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.
