Welcome to my latest project, Fallout New Vegas.

It has
been a while since I've tackled a new project, one of
the reasons being that I've had some business in the
professional guide writing business and worked with
Piggyback Interactive on the official strategy guide for
Final Fantasy XIII. It was an honor to work on such a
big project, and it was especially nice to be the first
person in the world to ever beat FF XIII outside of the
development team. I'm glad to present you THE follow-up
and popular series: Fallout.

OooO
|| Absolute Steve ||
|| Version: 1.00 ||
|| PS3 / PC / X360 ||
||faq@shillatime.org||
||www.shillatime.org||
Oo__________________oO
guide of a longlasting

The series of guides I've made for Fallout 3 was created with the intention of
not leaving a single irradiated stone unturned, but there's always room for
improvement. This guide is the result of many days and nights of long labour,
so here's hoping you'll enjoy the redesign of the layout, and may the in-depth
strategies and vast descriptions greatly enrich your gaming experience. In any
case, be sure to like this guide on facebook (see link above) and tell your
friends about this guide!
Fallout New Vegas does feel like a very stretched DLC and hardly has graphical
improvements over Fallout 3, but that doesn't take away any of the fun. The
game mechanics have been tweaked with, making the game harder and more balanced.
There are minigames now, there's still plenty to explore, but the 'Fallout 3'
feeling is gone (duh, it's Vegas!), the point being that the game doesn't really
breathe the same atmosphere as Fallout 3 both in terms of exciting storytelling
and areas. There are once again numerous annoying bugs that shouldn't exist,
long loading times included , especially on the Xbox 360. Resetting your Xbox
can sometimes do wonders combined with clearing the cache, though. All in all,
the game has its improvements, but is hardly as epic or revolutionary as it's
big brother. As such, be glad it's not called Fallout 4. :) On a closing note
I do want to mention that some events in FNV are painfully unfunny, sometimes
even disgusting and on the border of acceptable as to what you can put into a
video game. This has nothing to do with gore, more so with ethics. Some of
those people at Obsidian should give me a call - as a psychologist student I'd
gladly study them as field cases.
Lastly, be sure to check out Supercheats.com soon for an enhanced version of the
guide, which features video content at tight spots that might require additional
assistance. Having said that, please glance at the next few sections before
diving into the table of contents and take the opportunity to read more about
donation options and the future of guide writing. Thank you for your kind
consideration and enjoy the guide and the game!
~ Absolute Steve
P.S. Also on behalf of noz3ro, absolute daniel, and other future contributors
that may very well follow; welcome!
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[AND TERMS OF USE IN A SENSE]
If you found this guide helpful, feel free
to consider one of these options to donate:
1. Paypal donation at: faq@shillatime.org


2. Make a purchase at Amazon.com by searching
for your item through my referral search
box (this grants me 4% profit with no
additional costs for you), found at:
http://www.shillatime.org/amazon.html

3. Tell someone dear how special they

are to you and remember their smile.
[And afterwards, of course, return to
blasting off heads in New Vegas!]
Thank you very much for your consideration!
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_________________________________________________________________________[TOC]
Use CTRL + F and copy/paste the [TAG] to find the section you're looking for.
I. . . . . . . . . . . . CONTROLS, BASICS & TIPS [BSC]
1.1 ...................
1.11 ..................
1.12 ..................
1.13 ..................
1.14 ..................
1.2 ...................
1.3 ...................
1.31 ..................
1.32 ..................
1.33 ..................
1.4 ...................
1.5 ...................

Game Controls [BSC-1]

XBOX360 Controls [BSC-1.11]
Playstation 3 Controls [BSC-1.12]
PC Controls [BSC-1.13]
Companion Controls [BSC-1.14]
Understanding the compass [BSC-2]
Tips and Tricks [BSC-3]
General Tips [BSC-3.1]
Hacking Tips [BSC-3.2]
Lockpicking Tips [BSC-3.3]
Pre-order Bonuses [BSC-4]
Game Difficulty & Hardcore Mode [BSC-5]

II. . . . . . . . . . . . WALKTHROUGH [WLK]

2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
2.9

...................
...................
...................
...................
...................
...................
...................
...................
...................

Ain't That a Kick in the Head [WLK-1]

Back in the Saddle [WLK-2]
By a Campfire on the Trail [WLK-3]
Ghost Town Gunfight [WLK-4]
They Went That-a-Way [WLK-5]
Come Fly With Me [WLK-6]
Ring-a-Ding-Ding [WLK-7]
G.I. Blues [WLK-8]
Wild Card: Ace In The Hole [WLK-9]

III. . . . . . . . . . . . SIDE QUESTS [SDQ]

3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5
3.6

...................
...................
...................
...................
...................
...................

Aba Daba Honeymoon [SDQ-1]

Ant Misbehavin' [SDQ-2]
Anywhere I wander [SDQ-3]
Back in Your Own Backyard [SDQ-4]
Beyond the Beef [SDQ-5]
Birds of a Feather [SDQ-6]

3.7 ...................
3.8 ...................
3.9 ...................
3.10 ..................
3.11 ..................
3.12 ..................
3.13 ..................
3.14 ..................
3.15 ..................
3.16 ..................
3.17 ..................
3.18 ..................
3.19 ..................
3.20 ..................
3.21 ..................
3.22 ..................
3.23 ..................
3.24 ..................
3.25 ..................
3.26 ..................
3.27 ..................
3.28 ..................
3.29 ..................
3.30 ..................
3.31 ..................
3.32 ..................
3.33 ..................
3.34 ..................
3.35 ..................
3.36 ..................
3.37 ..................
3.38 ..................
3.39 ..................
3.40 ..................
3.41 ..................
3.42 ..................
3.43 ..................
3.44 ..................
3.45 ..................
3.46 ..................
3.47 ..................
3.48 ..................
3.49 ..................
3.50 ..................
3.51 ..................
3.52 ..................
3.53 ..................
3.54 ..................
3.55 ..................
3.56 ..................
3.57 ..................
3.58 ..................
3.59
3.60
3.61
3.62
3.63
3.64
3.65

..................
..................
..................
..................
..................
..................
..................

Bitter Springs Infirmary Blues [SDQ-7]

Bleed Me Dry [SDQ-8]
Booted [SDQ-9]
Boulder City Showdown [SDQ-10]
Bye Bye Lover [SDQ-11]
Can You Find It In Your Heart? [SDQ-12]
Classic Inspiration [SDQ-13]
Climb Ev'ry Mountain [SDQ-14]
Cold, Cold Heart [SDQ-15]
Come Fly With Me [SDQ-16]
Crazy, Crazy, Crazy [SDQ-17]
Cry Me a River [SDQ-18]
Debt Collector [SDQ-19]
Don't Make a Beggar of Me [SDQ-20]
Ed-E My Love [SDQ-21]
Eye For an Eye [SDQ-22]
Eyesight to the Blind [SDQ-23]
Flags of Our Foul-Ups [SDQ-24]
For Auld Lang Syne [SDQ-25]
G.I. Blues [SDQ-26]
Ghost Town Gunfight [SDQ-27]
Guess Who I Saw Today [SDQ-28]
Hard Luck Blues [SDQ-29]
Heartache by the Number [SDQ-30]
High Times [SDQ-31]
How Little We Know [SDQ-32]
I Could Make You Care [SDQ-33]
I Don't Hurt Anymore [SDQ-34]
I Forgot To Remember To Forget [SDQ-35]
I Fought The Law [SDQ-36]
I Hear You Knocking [SDQ-37]
I Put a Spell on You [SDQ-38]
Keep Your Eyes On The Prize [SDQ-39]
Left My Heart [SDQ-40]
Medical Mystery [SDQ-41]
My Kind Of Town [SDQ-42]
No, Not Much [SDQ-43]
Nothin' But A Hound Dog [SDQ-44]
Oh My Papa [SDQ-45]
One For My Baby [SDQ-46]
Pheeble Will [SDQ-47]
Pressing Matters [SDQ-48]
Restoring Hope [SDQ-49]
Return to Sender [SDQ-50]
Run Goodspring Run [SDQ-51]
Someone To Watch Over Me [SDQ-52]
Still In The Dark [SDQ-53]
Sunshine Boogie [SDQ-54]
Talent Pool [SDQ-55]
Tend To Your Business [SDQ-56]
That Lucky Old Sun [SDQ-57]
The Legend Of The Star/
A Valuable Lesson [SDQ-58]
The Coyotes [SDQ-59]
The Finger Of Suspicion [SDQ-60]
The Moon Comes Over The Tower [SDQ-61]
The White Wash [SDQ-62]
There Stands The Grass [SDQ-63]
Three-Card Bounty [SDQ-64]
Unfriendly Persuasion [SDQ-65]

3.66
3.67
3.68
3.69
3.70
3.71
3.72

..................
..................
..................
..................
..................
..................
..................

Volare! [SDQ-66]
Wand Dang Atomic Tango [SDQ-67]
We Are Legion [SDQ-68]
We Will All Go Together [SDQ-69]
Wheel Of Fortune [SDQ-70]
Why Can't We Be Friends [SDQ-71]
You Can Depend on Me [SDQ-72]

IV. . . . . . . . . . . . MOJAVE MAPS [MAPS]

V. . . . . . . . . . . . STATISTICS [STA]
5.1
5.2
5.3
5.4
5.5

...................
...................
...................
...................
...................

Are you S.P.E.C.I.A.L.? [STA-1]

Skills [STA-2]
Perks [STA-3]
Traits [STA-4]
Derived Statistics [STA-5]

VI. . . . . . . . . . . . GENERAL INFO [GEN]

6.1 ................... Level Up Chart [GEN-1]
VII. . . . . . . . . . . . INVENTORY [INV]
7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4

...................
...................
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Weapons [INV-1]
Armor [INV-2]
Recipes [INV-3]
Food [INV-4]

VIII. . . . . . . . . . . . APPENDIX [APX]

8.1
8.2
8.3
8.4

..................
..................
..................
..................

Xbox 360 Achievements [APX-1]

Playstation 3 Trophies [APX-2]
Snow Globe Locations [APX-3]
Skill Book Locations [APX-4]

IX. . . . . . . . . . . . VIRGIN HISTORY [VIR]

X. . . . . . . . . . . . CREDIT CHIPS [CRD]
XI. . . . . . . . . . . . RIGHTCOPY [COPS]
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AN ESSAY ON THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE OF THE VIDEO GAMEGUIDE INDUSTRY
A PLEAD FOR ENDLESS IDEALISM AND ULTIMATE RESOURCES
INTRODUCTION

Wow, what exactly is this? This is an essay on how the guide writing industry
is changing, an essay on FAQ writing, and an essay in which I plead for more
recognition for, and more cooperation between guide authors. Why is this here?
Because otherwise you wouldn't have been reading this. Feel free to read it,

but feel just as free to proceed to the main bulk of the guide. I hope you
enjoy this FREE guide "as is". This essay is NOT going anywhere. :)
THE PAST

Game guides have been around for almost as long as videogames themselves, but in
a world where information is becoming increasingly more accessible, how is the
format for game guides evolving? In the early nineties, game guides were usually
featured as an appendix to videogame magazines, until Prima launched a series of
game guides back in 1990. The guides were qualitatively poor and fairly
unpopular by today's standards. Another company called Bradygames started
selling guides in the nineties. It spawned various over the years, including
infamous - yet best selling - books for popular RPG's such as the Final Fantasy
series. Halfway the nineties, hotlines also started to gain popularity, if only
through heavy marketing. By dialing a certain hotline you had "instant access"
to hundreds of cheats for the most well-known games. The hotlines were rather
expensive (a buck per minute at least), so it wasn't the preferred option for
getting your daily cheatcodes. If you were stuck in a game back then, you either
had your friends or big brother help you. If your friends sucked at gaming and
you didn't have a big brother (I for one, didn't), then "that was life for 'ya."
At the end of the decade, two new companies arose in the game guide industry,
and interestingly, both took base in Hamburg, Germany. Piggyback quickly
conquered the European market with high-quality guides for well-known games
such as the Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy Series. FuturePress filled in
the gaps with 'lesser' titles and remains to do so to date, mainly for the
European and German market, one of the reasons it's hardly known elsewhere in
the world.
The internet brought aspiring game guide writers the excellent possibility to
spread their information worldwide, but it wasn't until around the millennium
that the majority of people started to gain internet access. The most popular
games were quick to be covered in so-called FAQs: Documents in which Frequently
Asked Questions were answered. Jeff Veasey, founder of GameFAQs, started
collecting these documents and brought them all together at what remains the
biggest online gaming helpsite to date. FAQs started including full-fledged
walkthroughs and some of these in turn evolved into strategy guides that left
no stone unturned. Lately, since the late 2000's, wiki pages have gained
interest. This format allows communities of people to cooperatively work on
creating a network of informative pages regarding a certain game. While the
obvious benefit is that the amount of people makes contributing easy and the
network quickly grows, some of the major downsides are inaccuracy of
information, poorly written and vague walkthroughs, and the constant need to
browse back and forth between pages. Most FAQ authors foresaw that accessibility
was easily enhanced and had already solved the tedious searching problem by
implementing a simple Ctrl + F search system with [tags] into their documents.
THE PRESENT

Presently, there are several camps in the guide writing business. There are the
well-known strategy guide writing companies that pay for exclusive publishing
rights, and there's the ever growing database of free guides online. We can
divide the four official strategy guide companies into two groups, not only
geographically but interestingly also qualitatively: On the one hand we have
the U.S.-based Prima and Bradygames, whose motto comes down to "selling as
many game guides as possible, for as many games as possible." The problem is
that they spawn not only strategy guides for games hardly justified for this
format, but more so that their books are qualitatively poor. Admittedly there

has been a slight rise in quality over the past 10 years, but the sloppy and
erroneous layouts and information almost never justify a purchase at these
companies. However, the majority of the gaming market - say 90% - doesn't even
look at the company name when buying a strategy guide, so there's no reason
beyond ethics for these companies to care. Fortunately, there has been a
slight shift in approach, where these companies are realizing that one author
simply cannot write a complete guide on his own, and as such the quality of a
few "big-name" guides has risen slightly. On the other hand, most layout
approaches aren't as good as they should be, and the same can be said about
various tactical tips, inaccuracy and incompletion of the content.
On the other hand we have the European companies, Piggyback and FuturePress,
of which the former is the uncrowned king in the guide writing business. Their
approach is to make very few guides a year - two to three at most - but to make
them perfect in almost every possible way. While strategy guides always remain
a product of marketing, if you need any reason to warrant a purchase at all,
it's because their books are in the best condition they could've possibly
reached you, having excellent binding, highly qualitative layouts and an ocean
of information and trivia. The only downsides to this approach are the fact
that not every game can be covered (only highly popular games can be), and that
a collector's edition might be pricey in these difficult times for some people.
Where Piggyback's fashionable office is located in the beautiful Hamburg city
center, my trip to FuturePress requires a little more dedication, but I
eventually manage to find their headquarters in a back alley of a more sober
neighborhood. The people are all very friendly, although it becomes immediately
apparent that they don't have the contacts Piggyback does. FuturePress still
makes better guides than Prima and Bradygames, but a sore reality is that they
only get to buy the rights from Prima and Brady themselves - mostly just for the
European market.
Then there's the free, online sources of gaming help, ranging from the vast
library of text-based documents on GameFAQs, to the - sorry to say, but poorly
made - semi-free guides of Gamespot and IGN, to wiki pages dedicated to specific
games, to in-depth guides by prolific authors at Supercheats, to more simple
websites that mainly offer cheats only. An interesting format sprung from
Youtube recently: Video talkthroughs. There are few reasons to be a big fan of
this format, if only for the reason that there's no proper search function, but
there are more downsides to it which are all discussed later. In this turbulent
world of ever-changing formats for game guides, which direction are we headed
and better yet, which direction is best to be headed towards?
THE FUTURE

It's mostly about making choices regarding the height of your standards and
arguably everyone would want the highest standard of quality, even if the
information is free. When looking for any source of game information, this
would translate into the following criteria: Getting everything out of your game
in the most convenient way possible. This is the approach that the better
official companies take when making their tomes, so it might as well be your
- admittedly ultimate - demand when looking for a free guide online. So let's
compare the different formats to see how well they work when this criteria
is applied.
LOW-QUALITY, SEMI-FREE GUIDES @ GAMESPOT & IGN

I'll start off with the - usually widely promoted - semi-free game guides on
Gamespot and IGN. First of all, keep in mind that the guys writing these aren't

paid a top-notch salary, and that they have to spit out guides at a rather fast
pace. Add to this the fact that writing for video games as a job takes most of
the fun out of the gaming experience and you get rushed guides with half-decent
text and accompanied screenshots that have no existential purpose but to serve
as filler. It's true; the walkthroughs are usually rather globally written,
serving only to get you from point A to point B, and will help you only when
you're stuck and have absolutely no clue as to where to go. The "in-depth"
sections mostly cover only the basics and are hardly worth mentioning. Quite a
lot of people *will* however use these guides, simply because they're decently
advertised online. A solution for improvement would theoretically be simple, but
it's similar to the final conclusion we'll land at in the final section of this
essay, so let's stay patient and unspoiled for now. A permanent problem these
sites face is the low budget they're willing to spend on game guides (in other
words, they lack idealism altogether. This is one of the reasons I'd recommend
against using these sites, but that's a complete different story).
WIKI-PAGES; GREAT IDEALISM, LESS GREAT FORMAT

Wiki pages are a newly born alternative and their pros and cons have already
been briefly discussed above. They suffer from the same problem as the
semi-free guides previously discussed, namely that they lack in-depth
information incorporated in the walkthrough itself. Wikis make up for this with
their nearly infinite amount of pages on subjects, but this is also a weakness;
this sometimes leaves you searching around and in circles. Credit is hardly
given when editing wiki pages, so for the exception of a few top-notch
contributors, it is a business mostly fueled in bit-sized pieces by a large
community of people. Unpopular games aren't covered by wiki pages at all, and
there are far too few contributors in the first place.