Try a "dead is dead" playthrough, meaning if you die in the game, it's game over, no reloading your save, you can only start a new character. That's about as hardcoe as you can get while self-gimping. =p

Head on over to the Oblivion forums and meet Buffy and then tell me I'm wrong. Over 500 hours on a character with base end and str and only, ONLY, uses bows.

Iron Man playthrough.

Thats the name..

I never said it wasn't possible, I just wouldn't want to do it. I'd rather have a game where I COULD die a lot. Games like Fallout and Oblivion you really only die if you mess up somehow and that's usually after you already gimped yourself. The hardest part of Oblivion was getting out of the tutorial on the hardest setting. Bows make the game even easier. I guess it's all the sneak critical shots that kind of overpower everything in these games.

Always play Very Hard.
I only use VATS as a 'ohgodsurprisebumrush!' panic button, try hard not to use it otherwise. I find the real-time combat, especially in closer quarters even w/guns, adds difficulty plus imo is way more fun than "pause, select target, unpause, watch slo-mo animation.'

Doesn't make it more difficult, but for immersion I find turning off dialogue subtitles helps me. Otherwise I can read so much faster than they can talk that I impatiently click-click-click past their voices. Forcing myself to listen to them because of no text titles helps me to pay attention to what they're saying and notice any vocal inflections/emotions and thus my immersion. Of course, you can still click-click out even so, if you want, like for the boring common npc bits. The actual dialogue choice-options still show, just the npc-spoken lines don't.

Sometimes I use my mod that alters XP gains and level-gain speed via mods. I don't want or need to be lvl30 to finish the game and I like staying low-mid level (under 15) for majority of the game anyway. It hasn't made combat much harder, but it does limit skill-check/perks a lot, which changes the way I play.

Don't buy anything from the shops. Including ammo.


Ironman! (meaning no shops either)... I used to do those in action-rpg's like Diablo, but I have such a hard time with the discipline of actually self-deleting a chr. if it dies.

I've done this in FO3, but not in F:NV yet, but I intend to:

-Iron man.
-Realistic carry: STR*10
-Realistic weapon loadout: A couple small weapons and 1x 2 hander.
-Realistic ammo load out: <200 rounds total
-Use only scavenged equipment, especially chems.
-Caps add weght: 100caps per pound, and that's probably generous.
-Sleep in places that seem secure.

This completely changes the game. You find yourself paying careful attention to your surroundings. You tend to consider risk vs reward every time you think about entering a building or engaging a mob. You may find yourself avoiding combat and quests which require combat. You find yourself moving tactically so that mobs can't sneak around you, or that you can keep as much of your surroundings in view. You see how important it is to develop those speech skills.

This makes the game much longer, and much more intense. No, I'm not arguing that everyone should do this, and I know that a lot of (meta)gamers out there are fundamentally opposed to artificially limiting themselves. But if you want a challenge, rules like these can definitely provide it.

I use the following mods:

Harder hardcoe Rates (Refined Rates causes you to actually run out of food, water, suffer from advanced dehydration/starvation/sleep deprivation)
Expensive Wasteland (you can increase prices up to 10x)
Populated Wasteland (spawns more human enemies in various areas)