A personal setup for a very hardcore TTW

[Heiro]

Hello everyone, my first post here. I started TTW a few weeks ago and was able to appreciate this wonderful mod. An absurdly well done job. I played for 41 hours with BLEED and sawerbatty, but I stopped because, at one point, there was a lack of immersion / difficulty in the survival aspect of the game, as usually occurs in Vanilla. I am sharing here a new and more hardcore setup of mods and house-rules that I am using and that have met my expectations reasonably well on a current run. Since I spent several hours searching and testing, I hope this post can help other colleagues who are also looking to increase the challenge and prolong their game time. Do it your way and be true to your house rules!

SETUP:
A) BLEED and sawerbatty: as in the first gameplay, these two mods do all the necessary service to keep the combat challenging.
B) Unfound loot in the "hardcore" preset
C) Stewie Tweaks, mainly to remove the automatic critical strike from sneak attacks, cut xp in half (with sawerbatty, the result is a total of 25% xp) and change the buy and sell multipliers. Specifically, 2x for the purchase of AID and AMMO items; 0.5x to sell WEAPON and ARMOR items
D) No Food Healing mod
E) House rule: 10x radiation (via console)
F) House rule: No doctor services for healing or removing rads.
G) House rule: if the Lonewanderer dies, the player will load the last save, check the current HP and "pay" (removal via console) enough stimpacks to heal the character from 0 to that amount of HP.

DISCUSSION:
B and C together guarantee that the character will not get rich anytime soon (or ever will) and solidifies the impression (and immersion) that the world really is in decline.

D forces the player to be cautious and patient. After all, we are now poor and healing items are 2x more expensive. This also makes the Healing Rate finally relevant. HP becomes another important resource to be managed. It also improves realism.

E makes radiation finally relevant and causes a serious conflict with Hunger and Thirst, which requires careful management. Will you solve the thirst problem by creating a radiation problem (use dirty water) or will you solve it by creating a problem in your wallet (use purified water)? (I don't know how to make mods, I'm using the console to apply -1000 radresist to the lonewanderer on the beguinning of the game. This is even worse, because it makes all the positive radresist in the game less effective).

F is necessary because medical services are very cheap compared to the benefit. This increases the difficulty even more, as the player will need to buy stimpacks and radaways, which are now 2x more expensive.

G is an attempt to penalize the (abusive) use of SAVE/LOAD and make the "game over" viable. Not as tough as Dead-is-Dead house hule, but still extremely challenging considering this setup as a whole. I do it via console (player.removeitem 0015169 x).

NOTE: I do not use sprint mod, as it makes it much easier to flee from enemies and avoid explosives. I also don't use bullet time, nor VATs and I added (Stewie Tweak) AP costs to access the pip-boy during combat. It is more exciting to respond to danger without having time to think. This makes it essential to have a panic weapon such as a railway rifle or combat shotgun (in early game).

IMPRESSIONS ON THE CURRENT RUN:

The gameplay is very brutal, slow and a little repetitive, but also very immersive, intense and rewarding. This setup forces a scavenger like gameplay, traveling repeatedly between corn fields, hunting for raiders on the way and avoiding dangerous enemies like supermutants. Whenever I die, I make these trips carefully again until I manage to collect about 15 stimpacks again. If CAPs are a measure of wealth, now stimpacks measure how well you are playing, since the more stimpacks, the further you are from the 'game over'.

The first death was a classic example of the importance of the G rule. I was in Arefu, early in the evening (I'm playing with the Clarity Darker nigths mod too) and decided, recklessly, to continue exploring southwest, even without seeing anything. I remember thinking, “In this region, at this level, there are only Moles and Bloatflys”. Wrong. I started being shot. I didn't see anyone (I also have no indication of enemies through Stewie Tweaks), I didn't even see cover. I died. I loaded the last save and sacrificed 8 precious Stimpacks. At the moment, it cost around 1600 CAPS and I certainly couldn't get that amount even from selling all of my items. That hurt.

When I was in Lv4, I thought there was no way to avoid a game over. It is very difficult to reconcile thirst with radiation, as you cannot easily earn CAPS. I had to look for Valt 13 canteen, although I hoped I wouldn't have to resort to that. With thirst more easily being relieved, I slowly managed to gather resources to guarantee my livelihood. The canteen healing effect is not affected by the No Food Healing mod (oh, thank God lol). So, in practice, I started to have a passive healing many times higher than the Healing Rate, but that still requires patience and caution from the player and that doesn't save you in a difficult fight. Not using Valt 13 canteen would considerably increase the challenge of this setup.

There is no room for error. The 2nd and 3rd deaths were due to raiders' grenades (thanks to BLEED). After the tenth death, I lost count. I know that most of them were due to grenades or frag mines. Also, I already got one hit kill from a super mutant with a .32 rifle even though I was full life and with power armor.

In the previous run (just bleed + sawerbatty), with 41 hours I arrived at lv 19, had gathered about 50k of CAPs and saw no harm from being inconsequential or careless. In the current run, with 41 hours I arrived at level 11, with about 1500 CAPs and I still walk out of the Megaton doors with almost the same caution with which I leave Vault 101.

I'm already starting to get around the difficulties. With Medicine 75 and Fast Metabolism perk, I now lose only 5 stimpacks if I die in full life. At the beginning of the game, almost 10 were needed. I also found that, even with the difficulties in the trade, a Sniper rifle with 100% condition yields me about 1200 CAPs. The 10mm subm, also has a good price and is quite common after lv10. Unfound loot penalizes the condition of the weapons found, but some Weapon Repair Kits do the job very well.

One way or another, when I feel that things are getting easier, I become very confident, I end up making more mistakes, I end up dying and I get back in the grip. This setup shows how important it is to always respect the enemy.