Where can I find a good sniper rifle?

Sniper's nest, near Cottonwood.

Camp McCarren in a tent on a bed.

Gun Runners.

-"How little we know" quest. There is two to be picked up for free in moderate CND.

-Camp McCarren in 1st Recon Sniper's tent. one in poor CND on a bunk.

Gun Runners +1. The one at McCarran is in pretty rough shape, don't add any mods to it. Buy one from Gun Runners and use that as your base weapon.

Early game you can also go to Broc Flower Cave (far south of Novac) to retrieve the Ratslayer. A fully modded unique Varmint Rifle. Watch out for the rats.

That's several thousand caps versus a few repair kits(50ish caps to make).

This is what I've done so far for early game snipering. Came across this before a hunting rifle even because im a nice guy and didnt wanna kill the ghoul earlier on and take his. Guess I should have though, lol.

It's not as strong as a sniper rifle, but dude, the scope is nice to look through, headshots kill all your non-super-badass mobs (meaning, deathclaws ) and it looks sweet in hand. Sometimes you gotta trade function for FASHION right? Plus you can repair it using ghetto varmint rifles that cost nearly nothing.

The actual sniper rifles are both rare, and freaking expensive. Meaning you will either need to pay to use it full time, or, have a softer backup for other cases. The ratslayer is a good backup sniper when you cant afford the sniper, or, can't find one yet Plus the cave its in is easy-mode to clear

When doing the quests for the Boomers you can fairly cheaply and easily get a Marksman Carbine in the generator room. Runs on extremely standard 5.56mm ammo, semi-automatic, 20-round magazine, same scope as sniper rifles or anti-materiel rifle. Low damage compensated by minimal kick-back and almost non-existent spread meaning you can easily pump 3-4 bullets into one guy before he even realizes what's going on. What's best, 5.56mm ammo also has AP and HP variants adding a lot of versatility to this gun.

I really enjoy this thing. Point, zoom or not, click 3-4 times, move to next target. Fun.

Gun Runners. It's only 5000 caps. You can easily get that much at playing blackjack. They also have a lot of ammo I can't seem to buy in bulk anywhere else.

Get Ratslayer for the lowlevels. After that or when you have some caps, buy a Sniper Rifle (important mod for it is the silencer) and you're set. Don't let people fool you with their talk of Gobi and Gauss; they can't be silenced.

On the other hand, one-shotting deathclaws with the Gauss from so far away they don't even show up on the compass (even with ED-E's perk) kind of eliminates the need for a silencer.

On the other other hand, all it did was irritate that giant Cazador. Ouch.

With high lockpick skill there are two additional snipers to be had. One at the sniper's nest above Cottonwood cove and the other in an unmarked booby trapped house northwest of New Vegas past the medical clinic. The latter is in a small room with lots of other goodies as well.