Fallout New Vegas has at least 3 unique weapons. Some are variations of pre-existing weapons,
while others are their own thing entirely. One of those weapons is a delivery system
for a heat ray. Can You Beat Fallout New Vegas With Only Euclid’s
C-Finder? I started things off by naming myself Karen,
because I said in the sometimes officially Christian Ratatouille Fan Club Discord Server
that I would, made myself look like a Karen, and started assigning SPECIAL points. The C-Finder is unique. It *is* an Energy Weapon, but the damage it
causes is not affected by any skills, I’ll explain more about that later, but because
of how the C-Finder works and my unwillingness to rely on Speech, I evenly spread out my
remaining points, picked Barter, Medicine, and Lockpick as my Skills, and Claustrophobia
and Skilled as my Traits. Skilled gives a +5 to all skills and you’ll
understand why I chose Claustrophobia in a bit. There’s only one place in New Vegas to get
Euclid’s C-Finder: Freeside. But you can’t just roll up to Freeside like
a pimped out giraffe covered in glitter, you have to work for your tool. I did the usual song and dance with Chet and
hit the road. My destination was Helios One because there
are things there that need to be done in order for me to get my target designator. On my way there, I dropped a worthless snow
globe on the ground a few times to see if it would break, passed by a memorial for those
who died but don’t deserve to be remembered, loosely attempted to lure a few dogs into
land mines to watch their limbs get dismantled by the shrapnel, and passed through the Blind
Deathclaw mating canyon. This is where the one Blind Deathclaw in the
game was told to go by the other deathclaws to keep it from being weird around the children. The Blind Bitch startled me good when it followed
me inside a shack. I’m not entirely sure how it got through
the door, I just assumed it was some blind magic. I’m also not worried about offending any
blind people, it’s not like they’ll be watching this. Two more Deathclaws from over yonder ravaged
my leather wrapped body while the worst humanity had to offer created holes in my body for
the deathclaws to play with. They followed me, the murderers not the deathclaws,
farther than I thought they would. I tried to lure them to a nearby Legion outpost
but it didn’t work for 2 reasons. 1) It was an NCR outpost and 2) they were
not interested in coming anywhere near the trailer park. Bunch of good for nothing good for nothings. The NCR Rangers were also uninterested in
going and attacking the marauders, which was a shame. I was counting on one of the Rangers dying
so I could convince Haggerty that I was an NCR soldier. Equally disappointing was the lack of any
sort of NCR uniform inside the outpost itself. Before long, I arrived at Novac. I took this opportunity to have Jeanie May
executed by Boone for her crimes against humanity: including but not limited to: existing. With what I can only assume was brain blood
now stained on my pants, I got Barter up to 42, went on epic adventures with Boone before
he disappeared into the nothing, and I approached Helios One. My Speech skill was about one-half too low
to let me convince her that I was there to help. Momentarily stumped, I did what anyone in
my position would do and resorted to committing crimes. Specifically, breaking, entering, and possible
theft. I say possible because I looked through every
hotel room in Novac in search of something that would give my hand the edge it needed
to remove Haggerty’s body from her head with one swift karate chop, but found nothing. So I just picked the lock on the side door
and nobody gave a shit. Inside, because I infrequently visit this
building, I spent a while looking for where to go. I did manage to find two reflector control
terminal passwords in my ransacking and monolithing. That’s not a word. After speaking to Fantastic, I got the Lucky
Old Sun quest, ignored other lab-coat guy, and went outside to create a GUI interface
using Visual Basic, to see if I could track an IP addresses and remotely restart the terminals. With both terminals successfully hackified,
I entered the Solar Collection Tower, where the real fun could begin. This building is guarded by a bunch of turrets,
at least half a dozen Protectrons, and more than 0 Mr Gutsy’s, none of which I can do
anything about. After getting blasted by so many lasers that
my ass was well-done, I found the not-locked door that let me get into the Observation
Level of Helios One. Here, I lacked the mental capacity to restart
a generator. I probably could’ve figured it out but my
dad would’ve given me shit for it because of course I was doing it wrong. If it’s not done his way it’s done the
wrong way… jackass. A Poseidon Energy ID Card is back inside the
Collection Tower next to a guy who’s just taking a nap, he’ll wake up soon. I used that card to activate the robot. It was beautiful. I woke it up, it did its task, then died. We should all be so lucky. From there, the only things left to do were
redirect power to the Archimedes II weapon system, go up to the Observation Deck, wait
until it’s between 9:00AM and 3:00PM to ensure all the children are at school, and
activate the laser. That’s it, you’re done! Run over. Mission accomplished. We did it. As luck would have it, I was wrong. I took the short way down, bartered with the
cousin of Grandma Sparkles, and headed for the Strip. Freeside. Same shit, different flavor. Not a whole heck of a heap happened on the
way there. I did steal the Lonesome Drifter’s guitar
and immediately sell it to a traveling merchant because I thought it would be funny, and I
discovered Boulder City to save myself a trip later. In Freeside. At Freeside? One of those sounds weird, I stopped a small
child, convinced him to sell me his gun for 20 bucks, and I finally got it. Euclid’s C-Finder. This in and of itself is not a weapon. It works with Archimedes II to call down a
laser of energetic death to wherever your heart desires. Being a futuristic Nazi-dominated world’s
version of a Polly Pocket, it has its own set of drawback. It can only be fired once per day and it only
works outdoors. That’s why I chose the Claustrophobia trait. I’m effectively defenseless indoors. That trait boosts all SPECIAL Stats by 1 when
outdoors and lowers them by 1 when indoors. My first shot fried from the C-Finder would
not happen on Freeside, but at Boulder City. I tricked Monroe into thinking that I would
get his hostages out, then called down a beam of light from the sky like Jesus and annihilated
every NCR soldier in a 15 mile radius. Sorta. It was closer to 15 inches than 15 miles. Also waiting 24 hours did not instantly refill
my ammo for the toy. That was the first of many issues that would
plague this weapon before this game was done with me. In the laser’s defense, it did kill quite
a few soldiers, and the Great Khans saw the light and began their slaughter. After waiting another 24 hours, I got another
Archimedes II charge, had a stroke and thought part of Boulder City was gone, I wasn’t
completely wrong, talked to Jessup about Bennifer, started raising my Tag skills, bartered with
Mick and/or Ralph, and used the C-Finder on a group of Thugs within Freeside. I did this a couple different times, reloading
a save every time just so I could get a general feel for the weapon. For reasons I lacked the ability to understand,
I sometimes got another Archimedes charge immediately after firing and could fire twice
in a 24 hour period. That’s not supposed to be able to happen. At the time, I just assumed it had something
to do with waiting for more than 24 hours and that the game was playing catchup. I don’t think that was it, but you’ll
understand why later. I’ll tell you when you’re older. I waited once more, Victor interrupted my
waiting by knocking the clock down to -1 hours, and because I lacked both the currency requirement
and speech skill to get my way inside the Strip the way you’re supposed to, I called
down my light from above and fried the Securitrons guarding the gate. Waited, then finished off the rest. I’d hoped that one shot would kill all 5
of the robots, but that would not be the case. My first stop on the Strip was the Tops so
I could gamble. I lost 500 caps, vowed to never gamble again,
and put a mug where it belonged to cool my raging heart. I immediately recouped those 500 caps and
had no way of getting the Platinum Chip from Benny, so I investigated his private quarters,
survived the ambush by ignoring the ambush, spoke to Yes Man to get the failsafe started,
somehow managed to keep Vulpes from talking to me while I ran from the Tops to Lucky 38,
dropped the snow globe from earlier again, and talked to Mr House about the next stage
of our plan. Vulpes was waiting for me outside, I couldn’t
put that conversation off forever, I had to have it one day. Vulpes was adopted. His mother is both infertile and imaginary. Before beginning the long march to Cottonwood
Cove, I bought myself a suit of Combat Armor and for some reason was able to get into the
Gun Runners compound without any of the attacking me. I tested God’s might with my light gun and
proved how horrendously ineffective it is against heavily armored targets unless you’re
hitting them directly. I reloaded a save to get my ammo back, snooped
around inside the building, returned to those dogs from earlier and melted them all, waited,
took a shot at killing snuffles, it didn’t work, and stopped at Hidden Bunker because
one of my quests called for having my rangefinder examined by them. I was stripped naked, fitted with an explosive
collar, and sent to do their dirty work. I had a plan though, they can’t hate me
if they can’t even understand what I can. I informed the NCR Ranger that the Brotherhood
were nearby, he took my collar off [uwu], the Brotherhood revealed that they were eavesdropping
worse than an untrusting parent and killed my boyfriend. It was at that point my plans changed. They must perish. I wanted to bait them into coming outside
so I could weld their skin to the inside of their metal armor, but they weren’t interested. I’d gotten a key off one of the Paladins
Dobson killed, so I made sure the Brotherhood 100% hated me. Then I left to head towards 188 Trading Post. There I found Veronica and recruited her to
my cause of wiping out everyone she’s ever loved. With Veronica hypnotized by my swag, I got
inside Hidden Bunker without anyone attacking me, but I also couldn’t progress their quest
line any farther. And the Rangefinder objective was completed
without it going anywhere. The quest was seemingly finished yet was still
active. That was irrelevant, I had bigger fish to
catch. I required 3 keycards, all of which I got
relatively easily. First Elder McNamara, then Head Scribe Taggart,
and lastly Head Paladin Edgar Hardin, I guess that explains why he’s in a hole. I then blew up the Bunker. Unfortunately Veronica began bopping her constituents
to death which gave me experience and is also not a skylight. I sent her to the Lucky 38, went on with the
destruction, escaped the Bunker and the Brotherhood were no more. With that done, I exited the game to consume
food. Back in the game, I was ready to head to Red
Rock Canyon. The closest location was that Ranger Station
from earlier. Once I got there, a Ranger hit-squad let me
know that I was on their shitlist. 4 Rangers all next to each other? It’s like they were asking to die! I fired and… the laser didn’t work. It did the spiral thing, beep beep (Lettuce)
in place, but never fired the shot. At first I thought it was just some weird
glitch that could be fixed by fast-traveling or un-equipping and re-equipping the weapon. Neither of those things did squat. Exiting the game and launching it again didn’t
fix it. Then I thought it might be because the NCR
hated me. They control Helios One so maybe I can’t
use the gun with them hating me, so I reloaded an earlier save when they didn’t hate me. No dice. By that point I was also out of ammo, so rather
than wait or sleep, and because I was already in deep shit, I played with console commands
to speed up the game. It got pretty fast, up to 250x speed for a
bit. One real minute is 20 in-game minutes so at
250 times speed like 5 billion years are passing every real-second. So not only would my weapon that’s supposed
to recharge its ammo every day not recharge ammo, even if it did the weapon wouldn’t
even work properly. This was a real kick in the dick. I’d read in forums and stuff that the C-Finder
is notoriously buggy, which was unfortunate. I was enjoying this playthrough so far but
it became quite clear that I had no options to proceed. So, I restarted the game. I went back to Doc Mitchell’s house, gave
myself a more fitting name, and was in no mood for bullshit. I’d still get Euclid’s C-Finder and use
it as my only weapon, but I was also playing it as safe as possible by using Barter as
much crutch skill if the gun broke again. After leaving Doc’s House, I shot bottles
with Sunny, talked to Ringo about the Powder Gengar’s, got Sunny, Trudy, and Chet to
chip in, and waited inside the gas station, hoping they’d all be dead by the time I
went outside. They weren’t, but they died quickly enough
without me intervening, I can’t really show it because OBS sometimes does this thing where
it only captures a few frames over the course of a couple minutes. Outside of Goodsprings, I decided it was time
for a sex change and became a woman. I passed under Primm and took a path through
the mountains to get to the other side of the mountains. Some jokesters with weapons tried to stop
be from getting to Novac. I contemplated doing Boone’s quest but decided
after about 11 seconds that I didn’t give enough of a shit about this game to do it
again. With Speech above 35, I convinced Haggerty
that I was with the NCR, got inside Helios One, and did almost everything like I did
last time. The only differences were that I knew where
I was going and I spoke to the other lab guy. I also save-scummed my way off the tower. My next stop was Boulder City where, after
talking to Jessup, I got my Barter skill up to 100 and was off to the Strip. Barter was at 50 by the time I left Doc Mitchell’s
house thanks to Charisma, Intelligence, and Luck being at 10 as well as the Skilled and
Good Natured traits which provided another 15 point boost to Barter right off the bat. Inside Freeside, I again convinced the kid
to give me his gun, tested it to make sure it worked, and again immediately got a 2nd
shot for some ungodly reason. I was a few hundred caps short of passing
the credit check, prompting me to visit the Atomic Jeep Wrangler to sell a few of the
things I didn’t need. I then did things a bit differently. Because Luck was at 10, I decided to get kicked
out of a casino. I played the slots at first and won 2000 caps
on like my 3rd pull but it just took too long. Blackjack with Luck at 10 is absurdly broken. It would be more of a challenge to try to
lose than to win. With 11,000 caps to my name, I used the Black
Widow perk to convince Benny to fuck me. We did the thing, Benny didn’t know that
there was a man inside the mind of the woman he just did stuff with, and I found Yes Man
because my only interest here is speed. Which was why I again recruited Veronica to
get me inside the Bunker. The C-Finder got another use on a Powder Guy. It was a little tricky getting inside Hidden
Bunker, as Veronica kept punching roaches before I could get inside. Eventually I just knocked her out with help
from the big G and woke her up by instantly transporting her unconscious mind to a new
dimension where her body was already awake. I met the Elder again and that quest objective
went nowhere, again. The Brotherhood were dealt with, Veronica
was discharged, and I left the Bunker in search of Cottonwood Cove. I exploded several Gheckos on my way there,
found more NCR Rangers that were pussies and wouldn’t help a frightened lady being chased
by Gheckos. I wanted to blast them too but they never
got close enough together for them to all die in one shot. Cottonwood Cove was boring, the boat ride
was boring, talking to Caesar and Benny was boring, upgrading the Securitrons was boring,
if you can’t tell by now I lost all enthusiasm for this run when I had to restart. But, thinking about it now, I probably could’ve
just reloaded a save just before leveling up, dumped all my points into Barter, and
saved myself a bunch of time. That’s a shame. If someone told me that they did what I’ve
done, I’d print it out and put it on the Fridge of Shame where it belongs. Anyway, I sided with Caesar momentarily, feigning
interest in his affairs, letting Benny get crucified, and returned to Goodsprings to
finish off my recording for the evening. The next afternoon, I was vaguely considered
that the C-Finder would have broken in the night. Thankfully it didn’t, Easy Pete finally
died, and I was off to Red Rock Canyon. After sleeping in real life, I managed to
regain my vision that I’d lost in the rage-induced delirium that began when the C-Finder broke,
and started doing things in New Vegas out of interest in the game rather than just getting
it over with as quickly as possible. My travels in nightmare canyon saw me getting
stung by a couple cazadors and deciding that all of us dying was better than just them
dying, a family of Deathclaws saw me as a tasty treat. I tried to soothe their burning desire for
flesh by luring them into a group of Raiders at Bonnie Springs. My entire left side got fried in the blast
and the Deathclaws didn’t even die, at least not from me. One tripped and stuck its head in the sand. At Red Rock Canyon, I became a glorified Lydia
for Diana by agreeing to go find Anders. I knew where he was, at Cottonwood Cove, I
cut him down, delivered a package at Crimson Caravan Company, and was sent to Vault 3 to
deliver a box of unmentionables to Motor Runner. This did not go smoothly. I chose to not attack the Fiends outside the
vault until I got them all in a group and could wipe out most of them and blind the
rest with my lightening. I got like 4 of them, less than half overall
if you look at scientifically. Then I realized that I hadn’t put enough
points into Speech to get inside the vault without being emotionally assaulted with physical
weaponry. Just like whenever the hell this happened
last time, I got a few of the Raiders to follow me to where a someone had set up a few traps. The idea being that I embrace the pain and
let my shins fill with shrapnel while the Fiends die from the explosions, dropping a
key to the door that I can’t open because my Lockpick skill isn’t high enough. Well, that didn’t happen. I found an NCR Ranger hiding out with a broken
leg just passed the traps. I used my knowledge of bandaids to tell him
that his leg no look good, he need go doctor, get fix. In exchange for my help, he gave me the key,
which I used to get inside the Maintenance area and deliver the goods to Motorrunner. Anders went to the big bandaid in the sky
once I got back outside the Vault, I was done with the Great Khans since I couldn’t teach
Jack about drugs, and I was off to Nellis. I don’t know what happened to George. I spammed my way through dialog and then he
exploded. I’ve probably tried this before, jumping
from a rock over the fence into the air base. Didn’t work this time, I spoke to Pearl,
and talked to Jack about some red bitch in Crimson Caravan. This quest would be a nightmare without fast-travel,
that’s what most of it is, going back and forth along with a few skill checks. My Repair skill was predictably 1 point short
of being able to repair the solar arrays, because of course it is. So I put that quest on hold, reported back
to Mr House, leveled up, was able to fix the solar arrays, and began working with the NCR
only because I needed to convince the Boomers to help me in the coming battle. Couldn’t do that let. Pearl is still Pearl and Pearl is an asshole. This little Boomer rambled on about who knows
what. He isn’t a boomer so I can’t take him
seriously, Loyal told me about the water bird, my vast intellect let me Jack that he could
super glue a bunch of macaroni together to make a snorkel, I found this shopping cart
all alone and thought it would be very cash money to see it get launched into the sky
by placing it atop the plane and activating the ballasts under water. It could not have gone worse than it did. Not only was the shopping cart not soaring
through the clouds like I dreamed it would, the fucking C-Finder broke again. Even though I expected it to happen again,
it still really annoyed me. Once Loyal was informed that the bird was
now floating, Pearl agreed to help me, I told Crocker what he thought he wanted to here,
was sent to calm down the Kings but that would’ve required effort so I gave up. And because Freaky McWide Face made me uncomfortable. I confirmed what I already knew to be true
by waiting in place for several days and not getting anymore ammo. I’ll spoil the surprise and tell you that
the gun never worked again, from here on out this is a Without Attacking Anything run,
which is why I’m going to breeze through it. Barter can often be an acceptable alternative
to Speech which has long since been at 100. I wandered around Gomorrah looking for Cachino,
Big Sal, or any other named NPC who could get a quest-line started, when that didn’t
work I started looking for Heck Gunderson’s son inside the Ultra-Luxe. I ran into a blockage that required getting
a White Glove to sponsor me. Optionally, I could’ve used the gun Heck
gave me to go in guns-blazing, obviously I couldn’t do that so I left. Mr House had to be out of the picture, but
I didn’t kill him, I just disabled his game shark to ensure he can’t cheat at Pokemon
anymore. I got some free experience by talking to Caesar
a few more times, Yes Man took his place inside the Lucky 38, I ignored President Kimball,
installed the thing at the place, and was ready for the 2nd Battle of Hoover Dam. With no means of attacking, I ignored all
the enemies in my way and took more damage than I would’ve thought despite the combat
armor, got instructions from Yes Man, flipped the switch, and arrived at the Legate’s
Camp. Barter of 100 can be used to avoid fighting
the Legate, which really makes this run depressing. I would’ve liked to see how difficult it
would have been to take down the Legate with only Euclid’s C-Finder. General Oliver was removed from this world
by the robots and I guess I sorta beat New Vegas with only Euclid’s C-Finder. This wasn’t the way I wanted it to go, but
I think the thing is largely broken and attempting to use it as your only method of attack will
just make it fall apart. And that’s gonna do it.
