Starting out in Fallout: New Vegas

This is for new players or people who find returning to this game difficult. I will take you from character creation to getting to New Vegas.

Introduction

Welcome to my Fallout: New Vegas guide and before we start it will be important to state that this is more of a beginners guide rather than to make a perfect character.

There are some miscellaneous tips to note before we start; don't anger the NCR or Caesar's Legion before you reach New Vegas. It's a good thing to heed as Nevada is a battleground from Nipton to Novac and an assassin sqaud will usually meet you outside of Novac if you anger either side.

Remember to take educated at level four because the two extra skill points per level really adds up.

Remember to take comprehension at some time if you want to use skillbooks, so that you get four skillpoints instead of three from each book.

Character Creation

Creating a character is easy, but creating a great character can be tricky. Let us start with the first part: the SPECIAL stats. All special stats increase skills, but we will focus on the non-skill bonuses they provide.

Strength increases your carrying capacity and checks if you can accurately use a weapon. This is especially useful if you would like to use big weapons such as miniguns, rocket launchers, large rifles etc. have four ( if you want to take weapon handling) to six( if you don't want weapon handling or you just want an extra 20 points of carrying capacity). Perception is used for accuracy. You also want an average amount of this or maybe a bit above average if you take fast shot later on. More on traits later in this guide. So a five to a six will suffice. Edurance is for general survivability: health and radiation resistance. You want an average amount five or so of this. I recommend a high intelligence so that you can have a flexible build as it increases the amount of skill points you get each time you level. Agility is the next stat and it increases action points, holstering, drawing, and reload speed. You will most likely want a high amount probably 7 if you use guns or energy weapons. The added reload speed will allow you to make quick work of people even with guns with small magazines.

Now onto Charisma and the final stat Luck. You want these low. Set them to one and put these points elsewhere. You don't need critical hits or tough companions. You can force a sneak critical hit and your companions are just a distraction for the enemy. You are the main damage dealer or at least should be. I recommend not caring about luck or charisma unless you care about 'luck based situations' such as gambling, enemy mishaps, or high critical chance ( which you can get without 10 luck) or you care about how tough your companions are, respectively. Any lost speech and barter skill will be made up with by the good natured trait ( you'll likely only use one comabt skill anyway) and putting points into speech to get 25 speech at level 2.


After that we need to discuss tag skills. The best all around 3 tags are guns, lockpick, speech. You can talk your way out of situations, pick locks, and shoot people. Guns are extremely common, and there are more locked items than hackable computers, and more speech and much better speech options than barter options. However barter is great in that it helps you with buying and selling, and sometimes computers are at a lower level requirement than the lock that it opens. Energy weapons can be more effective than guns as there are plenty of perks that increase their effectiveness, and with the lack of ammunition types they can be easier to use. If you don't care about non-combat situations tag a combat skill( guns or energy weapons), repair, and medicine. This will help in combat a whole lot, but it will make doing quests harder and make them take longer. There are a lot of options to make a good character, you just have to choose three skills to live by.

Traits are next and they are perks with downsides. The downsides are usually easy to combat as there are perks that combat them. The best trait for any build is good natured. It increases many non-combat skill by five, and lowers every combat skill by five. Since you will only use one or two combat skills tops it's essentially free skills points. Now this one is all opinion really you may want fast shot becuase at higher levels it will be straight 20% fire rate as your perception, and guns( or energy weapons) will cover the 20% accuracy penalty. Though if you want to be a sniper it will hinder you a bit in the beginning, but it will benefit you more than trigger discipline( the opposite of fast shot, although it may bite you later when you use the anti-materiel rifle). Small frame is a free agility skill point but you will have to tend to broken bones more but adamantium skeleton will fix this. Four eyes will prevent you from wearing the best headwear( because glasses cannot be worn with power armor helmets) ,but you will get one more perception if you wear glasses. Skilled( Old World Blues DLC) is also very nice and will stack with good natured to increase non-combat stats by a total of 10 but will decrease xp gains by 10%. You can take swift learner at level 2 to combat this (there is some competition at level 2 for perks but it's not a massive loss to take swift learner.)

From Goodsprings to Nipton

Don't forget to loot Doc Mitchel's home. There is a laser pistol, with ammo, a 9mm submachine gun( with 25 repair), medicine ( more with 25 medicine), food, misc. clothing, etc.

When you finish character creation, go to the saloon. You talk with Sunny and ask for work and you get free bobby pins, and a locksmiths reader. Then you ask about surviving in the wasteland. You go out back and get a free varmit rifle. Drop the ammo and you will get free ammo and some humorous dialogue when you speak to Sunny and say you ran out of ammo. Once you kill the bottles, continue with Sunny to all the others wells. Don't do the survival portion it's pretty useless.
Once you are done with this, you have ton of ammo for your varmit rifle.

Go back to the saloon, and talk to Joe Cobb so that you know where the NCR correction facility. Also fix the radio( 20 repair) there for some money and reputation.Now it is the time to get stuff done in Goodspring. Go to Victor's shack and pick up the weapon repair kit and use it on your rifle. Also go to the schoolhouse and pick the lock or hack the computer to get into the safe. If you have 25 repair and/or science go back to Doc Mitchell's house and get a free 9mm smg or free stimpacks.

Now with the misc. items out of the way make your way out of Goodsprings. Go north to discover Sloan, and repair the generator (35 repair) and fix Snuffle's leg (30 medicine) for NCR reputation and 200 NCR dollars. Also under the bridge there will be a dead Bright Brotherhood member with robes and a recharger pistol/rifle. On the way to Sloan go to Jean Skydiving and pick up the key from the desk and unlock the locker in the back for some loot.

Then go to the NCR correctional facility and pay the toll of one hundred caps. Go to Eddie who's in the northern building at the top floor. Do two jobs for him. This will net you some experience (from speech challenges and killing) and loot if you choose to kill the NPCs. Eddie's third mission I recommend helping the NCR for this one as the NCR plays a bigger role than the Powder Gangers. Don't forgot while at Primm to rescue Deputy Beagle and accept his quest to bring law and order to primm. If you wish you can get Meyers in now or get the NCR as the sheriff later.

Go to Goodspring and challenge Joe Cobbs gang to get some loot from them.

Now head down to the Mojave Outpost, but stop by the Nevada Highway Station. There is a person with a cowboy repeater. Pick it up and use it, and go inside the station and use the reloading bench to convert your 9mm into .357 magnum. Don't forgot to unlock the locked door and go through the first aid kit.

Now go to the Mojave outpost in the south-west corner of the map. Get the quest from Ranger Ghost and Ranger Jackson. First clear out the critters on the highway and move onto Nipton. Clear the bandit outpost which will provide cowboy repeaters and .357 magnum. Move to Nipton and talk to the legion accept their quest. Retreat back to the Mojave Outpost and turn in the three quests. P.S. remember about Tomas he has some free Sarsparilla star caps for you if you convince him to give it to you or kill him and loot them.

Back to Nipton and you should visit two specific house one near the Nipton general store which is booby trapped, which contains 4 frag mines and a grenade rifle,patriots cookbook, and 40mm grenades locked in a safe. Near this is a house with a mister gutsy kill it and loot the house.

To Novac and to Vegas

Now it is time to go through a battlefield. There will be many raiders, Caesar's Legion troops, NCR personnel, caravans etc. The first obstacle after Nipton is a small raider encampment. There is a frag mine under a cone and a few raiders on ground level. Loot the raiders on ground level and take the mine and move on as the radiers on the cliff aren't worth it. The truck has a gun cabinet in it with a cowboy repeater and some ammo.

You should go to Wolfhorn Ranch which is not to far from the encampment. You should go there to be able to use it as a hub to explore eastward. There is also the unique cleaver, Chopper, within the ranchhouse. Now follow the road north towards the Ranger Station Charlie. You will meet a squad of raiders whom are easy to kill.

Within a minute or so you will arrive at Novac. Once at Novac go to the dinosaur to the top and wait until nightime. Now speak with Boone and help him find the person who sold his wife. It is Jeanie May, and go to the motel to break into her safe. Take the Bill of Sale and talk to Jeanie May to see something in front of the dinosaur. Once she's in front of the dinosaur at nightime put on Boone's beret and then talk to Boone. Anything you say to him will have him work with you, however I recommend just showing the bill of sale.

Now wait there at the top of the dinosaur until daytime. Speak to Manny and tell him you will
help him with Novac's ghoul problem. Go to the Repcon Test Site while stopping at a camp a long the way. There are mine boxes, ammo boxes, first aid kits, and some caps.

Essentially, explore the structure. The caps, ammo, and pickable locks will provide worth while loot. Now go to the Bright Brotherhood's camp upstairs. Jason Bright will send you to kill the 'demons', who are actually nightkin. Go to the basement and go through the the main room and go left and turn right. You will meet the leader of the Nightkin.

Take the key, and find Harland nearly next door. Kill him as he has a hunting rifle and theres a lot of .308 rounds around him. Go to a terminal at the top floor and read the messages and go back to Davison and the Nightkin will leave. Go back to Jason and now you need to collect parts for the space ship after you meet Chris downstairs in the basement.

I recommend going to Novac and buying the Storage key from Cliff. Take 5 rocket souvenirs. Now go upstairs in the motel and jump out of Novac on the northside. Go to the scrapyard and talk to Old Lady Gibson. Buy the thrust control module. Return to Chris. Now it's time for lift off!

If you have 55 science you can make them crash or get there faster if you wish. Return to Manny and you get your experience so you can move on to Boulder city if you wish however you should be a good enough level to get to New Vegas.

Boulder City is straight forward. Fight the Great Khans or convince Jessup to free the hostages.

Now just head straight on the highway and enter Freeside. You have a few ways to enter Vegas.

Hack the robot with 80 Science.
Have at least 2000 caps ( you won't lose them).
Get a fake passport from Mick.

From here you can do anything you want you've unlocked New Vegas the hub of the game. You can gamble explore the vaults and kill raiders.

Advice

I recommend looting as much as possible. As obvious as it sounds, it's important.

Some great perks are: Fast Metabolism( allows for more effective stimpacks great with high medicine), Toughness( more DT), and Explorer( will show all locations).

Go to the New Vegas Clinic which is North East of Freeside. It allows for implants that increase DT, give health regen , and increase SPECIAL stats.

Also get Jury Rigging, a level 16 90 repair perk, it will help keep your expensive power armor in good shape and weapons performing superbly. Also it can help you make money buy using cheap weapons to fix degraded expensive weapons.

Closing

Thanks for reading and have fun in Vegas. If you have anything to add feel free to leave it in the comments section below or if anything is akwardly worded please say something. Thanks- Ztormtrooper

[Goblichadnezzar]

No, it doesn't really matter if you do. You just want to leverage gambling with high luck and use companions.

[sebathion]

Bro i put almost everything into luck and charisma, is it worth a restart

[leowaugh]

Thanks for getting me started in this. I was playing Fallout 4 and going back to Fallout 3 mechanics took a little getting used to. Having this guide to get me going was exactly what I needed!

[crisrich]

Thank you for the guide, it was very helpful for me starting the game for the first time. (I’m playing through PS4 without access to DLCs)

[Prey]

Probably the easiest way to enter New Vegas is to dress up as an NCR soldier, enter McCarran, and use the train. If we are disguised as a NCR soldier, the guards will not stop us.
You can easily get a NCR uniform in the vicinity of New Vegas, where NCR and Beasts fight each other. In these clashes NCR soldiers often die. Just loot theri corpses. This way you can get a lot of weapon, ammo and clothes.

Besides this "guide" is literally piece od crap.

[Quellv]

Hey, just wanted you to know so it is more clear, you buy the Counterfeit Passport from Ralph at Mick & Ralphs in Freeside. There is some questing or a 50 speech check.

[Coach]

I have to admit some of these things I didn't really know, but I think you need to be more specific about some areas.

[Goblichadnezzar]

Regardless, in my opinion this guide is worthwhile for people who are playing FNV for the first time, or really anyone because i feel it actually is a good build. Though it is fine to criticize regardless so no need to apologize.

[VinchenzoTheJackal & Shoon]

With the DLC it would actually be possible to get your SPECIAL stats all to 10, and your skills to 100... the time I last played FalloutNV was on the Xbox, and there was no DLC available to download at the time for that... and when there eventually was DLC to download, it only added starter packs to help you survive in the game by giving a select few free items when you start a new character... I'm actually amazed... you really don't need a perfect start with those DLC, you'll get close to perfect with even a decent set of starting stats skills. Your guide is actually worthwhile then... sorry I criticised

[Goblichadnezzar]

Yeah with all dlc you get up to 50.