cronicler
Lurksalot
After some more playtime and a lot of exploration, here are my
recommendations:
Use your fridge to store your trail supplies... I mean use ED-E, ed-e!
Essential Perks:
Travel Light (4)
Hand Loader or Vigilant Recycler (6)
Pack Rat (8) (Seems no brainer at first glance but it may not be that useful)
Jury Rigging (14) (Repair sniper rifle with BB gun? yes please)
Better Criticals (16)
*Shotgun Surgeon (6) (Allows you to continue using shotguns until late game, If you prefer shotguns)
Be a miser:
Look at the cost / weight ratio and discard any unnecessary stuff that is below 5 or so.
Try not to sell stuff with too much loss. gather some more rep for the town and then sell your stuff without loss.
Don't steal or devastate the towns. Farm the war zone instead.
For most economical solution to food and water, use or more precisely abuse gecko meat.
At around around 70 survival, regular gecko steak (1 meat) is worth 200 food and kebob (1 meat, 1 banana yucca, 1 buffalo gourd seed, 1 jalepeno) nets you -200 food and -100 water for a measly penalty of 1 rad.
Things like caravan lunch and trail mix seem very good on paper (a whopping -600 and -450 food respectively) but they are both very heavy and overkill.
Keep fresh vegetables and the lightweight nuts, berries fruits and such with you in your fridge (ED-E) sell rest of the stuff you find.
Same goes for any crafting materials you find. Check your recipes and stock on things needed for Medicines, Poisons (if you are melee) and Repair kits. Keep about 5 of each not so junk for any future use (iron, sensor module etc) and sell the rest.
Use heavier ammo and pick your targets carefully instead of spray and pray, this way you can do more with less ammo. Keep a stash of your heavy caliber (.45-70, .44, .357) or specialised (10mm or 12.7 for silenced pistol) ammo. Break down the ammo you are not using .22, 9mm, 5mm and the rest are more useful as powder than dead weight.
Try to get back to your current town after you finish cleaning each location. That way you can load up the "real junk" in your left over carry allowance and make some more bucks.
Armor, Clothing and Disguises:
For using as disguises, always keep the lightest armor or clothing for a faction. Use silencers and head shots to do your job quietly.
*The only exception seems to be NCR with their useless and heavy standard gear. Keep a ranger patrol or combar armor (which are just a bit more heavier than fatigues) for them.
*Clothing that you should keep:
Space Suit
Vault 21 Jumpsuit
Vault 3 Utility Jumpsuit
Every set of power armor you come across!
Weapons:
Try to stick to a common caliber type.
My personal advice is to use Ratslayer and That Gun (5.56) for most and keep Lucky (.357) or .44 Magnum Revolver or Hunting revolver (.45-70) for the tankscorpions and Deathclaws. (Thanks to the general scarcity of .44 and .45-70 you will probably be mostly relying on lucky and it's high crit chance)
If you are using energy weapons, abuse the Recharger Pistol and Rifle. Sure the damage sucks but both weapons have usable iron sights and no spread. They actually provide a good deal of protection against the usual vermin you face on the roads.
*Havent done a melee/unarmed run yet so can't comment on them fully
Explosives is a mixed bag. Although Weapons and thrown variants deal a lot of damage, they are not really cost effective (and likely to cause harm to friendly npcs). They sell for a nice amount thou.
That said, (dropped) dynamite and (armed) mine combo traps seem to be really cost effective when you need to deal with unexpectedly hard encounters (like stumbling onto the crashed vertivird and it's 12 guardians, armed with a silenced varmint pistol and "1" 20 gauge slug or cleaning the quarry early)
recommendations:
Use your fridge to store your trail supplies... I mean use ED-E, ed-e!
Essential Perks:
Travel Light (4)
Hand Loader or Vigilant Recycler (6)
Pack Rat (8) (Seems no brainer at first glance but it may not be that useful)
Jury Rigging (14) (Repair sniper rifle with BB gun? yes please)
Better Criticals (16)
*Shotgun Surgeon (6) (Allows you to continue using shotguns until late game, If you prefer shotguns)
Be a miser:
Look at the cost / weight ratio and discard any unnecessary stuff that is below 5 or so.
Try not to sell stuff with too much loss. gather some more rep for the town and then sell your stuff without loss.
Don't steal or devastate the towns. Farm the war zone instead.
For most economical solution to food and water, use or more precisely abuse gecko meat.
At around around 70 survival, regular gecko steak (1 meat) is worth 200 food and kebob (1 meat, 1 banana yucca, 1 buffalo gourd seed, 1 jalepeno) nets you -200 food and -100 water for a measly penalty of 1 rad.
Things like caravan lunch and trail mix seem very good on paper (a whopping -600 and -450 food respectively) but they are both very heavy and overkill.
Keep fresh vegetables and the lightweight nuts, berries fruits and such with you in your fridge (ED-E) sell rest of the stuff you find.
Same goes for any crafting materials you find. Check your recipes and stock on things needed for Medicines, Poisons (if you are melee) and Repair kits. Keep about 5 of each not so junk for any future use (iron, sensor module etc) and sell the rest.
Use heavier ammo and pick your targets carefully instead of spray and pray, this way you can do more with less ammo. Keep a stash of your heavy caliber (.45-70, .44, .357) or specialised (10mm or 12.7 for silenced pistol) ammo. Break down the ammo you are not using .22, 9mm, 5mm and the rest are more useful as powder than dead weight.
Try to get back to your current town after you finish cleaning each location. That way you can load up the "real junk" in your left over carry allowance and make some more bucks.
Armor, Clothing and Disguises:
For using as disguises, always keep the lightest armor or clothing for a faction. Use silencers and head shots to do your job quietly.
*The only exception seems to be NCR with their useless and heavy standard gear. Keep a ranger patrol or combar armor (which are just a bit more heavier than fatigues) for them.
*Clothing that you should keep:
Space Suit
Vault 21 Jumpsuit
Vault 3 Utility Jumpsuit
Every set of power armor you come across!
Weapons:
Try to stick to a common caliber type.
My personal advice is to use Ratslayer and That Gun (5.56) for most and keep Lucky (.357) or .44 Magnum Revolver or Hunting revolver (.45-70) for the tankscorpions and Deathclaws. (Thanks to the general scarcity of .44 and .45-70 you will probably be mostly relying on lucky and it's high crit chance)
If you are using energy weapons, abuse the Recharger Pistol and Rifle. Sure the damage sucks but both weapons have usable iron sights and no spread. They actually provide a good deal of protection against the usual vermin you face on the roads.
*Havent done a melee/unarmed run yet so can't comment on them fully
Explosives is a mixed bag. Although Weapons and thrown variants deal a lot of damage, they are not really cost effective (and likely to cause harm to friendly npcs). They sell for a nice amount thou.
That said, (dropped) dynamite and (armed) mine combo traps seem to be really cost effective when you need to deal with unexpectedly hard encounters (like stumbling onto the crashed vertivird and it's 12 guardians, armed with a silenced varmint pistol and "1" 20 gauge slug or cleaning the quarry early)