Mod:DUST Survival Simulator/Starting Locations

This page tries to cover the possible starting locations provided by Fallout: DUST, and as such contains mild spoilers concerning loot and surroundings of the starting locations. The Beginning provides for a lore-rich description of available starting locations.

Fallout: DUST 2.0 provides a choice of nine starting locations with each of them putting the player into an initially safe interior location, differing in readily available loot and first and foremost threats encountered upon exiting said locations and entering the wasteland.

Choice of starting locations is provided after chosing SPECIAL stats, traits and the physical representation of the Survivor (all of which are final, no refinement is possible) by the player being able to enter gameplay through named doors.

As noted in the Fallout: DUST Tips and Tricks page, saving your game proir to finally chosing a starting location is advised.

Starting locations are listed clockwise, with the player assumed to face the radio, starting on the right. The names given are those displayed in-game.

Shack (1)
Will put the player in the former Lucky Jim mine house.

Black Rock Cavern (2)
Actually Black Rock cave.

Hidden Armory (3)
This will start the game in the former, unmarked Great Khan armory at the south entrance of Red Rock Canyon.

While providing comparably large amounts of ammunition and weaponry, including several pistols and revolvers, many of these items require lockpicking skills up to and including average.

The Tesla Armor found in the Hidden Armory requires Power Amor training, which is not available in DUST.

Also, this starting location is infested with Tunnelers, including Tunneler Queens, allmost inevitably requiring Survirors to engage in combat with them at level 1.

Safehouse (4)
The former Follower Safehouse.

Shack (5)
The former Brotherhood of Steel Safehouse.

Safehouse (6)
The former Caesar's Legion Safehouse. This was the (single) starting location of Fallout: DUST prior to version 2.0.

Located close to the Burned Bulls Camp, this starting location provides two exit points, one being the front door, and the other reachable through a trapdoor in the lower room.

Shack (7)
This will relocate the player to Jeans Sky Diving, the door being located in the same room as as the doors to Abandoned Warehouse and Abandoned Home.

This is a particularly resource rich and safe starting location. Survivors close to Goodsprings Source will frequently engage in hostilities, leaving a good number of lootable corpses behind. Loot can include ammunition, weapons, amor, headgear and even backpacks.

The remaining Survivors are often weakened, and sometimes non-hostile.

Combined with the loot available in nearby Ghost Town, this starting location is very likely to provide for excellent starting equipment and provisions.

Hint: The key to the locker in the Shack is still on the desk.

Abandoned Warehouse (8)
This will relocate the player to an abandoned warehouse near Camp McCarran. The Fallout: DUST Tips and Tricks does point to this location being a more forgiving, easier to tackle entry point by providing players with some viable loot.

Often overlooked, one of the more positive aspects of this starting location is, that players will be able to exploit the inherent hostility between NCR and Tribals to their advantage.

Abandoned Home (9)
This will relocate the player to the inside of an abandoned home west of the strip, with a rigged mailbox right outside the front door.

Playtesting (and checking with the G.E.C.K.) showed, that this starting location is bugged. You will allmost inevitably die right after stepping out of the front door for the second time, if you activated the proximity fuse of the rigged mailbox bomb trap leaving the house the first time. Its timer does not properly account for repeated approaches unless the game is restarted. In addition to this, after its initial detonation, the rigged mailbox is sometimes rearmed, despite the in-game model showing the destroyed mailbox. The rigged mailbox can be disarmed with an Explosives skill of 45, just as in vanilla.

Also, Tribals are supposed to put a Frag Mine right in front of the door. As with the rigged mailbox, the Frag Mines behaviour seems to be bugged, with it sometimes not showing up.

Despite the odd behaviours, it is entirely possible to stay alive and begin exploring the world of DUST starting at this location.