As Usual A Late Sunday Update
Dec. 18th, 2022 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickAnd I didn't get EVERYTHING I wanted to get done, done -- but I got enough done to keep me happy! To whit --
Tumblr: Did the dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice and cleaned up the “Valicer Christmas Headcanons” post in the drafts before lunch (realized that Smiler’s favorite animal is the frog in the process; thanks Sims 4 frog-breeding mechanic), then did all the pictures and the starter drafts for the Chill Save update on Wednesday featuring the house upgrades/slight remodel between finishing up all my FO4 stuff, below, and my workout. And yes, drafts plural – what I thought was going to be a single post is actually two because there were a LOT of pictures. But I got all the pictures in and most of the text on the first post done! Will have to finish that off tomorrow. . . And as for Valice Multiverse, no activity there, so I just threw up a couple more reblogs of Alice and Corpse Bride stuff. Nice and easy!
Fallout 4: Yay, had a proper Fallout Sunday today, playing through 12/27/2287 in the game – aka my birthday! XD Plus a bit of 12/28 – let’s see what I accomplished:
A) Started with Victor having just woken up after camping out at Rocky Narrows Park, where he and Nick had found refuge for the night last time I played. Victor took a poke around the rest of the park while he was there – shot a radchicken wandering around the playground for its meat (and can) and grabbed a teddy bear that had been left by the seesaws (aww); found a randomly-floating hunting rifle (Bethesda); checked out the other standing cabin and found some baseball stuff lying around (took the glove and the ball for their components); shot a wolf who started prowling around when he exited the cabin (dangerous, but as I expected a BEAR somewhere around here, I’ll take it); and risked a trip into a heavily-irradiated camper and found a nice steamer trunk full of various goodies like ammo and some armor and guns to break down (he has plenty of Radaway, so it wasn’t an issue). Not a bad haul!
B) With that sorted, Victor and Nick left the park, working their way down the cliffs at one side to see if they could get to Graygarden (and raiding a dead radstag along the way) – fortunately, it was almost right at the bottom of said cliffs! :D Turns out I was closer than I thought! And I avoided whatever nonsense was going on over at Jalbert’s (so much gunfire nearby), so double win. :D Headed down there about 7:44 AM in-game and took a look at the stats – for some reason, the game says there’s six people living there, which I presume are the various Mr. Handys and their supervisors. Checking the defense towers reset the little “this settlement needs your attention” sign in my Pip-Boy, but I figured, as the biggest farm in the Minutemen holdings right now, this place desperately needed more defense. Especially since I wanted to get the two Handys I’d assigned to the defense outposts (Supervisor Green and a random Handy) back on food production. . .
C) Cue me spending most of the in-game day building loads of turrets (both heavy and regular) and putting them around the perimeter of the build area; reassigning Green and that other Handy to the crops that needed tending (though I discovered later that they could also man their defense posts as well as tend crops, so that was nice); retreating inside the greenhouse when a radstorm blew in and taking the opportunity to use the portable workbench to mess with the Kneecapper Laser Musket a bit – gave it a five-crank capacitor, but couldn’t decide which of the other mods, if any, I wanted it to have (because certain barrels remove the barrel “slot” at the end, meaning I couldn’t put a beam focuser or anything on the end if I used those. . .laser muskets make great snipers, or so I am told, but I’ve already got Righteous Authority for that, plus the Two-Shot combat rifle for everyday stuff. . .); dropping off a load of junk into the workbench when the radstorm transitioned into just a normal thunderstorm, then going back to Nick and raiding his inventory and swapping out the regular shotgun I gave him previously for the Tactical Advanced Double Barrel I’m not really using anymore (might as well give him the good one!) –
D) And then Nick asked Victor if he had a moment, and we got the third affinity convo! :D Nick basically explaining to Victor the contradiction of his life – namely, that he gets to HAVE a life because his head is full of borrowed memories from a Pre-War cop, and that grates on him sometime, as he doesn’t really feel like he has anything of his own. :( Victor assured Nick that he doesn’t think that Nick is a machine pretending to be a person, and said that, since separating the two isn’t really possible, he thinks Nick has built a really good life for himself. :) I’m so glad that they’re becoming friends so quickly – methinks that, once I’ve finished off the trip through Kellogg’s memories, I’ll have to have Victor help Nick wrap up some of his cold cases and – if Nick’s ready – do his affinity quest. :) Along with taking the Castle for Preston, of course!
E) Anyway, with that sorted, it was back to building! Namely, as the game had informed Victor he was a bit grubby, I had him build an outhouse and a shower station (and also replace the water pump I’d accidentally scrapped *facepalm*), then a little metal shack near the overpass that crosses over the settlement with a bed inside for him to sleep in (I put a painting inside and an “Employees Only” sign on the front for fun). XD Also tried to build some stairs up to the chunk of highway overpass that technically falls within this build area, but couldn’t figure out how to get them to work. Maybe another day! At any rate, building the shack took Victor all the way to his “exhausted” state, and I had him take the bedroom I’d just build for him for a spin, bunking down at 9:30 PM.
F) Victor woke up at 5:30 AM the next morning, feeling nice and well rested. :) I had him erect a Minuteman flagpole at the edge of the settlement, then had him take a shower (reducing his rads from the radstorm) and do a bit of cooking before he and Nick set off again shortly after 8 AM. After consulting the map, I decided the best way back to Diamond City would be to go down by Beantown Brewery and Oberland Station. Victor and Nick thus made their way down to the street below (stopping briefly at the Pulowski shelter stop to try their luck with the port-o-diner there – no dice on the pie), then over to the bridge that connects Cambridge with the Beantown Brewery – found a Brotherhood patrol lingering there, who’d just taken care of a Gunner. Victor and Nick left them to their patrol and headed past the Brewery and to Oberland, where Victor took some crops and duct tape and did a bit more cooking. I left it with him and Nick preparing to follow the train tracks through the fog, at about 11 AM in-game.
*nods* Pretty decent progress, if I say so myself! And getting Nick’s third affinity convo was a good in-game “birthday present.” XD Next time, hopefully we get back to Diamond City and trigger the trip back to Goodneighbor so we can go through Kellogg’s memories and Victor can learn he needs to head into the Glowing Sea. Which gives me an excuse to have him do a bunch of sidequests as he “prepares” for that. :P
Writing: As per usual for Sundays, I wrote up the day’s adventures for the FO4 Playthrough Progression! Pretty much the same as what happened above with exploring the park, improving Graygarden’s defenses, and having the third affinity talk with Nick, only with the addition of Alice and some slightly more realistic settlement improvements (Victor building a much simpler shack out of the scrap metal scattered around the settlement, for example). Also with Alice and Victor both talking to Nick about the memories of original Nick, and Victor bringing up Nick using a new name – a dialogue option I hadn’t picked in the original conversation but was curious about. Looking it up proved its the “sarcastic option,” with the Sole Survivor jokingly suggesting “Crumble-Bot! 3000!” and Nick laughingly saying “it’s the thought that counts,” so I had Alice make that joke while Victor posed the question seriously. XD I had Nick answer that he likes “Nick” and it would be awkward to rename himself at this point, which, fair enough. (And when Victor tried to call him “Nicholas” instead, it was just a bit weird for everyone involved. XD) Simple but sweet!
Workout: Back on the bike this evening to resume James Turner’s High School Years LP with episode 16! This is the final episode covering Reginald’s time in university (as James went all-in with a full class schedule to finish in three weeks), and it’s been the usual mad race of “doing homework, going to class, going to soccer practice, doing presentations and term papers, collapse in bed, repeat” for most of the episode. XD Reginald takes his university “career” seriously! The highlights of the episode so far have been:
A) Figuring out the relationship between Brady Vatore and Reginald, as Brady is Caleb’s son, and Caleb is of course the brother of Lilith, who married Ambrose Bigwallet, who is – well, there’s two branching Bigwallet lines thanks to one of the Semaj Renrut’s having a fling with Raggy Bigwallet from the Seasons LP (her son Bob became the star of the Discover University RtR, while her sister Lady II was the star of the Get Famous one, and we’ve been bouncing back and forth between the lines ever since), so Brady and Reginald are SOMEHOW related, but we’re not sure how (very distant cousins). And it’s likely not to be a blood relation as Brady has no mother in game, suggesting he was adopted by Caleb. Nevertheless, the possible addition of a slightly-creepy “keeping it in the family” vibe to his and Reginald’s fling means that James is DEFINITELY not pursing any other relationship with Brady. He wasn’t planning to anyway, but this just helped confirm that decision.
B) Reginald making Starter on the Foxbury Institute Soccer team, ending up a Notable Newcomer from all the fame he’s been gaining playing good games! There’s actually one more level to the “career” – Playmaker – but James isn’t sure if Reginald will be promoted to it before his university days end. He’s giving it his best go, though, having Reginald study his playbook on the regular, and he just won one of his last two games, meaning that if he gets promoted after the Saturday game, he’ll have maxed that out too, yay. :) James is also letting him flirt with fame, taking the perk that gives him more fame from skills and such – we’ll see where THAT goes later!
C) Things remaining weird between Reginald and Sidney, with Reginald having wants to talk to his crush and have a kid, and Sidney (despite no longer being Reginald’s dormmate – James isn’t sure what happens, but suspects they all “graduated” early) coming on-campus in the lobster mascot costume apparently to stalk him. XD James is obviously hyping up all the drama between them just to be silly, but it is a bit weird!
D) Reginald actually going and seeing his mother Column after getting a call from her on Friday evening! Yeah, this is a rare thing to happen in James’s LPs, where the previous generation is basically abandoned once the heir takes on the Rags To Riches challenge, but James is playing the VERY long game with this one to get the two branches of the Bigwallet family tree even again (basically Reginald needs to have kids, and then HIS kids need to have kids, so this LP is multi-generational), so he figured he could do some non-standard gameplay for him. :p The visit went well, with Reginald and Column (and Plan Tayne) having some sweet interactions. Column even gave him a loan of $2,000 for his house and some magical training! :) Good stuff. I actually left off right when Reginald went home to prepare for his final big game – we’ll see how that goes and if he makes Playmaker! And then it is graduation time, w000. . .
YouTube: Oof. . .well, if you go by what I’d hoped to watch today, I got three-fifths check on this item – I had to drop AT4W and Kevin after I realized I’d started too late on watching all the videos and wouldn’t be able to fit them all in. On the plus side though, this is a short week coming up, and Kevin’s upload schedule should make it easy to catch up. In the meantime –
A) Started, of course with OXmas – “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 9! Fall Guys Festive Fallathon Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022!” Another fairly simple one today – Andy vs Mike in a round of Fall Guys, with whoever manages to get the farthest winning! It was pretty close for three rounds – they both managed to qualify in Dizzying Heights (where you have to climb up while running around various spinning circles), Gate Crash (where you have to get through the gates going up and down and not fall off – they did both fall off, but managed to do some impressive diving through gates when they reset and made the finish line), and Jump Club (where you’re on a platform with two spinning bars, one big pink one and one smaller green one, and you have to jump and dodge them and not get swept off into the slime – Mike actually DID get swept off right at the end, but managed to qualify because someone else hit the slime first and filled all the elimination slots. Andy was like “what?!” XD), but on Fruit Chute (where you had to dodge flying fruit while running uphill on a slope that was moving downhill – think those “travelators” you see in airports and the like), a few bad hits on Andy meant that he was eliminated after Mike made the finish line. Shame. Mike played on to see what he’d get next, and got Blast Ball, where you had to throw exploding balls at people while the circular platform gradually fell away from under you – he did pretty well, but ended up running into an explosion and was knocked off into the slime. So no Fall Guys crown for him, but he did get himself a Christmas point! Three for three on challenges, meaning he now ties Andy for the lead. . .
B) Then it was time for GrayStillPlays and “when you hit the ground at 9,587,011 mph” – aka Gray plays Draw Flights – Drawing Puzzle! This is another one of those mobile games where you have to draw your way to victory – in this case, you must guide the world’s most boneless man, hanging onto a hovering object (Gray started out with a hoverboard, then randomized in a bird, then randomized in some rockets), over to a small platform with a flag on it, while avoiding all the obstacles. Obstacles ranging from grindy saws, to simple walls made of concrete or solidified sky, to MOVING walls made of concrete, to random gouts of flame, to little demonic creatures, to random wires, to – you get the picture. XD Gray, of course, liked to make the most ridiculous paths to victory whenever possible, though the fact that the gun swung around VERY VIOLENTLY whenever he made a turn made this a bit tricky. He did get his mandated YEET in, though. That is very important. And his mandated weird scribbles. Also very important. XD
C) And finally, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 9 - What Happens In Vegas…” with Wanda the Lone Wanderer’s adventures in New Vegas! As it turns out, though, as Jon is focusing heavily on this being a Fallout 3 playthrough, he chose to act as if Wanda’s stay in the Mojave Wasteland was more of a vacation than anything else. Hence the title of the episode. I guess three years of courier work after coming here on the train and then getting shot in the head, she wanted a break. XD Wanda’s “vacation” focused largely on getting her gear and her levels back (and as a result, speeding up the healing of her head trauma), and consisted roughly of the following:
I. Discovering that while Benny wrecked her levels, stole her gear, and left her humbled with head trauma, he didn’t touch the schematics she was carrying around, meaning – with a careful search of Goodsprings, particularly the doctor’s house and the schoolhouse (murdering the mantises inside), she was able to make herself a NEW dart gun with darts, and a NEW railway rifle with spikes. Admittedly, the local geckos really did not take well to being shot in the head with railway spikes (as in, they glitched out enormously), but it got the job done. She also swung by the graveyard and picked up a snowglobe and some cigarette butts from around her grave – souvenirs! XD
II. Checking out a random conspiracy theorist’s radio shack to make sure that the world hadn’t imploded on itself – i.e., that Moira hadn’t managed to finish the Wasteland Survival Guide without her. She had not and there was a Scout Handbook there instead. Though Jon was of the opinion that, if you DO finish the Guide before starting the New Vegas stuff, that the Guide SHOULD be there, and it should give you smaller or bigger bonuses depending on the perk you got for helping complete it and how well you did on all the objectives. *laughs* I’m the same way about mods myself, Jon – it’s easy to talk about how cool that would be when you’re not the one coding it! XD
III. Deciding to take the direct route to New Vegas (refusing to get into most of the sidequests/tutorial stuff) through Quarry Junction by using the dart gun to break a bunch of deathclaw legs so they can’t effectively chase her down – and hey, while she’s there, might as well get a deathclaw egg and take it back to Jas down at the diner to get an omelet and the recipe for said omelet from the nice possibly-a-cannibal lady! (She has “strange meat pies” in her kitchen, you see, and Jon thinks the whole “get me a deathclaw egg” quest is her way of harvesting the “strange meat” from unlucky strangers.) Things nearly got a little dicey when the deathclaws figured out how to get onto the bit of platform she was standing on, and again when the alpha male deathclaw proved to be fast even with a broken leg, but Wanda ducked, weaved, jumped down from high places, and got enemies stuck on the scenery and made it out with all limbs intact. (Er – on the SECOND try, anyway. XD)
IV. Deciding to swing by McCarran and help the NCR out with the local Fiends (because holy SHIT, in this save file they NEEDED IT – Jon was astonished to see the NCR troops falling so quickly to the local Fiend assault as usually they apparently kick Fiend ass), and then do a little bounty hunting with First Recon to take out the Fiend’s leader Delphi and earn herself a few caps for spending on the Strip. Unfortunately, First Recon kind of ruined things by shooting the leader in the head while Wanda aimed for the legs, mangling its visage and making it impossible to confirm who he was, meaning she didn’t get the full reward. Jon was quite sour about that. But hey, money is money.
V. Making it to the Strip and going to the Tops to find Benny, thus getting a RIDICULOUS load of XP and getting back two levels at once and a couple of nice skills and perks, yay. However, her goal was not to murder Benny, but instead to play nice with him. Not TOO nice, that is – while Jon had immediately gotten back her Black Widow perk when she first leveled up, he didn’t want to seduce Benny as he needed to do things a specific way to get Wanda’s stuff back without causing too much fuss. (Besides, think of poor Mr. Burke, waiting for her back in D.C. XD) Anyway, Wanda came up to him and, by being polite about the platinum chip, got herself a free stay in the Presidential Suite and a promise that he’d come up with meet with her. A quick pickpocket of his various hotel keys, and she was able to crack open the safe in there and get back all her old guns and equipment, yay. :) And then, with the help of the Naughty Nightwear Benny left her and Lincoln’s Hat, she was able to convince Benny over his intercom system that she wasn’t THAT interested in the Platinum Chip (being shot in the head will do that to a person) and that if he just left her alive, she’d leave him alone. And so he did. And so she went downstairs to gamble in his casino in the Naughty Nightwear because winning at gambling is a function of chance in this game, her Luck is 9 WITHOUT boosts and 10 with the Nightwear, and yeah. Made a whole bunch of caps from playing blackjack in a negligee. XD
VI. Heading over to Michael Angelo’s the sign maker and agreeing to take some snaps for him (with Jon pointing out with interest that this is a rare occasion where you can totally flub the speech check if you don’t have the Medicine or Speech skills, but the conversation continues on anyway, possibly because it’s just a quest about taking pictures). Cue Wanda running all over the Mojave wasteland, taking pictures of nice signs for XP, including climbing an old broken roller coaster all the way to the top hill to get a certain buffalo sign (and a very nice view) and learning that locations with multiple variants of the same sign will allow you to take pictures of either sign for the same XP, nice. :) Not that she ever went BACK to Michael to give him the pictures – no, she didn’t need the money, so these snaps went into her virtual scrapbook. XD
VII. Sneaking through Scorpion Gulch while taking the pictures, using her dart gun to cripple said scorpions, then using the trick of “you can open the door from this angle despite it being behind a fence so the game will instantly teleport you into the building because what is realism” to get into a location full of super mutants and fix a broken Mr. Handy (with the help of a science skill magazine) to get the thanks and supply cache of Nightkin (a special dark blue variant of super mutant specially adapted to the night) Tabitha and thus another load of XP for more levels, yay!
VIII. Stopping by Novac and getting some souvenirs for her trip home – “That Gun,” which has loads of damage on it, takes a bullet type that is ABSURDLY COMMON in the Capital Wasteland, and has bonus Crit damage – and, thanks to the mod standardizing prices between FO3 and F:NV, was actually in Wanda’s price range (Jon was originally going to steal it before he realized it was a lot cheaper); “Pacienca,” another super-special gun that Jon could actually afford for a change; and Boone’s special recon beret that increases Perception and gives even better Critical Chances (as good as the best actual armor in the game)! That last required her to lure the woman who sold Boone’s wife as a slave to the Legion to the dinosaur he was camped out in so he could shoot her, but Wanda’s commitment to neutrality means she’s willing to do both good things and bad ones if it results in her getting a great hat. XD
IX. Finally going to Mr. House, largely ignoring his lecture about how she should have come to him before confronting Benny because blah blah blah Platinum chip is missing, then stealing ALL of his pre-War books in his little Lucky 38 and running off to Freeside to find the train station and a train ticket back to DC and that Brotherhood of Steel scribe she befriended to sell them off –
and get 6,600 caps and 875 XP for the lot. NICE. :D And this got her back to where she should be in levels (or possibly one off, I don’t recall if she hit level 9 or level 10 at the end of the episode) and back to the Capital Wasteland after roughly three years and three weeks (three years spent in the Mojave because that’s when New Vegas starts, about a week’s vacation in the Wasteland there, then two weeks travel time back as per the loading screen). Fresh as a daisy and ready to actually resume plot stuff!
. . .in the new year, because next week is Christmas, and Jon has decided that that means we’re pausing for a Fallout Christmas Special. Dunno what it’s gonna be, but I am eager to find out. :D
Yeah, not bad! Would have liked to have least gotten a little farther on the tumblr drafts stuff if nothing else, but I can catch up on that tomorrow. And now it is time to get to bed because I do still have three days of work this week, meeh. Hopefully they go by quickly! Night all!
Tumblr: Did the dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice and cleaned up the “Valicer Christmas Headcanons” post in the drafts before lunch (realized that Smiler’s favorite animal is the frog in the process; thanks Sims 4 frog-breeding mechanic), then did all the pictures and the starter drafts for the Chill Save update on Wednesday featuring the house upgrades/slight remodel between finishing up all my FO4 stuff, below, and my workout. And yes, drafts plural – what I thought was going to be a single post is actually two because there were a LOT of pictures. But I got all the pictures in and most of the text on the first post done! Will have to finish that off tomorrow. . . And as for Valice Multiverse, no activity there, so I just threw up a couple more reblogs of Alice and Corpse Bride stuff. Nice and easy!
Fallout 4: Yay, had a proper Fallout Sunday today, playing through 12/27/2287 in the game – aka my birthday! XD Plus a bit of 12/28 – let’s see what I accomplished:
A) Started with Victor having just woken up after camping out at Rocky Narrows Park, where he and Nick had found refuge for the night last time I played. Victor took a poke around the rest of the park while he was there – shot a radchicken wandering around the playground for its meat (and can) and grabbed a teddy bear that had been left by the seesaws (aww); found a randomly-floating hunting rifle (Bethesda); checked out the other standing cabin and found some baseball stuff lying around (took the glove and the ball for their components); shot a wolf who started prowling around when he exited the cabin (dangerous, but as I expected a BEAR somewhere around here, I’ll take it); and risked a trip into a heavily-irradiated camper and found a nice steamer trunk full of various goodies like ammo and some armor and guns to break down (he has plenty of Radaway, so it wasn’t an issue). Not a bad haul!
B) With that sorted, Victor and Nick left the park, working their way down the cliffs at one side to see if they could get to Graygarden (and raiding a dead radstag along the way) – fortunately, it was almost right at the bottom of said cliffs! :D Turns out I was closer than I thought! And I avoided whatever nonsense was going on over at Jalbert’s (so much gunfire nearby), so double win. :D Headed down there about 7:44 AM in-game and took a look at the stats – for some reason, the game says there’s six people living there, which I presume are the various Mr. Handys and their supervisors. Checking the defense towers reset the little “this settlement needs your attention” sign in my Pip-Boy, but I figured, as the biggest farm in the Minutemen holdings right now, this place desperately needed more defense. Especially since I wanted to get the two Handys I’d assigned to the defense outposts (Supervisor Green and a random Handy) back on food production. . .
C) Cue me spending most of the in-game day building loads of turrets (both heavy and regular) and putting them around the perimeter of the build area; reassigning Green and that other Handy to the crops that needed tending (though I discovered later that they could also man their defense posts as well as tend crops, so that was nice); retreating inside the greenhouse when a radstorm blew in and taking the opportunity to use the portable workbench to mess with the Kneecapper Laser Musket a bit – gave it a five-crank capacitor, but couldn’t decide which of the other mods, if any, I wanted it to have (because certain barrels remove the barrel “slot” at the end, meaning I couldn’t put a beam focuser or anything on the end if I used those. . .laser muskets make great snipers, or so I am told, but I’ve already got Righteous Authority for that, plus the Two-Shot combat rifle for everyday stuff. . .); dropping off a load of junk into the workbench when the radstorm transitioned into just a normal thunderstorm, then going back to Nick and raiding his inventory and swapping out the regular shotgun I gave him previously for the Tactical Advanced Double Barrel I’m not really using anymore (might as well give him the good one!) –
D) And then Nick asked Victor if he had a moment, and we got the third affinity convo! :D Nick basically explaining to Victor the contradiction of his life – namely, that he gets to HAVE a life because his head is full of borrowed memories from a Pre-War cop, and that grates on him sometime, as he doesn’t really feel like he has anything of his own. :( Victor assured Nick that he doesn’t think that Nick is a machine pretending to be a person, and said that, since separating the two isn’t really possible, he thinks Nick has built a really good life for himself. :) I’m so glad that they’re becoming friends so quickly – methinks that, once I’ve finished off the trip through Kellogg’s memories, I’ll have to have Victor help Nick wrap up some of his cold cases and – if Nick’s ready – do his affinity quest. :) Along with taking the Castle for Preston, of course!
E) Anyway, with that sorted, it was back to building! Namely, as the game had informed Victor he was a bit grubby, I had him build an outhouse and a shower station (and also replace the water pump I’d accidentally scrapped *facepalm*), then a little metal shack near the overpass that crosses over the settlement with a bed inside for him to sleep in (I put a painting inside and an “Employees Only” sign on the front for fun). XD Also tried to build some stairs up to the chunk of highway overpass that technically falls within this build area, but couldn’t figure out how to get them to work. Maybe another day! At any rate, building the shack took Victor all the way to his “exhausted” state, and I had him take the bedroom I’d just build for him for a spin, bunking down at 9:30 PM.
F) Victor woke up at 5:30 AM the next morning, feeling nice and well rested. :) I had him erect a Minuteman flagpole at the edge of the settlement, then had him take a shower (reducing his rads from the radstorm) and do a bit of cooking before he and Nick set off again shortly after 8 AM. After consulting the map, I decided the best way back to Diamond City would be to go down by Beantown Brewery and Oberland Station. Victor and Nick thus made their way down to the street below (stopping briefly at the Pulowski shelter stop to try their luck with the port-o-diner there – no dice on the pie), then over to the bridge that connects Cambridge with the Beantown Brewery – found a Brotherhood patrol lingering there, who’d just taken care of a Gunner. Victor and Nick left them to their patrol and headed past the Brewery and to Oberland, where Victor took some crops and duct tape and did a bit more cooking. I left it with him and Nick preparing to follow the train tracks through the fog, at about 11 AM in-game.
*nods* Pretty decent progress, if I say so myself! And getting Nick’s third affinity convo was a good in-game “birthday present.” XD Next time, hopefully we get back to Diamond City and trigger the trip back to Goodneighbor so we can go through Kellogg’s memories and Victor can learn he needs to head into the Glowing Sea. Which gives me an excuse to have him do a bunch of sidequests as he “prepares” for that. :P
Writing: As per usual for Sundays, I wrote up the day’s adventures for the FO4 Playthrough Progression! Pretty much the same as what happened above with exploring the park, improving Graygarden’s defenses, and having the third affinity talk with Nick, only with the addition of Alice and some slightly more realistic settlement improvements (Victor building a much simpler shack out of the scrap metal scattered around the settlement, for example). Also with Alice and Victor both talking to Nick about the memories of original Nick, and Victor bringing up Nick using a new name – a dialogue option I hadn’t picked in the original conversation but was curious about. Looking it up proved its the “sarcastic option,” with the Sole Survivor jokingly suggesting “Crumble-Bot! 3000!” and Nick laughingly saying “it’s the thought that counts,” so I had Alice make that joke while Victor posed the question seriously. XD I had Nick answer that he likes “Nick” and it would be awkward to rename himself at this point, which, fair enough. (And when Victor tried to call him “Nicholas” instead, it was just a bit weird for everyone involved. XD) Simple but sweet!
Workout: Back on the bike this evening to resume James Turner’s High School Years LP with episode 16! This is the final episode covering Reginald’s time in university (as James went all-in with a full class schedule to finish in three weeks), and it’s been the usual mad race of “doing homework, going to class, going to soccer practice, doing presentations and term papers, collapse in bed, repeat” for most of the episode. XD Reginald takes his university “career” seriously! The highlights of the episode so far have been:
A) Figuring out the relationship between Brady Vatore and Reginald, as Brady is Caleb’s son, and Caleb is of course the brother of Lilith, who married Ambrose Bigwallet, who is – well, there’s two branching Bigwallet lines thanks to one of the Semaj Renrut’s having a fling with Raggy Bigwallet from the Seasons LP (her son Bob became the star of the Discover University RtR, while her sister Lady II was the star of the Get Famous one, and we’ve been bouncing back and forth between the lines ever since), so Brady and Reginald are SOMEHOW related, but we’re not sure how (very distant cousins). And it’s likely not to be a blood relation as Brady has no mother in game, suggesting he was adopted by Caleb. Nevertheless, the possible addition of a slightly-creepy “keeping it in the family” vibe to his and Reginald’s fling means that James is DEFINITELY not pursing any other relationship with Brady. He wasn’t planning to anyway, but this just helped confirm that decision.
B) Reginald making Starter on the Foxbury Institute Soccer team, ending up a Notable Newcomer from all the fame he’s been gaining playing good games! There’s actually one more level to the “career” – Playmaker – but James isn’t sure if Reginald will be promoted to it before his university days end. He’s giving it his best go, though, having Reginald study his playbook on the regular, and he just won one of his last two games, meaning that if he gets promoted after the Saturday game, he’ll have maxed that out too, yay. :) James is also letting him flirt with fame, taking the perk that gives him more fame from skills and such – we’ll see where THAT goes later!
C) Things remaining weird between Reginald and Sidney, with Reginald having wants to talk to his crush and have a kid, and Sidney (despite no longer being Reginald’s dormmate – James isn’t sure what happens, but suspects they all “graduated” early) coming on-campus in the lobster mascot costume apparently to stalk him. XD James is obviously hyping up all the drama between them just to be silly, but it is a bit weird!
D) Reginald actually going and seeing his mother Column after getting a call from her on Friday evening! Yeah, this is a rare thing to happen in James’s LPs, where the previous generation is basically abandoned once the heir takes on the Rags To Riches challenge, but James is playing the VERY long game with this one to get the two branches of the Bigwallet family tree even again (basically Reginald needs to have kids, and then HIS kids need to have kids, so this LP is multi-generational), so he figured he could do some non-standard gameplay for him. :p The visit went well, with Reginald and Column (and Plan Tayne) having some sweet interactions. Column even gave him a loan of $2,000 for his house and some magical training! :) Good stuff. I actually left off right when Reginald went home to prepare for his final big game – we’ll see how that goes and if he makes Playmaker! And then it is graduation time, w000. . .
YouTube: Oof. . .well, if you go by what I’d hoped to watch today, I got three-fifths check on this item – I had to drop AT4W and Kevin after I realized I’d started too late on watching all the videos and wouldn’t be able to fit them all in. On the plus side though, this is a short week coming up, and Kevin’s upload schedule should make it easy to catch up. In the meantime –
A) Started, of course with OXmas – “XMAS CHALLENGE DAY 9! Fall Guys Festive Fallathon Challenge | Tournament of Champions 2022!” Another fairly simple one today – Andy vs Mike in a round of Fall Guys, with whoever manages to get the farthest winning! It was pretty close for three rounds – they both managed to qualify in Dizzying Heights (where you have to climb up while running around various spinning circles), Gate Crash (where you have to get through the gates going up and down and not fall off – they did both fall off, but managed to do some impressive diving through gates when they reset and made the finish line), and Jump Club (where you’re on a platform with two spinning bars, one big pink one and one smaller green one, and you have to jump and dodge them and not get swept off into the slime – Mike actually DID get swept off right at the end, but managed to qualify because someone else hit the slime first and filled all the elimination slots. Andy was like “what?!” XD), but on Fruit Chute (where you had to dodge flying fruit while running uphill on a slope that was moving downhill – think those “travelators” you see in airports and the like), a few bad hits on Andy meant that he was eliminated after Mike made the finish line. Shame. Mike played on to see what he’d get next, and got Blast Ball, where you had to throw exploding balls at people while the circular platform gradually fell away from under you – he did pretty well, but ended up running into an explosion and was knocked off into the slime. So no Fall Guys crown for him, but he did get himself a Christmas point! Three for three on challenges, meaning he now ties Andy for the lead. . .
B) Then it was time for GrayStillPlays and “when you hit the ground at 9,587,011 mph” – aka Gray plays Draw Flights – Drawing Puzzle! This is another one of those mobile games where you have to draw your way to victory – in this case, you must guide the world’s most boneless man, hanging onto a hovering object (Gray started out with a hoverboard, then randomized in a bird, then randomized in some rockets), over to a small platform with a flag on it, while avoiding all the obstacles. Obstacles ranging from grindy saws, to simple walls made of concrete or solidified sky, to MOVING walls made of concrete, to random gouts of flame, to little demonic creatures, to random wires, to – you get the picture. XD Gray, of course, liked to make the most ridiculous paths to victory whenever possible, though the fact that the gun swung around VERY VIOLENTLY whenever he made a turn made this a bit tricky. He did get his mandated YEET in, though. That is very important. And his mandated weird scribbles. Also very important. XD
C) And finally, we had Jon of Many A True Nerd and “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 9 - What Happens In Vegas…” with Wanda the Lone Wanderer’s adventures in New Vegas! As it turns out, though, as Jon is focusing heavily on this being a Fallout 3 playthrough, he chose to act as if Wanda’s stay in the Mojave Wasteland was more of a vacation than anything else. Hence the title of the episode. I guess three years of courier work after coming here on the train and then getting shot in the head, she wanted a break. XD Wanda’s “vacation” focused largely on getting her gear and her levels back (and as a result, speeding up the healing of her head trauma), and consisted roughly of the following:
I. Discovering that while Benny wrecked her levels, stole her gear, and left her humbled with head trauma, he didn’t touch the schematics she was carrying around, meaning – with a careful search of Goodsprings, particularly the doctor’s house and the schoolhouse (murdering the mantises inside), she was able to make herself a NEW dart gun with darts, and a NEW railway rifle with spikes. Admittedly, the local geckos really did not take well to being shot in the head with railway spikes (as in, they glitched out enormously), but it got the job done. She also swung by the graveyard and picked up a snowglobe and some cigarette butts from around her grave – souvenirs! XD
II. Checking out a random conspiracy theorist’s radio shack to make sure that the world hadn’t imploded on itself – i.e., that Moira hadn’t managed to finish the Wasteland Survival Guide without her. She had not and there was a Scout Handbook there instead. Though Jon was of the opinion that, if you DO finish the Guide before starting the New Vegas stuff, that the Guide SHOULD be there, and it should give you smaller or bigger bonuses depending on the perk you got for helping complete it and how well you did on all the objectives. *laughs* I’m the same way about mods myself, Jon – it’s easy to talk about how cool that would be when you’re not the one coding it! XD
III. Deciding to take the direct route to New Vegas (refusing to get into most of the sidequests/tutorial stuff) through Quarry Junction by using the dart gun to break a bunch of deathclaw legs so they can’t effectively chase her down – and hey, while she’s there, might as well get a deathclaw egg and take it back to Jas down at the diner to get an omelet and the recipe for said omelet from the nice possibly-a-cannibal lady! (She has “strange meat pies” in her kitchen, you see, and Jon thinks the whole “get me a deathclaw egg” quest is her way of harvesting the “strange meat” from unlucky strangers.) Things nearly got a little dicey when the deathclaws figured out how to get onto the bit of platform she was standing on, and again when the alpha male deathclaw proved to be fast even with a broken leg, but Wanda ducked, weaved, jumped down from high places, and got enemies stuck on the scenery and made it out with all limbs intact. (Er – on the SECOND try, anyway. XD)
IV. Deciding to swing by McCarran and help the NCR out with the local Fiends (because holy SHIT, in this save file they NEEDED IT – Jon was astonished to see the NCR troops falling so quickly to the local Fiend assault as usually they apparently kick Fiend ass), and then do a little bounty hunting with First Recon to take out the Fiend’s leader Delphi and earn herself a few caps for spending on the Strip. Unfortunately, First Recon kind of ruined things by shooting the leader in the head while Wanda aimed for the legs, mangling its visage and making it impossible to confirm who he was, meaning she didn’t get the full reward. Jon was quite sour about that. But hey, money is money.
V. Making it to the Strip and going to the Tops to find Benny, thus getting a RIDICULOUS load of XP and getting back two levels at once and a couple of nice skills and perks, yay. However, her goal was not to murder Benny, but instead to play nice with him. Not TOO nice, that is – while Jon had immediately gotten back her Black Widow perk when she first leveled up, he didn’t want to seduce Benny as he needed to do things a specific way to get Wanda’s stuff back without causing too much fuss. (Besides, think of poor Mr. Burke, waiting for her back in D.C. XD) Anyway, Wanda came up to him and, by being polite about the platinum chip, got herself a free stay in the Presidential Suite and a promise that he’d come up with meet with her. A quick pickpocket of his various hotel keys, and she was able to crack open the safe in there and get back all her old guns and equipment, yay. :) And then, with the help of the Naughty Nightwear Benny left her and Lincoln’s Hat, she was able to convince Benny over his intercom system that she wasn’t THAT interested in the Platinum Chip (being shot in the head will do that to a person) and that if he just left her alive, she’d leave him alone. And so he did. And so she went downstairs to gamble in his casino in the Naughty Nightwear because winning at gambling is a function of chance in this game, her Luck is 9 WITHOUT boosts and 10 with the Nightwear, and yeah. Made a whole bunch of caps from playing blackjack in a negligee. XD
VI. Heading over to Michael Angelo’s the sign maker and agreeing to take some snaps for him (with Jon pointing out with interest that this is a rare occasion where you can totally flub the speech check if you don’t have the Medicine or Speech skills, but the conversation continues on anyway, possibly because it’s just a quest about taking pictures). Cue Wanda running all over the Mojave wasteland, taking pictures of nice signs for XP, including climbing an old broken roller coaster all the way to the top hill to get a certain buffalo sign (and a very nice view) and learning that locations with multiple variants of the same sign will allow you to take pictures of either sign for the same XP, nice. :) Not that she ever went BACK to Michael to give him the pictures – no, she didn’t need the money, so these snaps went into her virtual scrapbook. XD
VII. Sneaking through Scorpion Gulch while taking the pictures, using her dart gun to cripple said scorpions, then using the trick of “you can open the door from this angle despite it being behind a fence so the game will instantly teleport you into the building because what is realism” to get into a location full of super mutants and fix a broken Mr. Handy (with the help of a science skill magazine) to get the thanks and supply cache of Nightkin (a special dark blue variant of super mutant specially adapted to the night) Tabitha and thus another load of XP for more levels, yay!
VIII. Stopping by Novac and getting some souvenirs for her trip home – “That Gun,” which has loads of damage on it, takes a bullet type that is ABSURDLY COMMON in the Capital Wasteland, and has bonus Crit damage – and, thanks to the mod standardizing prices between FO3 and F:NV, was actually in Wanda’s price range (Jon was originally going to steal it before he realized it was a lot cheaper); “Pacienca,” another super-special gun that Jon could actually afford for a change; and Boone’s special recon beret that increases Perception and gives even better Critical Chances (as good as the best actual armor in the game)! That last required her to lure the woman who sold Boone’s wife as a slave to the Legion to the dinosaur he was camped out in so he could shoot her, but Wanda’s commitment to neutrality means she’s willing to do both good things and bad ones if it results in her getting a great hat. XD
IX. Finally going to Mr. House, largely ignoring his lecture about how she should have come to him before confronting Benny because blah blah blah Platinum chip is missing, then stealing ALL of his pre-War books in his little Lucky 38 and running off to Freeside to find the train station and a train ticket back to DC and that Brotherhood of Steel scribe she befriended to sell them off –
and get 6,600 caps and 875 XP for the lot. NICE. :D And this got her back to where she should be in levels (or possibly one off, I don’t recall if she hit level 9 or level 10 at the end of the episode) and back to the Capital Wasteland after roughly three years and three weeks (three years spent in the Mojave because that’s when New Vegas starts, about a week’s vacation in the Wasteland there, then two weeks travel time back as per the loading screen). Fresh as a daisy and ready to actually resume plot stuff!
. . .in the new year, because next week is Christmas, and Jon has decided that that means we’re pausing for a Fallout Christmas Special. Dunno what it’s gonna be, but I am eager to find out. :D
Yeah, not bad! Would have liked to have least gotten a little farther on the tumblr drafts stuff if nothing else, but I can catch up on that tomorrow. And now it is time to get to bed because I do still have three days of work this week, meeh. Hopefully they go by quickly! Night all!
