“ This is not official and it's not a patch. If it disintegrates your game, do a Kareem and skyhook the .esp into your Recycle Bin. ” J.E. Sawyer

JSawyer is a personal modification created by project director Joshua Eric Sawyer for those willing to experience a harder, more challenging Fallout: New Vegas and was released on December 29, 2011. It also includes several technical fixes and tweaks (particularly to the Karma system), that were not included in previous patches. While it is considered unofficial by its creator, it does provide insight into the aims of the lead developer and contains planned tweaks that never made it into the final release or in official patches.

On January 8, 2012, Joshua Sawyer released a version two to JSawyer. With the second version comes fixed oversights missed in version one and added tweaks to existing changes.

January 31, 2012, Sawyer released version three of JSawyer. Same as with version two, version three fixed missed oversights, changes to existing content, and balance of certain tweaks.

May 15, 2012, Sawyer released version four of JSawyer consisting mostly of fixed item values and most notably hides the pre-order bonus packs around the Mojave Wasteland.

September 29, 2012, Sawyer released version five of JSawyer. Different from the other updates, version five has 2 parts, Sawyer's first version of five fixes several oversights and changes xp values in add-on quest, while 5.1, with the help of experienced modder Xporc, changes the thresholds for H2O, FOD and SLP which where unable to get into the original update as intended and also adds several other fixes.

Installation

JSawyer requires not only base Fallout: New Vegas, but also all of its official add-ons installed: Dead Money, Honest Hearts, Old World Blues, Lonesome Road, Gun Runners' Arsenal, and Courier's Stash.

To install it, put jsawyer.esp in your Data folder. While no additional files are required, it does require a load order manager such as Fallout Mod Manager. JSawyer must be loaded after the core .esm and all add-on .esms. If not, the mod will not be properly installed.

Main features

This is an overview of JSawyer's main features based on the current version of the mod (5.1). A full chronological changelog can be found further below.

Player character

Leveling: The level cap is reduced from 50 to 35, the amount of XP required to level up is increased by 33%, and various quests had their XP rewards tweaked.

Health: The player's base health is lower, and the health the player gains per point of Endurance is reduced.

Carry weight: The player's carry weight is significantly lowered (150 to 50).

Perks: Various perks have had their requirements and effects tweaked. In addition, perks (and the Gun Runners' Arsenal challenges) that affect specific weapon types have been fixed to include all weapons of that type. For example, Shotgun Surgeon now also affects the sturdy caravan shotgun from the Courier's Stash.

Hardcore mode: The first threshold at which the player gains penalties for not eating/drinking/sleeping is now higher (400), but subsequent levels come quicker (at 150 intervals).

Karma: Killing feral ghouls no longer grants the player good karma, and the player gains far less good karma from killing evil characters. Various characters also had their good/evil character alignment changed.

Loot and item balance

The Courier's Stash: The items from the The Courier's Stash DLC are no longer given to the player for free at the start of the game. Instead all the items are spread across various locations in the Mojave Wasteland.

Item Scarcity: Food and drinks are considerably more rare in containers and NPC inventories, especially purified water.

Healing items: Stimpak weight was increased from 0 to 0.25 and they heal slightly less. Regular stimpaks have also been made more rare by adding a new less effective "Expired Stimpak" to the game's loot list. In addition, the stimpaks that you craft yourself are a less effective homemade version. Nuka Cola and Sunset Sarsaparilla restore less health, but now restore H2O as well.

Equipment: A lot of changes were made to weapons and armor to make them more balanced, see the full changelog below. Various items are now lighter to compensate for the lower carry weight, they break less often, and various weapon projectiles fly faster. A lot of armors have had their Damage Resistance and Damage Threshold values increased, making the player's choice of weapon against armored enemies more important.

Changelog

v1 changes

v2 changes

v3 changes

v4 changes

v5 changes

v5.1 changes (Josh Sawyer)

Changed the fHC*TextThresholds to match the fixed H2O/FOD/SLP thresholds.

Raised the fHCSleepDeprivationRate from 25 to 18 (faster).

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