Caravan (game)

Caravan is a card game designed by Obsidian Entertainment specifically for Fallout: New Vegas. While traveling throughout the Mojave Wasteland, you will encounter NPCs who will be available to play a game of Caravan. In order to play Caravan, you must possess a deck of 30 or more cards. However, the dialogue option appears even if you don't have enough cards. If an attempt is made to play with an insufficient number of cards, a message appears informing you that you need at least 30 cards to play a hand of Caravan.

Caravan can be an effective way of making money in New Vegas, particularly when playing against merchants who (if anted properly) can place as much as 81.5% of their available currency on a particular hand of Caravan. However, most Caravan-playing merchants are subject to a limit on the total number of times they will play against the Courier.

Obtaining a deck and additional cards
A free 54 card starter deck and game instructions can be received from Ringo in Goodsprings. This deck is composed of all 54 cards available from The Tops casino.

Additional cards can be obtained from various merchants and corpses across the Mojave wasteland. Also if the player beats Festus at Lucky Horseshoes he will sometimes give the player a card for their caravan deck.

Adding cards to your card pool is currently broken if you do not have patch 1.02, there is a work around in the Bugs Section - patched on the PC version.

Building A Deck
Caravan decks are composed of at least 30 cards from one or more traditional playing card sets. The deck may have any number of cards of any type, although it cannot have duplicate cards from the same set. For example, a King of Spades with The Tops on the reverse and a King of Spades with Gomorrah on the reverse is acceptable, but more than one King of Spades from The Tops deck would be illegal.

Using the in-game interface to build a custom deck
When you play a hand of caravan with an NPC, the first screen you see is the "deck creation interface," with two identical rows of cards.
 * The visible cards in the top row represent your current caravan deck.
 * The visible cards in the bottom row represent your pool of remaining unused cards.
 * The "Randomize Deck" button will randomly change the visible cards in the top and bottom rows, creating a new caravan deck for you each time from the available cards in your total card pool.

Moving cards between the top and bottom rows to create a customized caravan deck is accomplished with two other command buttons:
 * The Add button toggles a visible card in the exact center of the bottom row to become a visible card in the top row, adding that card to your caravan deck.
 * The Remove button toggles a visible card in the exact center of the top row to become a visible card in the bottom row, removing that card from your caravan deck and returning it to the pool of remaining unused cards.

If you manipulate your deck in any way (randomizing/adding/removing), the deck will remain the same from game to game until you edit it again.

Rules
Caravan is played with two players building three opposing caravans (or "bids") of numbered cards. The goal is to outbid your opponent with the highest value of numbered cards without being too light (under 21) or overburdened (over 26).

The game begins with each player taking eight cards from their deck and placing either one numerical card or Ace on each of their caravans.

A player may not discard during this initial round. (This is currently bugged so see Bugs Section.)

Once both players have started their three bids, each player may do one of the following on their turn:


 * 1) Play one card and draw a new card from his deck into his hand.
 * 2) Discard one card from his hand and draw a new card from his deck.
 * 3) Disband one of his three caravans by removing all cards from that caravan.

Caravans have a direction, either ascending or descending numerically. All subsequent cards must continue a numerical direction and/or match the suit of the previous card. Cards of the same numerical value cannot be played in sequence, regardless of suit. Face cards and Jokers can be attached to an Ace or numeric card in a caravan (including your opponents') and affect them in various ways.

Card Values

 * Joker: Played against Ace; 2-10.
 * Effects change based on whether it's an Ace or a number card (see below). They have no effect on face cards. Multiple Jokers may be played on the same card.
 * Ace: Value of 1.
 * Jokers played on Aces remove all non-face cards of the Ace's suit from the table. Eg. a Joker played on an Ace of Spades removes the 2 through the 10 of Spades. This has no effect on cards whose suit has been changed by a Queen.
 * Numbered Cards (2-10): Listed value.
 * Jokers played on these cards remove all other cards of this value from the table. For example, a Joker played on a 4 of Hearts removes all 4s (other than the card the Joker is played upon) from the table.
 * Note that the "Joker" has no effect on future plays of those cards, merely affecting the cards currently on the table.


 * Jack: Played against Ace; 2-10.
 * Removes that card from the table, along with any cards (Jokers, Queens, or Kings) attached to it.


 * Queen: Played against Ace; 2-10.
 * Reverses the current direction of the hand and changes the current suit of the hand. Multiple Queens may be played on the same card.


 * King: Played against Ace; 2-10.
 * Doubles the value of a number card. Eg. a King played on a 9 adds 9 to that caravan. Multiple Kings may be played on the same card for multiplicative effects; thus, a second King will re-double the value resulting from the first King. So, 4 + King = 8, but (4 + King) + King = 16 (8 plus 8).

Add to a Bid: Players add a number card (i.e. an Ace, or any card from 2 to 10) to one of their three columns and increase their bid. In order to add to a bid, a player plays a number card on the bottom of one of their stacks (by pressing down key or down on analog stick). The card must match the suit of the last card, or match the current direction. (ascending numbers or descending numbers) In both cases, the card must be a different value from the previous card.

'Direction: is determined by looking at the previous two cards in the column. At the beginning of the game, a player can choose to play a higher or lower value card, setting the Direction of the bid. Once there are at least two cards on a stack, those need to be checked to determine the current direction.
 * Example: If there is a column consisting of "9-Hearts; 4-Spades; 3-Diamonds" then the direction is currently descending because 3 is smaller than 4. You could play any 2 card or any Ace. You could also play any Diamond card, except for the 3 of Diamonds. If you play a diamond of higher value then the 3, you also change the direction.

Discard: A player can choose to discard either a card from their hand, and draw a new card, or discard a stack from the table. In either case, their turn immediately ends.

Modify a Bid: Face cards (Joker, Jack, Queen, King) have special abilities and can be attached, (Placed next to, rather than below) any number card currently on the table. Modifying an opponent's bid in this way (i.e. playing a face card on one of their cards) is allowed.

Winning
A player's caravan is considered sold when the value of its cards is over 20 and under 27. The other player may still outbid by increasing the value of their opposing pile while staying within the 21-26 range. The game ends when each of the competing caravans is sold to either your side or the NPC's side. In the event of a tie between any two matched caravans, the game continues until one side has a better bid. The player with two or more sales on their side at the end of the game wins the pot. If either player runs out of cards to discard before a winning condition is met, the player will not able to discard and will be declared the loser regardless of how many winning caravans they have.

NPCs who play Caravan

 * [1] Merchants who play Caravan will use half their currency as starting bid. Spending caps with them increases the amount they hold and the amount they bet, and vice versa.
 * [2] Certain merchants have a limit on the total number of times they will play Caravan against the player. This limit is absolute and does not "reset" at any point during the game.

Both Klamath Bob and Melissa were at one point intended to be Caravan players. The dialog options which would allow this have been completely removed in both cases, but their Caravan decks remain in the game's resources.

Additionally, Poindexter appears to have been intended to be a Caravan player. In this case the dialog option remains, but the associated dialog script, caravan deck, and necessary faction assignment are not present.

Videos
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Bugs

 * New cards are not automatically added to the player's deck, either when picked up or when purchased
 * This issue has been resolved with the release of Patch 1.2.0.285.
 * This issue has been resolved with the release of Patch 1.2.0.31x.
 * Cards are only viewable in the default "items" category while placing them into containers, rather than the expected "misc" category.
 * If any of the cards are duplicates of cards you already found before, they will not appear in the bottom half of your deck creation interface. This explains why sometimes new cards that you've bought/found seem to disappear when you add them to your card pool.
 * The game freezes when buying a large number of cards. A possible work around is to first put all playing cards you already have in the backpack of a companion. Then buy the cards you want of a vendor and finally retrieve all already owned cards from your followers inventory. Work around is to only buy around 3 items at a time.
 * It is also difficult to select cards when editing your deck, because the card that's highlighted is often not the card you're selecting.
 * Though the rules state no discarding may occur during the initial round, it is nonetheless possible to do so anyway. If you do, your opponent does not get a turn and you get to go again.
 * After the game ends:
 * when it says to press any button to continue pressing start and then hitting start again will cause the game to become unresponsive yet party chat still works.
 * the button you hit to continue will sometimes lag over. (Pressing (O) to exit will sometimes cause the pipboy to open and pressing (X) will sometimes cause you to talk to the person you just finished playing with).
 * Confirmed on unpatched Xbox version of the game, only encountered at Crimson Caravan merchant.
 * It is not possible to discard cards from your hand once your main deck is empty. Your opponent will still be able to do so once their deck is gone.
 * In-game the cards in the deck will all have "The Tops" background. However, when they reach your hand the front may look different (indicating that it is not a "The Tops" card). The backs are correct when building the deck but not correct when playing the game.
 * Upon winning, the player gets the amount of caps in the pot added to their cap total, though the in game message only reports adding half the pot. This is only when the player wins, if the NPC wins the caps are removed and added properly from both.
 * "Caravan Master" achievement unlocks with the perk of the same name after winning 35 games, not 30. First five wins count toward the "Know when to hold 'em..." perk, only the next 30 toward the achievement.
 * NPCs will never use a face card on one of your caravan bids, instead they will place the card on their own opposing bid.
 * When putting a card onto any pile, the green validation card will show upside down
 * When dropped, Caravan cards all appear to be ace cards, No matter which card they really are.
 * Playing with Dale Barton when he holds 59804 caps will result in you winning up to 52029 caps and Dale Barton will fall back to 59804. Repeatable. Also, the game repeatably crashes when he holds more than 70000 caps.
 * Confirmed on Johnston Nash after reverse-pickpocketing between 37,000 (roughly) and 65,537 (2^16+1) caps into his inventory. Crashes happened at higher values, exact cutoff unknown.

Behind the scenes
The achievement name Know When to Fold Them is a reference to the song The Gambler by Kenny Rogers.