Can you beat Fallout New Vegas as the Arizona Ranger?
Transcript:
Fallout New Vegas Arizona Ranger
Hello everyone, my name is Quacknee, and I’m here to ask and answer one question: Can you beat Fallout New Vegas as the Arizona Ranger? If you have played New Vegas before, then you have surely heard the song “Big Iron” by Marty Robbins. The song tells a story about the town of Agua Fria being liberated from an outlaw named Texas Red by a handsome Arizona Ranger. In this run, I will be roleplaying as the Arizona Ranger. Let’s explain the rules of the run.
I can only use 357 magnums
I can only fire from the hip (V.A.T.S. ok )
I must side with the NCR and become an NCR Ranger
I must be law abiding
Some other additional information, I will be playing on normal difficulty, on the PC version of Fallout New Vegas, with all DLC and no mods. Though, having no mods will likely change for future New Vegas runs; you’ll see why later. You’ll see that New Vegas is a very functional and not at all buggy game. Everything works as intended from this point forward.
With the rules established, let's get on with the run.
Our game starts the same as any other. I, a mail courier, immediately get shot in the head by Mathew Perry wearing a black and white checkered suit. He then steals the package I am supposed to deliver and leaves me in a shallow grave.
Fortunately for us, a robot named Victor digs us up and brings us to Doc Mitchell. He patches us up and we are off to the Vigor Tester to select our special stats.
The special stats I go with are as follows. 5 Strength, 4 Perception, 4 Endurance, 1 Charisma (dump stat), 8 Intelligence (for skill points), 9 agility (because the swiftness of the ranger is still talked about today), and 9 Luck (because I will be going for crits to make the build viable)
I tag the Guns, Lockpick, and Repair skills. You might ask yourself why I tagged lockpick if I’m not supposed to break the law. I’ll need it later to get the gun I will use for this run.
And for my traits, I take Skilled for a +5 in every skill, and I take small frame for a +1 to agility to max out the stat.
With character creation being finished, Doc Mitchell give me some supplies I mostly can’t use, and a pip boy.
I waste no time taking everything not bolted down inside Doc Mitchell’s house so that I can sell it later. He lets me do this, so it’s not stealing
I then make my way to Chet and begin to sell all of Doc Mitchell’s belongings.
I also found a couple 357 rounds, but no gun unfortunately.
I talk to Sunny Smiles and she teaches me how to shoot some empty bottles. Don’t worry, these bottles are, in fact, not alive, so no foul play here.
She then takes me to a water hole to kill some geckos and we come face to face with the first problem of this run. Unlike empty bottles, these geckos are very much alive. So shooting them with the varmit rifle Sunny gifted me would fail the run. I need a 357.
So I got the idea to check Goodsprings cemetery. According to the new vegas wiki, it IS possible to find a 357 by digging up these graves as the loot they contain is randomly generated. But I had no such luck, even after reloading my game. The loot in these graves must be determined when you first create a new save file, or when you first leave Doc Mitchell's house. Either way, it's a bust and I begin to make my way to Black Mountain. As the wiki also says a dead NCR ranger carries a 357, and it's relatively close to goodsprings.
Also, as I leave goodsprings, I use the skilled exploit, by choosing to remake my character when the game asks and taking the skilled perk again. When you take the skilled perk the +5 bonus to your skills is applied immediately. So if you take it again here, you get a +10 to all stats.
While on my way to black Mountain, I discovered the Yangtze Memorial. Next to an old sign, there is a duffle bag. And in that bag, is a 357 magnum revolver and 9 357 rounds. I thought it would take a bit longer to find a weapon for this run, but you won’t find me complaining.
I head back to the water holes, and take out some Geckos, being careful to land as many shots as I can, as ammo is scarce.
I even manage to save the goodsprings settler who gets ambushed by them
Geckos taken care of, I enter the saloon and find Joe Cobb, a leader of a group of escaped convicts called the powder gangers, threatening Trudy and the whole town of goodsprings if they don’t turn over a man named Ringo they think is hiding somewhere here.
As it turns out, Ringo is hiding out in an abandoned gas station in town. I talk to him and offer my help in protecting him from the powder gangers. He then tasks me with getting as much from the locals as I can.
First up is Sunny Smiles, who takes no convincing.
This man has had too much to drink