Mesina2 wrote...
Dean_the_Young wrote...
happy_daiz wrote...
^ Sorry to hear your smarty pants didn't make the cut. In retrospect, I'm already wishing I had focused a little bit more on Charisma than I did. I am running out of magazines to use. Hehe. And Lockpicking. I've had to leave several safes behind already.
You know what is a really fun run?
Endurance 1 pacifist run, baby.
Or at least I was a pacifist... because just about any mook could two-shot me, even if I was wearing armor. Fortunately Charisma 10 companions can kick serious ass, especially with perks, and my non-combat skills were so high I could generally avoid fights.
But hoover damn... who baby that was exciting.
Now that's badass.
Possible to do DLC's like that too?
Marginally, if you're a non-completionist and metagame. And use a lot of stealth boys. And twist the definition of 'pacifist'. (Like landmines!) Personally, while I did most of the core quests true to role-playing, I eventually put on heavy armor and killed some things from afar... and with explosives. I pretended my guy did a bit of construction work back in the day. Mostly I metagamed I had brought a companion with me.
The hardest part of Honest Hearts is the first sequence. IIRC, I
ghost-boyed my way across the bridge, where Follows Chalk killed the
enemy and became m ybodyguard. Once you have a companion, you can pretty
much get by with them slaughtering everything... and avoiding the giant
cazadores. I recommend doing it at lower levels- giant cazadores and
mooks with anti-material rifles were pretty much one-hit-kills if I
wasn't wearing power armor. I gave up and
started using plasma on the wildlife for convenience while exploring,
but for all the key quests I got by without needing to fight personally.
I ghost-boyed away the White Leg totems, used
C4 on the bear den, and after much thought I actually decided to
encourage Graham to defend the valley. Fleeing is much easier- Joshua
can solo all the White Legs and Salt-upon-wounds. But I ghosted through the cave, snuck like a coward, and let the Sorrows and Dead Horses handle the mooks. Oddly satisfying.
By far the best thing about Honest Hearts in a pacifist run, though, is the Compliance Regulator, the taser-gun you can get in the caves. It does almost no damage, but it has a critical-stun feature. I had maxed luck, so it allowed me to contribute to combat by stunning foes. (And, since I often snuck around, I could sneak-critical-stun the occassional inconvenient guard.)
For Dead Money, the key is to take companions with you where you don't need to take them, and basically wipe out the 'casual' ghost people in the villa. It's tedius, but in casual it's possible to just let your companions recover and grind them away. Then, when you trigger the gala, you run like hell. Once you're in the Sierra Madre, you can pretty much sneak around everywhere- the only real combat sequences come from the Ghost People in the lobby. I forget if you can run past them or not, but I think so.
Old World Blues isn't intended to be pacifist solo'd, and it lacks companions to rely on, but it is possible with a good enough sneak, luck, and perks. By far the most useful perk is the Animal Friend perk- with it you can avoid fighting nightstalkers, which are the real threat in the sneak suit and school levels. For the third melee mcguffin, sneaking and robotics expert can let you (non-lethally!) shutdown the robots and run. Otherwise- travel on top of the pipes while sneaking, and you can lose just about everyone. The Giant Roboscorpion and the Doctors are triveal with high speach and science scores. For roleplaying purposes I actually left without exploring everything to keep my pacifist mental achievement, and then reloaded and explored everything for the desired endings. I metagamed that I had a companion along.
Lonesome Road... didn't even try. That is a combat-heavy fest like none other, and being a largely linear road it lacks the means to bypass most threats. EDI also can't overpower the swarms. That said... I was definitely a fragile flower in a big, bad wasteland. The most important thing is traps. Getting EDI the powerder charge upgrade is the single greatest thing for an indirect fight. I set up my escape routes before I triggered a flight with a sneak-crit, and then fled away. That was the only way for me to get past the deathclaw highway. (Tunnelers were dealt with by liberal application of flare-gun panicking and EDI shooting.) Funnily enough, the finale- the great, unavoidable final battle, was more akin to my usual strategy- I died in short order if I was in the open, so I turtled up and let EDI and Ulysseus kill everything. Then saved the NCR and Legion, of course.
Overall? Mostly doable, but not enough for me to be honest about it. I just roleplayed that my favored companion, Cass, happened to accompany me on them. All the combat I did was credited to her.
But yeah, main game? That was legit. I mused about a few exceptions, like animals or explosives, but they never stuck. Boon and Veronica were my companions for the great hunt. EDI and Cass were my traveling companions.
While sneak, speach, and hacking/lockpicking are by far the more important skill sets, the best skills are probably animal friend and robotics expert. The first takes an entire type of encounter out of play, and made for potential allies- I once ran away from a raider encounter and to a nightstalker den to hide out. Much fun. The second, while borderline, is a non-lethal way to get out (or end) a lot of fights.
Surprisingly, a pacifist playthrough actually leveled up as fast as any other, and faster than some. Because I invested so heavily in the non-combat skills, I was freely making all the skill checks and getting boatloads of bonus xp, while my bodyguards were killing foes for regular xp. I, personally, couldn't join in, but I didn't lose out on much xp.
I definitely got conditioned to a lot of atypical behaviors, though. Who else would join in a caravan march for the extra protection? Who would feel safer walking with Legion patrols, knowing they'd fight off the bandits and animals? How many times did I make the hard choice, the really hard choice, and pass up on the right/nice thing because it would compromise the core principle?
Heck, the reason I could only side with House was because killing him was blatant murder. (Of course, my character's ideology was fine with House anyway.)
Retour en haut
Few more quick tips: unarmed does more damage in VATS. With high points in unarmed you unlock uppercut and cross. Uppercuts hit harder than normal blows, and cross does more limb damage. I don't know the exact math behind it, but it's probably in the Wiki somewhere if you're curious.
If you're lucky Johnson Nash will sell brass knuckles to get you going, but chances are you'll rely on melee weapons more to start.
