Hi everyone. I'm planning to play Fallout: New Vegas soon and I was interested in learning more about the hardcoe mode. I like the idea of being that deeply involved in the game world, but I was wondering if someone could describe in a little more detail the type of maintenance required of your character. Is it anything more than eating and drinking (and maybe sleeping)?

More importantly, I wanted to ask how tedious it is to do these things. How often must you do them? I want to be involved, even to the point of having to eat and drink *sometimes*, but I don't want to have to stop what I'm doing and deal with that type of upkeep every hour or two.

Thanks!

Tedious? For the most part with food and campfires along with water being available plenty and beds around, unless you spend say a week in-game in some cave.

Unless your role playing it's a -little- tedious but honestly as these items replenish your health you'll be using them anyways.

As far as difficulty goe I wouldn't suggest Very Hard. Now that is tedious. AI magically bulked instead of being better so there's no cheap deaths. In an RPG sense it makes sense though but I dislike it.

Hard is a nice balance though.

Its not tedious. Just make sure you have doctors bags or hydra around and you will be fine.

Hmm, ok so if it's not tedious, how about the other way around? Is it almost too trivial to even bother with, if the items are abundant and you need to use them anyway?

hardcoe very hard is kinda easy. Tedious is me starting a new character every time I get over level 25 or so because although being a god is kinda cool it gets old real fast for me.

Question: Do you like root canols?

You need lots of Doctors Bags and some Hydra. I came to the 2nd Battle of Hoover Dam without 2 Doctor's Bags or 1 Hydra. I had a few crippled limbs fighting, but I won. (hardcoe Mode I was doing, that is)

You do not even need a good survival skill at all in hardcoe Mode, I just got all of the Food, Water, Rad-Away, and Doctor's Bags I could and I was set. All I made at the campfire is Healing Powder (1). I beat the game from start to finish with HM on and I was only Level 12, that's how easy hardcoe Mode is.....for me.

The meter increases for thirst very quickly, every hour you gain about 20 or so thirst. It is slower for Hunger and even more slow for sleep. But BE SURE TO KEEP AN EYE ON THE METERS, DO NOT FORGET ABOUT THE METERS OR YOU WILL BE USING MUCH FOOD AND WATER AND POSSIBLY BE IN BED FOR HOURS. Sorry about the CAPITAL Letters, I just wanted to stress that and I was too lazy to do Bold, Italics, or Underline.

To be honest unless your an RPer and you want the eating, sleeping, and drinking to count for something or be gouged it is a bit pointless as you'll be doing all anyways otherwise just without meters in the Pip-Boy.

Now the food and stims giving back health isn't immediate but it's not all that noticable.

Ah right also there's the weight from bullets. Only big snag possibly for Energy/Guns users but not too bad. It just means you might have to actually buy bullets for once.

If your on the PC just disabling the HUD makes a huge immersion difference compared to this overlay.

So there is a meter? How does it work? What is the max amount it will increase to before you *have* to stop and eat/drink/sleep? Are there any side effects as the meter fills up, or is it just a final effect if you let it get full?

My first playthrough was with hardcoe and I found the food/water/sleep requirements sufficiently tedious that I didn't use it with my subsequent playthroughs despite liking several other aspects of hardcoe mode (like the restricted healing and ammo having weight).

I think it's worth trying through, you can always turn it off.

Oh good. And can you change difficulty level during the game too?

Well, it isn't exactly a meter. Its a bar exactly the same as the RADS Bar. It increases as time passes. It decreases as you eat, drink or sleep. I forgot to mention, there are three bars, hunger, thirst, and sleep. When any bar reaches 1000, then you say goodbye to the world. Side effects, like lowering your SPECIAL are going to affect you if it rises to 200, 400, 600, or 800. As I said, 1000 is death.

Yes, anytime: Very Easy, Easy, Normal, Hard, and Very Hard,
Press start, then go to options, then go to gameplay, you will see difficulty level.

only bad thing is companions can die unless you give them power armour or ranger armour thats about it really :fallout:

The "meter" is in the Pip-Boy by other things like RAD.

Also yes by pressing start and going into gameplay you canswitch difficulty options or even hardcoe mode on and off. There's other options in the menu too such as turning the HUD or Pipboy seperately to different colors.

Note if you turn off hardcoe mode at any time untill you beat the game you won't unlock the Achievement/Trophy for playing through.

No other rewards for playing hardcoe mode though.

Hmm, so if thirst is about 20 per hour, and hunger and sleep are even slower, that doesn't seem too bad. That means it takes 10 hours before you even get to your first bad effects for thirst?

But now, are we talking real world hours, or game hours?

Well, it might be more than 20 per game hour, that was just my estimate, and I'm not very good at estimating.

How hardcoe rates work is that it gives you a value, in seconds, that gains you 1 point of that rate.

So, for instance, you get dehydrated at a rate of 1 for every 10 seconds, by default. The higher the value, the longer it takes for you to raise that stat. That's why sleep deprivation takes forever and a bit to raise, because the value is so darn high, and the amount you reduce it by by sleeping is high.

The time rates for you to be hungry, running out of sleep, or dehydrated aren't as fast or annoying as you might think.

However you get thirsty the fastest.

Yeah, I just checked the Fallout wiki. Dehydration is 12 per hour, but that's a game hour. Like you said, it's 1 per real-time 10 seconds, which is 360 per real hour. Yikes.

Edit: But I also read about the Vault 13 Canteen, which seems like it would help...

Edit 2: Actually, if the canteen restores 25 hydration every five minutes, that almost completely offsets the dehydration meter.

Example of Thirst:
Start: New Vegas Strip. Hydration level: 5
Arrival: Mojave Outpost: Hydration level: 126 (might have been 86)
I think those were the numbers.

If you have PC get the water bottle mod that lets you fill up water bottles, and drink from them automatically when you get thirsty. Then it shouldn't really be tedious at all. You can go for real long in game time without having to sleep, and taking care of hunger is easy. I liked hardcoe, it reminds me I'm trying to survive.

It's tedious with a capital T.

Actually, it's tedious with a capital TEDIOUS.

If you like micro-managing instead of actually playing then you'll LOVE hardcoe mode.

Not too tedious. That only thing I hate is how fast your H20 bar goes up.

I only have one complaint for HC mode, and that is that it prohibits fast travel with crippled legs; (which I find to be patently absurd).

As for the rest... I have never played the game in regular mode, and don't plan to. Its been HC from the first, and I may even craft a mod that makes HC & WW both mandatory, and for WW not to cost a trait.