Fallout New Vegas DLC maps

Dead Money strips the Courier of every item and drops them into the Villa outside the Sierra Madre Casino, wearing an explosive collar controlled by Father Elijah. The add-on is built around scarcity: you scavenge for Sierra Madre chips, use vending machines to buy supplies, and avoid radios and speakers that detonate your collar. Ghost People do not die unless you dismember them, and the red Cloud slowly burns you in low-lying areas.

You recruit three companions for the heist: Dean Domino, Christine Royce and Dog/God, each with their own quest and a role in the casino break-in. The finale in the vault lets you take the gold bars, though their weight makes escaping with all of them one of the most famous challenges in the game. Completing the DLC raises the level cap by 5.

Bring a high Repair or Science skill for the vending machines, Melee or Unarmed for the Ghost People, and finish any Mojave business first because you cannot leave until the story is done.

Honest Hearts is the most open of the four add-ons: Zion is a large valley of rivers, caves and ridges you can explore freely, with the Dead Horses and Sorrows tribes as allies and the White Legs as the threat. The story turns on whether you help Joshua Graham, the Burned Man and former Legate of Caesar's Legion, fight the White Legs, or help Daniel evacuate the Sorrows peacefully.

Side content includes the Survivalist's story told through terminal entries and caches across the canyon, a set of new plants and recipes, and Joshua Graham's unique .45 Auto pistol A Light Shining in Darkness. The level cap rises by 5 on completion.

The DLC is friendly to low-level characters. Survival skill and a decent sidearm go a long way, and the Tribal Wisdom and Sneering Imperialist perks are only available inside Zion.

Old World Blues drops the Courier into Big MT, a crater of abandoned research facilities ruled by the Think Tank, five brains in jars who have removed your brain, heart and spine. The crater is full of lobotomites, robo-scorpions, cazadores and nightstalkers, and nearly every building hides a unique weapon or an upgrade for the Sink, the player home you unlock at the start.

The Sink is the reason many players do this DLC early: it has an auto-doc, a workbench, a jukebox and a garden, and its personalities (the Toaster, Blind Diode Jefferson, Muggy) are the funniest writing in the game. Completing the DLC raises the level cap by 5 and lets you return to Big MT freely, so you can finish exploring later.

Enemies scale and hit hard, so Energy Weapons or a strong Guns build, plus Science for terminals and the Y-17 trauma harnesses, make the trip much smoother.

Lonesome Road is a linear, combat-heavy road through the Divide, a landscape destroyed by nuclear warheads that the Courier unknowingly triggered years earlier. Marked Men, Tunnelers and Deathclaws fill the route, and the ED-E unit you find early can detonate the dormant warheads scattered along the way to open paths.

The story is a conversation with Ulysses about history, the Courier's past and the two Bears and the Bull. The ending lets you launch, redirect or stop nuclear missiles aimed at the NCR and Legion, which changes the Mojave map with new irradiated areas full of high-level loot (Dry Wells and the Long 15).

This is the hardest DLC. Come at level 25 or higher with heavy armor, plenty of ammunition and Repair for the ED-E upgrades. The Red Glare rocket launcher and the Elite riot gear are among the best rewards in the game.