9 Fallout: New Vegas Challenge Runs That Make the Game Feel Brand New

Every run of Fallout: New Vegas starts the same way: a man named Benny drags you to a cemetery outside Goodsprings and shoots you in the head. What happens next is up to you. Obsidian Entertainment’s open-world RPG — released in October 2010, and still fully playable on Steam and Xbox — lets you decide who your Courier is and how they move through the wasteland. Will you be a hat-wearing cowboy or a corpse-eating vampire? A pacifist or a pickpocket with live grenades?

The rules are yours to set, too: play dumb, make enemies on purpose, or travel only at night, and you can trip skill checks, faction grudges, and dialogue options you might never have otherwise encountered. Lock in your house rules and head back to the Mojave for a misadventure that feels brand new.

9 Play on hardcore mode

House rules: Ammo has weight (sorry), you do get thirsty, and stimpaks won’t save you in one click

Right after you finish character creation in New Vegas, the game offers you the chance to try Hardcore, an optional play mode that ups the difficulty considerably. Every bullet, shell, and energy cell now has physical weight. You do in fact need food, water, and sleep, or your dehydration, starvation, and sleep deprivation meters will max out and you’ll die. Healing items like RadAway and stimpaks work gradually, instead of instantaneously. Fast travel comes at a cost, and your companions can die — permanently. While there’s some debate over how difficult this mode really is, it might help to know that you don’t really need to commit for an entire playthrough: You can turn Hardcore mode on or off at any time in the settings menu. (You will get a unique achievement if you stick with it through the full game, though.)

8 Pick a side and stay loyal

House rules: Choose a faction, wear its colors, and treat the other factions accordingly

There are four major factions in New Vegas — the Free Economic Zone of New Vegas (or Mr. House’s regime), Yes Man slash Independent New Vegas, Caesar’s Legion, and the New California Republic. Side with one of these, or one of the game’s many smaller sparring groups, and that comes with perks. If you don the armor of a specific faction, for example, that can work as a disguise, allowing you to work for a bit with a faction that otherwise despises you — but only sometimes, as some characters can see right through it. This cuts the other way, too, unfortunately: Wear Legion armor in front of NCR soldiers, for example, and they could open fire. In a one-faction run, that’s just a risk you’re going to have to take. Pick a side, wear its colors, and accept that every rival faction in the game will hate you. This opens you up to failed quests, the occasional hit squad, and companions who won’t want to travel with you — but hey. Loyalty has a price, and true believers don’t care about the cost…right?

7 Ride in as a cowboy (or a vampire)

House rules: Deck yourself out in revolvers, carbines, and knives. Ignore all other armor. Wear a hat at all times. Or feed on the dead…when no one’s watching

The Courier starts in Goodsprings wearing a borrowed Vault 21 jumpsuit. To begin a proper cowboy run, you’ll need a wardrobe upgrade. Armor stays off; wear a hat and the red-scarf Ranger outfit instead. You’ll also want to build and level your character in pursuit of the Cowboy perk, which needs level 8, Guns 45, and Melee 45. That perk adds 25% damage with revolvers, lever-action firearms, dynamite, knives and hatchets; so, now, those are your whole arsenal. Be prepared for scarce ammo and constant repairs.

For a variant if you’re not feeling the Western vibes, consider being a vampire. Travel only at night, sleep through the day, and take the Cannibal perk, which lets you feed on human corpses while sneaking. Just, uh, never dine where anyone can see.

6 Play dumb on purpose

House rules: Skip right past Intelligence and prioritize Strength and Luck

Character creation in New Vegas gives you 40 points to spread across your stats. When you’re creating your character, go ahead and drop Intelligence to 1 and put those points elsewhere. A low Intelligence score unlocks dumb dialogue that’s rare but very funny and, in my opinion, definitely worth finding. At REPCONN headquarters, a robot demanding a password will accept your seemingly random guess of “ICE CREAM!”, which anyone else would need a high Luck score to land on. At the New Vegas Medical Clinic, saying “You sell plants, too?” in a discussion about implants earns a suggestion to buy an implant that makes you smarter. Be aware that in a low-intelligence run you’ll earn only 10 or 11 skill points per level and start weaker in Medicine, Repair, and Survival. But on the bright side, at least the password was indeed “ice cream,” and the robot let you in.

5 Go full pacifist

House rules: No kills. No companions. (A surprising amount of running, though)

After Benny shoots you in the head, you spend most of the game tracking him down. And normally, there is a lot — a lot — more shooting as that plays out. If you attempt a pacifist run, good luck getting to the end sans gunplay. The basic rules for a Fallout pacifist run are no kills, no injuring anyone, and no companions. (Companions are out, since they could just do the killing for you.) This will involve quite a bit of sneaking and running. So if this is your plan, put points into Sneak and Speech, and take the Silent Running perk. This is less an enjoyable gameplay experience than a punishing bragging-rights project, with a kill counter stuck at zero as your trophy.

4 Become an outlaw

House rules: Make an enemy of every faction. Use only what you can steal

Choosing your allies carefully is a huge part of Fallout: New Vegas strategy. Or you could sidestep that entirely and go it alone. In an outlaw run, your Courier will answer to no faction. Instead, everyone is your enemy. Everyone. The NCR, the Legion, the Westsiders, the Freesiders, the Boomers, the Powder Gangers, the Khans. This leaves you with precious few options, as your allies usually connect you with quests, better prices, and free equipment. Bereft of social connections, you’ll need to rely on stealing to get gear and resources. Heads up that this could easily turn into a “kill everyone” run, so you might want to make your peace with that playstyle upfront, too.

3 Beeline to Vegas

House rules: Skip the scenic route, walk through the cazadores, and reach the Strip as fast as you can

If you’re playing Fallout: New Vegas by the book, your Courier will take the long way to the Strip through Primm, Nipton, Novak, and Boulder City, encountering Powder Gangers, Legion scouts, and ghoul scientists as you go. Or you could skip all of that and just head to the endgame the moment you leave Doc Mitchell’s house. The shorter route runs past cazadores and super mutants, but with strategic long-range attacks and a lot of sneaking, it’s possible. You can reach the Strip as early as level 2, and some speedrunners have finished the main quest in about a half hour.

2 Sneak… or explode

House rules: Sneak around and use explosives. Don’t rank anything else until those skills hit 100

Thinking about attempting a stealthy New Vegas run? If so, go ahead and put your points into Sneak and Explosives. Doing so will completely reframe how you approach combat. You might decide to become very good at reverse-pickpocketing explosives — e.g., slipping explosives into a humanoid enemy’s pocket, stepping back, and watching the carnage. Alternatively, with points allocated to Charisma and Speech and a few good traps, you could become a man in the shadows, talking your way through the Mojave and letting landmines handle the rest. Your choice. Either way, don’t be standing there when the explosive goes off.

1 Gamble your way through

House rules: Your only source of caps is casinos and Caravan. The house always wins, so, good luck

Caps — the Mojave’s currency — can be used to buy ammo, stimpaks, repairs, and the implants that raise your stats. Most players earn caps by selling loot. Do a gambler’s run, and that reliable source of income vanishes. Instead, you’ll need to make your caps from casino games and Caravan, a card game played with a deck of at least 30 cards you’ve found or bought throughout your adventures. You build three caravans of cards to a value between 21 and 26, and you win by selling two of the three. One bad streak of luck, and you’re broke!

If you strike out on strategy and want to gamble, head to the Strip to play games like blackjack, roulette, and slots. As you might expect, gambling works out better for you if you put at least 7 points into Luck during character creation. (If you’re looking for a way to cheese Caravan, you can stack your deck with 10s, 7s, 9s, and face cards. But you didn’t hear that strategy from us.)