Last update, we woke up in a town in the middle of nowhere after being shot in the head. After an almost insultingly pointless tutorial, we're almost ready to be on our way and out of this town. Of course, it's never as simple as that.
Didn't get a good shot of the saloon last update, so here it is. Looks about as crappy as the rest of the houses in town, but what do you expect?
We need to talk to Trudy, the person in charge of the saloon. Well, we don't need to talk to her. We can already leave Goodsprings behind if we wanted to at this point.
Ignore the screenshot notification on the upper left corner of the screen. That will be fixed, or at least somewhat allievated by next update.
First time I played through the game, I shot this guy dead right here for threatening the town, and everyone acted like
I was the bad guy.
You would think someone would have bothered to fix the broken mirror in back.
"I overheard your argument. What was that all about?"
"It looks like our little town got itself dragged into the middle of something we don't want anything to do with. About a week ago, this trader, Ringo, comes into town. Survivor of an attack, he says. Bad men after him, needs a place to hide. We figured he was just in shock, so we gave him a place to lie low. We didn't actually expect anyone to come after him."
So they didn't ask him anything about the attack afterwards?
"What are you going to do now?"
"Some of the others, like Sunny, will probably stand up for Ringo if he asks for help, which he hasn't. Personally, I hope he sneaks out of town one night and takes the Powder Gangers with him."
"Why not just kill Cobb and be done with it?"
"You mean murder him?"
Well, I don't think it counts as murder if he's threatening you, but whatever.
"That's not our way, even if Cobb is scum. He can bluster and threaten all he wants."
"Where is Ringo now?"
"He's holed up at the abandoned gas station up the hill."
The gas station is right behind Doc Mitchell's house.
"I'm trying to track down the people who attacked me. Know anything about them?"
"Not much, other than they're a bunch of freeloaders who expected a few rounds on the house. I was able to get them to pay up, though. Of course, one of the Great Khans did knock my radio to the floor "by accident," and it hasn't been working since."
What a tragedy.
"Did my attackers say where they were going?"
"They were having some kind of argument about it, but the guy in the checkered coat kept shushing them. Sounded like they came in from the north through Quarry Junction. If that's the case I can't say I blame them for not wanting to go back."
A lot of people who played the game for the first time either didn't listen or didn't inquire about what was up north. If you go north, straight to Vegas, you'll have to fight off Giant Radscorpions, Deathclaws and Cazadores. Not fun stuff. You are kind of forced along a path, but once you get to Novac, the game opens up much more.
Not saying that you can't sequence break the game, you can and I will show it in a later update, but the route isn't very obvious and you still need to make your way past some tough enemies.
"Why is that?"
"The whole area's overrun with the kind of critters that just get mad if you shoot 'em. Merchants avoid that whole stretch of the I-15 like it's radioactive. Which it could be for all I know."
"So where are they headed?"
"I didn't hear exactly, but the leader was talking about the Strip. Fella wants to get there and avoid the 15, he'd have to go east. Take Highway 93 up."
"Want me to take a look at your broken radio?"
Why not, free EXP and caps.
"Sure. The outside looks okay, but I think something broke on the inside. There'd be caps in it for you. I do like to hear what's going on in the world. And that Mr. New Vegas seems like such a gentleman."
Let's see what we can do to fix this.
Only 20 repair required, you might have enough repair at this point in the game even without tagging the skill. I am an idiot and forget to talk to Trudy about the reward right away, so we collect that later.
We can also steal this revolver if we really wanted to, but we'll start seeing them everywhere soon anyways.
So let's go find Ringo up at the gas station. It's just behind Doc Mitchell's house over there.
Not much really there, aside from the Sunset Sarsaparilla machine. It's the new beverage in New Vegas, though you'll still find plenty of Nuka Cola and other variants of it.
"I'm not an enemy, if that's what you're asking."
No matter what dialogue option you choose, he lowers his weapon and offers to teach you Caravan.
Before you ask, no, even after spending a grand total of like 350 hours on this game, I still have not figured out how to play Caravan. Seriously, how the fuck does that game work?
"Sorry about the gun. You just caught me off guard, that's all. We got off to a bad start. What say we start over with a friendly game of Caravan? You know how to play?"
NOPE
"Did you know there's a man named Joe Cobb looking for you?"
"Yeah. He doesn't look very tough, though. I hear he's afraid I'll shoot him down from one of the windows when I see him, and he's right. I'll have a much bigger problem once his friends show up. There's no way I could handle all of them in a gunfight."
Actually, you probably could. They all suck and are armed with either Cleavers, Varmint Rifles or sometimes Single Shotgun. I'd say you have a chance.
"What are you going to do about the Powder Gangers?"
"I'm going to lay low for as long as I can, assuming the town doesn't throw me to the wolves. I've got no chance against the gang on my own."
"Maybe I can help."
I've fought Geckos before. It's pretty much the same thing, right?
"We'd just end up sharing the same grave if it's just the two of us. Now, if some of the other people in town were also on board..."
"I'll ask around and see who I can round up."
"Start with Sunny Smiles. She's been friendlier than most around here."
They all seem pretty friendly to me...
Yeah, this gas station isn't the best of hideouts. You think it would have been repurposed into a store or something.
Back to the saloon...
Looks like Sunny's dog has gotten over the demonic possession from last update.
"I'm going to help Ringo take on the powder gangers. I might need your help."
"Say no more. I'm in."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that. I have a feeling that I'm going to end up fighting those guys one way or another, so I might as well get it over with. Joe Cobb talks about leaving us alone if we hand over Ringo, but I know his type. He and his friends will come after the town eventually. However, between you, me, and Ringo, we aren't exactly a force to be reckoned with."
There's like 5 of them. I think we can take them on.
"A lot of people around here look up to Trudy."
Here's a question: Who runs this town anyways?
"If you could convince Trudy to join us, some of the folks in town might decide to help out as well. I know Easy Pete's got a stock of dynamite somewhere, and Chet just got a shipment of leather armor we could borrow. Talk to them as well. Finally, there's a good chance we'll all end up with extra holes in us, so if Doc Mitchell could cough up some extra stimpaks, that'd be great."
So, it's pretty much just a ton of skill checks. Speech for Trudy (Or Sneak), Explosives for Easy Pete and Barter for Chet. Mitchell gives you his stuff without a speech check. Right now, all we have is speech, so we can only get the supplies from Doc Mitchell and convince Trudy to help us.
"[Speech 25] You should help me take down the powder gang. Bullets, explosions, lots of fun."
One new thing about New Vegas is that speech checks require a certain amount of speech. This means no more save scumming to get a successful check anymore.
"[SUCCEEDED] I was planning on sitting this one out, but for some reason I can't help but like you. I'm with you. Let me have a word with a few other folks and I'll see if I can't round up some more members for this militia you're creating."
As far as can tell, she doesn't. Only she shows up for the fight, no other townsfolk.
"While everyone does own a gun, we could stand to be a little better equipped. The general store probably has what we need in stock."
We can't get him to help though, because Chet is a dick.
Oh yeah, we forgot to get the reward for fixing her radio.
"I fixed your radio."
"Yep, I heard it turn right back on after you got done tinkering with it. Here's some caps for the work."
"Thanks for the caps."
Only 50 caps.
"You're welcome. So, can I get you anything?"
We level up for the first time.
Points go into lockpick in order to be able to pick basic easy locks.
I always pick Rapid Reload, faster reloading is never a bad thing.
Let's go talk to Doc Mitchell.
At the beginning of the game in Doc Mitchell's house, you can't raise your weapon. Once you leave however, you can come back and kill him if you like. Don't know why, you can do that if you feel like being a dick.
Well, Doc, I don't really know how to explain this but... I was shot in the head, again.
"The town is going to be attacked by bandits. Anything you can do to help?"
"Seems like wherever I go it's always the same. Folks just never leave each other alone. I'm not much good in a fight, with my bum leg. And my supplies are scarce. But I'll give you what I can spare."
So now let's return to Ringo.
"Sunny's with us."
"Well, I guess that means we're ready to go. Unless you think there's something else you can do?"
"Let's do this."
"All right, I'm ready. I hope."
Ringo is really just a merchant.
"How many are there?"
"At least six, Joe Cobb included. They look pretty mean."
"Let's go."
"I'll be set up near the store. Let's hope that the gang doesn't manage to make it that far."
The powder gangers come in from the south, they're only a few feet away from that windmill.
I always sneak around to the side to attack them.
As you could probably guess, this isn't much of a fight with only the few of them. They have pretty shitty weapons too.
VATS works pretty much the same, though I use it a lot less. Mostly because with iron sights, aiming at vital points manually is much easier than Fallout 3, and it doesn't stop the game dead in tracks to do so.
We get Powder Gangers infamy for fighting these guys, by the end of this fight we will be villified with the Powder Gangers. If you side with the Powder Gangers, you will be villified by Goodsprings, but by that point, there will be like one important NPC left in the town anyways. (More on that on a later playthrough)
They all go down fairly quickly.
"You're welcome."
"I'll stick around for a bit longer, but I'll be gone in a few days. If you ever visit New Vegas, look me up at the Crimson Caravan camp."
One last thing I want to check before the end of this update.
Let's check out the General Store for a second.
This is Chet. If we had high enough Barter, we could convince him to give us some supplies to fight off the Powder Gangers, but really, very few people tag or put points into Barter this early on, if at all.
He sells some okay stuff, and is mostly just there to explain some of the new weapon mechanics of the game. More into them when we are actually able to use them, but he talks about special and surplus ammo. Surplus ammo is cheap and can be bought in bulk, and is less powerful than normal ammo. There is special ammo, which may be more damaging or have special effects. He also talks about weapon mods, which do a variety of things.
We sell the dynamite the Powder Gangers dropped for some extra caps.
Oh look, a Nuka Cola Quantum banner. No Quantum sidequest in this game, though there is something much similar to it, but at this time it has an (arguably) much better reward.
Anyway, there is still one or things to do at Goodsprings before we leave. Mostly conversational stuff really.
