So, we could go straight to Primm, but there is one small side trip I want to make.
So the road splits into two. One the left is Sloan, one the right is Primm. Let's check out Sloan before coming back.
Let's check out this shack first.
Apparently it was the storefront for a Sky Diving Company-thing. I don't really know honestly, it just looks like an average shack.
First we fight some Powder Gangers who are behind the shack though. I believe these guys are hostile by default if you don't help Cobb in Goodsprings, but I could be wrong.
I'm using the Single Shotgun on them. It's basically a shotgun, there is only one shell in it, so it needs to be reloaded after every shot. It's pretty good against these Powder Gangers, but so is pretty much anything.
He tries to run away, but I manage to get him.
There is an old airplane right outside the shack. It doesn't look completely wrecked, maybe one day it can be fixed.
This is the inside of the shack. Not much of note here.
There is a key and a Star Bottle Cap (More on that later) on the table. The key unlocks one of the lockers in the room.
Mostly just ammo and other random items. Still nice though.
Now we're back on the road going north.
There are a lot of little groups of Powder Gangers on the side of the road that attack you.
After killing that random Powder Ganger, we level up.
Put some points into guns, lockpick, repair and speech. I forgot to mention it before, but the skill of guns and big guns have been merged in this game. The main difference between small guns and big guns now are the Strength requirements.
Another change to the game is that you only get a perk every other level. The perks are more useful and interesting in this game, and there are no more "+10 to skill x" perks.
The Powder Gangers are so weak that one good shot from the Varmint Rifle takes them out.
There is a dead pack Brahmin on the road. There are no more wandering named merchants. There are some generic merchants who wander in certain areas though. I suppose they have it that way because of the Deathclaw/Cazadore barriers that would probably annihilate them.
More Powder Gangers.
So now we're in Sloan. This is as far as we can go on the road north if we don't want to get eaten by Deathclaws.
"If you want to get to New Vegas, you're better off heading east from Primm and then looping north. It's a heck of a lot safer."
Deathclaws in this game are much more dangerous than the ones in Fallout 3. We should take this warning very seriously.
"Where'd the Deathclaws come from?"
"They moved into the quarry after the Powder Gangers came through and made off with most of our dynamite. We shut the quarry down while we waited for the NCR to get us some more blasting sticks, but now the Deathclaws have shown up. The NCR's a no-show, and my men and I have got nothing to do but sit on our asses all day. It's damn frustrating."
We could offer to help them with their Deathclaw problem, but for obvious reasons we can't fight the Deathclaws yet.
"Have you had problems with Deathclaws before?"
"We'd see them occasionally, but they didn't seem too keen on getting to close to the quarry. Not sure if it was the noise or all the workers."
Pfft, if a Deathclaw wanted to take out the quarry workers, it probably would.
"I can't believe that an entire pack moved into the quarry. I thought that kind of bad luck only happened in New Vegas."
"Tell me about the Powder Gangers."
"They're a bunch of escaped cons from down south. The NCR was using them to maintain the railways as part of their sentence."
I still find it stupid that they would give cons free usage of explosives.
"I don't know who screwed up, but the Powder Gangers are loose. It was one group that attacked us and took our entire supply of dynamite."
"Let's talk about something else."
"Okay."
"What is this place?"
Getting some basic background info on the area. Sloan is pretty much completely unimportant to the game (No major sidequests here, etc.) but there is some interesting info here.
"This is Sloan, a camp for us quarry workers. The actual quarry, Quarry Junction, is up the road north of here. The whole thing is an NCR operation. We make cement for the NCR using the limestone we dig out with dynamite and draglines. Dirty work, but the pay is good. Wish we got paid in caps, though. Not a lot of merchants like taking NCR paper money."
"What does the NCR need with cement?"
"It all gets shipped by rail over towards Boulder City and Hoover Dam. The NCR's probably building fortifications with it all."
New Vegas does a good job (Most of the time) explaining the background and workings of the world.
"What's a dragline?"
"It's a big machine which moves rocks around, piles at a time. It's Pre-War tech, so you need to thump it once in awhile to keep it running."
Pre-War tech must have been made pretty well for it to last this long.
"You don't get paid in caps?"
"Nope. The NCR's been trying to switch over to using paper money, like in the Pre-War days. Trouble is that the exchange rates ain't exactly fair."
There are three types of currency in this game - caps, NCR money and Legion money. Really, there is only caps, as you exchange the other money for caps, but they have different exchange rates.
"For example, a hundred bucks in NCR money is valued at roughly half that in caps around here. Seems like a rotten deal for us, but work is work."
"Goodbye."
"If you insist on going north, don't be expecting a rescue when you get into trouble."
We're not going past the Deathclaws, that would be a very bad idea.
This is Sloan. It's pretty much just a collection of little run down shacks. Oh joy.
This is Snuffles. He is their pet mole rat and he is adorable.
[]
"Hmm... your leg appears to be injured."
""
It's not like I'd expect the mole rat to engage us in friendly conversation, but still it's worth a try.
"How's it going?"
""
We can't fix his leg with our current medicine skill, but we have something in our inventory that will help with that.
Another new addition to New Vegas is skill magazines. Basically, they give a temporary +10 boost to a skill. This particular magazine gives a bonus towards medicine, and with that we will have enough to heal Snuffles.
He is standing on his hind legs. That's one well trained mole rat.
We fix Snuffles leg.
All we get for it is NCR reputation. Ah well, it doesn't matter much.
This is like their little cafe. It's rather small, as you would expect from the size of the shacks.
"Anything that wasn't made 500 years ago."
I like to think that's kind of a jab at Fallout 3.
"Ha. Yeah, can you believe some people still eat that stuff? Anyway... I've got this recipe for a Deathclaw Omelet that I've been itching to try out. Trouble is - I need a Deathclaw egg. Kinda obvious, I suppose."
Getting a deathclaw egg is a dangerous proposition at this moment, so we won't be helping quite yet. Maybe at a later point in then game.
"What are you offering in exchange for a Deathclaw egg?"
"I don't have much in the way of money, but I'd be willing to share the secret of the recipe."
"Let's talk about something else."
"All right. Do you need anything to eat or drink?"
"I had some questions about this place."
"Sure. What did you want to know?"
"You don't look like a quarry worker."
"Oh, I'm not. I'm making my way to New Vegas. They say anything goes there, and best of all, the NCR can't mess it up for you."
If she is going to New Vegas, she is going the wrong way.
"I'll get there eventually. I've heard that you can't even get into the Strip unless you're rich."
"Are you from California?"
"Born and raised. Things back in California are better than they've ever been, according to my grandpa. The Raiders are mostly gone now and it's easy enough to get a job at one of the mills or farms. But now there's taxes and laws and other things."
It's nice that the reference areas from the original game. It's interesting to hear how much they've changed over time.
"The NCR keeps things safe and orderly, but it's all very boring. So, I came out east towards the frontier."
"Any trouble around here?"
"Well, there's the Deathclaws, of course, and there was that one group of Powder Gangers who stole all the dynamite. I think we're too small and poor for anyone to bother with, really. I keep a weapon near my bunk, though - same as everybody here."
He showed up the fuck out of nowhere in the middle of the update.
"Don't suppose you'd care to trade? I'm missing a few essentials and- oh, screw this. Lying just ain't in my nature. I'll tell it to you straight. I've been following you for a good bit now."
"Go on."
"It started off innocently enough. I was traveling, as I often do, and happened to observe you picking up one of those blue-star caps. You didn't show any reaction to it, so I figured you didn't know what you'd gotten your hands on."
He is scripted to show up after you find your first star bottle cap. Since you can find them pretty much everywhere, it doesn't matter where you find it. Like we found the first on in that shack just outside of Goodsprings. There is really no way for him to observe us in there though.
"What's so special about these caps?"
"There's an old wasteland legend that says somewhere out there is a fabulous treasure from before the war. Those caps with the blue star on them, the tale goes, are the key to that treasure. They're called Sunset Sarsaparilla Stars."
There is a random chance of finding a star bottle cop in any Sunset Sarsaparilla bottle.
"Where can I find more of these caps?"
"All over the place. The easiest place to find them is unopened bottles of Sunset Sarsaparilla. You'd think they'd all have been picked clean by now, but somehow new bottles keep appearing in the machines. Some say it's old Festus that does it, hoping someone will finally collect enough caps to earn the treasure. Other than bottles, you'll just have to scavenge. You can find caps in the unlikeliest of places, and blue-star caps are no exception."
"You mentioned someone named Festus. Who's that?"
"It's said that the treasure is guarded by a man named Festus, and he's the one who asks for the blue-star caps. It's also said that he's been around since the war, standing a lonely vigil, waiting for someone to come and take the treasure off his hands. That'd make him pretty damn old, but I've met a few people in my travels who claimed they actually met him, and they weren't the lying type either."
Maybe he's a ghoul, or a super mutant. We will find out much later.
"So you collect these caps too?"
"Nah, I gave it up years ago. Too dangerous. And even if I did still collect them, I'd tell you the same. There's people out there so mad with the idea of treasure that they'll attack strangers just on the suspicion that they have some of those caps."
We will see this in action a bit later in this playthrough.
"Thanks for the info, but I'll be going now."
"No problem. If you do end up triyng to collect more stars, watch out for a man named Allen Marks. He's killed several people for their stars already."
Alright, so after that little encounter (Which can happen anywhere) we have pretty much done everything we can with Sloan right now.
Vegas is so close, yet so far. We're going to have to backtrack to the Sky Diving Shack and take the other road to Primm. Hopefully things will be more eventful there.
