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Fallout: New Vegas - J.E. Sawyer "Hardcore" Mod Released

by Dhruin, 2011-12-30 00:59:33

J.E. Sawyer has released his personal mod for Fallout: New Vegas, intending to make the game more challenging and address some inconsistencies with karma and alignment. This isn't an "unofficial patch" (or an official one, for that matter) and isn't intended to fix bugs or add content.

The full suite of DLC is required - even the Gun Runners Arsenal and Courier's Stash - hopefully you can pick them up cheap if you don't have them. Grab the mod file here direct from Josh's personal site.

Here's the short version of the changelog from his Formspring postings (full notes are included with the file):

It's mostly general balance adjustments I couldn't do for various technical/time reasons, plus some general "make the Hardcore game harder" adjustments. I've made a couple hundred adjustments, but the most significant are probably:

* Max level with all DLCs installed is 35.
* XP rate is halved.
* Base player health is quartered and level-gained health is reduced by 25%.
* Base Carry Weight from 150 to 50 (related perks/things have also been adjusted).
* Energy Weapon ammo weighs less than its nearest equivalent Guns ammo.
* Energy Weapon durability is in the same ballpark as Guns durability.
* Medium Armor has a small amount of DR proportional to its DT.
* Heavy Armor has even more DR proportional to its DT.
* Power Armor does not require a perk, but if you have the perk, the weight of the armor is essentially negated.
* Karma/Alignment values adjusted all over.
* H2O/FOD/SLP rates doubled, but the first threshold is moved from 200 to 400 (statuses roll over ever 150 after).
* Water and Food drop rates on NPCs is dramatically lower. It is difficult to stay out of Dehydration/Starvation by looting enemies.
* Water/Nuka-Cola/Sunset Sarsaparilla heal much less, but now all restore H2O (alcohols will as well, but at lowered values).
* Default Stimpaks are uncommon. A new variant, Stimpak, Expired is the default. It is not that great.
* The player's Workbench recipe now makes Stimpak, Homemade. It is better than Expired, worse than default Stimpaks, and has the PE penalty from Healing Powder.
* All Stimpaks have weight.
* Pre-Order items have been adjusted to be more well-balanced and not worth that much if you rush to Chet's to trade them in.
* A bunch of fixes I couldn't make during development because of load order conflicts, time, etc. E.g.: Automatic Rifle spread re-adjustment, putting the Police Pistol on the Cowboy List, Bozar on Grunt, Junk Rounds are now actual ammo variants you can make, etc.
* Some other stuff.

It requires a load order manager (must load after all retail .esms) and every single DLC, including GRA and the pre-order packs.

Note that Josh has done around 20 hours of testing but makes no guarantees:

* I played with this mod for about 20 hours.  That's the extent of its testing.  Really.  BEWARE.

* This is not official and it's not a patch.  If it disintegrates your game, do a Kareem and skyhook the .esp into your Recycle Bin.

* I didn't add any huge new things because that wasn't really the point of the mod.

* I avoided anything that involved heavy scripting because I am bad at scripting and didn't want to blow everything up.

* Will probably conflict with some of your 10,000 other mods.  Sorry.


Source: No Mutants Allowed

Information about

Fallout: NV

SP/MP: Single-player
Setting: Post-Apoc
Genre: RPG
Platform: PC, Xbox 360, PS3
Release: Released


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