***SPOILER ALERT***

When you find find dead NCR troops, don their armor. You can then go to Camp McCarran and the monorail to the strip for free.

If you have a Luck stat of 7+ you can score 5k caps on blackjack at the Atomic Wrangler. Surely you can scrounge up a few hundred caps to get that ball rolling.

If not, One reward for the GI Blues quest is a free pass into the strip. That's how I got into the strip the very first time. I tend to burn that favor on speeding up the "Kings Gambit" quest later in the game now.

It's a credit check not a fee. No once the check is complete you can go in without being checked by the Securitrons.

I don't understand this.

I broke the bank at every single casino. After doing so, I had somewhere in the vicinity of 50,000 caps. I exploited the Gun Runners several times in addition to every single merchant I came across (I get the gear I need and then drain their caps down to 0 with an exploit). The only money I ever spent that I couldn't reclaim was 12k for 3 implants. Figure, at my best moment, I had 92,000 caps.

I'd sure like to know where else you're getting your caps. (Allow me to reiterate that I have cleaned out every single merchant, and I've done it more than once - six or seven in fact just with Gun Runners alone).

I noticed yesterday that my character has in the region of 95000 caps, having just paid for the phoenix implant thing, so he was over 100 000 before then. I don't know how, he has not cleaned the three casinos (only Atomic Wrangler has kicked him out, though he's been given the suite in all three main ones he has yet to be kicked from the tables) he's not even level 30.
hardcoe character but he was something of a klepto, anything with greater value than 20 caps per pound (ie carton of cigs is fine at 40/2(=20/1) but wonderglue, at 10/1 is not) was taken and sold up till he reached New Vegas.

So it's quite possible but I honestly don't know how. It just...happened.

Oh the boomers had a hand in it, those guys have a TON of stuff to sell.

Currently sitting on 500K, with a modded Luck 38 the computer has something like 10-20K from getting all the upgrades. yay for IWS and 90 Barter!

Probably because most people on their first playthrough (Or first fallout game) don't have an idea of what to sell, where to loot, what to buy and not buy and end up at the gate with less than 2000 caps. My first playthrough, I got there with about 400 caps. The next one, I got there with about 3500 Caps. Yay for looting.

Yep. Even after I have no possible use for the money, I still can't stop looting until I hit level 20 or so. Then I slow down. Some.
You can easily complete Dead Money staggeringly rich, by the way. It makes the vanilla game look cheap.

My first time through, I easily made about 2500 caps to show to the Securitrons at the gate by just taking the Goodsprings-Primm-Nipton-Novac-188 route to Vegas, and that was without even dumping a lot of points into Barter.

Of course, I was an inveterate looter in FO3, and old habits die hard.

My main character has over 150K and only played caravan a few times. He pretty much sold everything he found, never bought weapons only mods. He bought implants, and would pay for repairs when needed. Barter was a 35. It's not that hard if your not buying everything and don't have to get healed all the time. I would save up stuff in the Novac hotel room footlocker. I'd then play travelling merchant between quests. Start with the places I got the best prices and then visit them all selling until they were out of caps. As you go up in level the merchants get more caps. Some of the traveling merchants will have more than 8k. Gun Runners will have 15k+. Every three game days they restock and get more caps.

Yeah, getting caps or getting into Vegas is pretty easy. What's hard is getting the 4000 caps needed for the Intelligence implant without leveling up, ideally getting it as a Level 1 character. Actually, it's not getting the caps that's hard, it's avoiding the experience points while getting them that's hard.