Lately while playing Fallout New Vegas, I've found myself lugging far more equipment than I need. As a result, I'm always either overloaded and can't fast travel or sprint.
When I started playing Fallout 3, I discovered that there was far more junk in the Wasteland than I could possibly carry, and the game changed from A Post-Nuclear Roleplaying Game to A Post-Nuclear Inventory Management Simulator.
I promised myself that I wouldn't let this happen in New Vegas, but sure enough, I've reached level 7 and I'm consistently running into encumberance problems.
Part of this is because I grew up playing Thief: The Dark Project and I have a kleptomaniacal urge to steal every item from every area, but even without the misc crap, my weapon and armor loadout usually takes up more than 3/4 of my character's max weight. I've started leaving caches of equipment at various locations in the Wasteland (in whatever containers happen to be available) rather than always be slowed by lugging it all.
Is caching equipment the most effective solution (before I get the Travel While Encumbered perk) or is there a better way to avoid encumberance in New Vegas?
Best Answer
The single most important thing to remember is that you do not need most of this junk. And I'm not even talking about the 300 year old Blamco Mac & Cheese or enough liquor to drown the Strip.
I'm talking all those Merc _____ Outfits, the 7 Metal Armors those raiders were wearing, the 9 Tire Irons... you don't need them, and they don't sell for enough caps to make the trip back to town worth your time.
Once you get to the Strip and clean out a few Casinos, you'll never need caps again, and you can focus your looting on things which are useful and hard to buy - rare weapons, Ammo, chems, crafting components (that you actually use), and things which may as well be cash like Pre-War Money, Cigarettes, and other high value, low weight commodities.
Other tricks include: using companions as pack mules, and using Mojave Express drop boxes to ship all your junk to one location (I'm fond of Primm) for later pickup and resale.