Dead Money Prep Guide

Dead Money is a very mechanically unique DLC. It is common for players to find its design incredibly frustrating, formerly including myself. The truth is, Dead Money's difficulty is quite manageable, provided you prepare yourself properly. By following the steps of this guide, you should greatly increase your odds of getting through Dead Money without snapping your controller.

The first thing that happens in Dead Money is you losing all of your equipment. I'd actually recommend fast-traveling in butt-naked and unarmed so you can minimize the amount of gear you have to move on your way out. However, there are a few things the Sierra Madre can not rob from you, most notably perks such as the implants obtained from the New Vegas Medical Clinic.

Your priority here should be the regeneration chip. Dead Money is downright vicious with its tendency to limit your healing during the first half; you can't sleep, the vast majority of food items will increase your rads, and while the Auto-Docs in the clinic can patch up your limbs, they cannot restore your HP. Having passive healing is an extremely valuable means of keeping your health topped up without the need to constantly burn through your dwindling supply of Stimpacks.

Assuming you still have cash after regeneration, pick up as many implants as you can. The sub-dermal implants is particularly nice, as heavy armor is unavailable in the DLC and a little extra damage reduction can dull the pain a bit.

In general, I'd advocate investing in either Unarmed or Melee as a secondary combat skill on any New Vegas build, regardless of whether you are planning to tackle Dead Money, but in this DLC they are particularly useful skills to have. The Ghost People who serve as the primary enemy through the game only die when their limbs are crippled, and your close-quarter skills excel at this task.

Between the two of them, Unarmed is the best for our purposes. 75 Unarmed unlocks the Cross special attacks in VATS. The attack's bonus limb damage absolutely destroys Ghost People. Provided you can get in range, I have found 1/2 crosses will instantly kill a Ghost, saving you from the damage of a drawn-out brawl and helping conserve your healing items in turn. Further, the Bear Trap Fist is easy to find and plentiful.

If you don't want to build Unarmed, Melee is still a very strong option. Knife Spears are absolutely everywhere and the bonus Limb Damage they deal is a perfect fit for the Ghosts. In addition, their status as 2-handed weapons and relatively fast swing speed gives them excellent synergy with Super Slam.

If there's any tip I'm expecting to get flak on it's this one; the Light Step perk changes how Dead Money plays so dramatically it almost feels like cheating.

The DLC is saturated with bear-traps, land mines and trip-wires. While a careful and observant player will be able to avoid most of these traps, some placements are extremely dirty. The bomb collar and toxic cloud mechanics both force you to move fast at key points, making carefully scanning for traps a non-option. The cloud obscures your vision, making the traps even harder to spot. With Light Step, you can almost completely ignore these floor traps and focus on moving quickly and efficiently around the other hazards. 6 Perception and 6 Agility is an investment worth making for this one perk alone.

Be warned that your Companions can still trigger the traps even if you're immune, and if you decide to play on Hardcore, a companion death is a player death in this DLC. This makes the perk vastly less useful on Hardcore, but I'd still at least consider taking it.

While this isn't mandatory and the exact numbers on how high you should go are going to be very subjective, Dead Money virtually enforces some level of Stealth. There are invincible enemies you must sneak past, and sneaking past Elijah allows you to steal all 37 Gold Bars and escape despite being Overburdened.

I chose 50 here because that benchmark also improves your Holdout Weapon selection in the main game, but going higher wouldn't hurt. You'll also want to make good use of the La Fantoma comics you find inside the DLC to raise your Stealth further at key points.

Thank you for considering my advice on tackling the Dead Money DLC. I hope that this guide will help make Dead Money a less frustrating and more fulfilling experience for you.