Having enjoyed Fallout 3 a lot, I just joined to see what is up with New Vegas.

Looking forward to it and as many of you hardcoe mode interests me, but I am wondering what the actual effects are of the hardcoe mode elements.

I know what is different, but not how not drinking/sleeping/eating enough play out? Do you just drop dead at some point or does it slowly affect your abilities in some way ( I assume the latter).
As for crippling wounds ( I dont remember how it was in FO3 for sure since it was so easy to fix) I assume you'll be limping your way to the doctor?

Any pointers on this? Didn't see it in the obvious hardcoe threads or on fallout wikia, but could still be there ofc :unsure:

Well I dodn't think we know.
We know we'll get dehydrated but I don't think it's been confirmed how it will go.
But I guess it's like Radiation, which the more rad you gain the more your character gets nerfed until he/she finally dies.

Ok fair enough. Guess you're right, just hoping for more apparent impact of the stats nerf in visual/control wise ways.

Symptons of dehydration

Loss of fluid 1-5% - thirst, lack of appetite, red skin, fatique, nausea.

Loss of fluid 6-10% - light headed, headache, trouble breathing, unable to walk.

Loss of fluid 11-20% - delirium, swollen tongue, unable to swallow, diminished vision.

Later on you'll experience - severe muscle weakness, diminished mental abilities.

Im pretty sure they have some type of blur effect, would be nice.

From what I have gleaned, letting the dehydration or hunger meter (Meters? I'm still unclear if they are separate meters or just the one.) deplete will result in instant death. I've not heard, nor do I think we know, if there are stepped penalties along the way. If separate meters, it would be nice to see STR, END take a hit with a diminished hunger meter, and PER, INT, take a hit from the lowered dehydration meter. AGL could be affected by both.

It also is not clear whether or not death is instant, or if HP is continuously drained like when a character is drowning. I'm a bit mixed on this myself, because if HP drains until you die with a depleted meter, it becomes a little too easy to prolong your character's life using Stimpaks. On the other hand, if the game doesn't make it real obvious that you are about to die and you have forgotten to check your meter for a little while and just collapse on the spot, that could be very annoying. I imagine there may be times when you will want to ration out your food or water for as long as possible, pushing the meter to the brink to get the maximum benefit from each bottle of water or item of food.

I'm extremely curious how sleep deprivation will be handled. It doesn't make sense to die from lack of sleep - usually a person who goes too long without it will simply collapse and sleep off any ill effects. But being able to push the meter in game until your character just falls over asleep and wakes up a few hours later in fine condition seems like it would be a cop out. Not to mention more convenient than tracking down a bed. Maybe sleep deprivation means you take bigger and bigger stat, and hopefully, skill penalties, until you decide to stop and sleep, but the game never forces you to. That way, if you wanted, or were in the middle of an important mission, you could "push yourself" and keep going, but the strain and exhaustion means you aren't going to be thinking as clearly, and will have more difficulty functioning (as represented by skill penalties). Perhaps you are master at Lockpicking with 100 skill, but you've been up for two days straight now, and that Very Hard lock you've just encountered is beyond you at the moment because of the -20 penalty you've got on your Lockpicking skill. You just can't concentrate.

I don't know how it should break down, but maybe after your character has been awake for 18 hours, they take a -5 skill penalty until they sleep for at least 4-6 hours. Every 4 additional in-game hours you put off sleep, you get another -5 subtracted from your skills, and the penalty builds in a cumulative fashion. That means if you stayed up for two days straight, you'd be suffering -30 to all your skills. Go another day, and it becomes -60. Go another day and the penalty would be a whopping -90. That means that if your character stayed up for 4 days straight, it would be possible, like if you needed that time to hunt down food and water to avoid death, but you would be effectively "dead on your feet", unable to perform any but the simplest tasks, and them badly.

And this time around the Commando perk, should do more than just adding rifle accuracy.


Special Forces are able to accomplish great feats, even when up for several days, and with a minimum of solid food.


Perhaps the downsides of sleep deprivation will not be as severe with this perk...


Hehe, we'll see in just a few more days - it's fun to talk about it though.

I would say that it will be like when you are addicted to something, with the blur effects and stuff. I am asuming that your special will take a hit and you will die pretty quickly, but not instant...

I went 4 days once in the Marines with no food, and was carrying a combat load and traveling over 20 km a day on foot. I had no real shortage of water, however, and was able to function fairly well.

Pro Tip: When your body has been starving, DO NOT gobble down a bunch of food as soon as you get the chance. I certainly never did that again. Going blind is not cool - even if it only lasted 15 minutes or so.

Having perks that only appear when playing in hardcoe Mode would be pretty cool. Maybe something like "Fuel Efficient" where the hunger meter decreases more slowly. Perhaps "Sleep Walker" - you can go longer without sleeping before getting penalties. It could even have a funny Vault Boy picture with the caption - "You have things to do. You can sleep when you're dead."

It would svck really badly if it didn't have any penalties between perfectly fine and death, I think we can assume that there will be some.

In addition to the dehydration, there are other things like ammo weight, stim packs add HP gradually, over time as opposed to all at once, I think you'll have to visit a doctor for serious injuries, not just inject a stimpack directly into your head and heal your vision, or your arm or leg and heal the broken bone. Also, there is something that says there will be different, "better" A.I. for the enemies on hardcoe, although details on this are scarce.

I, for one am, looking forward to this, I felt that the normal difficulty was too easy in FO3, and thought that the slider, which simply meant badguys could absorb more bullets didn't add difficulty, just frustration, bullet sponges are a cheap way to make the game harder. Why do my bullets do less damage, but theirs do more? I think that the difficulty meter should ony effect the enemies damage output, as it would be harder if you took more damage. Maybe also add to the number of enemies, and tweak their A.I.

Could still do that, but make it unsafe. E.g. high chances of getting robbed/injured/killed.

I hope there is some noticeable complexity to it in ways like you describe.

Or spending a vast amount of time in the Wasteland alone will trigger a 'Solitary' perk, with penalties to Charisma, and the Speech skill - but adding a bonus to Perception... conversing with somebody will stop the effects (after a few conversations) This perk would be a nice edition to people that are planning to hunt, and scavenge.

it′s hardcoe mode, not kick to the balls annoying mode, no thanks, as unrealistic as it is, I prefer sleeping being left a safe thing to do, even on a worn mattress in the middle of nowhere.

Having played Fallout 3, what struck me the most was how it seemed fairly... Wasteful. I mean, there was food all over in the game, yet for the most part, there was little reason to actually eat it. With the hardcoe move, however, there may finailly be a resaon to, say, grab that Brahmin steak or canned food you found in that raider hireout you just cleaned up and use it. Or actuially take the meat of that mirelurk/radscorpion who just attacked you. And to actually prize items such as the Food Sanitizer!

There were also a lot of beds in FO3, but little reason to actually use'em - and realistically speaking some of'em were in places that you could consider uncertain at best to sleep at - would you sleep in a bed in the middle of the nowhere-wasteland? It's certainly not an attractive idea, but the call of sleep is strong and hard to deny at times. But this was never an issuse in FO3 - but it will be in New Vegas, so It'll be interesting being faced with that choice - sleep in the bed in that sandbag fortress you just cleaned out, or continue to a safer location...?

You missed the part I quoted, sure sleep must be safe.

either, because I doubt they have added a "x risk to get attacked" mechanic to sleeping, youl be just as safe to sleep as in Fallout 3

Possibly. Althrough, well, I'd LIKE to see a chance of a random encounter/critter attack happening if you sleep under the bare sky, at least - not indoors though.

Yeah. Was there ever a bigger waste of space than the food sanitizer?

I would love to see some complexity go into the calculations of danger or chance of getting woken up or attacked when choosing a place to sleep in the Wasteland. Raider hideouts could carry a high chance of getting attacked in the middle of the night as a straggler comes wandering in, or sleeping on ground level out in the open carries a high chance of being woken up or attacked by an animal. Choosing high ground or an out of the way, fortified or hidden location could carry much less risk. Such a thing would also make hotels or paid lodging more valuable, as there would be no chance of attack when sleeping in such a place.

There is an excellent mod on the Nexus for FO3 at the moment that lets a player sleep anywhere, and carries a chance of being attacked, or pick-pocketed while asleep. You can watch your character sleep as the world fast fowards around them, and even see the thief or attacker sneak up on your sleeping form. You can then chase down the thief, defend yourself, etc. You can even experience dreams. An amazing mod that would be a great addition to NV.

frankly the fact we have to micro manage sleep at all is all the realism we need in that department. No need to kick the guy laying down (yeah I know bad pun) by adding a risk to be thrown into combat.

yes you also can get a doctors bag to heal limbs if your inteligence is high enough

If the chance of attack isn't random, and the player can accurately gauge that chance before choosing a location to sleep, it just adds to the survival and strategy element. Especially if the sleep meter ends up working like I suggested earlier in this thread and you can stay up as long as you wish, just with mounting penalties. Choosing to sleep in the open in the wild would then always be a choice of last resort, and the result of poor planning ahead. I see no problems. I grew up playing RPGs where you had to make camp and rest to recover health, and there was always the chance of attack, but it just meant you got in the habit of staying better prepared.

wouldn′t that just end up making people only move like a X radius from a civilzed place with a bed? Because trust me no one is gonna pick the annoying enemy attacks option, if they can just be paranoid and stick close to a civilized spot. It discourage exploring, something that′s a shame to such a big open world. Add on top of that the fact sleeping don′t heal you in hardcoe mode is just setting it up for more frustration.

Sorry but realism needs to sit in the corner for this one.

yeah agreed, you could just know that sleeping in certain places is safe and some not.
If the hardcoe stuff requires little or no planning and can easily be dealt with whenever some meter runs low, aka no uncertainty it will be less appealing to me. I really hope it adds to my feeling of uncertainty and toughens decision making while wandering around. :icecream:

Tell me about it...



Hmm, I'm not too eager for being pickpocketed in my sleep (though it would undoubtedly carry a hint of realism to it - few might dare taking the risk of attacking an armed guy in Power Armor, but pickpocketing him is surely another matter)... The risk of being attacked though: defintively! Would also make it all the more important to try and sleep while you still are in a friendly environment (a town or the like)...



Again, as I said, it would only happen during certain circumstances, such as the PC sleeping in a bed under the open sky - beds indoors would generally be safe (a risk of being attacked would only exist if there's still enemies in the building, in other words not completely cleaned out), althrough you wouldn't be able to use the bed while there's still enemies around, of course. Maybe, as LateWhiteRabbit suggests, it would also be unsafe to sleep in some other indoors places, on the basis that the guys who lived in it had some pals out there who are sure to return (like what happens at the Super-Duper Mart)...

New poster here.

I'd just like to point out that getting attacked by wild animals while you are sleeping is very very VERY unlikely, even if you were in an area heavily trafficed by aggressive wild animals. They probably wouldn't even notice you huddled up in the dark corner (which would be the smart thing to do) not moving and barely making any noise. Even if you were sprawled face down in the middle of a road and (for example) a pack of wild hungry dogs happened across you, they would probably think you were part of the environment, no more attention given to you then the boulder they just passed, or the tree on the other side of the road. They wouldn't recognize you as dead meat to be eaten either, carrion gives off a certain ordor which predators can smell, if they don't smell it the thought of "yum food" doesn't even cross their mind. In fact your scent might even protect you, the smell of humans drives most animals (yes even predatory ones) bat [censored] crazy with fear. Humans are the top of the food chain for a reason, we are good at killing stuff and animals know it.

Getting attacked by other humans is another matter entirely. But for "realism" purposes you would be dead before you even opened your eyes if say a raider stumbled upon you while you were sleeping. So, in conclusion I agree with the "immersion" factor of getting attacked while sleeping. But, when it comes to "realism" and "easy of gameplay" I'd vote a big no on it.