Max Quests
8 years ago
United States

Hello,

Just wanted to share a little project I've been working on- I did a "max quests" speedrun where the goal is to get the Quests Completed counter in the Pip-Boy as high as possible. Obviously not all quests can be completed in one run because some are mutually exclusive, but my thinking was this would be kinda like the spiritual equivalent of All Quests in Fallout 3 (I lurked in progamingwithed's stream a while ago and saw him run All Quests, and that is mostly what inspired this). I'm not very skilled or well-practiced so this isn't exactly a shining example of good speedrunning, but I had a good time and actually finished a run so I thought I'd share just for fun.

I have tried and tried to get the speed cripple glitch to work and have still not been able to get it to work, so I decided it would be more fun just to do a run without it. Obviously using the speed cripple glitch would save a ton of time. But really the most interesting thing to me was puzzling out how to order things so that I had the right skill points or perks or items to do each part fast and without having to waste time backtracking to the same location a bunch of times, and I think I did a reasonably good job of that.

Here is the full video, 93 quests completed in 5:04:43 -

It's probably a long and boring watch, so here are timestamps of a couple somewhat interesting parts:

At REPCONN Test Site, you can't fast travel from the viewing area after watching the rockets take off, but you can after using quick save/quick load to get through the window: ()

Boone's companion quest, called I Forgot to Remember to Forget, has a little exploit. Normally you get "trust points" by doing certain things while Boone is your companion, and if you get to 5 trust points, Boone will ask you to go to Bitter Springs where you have to fend off a Legion attack. Nelson is one of the places you can earn trust points. There are three NCR prisoners being tortured- if you rescue them you get 2 trust points, and if you "mercy kill" them you get 1 trust point. If you save them first and THEN kill them... 3 points! ()

A few things went horribly wrong in this run- I think improving on this time by as much as 10 minutes would not be terribly difficult. I might do another run at some point to try to get under 5 hours at least.

Some of the things that went wrong: At Black Mountain, I have to use waiting to get out of combat so I can fix the robot. That's normal, and I've done that a few times before and have only had to wait once or twice, but this time for some reason I spent about a minute just waiting to get out of combat.

I had what I thought was a clever strat to get the cazador eggs for The Thorn really fast- if you hide behind the rocks near the eggs, the weird AI pathing sends the cazadors flying the other direction, and before long they are far enough away that you can fast travel. Unfortunately it didn't work this time for some reason- I think maybe one of my companions distracted the cazadors. So I fumbled away a couple minutes there.

One of the worst things was that Malcolm Holmes, who has 6 star caps to steal or loot, never spawned, or if he did I didn't see him. I resorted to a backup strat of drinking a ton of Sunset Sarsaparilla- each one gives you a 1 in 20 chance of getting a star cap.

Nothing in my route is really technically difficult- the only frustrating thing is that it's very easy to have a quest become impossible to complete, either because of a glitch or because I do something in the wrong order. This was the first complete run I finished, but I did have another run before this where I killed Alice McLafferty before turning in her last quest, and didn't notice my mistake until it was too late. So that run finished with 92 quests instead of 93. I kept the splits anyway since the mistake didn't impact the time too much, and those are the splits I was running against in the video.

And on the remote chance someone is still reading this and is interested, I did keep notes on everything while I was making the route and ended up with this giant 20-page google doc which goes over the route in more detail: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QDPx3Xr1WUjkOk0HXu4xsmkak_DKrt0z4M5flnH94kA/edit?usp=sharing

Sweden

Dude this is sick, happy to see someone take interest to route and run longer categories!

Nice work, maybe i'll try to do a run of this too.

Sweden

Alright, I've watched through the entire run and I think it's a good route. Obviously speedcripple would speed it up a great deal, but using QSQL to clip out of bounds and "coc warp" is also a trick that could cut down the time even more.

And by using QSQL to clip out of bounds, the entire "Legend of the Star" quest can be skipped (Since it's an automatic failure and instead adds "A Valuable Lesson") by clipping out and into the locked room. Picking up the holotape finishes the quest.

Nice credits too!

United States

Thanks!

I just got the clip for A Valuable Lesson like you described and wow that's fantastic.

Do you know is there a good way to tell which walls can or can't be clipped through? Or which ones are easier? Or is it possible to clip through basically any wall? Practicing this clip it seems like there are a couple spots where it's easier than others but maybe it's just me.

Sweden

It's basically experimenting on which wall that works, But up stairs and in corners usually work. If you've watched a fallout 3 any% run you've probably seen clips in vaults, and the same clips should work in NV too (They're the same models). I've started learning the route (I'm on the "North of Goodsprings" section of your route doc) and I've found a few clips that save time.

Note that I use speedcripple when I play.

ex: After talking to Eddie you can clip out in the corner on the right.

After killing Deputy Beagle (Or saving him, killing him turned everyone hostile for me) you can clip out in the corner behind him and spawn at the entrance.

In the HELIOS One tower you can clip out and take a shortcut to the mainframe room (In the turret room behind the robot on the left) by clipping through a wall and extending your jump a bit (qsql midair holding W)

In the REPCONN Test Site you can clip out after finishing Antler's task AND after talking to Jason for the last time (That's a long walk, that Jason one).

My Vault 22 route differs greatly to yours because of clipping. I go to Level 3, clip out ontop of the stairs and walk towards the cave section and clip in again by the locked door. Sprint through to the mantis eggs (Speedcripple makes me able to get away with 1-2 hits max) and run down to level 5 door. Run through to the Terminal and clip out behind it and leave the vault.

Haven't gotten further but next time I'll stream my practicing if you wanna watch videos of it.

United States

OK thanks.

I'm definitely excited to do another run though I have a ton of "real" work to get done this weekend so I probably won't get to it until next week. I would absolutely be interested in watching your stream or vods if you are doing something on stream.

United States

Found a useful clip- on the 13th floor of The Tops, in the corner by the white vase, you can clip through the wall and into the room that you would win playing blackjack. The trigger for completing Big Winner: The Tops is over by the entrance (which is still locked). So that skips playing blackjack (normally you have to win the key to the room by winning 7500 chips). Then when you fall oob you land in Benny's room near Yes Man.

Blackjack was the sole motivation for the Intensive Training perks and for starting with 7 LCK instead of 6 which is the minimum needed to get to 60 Science at level 2. So maybe Toughness would be a better perk and maybe it would be worth switching a special point to endurance if only for a little bit more HP.

New South Wales, Australia

I just finished watching the video of the run and it's very impressive. As you guys are saying, with the addition of speedcripple, qsql clipping and coc warping. the run could be less than 3 1/2 hours (maybe even 3).

I can't wait to try a run of it :P

United States

Just thought I would mention how I arrived at 93 as the highest possible number of quests completed. I looked at all the quests in the game in the modding tool (G.E.C.K.) and found all the quests that have a "Complete Quest" quest stage. That is how most quests are completed, but there are some weirder quests that are completed via a script command in one of the scripts. So I did a text search through all the scripts (which are all found in the FalloutNV.esm file) looking for all occurrences of the CompleteQuest script command.

That produced a list of 107 quests. 14 of them either prevent completing multiple other quests or prevent completing a faster quest. Here is the list: http://pastebin.com/fLRu1rAK

It tracks mostly with the list of marked quests at http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout:_New_Vegas_quests with two exceptions- Big Winner: The Tops is listed as an unmarked quest, and the unnamed quest where you talk to the messenger outside Nelson is not listed at all.

Sweden

Neat.

The quest "Ceasar's Hire" is a finicky one, since it has precise faction requirements and the disguised frumentari can only spawn in like 4 places. When I did a practice playthrough, he either never spawned or he spawned and got lost/shot by ncr somewhere since i never found him (Couldn't teleport to him via console, spawning a new one gave me the quest though).

Belgium

"It is possible to permanently disable this quest if the player fast-travels away from the Disguised Frumentarius as he is approaching, or if he is killed." (source:http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Caesar's_Favor) So apparently once you gain positive reputation, it's dangerous to fast travel. So if we need to fast travel at any point after getting positive rep, we could possibly never get the quest... Sounds like a runkiller :/

United States

Seems to be consistent to fast travel to 188 Trading Post immediately after getting Mixed rep with the Legion, then going over to the train tracks where the disguised frumentarius spawns. He will spawn after you enter certain parts of the map for the first time after getting the right Legion rep. So doing anything other than just going directly to his spawn point after getting Mixed rep would risk having him despawn or get killed.

United States

I found a clip through an invisible wall to get to Melissa without having to go through the Deathclaw section:

New South Wales, Australia

Thanks mate, when i get some free time i'll eventually do another run with reloading glitch strats. that looks a lot more pleasurable (and quicker) than sneaking through deathclaws. i wonder if you can reload glitch over that area and land there without alerting any deathclaws.

Belgium

Otherwise you can timestop past the deathclaws, but wooshing by with the pistol might work too. However I'm not sure that wooshing over the invisible wall would work cause you'll probably end up stuck between 2 invisible wall. That happened to me a lot when going from hidden valley to black rock mountain

United States

Interesting thing, if you have a Healing Powder in your inventory, you don't have to use the campfire for Sunny's second tutorial quest. You just talk to Sunny twice to advance the quest. Could be useful since we probably want to be pistol-dashing through the sections that have convenient Xander Root spawns.

If I'm reading the GECK right, Dead Sea (who we kill at Nelson) has about an 80% chance of having Healing Powder, plus a small chance ~8% of having Xander Root. Other Legionnaries tend to have a much smaller chance of having either. I don't know of any guaranteed Healing Powder spawns.

Hi,

I just finished a Max Quest run following your awesome text guide and I may be wrong but I think the max number of quests is 94 instead of 93. Just after finishing "The House Always Wins VII", start "The House Always Wins VIII" but tell House you need to prepare (quest count: 91). Then go kill House and install Yes Man in his place. This will obviously fail "The House Always Wins VIII" and make "All or Nothing" unaccessible. But for me it succefully finished "Wild Card: Change in Management" and "Wild Card: Finishing Touches" putting the quest count to 93. With "No Gods, No Masters" that puts the max quest count to 94.

In my playthrough, just before "No Gods no Master", my current count is 91 but I missed 2 quests : "Caesar's Hire" (opening the boxes didn't finish the quest) and "Wild Card: You and What Army?" (It was never started so when came time to turn it in I was disappointed). If you add "No Gods no Master" I should have had 94 at the end.

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