Forum:Game difficulty on PC

Well, I've gone through multiple iterations of games trying to find the right level of challenge. The DLCs added some nice foes, but they crop up only from time to time. I shifted the slider to Very Hard, and applied a slower leveling mod. That made the first part of the game much more challenging, in that I actually died from time to time. By level 20, though, you still become death incarnate.

I really liked the Weapon Mods mod, but having a laser-sighted, full auto plasma rifle was too overpowered. I ended up disabling it.

My latest go through is with some additional mods. These do several things. They make drugs, especially stimpaks, MUCH rarer. Drugs also have actual weight now, instead of being weightless. Ammo is slightly more rare and much more expensive. The Barter skill is also seriously cut down in efficacy.

The effects of this? I'm actually using a lot of the little options that were put into the game but are completely unnecessary at the default levels of difficulty. I'm eating the food I find. I'm using doctors. I'm drinking water from sinks, LOL. I have to keep swapping weapons as I run low on ammo for my current one. I was actually happy to find a wasteland junky who was selling drugs. Trading scrap metal for stimpaks is actually a tempting option, rather than just selling them all to Walter for the xp and caps. At level 7, I don't have a single improvement for my house, because I haven't been able to save up the caps after restocking on ammo. I'm using what drugs I do have more often for that little boost, since I can't afford to spray-fire ammo anymore. I've used almost every land mine and grenade I've found.

I suspect that Bethesda originally had a MUCH higher level of difficulty in some respects. They've put a lot of little bonuses in to make play possible under these types of circumstances. Not only is the game more fun for me, but the tradeoffs I have to make are showing me the value of things in the game that before I completely ignored. DreadPirateMurphy 14:28, 13 July 2009 (UTC)
 * They should make a new difficulty level which include all stuff you just said. That would be way more interesting. I mean, right now, when I kill an Enclave and find a plasma rifle, it's too tempting to not pick it up and sell it for major cash. And when I have alot of stuff to sell and I don't want any ammo or repair I just go to every town and buy stimpacks for it all, the game becomes too easy too early. I know it's about self-restraint, but some things you just do automaticly without even thinking about it. Hell, I'd like a "Realistic Difficulty", example of it: 2 shots of any weapon to the arm or leg cripples it, one shot to the head and you're dead, 3 if you have a combat helmet, metal helmet, power helmet etc. The same goes for all other human enemies, super mutants require 3-5 shots to the head before dying, but a sniper rifle always insta-kill anything with a head, with exception from radscorpions of course. Only shotgun's, missile launchers and other heavy impact weapons should be able to penetrate a radscorpions shell. With this, it dosen't matter how many stimpacks you have, it's all about tactics. Flamer and Heavy Incinerator should not be able to set mirelurks, radscorpions and giant ants on fire. And so on. Combat armor means you can take 5 bullets to the chest before dying, Power Armor can take 9 bullets. Therefor, a minigun is the worst thing to meet as it will probably instakill you. <--This would be really fun as anything, even a simple raider with a .32 pistol could kill you. Gabriel Cortez 16:03, 13 July 2009 (UTC)