Catching Up On Things Sunday
Jul. 30th, 2023 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWas a pretty chill day, all things considered -- even weather-wise, where things took a turn for the dry again. It got pretty warm this afternoon -- low 80s -- but without the humidity, it was a LOT more bearable! I mean, I've got my AC on now, but that's just because I had the sun beating into my room earlier and I needed to cool things down a bit. Always nice when you can have the windows open and actually BREATHE.
Also always nice when you can make some proper progress on your to-do list --
Tumblr: Managed to have a pretty good day on both tumblrs, which I’m happy about –
Victor Luvs Alice – Well, first of all, I put all my new Incorrect Valicer Quotes from the new(?) generator into a post draft before going to bed last night, so THAT’S all good. And then this morning, I finished off getting all the Chill Valicer save pictures sorted (70 in total), did all the starter drafts for this week’s Chill Valicer Save update, and completed the text and tags on the first post before lunch! :) So that was good. And even better, this evening, I was able to sneak in just enough time to complete the second post’s text and tags! So that just leaves four drafts to go, with the way I broke up the pictures – hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to make some good headway on what remains!
Valice Multiverse – No actual activity on threads or asks this evening, so I just stuck a nice piece of A:MR fanart and a CB meme I liked into the queue. *shrug* Just letting everyone know I’m still around!
Fallout 4: Welp, I’m no closer to Shamrock Taphouse, Hubris Comics, or Goodneighbor, but I DID clear out another location I was interested in exploring – the deadly parking garage! Allow me to tell you my tale. . .
A) Started off in Milton Hospital, having just secured the hunting rifle and the syringer rifle that were there – I decided that I might as well explore a little bit before leaving, just to see if there was any other good junk to be had and started checking out the hallway Victor and Ada were on. One door opened up on an interrupted breakfast scene, complete with Sugar Bombs and cafeteria trays (yoink), while the red door past the busted elevator –
B) Led outside! I found myself atop a little mid-level roof section, with homemade stairs going up – ascending those took me to the top of what I realized was the parking garage across the way. Among all the busted cars and motorcycles and such was another pathway leading to Fallon’s Department Store – while I didn’t want to go into the store itself, I figured I could have a nosy around the various rooftop bits and strolled on over, taking the stairs on the side up. Those led to a little rooftop diner area, with one Super Mutant Butcher inside – he was easily taken out with the Two-Shot, but didn’t have anything good on him, boo. >( There was another set of stairs beyond that which led to a higher roof section and a little maintenance room, this one with a fusion generator containing a fusion core, and roof access to the department store. I had Victor take the fusion core, then retrace his steps back to the staircase that he’d taken up and followed it all the way down (looting the cigarette machines along the way), to the little raised plaza area surrounding the front of the store.
C) Okay, well, that got me out of the hospital – time to leave this area and head to Goodneighbor, right? *shakehead* Not quite – while I wasn’t yet interested in taking on the super mutants in either Fallon’s or West Roxbury station, I was interested in checking out the other building in the area – the parking garage itself! Because I was pretty sure it was a death maze with some goodies inside, and I wanted those death maze goodies. :p So, after heading back around (and discovering a manhole cover labeled “Vault 88” in the street between the parking garage and the hospital – I guess that’s ONE way to get into the vault!), I laid down a save, then had Victor and Ada enter the maze! And while the marked path went straight, I decided to go right at the first turn, past the horrible raider “modern art” (a decapitated body strung up in razor wire, with the head on some nearby shelves) to check out the area over there. Turns out there was a room right by the front with a goodie box in it, guarded by a tripwire –
And radroaches! Which swarmed Victor and Ada, triggering the tripwire in the process. Victor and Ada took them all out (including a Legendary, which yielded a Kneecapper Lead Pipe – really?), but I was a little annoyed I hadn’t been able to disarm the tripwire for a little XP –
D) So, I quickly reloaded, re-entered the death maze, and had Victor creep up a little more quietly to the tripwire, disarming that and another one I spotted in the other direction. Then he was able to enter the room and VATS most of the radroaches, killing them easily with the Two-Shot (though the smallest one did get in a nibble just from being hard to see). Victor looted their bodies for meat and the Kneecapper Lead Pipe and claimed his prizes – a stash of bottlecaps and a box full of Mentats and Rad-Away. *shrug* Not bad! However, while that was happening, Ada somehow glitched outside through a gap in the wall and had to run back in to me – and while she was doing that, I heard SOMETHING go “blooey” above our heads. O.o Not sure what had happened at the time, but seeing both Ada and Victor were okay, I chose to press on, down the arrow path.
E) Which led to a room full of largely-knocked-over mannequins! Hmmm. . .fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any traps or other weirdness here, but there WERE two exits – one straight ahead, and one to the right with a bunch of cells and a set of three buttons with the numbers “1 2 3 4” over them. After examining the sign a bit closer and pressing some buttons, I determined that the first button controlled the doors for cells 1 & 2, the second the doors for cells 2 & 3, and the third the doors for cells 3&4. You had to push them in the correct order so that all four doors opened, turning the cells into a corridor. Fortunately, pressing each button in turn had already given me a good start, and I was able to quickly open up all the doors and pass through. I started exploring that hallway, but then thought “no, wait, I should check the other way too, see if that’s – actually, no, that’s irradiated, how about we NOT go that way?”
F) So down the door puzzle corridors it was! After a quick break for some blueberries and purified water, Victor continued onward, finding another tripwire to disarm between two crates by another “raider art installation” (Ada praised the blood spatters, making me raise an eyebrow), and eventually finding three ways to go – up a ramp HEAVILY trapped with tripwires, a load of bathroom scale bombs, and a handful of grenade bouquets; down toward a room full of those creepy cymbal monkeys; and through a red door. I had Victor head toward the monkeys first, sneaking forward so he could shoot the heads off all the little fuckers without activating them (as I could HEAR a turret somewhere nearby) – however, the room proved to be a dead end, with no turret or other monkey-triggered trap that I could see. O.o At least there was a little junk in there. . .I decided next to try the red door, and had Victor open it –
To find the world’s most Christmassy homemade turret behind it! Victor quickly ducked out of firing range, then, when the turret had calmed down a little, came back and took it out in a single shot. He looted it for ammo and took the jet that was under the tree behind it (O.o – I mean, I did come here in late January as per the game, is this seasonal, or. . .) – might as well, right?
G) Which left one way to go – the trap-covered ramp! I had Victor command Ada to stay behind for a minute (because, much as I love the little blue robot, I did NOT trust her not to wander straight into a trap and get us blown up), chug a Nuka-Cola for energy (he was starting to feel tired), and start disarming, working my way slowly but steadily up the ramp. Victor had to stop for a bathroom break midway through the bathroom scales (appropriate, I suppose), and I had to have him go back to Ada and offload a bunch of spare guns and stuff when disarming the grenade bouquets put him over carry capacity, but he got them all sorted and was able to bring her up to the second level. The game chose at this point to spawn a thunderstorm outside, which I felt was quite appropriate. :) The pair continued onward, with Victor disarming some more tripwires as they worked their way forward, before finding a dead radroach near a triggered tripwire. I wasn’t sure how it had died at first –
And then, after a little more exploration, I spotted the MISSILE LAUNCHER in the bed of the ruined truck straight ahead. I think I know what that fiery “blooey” I heard before was now. O.o
H) Well, fortunately, it was the work of a moment to disarm the gun brace, and then Victor and Ada were free to explore the various corridors and how they all connected to each other (Victor drinking a Nuka-Cherry to keep his energy up). There was another gun brace with a pipe pistol for Victor to disarm, and a whole pile of settler and trader bodies behind another tripwire, but otherwise nothing of much interest – and fortunately, when Victor found the ramp to head up to the third level, it WASN’T covered in various traps. He and Ada headed up to a “landing” with a lantern, where I had them turn left –
I) Straight into an area with a whole LOAD of feral ghouls, including a Glowing One! Fortunately, though, they were a bit scattered and needed a bit of time to FIND Victor, meaning he could hold position and pick them off with VATS and the Two-Shot pretty easily. Once all the ghouls were dead and looted, I had him double back to see where the path straight ahead from the lantern lead – turned out to be a longer route to the same place (maybe it gives you a better shot at the ghouls). He continued onward, past a bunch of dead ghouls (I kept checking with VATS to make sure they were indeed dead – fortunately yes), then found his way up to the ramp to the fourth level –
J) With another load of traps at the top. Ada got told to hold position while Victor went around and disarmed them all, then the pair continued onward, around to an area with three doors – a red one labeled 1 straight ahead, a red one labeled 2 to the right, and a blue one labeled 3 to the left. I dropped a save and had Victor open the blue 3 door –
Gun trap! A combat shotgun and a scattered laser rifle. Curious, I reloaded my save to see if the traps could be disarmed from the outside – nope – then tried door 2. That led further on, so I got out of the way and opened door 1 for funsies – THAT one had a Tesla electrical trap inside, but fortunately Victor was out of the way of the shock, so he was fine. . .
Except for exhaustion, which really started settling in as he tried to continue onward and loot the raider body he found beyond the door. Not wanting to have him chug any more Nuka-Cola, and noting that it was almost 11 PM in-game, I went ahead and let him drop his tent near the doors and get a few hours’ sleep.
K) Up bright and early near 6 AM, Victor continued onward, past the dead raider and down a corridor with tripwires and homemade bombs, which he carefully disarmed. This brought them to the final area, with two goodie chests – one green, one red – in two separate cells. Each cell had a button to press to open it – but that button was also wired up to a flamethrower in the other cell, which would toast the other goodie chest and prevent you from getting both. However, I noticed that there was one more little area beyond a couple of dead end signs, so I had Victor cautiously explore, ignoring the minor explosions that didn’t actually seem to do anything (maybe they were dud bombs) –
And found the little room where the person who must have set all this up (perhaps the dead raider we found before, having fallen to his own traps?) was living! Complete with weapon workbench, various chests full of good junk, and a bed with a Hot Rodder magazine beside it. :) I now think Victor might be able to paint his power armor pink if he was so inclined. :p
L) With that little area looted, it was goodie chest time! I decided to forgo looking up what each chest could contain on my phone (for all I know, the chests are random) and leave it up to chance, flipping a novelty coin I had on-hand. The result was tails, so Victor picked the red chest, letting the green one get flamethrowered. The red one proved to have 17 caps, some 10mm rounds, a Compensated Calibrated Powerful 10mm pistol, and a Muffled Polymer Combat Armor left leg. *shrug* Hardly great, but hardly awful. There were also a bunch of drugs in the room, which might be more useful as salable items. :p
And with that, the adventure was over – Victor proceeded down the corridor to the exit door, unbarred it, and ended up right back on the roof of the parking garage, almost where we started. :p Fun little trip! It was genuinely rather tense at times, and made you think a couple of other times. Plus it was FANTASTIC for getting little bits of XP from disarming traps – Victor’s now a lot closer to Level 37 than he was! XD But yes, next time, definitely have to start heading for Hubris, Shamrock, and Goodneighbor – I’ve got other quests I need to fulfill!
Writing: Obviously, I had to update the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the trip through the death maze! This week’s entry was almost identical to my actual playthrough, with just a few tiny tweaks to account for the fact that Alice is in the fanfic universe and thus can help with things – such as Alice helping with the button puzzle (and name-dropping Dr. Grout, as that whole thing DID remind me of his candle-pulling puzzles in his library); Alice assisting Victor in disarming the many, many traps around the area; Alice using her Auspex to let Victor know what door to pick of the three trap doors near the end of the maze; and Alice scouting ahead while Victor slept to disarm the tripwires and homemade bombs near the actual goodie room. Oh, and nobody noticed anything unusual about the manhole, because why would THEY have any idea that it led to an unfinished vault with its ghoulified Overseer still inside? :p But otherwise, yeah, pretty much just as I played it – complete with the trio flipping a bottle cap to see which trunk they picked for their reward. XD Fun times! Well, fun for ME anyway. :p
YouTube: Got through my usual two, even if I’m technically a day behind on the Subs – but at least tonight I didn’t have any buffering problems to deal with, which I am EXTREMELY grateful for –
A) First up, from GrayStillPlays, the video I couldn’t watch last night because YouTube and our internet were being a little bitch – “Which car can fit through the smallest hole in GTA 5?” Another wonderful Alex Torture Board, where Gray had to complete a series of challenges all ending in various thumbnail holes (you know, the ones where you don’t think the car could fit through). Gray had to fit a car through the Hole In One Thumbnail Hole (a giant golf hole on a green waaay below the starting point, meaning Gray had to fall into it PERFECTLY), the Deeper into the Matrix Thumbnail Holes (a series of thumbnail holes with little jumps in between made up of those TRON-esque neon grid patterns, that just got smaller and smaller as time got on), the “Wrong Hole!” Thumbnail Hole (a set of four different geometric thumbnail holes – tall rectangle, circle, short rectangle, square – where Gray had to find the real hole, aka the one with an invisible platform on it he could ride to the next area (tall rectangle, if you were wondering)), the “Bull’s Eye but the Bull is moving” Thumbnail Hole (a bull’s eye on a not-really-there backboard that kept moving around – Gray had to pick the right ramp and time it perfectly to make it through the teleporter in the middle of the bull’s eye), and – past a checkpoint – the “Thumbnail Thingy Hex sent & said figure it out Alex” Thumbnail Hole (one designed by Gray’s thumbnail-for-the-videos designer Hex, where Gray had to ride two box trucks stacked on top of each other and get yeeted perfectly through a cut-out onto the invisible platform that led to the win). As you might imagine, this one was ROUGH on Gray, as he had to learn how to line up a new car with the Hole In One Thumbnail Hole every time he found a car that couldn’t do the rest of the course. He had a few early wins with a couple of “arena cars” (the kind that I guess are used in car death battles – all of them had a jump, meaning he didn’t HAVE to do the Hole In One perfectly), but only the smallest made it through the Matrix (by using its jump to cheat by going OVER the holes – should have put invisible walls up top, Alex!) and to the geometry section, and then got stranded in the short rectangle hole. And the off-brand Batmobile, T-20, and a blue car explicitly called “Winner” all got stuck in the Matrix despite his best attempts at finding a nice slim car. Fortunately, there was also a pretty red car explicitly called “Slim” on the board, and THAT one turned out to be the one that could actually get through all of the holes, and could ride the (not very straight-driving) box trucks to victory. :) Man, though, you could hear Gray suffering in this one, though – Alex really gave him the business this time! At least he got it in the end, though – as he always says, “I’ll NEVER give up!” Even if it might be in the best interest of his sanity to do so. XD
B) And second up, from the vacationing-in-France Jon of Many A True Nerd, “Fallout 4: The Holiday Special!” Jon decided that, since he was on vacation, he should send one of his FO4 characters (judging by the fact that she was accompanied by a Dogmeat wearing antlers, the one from his last actual-Christmas holiday special) on vacation too! And as it turns out, there’s a good way to send a character on vacation in FO4 – by using the Creation Club to acquire a VR lounger! This is a recreation of the FO3 “Tranquility Lane” lounger (though Jon admitted he preferred the Memory Den’s memory pods, they look cooler and way more comfy), and they allow you to play around in four different potential areas – a recreation of the plaza outside GNR in the Capital Wasteland of FO3, an atomic crater, a “grid world” (I presume a TRON-like space), and Jon’s chosen destination, a beautiful crescent desert island. But what do you do on a VR desert island with no one else (but your beloved dog whom we all assume you just crammed into the memory lounger with you) around?
Why, you build a house, of course! Because that’s what these VR spaces are, apparently – custom settlements where you have infinite resources, bigger build spaces, and larger build limits, allowing you to make fancy houses for yourself if you particularly enjoy FO4’s building system. And so Jon spent the episode building his ideal FO4 island vacation home, near the back of the island so he could set up both a public beach and party area for visitors, and a private beach just for himself. And the completed product was in fact really nice – he spent a lot of time setting up an awesome party house for himself! There was a “veritbird landing spot” marked out with candles leading to the front door; there was the public beach with a few nice chairs, some lobster pots and boxes to make it look like Jon fished, and a weight bench to make it look like Jon lifted weights, with a path leading to the side door; a chill-out room right at the front of the house with couches, potted plants, artwork, fancy lights, and – in a stroke of genius – Roman-style open skylights (as he couldn’t get the warehouse/greenhouse glass roof ones to work) with garden plots containing crops like razorgrain and mutfruit trees under them so they could get watered by the rain; a more active hobby area near the back with a pool table, a tinkering desk, and a nice fireplace; a kitchen area off to the right that led onto the party deck (set up above a lovely natural stone arch), complete with sitting areas, a tiki bar, a basketball hoop, and a very dangerous balcony dining area with no railing at the back so everyone had an uninterrupted view of the scenery (also so Jon could punt off people who annoyed him); a bathroom with big windows and lots of colorful towels and a nice bathtub; his own private quarters with a fancy bed and jukebox, little work area, and private balcony with a dog house for Dogmeat; and – down a flight of stairs behind a “restricted” sign and a shotgun turret – his own private beach, complete with some lights going down the cliffside that were VERY fiddly to hook up (even with Jon abusing cheats to allow his character to fly) but SO worth it for him being able to hang out there 24/7. Oh, and on the other side of the little private cove was the area where he kept the remains of everyone who annoyed him in meat bags. XD It was just a fun, silly little build that I personally thought looked awesome – I am going to have to up my own settlement game in the future to try and match stuff like this. Or at least make my settlements look less ramshackle. :p But yeah, great little video to capture the “chillin’” vibe of a Jon on holiday! Enjoy France, Jon! You deserve it!
Workout: Check – back on the bike to start the week over again, with the following –
A) The end of GrayStillPlay’s compilation video “Testing 100 Vehicles in GTA 5!” Featuring the end of the “Crate-Dragging” board (with Gray dragging the crate through people, water, over a hole, and past some very powerful magnets. . .only to get a message from Alex at the very end that he didn’t actually need the crate to complete the board – Gray was Not Happy XD), and the “Train Challenges” board (where Alex created a quartet of challenges for Gray to complete in either the subway train or the freight train, such as plowing his way through bigger and bigger cars, or working his way through dancing tanks – the freight train won every time). Always nice to see some classic Alex work! :)
B) “How To Throw A Successful [Gold Medal] Baby Shower | The Sims 4 Growing Together Guide” by Petey Plays It! A short video about how to have an excellent baby shower and get the best rewards, showing what goals you’re likely to get and how to complete them (tips: have a stereo for dancing, some sort of bar for drinks, a celebration cannon, and a camera ready – yes, a camera, one of the potential goals is to take pictures! Which I actually quite like, as it encourages both Sims and players to capture memories :D). Just be wary of where you put that cannon, as it CAN start a fire if your Sim is either unlucky or not careful. Rewards include some new rattles and a fancy bassinet for the upcoming newborn, so it’s worth it to get the gold. :) Good stuff as always from Petey!
Other:
-->I managed to clear out my AO3 inbox of all comments, yay~ Glad to be caught up there!
-->We did play beanbags today, as the weather was finally nice enough again to do so – but ooof, did I have a bad day! I just could NOT get my aim sorted until the next to final game, and even THEN the only reason I won that one is because Dad had an off throw to close it out (or possibly let me win, but I’m honestly fine with that given how terribly I was doing). Dad of course was the star of the show, and Mom did a lot better than her usual, that’s for sure – final scores were me 3-3-3-W-3; Dad W-W-2-2-W; Mom 2-2-W-3-2. Yeeps – at least I won once! And hopefully I do better tomorrow – the weather’s supposed to be great up until about Friday (figures), so we’ll have plenty of chances to play!
-->And I answered all of Moose’s messages too, w000! E-mail inbox cleared as well, yes!
Whew! So yeah, actually caught up with a few things. If only because I had a much SHORTER Jon Fallout video to watch tonight and thus had a little more free time to do stuff like answer Moose and work on tumblr drafts. :p Look, I'll take it -- every little bit helps! And now I have to head to bed and prepare for my final week of work before my vacation -- hopefully it goes reasonably well! Night all!
Also always nice when you can make some proper progress on your to-do list --
Tumblr: Managed to have a pretty good day on both tumblrs, which I’m happy about –
Victor Luvs Alice – Well, first of all, I put all my new Incorrect Valicer Quotes from the new(?) generator into a post draft before going to bed last night, so THAT’S all good. And then this morning, I finished off getting all the Chill Valicer save pictures sorted (70 in total), did all the starter drafts for this week’s Chill Valicer Save update, and completed the text and tags on the first post before lunch! :) So that was good. And even better, this evening, I was able to sneak in just enough time to complete the second post’s text and tags! So that just leaves four drafts to go, with the way I broke up the pictures – hopefully tomorrow I’ll be able to make some good headway on what remains!
Valice Multiverse – No actual activity on threads or asks this evening, so I just stuck a nice piece of A:MR fanart and a CB meme I liked into the queue. *shrug* Just letting everyone know I’m still around!
Fallout 4: Welp, I’m no closer to Shamrock Taphouse, Hubris Comics, or Goodneighbor, but I DID clear out another location I was interested in exploring – the deadly parking garage! Allow me to tell you my tale. . .
A) Started off in Milton Hospital, having just secured the hunting rifle and the syringer rifle that were there – I decided that I might as well explore a little bit before leaving, just to see if there was any other good junk to be had and started checking out the hallway Victor and Ada were on. One door opened up on an interrupted breakfast scene, complete with Sugar Bombs and cafeteria trays (yoink), while the red door past the busted elevator –
B) Led outside! I found myself atop a little mid-level roof section, with homemade stairs going up – ascending those took me to the top of what I realized was the parking garage across the way. Among all the busted cars and motorcycles and such was another pathway leading to Fallon’s Department Store – while I didn’t want to go into the store itself, I figured I could have a nosy around the various rooftop bits and strolled on over, taking the stairs on the side up. Those led to a little rooftop diner area, with one Super Mutant Butcher inside – he was easily taken out with the Two-Shot, but didn’t have anything good on him, boo. >( There was another set of stairs beyond that which led to a higher roof section and a little maintenance room, this one with a fusion generator containing a fusion core, and roof access to the department store. I had Victor take the fusion core, then retrace his steps back to the staircase that he’d taken up and followed it all the way down (looting the cigarette machines along the way), to the little raised plaza area surrounding the front of the store.
C) Okay, well, that got me out of the hospital – time to leave this area and head to Goodneighbor, right? *shakehead* Not quite – while I wasn’t yet interested in taking on the super mutants in either Fallon’s or West Roxbury station, I was interested in checking out the other building in the area – the parking garage itself! Because I was pretty sure it was a death maze with some goodies inside, and I wanted those death maze goodies. :p So, after heading back around (and discovering a manhole cover labeled “Vault 88” in the street between the parking garage and the hospital – I guess that’s ONE way to get into the vault!), I laid down a save, then had Victor and Ada enter the maze! And while the marked path went straight, I decided to go right at the first turn, past the horrible raider “modern art” (a decapitated body strung up in razor wire, with the head on some nearby shelves) to check out the area over there. Turns out there was a room right by the front with a goodie box in it, guarded by a tripwire –
And radroaches! Which swarmed Victor and Ada, triggering the tripwire in the process. Victor and Ada took them all out (including a Legendary, which yielded a Kneecapper Lead Pipe – really?), but I was a little annoyed I hadn’t been able to disarm the tripwire for a little XP –
D) So, I quickly reloaded, re-entered the death maze, and had Victor creep up a little more quietly to the tripwire, disarming that and another one I spotted in the other direction. Then he was able to enter the room and VATS most of the radroaches, killing them easily with the Two-Shot (though the smallest one did get in a nibble just from being hard to see). Victor looted their bodies for meat and the Kneecapper Lead Pipe and claimed his prizes – a stash of bottlecaps and a box full of Mentats and Rad-Away. *shrug* Not bad! However, while that was happening, Ada somehow glitched outside through a gap in the wall and had to run back in to me – and while she was doing that, I heard SOMETHING go “blooey” above our heads. O.o Not sure what had happened at the time, but seeing both Ada and Victor were okay, I chose to press on, down the arrow path.
E) Which led to a room full of largely-knocked-over mannequins! Hmmm. . .fortunately, there didn’t seem to be any traps or other weirdness here, but there WERE two exits – one straight ahead, and one to the right with a bunch of cells and a set of three buttons with the numbers “1 2 3 4” over them. After examining the sign a bit closer and pressing some buttons, I determined that the first button controlled the doors for cells 1 & 2, the second the doors for cells 2 & 3, and the third the doors for cells 3&4. You had to push them in the correct order so that all four doors opened, turning the cells into a corridor. Fortunately, pressing each button in turn had already given me a good start, and I was able to quickly open up all the doors and pass through. I started exploring that hallway, but then thought “no, wait, I should check the other way too, see if that’s – actually, no, that’s irradiated, how about we NOT go that way?”
F) So down the door puzzle corridors it was! After a quick break for some blueberries and purified water, Victor continued onward, finding another tripwire to disarm between two crates by another “raider art installation” (Ada praised the blood spatters, making me raise an eyebrow), and eventually finding three ways to go – up a ramp HEAVILY trapped with tripwires, a load of bathroom scale bombs, and a handful of grenade bouquets; down toward a room full of those creepy cymbal monkeys; and through a red door. I had Victor head toward the monkeys first, sneaking forward so he could shoot the heads off all the little fuckers without activating them (as I could HEAR a turret somewhere nearby) – however, the room proved to be a dead end, with no turret or other monkey-triggered trap that I could see. O.o At least there was a little junk in there. . .I decided next to try the red door, and had Victor open it –
To find the world’s most Christmassy homemade turret behind it! Victor quickly ducked out of firing range, then, when the turret had calmed down a little, came back and took it out in a single shot. He looted it for ammo and took the jet that was under the tree behind it (O.o – I mean, I did come here in late January as per the game, is this seasonal, or. . .) – might as well, right?
G) Which left one way to go – the trap-covered ramp! I had Victor command Ada to stay behind for a minute (because, much as I love the little blue robot, I did NOT trust her not to wander straight into a trap and get us blown up), chug a Nuka-Cola for energy (he was starting to feel tired), and start disarming, working my way slowly but steadily up the ramp. Victor had to stop for a bathroom break midway through the bathroom scales (appropriate, I suppose), and I had to have him go back to Ada and offload a bunch of spare guns and stuff when disarming the grenade bouquets put him over carry capacity, but he got them all sorted and was able to bring her up to the second level. The game chose at this point to spawn a thunderstorm outside, which I felt was quite appropriate. :) The pair continued onward, with Victor disarming some more tripwires as they worked their way forward, before finding a dead radroach near a triggered tripwire. I wasn’t sure how it had died at first –
And then, after a little more exploration, I spotted the MISSILE LAUNCHER in the bed of the ruined truck straight ahead. I think I know what that fiery “blooey” I heard before was now. O.o
H) Well, fortunately, it was the work of a moment to disarm the gun brace, and then Victor and Ada were free to explore the various corridors and how they all connected to each other (Victor drinking a Nuka-Cherry to keep his energy up). There was another gun brace with a pipe pistol for Victor to disarm, and a whole pile of settler and trader bodies behind another tripwire, but otherwise nothing of much interest – and fortunately, when Victor found the ramp to head up to the third level, it WASN’T covered in various traps. He and Ada headed up to a “landing” with a lantern, where I had them turn left –
I) Straight into an area with a whole LOAD of feral ghouls, including a Glowing One! Fortunately, though, they were a bit scattered and needed a bit of time to FIND Victor, meaning he could hold position and pick them off with VATS and the Two-Shot pretty easily. Once all the ghouls were dead and looted, I had him double back to see where the path straight ahead from the lantern lead – turned out to be a longer route to the same place (maybe it gives you a better shot at the ghouls). He continued onward, past a bunch of dead ghouls (I kept checking with VATS to make sure they were indeed dead – fortunately yes), then found his way up to the ramp to the fourth level –
J) With another load of traps at the top. Ada got told to hold position while Victor went around and disarmed them all, then the pair continued onward, around to an area with three doors – a red one labeled 1 straight ahead, a red one labeled 2 to the right, and a blue one labeled 3 to the left. I dropped a save and had Victor open the blue 3 door –
Gun trap! A combat shotgun and a scattered laser rifle. Curious, I reloaded my save to see if the traps could be disarmed from the outside – nope – then tried door 2. That led further on, so I got out of the way and opened door 1 for funsies – THAT one had a Tesla electrical trap inside, but fortunately Victor was out of the way of the shock, so he was fine. . .
Except for exhaustion, which really started settling in as he tried to continue onward and loot the raider body he found beyond the door. Not wanting to have him chug any more Nuka-Cola, and noting that it was almost 11 PM in-game, I went ahead and let him drop his tent near the doors and get a few hours’ sleep.
K) Up bright and early near 6 AM, Victor continued onward, past the dead raider and down a corridor with tripwires and homemade bombs, which he carefully disarmed. This brought them to the final area, with two goodie chests – one green, one red – in two separate cells. Each cell had a button to press to open it – but that button was also wired up to a flamethrower in the other cell, which would toast the other goodie chest and prevent you from getting both. However, I noticed that there was one more little area beyond a couple of dead end signs, so I had Victor cautiously explore, ignoring the minor explosions that didn’t actually seem to do anything (maybe they were dud bombs) –
And found the little room where the person who must have set all this up (perhaps the dead raider we found before, having fallen to his own traps?) was living! Complete with weapon workbench, various chests full of good junk, and a bed with a Hot Rodder magazine beside it. :) I now think Victor might be able to paint his power armor pink if he was so inclined. :p
L) With that little area looted, it was goodie chest time! I decided to forgo looking up what each chest could contain on my phone (for all I know, the chests are random) and leave it up to chance, flipping a novelty coin I had on-hand. The result was tails, so Victor picked the red chest, letting the green one get flamethrowered. The red one proved to have 17 caps, some 10mm rounds, a Compensated Calibrated Powerful 10mm pistol, and a Muffled Polymer Combat Armor left leg. *shrug* Hardly great, but hardly awful. There were also a bunch of drugs in the room, which might be more useful as salable items. :p
And with that, the adventure was over – Victor proceeded down the corridor to the exit door, unbarred it, and ended up right back on the roof of the parking garage, almost where we started. :p Fun little trip! It was genuinely rather tense at times, and made you think a couple of other times. Plus it was FANTASTIC for getting little bits of XP from disarming traps – Victor’s now a lot closer to Level 37 than he was! XD But yes, next time, definitely have to start heading for Hubris, Shamrock, and Goodneighbor – I’ve got other quests I need to fulfill!
Writing: Obviously, I had to update the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the trip through the death maze! This week’s entry was almost identical to my actual playthrough, with just a few tiny tweaks to account for the fact that Alice is in the fanfic universe and thus can help with things – such as Alice helping with the button puzzle (and name-dropping Dr. Grout, as that whole thing DID remind me of his candle-pulling puzzles in his library); Alice assisting Victor in disarming the many, many traps around the area; Alice using her Auspex to let Victor know what door to pick of the three trap doors near the end of the maze; and Alice scouting ahead while Victor slept to disarm the tripwires and homemade bombs near the actual goodie room. Oh, and nobody noticed anything unusual about the manhole, because why would THEY have any idea that it led to an unfinished vault with its ghoulified Overseer still inside? :p But otherwise, yeah, pretty much just as I played it – complete with the trio flipping a bottle cap to see which trunk they picked for their reward. XD Fun times! Well, fun for ME anyway. :p
YouTube: Got through my usual two, even if I’m technically a day behind on the Subs – but at least tonight I didn’t have any buffering problems to deal with, which I am EXTREMELY grateful for –
A) First up, from GrayStillPlays, the video I couldn’t watch last night because YouTube and our internet were being a little bitch – “Which car can fit through the smallest hole in GTA 5?” Another wonderful Alex Torture Board, where Gray had to complete a series of challenges all ending in various thumbnail holes (you know, the ones where you don’t think the car could fit through). Gray had to fit a car through the Hole In One Thumbnail Hole (a giant golf hole on a green waaay below the starting point, meaning Gray had to fall into it PERFECTLY), the Deeper into the Matrix Thumbnail Holes (a series of thumbnail holes with little jumps in between made up of those TRON-esque neon grid patterns, that just got smaller and smaller as time got on), the “Wrong Hole!” Thumbnail Hole (a set of four different geometric thumbnail holes – tall rectangle, circle, short rectangle, square – where Gray had to find the real hole, aka the one with an invisible platform on it he could ride to the next area (tall rectangle, if you were wondering)), the “Bull’s Eye but the Bull is moving” Thumbnail Hole (a bull’s eye on a not-really-there backboard that kept moving around – Gray had to pick the right ramp and time it perfectly to make it through the teleporter in the middle of the bull’s eye), and – past a checkpoint – the “Thumbnail Thingy Hex sent & said figure it out Alex” Thumbnail Hole (one designed by Gray’s thumbnail-for-the-videos designer Hex, where Gray had to ride two box trucks stacked on top of each other and get yeeted perfectly through a cut-out onto the invisible platform that led to the win). As you might imagine, this one was ROUGH on Gray, as he had to learn how to line up a new car with the Hole In One Thumbnail Hole every time he found a car that couldn’t do the rest of the course. He had a few early wins with a couple of “arena cars” (the kind that I guess are used in car death battles – all of them had a jump, meaning he didn’t HAVE to do the Hole In One perfectly), but only the smallest made it through the Matrix (by using its jump to cheat by going OVER the holes – should have put invisible walls up top, Alex!) and to the geometry section, and then got stranded in the short rectangle hole. And the off-brand Batmobile, T-20, and a blue car explicitly called “Winner” all got stuck in the Matrix despite his best attempts at finding a nice slim car. Fortunately, there was also a pretty red car explicitly called “Slim” on the board, and THAT one turned out to be the one that could actually get through all of the holes, and could ride the (not very straight-driving) box trucks to victory. :) Man, though, you could hear Gray suffering in this one, though – Alex really gave him the business this time! At least he got it in the end, though – as he always says, “I’ll NEVER give up!” Even if it might be in the best interest of his sanity to do so. XD
B) And second up, from the vacationing-in-France Jon of Many A True Nerd, “Fallout 4: The Holiday Special!” Jon decided that, since he was on vacation, he should send one of his FO4 characters (judging by the fact that she was accompanied by a Dogmeat wearing antlers, the one from his last actual-Christmas holiday special) on vacation too! And as it turns out, there’s a good way to send a character on vacation in FO4 – by using the Creation Club to acquire a VR lounger! This is a recreation of the FO3 “Tranquility Lane” lounger (though Jon admitted he preferred the Memory Den’s memory pods, they look cooler and way more comfy), and they allow you to play around in four different potential areas – a recreation of the plaza outside GNR in the Capital Wasteland of FO3, an atomic crater, a “grid world” (I presume a TRON-like space), and Jon’s chosen destination, a beautiful crescent desert island. But what do you do on a VR desert island with no one else (but your beloved dog whom we all assume you just crammed into the memory lounger with you) around?
Why, you build a house, of course! Because that’s what these VR spaces are, apparently – custom settlements where you have infinite resources, bigger build spaces, and larger build limits, allowing you to make fancy houses for yourself if you particularly enjoy FO4’s building system. And so Jon spent the episode building his ideal FO4 island vacation home, near the back of the island so he could set up both a public beach and party area for visitors, and a private beach just for himself. And the completed product was in fact really nice – he spent a lot of time setting up an awesome party house for himself! There was a “veritbird landing spot” marked out with candles leading to the front door; there was the public beach with a few nice chairs, some lobster pots and boxes to make it look like Jon fished, and a weight bench to make it look like Jon lifted weights, with a path leading to the side door; a chill-out room right at the front of the house with couches, potted plants, artwork, fancy lights, and – in a stroke of genius – Roman-style open skylights (as he couldn’t get the warehouse/greenhouse glass roof ones to work) with garden plots containing crops like razorgrain and mutfruit trees under them so they could get watered by the rain; a more active hobby area near the back with a pool table, a tinkering desk, and a nice fireplace; a kitchen area off to the right that led onto the party deck (set up above a lovely natural stone arch), complete with sitting areas, a tiki bar, a basketball hoop, and a very dangerous balcony dining area with no railing at the back so everyone had an uninterrupted view of the scenery (also so Jon could punt off people who annoyed him); a bathroom with big windows and lots of colorful towels and a nice bathtub; his own private quarters with a fancy bed and jukebox, little work area, and private balcony with a dog house for Dogmeat; and – down a flight of stairs behind a “restricted” sign and a shotgun turret – his own private beach, complete with some lights going down the cliffside that were VERY fiddly to hook up (even with Jon abusing cheats to allow his character to fly) but SO worth it for him being able to hang out there 24/7. Oh, and on the other side of the little private cove was the area where he kept the remains of everyone who annoyed him in meat bags. XD It was just a fun, silly little build that I personally thought looked awesome – I am going to have to up my own settlement game in the future to try and match stuff like this. Or at least make my settlements look less ramshackle. :p But yeah, great little video to capture the “chillin’” vibe of a Jon on holiday! Enjoy France, Jon! You deserve it!
Workout: Check – back on the bike to start the week over again, with the following –
A) The end of GrayStillPlay’s compilation video “Testing 100 Vehicles in GTA 5!” Featuring the end of the “Crate-Dragging” board (with Gray dragging the crate through people, water, over a hole, and past some very powerful magnets. . .only to get a message from Alex at the very end that he didn’t actually need the crate to complete the board – Gray was Not Happy XD), and the “Train Challenges” board (where Alex created a quartet of challenges for Gray to complete in either the subway train or the freight train, such as plowing his way through bigger and bigger cars, or working his way through dancing tanks – the freight train won every time). Always nice to see some classic Alex work! :)
B) “How To Throw A Successful [Gold Medal] Baby Shower | The Sims 4 Growing Together Guide” by Petey Plays It! A short video about how to have an excellent baby shower and get the best rewards, showing what goals you’re likely to get and how to complete them (tips: have a stereo for dancing, some sort of bar for drinks, a celebration cannon, and a camera ready – yes, a camera, one of the potential goals is to take pictures! Which I actually quite like, as it encourages both Sims and players to capture memories :D). Just be wary of where you put that cannon, as it CAN start a fire if your Sim is either unlucky or not careful. Rewards include some new rattles and a fancy bassinet for the upcoming newborn, so it’s worth it to get the gold. :) Good stuff as always from Petey!
Other:
-->I managed to clear out my AO3 inbox of all comments, yay~ Glad to be caught up there!
-->We did play beanbags today, as the weather was finally nice enough again to do so – but ooof, did I have a bad day! I just could NOT get my aim sorted until the next to final game, and even THEN the only reason I won that one is because Dad had an off throw to close it out (or possibly let me win, but I’m honestly fine with that given how terribly I was doing). Dad of course was the star of the show, and Mom did a lot better than her usual, that’s for sure – final scores were me 3-3-3-W-3; Dad W-W-2-2-W; Mom 2-2-W-3-2. Yeeps – at least I won once! And hopefully I do better tomorrow – the weather’s supposed to be great up until about Friday (figures), so we’ll have plenty of chances to play!
-->And I answered all of Moose’s messages too, w000! E-mail inbox cleared as well, yes!
Whew! So yeah, actually caught up with a few things. If only because I had a much SHORTER Jon Fallout video to watch tonight and thus had a little more free time to do stuff like answer Moose and work on tumblr drafts. :p Look, I'll take it -- every little bit helps! And now I have to head to bed and prepare for my final week of work before my vacation -- hopefully it goes reasonably well! Night all!
