Cooking and crafting

[Wolfways]

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this but I can't find anything anywhere on the internet that answers my questions.

 

1) Is there any point in cooking (or crafting) in fallout?

I'm playing TTW/hardcore and have never found any reason to cook at all as there is an abundance of food everywhere just waiting to be picked up, and other than doctors bags and occasionally trying out a crafted weapon I haven't found a need to craft anything.

Is there a way to reduce the amount of food found in the game?

 

2) Are weapon mods and primer/powder supposed to be so rare?

This is the opposite of cooking. I can rarely use my .44 magnum because the ammo is so rare and never find primer or powder on vendors, and weapon mods are also very rare (I've nearly finished all of DC and still never found mods for my 10mm SMG). I use my .556 pistol practically all the time because I pick up so much .556 and it's fully modded!

 

3) Are there any mods or options to remove a good amount of "trash" from the wastelands?

I get the feeling that it is sometimes causing my game to lag a little. I have a very old pc :(

 

Thanks in advance for any replies :)

[jlf65]

1 - Too much food in TTW?? You're crazy. My last hardcore playthrough, I was hard-pressed to keep myself fed. I spent a LOT more caps on buying food than normal, leaving me scrounging for armor and high-end weapons and ammo. I've been pressing for more lower-level recipes so you can cook low-level food at the start of a new run before you have a survival over 25.

2 - This is my big complaint as well. The primer in particular is rare as hen's teeth. I added a few recipes to my own game: convert 2 small gun primer to 1 large gun primer, convert 2 small rifle primer to 1 large rifle primer, convert 1 large rifle primer to 1 shotshell primer, and convert 2 large rifle primer to 1 .50 MG primer. It's fairly easy to get a ton of small hand gun and rifle ammo to break down, but no way to covert it to USEFULL (i.e., large weapon) components in vanilla. There's a mod that let's you make weapon mods, but I forget the name offhand.

3 - I know there are, but I don't remember any names offhand. Do a search on Nexus using the term "performance" as nearly all the mods that get rid of trash do so to make the game run faster, and hence have "performance" in the name or description.

 

[khumak]

Well for food there's not really any reason to unless you're using a mod that drastically affects radiation but some of the better chems in the game are also made through the cooking system rather than the repair system.  For weapons/mods/etc I tend to agree with you.  The workaround I use was to install Vending Machines of the Wasteland. 

Ammo gets much easier later in the game but early game stick to using guns that use assault rifle ammo since it's so common.  Not sure about the trash but for areas you visit a lot you can just pick up the trash and put it in a container or dead animal or something, I actually do that for the areas around Megaton and some of the other areas I visit frequently.

Another thing you can do if you're having serious lag issues is turn down the distance values that certain things are visible in the graphics settings, things like grass and trees.  I actually used to set the visibility for grass to zero on my old computer and it never bothered me in Fallout.

[Wolfways]

I have the game on default setting now (turned it down recently) but some places (especially AWOP areas) still lag slightly, especially when opening containers. That can take up to 5 seconds.

 

As for chems, I've never used them because I haven't seen a point in them. I suppose some of them help in combat, but I've had no trouble there (playing on normal difficulty. I hate it when devs use "weapon damage depends on who's using the weapon" to change difficulty). Of course having multiple companions helps :)

 

But food? I have about 5 mirelurk cakes on me and 50 in the fridge at home, and I've never touched them. My FOD never gets about 200 because I pick up food everywhere. I'd like to be forced to cook things to eat but with the amount of food lying around there's no need.

Actually, I'm not sure that I've ever bought anything. I sell stuff all the time...or I used to anyway. I currently have around nearly 200k caps and haven't even picked up anything to sell for a long time.

[jlf65]

Hmm - it's Project Nevada that makes the food such an issue, especially in hardcore mode. PLain vanilla without hardcore, I agree, food isn't an issue. The chems are also more important with PN in hardcore - for example, you run out of doctor's bags and run into raiders - half of them throwing grenades, and the other half shooting at you with hunting and assault rifles. You NEED to pop some Med-X to ignore your crippled limbs so you can fight, and HC means you can't just inject the limb with a stimpak. Pop some more chems to do more damage, steady your aim, boost your AP... it's a whole 'nother game compared to vanilla normal mode.

[khumak]

Exactly.  If you've never used it, you really should try Project Nevada.  On top of the difficulty increasing aspects it also adds cool stuff like Bullet Time, greatly expanded Cybernetic implants system, etc.  The medical changes alone make me walk around severely radiated for basically the first 10-15 levels or more of the game if I don't want all of my limbs crippled all the time.  Eventually I have the skills to make doctors bags, hydra, etc to fix limbs so I don't have to rely on rad regen but early game it's a big problem.

I actually don't find food to be a problem even with Project Nevada unless I change loot rarity to be even more stingy than Project Nevada's most stingy preset. 

I actually start having the most issues with chems after I do Big MT because that crazy stealth suit AI seems to take sadistic pleasure in using up all of my stim packs and med x every time a mole rat crosses my path.

[Wolfways]

[quote=khumak]

 

The medical changes alone make me walk around severely radiated for basically the first 10-15 levels or more of the game if I don't want all of my limbs crippled all the time.  Eventually I have the skills to make doctors bags, hydra, etc to fix limbs so I don't have to rely on rad regen but early game it's a big problem.[/quote]

This is the kind of thing I'm NOT having issues with which makes me wonder what I'm doing wrong (or right depending on how you look at it :P ). I've never had any issues with rads either as I always have a few hundred RadAway and Rad-X on me.

 

Edit: I've been using PN for a long time too.

[khumak]

I'm guessing you're using one of the easier presets (or the default maybe) for PN.  Try the FWE or hardcore preset (The hardcore preset disables fast travel which I don't like), I like to use the FWE preset with loot levels tweaked to be even more rare.  I like the scarce resources.  When I run out of ammo (and I do), I'm forced to switch to whatever gun I DO have ammo for.  Needless to say my sniper rifles sit around collecting dust for a LONG time before I start getting enough .308 ammo to actually use.

[Risewild]

Just a note. Remember that if you beat the Pitt DLC you can use the ammo press to make more ammo.

Ammo and weapon mods are supposed to be more rare in the Capital Wasteland because there isn't any group making ammo there (like the gun runners) and there isn't any good trading (like crimson caravan) bringing supplies from a more industrial and civilized place (NCR). But there is a problem with vendors having too little ammo in their stores and that will be fixed in the next version of TTW .

Cooking is helpful because some recipes give bonus after being consumed (a good one I remember is the Yao Guai Steak). And you can always craft/cook stuff that can be helpful too like stuff to heal your broken limbs (people complain there aren't enough Doctor Bags in DC for example).

To be fair I also think there is enough food in the Capital Wasteland, just at the beginning of the game I come out of vault 101 with so much radroach meat I am set for a while, then I reach Megaton and since I usually play/test with a nice kleptomaniac, I always invade all the houses in Megaton and steal all of their food (which is enough to last me for a long time), there is even a few food items in the Megaton common house that are not owned by anyone so it is free food for people who don't play with characters who steal. Then there is the SupaDupa Mart right next door with more free food and the Anchorage Memorial has tons of Mirelurk cakes. Not to mention all the abandoned grocery stores that always have a few pre-war food items in them.

The Capital wasteland also have more restaurants where we can get food (and food is usually quite cheap) Megaton's Brass Lantern, Rivet City's Diner, Grandma Sparkle at the Wilhelm's Wharf, Porter's cafe in Canterbury commons, Carol's Place in Underworld and Café Beau Monde in Tenpenny Tower (those are the ones I can remember from the top of my head). I was always surprised when people said there wasn't enough food but now I know why, it is because of PN settings .

[jlf65]

Well, PN, and I don't go into my neighbor's houses and steal their food. If it's an abandoned house or diner, that's one thing. It's quite another to steal from folks. I don't like playing a bad guy in these games. Spending money on food means less money for ammo/armor/repair fees. However, I did finally remember "Simple Roasted Food" that I used to use in NV, and that it still works for TTW. So now I eat a LOT of dog roast, ant roast, and radroach roast. It ain't pretty, but it keeps me alive.

And I have so little problems with radiation that I added a patch mod to URWL to make the rain/snow radioactive. Now THAT makes it a bit more "fun" getting caught out in the middle of nowhere.