Overview
Never let go…. of that Vending Machine. I thought Dead Money was supposed to give a moral lesson about greed, but here, I take it up to a whole new level by not listening at all, being very greedy and abusive.Become the richest gun-smuggling sonnobobish after finishing Dead Money.
Preparations
If possible, right off the start of your game, collect these items. Stash and stockpile as much as you can.
- Fission Batteries
- Scrap Metal
- Packs of Cigarettes
- Cartons of Cigarettes
- Dirty Pre-War Casualwear
- Dirty Pre-War Parkstroller Outfit
- Dirty Pre-War Relaxedwear
- Dirty Pre-War Spring Outfit
- Pre-War Casualwear
- Pre-War Parkstroller Outfit
- Pre-War Relaxedwear
- Pre-War Spring Outfit
- Pre-War Bonnet (MMUE only)
- Pre-War Hat (MMUE only)
Note that there’s no Pre-War Businesswear or any Pre-War Hats. After all, business people never sell their clothes for casino chips. /deandominoface
If you use the Mission Mojave unofficial patch, you can bring back Pre-War Hats and Bonnets.
The Fission Batteries and Scrap Metal is for the Coin Operator Perk, which is given to you by Christine if you pass certain speech check. This perk allows you to craft Sierra Madre Chip (50 for 1 battery and 2 scrap metals).
You DON’T need to bring these reserves with you in the casino. Once the DLC is finished, 1 vending machine will still be available in the Bunker. You get all your items confiscated anyways once the DLC starts.
Inside the Villa…
Here’s a small list of usefull skill to have before going in the Sierra Madre:
– Strength: for more carrying weight.
– Luck: for gambling in the casino.
– Barter: When dealing with holograms.
– Repair: for repairing equipement and crafting Weapon Repair Kits.
– Jury-Riggin Perk: Repair anything with almost anything. An absolute must.
– Carry Weight Perks: Pack Rat is very good, Strong Back/Burden to Bear are nice as well.
Once inside, it’s important to loot everything. Supplies, weapons, armors, chips… It’s all good, but most important of all to secure an abusive future with the vending machine are Item Return Codes. Specificaly, the return codes for the Pre-War outfits. Look up in other guides/wikis on their locations, as this guide focuses on abuse tactics.
STACKING:
– Try to use Melee as often as possible. This will prevent any valuable guns from decaying in condition. Craft a Cosmic Knife Spear asap. Use guns only for radios/intercoms if possible.
– Craft Weapon Repair Kits. Find the material lying around, it’s everywhere. Duct Tape, Scrap Electronics, Scrap Metal, Wonderglue and Wrench. Try to stack em as much as possible, screw the Holorifle.
– Keep every Automatic Rifle you find and use Weapon Repair Kits on them. Even with Jury-Rigging, no other alternative can be found to repair these, so, rely on Repair kits for maximum value output. DON’T REPAIR ONE WITH ANOTHER, YOU FOOL. STACK. STASH. STOCKPILE. ALL OF THEM.
– Keep every Police Pistols, repair them with lesser pistols with Jury-Rigging. Use Repair kits only if you have enough.
– Try to keep an eye out for other high value weapons that can be repaired with lesser guns. Use Repair kits as last resort. Focus on the Automatic Rifle first for Repair kits, then go for the rest.
– Stack all Sierra Madre Armors/Helmets, use Pre-War Businesswear to repair armors, eyewears and Pre-War Hats for Helmets. Don’t use anything else but Businesswears(dirty or clean), machines don’t return these.
– Anything else in the Aid or Misc section you don’t need. All the trash loot, stack it.
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SELLING:
Find an hologram dealer somewhere. By memory, I remember 5 of them. The main goal here is to trade your extra max condition gears as well as aid or misc items you don’t need for Pre-War Money. Get as much as you possibly can.
Keep a calculator close to properly calculate how much the holo-dealer owes you in Pre-War money. Also, having the Dynamic Quantity Prompt mod[www.nexusmods.com] for this is almost essential. I highly recommend it.
Once you’ve picked clean the Villas and fire off the Gala Event, head into the casino!
Inside the Casino…
Time to step it up a little. Play along the quest until the casino has woken up.
– Follow the routine outlined in the villa section, stack those pricey items, repair them with lesser crap or repair kits and resell them for Pre-War Money
– The one and only hologram dealer is at the bar on the casino’s second floor. The only way to get back at the previous holo-dealers is to finish the DLC.
– If you feel like it, play some casino games. Trade a portion of your Pre-War money for Chips and play with them. This is why I added Luck as a usefull skill. The big idea here is to blow the 10k chips limit and get “banned” by the casino. I recommend playing Blackjack, as it is the easiest casino game based on predictable RNG. Know when to Double-Down, Stay or Hit and reap the 10k chip reward ez pz.
– Remember that inside the casino, you can stack and resell all the way until Christine unlocks the vault elevator in Vera’s Room. This is the point of no return, so make sure you picked the casino clean.
– Before proceeding in the vault, make a final resell of everything, return outfits to machines. Then, go to the casino holo-cashier and exchange ALL of your Pre-War money for chips. All of it, every single paper. Stack those chips high. It’s for this very step that you stacked Pre-War money for.
When ready, proceed inside the vault through the elevator in Vera’s room. We’re almost out of here!
Inside the Vault…
Not much to say about this section. There is an abundance of clutter to pick up in this section, and less weapons. Wether or not you decide to loot what is inside is up to you.
There are many guides out there that explains how to get the 37 gold bars with you. The big idea is to stack em, drop em then Grab em with the Z key and bring them along with you. Harder than it sounds, but it’s very possible nonetheless.
Note that when you exit the vault, you will be back in the villas, which means you can have access to previous holo-dealers. You can also go back inside the casino to exchange Pre-War money for chips.
So… go back to previous holo-dealers, sell them as much gold bars as possible for Pre-War money. Go back inside the casino, exchange money for chips. This step is optional, as you will have to Grab and drag the gold bar stack with you along the way to the holo-dealers. Do this step if you really… can’t let go. 😀
Once you’re 100% sure you exploit the hell out of everything, head back in the Mojave.
Back in the Mojave…
Congratulations, you got out alive of that hell-hole. Now it’s time to start using math and reap the rewards.
Go back home, rest up, deposit all your stuff, etc. Sit down a bar stool, pop a beer open, you deserve it.
Now… remember in the first section, I told you to stack pre-war clothes and cigarettes? Take all of these with you and go back to the Abandonned Bunker. Return all cigs and outifts for chips.
This is it. Glory. Look at your total amount of Sierra Madre Chips. It should be higher than 25k if you did it right.
“What do I buy now?” you ask? Buy as much Weapon Repair Kits as you can. They cost 20 casino chips. Let’s do some math now:
1 chip = 1 pre-war money = 15 caps
20 chips = 20 P-W money = 300 caps.
So, in theory, each repair kits costs around 300 caps. Now say you get attacked by Caesar’s Legion/NCR. One of the enemy dropped a high value weapon that is nearly broken i.e. a 12.7 SMG.
Say this broken SMG is worth 700 caps. Using 1 repair kit on it will raise the value considerably. Say, after repairing said SMG, the cap value raised up to 1500. So what does the math tell us?
1 repair kit (300 caps) = 800 caps of repair.
That’s more than 200% profit here…. per Repair Kit! Having a high Repair skill will allow you to get better benefits from repair kits.
Now take a breath and imagine that with 2000 casino chips, you can get 100 Weapon Repair Kits. The profit margin, in theory, is off the charts.
Final Word
And that’s how I did it. Once you exit the Sierra Madre, you can become a very rich gun-smuggler, going from trader to trader, buying low condition weapons, repairing them and reselling at a high price. Also, any high value weapons you find off of your enemies will do.
I hope this small guide will have helped you secure an abusive future with your precious Sierra Madre Vending Machine.
They said it was “the heist of the century”. I believed ’em. They said I should “let go”. Screw that! GIMME ALL THE MONIES, ALL OF IT.