My Fallout NV experience so far

[Ix Rebound]

Side note: did the scattered Deathclaws on the High Road in Lonesome Road exterminate anyone else? Says on the wiki that some sadist made them level-scaled so they out-damage the Legendary Deathclaw in Dead Wind Cavern. As in, at level 48 or so in the advanced riot gear, they killed me in two hits.

Oh yeah, most definitely.

The Survivalist Rifle and Graham's pistol from Honest Hearts did a good job of keeping most of them away, but when they got close for a lunge...well.. say goodbye to half your health and a bunch of stimpacks

Even worse was going into areas and triggering extra Deathclaw spawns, especially the abandoned trailer, where one just spawns on top of it!
Scared me more than any moment in F.E.A.R let me tell you..
Listening to that thing breathe and growl, seeing its eyes through the holes in the trailers walls..

 

[Tuesday Night Fever]

Spoiler

Actually you didn't botch the lesson. If you take the gold you end up looking like the world's biggest idiot in the eyes of the game. Another one of the game's many messages. I noticed it after I took the gold.

The game is basically laughing at the player in Dead Money.

The casino has gold. Gold is money. Money only exists because of value. Value exists because of scarcity. Replicators make things for nearly free meaning there is no scarcity. Power can become any rare thing.

Money is meaningless in a land of replicators. Where everything costs the same.

Meaning we ignored infinite free stuff just to steal money to buy finite stuff. Because of our primitive monkey brain.

Fallout is mostly about laughing at normal human nature.

Spoiler

To be fair, the replicators in the Sierra Madre won't be of much help to me when it's time to upgrade my Ratslayer to a suppressed Anti-Materiel Rifle and a mountain of .50BMG rounds, but shoving a bar of gold at the GRA vendor robot will. Woohoo metagaming; deal with one agonizingly slow walk back to town so I never have to bother vendoring junk ever again. I suppose the argument could be made that the replicators could be reprogrammed to manufacture additional things... but it's long-forgotten technology that probably no one alive (except maybe Mr. House?) would have any understanding of. Hell, the scientific scene is apparently so abysmal in the New Vegas region that no one in the NCR seems to notice anything even slightly fishy about Fantastic.

 

[Ravinoff]

Oh yeah, most definitely.

The Survivalist Rifle and Graham's pistol from Honest Hearts did a good job of keeping most of them away, but when they got close for a lunge...well.. say goodbye to half your health and a bunch of stimpacks

Even worse was going into areas and triggering extra Deathclaw spawns, especially the abandoned trailer, where one just spawns on top of it!
Scared me more than any moment in F.E.A.R let me tell you..
Listening to that thing breathe and growl, seeing its eyes through the holes in the trailers walls..

Oh god, the one on the trailer. The loot was so tempting that I couldn't resist it (hundreds of rounds of high-tier ammo), but that thing would tear me apart, I eventually popped a Stealth Boy and ran away.

 

[zombiejoe]

Glad you're enjoying the game. I've always liked New Vegas more than 3, though both are fine games.

And personally, I think that DLC wise
Old World Blues>Dead Money>Lonesome Road>Honest Hearts

Though they should be played in order of release.