Jesus Christ I forgot how lame modders for Bethesda games are. Looking for some lore friendly hair mods and all of its like "GET RID OF THE UGLY HAIR AND GIVE ALL FEMALE NPCS PRETTIER HAIR. NO MORE MOHAWKS FOR FEMALE NPCS"

fuck you I like punk hair, and it makes no sense for all the women to look like Barbie in AN IRRADIATED WASTELAND

Low Intelligence brute. NV is great in how it allows you to role-playing a complete dumbass.

Definitely downloading this one:

Benny Face Embiggener

Ah, my specialty. (Definitely not a hyperfixation, oh no)

Viva New Vegas is the best modding guide to modernize your game. If you want graphics mods, Salamand3r's Texture Guide is also great.

There isn't much opportunity to be a full commie, but the Followers of the Apocalypse are deliberately Anarcho-Communists.

As for endings, both major sides are invasive and the people of the Mojave don't want them. House promises rapid development and industrialization but is a bourgeois dictator. You can go for Independence if you want, but that comes with it's own drawbacks as well.

ATMOS is a cool new mod to improve the soundscape, same with Hymn of the New West.

For builds, the classic Cowboy/girl build always slaps, but tribal builds are also great fun, with high survival, sneak, and melee.

The melee and unarmed options in NV are so much fun, and it feels like you're playing a completely different game. Also, using crafting to get most things instead of buying is a lot of fun, and adds immersion to the game.

All this to say, anarcho-primitivist build is a ton of fun.

Wild Wasteland is worth the feat tax.

Do a melee or unarmed build. So many cool weapons with unique mechanics are locked behind unarmed and melee which most people don't use. You can get special movies, so it actually feels like combat is a bit more involved then "point and shoot."

I tried a shotgun surgeon build for my last run and it was great fun. Just knocking down cazadors, slavers, robotic cops, soldiers and anyone else who got in the way of my drug-fueled anarcho communist revenge RAMPAGE.

Luck based builds are also great fun.

I tend to go stealth-archer so when I wanna try something new I work against my instinct to make a glass cannon. High constitution, high strength, low agility (who needs vats?) low perception, scores of grenades and a big stick. Good times.

My last playthrough was a 10-luck character, which I somehow never did before.

I started the game, collected some explosives from the prisoners, then at level 2 ran my ass dodging and weaving around cazadors and death claws, slowing picking off some marauders with my dynamite sticks from on top of a hill. I continued sprinting all the way to new vegas at lvl3, collected as much garbage as I could to buy my way into the strip. Using the 10 luck, I cleared out every single casino at the blackjack tables until they kicked me out. Did a couple missions and at lvl 5 or 6 I Jumped into dead money and carefully threaded myself through the combat with my lucky crits, leveling up like 6 times, and then cleared out the Sierra Madre at the blackjack tables.

I exited, now the richest man in all of New Vegas, unwanted at every venue, and coming out of a luck driven fugue state, I needed to find something. I went to the cannibals and tormented them picking them off one at a time, glitched the quest, and left. I then executed Mr House to feel something and began wandering the wastes.

The greatest thrill of all was throwing myself far underleveled and under geared at harder and harder challenges.

Viva new Vegas stopped mine crashing every few minutes, but it will make the game more difficult if you’re doing JSawyer. Still a good time, loving my science playthru rn

Not a mod, but playing with Wacky Wasteland on is essential

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/75990/

https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/82355#

Both of these are assuming you're going for the Wild Card ending and killing the rest of the faction leaders.

I second going melee/explosives

TF2 demoman build. idk what actual things to build but you should maximize explosives and melee damage

I last played with the Viva New Vegas mod pack, worked great had a good time. I also added the People's Radio of China mod and imagined that my character was the Fallout equivalent of turning into a communist after a head injury. He was max luck, high perception and charisma, low everything else. I got really into energy weapons, grabbed every social perk first and any perk that triggered randomly or on a critical hit second.

explosives are the most chaotic and unbalanced combat skill, highest peaks of perfect bombs 1-hitting the hardest enemies and low lows of accidentally blasting yourself and companion to the stratoshpere

If you also have fo3 https://taleoftwowastelands.com

I'll do you one better: I haven't played a Fallout game since 2. The last thing I remember is a bunch of wasteland dudes needing a Geck, which reminded me of a luau at Mel Blanc's house!

Do I need to do any other Fallouts for New Vegas to make sense? Or am I good to just jump in blind?

Naked and unarmed, fueled on stims, 0 INT. Just all agility and strength.

my experience of New Vegas (on normal difficulty with hardcore mode):

get a quest to get revenge the guys who shot me

ignore intro and side quests in starting area because i've played them literally thousands of times

spend 1-2 hours schlepping across the ugly brown irradiated hellscape towards Primm

have a decent time killing the bandits at Primm and looting their corpses

spend 1-2 hours schlepping across the ugly brown irradiated hellscape towards Nipton

run out of healing items fighting random mutant ants and lizards on the way

get nearly killed by horde of bulletproof legion recruits at Nipton

barely survive and enter the canyon on the way to new vegas

get instakilled by the guys at the top of the canyon that ambush you with grenade launchers

realize i haven't autosaved since leaving Primm

quit the game and don't play again until i forget my character and start a new one

repeat

plus the mods all suck, they either clash with the artstyle or make everything work less reliably or unbalance the game. i have spent far too long trying to mod bethesda games, and their problems are not the kind one can solve with a mod imo.

Definitely Viva New Vegas

Independent is the most based, but the others are worth at least one playthrough to see the sights

New Vegas Bounties is one of the classics. It's a bit old, though.

New Vegas Uncut - Freeside Open is simply a must, along with something to open up the Strip. Makes things so much more immersive.

Try out Autumn Leaves- that's another classic.