Alright, so I’ve been messing around with “New Vegas” again lately, specifically trying to figure out how this whole “damage threshold” thing works. And man, it’s been a journey, let me tell you.
I started off by just playing the game normally, you know, shooting stuff and seeing what happens. But I noticed that sometimes my shots would do a ton of damage, and other times it felt like I was just tickling the enemies. So, I started digging around online.
Turns out, “New Vegas” uses this system called “damage threshold” or DT for short. Basically, it’s like a barrier that enemies have, and if your attack doesn’t do enough damage to get through that barrier, it hardly does anything.
I experimented with this a bit. I found that if an enemy has, say, 15 DT, and my weapon does less than 15 damage, it’s pretty much useless. But if I use a weapon that does more than 15, then the damage starts to go through. And every point of damage above their DT is one less point to their health. Cool, right?
- Trial and Error: I spent hours shooting different enemies with different weapons, just to see what would happen. I felt like a mad scientist, but with guns instead of beakers.
- Number Crunching: I started keeping track of the numbers, you know, how much damage I was doing versus how much health the enemies lost. It was a bit of a pain, but it helped me see the patterns.
- Perk Party: Then I discovered that some perks can actually increase your DT. There’s this one called “Toughness” that gives you a flat +3 to your DT for each rank. I also found that “Hit the Deck” and “Stonewall” can increase your damage threshold against explosive and melee attacks, respectively. That’s huge!
- Armor Advantage: I found out that using Armor Piercing rounds could decrease the enemy’s DT, although it slightly reduced the damage. This was a game-changer when fighting heavily armored foes.
But here’s the kicker: even if you manage to get through their DT, the game still won’t let you do less than 20% of your weapon’s base damage. So, there’s always going to be a minimum amount of damage you can do. I even found a mod that changes this to 10%, but I decided to stick with the original settings for now.
Then there’s this whole other thing called “damage resistance” or DR, which is a percentage reduction on the damage you take after DT. So, even if an attack gets through your DT, DR can still reduce it further. It’s like a double layer of protection.
Figuring out what it all means
So what does all this mean for actually playing the game? Well, it means that you need to be smart about which weapons you use against which enemies. If you’re going up against someone with high DT, you need a weapon that can punch through it. Otherwise, you’re just wasting ammo, which I learned from using VATS to hit enemies a lot.
It also means that investing in DT and DR for your own character is super important. The higher your DT, the less damage you’ll take from those weaker, faster attacks. But against the big, heavy hitters, like deathclaws, you want to max out your DR instead. It’s a balancing act, really.
It took a lot of trial and error, but I finally feel like I’ve got a decent grasp on how damage threshold works in “New Vegas.” It’s definitely a more complex system than just “shoot stuff until it dies,” but that’s what makes it so interesting, I guess.
