On my 2nd playthrough I decided to do it as quick as possible. Not so much in terms of fast time, but low experience, to end the game as low level as possible. So the fastest route through that I could find. No ethical or poilitical preferences, no side quests, no companions.

In summary, the route was leave Goodsprings to it's problems, go via Hidden Valley and Neil's shack to Vegas, steal a bunch of stuff from the Silver Rush to finance entry to the Strip, talk to Yes Man, disable Mr. House, confront Benny so that he does a runner, head off to the Fort to fire up the securitron army. Then: meet up with all the factions (Boomers, Brotherhood, Great Khans etc) and tell Yes Man they are to be ignored. Let the assasination happen, then off to the Dam for the big showdown.

This was all on difficult, hardcoe and not using fast travel. I hardly went anywhere, and I would have gone to even less places only I decided to collect about 20 landmines so I'd have some chance of killing Lanius. That battle with Lanius was a total slog, had to re-loads of times because I was so under-developed. However I finished the game at the quite inexperienced level 10.

Some of you must have tried this. How low did you go? What do you think is the lowest level that would be possible?

I have never tried this. But I would make an estimate and say level 10-12 is probably the lowest that this can be reasonably done. Also, make sure you set it on very easy, then it will be nice and easy even at level 10.

Take the road to Sloan then carefully walk on the east side of the road past the turned over truck up on the cliff, the deathclaws "will" notice you, just run along the rock as far east as you can and you'll escape them, after that make your way towards The Strip. "But I need 2000 caps!"
Well, I dunno how to fix that, maybe go up to YCS location and avoid every fiend and cazador along the way and snatch it, oughta earn you some caps.
Or you could buy the fake pass port from Mick and Ralph.
Then just do the main quest like regular.

you can always (sneak) kill a securiton and steal the key!

At level 1? With a varmint rifle?

Use the bucketing technique in the Van Graffs to get a lot of caps? Get a pot, fill with ammo, take somewhere hidden then nick it all. Rinse and repeat. Can also take weapons this way IIRC? If not, still a good amount of caps there...grenades too...

I'd probably side with the Legion if I were to do it.

There was a method for doing the game as quickly as possible so as to get the hardcoe play through achievement posted on another forum (sorry I seem to have lost the link). I tried it and managed to finish the entire game in approx 100 minutes (Yes Man ending). When the game ended I was on level 7 and hadn't killed a single person or creature.

While this was all a bit pointless, it was never the less fun to try out.

Thanks for all the input!



This sounds like a swift way through the game. What was the difficulty setting? Also, how do you finish it that quickly without killing anyone? Do you max out speech and pick up a few copies of Meeting People?

Are you a bad enough dude to get past the Blind Deathclaw in Primm Pass?

Yup, get noticed by it, run away, get [hidden], wait 24 hours, deathclaw gone, go past it.

Sneak past the deathclaws, loot some NCR gear near McCarran and get to the Strip by monorail.



I did it in my first playthrough. :disguise: The secret is to jump on that rock in the pass and cripple its legs.

Here's the link to the http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/959557-fallout-new-vegas/57236095 I used.

It's best to do it on very easy mode so you can basically just ignore anyone who starts shooting at you. It was worth a quick go just for a bit of fun, well and to get the hardcoe achievement (I don't like hardcoe mode). The only skills you need are Survival: 45 by level 6 and Speech: 100 by the time you get to the end.

I had a go at it, but the amount of XP you get for completing the various quests makes it really hard to stay at a low level. By scrambling around Black Mountain I went straight from Goodsprings to Freeside at level 1 and thought I was doing really well, but just going into the Tops bumped me up 2 levels. In the end I got to the Legate at level 9 but the final speech challenge against Oliver bumped me to 10.

Note that the original author of that guide amended the character build from CHR 1 and AGL 10 to CHR 10 and AGL 1. He thought AGL 10 made you run faster.

I'm going to give the guide a try today.

maybe a fully modded with hollow point bullets and psycho..

Good point with the HP rounds, apparently they have a DT of 0. wikia says they have 120 hp, would a varmint sneak attack with HP rounds breach that? It does have really low damage...

How about looting one of the Van Graff rifles? Or you could make a straight run for Ratslayer, can't be that hard to simply run in and out...

The key to a playthrough like that one would be to get your speech up to 75 at least, then use a suit and a magazine (backed by Comprehension) to get it to 100. That way, you can get Lanius to leave without a fight. If you fight him while your Level is in the single digits, you're going to get trashed repeatedly.