Hello all.

I've decided to try hardcoe mode for the first time, coupled with the Very Hard difficulty, and I have a few questions for the more experienced players:

1) Is there any advantage to opting for Energy weapons vs. Guns for hardcoe+ Very Hard? I'm not talking about killing power alone, but also things like weight management, ammunition availability, frequency of repair etc.

2) Just how much tougher do creatures and bad guys get on Very Hard?

3) Any tips on the optimal level of Survival skill? I've seen the opinion that all you need is to keep it high enough to be able to make Gecko steaks, but high levels of Survival increase the food efficiency, and in the later stage of the game I find more Bighorners than Geckos; they drop more meat, too.

4) Is there a location that could serve as a "home" and have safe storage AND a source of water AND a campfire AND a workbench nearby?

Any general tips on hardcoe play would be appreciated as well

It really depends on your playstyle, I only know about hardcoe not the hard difficuty setting however.

1. EW's are far heavier on HC ammo adds up to twice your weight on a general build.
Guns however require a lot more deifferent types of ammo and most guns rarely take the same ammo.
EW's have three basic ammo types MFC, EC, and ECC's, rifles take MFC's, pistols EC's, fully automatics take ECC's and big guns vary between the three.
Flame weapons take fuel, if you're into that type of gun.

EW's tend to mostly deal good fast semi automatic damage and have a high capacity and require less strength to use.
However are heavy as is their ammo.
Guns require greater strength to use right but have less weight meaning you can carry more ammo, and they have plentifull and light ammo.
However as said they are each usually only niche weapons than all rounders, each needing different ammo to use right, and have smaller magazines.

So unless you play just with 5.57 weapons and stock up on AP and HP rounds the weight difference is not too great.
at least it should not put you off trying anyway.

2. I can't help in NV, on FO3 they got a ton more health and hit harder.
I can only say this is what they did here too.

3. Either ignore it at under 25, or take it to 50+, it does not have that great an impact imo.
I played FO3 unmodded without stimpacks and have done so in NV, I really can't say HC has done much other than make the features a rule rather than a role choice.
Survival does mean less food needed to heal later on, and makes it a little easier post battle, but not much for me tbh.
I just bump it as it fits the Mojave feel to the game.

Supposedly enemies do 200% more damage while you do 50% less damage. the 50% less is NOT reflected in-game via the weapon dmg./dps numbers. So it'll still say in-game that your sniper does, say, 42, but you're actually supposed to be doing only 21. I'm not yet convinced they have more health, it could just seem that way because you do less damage - different way to do the same thing. But I could be wrong - (edit) last time I tried to get that Perk that shows HP's it was glitched for me, and I haven't used the console to compare since I haven't really cared about knowing that much.

I say supposedly because that's what I've read/been told, and it's what the Guide book supposedly says....but I don't know how to interpret the actual numbers I see in the GECK. Stuff like fdiffmultHPbyPCVH = .50 is assumed (by me) to be 'Hit-(something, maybe Percentage?) BY Player-Character on VeryHard = (50%), and fdiffmultHPToPCVH=2.00 could mean '(Hit-something) TO Player-Character on Very Hard = 200%, but that's all I can tell you. (2nd edit: could be HitPoints, too, but I don't think my PC's hitpoints are reduced by half ... )

From playing Very Hard, I can say that you will get 1-shot kills less often - that is, even a sneak-crit will not always do enough dmg. to 1-shot something, depending on weapon, skills/build and enemy etc - but they still will/can happen regularly if you're sincerely trying for them, of course. And that enemies definitely hit harder. However once you're past clvl 8-12 or so, if you're using the usual higher tier weapons/perks etc. it won't seem all that much harder in terms of ranged killing. The extra damage they do to you will still be noticeable, however, especially if ganged up on (several firing/hitting you at once). But in short....Very Hard by itself will not feel that much harder.

I just checked for you Lady.
Using my powers of console command shazzam.

You're 100000% spot on.
HP's don't go up, damage is just lowered from the players attacks.
So it must act like a medX but effecting the players attacks, and damage dealt to you must be dealt like an added psycho effect.

On VH it must be damage dealt reduced by 50, taken +200% or some such.

Hehe, I just checked myself & was going to post the same thing. Nothing like someone asking a question to motivate me to finally check something.

I wonder if companions damage output is also halved ... I couldn't find a GECK setting for that, but I just may not know the proper term to search to make it pop up easily in the giant list of Settings. Or it could be something in companion npc scripts.

Perhaps the extra damage dealt by enemies doesn't apply to companions, either. I'm still half-convinced companions have some kind of hidden extra boost to something in Very Hard. I can make a chr. & equip myself and Boone, for example, to have the exact same DT (taking CHA into account) and have close to the same number of hit points, but I swear I can be hit 3-4 times and my health bar is reduced to 1/4, while Boone can take hit after hit after hit after hit after hit by the same enemy (not including deathclaws/poison) and seemingly take barely any damage at all. :glare: It's become especially noticeable with the increased spawn mod, where he'll have 8 ghouls and a reaver smacking him around at lvl 6 and he's still standing, while if I stood still and let them do that to me, I'd be dead.

1) Guns have the advantage all round, although I did my playthrough with EW mainly. They are more common, cheaper and the ammo is more plentiful. And, by and large, they have better stopping power.

2) In Fallout 3 your weapon damage was halved relative to Normal mode.

3) I did it on VH/hardcoe with a Survival skill of 9 and never made anything at a campfire (except in the tutorial stage). There's tons of food about, from vendors, scavenging and from desert plants like barrel cacti and prickly pears.

4) There are tons of places that have some of those facilities - most containers don't respawn - and there are several proper player 'homes' that you can either rent or are given.

I did find having a companion to cart around my stuff was very useful, but I only had Strength of 1.

"hardcoe" is a bit misnamed in my opinion, as it gives the impression that it's only for expert players, whereas it really just adds a bit of 'realism' to the play, so you can't just go months without drinking, for example, as you could in Fallout 3.

Agree.

@Golem - my impression both from my own limited HC experiences and from what I read, as long as you have 30-50 survival to make a little food and water and you eat/drink now and then to keep up those meters, the gameplay isn't that different. eg, you won't feel super hard pressed by it or anything. It's just a touch of realism + an extra thing you have to keep track of periodically. The biggest difference (imo) is the stimpacks-cripple thing and that companions die permanently. Which is why I don't use the mode much...I like companions too much, and I'd cry buckets if they died forever. But if you don't use them/don't care, no big deal. HC is mostly a roleplaying aspect - I think Very Hard makes more of a difference in terms of gameplay difficulty than hardcoe - not a lot, but still more - but that's just me.

Yes the injuries are the worst part.
It's a lot more evident with small frame, without it and in constant melee you may cripple 1 or 3 limbs after many areas.
With small frame almost every fight early on will get you crippled if you're not carefull.

Medicine will help as you can both create doctors bags and use them more effectively.
Later on with levels, HP's and hydra in greater numbers it tends not to pop up much however.

This is fun however as having a hobbling completely crippled character and not fast traveling is a sight to see.

Companions dying is usually only a concern against a few creatures on normal HC, on very hard I'd see it as a frequent event.

If you equip them well, not too frequent overall actually. But yes, against a few it's almost a guarantee - and now there's that poison bug.

This is why I don't like Very Hard setting - its so unrealistic. If I shoot a fiend/raider in the face, I want him to die, not to continue running at me like a maniac. If Very Hard affected enemy AI, ammo availability, amount of skill points etc, then that is fine. These all affect the difficulty of the game without artificially reducing all damage done by your weapons. Just my thoughts on this. :shrug:

Yeeah I dont play Vh for the same reason. It isnt fun, just tedious. It should effect other elements, AI, how much radiotation effects you, and increase rad count. But getting owned by a crap gun, while you need several sniper rifle shts to take out one thing that should be dead. I stick with normal.
And not hardcoe, I dont like my companions dying.

Okay, you've just about convinced me to stick with Normal. I thought VH would have hostiles spawn in larger numbers, better armed etc, but if all it does is reduce your damage to nonsense...

Its like that for every gam ethough. Except rts.

What can I say, I don't play a lot of games. I am a sporadic rather than regular- or, god forbid, compulsive- gamer, and I tend to stick with old games I like for a long time.

I think for melee characters VeryHard would be more of a combat challenge, especially in the beginning. Then again, melee/unarmed is overpowered to begin with, so....


I understand this thinking and I half-agree with it. But in this game, where you can one-shot things even when your skills are below 20, it's not exactly "realistic" to begin with. I mean, I've artificially kept my c-lvl around 8 for most of the game. Skill points & AI don't matter nearly as much as your weapon and your manual dexterity skill at aiming. Thus I prefer at least taking a little more damage to myself when being shot at, since it's also not "realistic" that I can be a bullet sponge myself.

I no longer use VATS even as a panic-button (broke myself of that habit), my real-time ability to hit things in the face quickly and regularly is low, and remaining (detectably) crouched for very long can be somewhat problematic against many of the higher lvl enemies - thus for me I still find VH better/more enjoyable.

The damage models in Very Hard are unrealistic and annoying at times, I agree, but the alternative of playing in normal mode is just too easy for me at least. I have to do stupid things like charge a pack of Fiends and not use cover to die in Normal mode. At least with VH active there's a chance you'll die if you take on more than a few opponents without trying to reduce the odds against you or do some moronic things like the aforementioned charging multiple RCW users with a baseball bat. :facepalm:

For your other questions, the others have mostly covered it. Survival over 50 is a mostly unneeded in my experience, 50 is enough to make Gecko and Bighorner Steaks and that's easily all you need for the whole game. Only going to 25 and just eating Gecko Steaks is probably enough if you're tight with skill points due to a low Intelligence or other concerns. Guns vs EWeapons is mostly a non-issue post-patch as they are equally deadly if used correctly. Weight issues are a non-factor as well unless you're planning to go solo, with even one companion you can still carry around a small arsenal and still load up on loot. Even without them, I always take at least a moderate Strength score so ammo/loot weight isn't really much of a concern to me as long as you don't plan to carry around 8 different weapons and ammo for them all.

Places to use as a home, if you're on PC there are several nice mods that add player homes right in Goodsprings to start the game with, the one I use replaces the Goodsprings Schoolhouse with a player home and includes all you need for the entire game. If you're not on PC and have to use vanilla resources, stay at Victors shack until you pick up one of the officially sanctioned houses as it has clean water, a bed, safe containers (almost all in the game are safe btw) and is near constantly respawning Geckos to use as a food supply.

General tips, always carry more water than food. At least 2 :1 water vs food as you'll get thirsty a lot sooner than you'll get hungry. Sleep is almost never an issue unless you simply have to spend weeks on end without returning to somewhat civilized areas. Concerning crippled limbs, I've found that it does happen often enough that you should always carry around at least 2 or 3 Doctors Bags / Hydra with you at all times. Double that if you take Small Frame. SF is a good trait and I do take it, but you will obviously suffer injuries more often. Trade off of +1 Agility vs the need to carry slightly more medical supplies is well worth it to me.

Loadouts when leaving base, I try to keep my full loadout under 90 lbs in terms of weapons/ammo/supplies etc. Leaves plenty of room for loot and repair supplies. Pick 2-3 main weapon types you always use and stick to them, I use a long range gun such as a Hunting Rifle, short range such as a Hunting/Lever Shotgun and either a quick automatic such as an Assault Carbine or a silenced pistol depending on the situation.

Concerning companions and dying, get them upgraded armor ASAP. If you find/know where to find some power armor, most can wear it strait away. Or head to a certain area with dead bodies that are wearing some nice combat armor and use that. Be aware that sometimes companions will run ahead of a fight if they detect that YOU have been detected. I mostly like this behavior but be aware of it at low levels lest they run off into a pack of Cazadores. You'll be seeing either the death pop-up or hitting F9 soon if that happens.

There's more I could write I'm sure but this is already longer than I thought it would be so I'll stop here. Should get you started with HC + VH in any case, good luck and have fun with it.

Exactly.

@Golem - just try it for a while and see if you like it, yourself. If you don't, just turn it back down to Normal. Don't even have to start a new game.

Yes very true, you do have to quick load after the change though to reset it or that may just be me.

@Urtho Very good advice, nicely put.