Productive, Less Stressed Sunday
Jul. 24th, 2022 11:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickUnlike last week! Mostly because I made an effort NOT to overload my evening hours, yay. :) Day went very well, in fact, according to my to-do list --
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – did this shortly after my playthrough (see below), with Victor, Piper, and Alice heading out of Sunshine and through Wicked Shipping (looting the place as much as possible) before returning to the Red Rocket and Sanctuary. Along the way, Victor and Piper talk about Publick Occurrences and admit their feelings for each other (this time with less random truck explosions – again, see below), Alice asks when she’s going to be swept off her feet (whenever we get to Dunwich Borers, girl!), and Victor continues expanding his backpack capabilities. Because you can never have enough pockets for duct tape. *nods* Words to live by!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Plumbella, Jon's FO4 "Legendary Roulette" video: Check plus – I managed, via some DECENT time management for once, to fit in a bonus video! Which was very nice –
A) Started with the Plumbella today, before going downstairs to work out – “I turned The Sims 4's High School into a British school so we can 𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓾𝓶𝓪 𝓫𝓸𝓷𝓭 x”, in which she rebuilt the Copperdale high school lot to better resemble what she recalled from her own school days! Turns out English secondary schools are a bit more like your average large college campus around here, with multiple buildings for multiple classes. In her build, there was the big concrete block of English classes (with faculty rooms); the long L of PE, cafeteria, and music rooms; two “temporary” classrooms holding the computer labs (apparently that’s a thing too, seemingly “temporary” structures for classes that end up staying forever – unless they burn down, like one at Plumbella’s school did); and another building with the headmaster office plus science lab, woodworking lab, and art studio! It was all very cool-looking, even as I got a bit of the feels again from Plumbella’s comments on her school experience (including how she nicked off school once but hated the experience as she ended up just sitting silently in a damn forest the whole day) – especially when she built the isolation room. Damn. :( But it was still a cool build, and makes me that bit more interested in the pack.
B) Then, after supper, I decided to risk a quick drop-in on James Turner again for “The Sims 4 High School Years World Overview” – his full look at the world of Copperdale, a former mining town turned “this is the only place your Sims can go to high school” town. XD The town itself is very well-designed, with two residential/commercial neighborhoods split across the local lake, and one “neighborhood” just for the special high school and auditorium lots (the latter of which works like a variation on the “community spaces” that came with Eco Lifestyle, so you can customize its look for everyday, the prom, graduation, and career day). The builds are a mix of EA and Creators, and – well, it’s pretty damn obvious which is which. XD Though even the EA builds aren’t total insults to the senses this time around – they’re a lot emptier and boxier (I get the feeling when the Gurus build, they are WAAAY too cautious when it comes to the upper item limit), but they’re at least functional, and a lot more cohesive than past builds. The worst lot is, amusingly, the school itself, because – well, as usual, everything is TOO BIG. The school itself is only likely to have a handful of students in it at any one time because of lot load limits (20 active Sims on a lot, including the walkbys), and there is only two active classes a day, so the cafeteria for instance, is FAR too big for purposes. James likes the outside, but he admitted he was mainly excited to see what others would do with the school, and he himself already has a rebuild video up – I’ll have to budget some time to watch that later! He also wishes there was a bit more to do in the various world spaces themselves, and that getting to the big pier area was easier, as the closest lot is still just far enough away that jogging there is gonna take your Sim some time. But it’s a lovely world with plenty to look at and plenty of places for people, especially teens, to hang out, and James was happily blown away by the builds (particularly the Creator ones), so – yeah! Consider me slightly more hype!
C) Then it was over to my Subs for the latest from GrayStillPlays – “When you become the biggest blob in the world,” with Blob Runner! Yup, another one of those “your character is running across this obstacle course with the goal of picking up stuff to make you bigger and avoiding stuff that makes you smaller” mobile games, only this time you are a blob of vaguely humanoid goo, the obstacles chop off various limbs (so you can be just a head bouncing along, or one leg hopping along), and your goal is to pick up the various other cubes of goo to regrow your lost body parts and make yourself as big as possible so that, when you get launched at the end, you can make it all the way down to the big “x10” disc for the in-game gem currency. Also, your blob may find or buy various hats, including Elvis hair and a Canadian winter hat. Also there are levels that give you a jetpack so you can fly. Gray promptly made it his business to see just how big and colorful his blob creature could get – pretty damn big and colorful, it turns out! Even with his continual incompetence when it came to trying and failing to avoid the obstacles. XD Fortunately you can keep on rolling in this game even as the size of a pea, so it generally wasn’t a run-ender. Just a nice, cute palate-cleanser in between sessions of GTA V agony, really. XD
D) And finally, the big finish to the weekend – Jon’s latest episode of “Legendary Roulette!” Having killed Kellogg and welcomed the Brotherhood into the Commonwealth, Jon’s goal this episode was simple – get The Legend of Boston through the Glowing Sea to meet Virgil, so he can kick off “Hunter/Hunted” and get Legend on the path to building the teleporter. The steps for doing that included the following:
I. Stopping by Sanctuary to go “well, this Explosive Pipe Revolver Pistol kinda sucks, but it’s the only weapon I really have plentiful ammo for right now, so. . .” and level up to get Perception up high enough to take “Demolition Expert” and improve explosive damage even more.
II. Obviously doing the quest in the Memory Den to walk through Kellogg’s memories, then planning his path – not down the river like he usually does, but down the edge of the map, taking on the broken remains of the town there and all the monsters therein in hopes of more ammo and more Legendary gear.
III. Hitting Poseidon Reservoir as he worked his way down, and finding it full of ghouls to kill via explosive power! There were a few rough moments (including him nearly getting swarmed at one point), but he managed to kill everything without getting too roughed up (though, again, running low on ammo for his favorite guns). Notable moments included the appearance of the first Legendary Gamma Gun (though it was Steadfast, which proves more protection while aiming – not one Jon likes), and Jon deciding that the Kneecapper Submachine gun still has a place in his lineup, because for certain enemies – like the particularly tough Glowing One ghoul at the bottom of the plant – a guaranteed chance to cripple the legs is better than hoping you can bring down limb condition fast enough with Explosive.
IV. As if to prove that point, as Jon went by the raider motel (taking a moment to take out the boy on top with a missile launcher) and into Natick Banks, he encountered a Legendary Deathclaw that he was able to render pretty much harmless. . .at least until its limb condition randomly came back. Fortunately Jon was on top of a small building when it did, and he was able to just put the damn thing down again.
V. And then the Brotherhood showed up with a couple of Knights to fight the local raiders, and things got chaotic – because not only did we have a number of tough raiders going up against the BOS, the game decided to spawn in two more Legendary Deathclaws for them and Jon to fight! Jon was just like “WHERE THE HELL DO YOU KEEP COMING FROM??” XD On the plus side, the Knights survived and were a great help to Jon, and on the double-plus side – Troubleshooter’s Combat Rifle off one of the deathclaws! 50% extra damage against anything robotic. Something to help with the inevitable Robot Death Squads and synths!
VI. After that (and a stop back at Sanctuary to upgrade the Troubleshooter’s), Jon decided to swing by Robotics Pioneer Park because there’s a whole PARADE of Protectrons there, and Jon wanted a robot army (mostly because his previous Legendary friend either got lost or died). However, before he could set that up, there was a bit of distraction – not just from clearing out the park (ghouls and a Legendary ALPHA Deathclaw – fortunately Kneecapper, paired with Wounding, still did the work), but from the Brotherhood of Steel attacking the mutant camp nearby! Unfortunately, these mutants were a bit much for the BOS this time, and both knights died, but they did enough damage to the mutants that Jon was able to clear them out for the XP and suchlike. Jon then rested for the night at Sanctuary, got his health back up to near full, then tried to hack his robot army. . .
VII. No go. Jon only got one of the group, and it was the Paramedic Protectron with the zappy hands. Well, it was some help, so off Jon went into the Glowing Sea! Which was very busy right on the edges, with the Brotherhood going up against some very angry and well-armed Gunners on a nearby bridge. Sheesh.
VIII. Adventures in the Glowing Sea included Jon trying out his paramedic bot friend on a ghoul he had downed and finding he did rather pathetic damage with his electric arm smacks; Jon unwisely taking on a bunch of bloodbugs because “they’re bloodbugs, they’ll go down easy,” not remembering that a) bloodbugs, being giant spindly mosquitos, are a BITCH to hit, and b) there are Red Widows among the Legendaries – cue Jon having a panic attack as he desperately exploded all the legs off each bug and tried not to die from poison (I think he literally had TWO hit points left at one point); Jon taking on one of his most hated enemies, a radscorpion, from atop an abandoned house – only to discover Paramedic Protectron was AMAZING at stunning it with its electric punch, so yay there; Jon getting REALLY CONFUSED when a bunch of OTHER Legendary Radscorpions either didn’t notice him or didn’t care about his existence, leading to him picking the fight – and ending up dying from their poison shortly after he finished killing them all; Jon repicking the fight and getting a Quickdraw Laser Pistol out of the encounter, which he felt would work very well with his “time manipulation” build (where he uses Wounding to stack some bleeding damage on an enemy, then uses VATS to kill them while he’s in slow time); and Jon and Paramedic Protectron going up against the “final boss” Legendary Deathclaw in front of Virgil’s cave, with Jon killing it via his Wounding shotgun’s bleed damage JUST as it picked Legend up to disembowel her. XD Nice!
IX. And then Adventures in the Glowing Sea ended with Virgil’s turrets deciding Paramedic Protectron was an enemy and murdering it. :( Damn. You were a good friend, Paramedic Protectron!
X. Oh, and during all this, Jon just kept taking the “Demolition Expert” perk, as two of the ranks were already open to him, and he leveled up near the end just in time to take the third, meaning he’s already doing way, WAY more damage with his Explosive weapons than he was at the beginning of the episode.
So yeah – there was a lot of chaos along the way, but Jon achieved his goal, met up with Virgil, and started “Hunter/Hunted,” w00. And he’s already making plans for how he wants to handle that quest, AND for what he wants to do in Act III. :D I’m so glad he’s confirmed that this is a full playthrough, if something of a weird challenge speedrun version. XD This is such a fun series, and I feel like I’m learning a lot about Legendaries! Not that it’s helped me IMMENSELY in my own playthrough so far – Victor doesn’t encounter a ton of Legendary enemies – but it’s good information in case I pick up something really cool in the future. :)
3. Play Fallout 4 and get Victor and Piper on the road to Finch Farm: Check-ish? Look, they started moving in the right direction, anyway. XD Victor and Piper instead spent most of this particular playsession in a different location – Wicked Shipping! Because I passed by it before and I wanted to make sure I got all the goodies there. Here’s how it went down:
-->Victor and Piper left Sunshine Tidings at around 8 AM on 12/6/2287, on a VERY foggy morning. They proceeded to loop around the lake below them, shooting a couple of squirrels, poking through a weird mannequin camp they found, skirting around a small pack of wolves, making their way up through some grazing radstags, finding a crushed house with a little camp nearby (on the other side of the wolf pack, in fact – Victor grabbed some good junk and ammo without alerting them, thankfully) and the remains of another house with a mannequin lounging in a bathtub (again with a bit of loot to pick up) as they headed back toward Abernathy and Wicked Shipping.
-->They found Wicked Shipping as the fog began to burn off – they snuck in, managing to avoiding any notice from the ghouls until Victor had hacked the Protectron’s terminal and gotten it working (as a Subway Steward – Victor had plenty of tokens for him and Piper!). A ghoul attacked right after the damn thing activated, but between Piper literally smacking an arm off with her 10mm and Victor pulling out the submachine gun he picked up from Vault 114 (which works a lot better when I’m not panic-firing it), it was easily dealt with. The submachine gun might be a good one for ghouls!
-->They continued exploring, with Victor poking into each truck and outbuilding and putting bullets into ghouls. Cracking open one particular safe in the back of one particular truck got Piper to idolize Victor, heh. They headed into the outbuilding, where Victor put down a ghoul, looted the place, and listened to the holotape from Tim to his brother Blake about how he really shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with Eddie Winter and to please talk to him –
And then, just as Piper asked if he had a minute for the final affinity conversation, I heard an explosion. Unable to pinpoint where it came from, though, I left Victor continue the conversation –
THE TRUCK IN THE SHED EXPLODED. I DON’T KNOW WHY. SERIOUSLY, NOT A CLUE. As you might imagine, this led to a very dead Victor and Piper mid-affinity conversation.
-->Fortunately, I’d saved literally a couple of minutes beforehand. Game reloads, and Piper wisely asks Victor if he has a minute before they go into the shed with the truck. Victor and Piper had their final affinity chat outside, Piper talking about the paper and how everyone started treating her differently after she started it up (with Victor expressing incredulity about one of her first articles, a hole in the Great Green Wall covered by ONE BOOKCASE), and saying how she was so glad that he came into her life, as she needed someone like him.
Cue Victor stepping away for a moment to eat some Smoked Brie cheese (which upped his Charisma briefly) and making a quicksave before romancing her. :) Piper was her usual adorably awkward self, babbling about how she did feel that way, but she wasn’t sure Victor felt the same, and how she’s loud and pushy and always getting into trouble, with Victor assuring her that she doesn’t need to be perfect for everyone, she’s already perfect for him. :) So now they’re lovers too, Victor has her “Gift of Gab” perk, and both of my in-game romances are complete, yay. :)
-->With that sorted, I made another save, then had Victor and Piper MUCH MORE CAREFULLY go into the shed with the truck, killing the ghoul, grabbing the loot, and picking up the holotape WITHOUT playing it in case that sets off some sort of weird trap. Got out of there without incident this time – seriously, don’t know WHAT I did to cause all the explosions last time!
-->Having NOT blown up this time, Victor and Piper continued exploring the place – Victor picked up another issue of Grognak from the little office attached to the main building, and read through the terminal. Not much there but a couple of map updates from shipping manifests, and a memo about how the drivers CANNOT just go and deliver the goods, they have to talk to Tim or Blake first so they can update the paperwork and instruct them what cargo goes where. Because, well, Blake was working with Eddie Winter, and it sounds like they were moving around a lot of his illegal crap with their legit deliveries. Fun! In the main building, there was just one living ghoul (yay), and plenty of good loot (including lots of duct tape, yay!). Victor parkoured around to get all the stuff he wanted, scrapped down a leather arm piece at the armor bench he found, then he and Piper left the building around 5 PM.
-->From there, it was a short walk over to Abernathy, where Victor picked as many tatos as he could carry, and from there an exhausted slog over to the Red Rocket, as the tiredness had REALLY set in for Victor. He and Piper had an early night, turning in at 6:30 PM.
-->The pair woke up around 2:30 AM – Piper wandered around and said hello to the dogs while Victor cleaned up his inventory a bit (dropping off his new magazine in the magazine rack, some old notes and such in the notes cabinet, and listened-to holotapes in the holotape desk – though I made sure to take a moment to listen to the two Vault 114 interview tapes, which were both of patriotic Americans keen on setting up a good government in there! Too bad the experiment there demanded a radical and unhinged mind. . .), then got almost all the weapons out of the workbench (leaving only the minigun) and gave them to Piper so they could take them up to Sanctuary! Because, well, Victor isn’t using them, the DOGS aren’t using them. . .might as well make them available to the citizens over there, right?
-->And so Victor and Piper made their way over to Sanctuary, where Victor dropped off ALMOST all the guns (keeping the Mutant Slayer’s Double-Barrel Shotgun either for use or sale, and the .44 Subnosed Pistol for later), then worked his way through a dust storm making an Adventurer’s Bandolier and a Wanderer’s Backpack on the backpack workbench, then giving them some actual carry capacity over on the armorer workbench. The Wanderer’s Backpack clips into the Traveler’s Backpack Victor was already wearing, but in a way that actually looks semi-natural, so I’m not gonna worry about it – not when I was already able to give Victor another 100 pounds of carry capacity just from that! (Plus 20 from the max on the Adventurer’s Bandolier.) :D And if Victor keeps upgrading the Armorer perk, he can get it up to 200. . .
-->And then I realized it was getting a bit late, so I STARTED to turn Victor and Piper in the direction of Finchwick. . .only to spot Trashcan Carla still in the settlement and decide to have Victor hit her up for some goodies (buying some rice, fertilizer, and some good junk and selling her some of his unused ammo, chems, and booze). . .and then see Preston passing by and think “maybe I SHOULD send him to the Castle” –
And that’s when I realized what I was doing, saved right there, and quit. XD We can talk to Preston about the Castle NEXT WEEK, Vic. And THEN start toward Finchwick Farm.
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Did the usual Victor Luvs Alice catch-up this morning (including reblogging Moose’s three latest McFlyJuly stories), and grabbed a nice collection of Preston Garvey fanart for the drafts from the “fallout 4” tag before lunch. Then, after lunch, I got both of Smiler’s Chill Save update posts for this Wednesday sorted, yay! In a good position re: VLA updates for the rest of this week now, w00.
As for Valice Multiverse. . .uh, nothing going on there, and nothing I could find that I wanted to reblog. *shrug* Ah well!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again, with another semi-random selection of videos:
A) Dicebreaker, “Why You Should Play Blades In The Dark” – a video from Johnny’s (of Oxventure DM fame) own channel on TTRPGs, discussing why he likes the Blades In The Dark RPG (where you play as a Scoundrel looking to claw your way up the ranks of the criminal underworld in a post-magical-apocalypse city where ghosts are rampant and hungry, devils and strange Lovecraftian gods are real, and “electroplasm” has sparked a strange and foreboding Industrial Revolution) and why you should play it! I watched this mainly because I’ve been reading up a lot on Blades In The Dark recently thanks to following its link from the main OXBox TV Tropes page – BitD is the system they use for their “Luke GM/Johnny PC” semi-sequel series to the Oxventure series (as in, their version of the game’s main city setting, Duskwall, is in a future version of Geth – I have no idea if any of the characters in the BitD series are supposed to be related to the Oxventurers), and I was intrigued by it. It’s proven to be kind of fascinating to me, so I wanted to hear Johnny’s opinion on it, and it’s highly positive! He likes that it’s a game that focuses on getting players straight into the action, lets them plan on the fly, and has enough rules and information on the NPCs and setting for a GM to quickly give the gist of them to players, but leaves enough gaps for you to build your own lore. He does recommend psyching yourself up before the sessions if you’re new to GMing it, though, because a game where players are ENCOURAGED to make things up on the fly can be a bit stressful! But overall, he thinks it’s amazing, and I’m looking forward to seeing the OXBoxtra take on it once I get to that series!
B) Petey Plays It, with two short Sims 4 videos –
I. “5 Vampires Objects You Need To Start Using” – his picks for Vampires objects that are a must for any person playing with the pack: garlic (for Sims who are very ANTI-vampire), the pipe organ (for haunting music that makes people clean for you), coffins (for that vampire aesthetic), all the candle lights in the game (again for the proper aesthetic), and plasma fruit (for those good vampires who don’t want to hurt Sims). All pretty standard, but hey – he made a good case for each!
II. “9 Ideas To Improve Bathrooms” – bring bathroom design to the next level with these tips! Such as using one of the “wall-only” showers to build your own customer shower stall with walls and windows; using platforms to create a “built-in” tub; using a half-wall to create a “privacy screen” for the toilet; and even – if your house is in a good place – doing an “indoor/outdoor” build with the toilet and sink inside, and the tub outside on a balcony overlooking your own private view. (Uh – probably best done without Seasons installed! Or with a glass roof.) Some interesting ideas to jazz up builds here!
*claps hands* Good work, me. And I just answered my PM from Moose (without any nonsense regarding the damn character limit this time -- seriously, what HAPPENED last week with me and that), so now it's time to wrap up with the last comment I need to tackle and head to bed! One last week before I get my vacation, w000. . . Night all!
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – did this shortly after my playthrough (see below), with Victor, Piper, and Alice heading out of Sunshine and through Wicked Shipping (looting the place as much as possible) before returning to the Red Rocket and Sanctuary. Along the way, Victor and Piper talk about Publick Occurrences and admit their feelings for each other (this time with less random truck explosions – again, see below), Alice asks when she’s going to be swept off her feet (whenever we get to Dunwich Borers, girl!), and Victor continues expanding his backpack capabilities. Because you can never have enough pockets for duct tape. *nods* Words to live by!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Plumbella, Jon's FO4 "Legendary Roulette" video: Check plus – I managed, via some DECENT time management for once, to fit in a bonus video! Which was very nice –
A) Started with the Plumbella today, before going downstairs to work out – “I turned The Sims 4's High School into a British school so we can 𝓽𝓻𝓪𝓾𝓶𝓪 𝓫𝓸𝓷𝓭 x”, in which she rebuilt the Copperdale high school lot to better resemble what she recalled from her own school days! Turns out English secondary schools are a bit more like your average large college campus around here, with multiple buildings for multiple classes. In her build, there was the big concrete block of English classes (with faculty rooms); the long L of PE, cafeteria, and music rooms; two “temporary” classrooms holding the computer labs (apparently that’s a thing too, seemingly “temporary” structures for classes that end up staying forever – unless they burn down, like one at Plumbella’s school did); and another building with the headmaster office plus science lab, woodworking lab, and art studio! It was all very cool-looking, even as I got a bit of the feels again from Plumbella’s comments on her school experience (including how she nicked off school once but hated the experience as she ended up just sitting silently in a damn forest the whole day) – especially when she built the isolation room. Damn. :( But it was still a cool build, and makes me that bit more interested in the pack.
B) Then, after supper, I decided to risk a quick drop-in on James Turner again for “The Sims 4 High School Years World Overview” – his full look at the world of Copperdale, a former mining town turned “this is the only place your Sims can go to high school” town. XD The town itself is very well-designed, with two residential/commercial neighborhoods split across the local lake, and one “neighborhood” just for the special high school and auditorium lots (the latter of which works like a variation on the “community spaces” that came with Eco Lifestyle, so you can customize its look for everyday, the prom, graduation, and career day). The builds are a mix of EA and Creators, and – well, it’s pretty damn obvious which is which. XD Though even the EA builds aren’t total insults to the senses this time around – they’re a lot emptier and boxier (I get the feeling when the Gurus build, they are WAAAY too cautious when it comes to the upper item limit), but they’re at least functional, and a lot more cohesive than past builds. The worst lot is, amusingly, the school itself, because – well, as usual, everything is TOO BIG. The school itself is only likely to have a handful of students in it at any one time because of lot load limits (20 active Sims on a lot, including the walkbys), and there is only two active classes a day, so the cafeteria for instance, is FAR too big for purposes. James likes the outside, but he admitted he was mainly excited to see what others would do with the school, and he himself already has a rebuild video up – I’ll have to budget some time to watch that later! He also wishes there was a bit more to do in the various world spaces themselves, and that getting to the big pier area was easier, as the closest lot is still just far enough away that jogging there is gonna take your Sim some time. But it’s a lovely world with plenty to look at and plenty of places for people, especially teens, to hang out, and James was happily blown away by the builds (particularly the Creator ones), so – yeah! Consider me slightly more hype!
C) Then it was over to my Subs for the latest from GrayStillPlays – “When you become the biggest blob in the world,” with Blob Runner! Yup, another one of those “your character is running across this obstacle course with the goal of picking up stuff to make you bigger and avoiding stuff that makes you smaller” mobile games, only this time you are a blob of vaguely humanoid goo, the obstacles chop off various limbs (so you can be just a head bouncing along, or one leg hopping along), and your goal is to pick up the various other cubes of goo to regrow your lost body parts and make yourself as big as possible so that, when you get launched at the end, you can make it all the way down to the big “x10” disc for the in-game gem currency. Also, your blob may find or buy various hats, including Elvis hair and a Canadian winter hat. Also there are levels that give you a jetpack so you can fly. Gray promptly made it his business to see just how big and colorful his blob creature could get – pretty damn big and colorful, it turns out! Even with his continual incompetence when it came to trying and failing to avoid the obstacles. XD Fortunately you can keep on rolling in this game even as the size of a pea, so it generally wasn’t a run-ender. Just a nice, cute palate-cleanser in between sessions of GTA V agony, really. XD
D) And finally, the big finish to the weekend – Jon’s latest episode of “Legendary Roulette!” Having killed Kellogg and welcomed the Brotherhood into the Commonwealth, Jon’s goal this episode was simple – get The Legend of Boston through the Glowing Sea to meet Virgil, so he can kick off “Hunter/Hunted” and get Legend on the path to building the teleporter. The steps for doing that included the following:
I. Stopping by Sanctuary to go “well, this Explosive Pipe Revolver Pistol kinda sucks, but it’s the only weapon I really have plentiful ammo for right now, so. . .” and level up to get Perception up high enough to take “Demolition Expert” and improve explosive damage even more.
II. Obviously doing the quest in the Memory Den to walk through Kellogg’s memories, then planning his path – not down the river like he usually does, but down the edge of the map, taking on the broken remains of the town there and all the monsters therein in hopes of more ammo and more Legendary gear.
III. Hitting Poseidon Reservoir as he worked his way down, and finding it full of ghouls to kill via explosive power! There were a few rough moments (including him nearly getting swarmed at one point), but he managed to kill everything without getting too roughed up (though, again, running low on ammo for his favorite guns). Notable moments included the appearance of the first Legendary Gamma Gun (though it was Steadfast, which proves more protection while aiming – not one Jon likes), and Jon deciding that the Kneecapper Submachine gun still has a place in his lineup, because for certain enemies – like the particularly tough Glowing One ghoul at the bottom of the plant – a guaranteed chance to cripple the legs is better than hoping you can bring down limb condition fast enough with Explosive.
IV. As if to prove that point, as Jon went by the raider motel (taking a moment to take out the boy on top with a missile launcher) and into Natick Banks, he encountered a Legendary Deathclaw that he was able to render pretty much harmless. . .at least until its limb condition randomly came back. Fortunately Jon was on top of a small building when it did, and he was able to just put the damn thing down again.
V. And then the Brotherhood showed up with a couple of Knights to fight the local raiders, and things got chaotic – because not only did we have a number of tough raiders going up against the BOS, the game decided to spawn in two more Legendary Deathclaws for them and Jon to fight! Jon was just like “WHERE THE HELL DO YOU KEEP COMING FROM??” XD On the plus side, the Knights survived and were a great help to Jon, and on the double-plus side – Troubleshooter’s Combat Rifle off one of the deathclaws! 50% extra damage against anything robotic. Something to help with the inevitable Robot Death Squads and synths!
VI. After that (and a stop back at Sanctuary to upgrade the Troubleshooter’s), Jon decided to swing by Robotics Pioneer Park because there’s a whole PARADE of Protectrons there, and Jon wanted a robot army (mostly because his previous Legendary friend either got lost or died). However, before he could set that up, there was a bit of distraction – not just from clearing out the park (ghouls and a Legendary ALPHA Deathclaw – fortunately Kneecapper, paired with Wounding, still did the work), but from the Brotherhood of Steel attacking the mutant camp nearby! Unfortunately, these mutants were a bit much for the BOS this time, and both knights died, but they did enough damage to the mutants that Jon was able to clear them out for the XP and suchlike. Jon then rested for the night at Sanctuary, got his health back up to near full, then tried to hack his robot army. . .
VII. No go. Jon only got one of the group, and it was the Paramedic Protectron with the zappy hands. Well, it was some help, so off Jon went into the Glowing Sea! Which was very busy right on the edges, with the Brotherhood going up against some very angry and well-armed Gunners on a nearby bridge. Sheesh.
VIII. Adventures in the Glowing Sea included Jon trying out his paramedic bot friend on a ghoul he had downed and finding he did rather pathetic damage with his electric arm smacks; Jon unwisely taking on a bunch of bloodbugs because “they’re bloodbugs, they’ll go down easy,” not remembering that a) bloodbugs, being giant spindly mosquitos, are a BITCH to hit, and b) there are Red Widows among the Legendaries – cue Jon having a panic attack as he desperately exploded all the legs off each bug and tried not to die from poison (I think he literally had TWO hit points left at one point); Jon taking on one of his most hated enemies, a radscorpion, from atop an abandoned house – only to discover Paramedic Protectron was AMAZING at stunning it with its electric punch, so yay there; Jon getting REALLY CONFUSED when a bunch of OTHER Legendary Radscorpions either didn’t notice him or didn’t care about his existence, leading to him picking the fight – and ending up dying from their poison shortly after he finished killing them all; Jon repicking the fight and getting a Quickdraw Laser Pistol out of the encounter, which he felt would work very well with his “time manipulation” build (where he uses Wounding to stack some bleeding damage on an enemy, then uses VATS to kill them while he’s in slow time); and Jon and Paramedic Protectron going up against the “final boss” Legendary Deathclaw in front of Virgil’s cave, with Jon killing it via his Wounding shotgun’s bleed damage JUST as it picked Legend up to disembowel her. XD Nice!
IX. And then Adventures in the Glowing Sea ended with Virgil’s turrets deciding Paramedic Protectron was an enemy and murdering it. :( Damn. You were a good friend, Paramedic Protectron!
X. Oh, and during all this, Jon just kept taking the “Demolition Expert” perk, as two of the ranks were already open to him, and he leveled up near the end just in time to take the third, meaning he’s already doing way, WAY more damage with his Explosive weapons than he was at the beginning of the episode.
So yeah – there was a lot of chaos along the way, but Jon achieved his goal, met up with Virgil, and started “Hunter/Hunted,” w00. And he’s already making plans for how he wants to handle that quest, AND for what he wants to do in Act III. :D I’m so glad he’s confirmed that this is a full playthrough, if something of a weird challenge speedrun version. XD This is such a fun series, and I feel like I’m learning a lot about Legendaries! Not that it’s helped me IMMENSELY in my own playthrough so far – Victor doesn’t encounter a ton of Legendary enemies – but it’s good information in case I pick up something really cool in the future. :)
3. Play Fallout 4 and get Victor and Piper on the road to Finch Farm: Check-ish? Look, they started moving in the right direction, anyway. XD Victor and Piper instead spent most of this particular playsession in a different location – Wicked Shipping! Because I passed by it before and I wanted to make sure I got all the goodies there. Here’s how it went down:
-->Victor and Piper left Sunshine Tidings at around 8 AM on 12/6/2287, on a VERY foggy morning. They proceeded to loop around the lake below them, shooting a couple of squirrels, poking through a weird mannequin camp they found, skirting around a small pack of wolves, making their way up through some grazing radstags, finding a crushed house with a little camp nearby (on the other side of the wolf pack, in fact – Victor grabbed some good junk and ammo without alerting them, thankfully) and the remains of another house with a mannequin lounging in a bathtub (again with a bit of loot to pick up) as they headed back toward Abernathy and Wicked Shipping.
-->They found Wicked Shipping as the fog began to burn off – they snuck in, managing to avoiding any notice from the ghouls until Victor had hacked the Protectron’s terminal and gotten it working (as a Subway Steward – Victor had plenty of tokens for him and Piper!). A ghoul attacked right after the damn thing activated, but between Piper literally smacking an arm off with her 10mm and Victor pulling out the submachine gun he picked up from Vault 114 (which works a lot better when I’m not panic-firing it), it was easily dealt with. The submachine gun might be a good one for ghouls!
-->They continued exploring, with Victor poking into each truck and outbuilding and putting bullets into ghouls. Cracking open one particular safe in the back of one particular truck got Piper to idolize Victor, heh. They headed into the outbuilding, where Victor put down a ghoul, looted the place, and listened to the holotape from Tim to his brother Blake about how he really shouldn’t have gotten mixed up with Eddie Winter and to please talk to him –
And then, just as Piper asked if he had a minute for the final affinity conversation, I heard an explosion. Unable to pinpoint where it came from, though, I left Victor continue the conversation –
THE TRUCK IN THE SHED EXPLODED. I DON’T KNOW WHY. SERIOUSLY, NOT A CLUE. As you might imagine, this led to a very dead Victor and Piper mid-affinity conversation.
-->Fortunately, I’d saved literally a couple of minutes beforehand. Game reloads, and Piper wisely asks Victor if he has a minute before they go into the shed with the truck. Victor and Piper had their final affinity chat outside, Piper talking about the paper and how everyone started treating her differently after she started it up (with Victor expressing incredulity about one of her first articles, a hole in the Great Green Wall covered by ONE BOOKCASE), and saying how she was so glad that he came into her life, as she needed someone like him.
Cue Victor stepping away for a moment to eat some Smoked Brie cheese (which upped his Charisma briefly) and making a quicksave before romancing her. :) Piper was her usual adorably awkward self, babbling about how she did feel that way, but she wasn’t sure Victor felt the same, and how she’s loud and pushy and always getting into trouble, with Victor assuring her that she doesn’t need to be perfect for everyone, she’s already perfect for him. :) So now they’re lovers too, Victor has her “Gift of Gab” perk, and both of my in-game romances are complete, yay. :)
-->With that sorted, I made another save, then had Victor and Piper MUCH MORE CAREFULLY go into the shed with the truck, killing the ghoul, grabbing the loot, and picking up the holotape WITHOUT playing it in case that sets off some sort of weird trap. Got out of there without incident this time – seriously, don’t know WHAT I did to cause all the explosions last time!
-->Having NOT blown up this time, Victor and Piper continued exploring the place – Victor picked up another issue of Grognak from the little office attached to the main building, and read through the terminal. Not much there but a couple of map updates from shipping manifests, and a memo about how the drivers CANNOT just go and deliver the goods, they have to talk to Tim or Blake first so they can update the paperwork and instruct them what cargo goes where. Because, well, Blake was working with Eddie Winter, and it sounds like they were moving around a lot of his illegal crap with their legit deliveries. Fun! In the main building, there was just one living ghoul (yay), and plenty of good loot (including lots of duct tape, yay!). Victor parkoured around to get all the stuff he wanted, scrapped down a leather arm piece at the armor bench he found, then he and Piper left the building around 5 PM.
-->From there, it was a short walk over to Abernathy, where Victor picked as many tatos as he could carry, and from there an exhausted slog over to the Red Rocket, as the tiredness had REALLY set in for Victor. He and Piper had an early night, turning in at 6:30 PM.
-->The pair woke up around 2:30 AM – Piper wandered around and said hello to the dogs while Victor cleaned up his inventory a bit (dropping off his new magazine in the magazine rack, some old notes and such in the notes cabinet, and listened-to holotapes in the holotape desk – though I made sure to take a moment to listen to the two Vault 114 interview tapes, which were both of patriotic Americans keen on setting up a good government in there! Too bad the experiment there demanded a radical and unhinged mind. . .), then got almost all the weapons out of the workbench (leaving only the minigun) and gave them to Piper so they could take them up to Sanctuary! Because, well, Victor isn’t using them, the DOGS aren’t using them. . .might as well make them available to the citizens over there, right?
-->And so Victor and Piper made their way over to Sanctuary, where Victor dropped off ALMOST all the guns (keeping the Mutant Slayer’s Double-Barrel Shotgun either for use or sale, and the .44 Subnosed Pistol for later), then worked his way through a dust storm making an Adventurer’s Bandolier and a Wanderer’s Backpack on the backpack workbench, then giving them some actual carry capacity over on the armorer workbench. The Wanderer’s Backpack clips into the Traveler’s Backpack Victor was already wearing, but in a way that actually looks semi-natural, so I’m not gonna worry about it – not when I was already able to give Victor another 100 pounds of carry capacity just from that! (Plus 20 from the max on the Adventurer’s Bandolier.) :D And if Victor keeps upgrading the Armorer perk, he can get it up to 200. . .
-->And then I realized it was getting a bit late, so I STARTED to turn Victor and Piper in the direction of Finchwick. . .only to spot Trashcan Carla still in the settlement and decide to have Victor hit her up for some goodies (buying some rice, fertilizer, and some good junk and selling her some of his unused ammo, chems, and booze). . .and then see Preston passing by and think “maybe I SHOULD send him to the Castle” –
And that’s when I realized what I was doing, saved right there, and quit. XD We can talk to Preston about the Castle NEXT WEEK, Vic. And THEN start toward Finchwick Farm.
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Did the usual Victor Luvs Alice catch-up this morning (including reblogging Moose’s three latest McFlyJuly stories), and grabbed a nice collection of Preston Garvey fanart for the drafts from the “fallout 4” tag before lunch. Then, after lunch, I got both of Smiler’s Chill Save update posts for this Wednesday sorted, yay! In a good position re: VLA updates for the rest of this week now, w00.
As for Valice Multiverse. . .uh, nothing going on there, and nothing I could find that I wanted to reblog. *shrug* Ah well!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike again, with another semi-random selection of videos:
A) Dicebreaker, “Why You Should Play Blades In The Dark” – a video from Johnny’s (of Oxventure DM fame) own channel on TTRPGs, discussing why he likes the Blades In The Dark RPG (where you play as a Scoundrel looking to claw your way up the ranks of the criminal underworld in a post-magical-apocalypse city where ghosts are rampant and hungry, devils and strange Lovecraftian gods are real, and “electroplasm” has sparked a strange and foreboding Industrial Revolution) and why you should play it! I watched this mainly because I’ve been reading up a lot on Blades In The Dark recently thanks to following its link from the main OXBox TV Tropes page – BitD is the system they use for their “Luke GM/Johnny PC” semi-sequel series to the Oxventure series (as in, their version of the game’s main city setting, Duskwall, is in a future version of Geth – I have no idea if any of the characters in the BitD series are supposed to be related to the Oxventurers), and I was intrigued by it. It’s proven to be kind of fascinating to me, so I wanted to hear Johnny’s opinion on it, and it’s highly positive! He likes that it’s a game that focuses on getting players straight into the action, lets them plan on the fly, and has enough rules and information on the NPCs and setting for a GM to quickly give the gist of them to players, but leaves enough gaps for you to build your own lore. He does recommend psyching yourself up before the sessions if you’re new to GMing it, though, because a game where players are ENCOURAGED to make things up on the fly can be a bit stressful! But overall, he thinks it’s amazing, and I’m looking forward to seeing the OXBoxtra take on it once I get to that series!
B) Petey Plays It, with two short Sims 4 videos –
I. “5 Vampires Objects You Need To Start Using” – his picks for Vampires objects that are a must for any person playing with the pack: garlic (for Sims who are very ANTI-vampire), the pipe organ (for haunting music that makes people clean for you), coffins (for that vampire aesthetic), all the candle lights in the game (again for the proper aesthetic), and plasma fruit (for those good vampires who don’t want to hurt Sims). All pretty standard, but hey – he made a good case for each!
II. “9 Ideas To Improve Bathrooms” – bring bathroom design to the next level with these tips! Such as using one of the “wall-only” showers to build your own customer shower stall with walls and windows; using platforms to create a “built-in” tub; using a half-wall to create a “privacy screen” for the toilet; and even – if your house is in a good place – doing an “indoor/outdoor” build with the toilet and sink inside, and the tub outside on a balcony overlooking your own private view. (Uh – probably best done without Seasons installed! Or with a glass roof.) Some interesting ideas to jazz up builds here!
*claps hands* Good work, me. And I just answered my PM from Moose (without any nonsense regarding the damn character limit this time -- seriously, what HAPPENED last week with me and that), so now it's time to wrap up with the last comment I need to tackle and head to bed! One last week before I get my vacation, w000. . . Night all!
