Fallout: New Vegas challenges guide

Other Challenges

All Things in Modder Nation

Task: Apply 20 weapon mods.
Reward: 50 XP

Getting this challenge completed is a lot trickier than it might sound due to how poorly the mods have been implemented. To make a long story short, if Chet in Goodsprings isn’t selling useful mods by the time you reach someone who sells them, you won’t need them. You’ll find a 9mm Pistol mod long after you’ve moved on to .357 Magnums and find a mod for that when you’ve moved on to a Cowboy Repeater.

The easiest way to complete this is to wait until you have an excess of money and buy all the mods you can find from the various vendors. Once you have a bunch of mods go ahead and buy the weapons they attach to. Slap 20 of these on, resell the weapons to recoup some of your losses and the challenge is yours.

Weapon Mod Sellers:

188 Trading Post (Underpass Area): Alexander – You’ll need a Gun skill of 40+ to
convince him to sell any weapon mods to you.

188 Trading Post (Near the NCR tent): Arms Merchant

Crimson Caravan Company: Blake

Freeside, Silver Rush shop: Gloria Van Graff – She only sells Energy Weapon mods.

Gibson Scrap Yard: Old Lady Gibson – She only sells them very rarely.

Goodsprings: Chet – Sometimes a great source of early game mods, other times he never carries a single one. Ever.

Gun Runners, Shack Outside Building: Vendertron

Novac: Cliff Briscoe

The Fort: Dale Barton – Only available if you have positive reputation with Caesar’s Legion. Otherwise he will refuse to sell to you.

Artful Pocketer

Task: Pick 50 pockets.
Reward: 50 XP

This challenge is quite the pain in the rear. Since the NPCs in New Vegas scale to your level in a rather bizarre manner, this challenge is always very hard to get. Even when you have a Sneak skill of 100 regular schmucks will still notice you attempting to pickpocket them. Even the easier enemies, like Freeside Thugs, can notice a Stealth Boy concealed level 30 warrior of the Wasteland trying to get into their pockets. As such the easiest way to get this is by liberal use of saving and reloading.

If you’re interested in using a glitch to help you get this challenge then you can easily get this with Sarah Weintraub in Vault 21. In her inventory she has a thing of Bubble Gum that is never removed from her inventory and never added to yours. If you have the patience you can simply hide behind her and repeatedly steal this bubble gum, grinding this out one minty fresh step at a time.

At a Loss for Words

Task: Fail 100 Speech checks.
Reward: 75 XP

Sir Talks-a-lot

Task: Achieve 50 Speech successes.
Reward: 50 XP

Unlike in Fallout 3 Speech checks aren’t a percentage based check. In New Vegas you must actually have a high enough Speech score to effect the NPC’s in question. There are roughly 60 individual situations where you can use your Speech skill but with some NPC’s there are several Speech checks in a single conversation. This also seems to include any time when you use any of your skills to sway people.

NOTE:– Don’t bother actively aiming for At a Loss For Words. Save before talking to people, and if you see a speech check you can fail (and don’t have the items to boost your stats up) then do so. However even doing this you’re not likely to get this unless you really, really search for every speech check you can scrub up.

Know When to Hold %26lsquo;Em

Task: Win at Caravan 3 times.
Reward: 50 XP

Know When to Fold %26lsquo;Em

Task: Lose at Caravan 5 times.
Reward: 50 XP

Caravan Master

Task: Win at Caravan 30 times.
Reward: 50 XP

Caravan isn’t necessarily hard to win at, but some of the people who play the game are rather skillful at it. As such if you would like to get these wins as easily as you possibly can, then the best way to do so is to play particular opponents. Ringo in Goodsprings / the Crimson Caravan Company is one of the easier ones to play and by simply playing him you can easily complete this challenge. As he’s not especially talented, it’s fairly easy to win those 30 games.

Crafty

Task: Craft items via Workbench, Campfire, Reloading Bench or Companion 20 times.
Reward: 0 XP

Crafty Veteran

Task: Craft items via Workbench, Campfire, Reloading Bench or Companion 100 times.
Reward: 75 XP

This should be one of the earliest challenges you complete in the game. Since crafting ammunition counts as individual items crafted just break down a bunch of ammo you’re not using and craft ammo that you will use. Voila!

Disarming Personality

Task: Disarm 25 mines.
Reward: 50 XP

Other than the three mines found on the bridge leading into Primm there aren’t all that many mines set up around the game world. Some of the areas that human enemies have holed up in will have these but that’s never a guarantee. This is a surprisingly hard challenge to finish without all those damn mined subway tunnels Fallout 3 was full of.

Double Down

Task: Play Blackjack 10 times
Reward: 100 XP

Little Wheel

Task: Play Roulette 10 times.
Reward: 100 XP

One Armed Bandit

Task: Play Slots 10 times.
Reward: 100 XP

Take note that these challenges don’t ask you to actually win those ten games of Slots, Roulette and Blackjack. If you’d like to you can simply bid a lone chip ten times in each game and finish these in rather short order.

Fixin%26rsquo; Things

Task: Repair items in your inventory by yourself 30 times.
Reward: 50 XP

Even if you don’t have an especially high Repair rating you can fix your own equipment at any time. This means that even someone with a Repair skill of 10 can fix even the best equipment to full condition. As such this is a rather easy achievement for anyone to get no matter their playing style.

H4x Supr3m3

Task: Hack 25 computer terminals.
Reward: 50 XP

Healthy Glow

Task: Hack 25 computer terminals.
Reward: 50 XP

Unlike the No Tumbler Fumbler challenge this one is actually kind of hard. For whatever reason there are almost no computers you can hack in New Vegas. If we had to estimate, the guess would be that there’s perhaps 40 – 50 computers you can hack in the entire game and many of these are either Hard (requires 75 Science) or Very Hard (requires 100 Science). This is very problematic as it’s very easy to play through the whole game and not get this challenge done without doing plenty of side exploration.

He Moves in Mysterious Ways

Task: Have 15 Mysterious Stranger appearances.
Reward: 0 XP and the Friendly Help Perk.

Perk: Friendly Help – Makes it 15% more likely that the Mysterious Stranger or Miss Fortune will appear when in VATs.

Miss Fortunate Son (or Daughter)

Task: Have 15 Miss Fortune appearances.
Reward: 0 XP and the Friendly Help Perk.

Perk: Friendly Help – Makes it 15% more likely that the Mysterious Stranger or Miss Fortune will appear when in VATs.

There’s little you can do to make this challenge any easier to complete. The two helpers will appear when they’re damn good and ready. Really the best thing you can do is use VATs all the time against every enemy to make these pop up. There is only one rank of the Friendly Help perk so it doesn’t help if you have both of them helping you and complete the challenge with both.

Low Tech Hacking

Task: Pick 25 locks.
Reward: 50 XP

Another rather self-explanatory challenge, there is little in the ways of tricks to getting this one done. As there is only a few Very Hard locks in the entire game it’s rather worthless to take the skill that high. Get it to a 50 ASAP to open most of the locks in the game and this will come rather quickly as you play.

Walker of the Mojave

Task: Discover 50 locations.
Reward: 50 XP

Master of the Mojave

Task: Discover 75 locations
Reward: 50 XP

Unless you stick completely to the storyline you will get this on your first run through the game. Strictly following the main quest you are likely to get Walker of the Mojave but not Master. That one is only gotten if you spend some time to explore the Mojave Wasteland so you’ll want to take the time to gather some unique weapons, do side quests and buff up your character (and cap amount). This will also help you get the You Run Barter Town challenge via scavenging goods.

Questin%26rsquo; Mark

Task: Complete 5 quests.
Reward: 100 XP

NOTE: This challenge repeats seemingly non-stop.

This challenge is incredibly bizarre. Every time you complete five quests the game sees fit to give you a wad of extra experience for your trouble. It’s a nice little gift so get to doing all those side quests! Take note that only quests that appear in your Pip-Boy count towards this quest.

Up to the Challenge

Task: Complete 50 challenges.
Reward: 100 XP

Self-explanatory. By following the tips laid out elsewhere in this guide you will get this about as fast as realistically possible.

You Run Barter Town

Task: Sell 10,000 caps worth of goods to the various merchants.
Reward: 100 XP

If you don’t get this while playing through the game you’re doing something horribly wrong. A few of the better side quests, such as any that give you unique weapons, will net you this in rather short order. It’s actually kind of scary how you get this by either hours upon hours of work or by finding two or three of the better unique weapons.

Jan 25, 2011