Fallout New Vegas

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Kosh Vader

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koshvader

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About this mod

This mod attempts to make combat in Old World Blues less of a grind, both by decreasing the HP\'s of random creatures and by increasing the variety of spawned creatures & weapons.

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OLD WORLD BLUES NERF'D
by Kosh Vader

While I greatly enjoyed my first playthrough of the Old World Blues DLC, I quickly found that the Big Empty's creatures were tedious to combat at best -- frustrating at worst -- for my high level character. Unfortunately, Obsidian decided to adopt the Bethesda formula of pumping up DLC creatures' HP's to ridiculous levels. Something about needing to unload more bullets to fell a nightstalker than I do to kill one of the Mojave's deathclaws doesn't sit right with me. The final straws for me were the Roboscorpions. Those damned Roboscorpions.

So I took it upon myself to sweep through the .esp in the GECK and reduce the HP's of all the randomly encountered beasties (undead and brainless chaps included) in the Big MT. In the process, I made a few other changes to diversify the range of spawnable creatures and to give it all a nice neat little polish. Since this seems to be the sort of sweeping modification that many players desire, I decided to release it.


MAJOR EFFECT

I initially aimed to reduce the toughness of random hostiles in the Big MT without compromising their ability to put a hurting on the player. Unique hostiles are untouched. Creatures in Old World Blues can still be dangerous. Uniques can most certainly still be so. Because of the diversity I injected, however, you will find yourself taking less damage in most encounters. Your oh-so-fragile armor will thank you for using this mod (try taking a 45th level character through unmodified OWB with nothing but a Space Suit). The mod is mostly aimed at players who tackle OWB at higher levels, which is where the hostiles' HP values really get bloated.


SPECIFIC EFFECTS (Warning: May be Semi-Spoilerish)

- All random Creatures (anything that isn't a Lobotomite or undead) have had their HP's reduced. The reductions are greater at higher levels. Higher level PC's will still encounter tougher creatures, but no more groups of 600 HP meat-tanks. Unique Creatures (never encountered in groups) have been untouched, so you'll still run into Legendary beasts that require mighty hacking to slay.

- All random NPC's (Lobotomites, Y-17 skeletons, and Chinese prisoners with nasty skin-rashes) have had their Levels reduced. This was accomplished by lowering their Level Multipliers (the number that determines at what Level they spawn relative to your PC) across the board. The major effect of this is a reduction in HP's of all encountered NPC's. Level reduction also lowers NPC skills, but unless your PC is very low level all the NPC's will still have maxed out weapon skills. Generally, NPC's you encounter will be easier to kill than Creatures you encounter -- exactly the same way it is in the Mojave wasteland. Because they still scale to your PC's level, they will still be tougher than your average Mojave NPC. And with the right weapons, they will still be able to put a whupping on you.

- Normally, once your PC hits a certain level, every randomly encountered creature in the Big MT is upgraded to a stronger variant; the older, weaker variants that you used to encounter vanish into the aether. You can see this happening when the Mk designations on all the robots you fight increase. This is an old Bethesda technique, and it's lame. With this mod, lower level variants of creatures will still spawn even as you reach higher levels. Combined with the HP reductions, this means you'll have an overall easier time plowing through groups of bad guys as your level increases (the way it logically and sensibly should be). It will also increase diversity of combat encounters, lessening the overall tedium.

- Similarly, lower level weapons will now spawn on Lobotomites and Y-17's. Brush Guns will still be wielded by Lobotomites and Gauss rifles by Y-17's, just not quite as many. This will reduce not only the lethality of groups of those creatures but also the amount of uber loot you will collect. Diversity, also, will be served. Let's face it -- it looks kind of stupid when every Lobotomite is carrying a Brush Gun, a Hunting Revolver, or a Shishkebab.

- In addition to the greater variety of weapons that you'll encounter (especially at high levels) thanks to the above change, you will also see the Lobotomites wielding a few new weapons. I tried to keep the additions somewhat lore appropriate. Higher level Lobotomites will also sometimes spawn with a piece of armor that they picked up somewhere. Be sure to have weapons/ammo on hand that can overcome some DT.

- A few creatures have been renamed and resized to more clearly indicate the level of challenge they pose. Mk designations have been added to the names of all robots and cyborgs that previously lacked one. Weaker and stronger Nightstalkers and Cazadors have been given 'Young' and 'Giant' designators (following the same naming scheme used in vanilla NV and Honest Hearts). I tweaked some of the size values so that Young variants are actually smaller and Giant variants bigger. In addition to the cosmetic value, this will help players without the Living Anatomy perk determine how much firepower will be needed to take something down.


INSTALLATION

You've done this before, haven't you? Just extract the .esp file, drop it in the Data folder, and enable it using the New Vegas launcher or your preferred plugin manager. Load order shouldn't be an issue unless you're using other mods that make changes to the OWB creatures. Load those mods after this one if you prefer their changes, or vice versa. This mod makes changes to a few OWB levelled lists; you should always use Wrye Bash or any other suitable mod manager to merge levelled list changes.

This mod is currently BETA-ish (it's a word!). You may want to backup your saved games just to be sure. If you're not comfortable contaminating your mod list with my scraped together crap, check this page every so often to determine if a playtested update has been released.


COMPATABILITY

As stated above, this mod only changes OWB creatures and levelled lists. There should be few conflicts with other mods. If a mod modifies the same creature stats that this mod modifies, one will simply overwrite the other. I recommend Wrye Bash and levelled list merging for any mods that you are using and BOSS for maintaining a clean functional load order.


VERSION HISTORY

0.56 -- Tweaked all NPC's to be a *little* bit tougher to kill, as trial runs were showing them to go down too quickly. They're still easier to kill than vanilla OWB. I've also reworked the levelled lists, creating a second tier of Hard variants that appears at Level 30. This is in addition to the Hard tier that already exists at Level 40. So you'll encounter Hard NPC's (potentially with higher powered weapons) 10 levels earlier, and their chance of spawning doubles at Level 40. Four tiers of difficulty in all, making for a smoother curve.

0.42 (why the hell not) -- This is my first released mod, though I've played around with Morrowind editing in the past. I know my way around these Bethesda editors a little bit, though I can't be entirely confident that I've done nothing that could totally wreck your game. I'm open to any comments, suggestions, complaints, or bug reports. I've tested the majority of these changes on my own Level 45 playthrough. I can't say for sure what kind of experience lower level characters might enjoy (or suffer). Let me know how it goes for you. If a good majority of players think that I've curtailed OWB's difficulty too much or too little, I'll be open to making some tweaks. Keep in mind, however, that this mod is intended for players who believe that the vanilla OWB experience is a little too extreme. If you prefer squads of 600 HP Roboscorpions and Lobotomites who've raided a Brush Gun factory, simply pass on this mod.