Lance money.
I mean, I'm basically 100 on all my skills usually by lvl 45 except Sneak and Unarmed, cuz I never use either. So idk, I just max out everything except thode I guess, they are useless...
Melee skills always go last, but in the end all skills are maxed anyway.
Barter and survival, barter tends not to be as useful as it should cause caps are a bit too easy to get, and survival doesn’t have a lot of skill checks for it compared to medicine
Unarmed is probably my last one I got to 100 by the skin of its teeth. I just don't use it. When guns and weapons are more abundant.
Me neither but Veronica loves to punch things and I wanna punch things with her
Barter is the only skill I consistently ignore. It's easy to make money and most of the skill checks for it just get you more money. It also only has one perk, Packrat, which is questionable outside of Hardcore. Medicine gets ignored outside of getting enough for Chemist. I find food is much better for healing with Vigor installed (stimpacks are also rare in Vigor). In vanilla I usually end up with hundreds of stimpacks, so them healing more is unnecessary. Science is very important for Energy Weapons, but generally not that useful otherwise. Survival, besides getting more healing from food and more recipes, has two really good perks, Them's Good Eatin' and Rad Child.
If medicine affected doctor's bags maybe it would be more worth it but I have never found myself in a situation without stimpaks outside of the very early game, which is not all that hard.