What's the deal with Dead Money?

[ChefGuevara]

I'm playing through Dead Money,and having fun with it.I admit the enemy types are lacking in variety,and that the map is small,but i feel the good outbalances the bad;despite this,people seem to either love or hate it.Any ideas why?

[Sentient_Toaster]

Messaggio originale di Livin' La Vida Loca:

The equipment,too good?Like i said,i haven't finished it,but the Sierra Madre armor is kind of outclassed by Joshua Graham's armor for me,and the automatic rifle is inefficient and inaccurate,poilicem pistols are meh,and i don't use energy weapons,so i wouldn't know about the holorifle.

Not so much about the equipment, but the vouchers and what you can get with them... as well as the cash potential.

If you trade in all Sierra Madre chips for pre-war money at the hologram cashier before you leave, it's a 1:1 conversion -- and each pre-war money unit is worth 10 caps. Breaking the bank there thus nets you 100K worth of caps, effectively.

There's a Sierra Madre vending machine in the Abandoned Brotherhood Bunker. There's also a dropbox there that receives 100 chips + 1 voucher for 1000 chips, every three days. Now, you can't actually *use* the vouchers unless you do what is necessary to unlock them while you're in the Sierra Madre itself, but if you did, that's 1100 chips periodically delivered. These chips can then be used with whatever SM vending machine codes you unlocked before you left, thus potentially giving you a massive supply of weapon repair kits (far faster than you can realistically use them unless you're truly obsessive about gathering and repairing all weapon drops), stimpacks, doctors' bags, Rad-X and Rad-Away, .308 ammo, etc.

1100 chips = 55 weapon repair kits every three days which should let you use even fragile weapons with max-charge/JSP/Super/similar ammo without worrying very much at all.

What's in the SM vault is just an added bonus.

[ChefGuevara]

Huh.With that kind of money,i could buy the entirety of the GRA weapons.

[Laigon ♥]

The problem with all that pre-war money is exchanging it for caps. I've got over 140k worth of it but it would take ages to go round finding people with enough money to sell to. Unless anyone knows of another way?

[Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical]

Messaggio originale di Laigon:

The problem with all that pre-war money is exchanging it for caps. I've got over 140k worth of it but it would take ages to go round finding people with enough money to sell to. Unless anyone knows of another way?

Gun Runners, Great Khan Armory, Quartermaster Barton. Buy they ammo they have, give them PWM in return.

[Sentient_Toaster]

PWM is also useful if you're buying expensive upgrades.

For instance, if you want to fully upgrade either a Red Glare missile launcher or the shoulder-mounted machine gun from Lonesome Road, each has three upgrades with a total base cost of over 30,000 bottle caps. Yow.

Probably the main inconvenience is that neither repair nor implants (either of which can be fairly expensive) goes through the bartering interface, so you have to have accumulated enough bottle caps rather than offering PWM, ammunition or the like.

[Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical]

This where I get to wave my non-HC character before the one I started yesterday again...he had enough caps to buy all 6 of the above upgrades mentioned without even scratching the bank windows.

[SIlverblade-T-E]

HAS to be played on "Hardcore" mode :) really awesome atmosphere/story, ramps the pace/fear up as the cloud eats away at you, and the story and characters are superb, etc.
Love it!

[「Face」]

I believe the DLC was way more in depth than some of the other ones and it gave the player a view of the dark side of the Fallout world, like it should be.

Also I feel it explains the BoS in Nevada better than the base game does, as all you hear about is Helios...

The weapons gave great variety to the game, introducing the first pump action enery weapon (which turned out to be the best in the game), a modern .357 revolver, strange knives that light people on fire, and of course, the BAR...

Definatly either #1 or tied with Old World Blues.

For the first New Veags DLC I think Bethesda did a good, although it wasn't as polished as some of the others.

[Vic Evicerator]

Messaggio originale di Livin' La Vida Loca:

I suppose stealth was a better way to deal with Ghost People,but that's mostly because they take forever to kill;The Villa's design is kind of confusing,that's tough to deny;It doesn't feel very on-rails-y to me,moreso like resident evil 4 with slower combat pacing,but better narrative pacing,at least to me.

I've found the best way to deal with them is a combination of melee+explosives, which by chance was the exact opposite of the way I was playing through the first time I played (a gunner/sniper) - I griped about bullet sponges until I saw the wonders of a well-placed grenade and saw how much less ammo it took to carve them up with cosmic knives after a takedown. My next playthrough was a melee/unarmed concentrator and it was much more fun. Also, I griped about how 'useless' the police pistol was until I tried it on a lark and realized that its critical bonus made one-shotting one I managed to sneak up on a viable combat option. That right there is probably my prime example of giving privilege to a playstyle that matches up with the designer's intentions...

[LoneCourier]

Personally i liked the DLC because it introduced the awesome story of the Courier, however the Smoke clouds and instant death speaker phones really made the experiance lack.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Messaggio originale di destroyerdm:

Personally i liked the DLC because it introduced the awesome story of the Courier, however the Smoke clouds and instant death speaker phones really made the experiance lack.

The Courier's story? Are you sure you're not referring to Lonesome Road?

Messaggio originale di Lord Vic:

Also, I griped about how 'useless' the police pistol was until I tried it on a lark and realized that its critical bonus made one-shotting one I managed to sneak up on a viable combat option. That right there is probably my prime example of giving privilege to a playstyle that matches up with the designer's intentions...

If you didn't have a high Guns skill, then you were doing less than base damage with the Police Pistol. Formula is (50 + Guns/2)% skill, according to the main unofficial wiki. I personally found it more appealing than the Automatic Rifle, since it's far more accurate (spread 0.5 versus spread 2.5) and the ammo was fairly common... and yes, the bonus critical damage is nice esp. if you're already walking in with Better Criticals. It's basically a significantly improved version of the base .357 Magnum.

[CheechWizard]

Messaggio originale di Sentient_Toaster:

The Courier's story? Are you sure you're not referring to Lonesome Road?

All the DLC had little hints that led up to Lonesome Road.