Hey everybody. I just got FO:NV gifted by a friend and am excited to start my first play through as soon as steam finishes downloading it. Something to do till Skyrim hits bliviongate:

Anyway... I was wondering; do you guys recommend hardcoe or normal for a first time?
I'm not new to rpg's but I am certainly not extremely good at it.

I'm leaning towards hardcoe just for the hectic fun of it .

Any opinions on this matter?

hardcoe is way more fun and challenging. I cant even play normal anymore, its just so humdrum in comparison!

Basically not counting combat, thats a separate difficulty. Normal is easy and hardcoe is normal!

hardcoe is really fun. I would advise it.

I've have yet to play New Vegas without hardcoe active. Turn on hardcoe at character creation and keep it on. It sounds way more scary that it turns out to be.

The only thing you really shouldn't do with HC mode on is overuse the 'wait' feature. A 1-6 hour wait times when needed is fine, but trying to to do the old three day wait cycles to refresh merchants could kill you.

There are some very hardcoe hardcoe lovers here. It depends on your style of play. I tried it twice and I'll share why I don't use it. I'm very big on companions and the first time my companion, ED-E, was killed, that was it...hated that. I was at Level 5 and quit that feature. So, later I got an Essential Companions mod and tried it again because my companions couldn't die. I made it to Level 15 and when I found 15 missiles and couldn't carry them because everything has weight, I quit it again....I'm a big loot-lover, you see. So for me, I thought it was a little tedious but I still do the things that make it fun like recipes at the campfires. You might love it though and none of that will bother you. Whatever you do, good luck! It's a great game.

Unless you're wanting to play a dedicated Energy or Explosive Weapons character (the ammo for which is prohibitively heavy in hard core) Hard Core isn't a big deal. It takes bit of planning to make sure you have food and water with you and, as mentioned, you can't spam the three day waits to refresh merchant inventory like you can in Casual mode. It just adds a bit of reality to what is, after all, a role playing game.

Definitely try hardcoe for your first playthrough. The Pack Rat perk will help cut down the weight of food/water/ammo. Also having a Barter skill of 70 gives you more options in several quests.

If you have experience w/ RPGs then I'd say go hardcoe mode, as I find it really flushes out the games mechanics more.

If you're a casual player or new to RPGs go for normal mode first.

Experiment, you can turn it on and off at anytime.

I find hardcoe to be tedious. I don't die if I don't eat once a day. I recommended normal normal for your first run through.

hardcoe hardcoe hardcoe if for nothing else but the ammo weight. having to plan ahead for your weapons layout and your ammo is a big plus for me. the eat/drink/sleep mechanics are on the very light side and you probably will barely notice them,i had to use mods to increase them. also you need doctors bags to heal limbs so collect those forceps, braces, surgical tube scalpels early on cause they will come in handy. playing on normal is for wussies.

edit: i cant believe that word got by the censors. :lmao:

No, but you will be very ill and weak, your stats will reflect that. That's the point of hardcoe, albeit the dehydration and hunger could be better implemented and more dynamic.
And you don't die in a day, it takes three game days without eating and drinking for this to happens.

But the rest is great, not allowing to carry an armory with you and your companions can dying brings a lot of strategy into the game.

I would suggest going on normal mode for the first time, and on the second playthrough I would use it. I haven't used it yet, but I was thinking of having an Explosives Logan Loophole character on my fourth playthrough, so I think it would be a good fit then.

ok, I just went ahead and tried it, And I think I'm sticking to it. It does at something FO3 didn't have and the Ammo wait sure is something to consider now . It's fun

I'm a fan of playing and liking the hardcoe modes on most games as I like the extra challenge and realism that's usually brought into force, and while I initially tried the hardcoe mode of NV and did my best to like it and understand its dynamics, in the end I soon turned it off because I thought it was just dumb and I couldn't fathom how a lot of elements were supposedly more realistic or enjoyable.

First thing that I noticed right away and that annoyed me to no end was the water situation. I like the idea of having to manage your hydration levels, but right away you find yourself with the great luck of actually being close to a very large and clean and free source of water! And what is there plenty of just lying all around? Empty whiskey bottles and stuff. So in real life, problem sorted. Plenty of clean water, plenty of containers. No more issues. But no, in this you have to buy or loot water, or get specific 'ingredients' just to make daft cactus water at a campsite, or keep returning to water sources to manage it. So as far as I could see, water management wouldn't be an issue if it was being realistic. Few whiskey bottles - fill 'em up. Carry with you. Refill as necessary. End of. No challenge whatsoever. And the fact that anything even remotely alcoholic would only dehydrate you even more was ridculous - drinking a spirit, sure, but just drinking a beer doesn't hydrate you at all? That's BS.

Next thing is sleep. Again, I like the idea of having to rest or suffer penalties because of tiredness. But again, I just COULD NOT FATHOM the daftness of the system in place for that. If you were a hardcoe joe in the wilderness, you could rest anywhere if you really needed to, providing you're protected from critters or such - you wouldn't HAVE to find a designated, damn bed just to sleep. Not being able to just sleep or rest anywhere is just daft (unless you're in a dangerous spot). I could accept that a bed in a sheltered area would be more restful than a rock in the desert, but still, if it was realistic then sleep would not be an issue - easy to mange and take care of. Not that sleep is hard to manage in hardcoe mode, but the method just annoys me. It's not realistic at all.

Food wouldn't be an issue either with the amount of big, meaty critters just begging to be carved up and cooked round every other corner. Eating the meat from even a single full sized gecko would keep you stuffed for days.

Limb damage? Really hacked me off. I liked the idea of having to go see a doctor to sort a limb that was actually crippled, but limbs that aren't crippled and are only partially damaged in some way, to not have them heal when you rest, even just a little at a time, is another annoyance and isn't realistic either. The body does heal (to a point) on its own - it's perfectly reasonable to have unbroken or not seriously injured limbs gradually heal over time, especially when resting. The fact that they don't is another dynamic I couldn't accept. Not realistic, just daft. Potentially having to go pay a doc every single day before I head out just to sort out my limbs which never ever recover any damage on their own no matter how long you might rest is just an annoyance, not extra realism.

Ammo being weighted and stimpacks not healing instantly WERE points I did like the challenge of and that actually made perfect sense, but all the other unnecessary and unrealistic tedium just made 'hardcoe' mode pointless to me.

Last thing that concerned me as well with hardcoe was companions being able to die. I like the idea of it in theory - you're going to care a lot more if you know they can actually get permanently wasted, but at the same time, considering how LITTLE control you really have over your companions and their actual mentality in combat, and how incredibly daft they can be, it's easy to see how they could needlessly die in the face of dangerous threats purely down to their own scatty AI and your inability to manage or command them realistically - rather than them dying because you didn't play well or care enough or equip them properly.

So no, in my humble opinion, I don't recommend hardcoe for a first playthrough. I think it's pants.

Each to their own though.