Dangerous Areas?

[SgtLieutenantGeneral]

I mean, I played Fallout 4 before I played this game, and in Fallout 4, the rule was, the farther south you headed, the more dangerous. Is it the same way in New Vegas?

[Belanos]

More or less. At the first of the game, if you try to head north out of Goodsprings you're likely to have your head handed to you by either Deathclaws or Casadores. Your best bet is just to follow the quest lines that are given to you at the start. Once you get to New Vegas and have a few levels on you though, it doesn't really make a lot of difference. You'll still need to be fairly powerful to deal with the Deathclaws though, they're the most dangerous creatures in the game.

[Carver]

When you start the game, it is sorta implied that the PC should 'head' to New Vegas (though you don't have to, but it's a good start). There are a few ways to do it, but only one of them is really 'easy' which is to go all the way south, then east across the map, and then north up along the highway. It's sorta the main way to do it really cause there is a bunch of quests and plot lines along the way, plus some companions you can gather.

The other two are shortcuts but are full with either A: deathclaws, or B: cazadors-- both of which will own you early on in the game. Anyway, there are some dangerous areas but as you go up in levels you should be better prepared to face the enemy. New Vegas' system is different from 4 as when you level up you manage to surpass the enemies you saw at the start, compared to 4 where as you level up the enemy becomes tougher with you to where you are both always sorta at the same level.

But anyway, the Mojave is semi-civilized, so it isn't really the further you go some place the more dangerous it gets more than there are a few locations across the map which are lethal to an unprepared player.

[MagnusCerebrum]

Originally posted by AndreyKva the 2017 Mans:

New Vegas is different. In NV, it's not about which direction you go, but which paths you take. The map isn't really that much harder the further you get from the starting area, like Fallout 4. Hell, the most dangerous area in the game is actually very close to the starting town. You'll know if an area is dangerous because it will usually be foreshadowed in dialogue and worldbuilding.

May i ask where that location is?

[Belanos]

Originally posted by GermanOverlord:

May i ask where that location is?

Quarry Junction, just past Sloan. The area is invested with Deathclaws, including a very tough Alpha Male version.

[talgaby]

There are a few nasty surprises besides the ones NPCs or road signs obviously point at. Like the deathclaw nesting ground on the other bank of the Colorado. Or trying to explore a radscorpion mound only to bump into their mommy.

[Docsprock]

There are 'Danger' areas in any direction, in any part of the map. The above posters have pointed out some of them. The only really 'safe' place is New Vegas, and you can get in trouble there too.

[Maxwell Sinclair]

Honestly, unless you go blindly running in head first. No areas are outright dangerous. For a new player who doesn't know what is in an area or what to expect, there are a LOT of danger areas.

Quarry Junction: North of Sloan, the main obstacle between new players and the big shiny tower in the distance. This place has so many deathclaws, you'll find yourself being chased by 5 or more of them just for breathing in this places general direction.

Unnamed Northern Pass: This one will allow you to skip around quarry junction and you won't find deathclaws here. Sounds pretty sweet right? Except for the evil blue and orange demon wasps who are gunning to shove their pointy thingy in your butt. They'll murder you, then when you thought you were dead, they'll eat you, and murder you again. You can get there by following the road to the northwest of Goodsprings.

Hidden Valley: You may be wondering why this place is dangerous, all that's in it are some bark scorpions. If you stumble across the secret base, you'll either be murdered, ignored, or they'll strap an explosive collar to your neck and force you to do a mission for them before letting you go free. Not directly dangerous but, threatening all the same.

Outside of Nellis Airforce Base: This one, there is an NPC to warn you about how dangerous it is. If you plan to be around here, you best be damn good at running. Otherwise, your butt will rocket through your brain and into the sky. If you like that idea, you can find this to the North East of New Vegas.

All DLC Locations Except Honest Hearts: Pretty self explanatory, they warn you that they recommend certain levels. Sierra Madre is the most annoying/difficult DLC of them all and probably the most dangerous area in the game in terms of actual dangers, although Lonesome road is a close second. Honest hearts, wonderfully easy.

Black Mountain: You'll be warned about this place by a friendly super mutant when you approach, but it's a big giant mountain fortress thing, filled with lots of super mutants who want to turn you into a rug and/or dinner. Also if you try to run away from them down the main road, you'll walk into quarry junction and be eating deathclaws. This one is close to hidden valley and roughly central to the map.

The Crashed Vertibird: This one is special, it's really far down south, almost to the southern limits of the map, and then a ways to the eastern side. If you hit searchlight airport you've gone too far. This place is filled with about 10 Hardened Robots, a mixture of Mr Gutsy and Sentry Bots, if you can battle through them, a unique weapon waits for you at the wreck of the vertibird.

Camp Searchlight: This creepy, green filtered town, is full of heavy radiation and radiation related creatures, it's the vault 87 (surface) of New Vegas, although the radiation isn't so immediately lethal, it will quickly creep up on you.

The unofficial Deathclaw Sanctuary: Now don't worry too much about this, you have to specifically go hunting for this one, but if you go down to Cottonwood cove, dive into the river, and start swimming upstream, you will see a beach you can climb onto on the "Fortification Hill" side of the river, with a path between cliffs you can walk up. This location contains about 10 deathclaws, a Mixture of Mother, Alpha Male, Young, and regular. Your reward for this place is a dead prospecter wearing a unique set of power armor, that is themed around the Enclave and is the only set of Enclave power armor in the game. (Excluding the Tesla armor and Enclave Remnants)

Dead Wind Cavern: The Legendary deathclaw lives here with about 4 of his friends, unique grenade machine gun awaits if you can defeat him, incredibly tough fight though.

Coyote Mine or whichever it is that has the thing: Close to cottonwood cove, this place contains the legendary cazador, aka, the legendary crap your pants and run like the 50mph man.

Repconn Rocket Site: While it doesn't seem immediately threatening, it contains lots of feral ghouls and once you get deeper in, nightkin.

[SwiftDeathSK]

Maxwell has a pretty decent list that I would mostly agree with, except I do not agree at all that REPCONN Test Site should be on this list. To prove my point on this, I'm doing a run with a difficult early-game build (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y5EL-U52ig) with the Realistic Weapon Damage mod installed, Project Nevada set to the Hard Hardcore preset, then modified to be even harder (tag skills dont give bonuses, -10 skill points per level instead of -8, but perks every level to offset the difficulty increase), the game difficulty set to Very Hard with Hardcore mode enabled. This ain't some kiddy playthrough. I had easily 2-3 times more difficulty in the Honest Hearts DLC with the White Legs and Zion Mantises than I did dealing with REPCONN's stuff, including the invisible schizo super-mutants. REPCONN is not hard. Not even close.

[baumgartner]

Another nice thread except you guys/gals probably have intimidated the OP from moving to any part of the map- The list of places for a low level character to avoid is extensive but still missed lots, lots more if the OP so much as strays walking away from the main highways South, East and at last North to New Vegas. But heck, thats an extra to the RPG aspect of the game; its a darn good 'Hunter/Killer' exercise as well.

[Washell]

Half the fun is in the exploration people, don't have to spell everything out for him and ruin the game...

[SwiftDeathSK]

Quite frankly, OP - run around and get yourself killed. This is one of those games where part of the fun is making the mistakes and learning from them. "They say don't go north, well I'm sneaky enough to get past these guys" - might work out for you, or it might end in horrible death. In this game not much is set in stone until it happens, and even then there are save files. Explore, make mistakes, and get yourself in WAAAAY over your head. You will love it.

[Landor]

Originally posted by SwiftDeathSK:

Quite frankly, OP - run around and get yourself killed. This is one of those games where part of the fun is making the mistakes and learning from them. "They say don't go north, well I'm sneaky enough to get past these guys" - might work out for you, or it might end in horrible death. In this game not much is set in stone until it happens, and even then there are save files. Explore, make mistakes, and get yourself in WAAAAY over your head. You will love it.

i recommend this. the game keeps 3 autosaves for a reason, so go nuts. remeber that the game autosaves at any loading transition, i find the time bases autosaves are unreliable.

its also worth noting quicksave and quickload (F5 and F9 i think,) so if you are unsure if you want to continue, just pop a quicksave.

[Belanos]

Originally posted by Landor:

i recommend this. the game keeps 3 autosaves for a reason, so go nuts.

No it doesn't. I believe you're thinking of Skyrim. Before that title, all the Bethesda games only had a single autosave slot. However there is a mod available, CASM (Cipscis Auto Save Manager), that will allow you have a bunch of autosaves, with the number and the timing of each one configurable by the player.

[SwiftDeathSK]

If he doesn't mind the achievements being locked until he reloads the game, he can also bring up the console to speed the saving process up. ` (the little ~ button above the tab key on your keyboard) will open up the console, while in the console you can enter
save SAVENAME
where SAVENAME is whatever you want your savefile to be named as. You can do some unique saves to remind yourself what you were doing at the time of the save, like "RobbingPrimmBlind" or "HittingHouseWith9Iron" - and the save files will be called that instead of Save #### and whatnot.
This does prevent the ability to earn achievements during that current play session. You can install a mod that bypasses that, or you can just live without the evidence for future bragging.
From my experience, CASM saves waaaay too much, to the point where it lags the game and can cause slow-downs, even on it's lowest settings. If you want a lag spike every 2 minutes or less, CASM is a great mod, but being aware of how recently you saved works just as well. Despite this, I do use CASM myself. This is why I speak from experience. It gets annoying, but it's bearable. I do wish I could change the auto save to wait longer than 120 seconds though.
Or you can do a generic permanent save command, like I do with my character name as the save file followed by a number, and when I'm saving I just hit `, the up arrow key, followed by enter after I've done it once before, then exit console, and I have a new permanent save in just a few seconds.

[Belanos]

Originally posted by SwiftDeathSK:

From my experience, CASM saves waaaay too much, to the point where it lags the game and can cause slow-downs, even on it's lowest settings. If you want a lag spike every 2 minutes or less, CASM is a great mod, but being aware of how recently you saved works just as well.

I don't have any problems with it myself, the saves are seamless and I don't even notice them when they happen, especially since I tell it to shut the messages off. As for the frequency, that's configurable, you don't need to have it do it's thing every minute, which is the default. IIRC, I have mine set for every 5 minutes, and the maximum is every 60 minutes. You just need to hold down your save key and a menu will pop up with various options you can select. Or you can go into the GECK and change it permanently from there. That's what I've done since I don't want to be required to adjust my settings again every time I start a new game.