Fallout: New Vegas: Hardcore Very Hard build guide

To start:

Girls are better because most human enemies are boys and the Black Widow perk allows you to boost at the beginning by confronting Benny as soon as you get the implant for 4 intelligence, potentially at level 1.

4 Strength ( +1 implant, +1 Lonesome Road reward, +2 OWB Reinforced Spine, +2 virtual from Weapon Handling Perk ) 8 base, 10 virtual for using all weapons no accuracy penalty. Can use consumables to get to 10 for max melee damage, in this regard this build is slightly less than optimal for pure melee, but if you choose to spend Intense Training perk points you can max for melee too.

5 Perception [+1 implant = 6] all you need for the best perception perk]

9 Endurance [+1 implant for max health and all implants]

1 Charisma [+1 implant] [Charisma is a garbage fire, not sure how it got past developers just looking at it, imo the only reason to not have 1 charisma is if you have 10 charisma for a pacifist playthrough and you don’t do damage to enemies you let your companions do all the fighting.]

3 Intelligence [+1 implant, get implant immediately by running to New Vegas clinic at the beginning. You can run by Neil’s Shack to the pass at Black Mountain and pick up the NCR armour there and take the monorail to get into New Vegas. You can sell your items and give house the snow globe, that should get you close to 3k caps for the implant and DLC items make the game too easy anyway lol ;). But since you have 9 luck you can also just gamble for a ton of money instead for more implants than just intelligence.]

9 Agility [+1 implant]

9 Luck [+1 implant]

Tags: Speech, Barter, Guns – these are honestly optional since you can get by with melee weapons for a few levels to pump whatever you feel you need to.

Traits: Gifted + *optional* – I like to take fast shot because it’s one of the only ways to increase your fire rate and the other way is like one of the level 50 perks if I remember correctly. Logan’s loophole can be a good way to make the game easier until you complete OWB, especially if you choose to rush OWB at ~Lvl 1 and change it with the doctor booth you unlock there.

Final SPECIAL without using Intense training:
S 8. base / 10 for the purposes of using weapons
P 6. for best P perk
E 10. max
C 2. trash stat
I 4. Can get all skills to pass checks, use Intense training or Educated perk if you want
A 10. max
L 10. max

These stats are without using Intense Training.

Pick whatever perks you want, imo the best perks to take are really obvious. Take perks that help you all the time, not ones that give fringe benefits. Perks that improve your performance in combat are always good to take. The chemist perks are never worth taking since people tend to hoard aid items, just let go and actually use them. You will always have a surplus once you realize when you really need them and don’t.

After leaving Doc’s house get the snowglobe from the cemetery and head towards Sloan.

Don’t fight anything just run and past by Neil’s Shack and take the pass at the beginning of the Black Mountain trail where the dead NCR soldier is. Take the NCR armour.

Run to Camp Macarran and use the monorail to get into the strip. I don’t have a map for you but you shouldn’t run into any enemies basically at all if you go the right way. Run towards the sharecropers and follow the airports wall to the entrance of Macarran. Gamble to get the money for intelligence implant, 3k caps. If you sell all your items and give house the snowglobe you should be able to rather quickly get 3k caps while staying at lvl 1. Try to get the Intelligence implant at level 1 but don’t stress about it. Run to the clinic and get the implant and if you gambled all the casinos until they threw you out you can get a lot of implants.

At this point you can start playing the game from goodsprings with a solid boost.

If you want to go the extra mile you can:

Get power armor training immediately by rushing the brotherhood quests, pumping to 70 science helps with this. I think supporting McNamara is the easier way to get through this quest if I remember correctly. You will get power armor from the fallen knights by the Boomer base which can also be ran to basically at level 1.

Rush lonesome road for supplies and EDE upgrades (don’t fight anything just run around the area as fast as you can looting and using chems and stimpacks to run past things.)

And if you want to reallllllly go the extra mile you can rush the entirety of OWB at lvl1 and unlock big bonuses and the house there before you start the main quest. You will have to just run through and not do some parts of some quests but most of the stuff there you can go back and do after you beat the Giant Robo Scorpion anyway. If you do this, pump science to bypass many quest objectives with ease and you need 100 to shut down the robo scorpion, so that’s anywhere from 60-80 with the special clothes that give science boost you find in OWB + comprehension and a magazine. You can also consider taking the comprehension perk and using science magazines so you don’t have to spend so many of these early level skill points on just science and this will help you not spend points on the more useless skills people only really upgrade to pass speech checks. +20 boost with magazine and comprehension perk allows a build to get past a lot of specific quest objectives with low intelligence at earlier levels, like getting power armor right away because that computer virus quest is ridiculous lol. It also allows you to spend more points on survival and weapons skills while still being able to do cool parts of quests which helps more on Hardcore very hard.

It’s also possible to run straight to the elite riot armor but that might not be the most fun gameplay ever lol