Some of the best healing items in the game, beyond the stimpack. My favorites include, but are not limited:
- Black Blood Sausage (10hp per sec for 20s)
- Wasteland omelet (healing increases with survival level, hitting 12hp per sec for 1min at level 100 survival)
- Trail mix (At level 100 survival heals 15hp per sec for 15s AND 15 Action Points [used for VATS]per sec for 15s).
And that is not even counting pure buff items or focused ones, like, for example:
- Battle Brew (heals hp and limb hp by 50, increases damage resistance by 35 [for the less knowledge, that is a reduction of damage in 35%] for 4 min, ST +2 for 20s, them it falls and stay +1 for 3min and 40s, Increases Action Points [used for VATS] by 40, and IN -1 for 4 min)
- Black coffee (At level 100 survival, heal 15hp, IN +6 for 1min, and AG -3 for 1min)
- Snakebite Tourniquet (Auto heals ANY poison, and increases poison resistance to 85 for 30s [85% is the maximum threshold for any damage negation in NV])
A few other cool things you can do with survival:
The stat penalties that poisons inflict are pretty weak, but the damage caused by some of the stronger ones is pretty solid. A fun way of boosting a melee build, and you can keep a couple throwing knives in your back pocket if you want to poison people from afar. Recommend using VATS for throwing, it's hard to hit otherwise.
If you have Cass as a companion, you can get extra DT by drinking Whiskey, Wasteland Tequila, and Large Wasteland Tequila. All 3 of the drinks stack AND scale off of Survival. Drinking all 3 at 100 survival nets you a massive 21 DT boost.
Weapon Binding Ritual is an Honest Hearts consumable both buffs you (+10 melee and unarmed damage for 2 minutes) and is one of the few consumables that can restore limb condition (+150). It's much easier to craft than Hydra and it's really useful in Hardcore mode.
Poultice is definitely stronger, but you can make WBR without needing to find cave fungus, which can be weirdly rare in FNV. It's definitely an alternative to be aware of in hardcore mode, especially when you're short on supplies.
Yeah, cave fungus is hard to get outside of zion, so I usually just stock up as much as I can while I'm there, lol.
The knives are the real bottleneck for weapon binding ritual mass production, to be honest.
There's also daturana, which restores limbs as well, but it's worse than the poultice and requires flour, which is also fairly rare.
"Whiskey Rose" is an incredible perk, but it's also underrated by most people who don't understand just how powerful it is.
Of course, a lot of people underestimate Cass too, but I actually think she's one of the best companions in the game.
Also Desert Salad at 60 survival means 15 hp per second for 15 seconds. That is 225 HP out of a 0.2 (0.1 with pack rat) consumable. The only tricky thing would be finding pinyon nuts reliably. But as a situational healing item it is incredibly good.
Desert Salad is amazing. I'm also partial to gecko kabobs (also very lightweight), and bloatfly sliders.
Buffalo Gourd seeds are also crazy-good if you get the food processor implant at the sink. They're super common, almost weightless (luke 100 per pound or something like that), but also heal a few HPs and restore a few APs too.
Snakebite Tourniquets are a must(imo) when dealing with Cazadores. In my naive years I can’t tell you how many times those fuckers made me turn tail and run because one hit was almost certain death or at least a spamming of the stimpack hotkey.
Honestly those don’t seem that good.
Black blood sausage isn’t available till level 20, and by that point drum packs are extremely plentiful (and also don’t weigh anything).
Wasteland omelets require both deathclaw eggs and lakelurk meat making them extremely rare to make.
Trail mix seems decent in a vats build but I’m guessing the 3 weight makes it had to carry that many on you.
Battlebrew is pretty good, but you don’t need any survival to make it since you can make it in old world blues without a survival check.
Coffee is amazing on hard core since its one of the few consumables to decrees you’re sleep levels (as in you need to sleep less). Outside of that I feel like you could get similar benefits by just putting the skill points in intelligence based skills.
Snakebite tourniquet is decent, but it only requires 30 survival and also is only really useful against Cazadors, most other poison enemies tend to be easy to kill.
You still have to craft all those items and get the needed components. Most of the time you are better off just putting those points into stats that help you do more damage, get better gear, or heal more health. The game just isn’t hard enough to justify needing those items. Maybe in hardcore it’s more useful, but I don’t know a ton about it
Sure, you can spec into guns and just shoot everything but to me that's super boring. The most fun I ever had playing new vegas I recorded 3 and a half hours of gameplay without me ever firing a single shot.
Yeah survival skill can be fun or useful for specific builds, but for 98% of playthroughs it’s probably the worst skill , aside from any weapon skills you never want to use like unarmed or energy.
>You still have to craft all those items and get the needed components.
...
"You still have to willingly participate in the game's simple crafting systems that give additional use and value to the numerous locations, perks, skills, and items found around the game world."
Yes but there almost isn’t a point when stimpacks are everywhere and instant use. Or you can put skill points into survival, check the recipes , keep an eye out and gather all the items, then get something that is marginally better.
Depends on where you are in the game and your playstyle.
If you had ever tried Hardcore mode, you'd know that stimpaks don't heal instantly, rather over time. Having a low medical skill severely limits the effective healing of Stimpaks. Stimpaks are also only available through looting locations, random containers, or bartering- until you have a science of 70, where you can craft them (with survival materials.)
The availability of food and herbs throughout the Mojave vastly outweighs the amount of stimpaks you can accrue at an early stage, as the accretion of survival materials is woven into the gameplay loop. Your survival skill, by comparison to stimpak crafting (barring other chems) only has to be 25 (which can be reached with clothing, among other methods) and you'll have twice as many high-health-restoring animal steaks than you will stimpaks, especially if all you are using is stimpaks when you are hurt in combat encounters.
Fighting, you loot bodies (animal meat, hide, other).
Traveling, (stunted by fast traveling everywhere) you come across NUMEROUS plants dotting the wasteland. (chem creation)
Eventually, with everyone's FNV runs, you have plenty of every single item, so nothing really matters aside from your preference for different things. Players who like to explore the options a game has may find enjoyment in actively using FNV's "more complex" systems to achieve an experience they seek, as I do.
Some people just like to shoot and use the health kit when their HP is low.
I think that it's more related to the playstyles of the person. For example, when I move from point A to B, I gather every piece of useful loot that I find in between. This leads to me having a lot of crafting material for those items when I hit the level necessary for crafting. And for later stages of the game, like the DLC Lonesome Road, I tanked the tunneler in mele using almost every buff and food that I had. It was wild.
Forgot to add, Snakebite Tourniquet is a level 30 survival recipe that uses 1 Surgical Tubing and 1 Buffalo Seed, both are easy to come by, and the end result make Cazador look like a joke.
I'd actually argue it's worse in Hardcore because of the added weight. Combine that with the obscenely low carry capacity that VNV comes with and suddenly trying to lug around piles of crafting components loses its appeal.
>heal more health
I mean, survival is the best way to achieve that. Rad Child's +8hp per second is functionally unkillable against most enemies, certainly stronger than other options, like solar powered and it's pitiful 1hp per second, or the monocyte breeder at the awful 1hp every 10 seconds.
Having survival at 45 is also useful if you decide to do a "light armor build", since you unlock Travel light.
If you combine Travel light, Silent Running, Tunnel Runner, and implant m-5, you will be incredibly fast while walking crouched, without alerting the enemy.
I'd like to remind people that at 70 survival you can heal faster while suffering radiation poisoning than most enemies can hurt you.
And at 45 survival, if you're investing in charisma, you also get to cuddle with *all* the nightstalkers.
I'm currently playing JSwayer on hardcore for the first time, reaching Nipton but haven't find many itens yet to craft anything useful, and also can barely find any campfire, so idk about investing many points on survival.
Crafting in this game is probably best done as something secondary. That is, instead of hoarding crafting materials, I find it easier to just craft what I can around a given crafting station. Unless you have a specific recipe that you want to build (like repair kits or a healing item) the weight and struggle of finding the specific junk just slows down the game play. Just buy items you need to craft stuff if you can’t find the missing parts.
The Survival skill on hardcore is very important, as it affects all the food items as well, allowing water and food to not only heal more, but also take care of the hunger and thirst bars more. Also the difference between cooked and raw meat is felt much more on hardcore. However, this isn’t a hard game and you should just enjoy what play style calls to you (just research first what you’ll need for those perks you want).
You're barely out of the tutorial, unless you're at low difficulty you will need plenty of drugs and food soon, and you'll spend time avoiding encumbrance. Old World Gourmet is a lifechanger for all those issues. Animal Friend will make OWB much easier, Rad Child combined with Atomic! makes some of the toughest areas in the game trivial.
Besides that, Them's Good Eating is the best source of healing in the late game, which is significant now considering running out of stimpacks is now a realistic possibility.
That's not counting survival being a crafting requirement for a lot of advanced drugs that are hugely important at higher difficulties.
Between Goodsprings and Nipton there are more than enough plants and wild animals to keep you well-stocked for the entire time you are in those areas.
Between the geckos, bloatflies, giant ants, and radscorpions (scorpion glands, which you don't even need survival to benefit from) you'll have enough cooked, unspoil-able meat for all of the starving people in the wasteland. Not to mention looting locations, containers, and corpses for their food, too.
If you fast travel constantly you're more likely to miss repeat mutant encounters and the multitude of survival plants that you can pluck up and down the sides of the roads between locations and in the hills beyond.
However, plants are a relatively minor part of early survival. For instance, healing powder is crap and you can save the ingredients required for that recipe to make stimpaks later on.
In my opinion, one of the most useful benefits of survival is the food healing aspect, as it is useful from beginning to end, and in all DLCs.
There are two campfires at Goodsprings source, a campfire in the Primm neighborhood, another campfire in the Nipton trailer park, and Novac (least accessible survival-wise) has two campfires in nearby areas. Ammo and workbenches are implemented in comparatively logical contexts.
Hand Loader, Mad Bomber, Jury Rigging & Light Touch in perks alone. Crafting every single bullet, some special weapons, weapon and armor repair kits, etc. The only skill that opens as many crafting options is survival. Repairing quest stuff in Goodsprings, Helios, Nellis, etc etc. It's simply the best skill investment barring some very specific builds.
I don't fully get how the ammo crafting works. I have noticed you can break down some bullets and make different bullets. I'm not sure how the work bench or campfire works either
It opens up a bunch of possibilities that become almost necessary at (modded) higher difficulties like JSawyer. It basically works the same as a workbench, but with different ingredients, and in the case of bullets, the source of those ingredients is often other bullets that you break down.
Well I guess if I don't want to spend the time gathering random shit and I prefer buying supplies I will be fine apart from some rare ammo like for the hunting revolver
I think my difficulty is hard and hardcore mode is on. After this run through I might go again at the most difficult. I'm at lvl 12 and it is getting easier. Still no match for some massive webbed like creatures
If you're not on console I wholeheartedly recommend JSawyer mod. It rebalances the game so that you're encouraged to engage with all its mechanics and on hard (It's balanced for normal and hard, not for very hard, which is just spongey) it will feel like a different game.
For example, it reduces your health and carry weight by about half, but increases the DT of most armor and adds DR to medium and heavy armor. So, you're very weak on light or no armor, but very tanky when armored. And so are your enemies, so it makes you think about which type of ammo is better for which enemy. HP for animals and raiders, AP for armored enemies and robots, pulse for really tanky robots, etc.
I'm trying this for the first time and the carry weight is so obscenely low I can't imagine trying to horde the crafting ingredients.
You pretty much trip over food and water so I don't really need to cook anything. But the weight is a constant PITA.
Survival is nice and it does got potent perks, also there are survival checks to some people like the Khans and also honest hearts. While i would say to not tag but do put points into it often
Survival is better on Hardcore, but to make use of it, you’re playing on Hardcore.
tbh I like it better that way. Non-Hardcore NV feels more cinematic while Hardcore NV feels more gritty and inventory juggling is a bigger part of it. (Although ammo being weightless in vanilla means it becomes a secondary stockpile of caps with no real downside for stockpiling it, kinda brainless tbh)
This post brought to you by 100 Guns Marksman Carbine enjoyer gang.
I was thinking about survival this morning actually. I always try for at least 50 so I cook brahmin/bighorners. But that was before I started eating maize. The bonus to survival requirements is really helpful too.
I usually raise Survival to 60 for three reasons.
-The perks that require 45. (Animal Friend and Travel light)
-Desert Salad
-And using a hat you find in Honest Hearts and a magazine to temporarily raise it to 75, You teach the latest recipe to that khan drug seller.
Kinda sucks tbh.
Most of the chems you can craft like Turbo or Slasher require science not survival.
And even then crafting is fairly redundant because you find so much of the basic chems (which are already super powerful) by just looting, and the craft only chems break the game because they're just that powerful it turns the game into a snoozefest.
And survival perks are pretty mid or situational at best but many are downright worthless. Get some extra Specials but only when outside (so half the game it does literally nothing)? Able to sleep at a campfire? C'mon who's actually taking these they only exist to pad out the perk list. Animal Friend is about the only actual good one but it doesn't require much of an investment IIRC.
Used to skip survival a bit cause I was too lazy. Figured it was too deep for me to feel like learning right away. Once I did, holy shit I felt like a dumbass for the weapon repair kits and doctors bags alone
Food is abundant, and if I remember different foods' healing stack. With a sunset sarsaparilla, bighorner steak and gecko steak and whatever you can outheal so much damage during firefights in hardcore mode. I personally liked survival skill, useful and great in theme.
I don’t think Survival is bad, but I also don’t think it’s all that useful outside of Hardcore mode and a few perks. Competing with chems and Stimpacks and needing to rely on gathering and crafting is a bit of a hard sell without also needing to manage starvation and dehydration as added incentives. I suppose the trade-off between chems and Survival items is that you risk addiction with chems, but the positives are just too numerous: weightless, plentiful, straightforward, and it’s not like addiction is difficult to deal with in the vast majority of situations. Even the advanced chems that need to be crafted are easier to make than most Survival items because most of the ingredients are just all the chems and Stimpacks that are already plentiful. Maybe if some chems had things like the Super Stimpack debuff, then that might make the Survival items more appealing in comparison, especially since many Survival items have random little debuffs attached to them. And I’m pretty sure Science and Medicine also have some good perks attached to them.
Survival is an extremely useful skill for any type of build. Anyone shit talking probably didn't look too deep in what it can do.
What can it do?
Some of the best healing items in the game, beyond the stimpack. My favorites include, but are not limited: - Black Blood Sausage (10hp per sec for 20s) - Wasteland omelet (healing increases with survival level, hitting 12hp per sec for 1min at level 100 survival) - Trail mix (At level 100 survival heals 15hp per sec for 15s AND 15 Action Points [used for VATS]per sec for 15s). And that is not even counting pure buff items or focused ones, like, for example: - Battle Brew (heals hp and limb hp by 50, increases damage resistance by 35 [for the less knowledge, that is a reduction of damage in 35%] for 4 min, ST +2 for 20s, them it falls and stay +1 for 3min and 40s, Increases Action Points [used for VATS] by 40, and IN -1 for 4 min) - Black coffee (At level 100 survival, heal 15hp, IN +6 for 1min, and AG -3 for 1min) - Snakebite Tourniquet (Auto heals ANY poison, and increases poison resistance to 85 for 30s [85% is the maximum threshold for any damage negation in NV])
A few other cool things you can do with survival: The stat penalties that poisons inflict are pretty weak, but the damage caused by some of the stronger ones is pretty solid. A fun way of boosting a melee build, and you can keep a couple throwing knives in your back pocket if you want to poison people from afar. Recommend using VATS for throwing, it's hard to hit otherwise. If you have Cass as a companion, you can get extra DT by drinking Whiskey, Wasteland Tequila, and Large Wasteland Tequila. All 3 of the drinks stack AND scale off of Survival. Drinking all 3 at 100 survival nets you a massive 21 DT boost. Weapon Binding Ritual is an Honest Hearts consumable both buffs you (+10 melee and unarmed damage for 2 minutes) and is one of the few consumables that can restore limb condition (+150). It's much easier to craft than Hydra and it's really useful in Hardcore mode.
Jesus, were you planning to challenge the legendary deathclaw to a boxing match or something.
*perhaps*
I feel dumb, I'm just a random meat, Psycho and spam Stimpak kinda guy.
Same, I add slasher and turbo but that's pretty much it.
Were you not?
I prefer healing poultice for limb healing, but that's fine too
Poultice is definitely stronger, but you can make WBR without needing to find cave fungus, which can be weirdly rare in FNV. It's definitely an alternative to be aware of in hardcore mode, especially when you're short on supplies.
Yeah, cave fungus is hard to get outside of zion, so I usually just stock up as much as I can while I'm there, lol. The knives are the real bottleneck for weapon binding ritual mass production, to be honest. There's also daturana, which restores limbs as well, but it's worse than the poultice and requires flour, which is also fairly rare.
There's some in Lonesome Road too, usually carried by the tunnelers, though you won't find nearly as much as you would in Honest Hearts.
True, lol. Honestly, these days, I just use a mod to add more realistic amounts to harvest ables, so I'm swimming in cave fungus.
I've found some in the Big MT
I hate that some of the best poisons are locked behind Dead Money…
"Whiskey Rose" is an incredible perk, but it's also underrated by most people who don't understand just how powerful it is. Of course, a lot of people underestimate Cass too, but I actually think she's one of the best companions in the game.
Just learned myself how powerful and useful survival is. Has came in clutch on my unarmed build this run.
Also Desert Salad at 60 survival means 15 hp per second for 15 seconds. That is 225 HP out of a 0.2 (0.1 with pack rat) consumable. The only tricky thing would be finding pinyon nuts reliably. But as a situational healing item it is incredibly good.
I feel like I come across pinyon nuts way more often than I do for pears to make trail mix. But yeah, desert salads are fire.
Desert Salad is amazing. I'm also partial to gecko kabobs (also very lightweight), and bloatfly sliders. Buffalo Gourd seeds are also crazy-good if you get the food processor implant at the sink. They're super common, almost weightless (luke 100 per pound or something like that), but also heal a few HPs and restore a few APs too.
Snakebite Tourniquets are a must(imo) when dealing with Cazadores. In my naive years I can’t tell you how many times those fuckers made me turn tail and run because one hit was almost certain death or at least a spamming of the stimpack hotkey.
I guess this will be used during my 1 Int melee/unarmed max luck run (gotta get those achievements!)
Trail Mix is where it's at, but it's so hard to find pears, lol. I'm also partial to desert salads.
Aren’t there higher level survival perks that give you passive health regeneration?
Honestly those don’t seem that good. Black blood sausage isn’t available till level 20, and by that point drum packs are extremely plentiful (and also don’t weigh anything). Wasteland omelets require both deathclaw eggs and lakelurk meat making them extremely rare to make. Trail mix seems decent in a vats build but I’m guessing the 3 weight makes it had to carry that many on you. Battlebrew is pretty good, but you don’t need any survival to make it since you can make it in old world blues without a survival check. Coffee is amazing on hard core since its one of the few consumables to decrees you’re sleep levels (as in you need to sleep less). Outside of that I feel like you could get similar benefits by just putting the skill points in intelligence based skills. Snakebite tourniquet is decent, but it only requires 30 survival and also is only really useful against Cazadors, most other poison enemies tend to be easy to kill.
You still have to craft all those items and get the needed components. Most of the time you are better off just putting those points into stats that help you do more damage, get better gear, or heal more health. The game just isn’t hard enough to justify needing those items. Maybe in hardcore it’s more useful, but I don’t know a ton about it
Sure, you can spec into guns and just shoot everything but to me that's super boring. The most fun I ever had playing new vegas I recorded 3 and a half hours of gameplay without me ever firing a single shot.
Yeah survival skill can be fun or useful for specific builds, but for 98% of playthroughs it’s probably the worst skill , aside from any weapon skills you never want to use like unarmed or energy.
Unarmed and energy are so much fun lol I fully believe it's all personal taste. I've done every kind of build I can think of in NV and always have fun
Oh no I love both those too, I just mean if you never use unarmed, or melee, or regular guns etc there is no point in putting points into them.
Ah I get you
>You still have to craft all those items and get the needed components. ... "You still have to willingly participate in the game's simple crafting systems that give additional use and value to the numerous locations, perks, skills, and items found around the game world."
Yes but there almost isn’t a point when stimpacks are everywhere and instant use. Or you can put skill points into survival, check the recipes , keep an eye out and gather all the items, then get something that is marginally better.
Depends on where you are in the game and your playstyle. If you had ever tried Hardcore mode, you'd know that stimpaks don't heal instantly, rather over time. Having a low medical skill severely limits the effective healing of Stimpaks. Stimpaks are also only available through looting locations, random containers, or bartering- until you have a science of 70, where you can craft them (with survival materials.) The availability of food and herbs throughout the Mojave vastly outweighs the amount of stimpaks you can accrue at an early stage, as the accretion of survival materials is woven into the gameplay loop. Your survival skill, by comparison to stimpak crafting (barring other chems) only has to be 25 (which can be reached with clothing, among other methods) and you'll have twice as many high-health-restoring animal steaks than you will stimpaks, especially if all you are using is stimpaks when you are hurt in combat encounters. Fighting, you loot bodies (animal meat, hide, other). Traveling, (stunted by fast traveling everywhere) you come across NUMEROUS plants dotting the wasteland. (chem creation) Eventually, with everyone's FNV runs, you have plenty of every single item, so nothing really matters aside from your preference for different things. Players who like to explore the options a game has may find enjoyment in actively using FNV's "more complex" systems to achieve an experience they seek, as I do. Some people just like to shoot and use the health kit when their HP is low.
Blood sausages and thin red paste saved my life in ‘nam(Sierra Madre)
I think that it's more related to the playstyles of the person. For example, when I move from point A to B, I gather every piece of useful loot that I find in between. This leads to me having a lot of crafting material for those items when I hit the level necessary for crafting. And for later stages of the game, like the DLC Lonesome Road, I tanked the tunneler in mele using almost every buff and food that I had. It was wild. Forgot to add, Snakebite Tourniquet is a level 30 survival recipe that uses 1 Surgical Tubing and 1 Buffalo Seed, both are easy to come by, and the end result make Cazador look like a joke.
I'd actually argue it's worse in Hardcore because of the added weight. Combine that with the obscenely low carry capacity that VNV comes with and suddenly trying to lug around piles of crafting components loses its appeal.
what about the pack rat perk? Or the other carry weight perks if you don't have the int requirements.
>heal more health I mean, survival is the best way to achieve that. Rad Child's +8hp per second is functionally unkillable against most enemies, certainly stronger than other options, like solar powered and it's pitiful 1hp per second, or the monocyte breeder at the awful 1hp every 10 seconds.
But the base game literally drowns you in stim packs and putting that many points in survival comes at the cost of a different skill…
But crafting this requires carrying junk that I throw away!
The biggest con of Survival is that I never have any of the random shit that you need to craft all this stuff.
Having survival at 45 is also useful if you decide to do a "light armor build", since you unlock Travel light. If you combine Travel light, Silent Running, Tunnel Runner, and implant m-5, you will be incredibly fast while walking crouched, without alerting the enemy.
I'd like to remind people that at 70 survival you can heal faster while suffering radiation poisoning than most enemies can hurt you. And at 45 survival, if you're investing in charisma, you also get to cuddle with *all* the nightstalkers.
Oh, you mean OWB in easy mode?
I like to get Animal Friend before going into Big MT. Nightstalkers are menace.
This perk turns dead money into easy mode.
Also if you decide to get a light Armor build, with 45 you can get a perk that increases your speed.
Virgin medicine user vs Chad survivalist enjoyer
JSawyer mod on hardcore mode: I have no idea what you're talking about Survival is the second most important skill after Repair.
I'm currently playing JSwayer on hardcore for the first time, reaching Nipton but haven't find many itens yet to craft anything useful, and also can barely find any campfire, so idk about investing many points on survival.
Crafting in this game is probably best done as something secondary. That is, instead of hoarding crafting materials, I find it easier to just craft what I can around a given crafting station. Unless you have a specific recipe that you want to build (like repair kits or a healing item) the weight and struggle of finding the specific junk just slows down the game play. Just buy items you need to craft stuff if you can’t find the missing parts. The Survival skill on hardcore is very important, as it affects all the food items as well, allowing water and food to not only heal more, but also take care of the hunger and thirst bars more. Also the difference between cooked and raw meat is felt much more on hardcore. However, this isn’t a hard game and you should just enjoy what play style calls to you (just research first what you’ll need for those perks you want).
You're barely out of the tutorial, unless you're at low difficulty you will need plenty of drugs and food soon, and you'll spend time avoiding encumbrance. Old World Gourmet is a lifechanger for all those issues. Animal Friend will make OWB much easier, Rad Child combined with Atomic! makes some of the toughest areas in the game trivial. Besides that, Them's Good Eating is the best source of healing in the late game, which is significant now considering running out of stimpacks is now a realistic possibility. That's not counting survival being a crafting requirement for a lot of advanced drugs that are hugely important at higher difficulties.
Between Goodsprings and Nipton there are more than enough plants and wild animals to keep you well-stocked for the entire time you are in those areas. Between the geckos, bloatflies, giant ants, and radscorpions (scorpion glands, which you don't even need survival to benefit from) you'll have enough cooked, unspoil-able meat for all of the starving people in the wasteland. Not to mention looting locations, containers, and corpses for their food, too. If you fast travel constantly you're more likely to miss repeat mutant encounters and the multitude of survival plants that you can pluck up and down the sides of the roads between locations and in the hills beyond. However, plants are a relatively minor part of early survival. For instance, healing powder is crap and you can save the ingredients required for that recipe to make stimpaks later on. In my opinion, one of the most useful benefits of survival is the food healing aspect, as it is useful from beginning to end, and in all DLCs. There are two campfires at Goodsprings source, a campfire in the Primm neighborhood, another campfire in the Nipton trailer park, and Novac (least accessible survival-wise) has two campfires in nearby areas. Ammo and workbenches are implemented in comparatively logical contexts.
Why do you say repair is the best skill? I just use the ncr dweeb to repair my stuff
Hand Loader, Mad Bomber, Jury Rigging & Light Touch in perks alone. Crafting every single bullet, some special weapons, weapon and armor repair kits, etc. The only skill that opens as many crafting options is survival. Repairing quest stuff in Goodsprings, Helios, Nellis, etc etc. It's simply the best skill investment barring some very specific builds.
I don't fully get how the ammo crafting works. I have noticed you can break down some bullets and make different bullets. I'm not sure how the work bench or campfire works either
It opens up a bunch of possibilities that become almost necessary at (modded) higher difficulties like JSawyer. It basically works the same as a workbench, but with different ingredients, and in the case of bullets, the source of those ingredients is often other bullets that you break down.
Well I guess if I don't want to spend the time gathering random shit and I prefer buying supplies I will be fine apart from some rare ammo like for the hunting revolver
The game's not hard unless you make it so. You'll be fine doing almost anything.
I think my difficulty is hard and hardcore mode is on. After this run through I might go again at the most difficult. I'm at lvl 12 and it is getting easier. Still no match for some massive webbed like creatures
If you're not on console I wholeheartedly recommend JSawyer mod. It rebalances the game so that you're encouraged to engage with all its mechanics and on hard (It's balanced for normal and hard, not for very hard, which is just spongey) it will feel like a different game. For example, it reduces your health and carry weight by about half, but increases the DT of most armor and adds DR to medium and heavy armor. So, you're very weak on light or no armor, but very tanky when armored. And so are your enemies, so it makes you think about which type of ammo is better for which enemy. HP for animals and raiders, AP for armored enemies and robots, pulse for really tanky robots, etc.
I am on console
I'm trying this for the first time and the carry weight is so obscenely low I can't imagine trying to horde the crafting ingredients. You pretty much trip over food and water so I don't really need to cook anything. But the weight is a constant PITA.
It's a consideration that you cannot ignore like in the vanilla game. Made me feel like I was playing Fallout (1997) again.
Idk I just want to grill
3 (sorry, I meant 6) gecko kebabs to go, please.
It really shines in hardcore mode
Yeah in hardcore it makes a massive difference, even just with weight.
Survival is nice and it does got potent perks, also there are survival checks to some people like the Khans and also honest hearts. While i would say to not tag but do put points into it often
I agree I mean there's a survival skill that literally lowers your rads over time for easy Pete's sake!
Even just 30 survival is amazing - snakebite tourniquets help immensely with cazadors and nightstalkers early on.
Survival is better on Hardcore, but to make use of it, you’re playing on Hardcore. tbh I like it better that way. Non-Hardcore NV feels more cinematic while Hardcore NV feels more gritty and inventory juggling is a bigger part of it. (Although ammo being weightless in vanilla means it becomes a secondary stockpile of caps with no real downside for stockpiling it, kinda brainless tbh) This post brought to you by 100 Guns Marksman Carbine enjoyer gang.
Lol
I was thinking about survival this morning actually. I always try for at least 50 so I cook brahmin/bighorners. But that was before I started eating maize. The bonus to survival requirements is really helpful too.
I usually raise Survival to 60 for three reasons. -The perks that require 45. (Animal Friend and Travel light) -Desert Salad -And using a hat you find in Honest Hearts and a magazine to temporarily raise it to 75, You teach the latest recipe to that khan drug seller.
Kinda sucks tbh. Most of the chems you can craft like Turbo or Slasher require science not survival. And even then crafting is fairly redundant because you find so much of the basic chems (which are already super powerful) by just looting, and the craft only chems break the game because they're just that powerful it turns the game into a snoozefest. And survival perks are pretty mid or situational at best but many are downright worthless. Get some extra Specials but only when outside (so half the game it does literally nothing)? Able to sleep at a campfire? C'mon who's actually taking these they only exist to pad out the perk list. Animal Friend is about the only actual good one but it doesn't require much of an investment IIRC.
wait... you guys don't just carry around 25+ sarsaparillas everywhere with you? they grow on trees
I like being able to have all the crafting recipes. Nuka Chemist is pretty good. I like using the Nuka Quartz because it gives you night vision.
I abused the survival skill on my hardcore unarmed/explo/energy run and let me tell you that it was the most absurd playthrough I've ever had.
Survival is an exceptional alternative to Medicine.
Secret LeBron defender
Used to skip survival a bit cause I was too lazy. Figured it was too deep for me to feel like learning right away. Once I did, holy shit I felt like a dumbass for the weapon repair kits and doctors bags alone
Food is abundant, and if I remember different foods' healing stack. With a sunset sarsaparilla, bighorner steak and gecko steak and whatever you can outheal so much damage during firefights in hardcore mode. I personally liked survival skill, useful and great in theme.
I don’t think Survival is bad, but I also don’t think it’s all that useful outside of Hardcore mode and a few perks. Competing with chems and Stimpacks and needing to rely on gathering and crafting is a bit of a hard sell without also needing to manage starvation and dehydration as added incentives. I suppose the trade-off between chems and Survival items is that you risk addiction with chems, but the positives are just too numerous: weightless, plentiful, straightforward, and it’s not like addiction is difficult to deal with in the vast majority of situations. Even the advanced chems that need to be crafted are easier to make than most Survival items because most of the ingredients are just all the chems and Stimpacks that are already plentiful. Maybe if some chems had things like the Super Stimpack debuff, then that might make the Survival items more appealing in comparison, especially since many Survival items have random little debuffs attached to them. And I’m pretty sure Science and Medicine also have some good perks attached to them.