Last Day Of Freedom
Jan. 2nd, 2022 11:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWell, until next weekend, but it's just not the SAME when it's only two days off instead of like eleven. *sigh* At least it's been a good break. If a bit of a weird one, what with the sudden obsession with an Alton Towers roller coaster with a brainwashing theme. I would not have guessed that if you said it was something that would happen at the end of 2020.
Anyway, I'm just hanging out before bed, making a beginning-of-the-year backup and doing some socializing -- let's see how I did on today's to-dos, shall we?
1. Either continue updating the "Playthrough Progression" part of my "Fallout of Darkness" doc,or get back to work on "Learn To Love Again": Check to the former – I updated the playthrough with Friday’s session before lunch, then with today’s session (as seen below) this afternoon after, well, playing it. Also started an “artifacts” list for Alice for her magical do-dads and whatnot – currently the only entry is the Tal’Mehe’Ra blade, but I’m gonna have to poke through the occult items you can pick up in Bloodlines and see which ones I personally think she would still have after two centuries.
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, watch Fallout lore video in Watch Later, and Jon's latest F:NV "Utter Chaos" video: Check! Two Subs, two Fallouts, life is good –
A) Started with that Fallout lore video I’ve had saved up for a while – “Fallout Lore: Ug-Qualtoth, The Krivbeknih and The Blackhall Family!” A solid sum-up of the eldritch horror Ug-Qualtoth and the history of Dunwich Borers and its founders – and its artifacts. It was pretty interesting stuff – while I’m semi-familiar with the FO4 portion of the lore, I wasn’t up on the history from the FO3 portion, so it was good to get filled in on the history of Constance Blackhall and her family, and the company. The creator, Synonymous, even posited that Uq-Qualtoth is some sort of god of radiation, as more than one of his followers has been transformed into a ghoul, and feral ghouls and radiation tend to lurk in the areas where he’s worshiped, or where his artifacts are currently stored (like his obelisk under the Dunwich Building, or the two mini-nukes flanking Kremvh’s Tooth). Apparently the idea is that the ferals are supposed to be eternal worshipers. Spooky! I like it.
B) Then it was over to the Subs, for Call Me Kevin and Hardcore Minecraft One Chunk Challenge! Today was the big one, folks – today Kevin both went to the Nether, and then to the End to complete the game! How did he do this? Well, mostly through heading through the portal to the Nether, killing skeletons, stumbling upon old bastions, hiding from Blazes until he could pop out and slaughter them for their rods, playing tennis with Ghasts, finding a great spawn point for Endermen and forcing them into boats so he could kill them for their pearls, heading home to slaughter his entire pen of chickens for provisions (while the Christmas “present box” update was active, no less), setting up the portal to the End, IMMEDIATELY building a giant tower into the sky on the advice of another Minecraft YouTuber, pouring water over a lava block to make both obsidian and a giant waterfall, getting the Ender dragon to come up to him –
And getting the dragon STUCK IN THE WATER so Kevin could shoot arrows at it at his leisure. Holy crap, a weird way to kill the Ender Dragon I was actually unfamiliar with. O.o But he did it, smashed whatever its the Ender Dragon left behind, then took a GIANT leap of faith into the portal below to end the game! Challenge completed, and in MUCH less time than the standard playthrough! True military genius, our Kevin (and that other YouTuber – thanks for the strat, buddy!).
C) Then, this evening, it was time for GrayStillPlays and more Skate 3! Because Gray found himself a fun infinite speed glitch caused by tossing your skateboard on the ground, waiting for it to start rolling away, and then jumping onto it at JUST the right moment. The game will always teleport it back to you, but if you time it right, you’ll go FLYING. Generally into a guard rail, wall, cliff, or other solid object that then crushes some of your bones, but. . . XD Gray was getting speeds up to 111.3 MPH according to the game! Rocketing down lonely roads, doing awesome tricks in the skate park, leaping off buildings in an attempt to smash through the windows in a different building, and sending himself into space via someone’s swimming pool. Before crashing down into some garbage cans. XD Oh dear – I am SO looking forward to more skating adventures with his 50-year-old balding skater! XD
D) And then, of course, it was time for Jon’s new F:NV series, “Utter Chaos!” Where everything is randomized and the doors may kill you. XD Jon’s adventures today included a trip to the general area of Nellis, where he explored the hangars and found a couple of broken doors that didn’t go where they said they went (which was – into the hangars, which should have been Jon’s first clue they’d gone wrong in a full randomization mod); found his way to the Boomers and did a quest for them to clear out the “ants” in the Nellis generators because he already knew the way in – said “ants” included a tunneler with some books, a Nightkin super mutant with a missile launcher (or possibly a Fat Man), one ACTUAL ANT, and Mr. House; went back to the Tops Restaurant after realizing “oh hell, I ACTUALLY MISSED BENNY COMING IN THERE ONCE” – but sadly, despite waiting for a full in-game day, Benny never showed up again; found a door into the part of the New Vegas strip he was most desperate to see, which led to a door into the Lucky 38 Casino, which led him to Now Giant Ghoul Mr. House and actually ALLOWED HIM TO ADVANCE THE PLOT A BIT (though he still doesn’t have the platinum chip, of course – but he did get an invite from the NCR Ambassador to talk to him!); ventured into the Narrows, a location in the Honest Hearts DLC, and explored the caves looking for good locations; attempt to follow what I assume to be a stripper under normal circumstances but now was a woman in a full hazmat suit back to her room, only for her to blip out of existence like six doors into her journey of randomness across the wasteland; found a door into the ruins of a certain city to have a final showdown with the Great Khans and get some fame and good karma with the NCR; and went ALL ACROSS THE MAP, CHECKING EVERY DOOR EVERY PLACE HE COULD THINK OF FOR ONE DOOR INTO THE TOPS –
And he found it. Straight onto the main casino floor. In the depths of the sewers.
It needs a key.
Jon openly admitted he could cry at the end of the episode. Even the wonderful sharecropper farm, with all of its doors, let him down. So next week is THE SEWER LEVEL EPISODE! Where, unless he thinks of another plan, Jon has to navigate an area he’s largely ignored in Fallout: New Vegas. This should be interesting. XD
3. Play Fallout 4 and take on USAF Station Olivia: Check! Victor and Codsworth moved in under the cover of the fog, and were able to take out the two guys around the outside of the building (and the one dog – got a bandanna for Dogmeat out of it), then I had Victor take a moment to further improve his armor and do some scrapping before heading into the station itself.
Where, uh, Victor immediately needed a quick bathroom break. ^^; Welp, that’s Advanced Needs 2 for you. . .at least it happened before the action kicked off! Codsworth ended up roasting the first two raiders before Victor could get a shot off, then they explored the building, Victor giving into his pack rat tendencies more than once (more materials, more materials!), before trying to molotov a raider –
Aaand accidentally blowing himself up. (Well, either that or getting mini-gunned to death – suspect it was a combination of the two.) Whoops. I tried going a different way and taking on the raiders on the other side – broke an arm molotoving THEM, but a combination of Codsworth’s flamethrower and my own trusty 10mm meant that the real problem in the room, Ack-Ack with her minigun, got taken out really quickly! After that it was just a matter of inventory management, getting the locket, and then taking on the radroaches in the next room. Molotoved a bunch of them (though, uh, broke BOTH arms that time – I blame Codsworth, who insisted in being in my space), and managed to kill the Legendary spawn in one shot for a Mutant Slayer’s Double Barrel Shotgun! Handy! Also got a Vault-Tec Lunchbox with an Ice-Cold Nuka-Cola Quantum inside, nice. :D
After all that, figured the best thing to do would actually be to go back to the Red Rocket and drop off a bunch of junk. Along the way, though, found a crashed vertibird with a power armor frame nearby – only the torso was on it, but my thought was that it would help with carry weight while getting home. Unpowered, though, so I had to run back to the station to get the fusion core so I could walk back. Dumped all my junk, got my stuff off Codsworth and dumped all THAT junk, then sent Victor to bed before his fatigue got too bad. Up the next morning by 6, and spent most of it cooking, scrapping, doing a little gun improvement (adhesive remains the tricky bit), giving Dogmeat his bandanna, and dropping off items that I didn’t need in my inventory. Figured the best thing to do after that was run to the Abernathys and return the locket – that got Blake on my side, another quest done, and Codsworth’s first affinity talk! :D So that was sweet. And a level up to boot – took Action Boy for faster AP refresh. Always important out in the wasteland!
4. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Oxventure, for some between-adventure stuff! Namely:
A) A short “trailer” for the Oxventure guild traveling to EGX 2019 for more Oxventures, only to have various conflicts arise on their boat (like Dob trying to start a rousing song of “99 Bottles of Ale on the Wall,” and Egbert needing to go to the bathroom, with Corazon asking Johnny if he’d need to roll for that) XD
B) A level-up episode, with the Oxventurers going from Level 3 to Level 5! This allowed them to improve their characters in a variety of ways – namely, upping ability scores, choosing new spells, and rolling to improve their hit points. A lot of the team sunk at least one point into strength, though Jane/Prudence chose to do two into Constitution as she is constantly the most-injured one in their adventures and she wants to make it harder to get disemboweled. XD Dob now has the ability to “Speak With The Dead” (learned in an attempt to apologize to the orphans of Bumble – however, this spell actually just allows you to ask five questions of a corpse, and it might not even answer truthfully if it remembers you as an enemy) and to “Calm Emotions” (good for chilling out the mobs long enough to beat a hasty retreat); Prudence grabbed the “Hunger of Hagar” (a terrifying spell that lets her RIP OPEN A GAP TO THE PLACE BETWEEN THE STARS WHERE MILKY ACID TENTACLES MAY CARESS THOSE UNLUCKY ENOUGH TO BE IN IT); Merilwen now has the ability to shoot poison out of her hands, breathe underwater for a day (and help her fellow Oxventurers breathe too), and a new wildshape, though she hasn’t mentioned what it is; Corazon has a new disguise spell so he doesn’t have to rely on Dob’s disguise kit and its rolls (and mentioned he may be using it to commit crimes as Dob); and Egbert picked up “Zone of Truth” to compel truthfulness within a certain sphere (granted, getting people to actually TALK is up to his muscles – and he implied he wouldn’t mind getting Corazon to be more truthful with the others). So yeah. XD And everyone has more hit points now, with Prudence and Dob in particular making out like bandits (Prudence going from 18 to 35 (a point below Corazon, as he gleefully pointed out), while Dob got double eights and, with his Constitution bonus, got from 20 to 44! Nice). So they should be all good for their next adventure, “Out Of Order!” :D
5. Work on tumblr queues: Check – I started working on the pictures for my next Chill Save Wednesday update on Victor Luvs Alice (the one from Christmas, Victor and Alice painting murals and getting A+s during their last semester in UBrite) last night, and finished that up early this afternoon – along with the actual posts, all drafted out! O.o Look at me being productive and creative. . . And over on Valice Multiverse, just one ask reply. Quick and simple for a Sunday evening!
Okay, backup finally finished, conversations wound down, nothing else pressing -- time to hit the sheets and hopefully get some half-decent sleep before work. End of holiday calm ends, beginning of work stress starts. Goodie. *sigh* Night all!
Anyway, I'm just hanging out before bed, making a beginning-of-the-year backup and doing some socializing -- let's see how I did on today's to-dos, shall we?
1. Either continue updating the "Playthrough Progression" part of my "Fallout of Darkness" doc,
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, watch Fallout lore video in Watch Later, and Jon's latest F:NV "Utter Chaos" video: Check! Two Subs, two Fallouts, life is good –
A) Started with that Fallout lore video I’ve had saved up for a while – “Fallout Lore: Ug-Qualtoth, The Krivbeknih and The Blackhall Family!” A solid sum-up of the eldritch horror Ug-Qualtoth and the history of Dunwich Borers and its founders – and its artifacts. It was pretty interesting stuff – while I’m semi-familiar with the FO4 portion of the lore, I wasn’t up on the history from the FO3 portion, so it was good to get filled in on the history of Constance Blackhall and her family, and the company. The creator, Synonymous, even posited that Uq-Qualtoth is some sort of god of radiation, as more than one of his followers has been transformed into a ghoul, and feral ghouls and radiation tend to lurk in the areas where he’s worshiped, or where his artifacts are currently stored (like his obelisk under the Dunwich Building, or the two mini-nukes flanking Kremvh’s Tooth). Apparently the idea is that the ferals are supposed to be eternal worshipers. Spooky! I like it.
B) Then it was over to the Subs, for Call Me Kevin and Hardcore Minecraft One Chunk Challenge! Today was the big one, folks – today Kevin both went to the Nether, and then to the End to complete the game! How did he do this? Well, mostly through heading through the portal to the Nether, killing skeletons, stumbling upon old bastions, hiding from Blazes until he could pop out and slaughter them for their rods, playing tennis with Ghasts, finding a great spawn point for Endermen and forcing them into boats so he could kill them for their pearls, heading home to slaughter his entire pen of chickens for provisions (while the Christmas “present box” update was active, no less), setting up the portal to the End, IMMEDIATELY building a giant tower into the sky on the advice of another Minecraft YouTuber, pouring water over a lava block to make both obsidian and a giant waterfall, getting the Ender dragon to come up to him –
And getting the dragon STUCK IN THE WATER so Kevin could shoot arrows at it at his leisure. Holy crap, a weird way to kill the Ender Dragon I was actually unfamiliar with. O.o But he did it, smashed whatever its the Ender Dragon left behind, then took a GIANT leap of faith into the portal below to end the game! Challenge completed, and in MUCH less time than the standard playthrough! True military genius, our Kevin (and that other YouTuber – thanks for the strat, buddy!).
C) Then, this evening, it was time for GrayStillPlays and more Skate 3! Because Gray found himself a fun infinite speed glitch caused by tossing your skateboard on the ground, waiting for it to start rolling away, and then jumping onto it at JUST the right moment. The game will always teleport it back to you, but if you time it right, you’ll go FLYING. Generally into a guard rail, wall, cliff, or other solid object that then crushes some of your bones, but. . . XD Gray was getting speeds up to 111.3 MPH according to the game! Rocketing down lonely roads, doing awesome tricks in the skate park, leaping off buildings in an attempt to smash through the windows in a different building, and sending himself into space via someone’s swimming pool. Before crashing down into some garbage cans. XD Oh dear – I am SO looking forward to more skating adventures with his 50-year-old balding skater! XD
D) And then, of course, it was time for Jon’s new F:NV series, “Utter Chaos!” Where everything is randomized and the doors may kill you. XD Jon’s adventures today included a trip to the general area of Nellis, where he explored the hangars and found a couple of broken doors that didn’t go where they said they went (which was – into the hangars, which should have been Jon’s first clue they’d gone wrong in a full randomization mod); found his way to the Boomers and did a quest for them to clear out the “ants” in the Nellis generators because he already knew the way in – said “ants” included a tunneler with some books, a Nightkin super mutant with a missile launcher (or possibly a Fat Man), one ACTUAL ANT, and Mr. House; went back to the Tops Restaurant after realizing “oh hell, I ACTUALLY MISSED BENNY COMING IN THERE ONCE” – but sadly, despite waiting for a full in-game day, Benny never showed up again; found a door into the part of the New Vegas strip he was most desperate to see, which led to a door into the Lucky 38 Casino, which led him to Now Giant Ghoul Mr. House and actually ALLOWED HIM TO ADVANCE THE PLOT A BIT (though he still doesn’t have the platinum chip, of course – but he did get an invite from the NCR Ambassador to talk to him!); ventured into the Narrows, a location in the Honest Hearts DLC, and explored the caves looking for good locations; attempt to follow what I assume to be a stripper under normal circumstances but now was a woman in a full hazmat suit back to her room, only for her to blip out of existence like six doors into her journey of randomness across the wasteland; found a door into the ruins of a certain city to have a final showdown with the Great Khans and get some fame and good karma with the NCR; and went ALL ACROSS THE MAP, CHECKING EVERY DOOR EVERY PLACE HE COULD THINK OF FOR ONE DOOR INTO THE TOPS –
And he found it. Straight onto the main casino floor. In the depths of the sewers.
It needs a key.
Jon openly admitted he could cry at the end of the episode. Even the wonderful sharecropper farm, with all of its doors, let him down. So next week is THE SEWER LEVEL EPISODE! Where, unless he thinks of another plan, Jon has to navigate an area he’s largely ignored in Fallout: New Vegas. This should be interesting. XD
3. Play Fallout 4 and take on USAF Station Olivia: Check! Victor and Codsworth moved in under the cover of the fog, and were able to take out the two guys around the outside of the building (and the one dog – got a bandanna for Dogmeat out of it), then I had Victor take a moment to further improve his armor and do some scrapping before heading into the station itself.
Where, uh, Victor immediately needed a quick bathroom break. ^^; Welp, that’s Advanced Needs 2 for you. . .at least it happened before the action kicked off! Codsworth ended up roasting the first two raiders before Victor could get a shot off, then they explored the building, Victor giving into his pack rat tendencies more than once (more materials, more materials!), before trying to molotov a raider –
Aaand accidentally blowing himself up. (Well, either that or getting mini-gunned to death – suspect it was a combination of the two.) Whoops. I tried going a different way and taking on the raiders on the other side – broke an arm molotoving THEM, but a combination of Codsworth’s flamethrower and my own trusty 10mm meant that the real problem in the room, Ack-Ack with her minigun, got taken out really quickly! After that it was just a matter of inventory management, getting the locket, and then taking on the radroaches in the next room. Molotoved a bunch of them (though, uh, broke BOTH arms that time – I blame Codsworth, who insisted in being in my space), and managed to kill the Legendary spawn in one shot for a Mutant Slayer’s Double Barrel Shotgun! Handy! Also got a Vault-Tec Lunchbox with an Ice-Cold Nuka-Cola Quantum inside, nice. :D
After all that, figured the best thing to do would actually be to go back to the Red Rocket and drop off a bunch of junk. Along the way, though, found a crashed vertibird with a power armor frame nearby – only the torso was on it, but my thought was that it would help with carry weight while getting home. Unpowered, though, so I had to run back to the station to get the fusion core so I could walk back. Dumped all my junk, got my stuff off Codsworth and dumped all THAT junk, then sent Victor to bed before his fatigue got too bad. Up the next morning by 6, and spent most of it cooking, scrapping, doing a little gun improvement (adhesive remains the tricky bit), giving Dogmeat his bandanna, and dropping off items that I didn’t need in my inventory. Figured the best thing to do after that was run to the Abernathys and return the locket – that got Blake on my side, another quest done, and Codsworth’s first affinity talk! :D So that was sweet. And a level up to boot – took Action Boy for faster AP refresh. Always important out in the wasteland!
4. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with Oxventure, for some between-adventure stuff! Namely:
A) A short “trailer” for the Oxventure guild traveling to EGX 2019 for more Oxventures, only to have various conflicts arise on their boat (like Dob trying to start a rousing song of “99 Bottles of Ale on the Wall,” and Egbert needing to go to the bathroom, with Corazon asking Johnny if he’d need to roll for that) XD
B) A level-up episode, with the Oxventurers going from Level 3 to Level 5! This allowed them to improve their characters in a variety of ways – namely, upping ability scores, choosing new spells, and rolling to improve their hit points. A lot of the team sunk at least one point into strength, though Jane/Prudence chose to do two into Constitution as she is constantly the most-injured one in their adventures and she wants to make it harder to get disemboweled. XD Dob now has the ability to “Speak With The Dead” (learned in an attempt to apologize to the orphans of Bumble – however, this spell actually just allows you to ask five questions of a corpse, and it might not even answer truthfully if it remembers you as an enemy) and to “Calm Emotions” (good for chilling out the mobs long enough to beat a hasty retreat); Prudence grabbed the “Hunger of Hagar” (a terrifying spell that lets her RIP OPEN A GAP TO THE PLACE BETWEEN THE STARS WHERE MILKY ACID TENTACLES MAY CARESS THOSE UNLUCKY ENOUGH TO BE IN IT); Merilwen now has the ability to shoot poison out of her hands, breathe underwater for a day (and help her fellow Oxventurers breathe too), and a new wildshape, though she hasn’t mentioned what it is; Corazon has a new disguise spell so he doesn’t have to rely on Dob’s disguise kit and its rolls (and mentioned he may be using it to commit crimes as Dob); and Egbert picked up “Zone of Truth” to compel truthfulness within a certain sphere (granted, getting people to actually TALK is up to his muscles – and he implied he wouldn’t mind getting Corazon to be more truthful with the others). So yeah. XD And everyone has more hit points now, with Prudence and Dob in particular making out like bandits (Prudence going from 18 to 35 (a point below Corazon, as he gleefully pointed out), while Dob got double eights and, with his Constitution bonus, got from 20 to 44! Nice). So they should be all good for their next adventure, “Out Of Order!” :D
5. Work on tumblr queues: Check – I started working on the pictures for my next Chill Save Wednesday update on Victor Luvs Alice (the one from Christmas, Victor and Alice painting murals and getting A+s during their last semester in UBrite) last night, and finished that up early this afternoon – along with the actual posts, all drafted out! O.o Look at me being productive and creative. . . And over on Valice Multiverse, just one ask reply. Quick and simple for a Sunday evening!
Okay, backup finally finished, conversations wound down, nothing else pressing -- time to hit the sheets and hopefully get some half-decent sleep before work. End of holiday calm ends, beginning of work stress starts. Goodie. *sigh* Night all!
