My wife and I are both playing through New Vegas for the first time and we basically both went the same route which was this (more or less):

(Warning! Possible Major Spoilers)

1. Traveled to the Strip
2. Talk to Mr. House
3. Find Benny and immediately kill him
4. Talk to Yes Man and start his quest line
5. Take the Platinum Chip to the bunker under the Fort without taking it back to Mr. House first (following Yes Man's advice)
6. Activate the AI upgrade
7. Travel to Hoover Dam and start Colonel Moore's quest (For the Republic, Part 2)
8. Kill Mr. House

Now, here is where the problem starts. It was always my intention to team up with the NCR but when I kill Mr. House I get negative karma. Which I don't quite understand since he doesn't seem like a very nice person. But it also turns out that completing The House Always Wins quest to a certain point makes the For the Republic, Part 2 quest fail. But even if it was still available the requirements for saving the president are very high (50 speech, repair and explosives!?) and we are both already level 30.

So, basically we're both thoroughly confused by the storyline, we've failed a number of quests for reasons I can't possibly explain, and even if we team up with the NCR we can't complete their main quest.

I stopped playing a couple weeks ago because I was just to frustrated but my wife kept plugging away only to run into the same difficulties this morning.

Is it worth starting over from the beginning or should we just choose a different side to team up with and just end this game?

Just for the record, neither of us had any problems with FO3 storyline/quests.

-JJ

You don't have to actually kill House. Just disconnect him from the system and leave him.

There are 4 sides to choose from in the game: NCR, Legion, House, Independent (a.k.a Yes-Man). When you advance far enough with a certain faction, the other factions will no longer accept your help and you will fail their quests (Except for Independent. Yes-Man is available no matter what).

But if your skills are at such a low level at maximum character level, I recommend reading a guide/asking around about character builds and starting over. Speech especially is very important.

When you get to a certain point with (some) faction quests, there is a warning "quest" that will trigger. For the NCR, if I recall correctly, it's "Don't Tread on the Bear." That was your warning that continuing down the path you were on was going to cause you to "fail"/not be able to work with the NCR main quest line anymore. Choice consequences and all that. If you didn't get that warning/quest before "failing", something glitched.


According to the http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/You%27ll_Know_It_When_It_Happens you can save the President without those things, but they may not be the "best" courses depending on what you want to achieve. And of course you have to know what they are. (reporting and killing yourself vs. disarming the bomb yourself).
But I'm not 100% sure if those options are always available, either. I've always gone the repair/speech route.

Thats because FO3 didn't give you any choices. This game has 4 paths to choose from. So choosing one can cause you to fail parts of the other 3. And becoming vilified by certain factions can cause quests to fail too. I usually stay in good terms with everybody and do all the side quests I can before I choose a side.

Yeah, just finish out the Yes-Man/Wild Card quest sequence and you'll be fine. You should have Wild Card: Side Bets available as a quest. If you don't, maybe you need to return to Yes-Man to activate it.

Unlike F3, Speech is critical to get up to at least 80% ASAP. Also, find as many Meeting People (+20 Speech) magazines as you can. There's always an alternative if you can't make a speech check, but sometimes those alternatives are very hard or even impossible if you've done certain related quests "out of order", or killed the wrong key NPC.

High Barter and Medicine can be useful, also.

Alright so it sounds like the independent route is the way to go. Do you still get to fight on the side of the NCR at the Hoover battle or do you take out both NCR and the Legion?

Also, I thought the Wiki said you get a karma loss for either killing or disconnecting Mr. House. Maybe I misread.

Both of our builds are fairly similar: 80+ into speech, repair, guns, energy weapons, lockpick, science, and sneak. Neither of us use explosives however and the Wiki seemed to indicate you needed all 3 skills (speech/repair/explosives) to save the pres, which seems kind of excessive to me.

Anyway, thank you all for the clarification and the tips! It looks like we'll be able to complete our current games after all

-JJ

You do, killing him nets you less karma loss because disconnecting him is seen as cruelty. Killing- Bad Karma, Disabling- Alot of bad karma

You missed out on a lot of good stuff. Make a new file and do some things differently.

Just remember that there is major value in replay, and. It's good to see everything.

I kill Mr House and have no trouble with the NCR.



You should always save your game a lot, new saves, don't overwrite old ones in case you want to backtrack or run into a glitch. Are you on console or PC?

It may have been the upgrading of the bots..
If you had left them and killed house earlier on I don't think you would have failed don't tred on the bear.
You always gain karma loss with that act, it's strange considering but nothing to get worried about.

Silenced weapon, sneak, stealthboy + kill the engineer on the roof before the presidents vertibird shows up is the easiest way to do this quest imo.

Yeah, I had a feeling that we may have inadvertently skipped past a lot of the core storyline (hence our confusion).


Ooo, good tip!

Thanks,
JJ