DLC #53 - Fallout : New Vegas - Gun Runner's Arsenal

To end the stream of New Vegas DLC, Gun Runner's Arsenal is something a little bit different to the usual episodic story related angle.                                                                                                              
As far as the trophies go, this is just essentially a series of challenges to slog through that see you slaughtering practically everything in the wasteland through unusual means, with 3 trophies tied to completing 9 different challenges of increasing difficulty.                                                                      
The other 2 trophies, "Curious and Relics" and "Master of the Arsenal" require 10,000 points worth of damage with Gun Runner's Arsenal weapons, and unique Mojave weapons, both are which are provided by vendors as part of the DLC. These will flow naturally if you make sure you complete all the challenges with these types of weapons, speaking of which;

Up to the Challenge - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) one star (*) Challenges.
Combat Veteran - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) two star (**) Challenges.
Pros Only - Completed any three Gun Runners' Arsenal (GRA) three star (***) Challenges.

For the most part, the challenges aren't too difficult, though it is mainly down to the fact you get a selective range of choice for each tier.                                                                                                       
Some of the challenges in certain tiers just simply aren't worth the time and effort, and there are definitely easier alternatives (Why would you go through the hassle of killing 20 animals with the FatMan when you can just cripple 5 right arms with a shotgun, which takes no longer than 5 minutes?).                                                                                                                                                        
It's also worth nothing that, if you've already hit the end game (Given the fact this is the 5th DLC package, then chances are, you have) then some of the challenges become somewhat locked out, given the fact they require you to injure/kill certain story-related characters who may already be dead, meaning the only remedy to this issue is to play through the entire game again, which you're hardly likely to want to do.                                                                                                                        
Some of the three star challenges have an air of toughness about them, and despite the freedom of choice, you'll still feel like you're stuck between a rock and a hard place, since most of them involve tackling the Mojave's most dangerous enemies/characters.                                                                   
Despite that, and assuming you accumulate the two, 10,000 damage related trophies along the way, you'll probably beat the package in around 6 hours or so. I tackled the challenges I felt were the easiest for every tier. They're listed below;                                                                                      
One Star Challenges :

• Benefit or Hazard
• The same could be said of all Religious weapons
• Ne, Ne, Ne, Ne...

Two Star Challenges :

• Dyin' ain't much of a Living
• Nyah! See?
• White Line Nightmare

Three Star Challenges :

• Against All Tyrants
• Armed For Bear
• Man-Machine Interface

DLC #52 - Fallout : New Vegas - Dead Money

Escape Father Elijah's clutches, and take
your revenge.

Dead Money finishes off the story driven New Vegas DLC, and although the trophies aren't exactly challenging, the various game mechanics will make you work for them a little harder than you may enjoy.
                
Out of the 5 trophies, 4 of them are progression based (noticed the pattern yet?), and just require you to beat the game, though you will need to bring out the good, old save game trickery again if you don't wish to play this episode through twice to grab everything on offer.
                                                                 
The story doesn't exactly branch, but there are two different ways to end it, with a trophy granted for each way, so as long as you save before accessing the vault, you can reload your save and perform the opposite action for whichever trophy you need. Thankfully, you won't have to replay any long branches or anything like with previous pieces of DLC and the main game, so you won't feel like you're wasting time.    
                                     
The only other trophy, "Sierra Souvenir Aficionado", comes from collecting 500 Sierre Madre chips, which are scattered around practically everywhere, so as long as you're aware to look out for them, you shouldn't be in any danger of missing them, or not collecting enough of them. 
             
Just a word on the previously mentioned game mechanics, they don't make the story challenging, just a little bit frustrating. The episode is probably the longest out of all the DLC, but only because you'll be scouting out radios to avoid your collar being blown up, or red clouds to avoid being poisoned and killed. It means the pace of the game is broken quite often, and that makes it seem longer than it really is.                                                                    
All in all, you're probably looking at about 6 hours to beat the DLC, providing you make sure you can reload a save before the opening of the vault.

DLC #51 - Fallout : New Vegas - Old World Blues

Outsmart Dr. Klein, and escape Big Mountain

After the step up in difficulty bought about by Lonesome Road, Old World Blues follows up with a more relaxed set of trophies, more similar to the progression based nature of Honest Hearts.
                                                      
Out of the 5 trophies, 4 of them are all related to the main quest-line, which can easily be completed within 2-3 hours, and provides a very minimal challenge, despite 2 boss fights near the end. 
                                                     
Apart from that, the "Making Friends" trophy is the only trophy that branches away from the main quest, and puts you through a bog standard fetch mission, as you locate 10 pieces of data to re-activate 10 different electrical items in the central hub of the map.
                                                                    
The whole package is an incredibly easy 5 trophies, and should take no longer than 4 hours to fully complete. The challenge presented is close to non-existent and you could easily sit down and finish it all in 1 casual sitting.

DLC #50 - Fallout : New Vegas - Lonesome Road

Lonesome Road brings 5 additional trophies to Fallout, and although there is a little bit more variety in the trophy requirements for this package, it is still a fairly relaxed ride that won't trip you up too badly (Until you come to the collectibles part, that is...).

Out of the 5 trophies on offer, only 2 of them are progression based, and simply relate to going through, and beating, the story within the expansion.

It is a little bit tougher to beat than Honest Hearts, for the reasons that you'll run into deathclaws and a tricky final boss fight, but there are various ways round these obstacles, so seasoned players shouldn't find it too much like hard work.

The other 3 trophies in the package relate to collectibles, in one form or another;

ED-Ecated - Found all of ED-E's upgrades in the divide
Rocket's Red Glare - Acquired all upgrades for the divide's signature weapon
Warhead Hunter - Detonated all warheads in the divide

Finding all of these collectibles really isn't really too difficult, but you'll definitely need to be aware of a few things.

The Red Glare (which is an automatic, rapid fire rocket launcher) has 3 upgrades, all of which amount to around 45,000 caps collectively. The best way to approach this is to save your game and sell everything to the electrical commissionary, before re-loading the save after the trophy notification. You'll most likely need to balance out the equivalent of what you need in caps with equipment, given the fact the vendor only has 6000 caps in trading itself. If you need to raise a significant amount of funds still, you might be out luck unless you've done alot of previous collecting, so just be aware of how much you need.

Also, even though ED-E only has 5 upgrades available, 1 of them is stored behind a locked door that requires a terminal hack to the tune of 75 skill. There is no alternative way to unlock the door, so if you haven't got close to a 75 hacking skill, you've either got alot of levelling up to do, or you'll need to find skill books/magazines.

The length of the DLC will depend on if you run into any of the issues above, but providing you have a relatively smooth path from start to end, then you're looking at no more than 6 hours or so to achieve all the trophies.

The main story has flourishes of difficulty, but is mostly trouble-free, and the collectibles are just a matter of backtracking and using any relevant guides to find out the locations of everything. Assuming you don't hit any snags, it's a straight forward enough piece of DLC.  

DLC #49 - Fallout : New Vegas - Honest Hearts

Banish the "White Legs" in Honest Hearts

Sticking with the New Vegas theme, the barrage of DLC content begins with Honest Hearts, and is an incredibly east package to pick up some additional trophies from.
                     
The 5 trophies on offer are entirely progression based, and the only thing worth noting is that story provides a branched ending, similar to that of the main game story, which includes 2 endings, each with a relevant trophy for completing the branch.                                                        
With some good old-fashioned save game trickery, you can play out the 1 ending, and then reload back at the crux point to play out the other ending and unlock whichever trophy you didn't grab first time round.
                   
In terms of difficulty, there practically is none, and the episode takes no longer than 2-4 hours to run through in full, along with both of it's alternative endings (Providing you opt for the more time efficient option of loading from the branch-off point). Even if you do wish to play through the DLC in full twice, instead of re-loading your save, you're still only looking at about 6 hours maximum to grab all 5 trophies. It's a very linear, and incredibly relaxed piece of content.
                                                            
Easy.

Platinum #42 - Fallout : New Vegas

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 6/10                                                                              
The New Vegas trophy list follows a very similar mould to the previous Fallout game, with the vast majority of the list packed with cumulative and quest progression trophies.                                                   
There are significantly less trophies related to side quests this time round, though that's down to the branched off ending paths present at the end of the game.

In a very similar manner to the karma system in Fallout 3, which had trophies revolving around hitting the same levels with each of the 3 karma stances, and therefore promoting multiple playthroughs, this list does exactly the same thing, except with multiple game endings depending on selections and choices throughout the game.

Thankfully, and in the same manner as Fallout 3, there is also a crux point where you can choose which path to take, at which times you can use a bit of save game trickery in order to reload the game from that same section and mop up each of the trophies related to the games 4 different quest endings, without the hassle of actually having to play the game through 4 times in full.
                                 
The main questline isn't terribly long anyway, but going through each of the 4 endings individually on separate playthroughs would take a solid amount of time and dedication, and would essentially turn the list into a needless chore, so it would be in the best interest of time and enjoyment to duplicate your save file and just reload them before each quest choice.
                                          
Carrying on that progression based theme, there are a bunch of tasks all relating to small grinds over various aspects of skills including lockpicking, hacking, speech challenges and repairing. You can naturally unlock most of these, but for others, you will need to delve deeper into the expansive wasteland and side activities, especially for the trophies that have higher accumulative totals to rack up.
                                                                               
There are also handful of trophies that require you to deal 10,000 points of damage with various wasteland weapons, making caps and healing yourself but most of these are just a matter of playing through the game naturally, and will flow throughout the course of the game. Accumulating damage with weapons is easy to farm through, and there definitely isn't a shortage of dungeons and caves to blast through in order to rack up enough damage points for each weapon category.

It can get more difficult when it comes to 10,000 points worth of things such as unarmed damage and melee weapons, simply due to the reason that enemies are always more dangerous when you're closer to them, but all the points based trophies are simply just a matter of time and shouldn't be too difficult to unlock.
    
Being set in New Vegas, it wouldn't be a complete list without some casino based trophies. The  "Courier Who Broke the Bank" trophy,  awarded for getting barred from each of the strip's casinos, essentially comes down to just cleaning them out of caps, and being banned from competing inside them.

Each casino has a different limit, which is usually higher than the previous one, and even though it can be quite difficult to win so often that you clear out an entire fund pot, if you raise your in-game luck attribute high enough, you can essentially win every single game you play, which definitely takes the sting out of the challenge. Even if you didn't choose a high luck attribute at the start of the game, you can wipe and modify your attribute set specifically for these trophies, which you will most likely need to do if you want this trophy, as it's very difficult to win such a high volume of casino games without it.
                                                                                                      
The only trophy you can argue that provides any sort of challenge is the only Gold trophy in this list. The "Hardcore" trophy, awarded for playing the game from start to finish in hardcore mode, is a mode where you have to take into account various factors that pertain more to real life survival, including starvation, dehydration, prolonged limb damage and sleep.

Even though you have to keep the permutations of Hardcore mode switched on throughout the whole game, you can choose to play it on any difficulty, which does make this considerably easier. It is still tough to keep tabs on the various survival factors in the game, but they degenerate your characters health at a much lower rate on the lower difficulty levels, meaning you're not constantly keeping an eye out on your survival factors so often.

If you want a genuine challenge, Hardcore mode will provide it on the games higher difficulty levels, but that really is the only way that this list will test you. There are a few difficulty spikes in some other areas too, but this Platinum is really just about time. Playing through the main quest is an 8-12 hour experience, and you will need to play through each of the 4 different endings, which, despite being a massive timesaver if you utilise the save game trickery mentioned above, will still take a fair amount of time.

The abundance of side activities and other quests that have trophies attached to them will add to the overall completion time significantly, and you can expect anywhere between 80-100 hours for a general estimation. If you're up for the grind, this is a relatively easy list, but you should expect a slight challenge.

Notable Trophies - 

Veni, Vidi, Vici! - Completed Veni, Vidi, Vici
Eureka! - Completed Eureka!
Render Unto Caesar - Completed Render Unto Caesar
All or Northing - Completed All of Nothing
Hardcore - Played the game from start to finish in Hardcore Mode. 

Hardest Trophy -   
                                                                                                                                

  

Veni, Vidi, Vici!
Completed Veni, Vidi, Vici.





Note : Any of the 4 main ending trophies could be deemed as the hardest trophy, but I felt this one just about edged it in terms of difficulty.