Is Dead Money Unfair?

Is Dead Money Unfair?

  • Yes

  • No

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xXxKillaHDxXx

xXxKillaHDxXx

First time out of the vault
The DLC "Dead Money", Has a very interesting map design and a great quest line to it but is seen tremendously difficult and can be frustrating due to its high difficulty.

When it comes to combat in dead money, it seems unfair reasons be:
  • All Weapons have partially no effect on ghosts
  • Very limited Ammo (Especially with the holorife)
  • Starting the DLC without your equipment (At an extent)
Dead Money shouldn't be easy but is a bit overkill on difficulty?

Dead money is difficult because its unfair in my opinion. Do you think the reason why people dislike this DLC is because it can be annoying?

The DLC is around 5 years old so it wouldst obviously get a update but have you had trouble with this DLC?
 
It's kind of meant to be difficult, that's the point. By the time you do that DLC chances are you'll be a walking tank. Removing your equipment till the end forces you to rethink how you play the game; it resets to zero, so to speak. The point of that is to make the player fear for their safety, the entire villa is deadly in a variety of ways, and you'd simply not get the same effect if you had your T-51b, grenade launchers, and hundreds of stimpacks.

Weapons have minimal effect: Again, intentional, but easily bypassed as soon as you learn that the Ghost People are killed by losing a limb, even at full health. Knock them down, use a knife to chop off a limb.
Limited Ammo: Well yeah... that reinforces the need to survive and pick your battles. Plus, the moment you find the tape that gives you .308 rounds from vending machines (which you should find very soon as it's in the police station) you'll actually have a decent source of ammo for a powerful weapon. Again, combined with chopping off limbs, this is perfectly well balanced.
Equipment I already covered.

Everything in the DLC reinforces the themes it's going for (disempowerment, survival, greed, unchecked curiosity, letting go). Why'd you think they put all those gold bars in the vault at the end? To reinforce the notion that you can't take it with you, it ties into the whole letting go theme. Likewise, it's an object lesson in the whole 'curiosity killed the cat' phrase; you wandered into the bunker, wanted to know what the radio broadcast was about, and you got knocked unconscious and all your stuff taken away as a result. Pretty good life lesson there ;p Curiosity is good, but equally it's sometimes wise to simply walk away.

The one thing I'm less enamoured with is the speakers, though. Thematically it's perfect, but gameplay-wise they are probably a bit overkill when combined with everything else that's trying to kill you, haha. Still, even there, those can often be destroyed or deactivated, it's simply a case of being cautious and not rushing headlong into things.
 
I enjoyed it, mostly because it wasn't a combat DLC. Yes invincible enemies do make the game very difficult, but that's part of the fun. I personally loved running through hordes of Ghost People and the Cloud, unable to do shit about it. No matter how high level you are, or how awesome you are at the game, I found that it was still insanely difficult, which was the best part of it for me.
 
I don't think that it's unfair, ESPECIALLY if you get from Dog/God the "Ghost Hunter" perk. It's just permadeath for Ghosts. I think it's OP, even.
It's posible to remove or mitigate most enviromental hazards via perks, items and experience. Have i said that i love it yet? :-D
 
As someone who usually plays unnarmed+melee specialist, max strength and max constitution, only wears raider armor and usually gets the "Solar Powered" perk + "Rad Child" perk + Monocyte Breeder Implant I don't have most problems guns or energy weapons characters have, I don't need ammo, I grab a cosmic knife and ghosts are pretty easy, constantly regenerate lost HP, etc...

Speakers are the only thing that make me be careful in that DLC, but to be honest since my character is melee oriented and has a lot of HP which regenerate, without the speakers I would just breeze through the entire DLC like it was nothing.
 
This DLC was a huge kick to the teeth as far as difficulty's concerned--something I feel was desperately needed by that point in the game. Instead of throwing tanks at you like most games tend to do for difficulty, you get a couple new game mechanics to change things up, like enemies that move in erratic ways and can come back from death unless butchered, some interesting platforming [Something we almost never see in 3 and NV], companions that distrust and downright despise you right off the bat, deadly traps, deadly cloud, and lots of head exploding. I loooved it. I played it on hardcore and hard and got through it. It really depends on your build and playstyle, what perks and skills you work on. The police pistol quickly became my friend. With Bloody Mess I made, well, a mess of those Ghost People. Later on I placed the DLC at level 4 just fine. If there's something I disliked about it, it's the map. It reminded me of older FPS games where it's really easy to get confused and go the wrong way, move in circles, and get annoyed fast.
 
I don't understand how this DLC is considered "Unfair" They took already established mechanics and forced players to adapt to them again under a different circumstance. That's typically what good games do, am I wrong?

From my perspective the challenge presented in the DLC was a breath of fresh air. When I first played it the world was already begining to stagnate for me and with a new scenario to explore I was overjoyed.

Consider the DLC from a developer perspective:
You know players are running around the Mojave like demi gods and yet you still want them to experience a challenge. But not just a simple kill loot repeat challenge, but something original and thought provoking.

The fact that they gave a a survival scenario fit very well with the established motif that is Fallout, while at the same time cultivated an experience that allowed us to take what we had learned from this DLC back into the main game through interesting dialog with NPCs or to cash in those gold bars we all took.

Dead money had more in common with a monkeys paw because of the ending, and the fact that they managed to shove loot and riches in our faces and force us to turn away did provoke an outcry I say they did an amazing job of making it "fair".
 
One, and only one, of the speaker placements is totally unfair, and this is no exaggeration - it's one in the vault area in the corner of a catwalk. To disable it, you have to get to the terminal controlling it. But the terminal is next to the speaker, and there's only one path from some stairs to the catwalk to get to it, and the catwalk is the only path out of the area. Once you reach the terminal, your collar will be on the verge of exploding (unless you have turbo) so you have to take leap of faith and just hope that the terminal can actually turn off the speaker.
 
I loved the indoors speakers that were placed out of reach for the player, sometimes with two speakers tormenting you at the same time, so you jump from ledge to ledge, like Tarzan on speed, disable a speaker, then still get the increased beeping, cold sweat, and exploded head

fuck yea
make me work for it!
 
Practicat said:
One, and only one, of the speaker placements is totally unfair, and this is no exaggeration - it's one in the vault area in the corner of a catwalk. To disable it, you have to get to the terminal controlling it. But the terminal is next to the speaker, and there's only one path from some stairs to the catwalk to get to it, and the catwalk is the only path out of the area. Once you reach the terminal, your collar will be on the verge of exploding (unless you have turbo) so you have to take leap of faith and just hope that the terminal can actually turn off the speaker.
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God, those radios were so annoying. I hated my collar always beeping.
 
I was lucky enough to notice a shotgun leant on the wall in shadows near the starting location, so fighting ghost people wasn't hard thanks to Shotgun Surgeon perk. Also, Light Step perk is essential in this DLC, got my arse saved from nasty explosions dozens of times by this one.

Most of dangerous spots with speakers are marked by messages written on walls, often pointing right on the speaker. Holograms are much worse, since you can't shoot them directly!
 
These days I run my own mod in NV and it disables the radios. I've played it more than enough times to have had the original experience, now I just love to bask in the atmosphere and enjoy wandering around at my leisure without worrying about the speakers :)
 
I don't think it was "unfair" at all. It forced me to re-evaluate my play style and adapt to the environment and the enemies. I thought it was a nice challenge, and once I did adapt I did just fine in it.
 
valcik said:
Most of dangerous spots with speakers are marked by messages written on walls, often pointing right on the speaker. Holograms are much worse, since you can't shoot them directly!
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And even with the holograms, you could just hang back, study their patrol patterns, and then time your moves to evade them. Or look for the emitters.
 
I recently played through Dead Money on Hardcore. It's fairly difficult, but unfair? I don't think so. Sure the cloud can be annoying but you can use Dean Domino to circumvent it. Ghost People got you down? Go grab Dog and he'll eat them for you, literally. If you can't bypass a certain radio, bring Christine, she makes it take longer for the radios to set off your collar.

Dead Money may be difficult but each obstacle in it can be made easier by a certain companion. You just have to switch between the 4, which really emphasizes the whole theme of "Work together or you die". You can't just bring along one companion for the entire adventure like back in base New Vegas. You have to constantly swap them out in Dead Money, especially on harder difficulties, or you will most certainly die.
 
Spacemunkey said:
My disappointment with this DLC was not having Veronica wrapped into it
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She is though. Well, kinda. At the end of the DLC you can bring her to Father Elijah's bunker and give her what were essentially his final thoughts, which will give her a special unarmed perk if you let her listen to the holotape. Or you can keep it for yourself and get a special perk all to yourself instead. It's not much but it's there. I will admit I wish you could talk to Veronica about Christine though. Those poor girls have no idea if the other's even alive or not!

And on the other hand, I think they may have left Veronica's involvement in this DLC small on purpose. If Veronica got more involved, this would give her a lot more screentime, so to speak, than the other companions. None of the others have anything that relates them back to the DLC. The only other companion that's very much affected by DLC is ED-E. He gets a loooot of stuff from Lonesome Road.
 
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