Fallout: New Vegas

(Updated to reflect the PipBoy method. Credit to the commentors who suggested it.)

First off, you'll want to load up on food. Ideally, carry a lot of low-weight, high-healing foods. (General rules: steaks > meat, created meals > food drops and pre-War food boxes.) Note that "outside" water and bottled drinks (Nuka and sarsaparilla) do not count towards this achievement, though it appears that bottled water does count. EDIT: Also, per Lanceride : Blood Sausages, Thin Red Paste, and Thick Red Paste do not count toward this achievement.

If you're looking to farm food for this achievement, I recommend fast travel between the following locations:

* Ruby Hill Mine / Silver Peak Mine (Bighorners) (near Jacobstown)
* Nipton, then walk east (lots of Bighorners)
* Goodsprings Source (Geckos)
* Crescent Canyon West/East (Golden Geckos) (southeast of Mojave Outpost)
* Nopah Cave (Fire Geckos) (southeast of Red Rock Canyon)
* Bloodborne Cave (Fire Geckos) (southeast of Nellis AFB)

In my opinion, the best sources of food are Geckos and Bighorners. They drop a lot of meat, and using a campfire (at Goodsprings Source, El Dorado Gas & Service, etc.) you can make Gecko Steaks or Bighorner Steaks. Both are made at a 1:1 ratio and do not require any extra ingredients, so you get a good amount of HP for your effort. (FYI, you'll want to avoid the Fire Gecko locations if you're a low level or have weak weapons.)

If you're feeling really creative and want a challenge, get the recipe for Wasteland Omelets from the girl in Sloan and farm Deathclaw Eggs at Quarry Junction and Dead Wind Cavern. I'm not aware of any food in the game that gives more HP -- my character gets 600 HP from each omelet, which has a weight of 1. Deathclaws are tough sumbitches, tho. You also have to have a few other found items in order to make the omelet. Note: The gourmand in the Ultra Luxe Casino sells Wasteland Omelettes, and these return to his inventory over time if you wait. If you're solely going for this achievement and have loads of caps to spend (and don't need XP or any sort of entertainment), this is the way to go. (Credit to stefb42 for this tip.)

Now, take a little damage, however you like. I recommend letting a bloatfly shoot at you a few times, or drown yourself (briefly), or something similar. As long as your health is not 100%, you can go into your PipBoy and eat as much food as you like, and it will all count -- as one commenter noted, you could theoretically eat 10,000 HP of food at once and the achievement will pop. NOTE: Per LV 1 Blue Slime this will only work in Hardcore mode - other difficulties appear to have a cap on healing from using this method. Please see his comment.

To track your progress, go into your PipBoy, press RT to go to "Data", left stick over to "Misc", press Y for "Challenges", and press X to show "Other Challenges". Look for, of course, "Desert Survivalist".

* EDIT: Please leave a comment and be productive if you think this solution can be improved. *

Fastest and easiest way possible: (Regardless of survival skill & amount of food on you, this can be done in less than 15 minutes).

1: Go to the food vendor chap at the Gourmand in the Ultra Luxe Casino.

2: Buy everything off him (He also sells wasteland omelettes (1-4 each time) which heal 420-600 points per omelette)).

3: Press 'back' and wait for 3-4 days.

4:Talk to the guy again and buy everything off him.

5:Keep buying everything off him and do this about 8-10 times.

Now you 'should' have enough food so, SAVE the game just in case.

Now start punching a few people so they retaliate and damage you back. Once you have lost health go into your pip-boy and onto the 'aid' section. Now just spam away at the 'A' button and eat everything! (don't worry about watching your health go up just eat eat eat!)

If the cheevo doesn't pop then simple reload the save and buy a bit more food and then try again.

I thought I would post this strategy as it doesn't involved fannying about looking for food, or drowning yourself and is easily the least effort and time consuming.

**Just another little tip**

Before buying all the food, you may want to clear your aid section of everything that isn't food (get rid of stimpaks etc). And also get rid of water (Yes it does count as food but it also adds some health instantly which we do not want as we are binge eating!)

Full credit goes to ripacrombie (10-27-2010, 11:05 PM) , courtesy of www.xbox360achievements.org, original method found on this thread:

http://www.xbox360achievements.org/forum/showthread.php?t=27...

To summarise: Collect Radscorpion Glands on your travels through the Wasteland or even better verse Giant Radscorpions (3 if your good enough) at the The Thorn battle arena. On average a single battle can give 10 Glands for use.

After collecting alot of Glands go to Primm (complete the quest there to unlock the Casino there) and talk to Ruby Nash, who usually walks outside the Mojave Express building near the Casino. She can convert 5 Radscorpion Glands into 5 Radscorpion Venom Casseroles. Make sure your health is not 100% (harm yourself with Dynamite, Grenade or a Mine), enter your Pipboy and eat all the casseroles you create at once (you don't need to eat and wait).

Each casserole gives 60 HP to Food. In theory you need to obtain 170 glands/casseroles from scratch to do this, but if you work The Thorn for Glands you can gain this quickly. As an added bonus you can gain XP, Caps and even do other 10000 damage achievements with different weapons (Melee, Unarmed, Guns, Energy Weapons, don't do Explosives) while beating on the Giant Radscorpions.

A lot of these are great ideas, but I did a little something different.

I went to the Nellis Mess Hall (One of the hangars in the Air Force Base where the boomers are, I recommend fast-traveling to the Nellis Hangars in the Northeast) and around there is the Boomer Chef. He sells you food.

What I did was cleared my inventory (as much as possible) and bought everything I could carry. Then I warped to the Crashed B-29 in the lake and went to drown myself (make sure Hardcore is off). After my health started depleting, I swum back onto shore. At this point, I began eating the food and didn't have to continuously redrown. I just did all the food at once and it counted for me.

I highly recommend getting the Purified Water, as it goes quickly and comes in high quantities. After that, I went back to the Mess Hangar and waited three periods of 24 hours and he restocked.

Rinse and Repeat.

It may not be the fastest fastest method, but it worked perfectly for me and didn't take long at all, and I was starting from 0.

Hope this helps!

Here is a good way to get fast, free food. In the Follower's Safehouse, there are two refrigerators which as long as Doctor Laria is present, contain an infinite amount of food.

I will now explain how to gain access to the safehouse, if you already have access to it you can skip this next section.

First of all, you will need to be at least neutral with the Followers of the Apocalypse. However I'm not really sure how to get in bad relations with them. You're goal is to become Idolised by the Followers, who will then grant you access to their safehouse. The easiest way to do this is to donate medical supplies to Julie Farkas in the Old Mormon Fort in Freeside, just outside New Vegas. If you are low on medical supplies, you can buy some (I found a good place to get them was the New Vegas Medical Centre, or even Julie herself). After donating enough to become Idolised, Julie will then offer you the chance to join the Followers (You may need to wait a few days, or leave the fort to get this to happen). Accept her offer, and among other things, she will give you the key to the Followers Safehouse.

Now before you travel to the Safehouse, you're going to want to stock up on Rad-Away, and something that will let you damage yourself (there is no water around the safehouse, and you will become extremely over-encumbered and unable to travel). I took a rocket launcher. Now travel to the safe house, which can be found north-west of Vault 22, or just west of New Vegas. It should be marked on the mini map for you after being given the key. Note: You must head towards the Safehouse from the west, as the there are impenetrable rocks behind it, making it impossible to get to from the east.

Inside you will found two fridges, among plenty of other cool loot. These fridges will be automatically restocked by Dr. Luria as long as she is present at the safe house. She comes for a few days every week. If she isn't there when you get there, just start waiting in 12 hour bursts until she is, as I found that if you wait longer she is likely to show up, but then immediately leave, leaving you without the chance to use the infinite fridges. However once she is there, go to one of the fridges, open it, take everything, close, repeat x 100. I started reading these forums while just pressing 'A' (open), 'X' (take all) repeatedly. After a very short amount of time (5 - 10 minutes), you should have enough food to fully complete this achievement from 0 HP healed.

Now I recommend walking outside to damage yourself (just to make sure you don't kill the doctor replenishing the fridges!) take everything you can to boost your Survival skill, then just starting taking all your different food. You can do this by damaging yourself, (so you have something to heal) then in the pop-boy keep taking food without closing it. This food will count towards your total food healed. If you want more information on this part, I suggest reading this wiki page which does a great job of explaining this process - http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Desert_Survivalist

Your progress can be tracked by going to the pip-boy, then Data – misc – challenges (Y).

You will also just want to watch your Radiation level, as the food you will be eating isn’t the best quality and is quite irradiated, and upon reaching max radiation you will die (Happened to me twice when I wasn’t paying attention!).

All in all a lot of button spamming involved, but quite a quick and easy way to get this achievement out of the way!

Good luck!

These all seem like good methods, but I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but having Arcade in your party gives you a ten percent boost to food items which makes a difference over the course of 50 big horn steaks.

Another way is:

Survival skill 100 , collect lots of bighorn or gecko meat , go to a campfire and do the above meat as steaks , and then you can go to a river or lake and start drowning your self so you can lose hit points and then start consuming the steaks until the achievement pops .

With that way you don't waste ammo and you don't limb your self .

You can use the same way for the 10000 hp with stimpacks .

Also save the game every 2 minutes while you doing that because you might forget your character below water and drown...you dont want to start all over again :))

To supplement Ricky Horror's solution;
Note that although any foods counts, going to a few places, will give you insane amounts of food, and it is important to have 3-6 different types of food as when you use the same food the health bonus only stacks, as in you'll get +1 HP for 9 secs for maize but instead of getting +2 hp for 9 secs you get +1 hp for 18 secs, so using more than one food will add more +hp effects.
Go to NCR Sharecropper farms where there are a bunch of green houses stacked with maize and pinto bean pods

Brooks tumbleweed ranch, Matthews animal husbandry farm and other places that have lots of bighorners and brahmin

edit: sarsaparillas, alcohol, and nuka cola DO NOT count, but cannibalism may count
edit: Purified water, irradiated water and dirty water DO count, but drinking from sources like lake mead or urinals does not count
edit: The storage hanger at the 'Hangers' at Nellis Airforce Base has a kitchen loaded with food, and a chef that you can purchase more from

go to the ultra luxe and if you have enough caps go to the gourmand guy that sells food and buy every thing there and go to lake golf and drown yourself to where your health is low but you are not killed and use the waste land omlet first and then use everything else you bought from him to heal yourself and then wait a couple of in game days to let him restock and then rinse and repeat

I figured this out near the end of doing this achievement. First off go to Nellis AFB and go to the mess. Speak to the chef and buy all his purified water off him. Rest for 3 days and repeat the process of buying water. do this 3-4 times. Next step is to go to the B-52 site (make sure you have the re-breather) and drown yourself until your nearly dead. Put the re-breather on and consume all your water. It should come up after a few minutes.

I was on 6,000 when I realised this and I quickly finished what I thought was going to be the most annoying achievement.

If you're willing to lose Karma and don't care about your loyalty to the NCR, go to the House Resort at Camp Golf, and go to the right. You will find a couple rows of bunk beds, but past there, a kitchen, and a Desert Survivalist's wet dream - dozens of food items, from Bubblegum to Brahmin Steak and even the Nuka Cola Quartz! The place is not far from Lake Mead or Lake Las Vegas where you can drown yourself to allow the food to heal you. The food storage here alone won't give you 10000 but it certainly makes a dent.

Go to the Gourmond restaurant in the ultra luxe, use pukey UK's method of getting food, then go into the ultra luxes bathing room opposite the Gourmond drown yourself in the water. This will cause you to loose health fast. Then simply use the accumulated food to heals yourself, drowning yourself again when your health maxes out.

This is probably the fastest method...
>At Camp McCarran in the concourse, talk to Cpl. William Farber. He can found around the dining area. He sells at one time: (17) Fresh Carrot, (31) Fresh Potato, (43) Maize, and (1) Pork and Beans.

>Go around the corner, hurt yourself, eat your food (BUT DO NOT CLOSE THE PIPBOY UNTIL YOU EAT ALL THE FOOD). Repeat.

>Note: make sure you're not an enemy of the NCR (I am not sure if it matters, but it is an NCR Camp)
>Note: watch out for NCR soldiers when hurting yourself, they will attack back including the chef who sells the food.

I found a relatively simple method to obtain this achievement.

Step 1. Goto the NCR Sharecropper Farms
Step 2. Collect all the food that is growing in the greenhouses.
Step 3. Damage yourself with an explosive weapon while crouched and looking down. (Note: The YCS-186 can do this as well.)
Step 4. Once you have shot yourself at least once. Eat all the maize and pinto beans you collected there.
Step 5. If you have not gotten the achievement. Leave, wait 3 days, and repeat steps 1-4.

Hope this helps you get this achievement.

The method in this video was perfect. Your gonna have to spend a few thousand csps, but it only takes a hour or two. Just reload a save when.you get the a achievement.