This page is about the quest. For for the song with the same name, see Ain't That a Kick in the Head?. For the achievement with the same name, see Ain't That a Kick in the Head (achievement). |
Ain't That a Kick in the Head is a tutorial quest in Fallout: New Vegas.
Quick walkthrough
- You wake up in Goodsprings
- Doc Mitchell will explain what happened to you
- Pick your appearance (race, age, appearance and name)
- Pick your SPECIAL points by the Vit-o-Matic
- Pick your Tag skills and Traits
- Doc gives back all possessions along with a Vault 21 jumpsuit and a Pip-Boy
- Doc tells you to talk to Sunny Smiles leading to Back in the Saddle.
Detailed walkthrough
After the intro cinematic, you wake up with blurred vision in a small town called Goodsprings. After a particularly bad evening, and rescue by Victor the Securiton, you awake inside Doc Mitchell's shack. As your head begins to clear you sit up to see the man who fixed you up, and owner of fore-mentioned shack. He will ask the player of their name, followed by handing them a Reflectron to examine (and customize) their appearance. You will have the opportunity to assign your SPECIAL points through the Vit-o-Matic vigor tester, and tag three skills after word-association, personality profile, and Rorschach blot tests.
Once character creation is complete, the doctor will walk the player to a door out into the town of Goodsprings, where he will give the player a Vault 21 jumpsuit as well as a Pip-Boy 3000 and any pre-order bonus items (you are also rewarded with 20 exp for completing this quest). There is no theft penalty for anything in the Doc's house during this initial quest. After leaving the house and returning, items will be marked as owned. The doctor has a fair amount of medical equipment, as well as a laser pistol and ammunition in a metal box. The chemistry set in the room you awoke in can be used by a character with enough initial Science skill to produce either some stimpaks or a small assortment of chems. There is also a broken 9mm SMG laying on a chest near the bed in which you woke up, which can be repaired and taken if your starting Repair skill is 25 or above. Also if you have high enough Speech or Medicine you can talk to the doc and he will give you three stimpaks.
Reward
After completing the tutorial, every character gets 4 stimpaks, 18 caps, a couple of bobby pins, possibly one ranged weapon (9mm pistol is default if no weapon skills are selected) or one hand-to-hand weapon, dependent on the selected tag-skills.
Tagged Skill | + Rewards based on the tagged skill. | Equipment |
---|---|---|
Lockpick | 12 bobby pins instead of 6 | |
Guns | 9mm pistol and 43 9mm rounds (instead of default 22 rounds) | |
Explosives | 8 sticks of dynamite (only when neither Guns nor Energy Weapons are tagged as well) | |
Energy Weapons | Laser pistol (only when Guns isn't tagged as well) | |
Melee Weapons | Straight razor (Regardless of other tagged skills) | |
Unarmed | Boxing gloves (only when Melee Weapons isn't tagged as well) |
Quest stages
Detailed psychological evaluation
- See: Psychological Evaluation
Notes
- Before you leave the doctor's house, the game will offer you the option to play the game in hardcore mode. The reward is an achievement/trophy. You do not receive any in-game reward for completing the game in hardcore mode.
- If the player talks to the doctor again before leaving the house, he/she is given the option to use a Medicine or Speech check (30). If the speech check is successful then the player is rewarded with 3 stimpaks.
- Doc Mitchell will comment on any extremes in your special skills (e.g. 1 in Intelligence, 8 in Luck, etc.)
- In the event that a person wants to skip through the options process that decides your tag skills, the default tag skills are Melee weapons, Survival and Speech.
- If the player is not given a laser pistol by Mitchell, one can be found on a shelf with ammunition.
- Since the items in Dr. Mitchell's house are not assigned to him, they can be collected without losing Karma.
- In Fallout 3, if the Lone Wanderer says they hate their Pip-Boy and asks how to get it off, Stanley Armstrong says its impossible. However, Dr. Mitchell took his off somehow and it is possible in Mick and Ralph's store to swap it out for the Pimp-Boy 3000 after resolving Mick's problem.
- After finishing customizing your character's appearance, Dr. Mitchell will always say he got most of it right, the stuff that mattered, even if you changed from the default male to female
- The last Rorschach paper blot can be called "Two Bears High Fiving" by the player. If you take the Wild Wasteland perk, then there is an NPC in Honest Hearts named Two-Bears-High-Fiving.
Behind the scenes
- Ain't That a Kick in the Head? is the name of a popular Dean Martin song. The song is also featured on the in-game radio station Radio New Vegas and played in the casinos.
Bugs
- Vit-o-Matic Vigor Tester, clicking on the up/down arrows to increase or decrease a statistic, or the left/right arrows to shift between statistics, may not work. If this happens, it may be that the game thinks that the arrow is somewhere else, in which case clicking elsewhere on the screen will produce the desired result. Another workaround is to use your keyboard's arrow keys (NOT the wsad keys) to increase/decrease statistics and shift between statistics. While using the