9 Fallout: New Vegas beginner's tips to help you get started

This Fallout: New Vegas beginner's guide will show you how to survive the Mojave Desert. With a free weapon and a few stimpacks from good 'ole Doc Mitchell, you'll get a nice head start, and from there it's all about finding abandoned campers, robbing graves, and avoiding Quarry Junction.

Here are our best tips and tricks to help you through the first hours of Fallout: New Vegas.

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Install mods for quality-of-life improvements

Fallout: New Vegas is an amazing RPG, but without mods, it's outdated, unappealing, and often downright unplayable in 2025. So, to have a lovely time in the Mojave Desert, be sure to download a good mod pack, such as Viva New Vegas, which contains countless bug fixes, visual upgrades, and quality of life features. You can also download individual mods, but beware that there's quite a lot to fix and improve upon, so getting one of the well-known mod packs is the easiest way to start playing.

If you go for Viva New Vegas, some of the options you might want to adjust in the mod configuration settings (through the in-game menu) are your field of view, head bobbing during sprint, quest objective markers, and the weapon wheel.

Charisma is the 'dump stat'

While creating your character at the start of a new Fallout: New Vegas game, you must distribute your attribute points between stats like Strength, Perception, and Agility. While the Intelligence and Endurance stats are particularly good, Charisma is widely considered the worst Fallout: New Vegas stat, as it only benefits barter, speech, and companions. But that's not a bad thing, as reducing Charisma to level 1 generates more attribute points for other attributes.

Once you've set Charisma to 1, it's best to pick Speech as one of the three focus skills on the next screen, so you can make up for the lack of Charisma-based skill points and still pass your speech checks. If you have already created your character, note that you get one more chance to distribute attribute points as you leave Goodsprings for the first time. For more details, take a look at our guide on the best Fallout: New Vegas starting stats.

Rob Doc Mitchell for free goodies

The Doc likes to be helpful, doesn't he? Surely he won't mind you taking a thing or two (or three, or four) from his humble abode in Goodsprings. Although red items in Fallout: New Vegas are forbidden (taking them counts as stealing — so don't do that), the Doc's items are yellow, which means you're free to take them. The Doc has scrap metal, stimpacks, energy cells, and even a laser pistol. The pistol is on a shelf next to the character creation machine.

Once you've relieved the good doctor of his earthly possessions, you may sell them at the Goodsprings General Store two doors down the road (next to the saloon). If it's too much stuff to carry, just take what you can and come back for more free items later.

Save regularly or face the consequences

Although Fallout: New Vegas has an autosave function, it doesn't actually save the game that often. It's perfectly possible to complete a quest stage, fast travel to another location, advance with another quest line, perish, and have to do it all again if you didn't manually save. Although your mod pack should hopefully prevent this, vanilla New Vegas has the tendency to crash, so it's extra important to save often if that still poses an issue.

Get a shovel to dig up valuables

Why? To go graverobbing, of course! While you're selling Doc Mithcell's stuff at the store, buy a shovel and keep it with you so you can always dig up items throughout your playthrough. The best place to start digging is the Goodsprings Cemetery, on the north side of town. Keep an eye out for the snow globe, especially — it'll fetch a ton of money!

Don't forget about these useful features

This game doesn't like to tell you about handy gameplay features, so let's go over them here.

• Flashlight: Toggle it on or off by holding the Pip-Boy button, which is 'Tab' on PC, 'Circle' on PlayStation, and 'B' on Xbox by default.
• Holster weapon: Instead of pressing the reload button, hold it. Hold 'R' on PC, 'Square' on PlayStation, and 'X' on Xbox.
• Pass time: To pass the time, click 'T' on PC, the 'Select' button on PlayStation, and the 'Back' button on Xbox.
• Fast travel: You can instantly teleport to any major location on the map after you've discovered it.

Find a place to sleep through the night

It's hard to get anything done during the night, when you can hardly see your enemies, so if you need a place to sleep in Goodsprings, use the sleeping bag in the old camper just north of the store and saloon. You'll find some free items and storage space, too.

Beware that sleeping here won't grant the "well rested" bonus, which is only granted by sleeping in a bed you own or paid for. If you're well-rested, you'll gain 10% more experience for the next 12 hours (in-game time). The easiest way to get this bonus is to rent a room in the Dino Dee-lite motel in Novac.

Avoid angering Goodsprings or the Powder Rangers

Following the "By a Campfire on the Trail" and "Back in the Saddle" quests, both of which take place in Goodsprings right after you leave Doc Mitchell's for the first time, Sunny Smiles will ask you to visit the Prospector Saloon and have a chat with the owner, Trudy. Upon entering the saloon, you'll witness an argument between Trudy and Joe Cobb, a Powder Ranger.

You're now faced with a choice: Side with the Goodsprings residents or the Powder Rangers gang. Although you should certainly complete this side quest eventually (it's either named "Run Goodsprings Run" or "Ghost Town Gunfight," depending on your alliance), a hostile faction can be quite disruptive in early game, so you might want to save this one for later, until you've collected Doc Mitchell's items, geared up, and unlocked a few more fast travel points.

Don't visit Quarry Junction

If an experienced Fallout: New Vegas player tells you to visit Quarry Junction in the Mojave Desert (near the Great Khan camp), ignore them — they're trying to pull your leg. Seriously, whatever you do, do not visit Quarry Junction without a decent loadout and combat experience, as it hosts some of the most dangerous enemies in the game. It's best to avoid it until you're level 15 at least, but level 20 is better.