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Steam Deck35 ReportsA warning message displayed when I first launched it. I ignored and had no issues after.
Occasional infinite save loading. Had to load an older save, then the most recent one.
Everything default, no mods. Experienced 1 crash in about 100 hours of playing on the Deck. Always stable 60 fps throughout the game. Sometimes loading the most recent save file right after starting the game would result in an infinite loading screen; to fix it I had to load an older save first. No other issues.
Sometimes the audio would crackle if I put the deck into sleep mode and woke it up again. And rarely it would crackle for a few seconds during gameplay
There was some slowdown during some action sequences.
Over my playtime my game would crash from time to time. This happened around 10 times in my 110+ hour playthrough
Trying to launch the game whilst the Steam Deck is plugged into a deck causes the game to not recognise any other input other than the Steam Deck itself. You HAVE to boot the game without the Steam Deck plugged in, then you can plug it in. This does mean you'll get black bars on the side if your monitor is bigger than the Steam Deck resolution but it's still perfectly playable.
60TDP
Default proton recommended by valve caused frequent crashing. Switching to GE-Proton7-10 seems to resolve this based on discussions on redit.
I used Protontricks under the New Vegas profile explicitly so I could install Mod Organizer 2 for use with modding.
I changed the right trackpad press function to act as left-click. Additionally, I made one of the back grip buttons ~ for console commands if needed, and another set to Esc.
7w TDP gives 60fps in some locations with most very easily fluctuating between 40-60. 5w TDP limit gives nearly 4 hours of play at a locked 40Hz.
Terminal text can sometimes be hard to decipher, especially if not running at native res or if the 'Half Rate Shading' option in Steam overlay is enabled.
Fixed upon using Proton-GE
Here's the meat of my report to get mod support working. I do also apologize in advance for how long the report here is.
Use ProtonUp-Qt in order to install the latest 'Steam Tinker Launch' [STL herein] and set the game to use that instead of Proton. Additionally, I chose to install the latest Proton-GE, which happened to be 9-2. This version over Steam's default Proton fixed several visual glitches and improved performance slightly.
From here, it is possible to install Mod Organizer 2. Maybe. If you're lucky, there will be no problem. Some users may need to browse to /dev/shm/steamtinkerlaunch/steamtinkerlaunch.log and find out what the red highlighted error they have says. For me, I needed to copy to manually installed MO2 files to the specified location in my error message. This allowed STL to finally allow me to launch MO2.
After verifying MO2 works, I went back to the main menu of STL and clicked on "Game Menu" at the bottom. From here, there are some core settings that were mandatory to change in order to get mods, including those that rely on xNVSE, to work. They are as follows:
Misc options
- ✅ Use custom command
- Custom command:
Mod Organizer.exe
Proton options
- Proton version:
GE-Proton9-2(The latest at the time of installation) - ✅ Dxvk async
This allowed me to launch the game, bringing up MO2 by default, and detect my mod load order, as well as choose to launch NVSE for a fully modded experience. I largely followed the "Viva New Vegas" guide, however, to ensure all NVSE plugins worked as intended, I installed them manually rather than through MO2. Every mod worked beautifully, & I only had a single crash out of a 30-hour NCR playthrough. Hopefully this helps anyone trying to get mods set up on their Deck as well.
If you put your deck to sleep while the game is running, then occasionally it will make the Audio horribly distorted when waking the deck up, until you restart the game.
F:NV lacks Aim Assist for controllers, which makes aiming a nightmare. The game is still perfectly playable, but if you're not great with a controller a mod is recommended for some form of Aim Assist.
For some odd reason, game dips to 45-55 FPS on the Strip. This is likely an issue with the game's inability to allocate the full power of the deck to the game due to its age.
Occasional Crashes when loading into a new area; this likely is a problem with the base game, as its notorious for crashing.
It is entirely possible to install MO2 on this, using a third party installer. If you would like to do that, the game MUST be installed on the deck's SSD.
When the game launches, the player is required to interact with a launcher that only accepts mouse input. This, however, will not happen if the game is modded through Nexus.
Some action scenes with many enemies and flying bullets caused a little framerate drop. This, however, may have been caused by the upscaled textures and improved game assets I was using, which did not play well with the ancient game engine.
The game crashed a couple of time without any apparent reason. This behavior, however, seems consistent with the experiences of players in native environments.
I played the vanilla version of the game the first 15 minutes and then I went ahead to mod it by using the Nexus Mod Manager in order to have upscaled textures and improved game assets. Everything went as expected in both cases, with only some minor performance issues in very specific game phases (i.e. during the Hoover Dam battle). All in all the experience was absolutely enjoyable and I can assure that anyone will be able to play this game on Steam Deck with no major problem.
Brightness shortcut (Quick Menu + left analog up/down) blocks input. Have to enter and exit Quick Settings.
changed compatibility settings
went
The game crashes every time I get past the launcher without fail, not even getting to the Obsidian logo
Switched to 40HZ to save battery life.
Slight performance dips/stutter occassionally when playing recently, but not anything too significant.
A great experience overall.
Besides needing touchscreen for launcher and on-screen keyboard for your name, works beautifully OOTB
had to bring up Steam virtual keyboard with Steam Button + X to enter name, but other than that worked a treat just with normal controls
It's much better played with a keyboard and mouse, the aiming with a controller is too imprecise. Not recommend on Steam Deck.
40fps and refresh rate cap
Aiming with a controller is very imprecise with the official layout or the custom gyro layouts.
Installed Matoking Protontricks flatpak, followed the guide on github github/flathub/com.github.Matoking.protontricks
Had issues after putting deck in sleep mode several times, just need to restart game to fix it.
Very infrequent crashes, 1 or 2 whole playthrough
Crackling when resuming from sleep, but not always.
Sometimes the game would hang on the loading screen after launching and loading a save. Workaround by loading a previous save (usually a recent autosave).
2-3 crashes across a whole playthrough, but nothing out of the ordinary for a Fallout title.
Limit TDP to 6w
Game launches with a seperate menu, but works with touchpad/screen. Just press play, or configure graphics.
The game doesn't launch in 1280x800 by default, but is easily fixed from the launcher's config menu.
Lag spikes, a common creature in New Vegas. Probably wouldn't happen if I bothered to install community patches.
Again, not uncommon to Windows New Vegas. Probably also fixed with community patches.
I never bothered to install mods or patches, but I'd probably recommend it for a more stable experience. Played through the whole game without it while only being mildly inconvenienced by CTDs or lag spikes (especially with explosions).
Totally fine in handheld or with KBM, but if you're using a controller it can be a pain to navigate.
A screen launching will appear after start the game, use the touchscreen to choose the right resolution in OPTIONS.
Was unable to use triggers and bumpers in Doc Mitchell's house (the intro location;) leaving allowed me to use them
Streaming issue when game loads in new outdoor environment while exploring wasteland; displayed by noticeable frame rate drop
Unsurprising as even on console, this game is bound to crash
It's a miracle this even works on Proton due to the fact how notorious the game's (and in turn, the PC port) bugs and issues are.
Playing vanilla works well enough. But it's incredible this can be played with mods on a handheld.
We can play the game with mods. Use the linux version of Mod Organizer 2 to manage mods. Here's the build I use: https://github.com/rockerbacon/modorganizer2-linux-installer
I play with the mod list, Viva New Vegas, and a few other mods. Here's my controller setup: steam://controllerconfig/22380/2818364555 I mostly keep playing with gamepad mode. But have a few keyboard hotkeys added in.
Set display refresh rate to 40Hz. In game VSync on. Medium graphics preset on with actors and object fade set to max. I get around 4 to 4.5 hours of battery life.
Don't quicksave or overwrite saves when playing modded. Also, don't use autosaves. Again, the troubles of modding this game.
I play Fallout New Vegas modded. I get crashes despite all the third party tools to get it stable. It's expected with this game.
Everything seems to work very well with minimal to no configuration out of the box, and even modding works if you finagle it properly.
Used a tweak from Stewie's Tweaks to enable simultaneous mouse and controller input. Regular controller input works as expected, as well.
Reducing the refresh rate to 40 Hz seemed to net me an extra thirty mintues to an hour of extra playtime and a steady framerate even when heavily modded, though results may vary.
I heard an odd audio glitch every once in a while. Not sure whether it was a mod or the game itself, but disabling my non-essential mods did not do away with the sound.
If you play the game vanilla, this will work straight out of the box for you, but if you want mods, you're going to have to be willing to get your hands dirty with SteamTinkerLaunch.
While modding itself requires some basic knowledge of Linux and a copious amount of patience, once you have all the mods loaded through Vortex or Mod Organizer 2, the actual playing experience is pretty great. Most mods work as inteneded—even Tale of Two Wastelands if you have access to a Windows device and follow the build instructions there before copying the resulting folder over—with only one of my regularly-used mods failing to work properly.
Registry fix was required to get the game to detect it was installed.
Worked well, you'll need to use the touch screen to get past the launcher screen. Some crashes in seemingly random areas, but after rebooting I was able to go back and play as normal.
Had to use touchscreen for the initial launch window
Changed TDP to 6 for smooth 60fps with very little hiccups. Can go down to 5 or even 4 if you're ok with 30fps gaming for longer battery life.
Menu requires touchscreen, besides that game worked fine.
Launcher menu doesn't support gamepad but the deck has touchscreen, or you can bind a trackpad for mouse
5w TDP, 30FPS cap will get you just shy of 5 hours of playtime with ingame settings at "High". At 5w, New Vegas can also run at an unsteady 60FPS, with frequent dips. Adjusting GPU allocation might help with this if 30FPS is a non-starter for you.
New Vegas doesn't support mixed input, meaning you'll have to choose between analog movement and mouse aim.
Played for several hours without any issues. Game runs well and has 360-era gamepad support out of the box, if you can stand not having gyro aim.
