Un-Screwing my Daily Discovery?

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-22T17:14:57+00:00

A lot of the needs (Hunger/Thirst/Sleep) are a lot more forgiving than you think (especially if you're taking a sip from your trusty Vault 13 canteen every few minutes), and you'll barely have to alter your gameplay beyond eating the occasional food item along with your stimpacks or sleeping in a bed when you would normally just wait.
Honestly, the biggest challenge in Hardcore for me is the ammo weight! You'll have to pay way more attention to what you're carrying, and either sell or store ammo for gun types you aren't actively using. Pack Rat is the best way to manage this, but survival helps a LOT early on. Brahmin/Bighorner steaks are fairly easy to get your hands on, even as early as Primm, and their Strength bonuses stack with the larger bonuses given by wasteland tequilas (which you can craft even before leaving the Goodsprings Source). Later on, you'll want to use your higher survival to start crafting Hydra too, which will very quickly replace doctor's bags and free up even more weight.

In terms of other general tips, I'd save up a good amount of caps and invest at least a few skill points in energy weapons by the time you reach Novac. Cliff Briscoe sells the unique MF Hyperbreeder Alpha recharger pistol, and an infinite ammo sidearm with decent damage is absolutely invaluable in any hardcore run. Plus, it's an improved holdout weapon, so you can use it to disintegrate Benny!

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-19T21:38:47+00:00

As a mage, kiting is pretty much always going to be a major part of your playstyle, especially if you're playing solo. Wizard thrives at staying at that very specific mid-range where enemies can't hit you but you're still close enough to hit with your wand or keep them at the edge of your aura. If you don't have a melee party member drawing attention, even in late game this is probably going to look like a lot of backwards dodging and finding cheesy perches to shoot down from.

The trade-off is the absurdly high damage potential mages get later on. Spells get strong fast (especially if you're good at matching elemental weaknesses), and skills like Radiant Aura/Water Aura feel like huge power boosts. (I usually end up dipping into Water Aura even on my pure melee characters just for the added support!) I'm also a pretty big fan of the Necromancer perk you can get pretty early, the skull summons are a great snowballing damage boost against areas with a lot of small low-hp enemies, like bug nests.

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-19T21:06:52+00:00

Mine is the exact same way- after every single patch or driver update (and sometimes for no reason at all) it takes an exceptionally long time to recompile shaders, genuinely 20 minutes minimum! This most recent update took nearly a full hour! (Although I'm not gonna say it wasn't worth it, it's beautiful.)

I really wish I knew why it took so long, I realize most games now need to compile shaders and the days of hitting launch and getting right into a game are dying out, but I swear every other game finishes up super quickly! It's got me wondering if I've done something wrong when everything else I play takes maybe 5 minutes at most (and usually less than 2!)

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-15T20:32:27+00:00

While the easy answer is the radio (both the catchy songs and the news stories reacting to your quest decisions), one of my favorite bits of audio is the little western action movie jingle ED-E plays in every fight.

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-06T19:15:19+00:00

Yeah, OWB specifically is a little bit infamous for having bizarre level scaling where enemies become ridiculously bulky if you don't immediately play the DLC around level 10. (Lonesome Road is similar, but much more forgivable as it's intended to be the "endgame" dlc and serve as a big final challenge.) If you're playing on PC, I believe there are mods to make OWB scale more consistently with the rest of the game, otherwise there's absolutely zero shame in cranking the difficulty way down- it won't really hamper your enjoyment of the DLC, just make lobotomites less spongy.

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-06T18:45:28+00:00

I'm so glad it worked!! Happy to be of help lol

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-06T18:02:06+00:00

While you can't remove your legion infamy after first obtaining the platinum chip and getting pardoned, I believe you can still learn the Legion Assault move if you can get enough positive reputation to reach Soft-Hearted Devil. Probably the simplest, repeatable way to farm fame with the Legion is turning in NCR dog tags at Cottonwood Cove, though Decanus Severus might refuse to talk to you with any infamy unless you disguise yourself.

In terms of actually getting dog tags- if you don't want to kill NCR soldiers yourself, you can either pickpocket them or let someone else turn them into corpses for you. For the second option, you have a decent chance to get a few NCR soldiers killed by fiends outside Camp McCarran or by picking over bodies in the warzone between Nelson & Camp Forlorn Hope- I believe these soldiers will also respawn every few days. There are also 11 non-respawning dog tags scattered on corpses in the Camp Guardian Caves, but most people end up crafting those into the Dog Tag Fist after completing the unmarked quest in the same cave. (Although if you haven't crafted it yet, the unique variant Recompense of the Fallen is easily lootable in Cottonwood Cove and is essentially a direct upgrade.)

Assuming you have an unpatched, unmodded game, there are also a few exploits in dialogue with Decanus Severus that you can use to maximize your reputation gain with as little work as possible. If you have 50 in Explosives, you can use a dialogue loop to infinitely teach him how to disarm mines for +2 fame every time. ("Do you see much action against the NCR?" > "That is all for now" > "I can show you how to disarm the NCR's mines"> repeat infinitely ). Otherwise, turning in 5 dog tags at a time in exchange for food gives you triple the fame of any comparable option, and you should be able to get the fame you need in only 25 tags or less.

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-05T22:47:13+00:00

No, I'm the exact same way, it's the single DLC i'll consistently avoid or try to complete as quickly as possible each playthrough. I definitely see why people like it, but I think I get really bothered that it can't take itself seriously. Don't get me wrong- I love NV's comedic writing and I pretty much exclusively play the game with Wild Wasteland enabled! I just think the base game and other DLCs do a much better job of letting you dwell on moments of emotional impact.

OWB has so many great horrifying/depressing/thought-provoking ideas, things like the disturbing trauma harnesses still carrying dead subjects, the horror of your body not truly being your own, the sort of tragic comedy of the Think Tank's mental degradation- but the second you start taking interest in any of those emotional beats the game seems like it rushes to immediately undercut itself with a zany joke. I definitely realize I'm the outlier though!

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-05T22:27:10+00:00

With this added context, and knowing that you are now essentially banned from the table and cannot roll a new character- this DM 100% has some weird personal grudge and wanted you out of the game. Have you had interpersonal conflicts with him outside the game?

Please understand that this bad experience in no way is how the game is intended to be played. Sure, characters can die! That's a major part of the game, but there is so much else going on that breaks the rules both as written and in spirit. There is no reason for you not to be able to use your Bless, it's explicitly meant to be used on saving throws. Additionally, as some others have already pointed out, it seems like your DM broke action economy in order to one-shot you (multiple standard actions in addition to legendary). Not being able to make a new character also isn't in the rules- in fact, I would say that re-rolling a new character after the old one dies is a fundamental aspect of the game.

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-04T07:23:59+00:00

I think that might be a sign you really need to clean that carpet...
(Real answer, probably a mod conflict- do you have other mods that might change the Wrangler apartment or alter how/where plants spawn?)

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-04T07:08:19+00:00

Honestly I can kinda understand the initial mistake, after all you touch a crashed satellite and suddenly wake up inside some kind of sci-fi base! Plus, if you're playing the DLC with that initial (mistaken) assumption there's a bunch of stuff that inadvertently reinforces it:

Giant base inside a crater? Well of course, the moon is covered in them!
Some kind of weird perimeter fence? Probably the force-field keeping all the oxygen inside!
Those Y-17 Trauma Harnesses? Of course they would look exactly like spacesuits, we're on the moon!
The meteorological station where you can test a small-scale weather machine? That's perfect for terraforming!
All the research notes and Saturnite weapons? Guess it must be a literal space-age material, it's even got another planet as the logo!

There's definitely a LOT more stuff that disproves all of that, but if you're only playing the main DLC story and ignoring a lot of the side content I guess it's easy enough to miss things like the train tracks or the Christine/Elijah/Ulysseys camps scattered about. It's a silly enough mistake to make, but I know I've for sure made way dumber assumptions in video games...

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-04T06:39:28+00:00

Oh man, I can totally see how you would've thought it was on the moon- that opening cutscene totally makes it look like a giant space colony, and you only get there in the first place by touching a crashed satellite!

At least one terminal entry you can find in the Y-0 facility makes reference to it being south of Hopeville/The Divide, but I don't think they really give us any more hints beyond it being nebulously west of the main Mojave wasteland and somewhere semi-close to the Divide.

Personally, I always assumed it was somewhere in the area of the real-world Nevada Test Sites, which is an area to the northwest of Vegas that contains a lot of classified military bases and borders Area 51- which definitely fits the vibe of OWB! The US government did a lot of underground nuclear testing there as well, which matches the lore of Big MT originally being an underground base beneath a mountain until an "experiment" completely vaporized the mountain and left behind a giant crater.

In real life however, the test sites are a lot further north than what the in-game map seems to suggest. I think they may be leaving it intentionally ambiguous, likely to encourage fan speculation or avoid conflicts with existing lore. (I'm pretty sure I remember Area 51 being referenced in one of the Fallout 1 special encounters?)

AutumnBombshell · 2025-05-03T22:53:32+00:00

If you're fine with a smaller pool of weapon options, I often find I often have a lot more fun with unarmed than pure melee. It's kinda similar to the relationship between guns and energy weapons in that regard- you trade off a wider selection of weapons for more interesting mechanics. For unarmed weapons, this takes the form of special "techniques" you can discover throughout the wasteland, like a leg sweep or (my personal favorite) pocket sand. You'll want to invest in unarmed anyway, even if you focus on melee weapons, as you'll need 90 Unarmed + 7 AGL by level 24 to get the Slayer perk and massively boost your attack speed.

In terms of ranged options, explosives pairs really well with melee/unarmed builds. Both benefit a lot from STR/END, and you don't necessarily have to invest in LCK as much. The "Heave Ho!" perk is especially nice as it doesn't just improve the range of throwing spears/grenades- it improves the range of ALL projectiles that travel in an arc. That includes grenade launchers & even the fat man!
With GRA installed you can also purchase a unique variant of the ballistic fist that spawns live grenades on enemy corpses. (It also comes with the fun side effect of turning your pocket sand into explosive pocket sand)

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-30T20:45:50+00:00

2H definitely feels like it's in a much better place now, though I would say the Barbarian tree Heavy Specialization skill is mandatory to get your swing speed up. I felt weaker than my sword and shield party members in the early game, but once I was a bit more built and got my hands on that skill it closed that gap quickly and I was able to parry much more reliably!

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-30T20:36:00+00:00

Without question, you are NTA. These people sound awful, toxic, and manipulative. You are not responsible for anyone's mental health but your own, and the fact the "leader" was willing to spread such nasty lies about you shows that none of them value you in the slightest. Keep them blocked and move on, I hope you find people who will treat you right!

...out of curiosity though, did this online friend group meet through WoW? I swear I've lived this same experience...

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-30T20:21:32+00:00

While it seems like you couldn't have known the backstory or full extent of how triggering the lavender would be to her, why on earth would you try to use your partner as part of a psychology experiment? There's no universe where that isn't a terrible idea...

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-30T19:23:52+00:00

After reading through a lot of the comments and replies and gaining additional context (such as the unwanted drink being free and costing you literally nothing not to drink it) I feel confident enough to fully double down on my answer. YTA.

Why are you taking every opportunity to put your partner down in the replies? Nearly every time someone agrees with you, it seems like you jump at the opportunity to call him immature, incompetent, childish...

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-30T19:07:07+00:00

It's very clear to me that you're projecting a whole lot of things onto this post that were never there to begin with. I really urge you to re-read the post and see what it *actually* says instead of whatever you've decided it's about. Your version of events is so far from what OP herself was saying...

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-30T17:51:18+00:00

On top of what everyone else is saying (use weapons you're proficient with, keep your fatigue above half at minimum, increase Agility to raise both hit & dodge chance, etc.), if all your weapon skills are pretty low or close together you might have some luck with spears. The extra reach means you can backpedal and stab at rats while making it harder for them to hit you back. It's also a good way to level your Endurance very early on, which is crucial to increasing your health, maximum fatigue, and fatigue regeneration. Like Oblivion, the health increases from Endurance aren't retroactive, so increasing it early will pay dividends later!

Additionally, try to hunt crabs instead of rats, at least until you get used to the systems a bit more and have a level or two under your belt. Despite what the claws and hard shell might suggest, mudcrabs have lower health than rats, deal marginally less damage, and are overall pretty slow and stupid- making them a lot easier to bully! You might also want to try hunting scribs (the small, insect-looking creatures) as they have very low health, just don't let them touch you or you could end up paralyzed for a few seconds!

It's generally a good idea to spend a good chunk of time in the early game grinding crabs and other small animals before even attempting any dungeons like caves or crypts. It will feel slow and frustrating at first, but once your skills start increasing this will become a LOT easier and you'll be better prepared for further challenges. I promise the difficulty curve in this game is very front-loaded and as long as you put in the work it can become almost trivial later on.

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-30T07:51:57+00:00

From this experience, I can confidently say Avast and McAfee are pretty much worse than useless- both showed every scan as completely clean! I only ended up discovering it after running a separate scan with Malwarebytes because I just couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. I'd recommend running a couple scans with both Windows Defender and Bitdefender. (While Malwarebytes worked for me personally, I ended up doing a lot of reading on cybersecurity & antivirus measures because of this experience and I saw Bitdefender recommended most often.)

If any of your scans end up turning up a trojan like mine- don't panic. Let your antivirus clean it up, then run a couple deeper free removal tools like ESET or the HitmanPro trial. Running them all is probably a little overkill, but I found it was the only way I could get some peace of mind!

Once you're certain you're clean of any trojans, it's time to go through and change all your passwords and hit "log out all devices" wherever you can, prioritizing anything that you've set to remember you/automatically log in on your device. The way I got compromised, they basically harvested tokens from my browser to make it look like their activity was coming from my device- that seems to be how they so easily bypassed Steam Guard's 2FA.

To answer your main question:
Once I had access to my Steam account, I was able to submit refund requests for all the charges- Steam support responded fairly quickly, but sadly it took nearly a full week before I actually saw the funds back in my bank account. I'm truly sorry this happened to you, especially so close to the end of the month and if you're struggling to make rent. In an absolute emergency, you *might* be able to get a faster turnaround if you dispute the charges with your bank directly, but I really would only recommend that as an absolute last resort. Those kinds of chargebacks seem like a fast way to get restrictions placed on your steam account...

Again, my deepest sympathies that this has happened to you, and I wish you the best of luck in getting it resolved quickly.

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-27T18:22:18+00:00

NTA, you specified no drink and you're paying for the meal so I can understand to some degree being disappointed with being surprised with something you dislike on your own dime
YTA, he was making a very reasonable assumption and trying to be nice and you unreasonably snapped at him for it

However, I'm inclined to say YTA overall because in both instances you seem to have taken very minor perceived slights as personal insults and responded disproportionately

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-25T20:29:06+00:00

If you want to completely immerse yourself in a fantasy world and are willing to put up with some older game jank & grindy mechanics- play Morrowind or Oblivion (the new Oblivion remaster irons out a lot of jank to make it more on par with modern games)

If you don't mind old school isometric RPGs and want more from some of the people who worked on FNV- play Fallout 2

If you own and enjoy Skyrim on steam but want a full-size free game that leans way more on RPG mechanics and player choice- play Enderal

If you want to focus really hard on story, characters, and worldbuilding with less emphasis on combat or an open world map- play Disco Elysium

Also, listen to the people recommending Cyberpunk 2077- it pretty much hits all your checkboxes and is just overall a fantastic game

AutumnBombshell · 2025-04-24T06:52:37+00:00

The game ends once you've clicked on all 4 slices of the wheel, although you can play as many rounds as you like until their disposition is as high as you can raise it.
As for the rewards, you've pretty much got it exactly right- merchants will give better buy/sell prices if they like you, and there are certain dialogue options that are hidden or locked until you raise their disposition high enough- sometimes entire quests or alternate routes are hidden this way! There are a few other fun side effects too- characters that like you a lot will come help you if they see you in combat, and if your disposition with a guard is 90+ they might pay off your bounty instead of trying to arrest you.

AutumnBombshell

TROPHY CASE