Mod:DUST Survival Simulator/Tips and Tricks

This page provides players new to Fallout: Dust with all the advice they will need to survive the Mojave and surrounding areas.

Note, that depeding on playstile, there are multiple options to ease the challenge of mastering DUST.

Trying to tackle DUST without prior experience in Fallout: New Vegas in Hardcore Mode is discouraged.

WARNING: Some sections of this page WILL contain spoilers, namely the locations of escape routes and how to utilize them properly. Endings resulting from these escapes have been relegated towards the bottom of the page for viewer convenience. If one wishes to find the endings themselves, then avoid scrolling towards the bottom of the page.

Getting Started
Character creation in Dust should not be handled exactly as one would in vanilla New Vegas. A high-Speech, high-Barter, high-Charisma playstyle will almost certainly result in the player having a very difficult time playing Dust. This isn’t your neighborly Vegas paradise. This is a true wasteland, where almost everyone you encounter is keen on killing you and taking your equipment, or worse. Plan accordingly when creating your character.

SPECIAL Statistics
To begin, take all of your SPECIAL points out of Charisma. High Charisma is a dreadful waste of SPECIAL points, and will get the player nowhere. Rather, invest your points in more concrete statistics, like Strength or Intelligence. A high Strength can help raise your lowered carry weight, and high Intelligence will ensure that you gain more skill points upon leveling up.

See the Fallout: Dust SPECIAL page for the changes Dust introduces to SPECIAL and derived statistics, and if you're concerned about the drastically lowered carry weight, then spend the Backpacks provided by DUST a visit.

Skill Point Distribution
Skill points should generally be focused towards more combat-based skills, like Guns or Melee Weapons. However, a plurality of skill points should be placed in more specialized areas, namely Lockpicking or Repair. Lockpicking allows access to many helpful supplies, and Repair can keep your equipment in good condition. Furthermore, the Repair skill can allow you to craft makeshift weaponry, which can prove very helpful. Survival skill gives access to good perks (e.g. Roughnin' It, especially good when combined with Bedroll kit).

Perks and Skills at a glance
Helpful resources for deciding on how to sketch out the perks, traits and statistics of your Survivor are provided in the Fallout: Dust Perks and Fallout: Dust Traits page, with additional information being kept in the Fallout: Dust SPECIAL and Fallout: Dust Level pages.

Starting Locations
Selecting a good starting location can be especially tricky. The names placed on the doors at The Beginning are rather vague, or even deceptive. Therefore, it is recommended to save your game before selecting a starting location. This allows you to rethink your decision should you choose poorly.

Recommended starting locations are the Abandoned Warehouse or the Shack reachable through a door in the same room as the Abandoned Warehouse. The Abandoned Warehouse is located nearby to Camp McCarran, in a relatively safe position. Furthermore, the warehouse comes with a makeshift sniper rifle with ammo on the staircases, with the possibility of more weapons and equipment on corpses.

The Shack door leads to Jeans Sky Diving, with a good chance of providing lootable corpses close to Goodsprings Source. Nearby Ghost Town also provides for valuable resources and gear.

'''Most importantly, wherever you start, DO NOT forget to grab the Crafting Kit. The kit is an invaluable tool for survival in Dust, and weighs only a single pound (and if you happen to run into a Hot Plate, grab that too). The usefulness of the crafting kit will be covered later.'''

Basic Survival
Survival in Dust is to be approached somewhat differently from vanilla New Vegas. Most harvestable plants have been removed, and water, especially the clean variety, is very scarce. Dust has amplified the survival needs, and as such, it is recommended to keep track of supplies to avoid running low on the necessities. If that wasn’t enough, survivors now have to deal with the Sanity system, meaning that endless slaughter of other humans for supplies will no longer be strictly profitable. Pick your fights carefully, and know when to save your ammo for more perilous situations.

Survival Needs
Hunger, Thirst, and Sleep are no longer mild inconveniences. In Dust, the hardcore mode survival needs prove a constant threat to survivor health. Stock up on food and water, even if it is irradiated, and do not be afraid to take a nap when the opportunity presents itself.

Thirst is easily the most threatening of the survival needs. Most sources of water in the Mojave are now either irradiated or absent altogether. The Courier’s Stash add-on proves immensely helpful in managing Thirst, as the Vault 13 Canteen can help temporarily stave off dehydration. Toilets are a common source of water, though often irradiated. Lake Mead has become Mead Canyon, drained of all water.

Food and Sanity go hand in hand with one another. Cannibalism solves the food issue permanently, but can take a massive toll on Sanity. Buildings with people nearby are the best places to find food, namely Nipton. The McBride ranch house in Novac still has the many Brahmin Steaks located in the fridge, though Novac itself is heavily populated with cannibals.

Sleep is the least threatening of survival needs, but should not be overdone. Sleeping too long will cause your other needs to skyrocket, and can even cause death upon awakening. Therefore, keep sleeping low on the priorities list. Focus on Hunger and Thirst.

If all the hardcore needs are just a tad too hardcore, don’t worry. Hardcore mode, while the intended game mode for Fallout: Dust, can be toggled off at any time.

Crafting
Possession of a Crafting Kit is quite easily the most important step towards Quality of Life in DUST. Any starting location keeps a Crafting Kit to be picked up, allowing for on-the-spot preparation of food, drink and even ammunition.

Visit the Fallout DUST Crafting page for a comprehensive list of craftable items.

Sanity
The new Sanity system is merely a repurposed Karma system, with the good and bad roles reversed. Most actions that would normally gain Karma in normal New Vegas (killing ghouls, killing Fiends, etc.) now cause a loss of Sanity. Actions that would lower Karma (theft, etc.) now raise Sanity. However, some new Sanity boosters and perks have been integrated to work in tandem with the Sanity system.

Insanity is caused by having your sanity drop too low, and is usually caused by excessive killing and/or cannibalism. While generally regarded as bad, Insanity has its perks, both figuratively and literally. Hallucinations caused by insanity can cause Fugue States, which can lead to surprising outcomes. See the Insanity page for more information.

Combat
Combat has, as with most everything else in Dust, been made much more difficult. You are more fragile, but so are your enemies. However, this isn’t exactly an even playing field when you have no assistance in fending off a horde of cannibals. Bullets no longer appear in boxes of dozens. All munitions now appear individually, making ammunition exceptionally scarce.

A good approach to combat in Dust is stealth. Being stealthy allows you to pick off your opponents individually as opposed to taking them all at once. It also allows you to save ammunition. Stick to the shadows and strike from cover.

Speaking of ammunition, always loot the weapons of off your opponents, as you will keep the additional munitions, even if you drop these weapons right after looting them.

Unique and useful loot
Dust adds a few new unique items that prove incredibly useful. The first is the McCallum Rifle. One copy, with all of it's mods (silencer, scope, long barrel) can be found in a small shack connected to railway tracks a bit north of Repconn HQ. It uses 45-70 Gov't ammunition.

The second unique item is a stun gun. It is hidden on a roof of El Rey Motel inside a small, locked chest (the key is inside one of the rooms). It works like a recharger pistol so you don't need ammunition. Incredibly useful, both in stealth and combat.

The third item is a unique ghost people cowl. While it's not the best as a helmet, it gives a player a nightvision, which is incredibly useful at nights. It can be found inside Lucky 38, on the corpse of one of the ghost people.

The fourth item is the Medicine Stick,located at a tribal outside Novac now known as "Tribal Rifle"

The fifth item would be a powerful power armor known as "Scorched Power Armor" found at 188 Overpass and in Camp Golf, but it requires power armor training, which is not available in DUST.

Check the Weapons of DUST page for information about weapons unique to DUST and their properties, and the DUST Backpack page for improving your carrying capacity in order to take advantage of the above advice, despite the limited carrying capacity in DUST.

Non-unique, useful loot
Beginners might want to try and get their hands on a set of Throwing Spears. These are easy to craft or obtain from opponents, completely silent and first and foremost incredibly powerful. Aiming might require some practise, though, and Throwing Spears are certainly not one of the weapons of choice for close quarter combat, or if swarmed.

For sniper characters, the Ratslayer still located in Broc flower cave might prove the be very useful, being a unique variety of the Varmint rifle equiped with a night vision scope, silencer and extended magazine, still having an unmatched multiplier of chance of a critical hit. While getting to Broc flower cave is a rather dangerous undertaking, surprisingly the inside of the cave is guarded by annoying, but not mortally dangerous foes. On the flipside, being a unique weapon, keeping the Ratslayer in shape might prove to be not worth the trouble for non-sniper characters.

With a little bit of luck, the Gun Runners' Vendortron might be found alive near Vault 34. You will probably have to eliminate all Tunnelers in the area prior to it being willing to trade with you.

If your charaxter is insane, you can get the alien blaster but first you need to kill aliens which isn't easy task. Alien are located in the same place as in vanilla game, east to Brooks tumbleweed ranch.

Tunnelers
Tunnelers from the Divide have, as Ulysses predicted, invaded the Mojave. Anywhere you would normally find Geckos in vanilla New Vegas, you will now find Tunnelers, who appear to have driven the Mojave Gecko population to extinction.

Tunnelers are very difficult combatants. What they lack in health, being taken down in a couple shotgun blasts, they more than make up for in damage and numbers. They strike in packs of three or more at once, and two or three slashes from them is an almost assuredly fatal. Furthermore, a possible bug exists with the Tunnelers that causes them to detect you more easily if you are sneaking. This can make it very difficult to avoid detection, though the Tunneler Detection Fix on the Nexus remedies this problem.

Tunnelers are better driven off or avoided than killed. For every Tunneler you kill, two more will come to take its place. Tunnelers are afraid of fire and other sources of bright light, meaning that flare guns, flamethrowers, and flash grenades are effective at driving them off long enough for you to escape. Additionally, stick to the roads. Areas off the beaten path are often swarming with Tunnelers, and straying from the road can lead to a dozen Tunnelers intercepting you.

If you are detected by Tunnelers and don’t have the firepower to kill them or drive them off, run for the high ground as fast as possible. This will at least slow them down long enough to give you a fighting chance, or cause them to flee if you are on top of something on which they cannot navigate. Boulders scattered across the desert can provide a temporary reprieve from Tunneler attacks, allowing you to take pot shots at them to clear a path to the next boulder or other high ground.

Tunnelers provide for excellent food (Gecko Kebob, Tunneler Steak), though, and with a weapon like the loot- and craftable Makeshift Crossbow (or Throwing Spears) they can be one-shot killed, even with low-level characters. Use Tourniquets (crafted from Leather Belts) to boost your Posion Resistance, if you happen to encounter a Venomous Tunneler.

Lowering Difficulty
Should DUST’s difficulty prove too much of a challenge, there are plenty of ways to make DUST easier. Toggling off hardcore mode is the simplest option, removing the survival needs and ammunition weight. This method comes at great cost to one of the core aspects of DUST, but should the player require a “practice run” of sorts, it’s a viable option.

The Fast Travel in Dust mod on the Nexus re-enables fast travel for DUST. This makes traveling the Mojave far less tedious, as it allows fast travel like the vanilla game.

The Weightless Ammo for Hardcore Mode mod makes ammunition weightless even if you are in Hardcore Mode. As an odd side effect, it also increases the amount of ammunition you will find in DUST (where you would normally find one bullet, you will now find 12 or so). This allows for a more gunplay-friendly experience and lower difficulty.

Escaping the Mojave
In Fallout: Dust, there is only one objective: escape the Mojave Wasteland. The problem is that you have no quest markers. You actually have to find your own way out of the Mojave and to safety, using information you find scattered about the wastes. Keep your eyes peeled, and don’t miss any details. Furthermore, use common sense. Think about vanilla New Vegas, and the locations within it. Don’t be afraid to explore on a hunch. You might be pleasantly surprised at what you find.

'''THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING. '''Beyond this point are spoilers to the escape routes and how to access them. If you want to discover all the escapes yourself, DO NOT READ BEYOND THIS POINT.

Option #1: Airplane!
This is the most obscure of the endings to Dust, and arguably the least rewarding. Many areas of the Mojave have aircraft, but only two can be made operational.

Go to Searchlight Airport in the south. Avoid Camp Searchlight itself, as there is a heavy Brotherhood of Steel presence there, and they will shoot on sight. There is a large population of radscorpions on the tarmac. Avoid or kill them, then make your way to the intact plane on the runway.

At the plane, you will find a deceased Brotherhood Scribe who attempted to repair the aircraft. Next to the plane, you will find a workbench with a clipboard on it. This clipboard is in fact a List of Materials. Picking up the list will add the Airplane Parts recipe to the workbench recipes.

Requirements for the parts are as follows: Once these requirements are met, you will be able to craft the Airplane Parts at any workbench. Once you have the parts, interact with the fuselage on the plane, just behind the cockpit. You can then repair the plane and flee to Camp Adytum in California. Walk down the street, and the game will end with you having found safety.
 * 75 Repair skill
 * 1 Conductor
 * 48 Flamer Fuel
 * 6 Scrap Electronics
 * 8 Scrap Metal
 * 2 Sensor Modules

Alternatively, there is one more airplane near Jean Sky Diving. While you have to walk there, there are no radscorpions nearby (there are hostile survivors, some centaurs and sometimes a tunneler or two).

Option #2: Big Mountain Research Center
The objective in Dust is to escape the Mojave. So why not try Big MT? It can’t be any worse, right? The only problem is that the Midnight Science Fiction Feature ended 20 years ago. Getting into the Big Empty won’t be so easy this time.

Follow the train tracks south of Nipton until you reach the train tunnel. The tunnel will require a hefty amount of Lockpicking skill to open. Alternatively, there is another entrance hidden inside old Legion Safehouse (which is also one of the starting locations) if you don't have 50 lockpick. Once inside, you find a pile of debris to the left of a crashed train car. Removing this debris will require 5 bricks of C4 (no detonator required).

The best way to locate the requisite C4 is to visit Camp Guardian and Vault 74. It’s a dangerous journey, but so are most of the endings to Dust. Avoid or kill the resident Ghost People, and enter the Camp Guardian caves. Inside the caves near the entrance is a box, which will contain at least two bricks of C4.There are three bricks of C4 inside the armory of Vault 74. Return to the train tunnel south of Nipton.

Upon interacting with the pile of debris, you will be given a pop-up allowing you to remove the rubble. Traveling through the tunnel will take you to Big MT. However, it has fallen apart since the Courier visited. The Sink artificial personality has flooded most of the crater in an attempt to scrub it clean. If that wasn’t enough, tech scavengers are warring with the Brotherhood of Steel over control of the crater’s technologies.

To escape, you must make your way to what was once The Cuckoo’s Nest, but is now a shrine to the Toaster. Enter the cave there, and prepare to die. In a rather cruel move, Naugrim placed a toaster mine directly at the entrance to the cave, which will likely kill any Survivor who enters. Use whatever means necessary to avoid this and the many other mines dotting the cave. On a pedestal there is the Tampered Transportalponder. Take the Transportalponder and find a location outdoors and outside of combat.

If you don't like mines, there is one more copy of Transportalponder. To get it, either go on foot to Little Yangzte or try to leave the map (unlike in the vanilla game, you will be teleported near the camp). Once you do, you will be attacked by a group of tech scavengers. One of them will have the device you need.

Using the Transportalponder will teleport you to a seemingly random canyon. Follow the walkway down to the tunnel. At the other end of the tunnel is Grand Staircase and safety.

Option #3: Get to the Choppa!
Most survivors who pass near the now barricaded entrance to Camp McCarran likely notice the prominent Vertibird parked on a landing pad within the confines of McCarran’s walls. There is also graffiti nearby pointing to the Vertibird encouraging readers to “RUN. GET OUT OF HERE.” If it wasn’t obvious by this point, the next escape plan involves the Vertibird in Camp McCarran. However, there is a slight problem: the entrance, as was stated, is barricaded off. Have faith, for hope is not lost. There is another way to reach McCarran.

But what is this method of entering McCarran? Amazingly, the solution lies in the McCarran-LVB monorail system, which is, amazingly, still operational. The hard part is reaching the monorail.

To reach the monorail, you must first reach the ruins of the New Vegas Strip. This can be done in any of four ways:

The first method of entering the Strip requires opening a Hard locked door on the exterior wall of the Strip. This door leads to the interior of the Tops casino. WARNING: this method is a one-way trip. There is a drop-off from one of the elevator shafts in the Tops that cannot be climbed back up.

The second option necessitates entering the Strip through Freeside. Freeside is plagued with an abundance of feral ghouls and the occasional trigger-happy survivor. If that wasn’t enough, the gate to the Strip is locked and requires a key. The key can be found on one of the NCR Rangers indoors at Camp Golf. Raiding Camp Golf is an exceptionally difficult task, as it has an abundance of NCR troopers and Rangers.

The third option is the hardest and the most dangerous one. You need to enter the Sewers (you should make a manual save before you do) and find a master key. The key is located in The Thorn, right under the monument. Then, you need to head to the part of the Sewers connected to North Vegas. There is a ladder that leads to the Strip. This way is not a good one, as the room with a locked ladder is heavily irradiated (over 30 rads/sec) and when you enter the Strip, you're in the middle of the poisoned streets full of enemies, plus you need to go through the Sewers. There is another way to the Strip which is also in the Sewers but you need a special key card (you can get it by killing one of the scientists in Camp Golf). It's a hidden door that leads to The Lucky 38.

Finally, the last option to enter the Strip requires that the player character be insane. Once you are insane, get attacked by a hallucination and enter a fugue state. Explore the room you are taken to carefully. There is a trapdoor that takes the player to the Gomorrah suites.

If one of the two latter options is taken, you must enter the middle section of the Strip via a route connecting the Gomorrah cashier’s room with the Tops. This is because a truck crashed into the gate leading from the first to the middle section. There is also a path into the Strip via the sewers, but this option is not recommended. The sewers are arguably the most dangerous area in Dust, and should be avoided.

Next, reach the NCR Embassy on the Strip. Eliminate the occupants. One of the NCR members inside will have a key to the monorail. Take the key, enter the monorail, and go to Camp McCarran.

Inside McCarran, there is an absurd number of ghouls and NCR troopers. Avoid them (or kill them, if you’re some kind of suicidal maniac), and run for the rear of the Camp. Go through the main building for fastest results. Run to the location climb the ladder, and go up to the Vertibird. You will be given a prompt asking whether to stay or go. Obviously, just go (If you decide to stay, you get about 2000 exp, but you can't change your mind later). There’s no point in backtracking. You then enable the Vertibird’s autopilot. Sit back, and enjoy the ride.

Unfortunately, you have not won. Not yet, at least. The Vertibird’s auto pilot lead to skies filled with the Cloud. The Cloud gunks up the intakes, and the chopper crashes in the last place you’d want to end up: the Sierra Madre.

Run to the Villa Fountain. Avoid/kill ghost people. Loot the Father (a now-deceased Elijah) for his key. Backtrack to the crash site, and keep going until you find a sewer grate the key can unlock. Go to the bottom of the sewers, to a ladder. This ladder leads to safety in the form of Camp Adytum.

Option #4: Nightmare in Zion Canyon
If a survivor goes to the Northern Passage,Next to it they will find a grave,buried inside the grave is a key to the Northern Passage gate (you MUST have a Shovel, otherwise you can't get the key and enter Zion) .Inside the Northern Passage is Butch and a survivor from Zion,they are hostile so be careful.Now that you are inside Zion,you should worry about Spore Carriers and a immortal variant,It's recommended to bring a fire weapon.You should hurry to the Sorrows camp and find White Bird Cave.

Inside the White Bird cave is an NCR with an unique Auto-Materiel Rifle,That in my opinion isn't worth it because of the recoil and rarity of the bullets.In the NCR's corpse you will find the PineCreek Tunnel key. Hurry to PineCreek Tunnel and unlock the big gate. Be careful there are a lot of Spore Carriers there.Once you get inside you need to walk through a tunnel full of well hidden traps.I'd recommend the light step perk. Once you reach the end go to the door and start walking through the Long Dark. There's a locked door we will talk about later.It's recommended to use the local map because of the huge amount of paths. Be careful. The Long Dark and The vault have a few people who are (probably) halucinations but sometimes they are replaced by real cannibals that attack you. Once you find a cave keep following.After the cave is a vault (If you wish you can exit the vault and reach The Divide). At the entrance of the vault from the cave you will see a buried file cabinet with The Grand Staircase Key.Backtrack all the way back to the locked door in The Long Dark,unlock it.You find yourself in a canyon,go all the way down the buildings and you will find a place similar to New Canaan.Congratulations! You have reached safety.