So, I've done Honest Hearts and am preparing to go to the Mojave Drive-In very soon. Any advice you guys can give me? Like, don't bring too much stuff, bring a melee weapon, etc. (or, do Dead Money first)? No spoilers please.

I tried it only once and that DLC pissed me off. Do you have the robitic expert perk? You might want that before going in. I imagine it would come in handy for OWB. I only tried that on Normal too, and it was very frustrating. the npcs seemed to have insane perception too, seemed to be in caution the entire time.

Not sure if thats the right name of the perk, but its the one where you do 25% more damage against robots. I imagine that mixed with the proton axe, would be a good combo.

Old World Blues is very completable even coming in with absolutely zero equipment at level two.

That said, this is a good checklist:

• Have you completed Dead Money?
  
• Have you completed Honest Hearts?
  
• Do you have a minimum of Thirty-Five(35) Weapon Repair Kits?
  
• Do you have at least 75 points in one of the five combat skills?
  
• Are you Level 20?
  
• Do you have at least 75 points in either Medicine OR Survival?
  
• Do you have at least 75 points in Speech OR Barter OR Science OR Repair?
  
• Do you have a weapon capable of taking on Deathclaws?

For optimal experience, I would recommend heading in with: Them's Good Eatin', Entomologist, Robotic Expert, Certified Tech, & Animal Friend.

If you have a player base, take everything with you. If you have several bases, take everything with you. If you intend to use Guns or Explosives, take everything with you.

-Nukeknockout

If you are on PC save often. The thing is very fond of crashing.

Have high speech, medicine and science when entering

Good melee/unarmed skill recommended.

Bring... A... [censored]load of ammo.
Seriously.
Bring two weapons max, clear out everything else apart from your armor and then get ammo ammo ammo and more ammo.
I only played OWB once but with my EW character who had like 400 MFC and 200 SEC and 400 ECP was drained dry withint a couple of hours.
So yeah, bring ammo, lots of it, and then some.

On the contrary. Bring your companions with you, have them carry as much ammo as they can, take it from them, THEN activate the satellite after dismissing them.
Many enemies in the Big Empty have ~700 health and 20 DT, meaning they eat bullets like candy.
Bring money too. You may have read the above line and thought "then I'll bring a good melee weapon/fist." Those help (Paladin Grill is a good choice, a useful melee weapon will be provided for you), but again, they'll break a fair amount since the enemies demand so many hits, so you'll want cash to pay for repair costs.

Might also consider bringing Lucky specifically, if your luck and agility are good enough to use it properly. That gun saved my ass.
For the record, my first playthrough of OWB (blind), by the time I was done, I only had ammo left for Lucky (.357 magnum is one of the few ammo types actually found in OWB) and a couple shots for my Brush Gun, though I only had those because I was specifically conserving them for the possibility of tough fights. I went in with 5mm (2000+?), .357 (300-400), .45-70 Gov't (600-800), .308 (500-600) and a fist, then had only .357 (and my fist obviously) by the time I left, really.
Had other characters go in (not-blind, I knew of the ammo issues) with loads of 12.7mm, .45 auto, etc, and it's always the same. Last time I even brought 4k 12.7mm bullets, spent them all. .357 and .44 magnum are the only ammo types that have an advantage.
Just be careful with your ammo. Bring a sidearm perhaps and, before each fight, ask yourself "do I REALLY need to spend rifle ammo on this." If not, use a pistol. Or a fist, if you have enough caps to keep repairing said fist. Weapon repair kits might also be a good idea, since, if you're wearing anything but Heavy armor, you'll need that money to repair your armor.

Something I've found which helps a ton with ammunition conservation is using Tomahawks & Throwing Knife Spears to take down Lobotomites in VATS. What also helps is using Melee weapons against anything which isn't a robot or a Lobotomite.

-Nukeknockout

Man, I'm glad I posted this thread. I was prepared to go into the DLC with about 500 5.56mm, 200 .308 and 700 10mm bullets. I had a vague idea that OWB would be ammo-intensive, but wow. I was way off the mark on how much. Will pick up another gun with a different ammo type then go on an ammo shopping spree across the Mojave. Luckily I also just found the Paladin Toaster.

I'm level 28 now, and have had 9 INT since level 1 so my Speech, Med. and Science are all in the last quarter.

Thanks for the advice, all!

Weapon choice, general:

OWB has spawning issues similar to Honest Hearts; things usually spawn too close to you for long-range sniper tactics, nor does the terrain allow you too many long distance shot opportunities. I would recommend paying more attention to (and bringing along more ammo for) your close- and mid-range weapons.

Weapon choice, ammunition:

Generally, OWB is most friendly to Energy weapons, except perhaps for the flamer kind. You can get small quantities of SECs and MFCs from multiple NPCs and appliances at your home base in addition to what you find while scavenging and looting dead enemies and robots. If you're looking for a weapon to fall back on to conserve ammo, a fully modded GRA Plasma Defender will be excellent. MF HYperbreeder Alpha even more so. You will also be provided with an OWB-native energy pistol using SECs, but to be honest, it's not very practical.

Guns wise, OWB is more friendly to Cowboy-class weapons than it is to Grunt-class ones. If you want a steady supply of ammo, choose something in .357 or .44 and take Hand Loader. A Trail carbine and Lucky will both be right at home here. Lots of .357 and .44 casings will be available from a certain household appliance. 45-70, 10mm and 12 gauge will be available in modest quantities from dead foes.

Explosives wise, you're pretty much screwed, so if you're using them, bring a VERY good supply, take Mad Bomber and try to rely on Tin grenades and Satchel charges whenever possible.

Armor:

Light armor is all you'll find, so if you want to be able to repair your armor with Jury Rigging, stick with light.

OWB is also chock full of Combat Armor. It's Heavy Armor players who are totally screwed.

-Nukeknockout

I don't remember finding much Combat Armor there. No foes wear is, so it's probably a random find in lockers and boxes, and I've had bad item spawn luck or something?

Combat Armor is a random spawn in lockers, and since there's so many lockers, I have been unable to leave OWB with less than fifteen suits of Combat Armor every single time I've played it.

-Nukeknockout

I disagree.
My first playthrough I had Joshua Graham's armor, which cost me TONS to repair. Other playthroughs since then I've done Medium and Heavy armor characters, and Heavy always does best.
The way the game works, if I remember correct, is that if an enemy's attack damage is over your damage threshold, your armor degrades faster. If you have higher DT, your armor takes like no damage. Thus, Light armor will have to repair a lot, Medium and Heavy, to a lesser extent. Heavy may not have a way to repair besides the sink, but Heavy needs to repair far less anyways. I probably made 8 repair trips on my light armor character (as in repair from <25% to full), only two with my heavy armor characters (probably more like <40%).

Though with Jury Rigging, the crap-ton of Lobotomite Jumpsuits makes repairing Light Armour a small issue.

That does seem to be the way it works, and if I ever paid for repairs, I would agree with you. As it is, I almost always grab Jury Rigging instead.

-Nukeknockout

Fair enough, but that's ONLY if you have Jury Rigging. Otherwise, it's a whole different game of repairing.

Bring a good melee weapon (Oh baby!) and a good set of armour, use Joshua Graham's and you'll be fine for combat.

- Oh I forgot about Lobotomites....Bring a [censored] load of stimpaks/med-x/psycho

be ready to listen to very long dialogues I loved them and there are nice stuff you can get there so leave some room for it. it's not so hard so don't worry about what weapon to use I found the DLC very funny and fun so enjoy

Well, I finally went into the Big MT. Seriously, I love everything about this DLC. I started up New Vegas at about five pm thinking "eh, I'll start OWB, muck around for ten minutes then go cook my dinner. It's now 10pm, and I'm stopping only because my stomach is really growling. Don't think I've been that into a game since.... well since that first playthrough on I got to the Strip. I'm kinda torn between finishing it this weekend and rationing the awesome over a few weeks.

I'll post my general impressions when I finish it.

So, yeah. I completed OWB last night.

Old World Blues is awesome. I was a little underwhelmed by Honest Hearts, so I was completely blown away by OWB. I love the wacky humour, and the relatively small and flat Big MT was no hassle to travel across. The enemies were fun, I only died once (I did not see that mini-deathclaw coming) but they didn't feel like complete pushovers. I loved all the personalities at the Sink so much that I didn't even mind going on all those repetitive fetch quests to upgrade them. My favourite, probably Muggy (his ending slide was especially hilarious), or the Stealth Suit (reminds me a little of GLaDOS). The little clues about Elijah and Ulysses were very cool too, though I wonder why he wasted so much time painting his (very complicated!) symbol on everything.

One thing though, I did not use nearly as much ammo as I though I would. Maybe it's just my playing style, but I completed the DLC without making a dent in the mountain of ammo I brought to the Big MT. But I also had Paladin Toaster, Robotics Expert and Ranger Takedown, so maybe that's why. I came out of Big MT with a lot more doctor's bags and weapon repair kits than I went in with, because the place is chock full with crafting components. Could've made literally thirty more WRKs if I had the wrenches. And the meat from the Legendary Bloatfly cleaned out the large cache of prickly pear fruits I still had from Honest Hearts.

Other things:

I didn't bring a lot of .357, or I would have used the K9000 cyberdog gun more. Screw the Fat Man, the cyberdog gun is clearly the most awesome weapon in Fallout.

OWB is also probably more fun as a energy weapons user - EW ammunition is everywhere. Quite looking forward to playing this as an EW/melee weapon user.

I didn't see the confirmed bachelor speech check when I spoke to my brain, I was quite looking forward to that. I chose the Speech speech checks instead.

The Sink CIU doesn't seem to replenish its caps though, which is a shame.

Gonna spend a bit more time in the Mojave before going to the Sierra Madre. Though I don't expect Dead Money to be as awesome as OWB.

OK, I went by your check list and I was fretting that DLC. However (playing on easy yea LOL), it was hilarious (as someone else stated). OMG It was so funny, I was cracking up by the various people I talked to.

I thought the Robo-scorpions would be all over the place, but they don't even factor in until later. The Lobotomites are like ghouls with armor, but I had no issues taking them out.

Things that helped:

Animal Friend Perk - a lot of places had Nightstalkers and I could just walk right through those areas without problems
Stealth Boys - there are various test scenarios to upgrade the Stealth suit you can find there
Robotics Expert Perk - Do 25% more damage and can disable robots while Hidden in Sneak Mode (especially helpful and necessary during the Stealth suit test scenarios)

I am not much of an energy weapon person, but I found the fully upgraded Tri-Beam Laser Rifle (with overcharged ammo) worked well on all enemies in the Big MT. And yea, I really didn't use as much ammo as I thought either. I guess the guys here that went through a ton of ammo played the game on HARD.

Well, I also have to add that this was the last of the DLCs and I was already level 45 or so. In my current play through, I'll do Honest Hearts first, then OWB, followed by Dead Money and then Lonesome Road.

I'm glad two of my items helped

For reference, I play on Normal/hardcoe, and the list is adjusted for me being a terrible shot outside of VATS and my propensity for Chem/alcohol use to make up for this.

Glad you had fun

-Nukeknockout

Oh your list and advice definitely helped. Although, this time around, I'll try it a before I hit level 45 hahaha. Yea, see, that's what I thought, you are playing on a different difficulty level.
Anyway, I don't think you need all these weapon repair kits though. There is enough stuff laying around to make repair kits, while you are there

This DLC was more fun than Dead Money. I hate it when my head explodes. LOL


Hmm, it did for me. It always had like around 16K - 19K caps when I checked. By the time I did OWB, I had like 50K caps on me, so I used weapon repair kids, and I used the Sink to repair my other gear. So, not sure if his cap balance stayed so high, because I kept pumping caps into it or what?

OMG you mentioned talking to your brain - now that was the most bizarre and fun part. I asked it why it sounded so masculine and it complained about voice modulators and that female ones are hard to come by hahahahaha Then it kept going on and on, complaining about me jumping in radio active muck all the time and getting shot at etc etc LOL I finally convinced it though, that we are better as a team.

Yeah, I think when you repair stuff the caps you spend show up on the barter screen. I never repaired my stuff through the Sink because I had the Jury Rigging perk. I ended up buying the expensive weapon mods to sell when I got out.

But yeah, Animal Friend and Robotic Expert were HUGE boons. I'm sure I'd have been less enamoured with the DLC if I had to fight all those damned nightstalkers. Give me a human foe any time. And a 25% damage bonus against half the enemies of OWB is insane.