Fallout: New Vegas' lead designer releases free hardcore mod

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Unofficial download brings the pain to PC gamers

The Fallout: New Vegas team may have ended its journey with Lonesome Road, but that hasn't stopped Obsidian's lead designer J.E. Sawyer from extending the post-apocalyptic adventure for PC owners with his own game-changing mod.

As detailed on No Mutants Allowed, the unofficial add-on brings a whole new challenge to Bethesda's RPG. Once applied, players must survive New Vegas with half XP rates, lowered health, increased weight restraints, fewer NPC water and food drops, and less healing options. In addition to upping the difficulty, Sawyer's mod also adjusts Karma and Alignment values, inventory weight, and the stats for various pieces of armor and weapons.

Sawyer coded the mod on his own free time, and emphasized it is in no way an official release, writing, "Finally, the game's over. The ship has sailed. No one is working on it anymore. No testers, nothing. This mod is just me working in my free time. If I horribly botch something, you can just un-check the mod and go on your way.”

The mod is available for download here, and requires all pieces of Fallout: New Vegas DLC to function. Luckily enough, all pieces of DLC will be included in the Fallout: New Vegas Ultimate Edition, which arrives for all platforms on February 7 in North America, and February 10 in Europe.

Matt Bradford

Matt Bradford wrote news and features here at GamesRadar+ until 2016. Since then he's gone on to work with the Guinness World Records, acting as writer and researcher for the annual Gamer's Edition series of books, and has worked as an editor, technical writer, and voice actor. Matt is now a freelance journalist and editor, generating copy across a multitude of industries.