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Update 3 ? We're All Talk
By popular outrage, I went for the middle ground and pickpocketed Malcolm Holmes since he was still right there when I reloaded.
I'll just be taking these...
There's a couple areas in Goodsprings I didn't explore yet ? one is the interior of the old schoolhouse. In we go!
It's a little dark inside ? but we apparently can just crank up the brightness on our Pip-Boy to help a little with that!
It's not a lot, but it does help in some dark areas ? at the cost of making us easier to spot! If you pay attention, you can see a mantis nymph moving from the doorway to juuuust outside the illuminated area. There's some of those around here; Courier just hacks 'em to death with a kitchen knife again.
Stupid bugs.
There's a few reasons I came here ? first is a couple skill magazines:
And some lockpicks, er, bobby pins:
The second is the fact that I can easily show the hacking (ugh) and lockpicking minigames!
Looking for junk code wrapped in matching brackets ? of any sort, they could be < >, { }, [ ], or ( ) - will either remove a dud password or replenish our guesses. There is no pattern to tell which will happen, so it's best to try one or two of the passwords before hunting junk code, since you only have a max of 4 guesses. By the same token, the dud password COULD be one you already tried, but that's slightly less annoying. In a change from Fallout 3, if you back out of hacking to cheat, you have to wait through the starting screens instead of skipping them. One of the few things Obsidian did to make a Bethesda choice actively worse.
Then when you try a dud, it tells you how many characters are correct. It does not tell you WHICH, so you still need to think.
I succeed on the third try.
I could open the nearby safe from here! But fuck that, I can also get the experience for picking the lock if I do that too.
I instead pick the lock! This is much easier ? you just carefully rotate the bobby pin with the mouse and apply torque with the screwdriver by pressing any of your movement keys. You can break a bobby pin by screwing up, but you can't jam the lock unless you try to force it. I'm really good at this minigame since it was in Fallout 3, New Vegas, AND Skyrim basically unchanged. Lots of practice, man. Lots of practice.
Niiiice, Stealth Boy!
Stealth Boys are handy as fuck for a while, they let us have a stealth field and be much sneakier.
Super Stimpacks restore more health at once than a stimpack but later lower some stats. More useful in Hardcore Mode.
We also duck back into Doc Mitchell's house, since it was pointed out that I missed this 9mm SMG:
Just pull the thingy aaannnd... Presto!
I also grab the sarsaparilla out of the case. Courier will be chugging these off-camera, since there's a chance of getting a Star cap out of it. He has good luck, so it's not really a bad chance either!
The SMG is worth the big bucks.
These could be useful I guess if you had a really heavy weapon or something that you didn't have skill to use properly yet. I never bother with 'em.
It's time to sell some shit. Let's read up first, though:
Hey wake up! I wanna do business 
I've got plenty of supplies for sale. Even got some weapon mods and special ammo ? well worth the caps, if you ask me. If you're hurting for caps, I've also got boxes of surplus ammo in the mescellaneous section. They're not great, but you get what you pay for.
Show me what you have for sale.
Can do.
Here's what we want. Expensive, but it's almost as if I stole everything that wasn't nailed down in Goodsprings or something!
Weapon mod kits to do things like silence or add scopes to weapons was one of the most popular mods for Fallout 3, and Obsidian worked it on into New Vegas. It's still pretty weak, but I'm going to be doing some serious murder with this thing anyway.
Now, there's one citizen's house I didn't rob yet, so let's go there.
See this nondescript looking box?
It's pretty useful. This sort of thing was also one of the most popular mods for Fallout 3 and got into the game as well.
Now, let's go talk to Trudy, like Sunny asked us to.
Seems like there's some trouble!
Trudy ain't give a damn about him. Or about Courier standing on her bar counter, for that matter.
I overheard your argument. What was that all about?
It looks like our little town got itself dragged into the middle of something we don't want anything to do with.
Do tell.
About a week ago, this trader, Ringo, comes into town. Survivor of an attack, he says. Bad men after him, needs a place to hide. We figured he was just in shock, so we gave him a place to lie low. We didn't actually expect anyone to come after him.
It's odd that Cobb wasn't able to find Ringo. The town's not that big.
Cobb hasn't exactly been looking for Ringo too hard ? I think he's afraid that Ringo will ambush him, which is probably true.
Where is Ringo now?
He's holed up at the abandoned gas station up the hill.
What are you going to do?
Some of the others, like Sunny, will probably stand up for Ringo if he asks for help, which he hasn't. Personally, I hope he sneaks out of town one night and takes the Powder Gangers with him.
Interesting. Goodbye.
Be careful out there.
Sounds like drama! Let's get to the bottom of this. (We actually COULD side with the Powder Gangers, but ehhhh...) We head up to the gas station and Ringo pulls a gun on us!
I'm not an enemy, if that's what your asking.
Sorry about the gun. You just caught me off guard, is all. We got off to a bad start. What say we start over with a friendly game of Caravan? You know how to play?
I will never play Caravan, I legitimately have no fucking clue how. If anyone wants to do a writeup on it, be my guest. The stakes are pretty low anyway, and I'll be solving Courier's money woes for life in other ways.
Did you know there's a man named Joe Cobb looking for you?
I'll have a much bigger problem once his friends show up. There's no way I could handle all of them in a gunfight.
What are you going to do about the Powder Gangers?
I'm going to lay low for as long as I can, assuming the town doesn't throw me to the wolves. I've got no chance against the gang on my own.
You need a hired gun. I'm available.
All i've got left on me are a handful of caps, but you get me out of this, and I'll make sure the Crimson Caravan pays you back. You've got my word.
It'll have to do. What now?
I'll ask around and see who I can round up.
Start with Sunny Smiles. She's been friendlier than most around here.
Can do.
I'm going to help Ringo take on the powder gangers. I might need your help.
Say no more. I'm in.
Just like that?
Just like that. I have a feeling that I'm going to end up fighting those guys one way or another, so I might as well get it over with. Joe Cobb talks about leaving us alone if we hand over Ringo, but I know his type. He and his friends will come after the town eventually.
If you could convince Trudy to join us, some of the folks in town might decide to help out as well. I know Easy Pete's got a stock of dynamite somewhere, and Chet just got a shipment of leather armor we could borrow. Talk to them as well. Finally, there's a good chance we'll all end up with extra holes in us, so if Doc Mitchell could cough up some extra stimpacks, that'd be great.
I'll see what I can do. Goodbye.
Shit. Courier can't make these checks, and unlike Fallout 3, it's a hard check ? no savescumming on a 3% persuade chance for us today. FORTUNATELY, there's ways around that.
To start with, Chet sells a spare Salesman Weekly:
Much better!
We take that and repair it with our old stuff we bought ? better condition armor is good. Note that the little tick for full condition is only 50% item health compared to a weapon's 75%. Also, there are a few changes to the way armor works, period! Fallout 3 had a very simple Damage Reduction (DR) that reduced incoming damage by up to 85%. New Vegas (re)introduces Damage Threshold. There are some honstly kind of boring and spergy formulas I could talk about, but important bit is that DT will subtract a flat amount of damage off, down to a minimum of 20% of incoming damage. It plays with DR too, but you can go look that up on the Fallout Wiki if you really wanna know.
So this leather armor takes off up to 6 points of damage. Could be worse, I guess?
The good doctor hands over the stimpacks with no skill check. However...
We can get a bit more ? some Doctor's Bags ? if we have 30 Medicine (which we do).
Stats affect the skills too - +2 skill points per relevant SPECIAL stat -
But we'll still fall flat on Trudy's Speech check. Damn. On the other hand, if we roid out a bit...
Easy Pete will cough up his dynamite. Cool.
So how are we going to get that little bit of Speech skill? By doing something completely unrelated, of course!
A little southeast of Goodsprings is a shack ? Jean Sky Diving is the overall area ? and we're really close to a levelup.
It's got a Star Cap...
And a locker we can't open (but I have a Locksmith's Reader) which is just enough XP to top off our level and get us enough Speech skill to convince Trudy.
Actually there's a key for the locker but I wanted the XP for lockpicking 
We now have full support! But I'm not doing that quiiiiite yet. Just a teeeeensy bit south along the road from Jean Sky Diving is a Powder Ganger camp:
Approach these suckers carefully ? they'll blow up, and with Courier's abysmal Explosives score, he gets like one beep before BOOM. More Explosives score increases the leniency on these things. We disarm and steal them.
And the Powder Gangers' ammo.
(which they don't like)
They don't like Courier killing their boys, either. Whoops!
The two gangers over at Jean Sky Diving are now hostile.
A bit to the East we find Ringo's robbed caravan, which is a potential source of free leather armor off one of the guards (it goes into improving the suit we're wearing).
We're about ready for Goodsprings, though.
I happen to know about where the Powder Gangers spawn, so I plant the stolen powder charges on that stretch of road 
Sunny's with us.
Well, I guess that means we're ready to go. Unless you think there's something else you can do?
Pretty much all of Goodsprings is on our side at this point. I think we're ready.
All right, I'm ready. I hope.
How many are there?
At least six, Joe Cobb included. They look pretty mean.
Let's go.
I'll be set up near the store. Let's hope the gang doesn't manage to make it that far.
WE'RE OFF
I done good with my powder charge placement! 
Fight's pretty easy.
You're welcome.
I'll stick around for a bit longer, but I'll be gone in a few days. If you ever visit New Vegas, look me up at the Crimson Caravan camp.
I have a feeling I'll make it up that way eventually. See you there.
I'm trying to track down the people who attacked me. Know anything about them?
Not much, other than they're a bunch of freeloaders who expected a few rounds on the house. I was able to get them to pay up, though. Of course, one of the Great Khans did knock my radio to the floor "by accident," and it hasn't been working since.
Did my attackers say where they were going?
They were having some kind of argument about it, but the guy in the checkered coat kept shushing them. Sounded like they came in from the north through Quarry Junction. If that's the case I can't say I blame them for not wanting to go back.
Why is that?
A lot of players (myself included) went out that way their first time and got promptly murdered by Cazadors ? mutated wasps that are pretty strong, really fast, have poison, and have quick erratic movements that make them a bitch to snipe. There's some other routes, too, but those will get you Giant Radscorpions ? absolute bastards for a low level character with the arrival of DT ? or Deathclaws (the infamous Fallout murderbeasts).
So where were they headed?
I didn't hear exactly, but the leader was talking about the Strip. Fella wants to get there and avoid the 15, he'd have to go east. Take Highway 93 up.
Do you know the robot that rescued me?
What does he actually do around here?
Other than rolling around once in awhile, it doesn't do anything useful as far as I can tell. I don't know why it took an interest in you, but I'd be careful. It's never helped anyone before.
That's... very interesting. Thanks for the info, Trudy.
Be careful out there.
Interesting! Victor's acting a little funny about us, it seems!
We pick up a shiny six-shooter and a second Stealth Boy off Joe Cobb's corpse.
We can fix up Trudy's radio, too, for a tiny reward in XP and caps. Every little bit helps, though!
Here's the reloading bench. You can break down ammo, and use the parts to make more of different types with the empty casings from your used shots. This was also a very popular type of mod in Fallout 3, and again made it on into New Vegas. You can see in the top left corner of that shot that I've finished up a Challenge, so this is a great time to talk about them.
You find Challenges on the Notes section of the Misc tab of your Pip Boy. There's a few kinds ? combat challenges, skill challenges, and story challenges to simplify it ? and completing a challenge gives experience (and some give special epithet perks with bonuses). A lot of them can be done over and over and over again for experience, or a few times and have different levels of the epithet perk.
The Workbench serves about the same purpose as the Reloading Bench, but for energy weapons instead of conventional firearms. New Vegas collapsed some skills, so anything that shoots a bullet is under Guns, and anything that uses a laser or plasma or fire is now Energy Weapons. I'm also oversimplifying a bit, there's a grenade rifle that counts as a Gun, but yeah, whatever, it's a good enough explanation for how the collapse worked out.
You can also make some other kinds of thing at the Workbench, though!
I didn't show myself picking it up, but Powder Gangers carry NCR scrip. We can use it as a trading commodity and it has one other use I'll show when I get there.
Oooone last thing for this update:
We buy a shovel from Chet, and head back up to the graveyard.
We can rob the dead, hell yeah! (The dead are mostly buried with ammunition, but there was one grave with 9 caps and another with some Psycho).