Completed everything, what do I do now?

wait for Lonesome road.

 

Do playthroughs with different goals. Do a melee playthrough, a playthrough with every faction, evil playthroughs, good playthroughs, playthroughs where you kill everything you see, a playthrough where you don't kill anything at all etc etc

How many hours have you played the game?

 

Start a new character.

No, they said it was going to be open world like Honest Hearts and OWB.

 

I agree with the others. Try a different build at complete odds with your first character. For example:

Played my first game as a near-perfect neutral who was highly adept at trading & smooth-talking his way through most encounters. Took the Yes-Man finish rarely having to lift a weapon to defend myself.

To sharply contrast that, I'm playing as a Melee/Unarmed/Survival character who is slowly developing proficiency with Explosives. As a result, combat has become MUCH more interesting - especially since I am favoring the Legion and decided not to take any companions with me. The first time I had to go toe-to-toe with the NCR hit squad was brutal. Duck & weave. Mine traps. Lots of consumables. I'm playing on Hardcore/Very Hard.

I was better prepared for them the next time thanks to my Survival skill. I had a number of poisons ready and the value of my fire-made meals grants me benefits far greater than any stimpack could. The drawback being a portion of my carry weight is dedicated to ingredients.

I find the economy is much better balanced, too. With my uber-low barter, I'm no longer swimming in caps from trades or able to negotiate 'jobs' for higher rates. I am continually getting screwed on deals. Combined with my lack of companion/mules I am not carrying thousands of caps worth of gear. I have to pick one or two quality items to bring in for trade - forcing some difficult decisions on what to take with me.

Lastly, playing with a lower Intelligence isn't game-changing, but the reduction in skill points from my prior character is definitely starting to show weaknesses in how well-rounded I can be. This is forcing me to specialize a little earlier.

Really enjoyed my initial play-through but am finding the sharp contrast this time really interesting.

 

The point of New Vegas is playing all th ending Paths, and different Builds, do that. Side with another Faction, Pick a Non combat build, an unarmed one, etc.

 

Or be chaotic and kill every single living person in the game. Then you will have the entire wasteland to yourself.

 

You really should complete a new playthrough. One of the main things I like about New Vegas is its replayability. Probably has the some of the best replay value of any single-player game with a story (not anything like Europa Universalis) that I've ever played, due to all of the different choices you can make. You can complete most quests in 2, 3, or even 4 different ways. Not to mention the main quest, which goes even beyond the 4 faction choices, due to the choices you can make within each faction's main quest.

 

Get a 100% gamerscore.

Pick up every loose item you can find. Deposit it into one room. Throw a grenade at the pile. :haw:

 

It's decided. I'm doing this.

 

At this point in my game, I've taken to coming up with my own miniquests to stay busy until lonesome road comes out, and I have been going around closing out the little unmarked quests and such that I didn't get around to like finding all of the survivalists messages or tracking down vance's smg.

Sometimes I'll role play a bit and strip down to minimal gear and go hunt some yao guai or green geckos in Zion, without using fast travel, and bring back tons of meat or skins to craft with. Without friendly npcs to trade with and a companion to cover you, Zion is quite the wilderness.

Other times I trek the wastes picking agave fruit and scrounging up whiskey bottles to crank out wasteland tequilas and restock my char with the best booze in the game for a light armor char.

Last week I spent about a week of in-game time patrolling the west bank of the river and shredding legion patrols until I had more throwing spears than you can shake a stick at, then I proceeded to the area north of Primm and stealthily cleaned out the powder ganger camps with nothing but the spears, some artful crouching and a couple stealthboys.

when that stuff gets boring, there's always lots of random people who need a lump of c4 in their pocket and a quick trip to the stars, or patrols paths to cover with landmines and then observe from a distance.

 

Go outside and get some fresh air?

 

Do what I do. Collect teddy bears. You should see my bed in the 38. It doesn't have to be teddy bears, though. There's dino toys, toy cars, etc.

 

Nah, that's boring...

 

LOL

On the topic, try some of the mods? There are some have DLC-calibre, even better.

 

I did unarmed, melee, and explosives all in the same build. Just grab a grenade MG and blast your way through the finale with it. that's what I did.

Healing with food is easy, espeically in Honest Hearts/Dead Money, both because of new perks and because HH is overrun with food healing items. Just eat eat eat.