A Pretty Nice Fallout Sunday
Aug. 6th, 2023 11:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickWeather was warm, sun was shining, and I got a lot done on my to-do list, yay --
Tumblr: Had a pretty good day over on the old tumbls –
Victor Luvs Alice – I finished off prepping all the Chill Valicer Save pictures for this week’s update (the end of the honeymoon and Spookfest – ended up being sixty in total) and got them all into their starter drafts before lunch, then finished up the full text, tags, and image alt text after lunch. I also started another draft as well – another Not-Incorrect Valicer In The Dark Quotes collection, mostly because I’ve had one about a gang not being intimidated by Alice and her Hobbyhor – Hobbygoat because horses aren’t a thing in my Duskwall until she performs the ground pound maneuver on them stuck in my head for a while and wanted to get it out. Not too shabby, I think!
Valice Multiverse – my decision to reblog a set of insomnia-themed starters bore fruit in the form of an ask from Brynlee Marie, with her character Maddie informing an insomniac Alice that it’s 4 AM and she needs sleep. I haven’t decided if Alice is having nightmares or just can’t shut her brain off, but either way, she doesn’t have high hopes so for sleep happening! That response is in my queue for tomorrow, yay. :)
Fallout 4: Hey, I actually made progress toward one of my chosen goals/destinations today! :D Aren’t you all proud of me? At least a little? XD Anyway, let me give you the scoop –
A) Picked up where I’d left off last time, atop the roof of the parking lot death-maze (still mazey but a whole lot less deadly now). I had Victor and Ada take the stairs back down by Fallon’s, since I knew those were clear, then directed them back down the road the way they’d come, past the high school, picking up a few bits of junk from the trash cans and such nearby (and dumping a bunch of heavy stuff on Ada again when that put Victor overweight and slowed him down to a crawl. There is never enough carry capacity in this game, I swear. . .) This brought them to an intersection by a crashed truck – I had Victor consult his map, then take the left road to get back to Boston and thus the general area of Goodneighbor. This brought him and Ada past through a bunch of wrecked cars to what looked like a temporarily military checkpoint, complete with barriers, flags, bunch of ammo boxes –
And a partial set of X-01 power armor. O.O If you don’t know what that means, X-01 is the FANCY power armor, the kind that you often see on the front of the box art for these games. (I actually think it’s generally used by Enclave in the older titles, but as they don’t exist here.) I was like “oh cripes, I should probably take that – but Victor getting into power armor is probably going to actually CUT his carry capacity thanks to my mods, and it’s kind of slow and clunky, and I already have power armor waiting for me back in Sanctuary. . .”
And then I realized, “wait – I don’t need to have Victor climb into the FRAME – I can just strip the armor off said frame and carry it around!” *strips head, torso, arm piece* “Have ADA carry it around because shit’s heavy, yo.” XD
B) While I was doing that, I spotted a vertibird circling around overhead, fighting someone on the ground. I figured I’d go ahead and see what was what in a moment, but while I was finishing my looting of the temporary checkpoint, there was a big BOOM, and the vertibird ended up crashing. I could still hear loads of gun and laser fire, though, so I headed forward cautiously, with a VATS scan of a nearby ruined house revealing the outline of a mutant hound. A little bit later, I got close enough to the location to officially discover it, and found it was Big John’s Salvage, a known super mutant base! Apparently the Brotherhood Of Steel had spotted them on a fly-over and decided that having super mutants all over the shop wouldn’t stand. Which, you know, given what most super mutants are like in this game, is a perfectly acceptable decision to make. I had Victor wander in to help, figuring the BOS could use the assistance –
Eh, not really. Even though most of the BOS crew had perished in the crash (which had landed neatly in the yard behind the ruined house I’d spotted the mutant hound in before), there were still one aspirant and one knight that were still kicking, and they were doing pretty well with the super mutants. Victor was still able to help take out a few mutants and a mutant hound in a pen nearby, though. I may not be the biggest fan of the BOS, but I’ll help them take out monsters, sure! Especially since Victor at this point doesn’t know how bigoted they can be.
C) With all hostiles dead, I had Victor start exploring and looting, picking up pretty much everything useful off the corpses and working his way around to the little “general store” area near the front of the salvage yard. Along the way, I spotted the BOS aspirant patrolling just outside the main yard – but when Victor scanned him in VATS, just to see how he was doing, he showed up in red! AKA as hostile! O.o I’m not sure why – though it’s possible that he took a friendly fire bullet from Victor or a friendly fire laser from Ada. Fortunately, he was easy enough to avoid, with Victor working his way into the store from the top and cracking a few locked items along the way (a toolbox for tools and adhesive; a safe for ammo and pre-War cash; and a door into the back room for more ammo and some stimpacks). Victor then looped back around, closer to where he’d originally come in (the Aspirant may have noticed him, but didn’t immediately start shooting, which is good), and found another path around the edge of the salvage yard –
Which had a bunch of mannequins on and around it, and a line of raider corpses. (Plus one decapitated trader head with cherries.) Going up a nearby ramp even had a Super Mutant Master with a minigun and a raider right next to each other, as if they’d managed to kill each other. I’m guessing what happened here is that either a pack of raiders tried to take on the super mutants, or the mutants took over from the raiders, and then the BOS came in and basically nobody won the ensuing fight. Except Victor, who got to steal the loot off everyone while taking minimal damage and firing minimal ammo. :p
D) Case in point – having found his way up to the “reward chest house” (which had a raider looking like he was trying to protect something in a chair, suggesting that the raiders were first wiped out by the super mutants, and then the mutants by the BOS), Victor discovered not only more ammo, drugs, and good junk, but also a copy of “Tales Of A Junktown Jerky Vendor,” which permanently gave him better prices from vendors! Nice. :D I had Victor take pretty much everything he could carry, then had him head out through the back of the yard (near some glitching glowing radstags) and park himself on one of the rocks overlooking the place so he’d have a nice, safe, relatively flat spot to whip out the old portable workbench. :) After a quick snack of melon flambe to handle the old hunger and thirst needs, I had him spend some time scrapping down some of the weapons he’d picked up and didn’t need (Two Shot Combat Rifle BELOVED) and do some cooking to help with his carry weight. Every little bit helps, after all!
E) With that done, it was onward, toward the heart of the city! Victor and Ada proceeded around the back of the salvage yard, past a horrible radioactive crater-lake infested with bugs. One of which, a stingwing, took an interest in them – fortunately, Ada managed to kill it before it could do anything to Victor. He looted the meat and continued onward, past an old Red Rocket –
WITH A SENTRY BOT PATROLLING OUTSIDE. O.o I definitely wanted to avoid THAT bastard if I could, so I tried to sneak around it, keeping well away from the Red Rocket –
No dice. It spotted Victor and Ada – BUT! In a lucky break, the damn thing was already in an overheated state, so it couldn’t immediately start raining death down upon them – it had to cool off first. And with Ada’s newly-upgraded hand laser keeping it VERY distracted, Victor was able to get off a few shots and blow it up! :D Yaaay! Once it had stopped burning quite so much, I had Victor loot the wreckage, then go around and loot everything in the Red-Rocket that seemed useful. More inventory management with Ada followed (seriously, she can carry SO MUCH now, so worth upgrading her), along with Victor chugging a Nuka-Cola because he had the fatigue at 4 in the afternoon and I wanted him to keep pressing on.
F) With the Red Rocket sorted, the duo continued onward, down the road and over the bridge, straight into a raider camp. A very low-level raider camp just outside DB Technical High School, to be precise – Victor and Ada easily took care of the three raiders out front and their attack dog. From there it was around the corner to Med Center Metro, then right down the busted and rubble-strewn streets, working my way toward the Shamrock Taphouse map marker (as I decided I wanted to get Drinking Buddy first). This took Victor and Ada down to a boardwalk area, then into a little boathouse as I looked for goodies. Not finding much of anything, though, I had them stop and turn around, toward the houses they’d passed on the way –
Only for a radscorpion to burst from the earth right in front of Victor. Startled, I hit VATS and lined up all the shots I was allowed –
ONE HIT, ONE KILL. :D It is so nice having a gun that can just end so many lives without issue! Still, this made me aware that there were radscorpions, and possibly other burrowing nasties, in the area, so I had Victor head right toward a ruined house, then work his way up the rubble onto the bit of still-standing roof to set up his tent for the night, as he was starting to feel the tired again. He hit the hay at 8:16 PM, and I let him have a full eight hours – he’d earned it. :)
G) Up at 4:16 AM, Victor stowed his tent (freeing a glitching Ada in the process), then headed back down to street level and toward the Taphouse. He managed to successfully sneak past a raider camp, then found a little waterfront Drumlin Diner nearby with an Advanced locked door – after dropping a quick save to make sure that I had a way to continue if it was trapped, I had Victor crack it, then – after discovering nope, it was fine – raided the inside and used the stove to do a little more cooking (I had radscorpion meat to fry up, after all ;) ). From there, it was through another raider camp (a cleared one – in fact, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who cleared it earlier) in front of a boarded-up building –
And THAT put Victor right in front of the Shamrock Taphouse! So that is where I saved and left it for the day. :) Next time, Victor heads inside, clears the enemies, and meets Drinking Buddy, the micro-brewery robot with a terrible sense of humor. XD Should be fun!
Writing: Another Sunday playing Fallout 4, another Sunday updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression document. . .and honestly, today’s entry was pretty much EXACTLY like the write-up above, only with “Alice is being dragged along on a cart through most of this nonsense” and “Victor knew the BOS aspirant was hostile because the guy told him to fuck off when he tried to say hello.” I even threw in Ada getting caught in the tent just because it amused me. XD Nice and easy this time – we’ll see how summarizing the Shamrock Taphouse fight goes next time I play!
YouTube: Got through my typical Sunday two –
A) First, from the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays and “When your IQ is 1,000,000,000,” aka Gray plays Big Brain Run! Remember that neck-stretching mobile game that he played a while back, where you had to go down the course collecting neck rings of the correct color to stretch your neck while dodging various violent spiky pretzels, then at the end you got a ridiculous multiplier and then walked past a bunch of stuff to see what your neck was taller than? This is that game, only now you’re collecting BRAINS of the correct color to swell your head to gigantic proportions, and the walk at the end is to see what animals you’re smarter than (it starts at “ant” and Gray managed to get all the way to “fox”). Just – who comes up with these ideas, seriously? What possesses someone to look at all the other “run” games on the mobile market and go “I know what will set us apart – collecting brains!” XD I mean, it got Gray to play the game on the channel, and he seemed to have a reasonable amount of fun with it (especially enjoying the brain at the end getting bigger and bigger with all the multipliers and overshadowing his body more and more), but still. XD
B) And second, from the Recommended (as that’s where he usually pops up for me), we had Jon and “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 40 - Rolling The Die,” aka Jon and Wanda play with Random Events in Fallout 3! Random events (or “freeform encounters,” as the game itself seems to call them), as you might expect, are things that can happen randomly in the Capital Wasteland – though they’re not exactly as random as you might think. How it works is, there are certain spots on the map that the game has designated as places where random events can spawn. Whenever the player approaches one of these spots, the game checks an internal list and picks one at random from what’s available. There are two types of random events – Type A, which are static and can only appear at one location, and Type B, which are roaming, meaning the event characters spawn at a certain location, and then start walking. What events you get can vary by location (for example, you will almost never see “humans captured by super mutant” events unless you’re near established super mutant bases, like Vault 87 or the Germantown Police Station), how you resolved certain quests (for example, Jon CANNOT get the “Ant-Agonizer going around with her ants killing random people” event, because he resolved that quest peacefully, talking the Ant-Agonizer down), time of day, and in one case even by what you’re wearing at the time. Some are repeatable, and some, unfortunately, are one-and-dones – if you spawn them once, they can never spawn again. Jon loves the random events because he likes how they make the wasteland a little more chaotic and interesting, and enforces the idea that there is danger around every corner, and he likes the quest-related ones in particular because they show the consequences of your actions in a more natural way than just a slideshow at the end (though he did admit that the benefit of a slideshow at the end is, unless it severely glitches out, you’re guaranteed to see it, rather than possibly missing it like a random event that spawns when you’re in a hurry or runs into a monster and gets eaten). So, today’s episode saw him largely hanging around two specific locations, constantly reloading them to try and get as many of the interesting and unique random events that he could to spawn! His success rate was – variable. Here’s how it went down –
I. Location #1 was the Jalbert Brothers Disposal site (full of radioactive waste), where Jon parked Wanda to cycle through as many Type A static events as he could. The events he showed us in detail were –
First: The “robot repair” event, where you find a wandering mechanic with a Mr. Handy who is stuck in a diagnostic loop that he can’t fix. Wanda, who had enough repair skill to know her way around robots, was able to repair the guy by rewiring a few things inside, and the grateful mechanic gave her some payment for her trouble! Unfortunately for him, that payment was a mere two energy cells, and an annoyed Wanda/Jon promptly blew his head off. Because this is True Neutral Wanda, who is only second to True Neutral Merilwen when it comes to war crimes. XD
Second: The “purified water fridge” event – this involves some random wastelanders (in this case ghouls versus an escaped slave) fighting over a fridge that happens to have some purified water in it. The ghoul in charge told Wanda to take a hike, but her speech was high enough that she was able to pass a speech check to ask him to split the water (he was very grumpy, but agreed) and thus got ten cans of purified water for herself, nice.
Third: One of the “hunters” events – this one is a repeatable event that sees up to four “hunter” NPCs against a random animal, ranging from dogs to freaking yao guais (aka bears). If they kill the animal and survive, and you talk to them, they have a unique line about how the animal tastes, and turn into a trader who sells meat from that animal. This one was the hunters versus a dog, who told Wanda that most everyone likes dog meat. (I would agree, but I think most people prefer the “dog” capitalized and the “meat” part of the same word. ;) )
Fourth: A quest-related one – “dead Vault 101 resident!” Specifically in this instance, the corpse of one Freddie Gomez from the Tunnel Snakes! This is a result of Wanda choosing to blow up the generator as Butch asked her to and forcing all the residents of Vault 101 out into the Wasteland, and kind of pairs with the “Amata runs into the Enclave” random event Jon saw before while vault-diving – because the residents were forced to flee unprepared, every so often now Wanda will find dead Vault 101 residents out in the wastes. If she’d just convinced them to open up the vault to the outside world, she’d have found a perfectly alive former resident, Sally, who would have told her that everything was fine and thanked her for her help. But Wanda chose violence, and thus dead Freddie. Sorry Freddie!
Fifth: The “wandering ghouls” event – Wanda coming across some ghouls who were TRYING to make it to Underworld, the ghoul city, but couldn’t make it past the super mutants. So now they’re trying to find their own place in the wasteland. If you’re not already familiar with Underworld, these guys can add the location to your map!
Sixth: The “Lazlo Radford” – Lazlo being some random dickhead who thinks the PC is a communist and promptly tries to kill them. He’s a random event that’s tied you having picked up something in the world – specifically, a schematic for a railway rifle, as that happens to be his weapon of choice. He can’t spawn in until you’ve gotten that schematic and thus know what the hell the gun is. As Wanda happened to be carrying HER railway rifle, she and Lazlo had a brief shootout, which was ended by Wanda taking him out in one critical hit that pinned his head to a rock. Without the rest of him attached.
Seventh: Another “hunters” event, this time with them versus a giant soldier ant! Apparently you can get some nice, juicy steaks out of your average giant ant. XD
Eighth: The outfit-related one that Jon was really hoping to get – the “child superhero fan” event! If you resolve the superheroes quest in such a way that you end up with either the Mechanist or Ant-Agonizer costumes (or both, like Wanda) and have them on while running around random encounter areas, you can spawn in a child who tells you how cool you are and asks for an autograph. Your options are to just give the kid the autograph; attempt to charge them ten caps for the autograph; or straight up give the kid the suit, which as you can imagine, REALLY makes their day. Wanda chose the last option, and the kid put it on and raced off – though he didn’t take the helmet. Leaving Wanda just standing there staring after him in her undies and the Mechanist helmet. Jon considered it pretty amusing. XD
Ninth: Another quest-related one – a “wasteland survivor” event! This event is tied to the “Wasteland Survival Guide” quest, and comes in two variants. If you half-assed the book and it ended up bad quality, you’ll come across a wastelander fleeing a fight with something, and when you talk to them, they’ll complain that the book was utterly useless. Wanda made sure to do every optional objective and made the book the best quality could be, however, so she found a wastelander easily slaughtering a mole rat, who, when questioned, told her how awesome the book was and how it’s responsible for him and his family being up to TWO meals a day again! And then thanked her for her contributions when she informed him that she helped write it. Jon really liked this one because he likes the warm feeling he gets from knowing the book is genuinely helping people. :)
Tenth: Another “hunters” one, this time with them versus a mole rat. Apparently it’s a very gamey meat, which probably explains why there was that set-up Jon found in a tunnel ages ago all about trying to improve its taste. XD
Eleventh: A repeat of the “dead Freddie Gomez” event that Jon had to show us because this time the poor bastard was just exploded hunks of meat.
Twelfth: Another “wasteland survivor” event related to the Wasteland Survival Guide, and one that was actually a random event Jon himself had never seen before! This one featured a woman kicking mirelurk ass and treating the Guide like it was basically a new HOLY TEXT showing the wastelanders the way back to paradise, showering blessings upon Wanda when she admitted to helping write it. Wanda even got ten caps as a donation from the grateful lady (though possibly that was the result of Jon asking for a “tithe” as per the dialogue options, but I can’t be sure). Jon found the first guy heartwarming, but this survivor kind of unsettled him because he felt like he’d started a cult.
Thirteenth: A “dead scavenger” event (literally just a scavenger corpse that spawns in for the PC to loot) that was only notable because Jon suspected it of being weighted somehow to be picked more often, stating he’d seen it like five times during his reload spree.
Fourteenth: A “random frag mines” event, that spawns random frag mines in the location! Ones that you can’t even disarm – you just have to set them off and then run away. So if you’ve ever exploded for no reason while traveling the Capital Wasteland, now you know why!
After that, Jon decided he was done reloading and just told us about the events that he couldn’t trigger in this area for whatever reason – meeting a trader who is going to Big Town either to sell them something (what depends on how you helped them with their super-mutant problem – in Jon’s case, since Wanda set them up with protector robots, he’s going to sell them robot parts for repairs) or to scavenge their corpses (if you didn’t help them at all and just let them die); some wastelanders being chased by a wounded deathclaw who, if you help them by killing the deathclaw, give you a “treasure map” to Rock Creek Caverns (Jon was pretty sure he’d already done this one earlier as he had the location on his Pip-Boy map, and the comments confirmed it was in an early episode of the series; also there’s no treasure in the Caverns, just a lot of mirelurks); the water beggar Ben Canning deciding randomly to roam the Wasteland if you give him water (he doesn’t become a trader or anything, he just follows the safe routes as a tourist); and Mel the incompetent raider who was kicked out of his gang and attempts to rob you with an unloaded weapon (he is apparently very easy to talk down, as you might expect XD).
II. With that sorted, it was time for location #2 – a road with a big rock beside it just outside of Minefield, which was a perfect locale to spawn Type B wandering events! Jon had Wanda loop around the same car toward that rock a few times and got –
First: One of the “fight” events, with a bunch of Brotherhood Outcasts appearing from behind the rock to fight some Enclave that had spawned in by some busted cars nearby! The two promptly began firing at each other, and Wanda gave the Outcasts a hand by shooting the Hellfire trooper amongst the regular scrub troopers. :p
Second: Another “fight” event, this time featuring a couple of Outcasts taking their Sentry Bot out for a walk and running into some raiders. Wanda didn’t feel the need to help out the Outcasts with this one. XD
Third: A “vertibird drop-off” event, where a vertibird lands on the road, drops off an Enclave soldier or two, and then departs – though apparently this one can glitch our and kind of repeat forever on a loop. Fortunately this didn’t happen here, as Wanda does NOT need more trouble with waves of Enclave coming after her!
Fourth: In Jon’s own words, “a single eyebot and that’s it.” Apparently some of these events are a lot less dramatic than others. XD
Fifth: An “escaped slaves” event, where a couple of escaped slaves start coming up the road, and if you talk to them, they’ll explain that they’re looking for the Temple of the Union to join Hannibal’s cause – and then admit they need directions. If you’ve only just found the Temple, you can direct them to its original location; if you did the associated quest, you can direct them to the new site in the Lincoln Memorial; or if you’re an asshole, you can lie and direct them northwest of DC, aka straight to slaver headquarters. Wanda was nice and sent them to the correct place. . .though I wonder how they’ll react when they get there and find all the bodies, since Wanda DID murder Hannibal and all his people after getting them settled because she wanted Lincoln’s hat back.
Sixth: A “super mutant versus wastelanders” event, with the super mutant making mincemeat of the wastelanders. This one got Jon’s hopes up, because he thought it was one of the two special events that he really wanted to show us, but no. Just a random super mutant killing a bunch of people, as random super mutants so often do.
Seventh: Another “Outcasts versus Enclave” fight, only notable because of a frustrated Jon commenting that there are a lot more repeatable Type B events than there are Type A ones, and since the game chooses randomly – yeah, can be hard to get the ones you want!
Eighth: Another “they’re not all dramatic” one, with Jon bitching about how he can’t get the ones he wants to spawn while wandering around a random herd of brahmin in the middle of the road. XD
III. So, did Jon ever get the two Type B events he really wanted to spawn to show up? No, unfortunately, at least not the way he wanted –
The first one he wanted to show up was “Donovan versus the super mutants” – this is the one he thought the super mutant one above was. It involves Donovan of Reilly’s Rangers going up against some super mutants, and if you talk to him afterwards, he will give you a mini-nuke (with him being more enthusiastic about it if you help him with the mutants). However, upon heading to Rangers headquarters, Jon noted that Donovan was very much not there, and so he thinks that what happened is that he DID trigger the event, but never noticed it, and thus Donovan ended up dying to the super mutants. :( Sad times!
And the second one he wanted to show was “Uncle Leo” – and another hour and a half spent at the Minefield spot trying to get him to spawn, Jon snapped and decided to use cheats to enter the “holding pen for freeform encounters” – a literal flat void in which the NPCs for all these events are held until needed (and yes, that is the official name for it) – and summon Uncle Leo himself! Uncle Leo, as it turns out, is the only other friendly super mutant in the game, who is as philosophical and chill as Fawkes. Possibly even more chill – if you attempt to rob him, he just gives you a set of dirty businesswear, and insists that it’s a gift if you’re like “dude, I’m robbing you,” saying that if he was able, he’d give you the experience of the moon rising over the Wasteland, aww. He’s also a great source of information to newbies about how super mutants are made –
AND he’s a MULTIPLE ENCOUNTER event. Because you can find him up to THREE TIMES in the Wasteland if you’re lucky, and each time he has unique dialogue! On the second time you find him, he’ll tell you about how he fell into a basement once and hurt himself, escaped after healing with a bunch of purified water, then was attacked by some humans for said water and ran away, leaving it for them. On the third time, you can express concern about how he’s doing, but he insists he’s fine, he’s making do. Jon couldn’t show off those conversations (the game wouldn’t trigger them in the void), but at least he was able to tell us about them!
And so the episode ended with Wanda escaping the void and returning to the normal world, having had her fill of random encounters for now. Next week – back to the plot, as I think we’re going back up against the Enclave properly. . .
Workout: Back on the bike today, with a couple more James Turner and Petey Plays It Sims videos –
A) “This house costs $0 Simoleons” by James Turner – this is apparently a follow-up to a video he did entitled “This house is 100% free,” where he built a base-game-only starter home for people to use to celebrate the fact that Sims 4’s base game was now free-to-play. A lot of people pointed out to him that the title felt kinda clickbaity, so he chose to atone for his sins by building a GENUINELY free house in the game. How, you ask? By taking advantage of debug items (most of which don’t cost anything) AND an interesting glitch in the game that I never knew about – apparently, if you bulldoze any of the lots in the commercial Starlight Boulevard area of Del Sol Valley from Get Famous, the lot value gets set to $0. So your Sims could buy said lot for free. O.o How bizarre. . .but James made good use of it, wiping out Ward Park and using free flooring, free roofs, a few free decorations (like cracks for the walls and floors) and a whole bunch of various free debug items like walls and columns and not-really-there doors to make a semi-abandoned house under construction for his Semaj Sim to live in! It came out looking pretty cool, I must say – he put a lot of thought into making it look like a genuinely partially-constructed house, picking out all sorts of bits of decorative scaffolding and fencing and old cut lumber to stick around the place. He even stuck a crane in there, lifting pieces of wood to make the garage. XD However, because debug items aren’t generally FUNCTIONAL, there wasn’t a lot of ways to satisfy needs in the house. While James was able to get the bathroom sorted out by putting a free public toilet in the corner (and pretending it was a temporary construction for the workers), he was never able to find a working chair or bed, nor a working fridge or stove. So if Semaj wants to sleep on this lot, he needs to go to the bench near the fountain next to the lot, and if he wants to eat. . .well, there’s a cherry tree nearby that will grow EVENTUALLY. XD But it is 100% free in-game, and as he said, it could be an interesting start for a Rags-to-Riches LP. It’s just fun, you know? We like fun around here. :p
B) “Complete Guide To Drama Club | The Sims 4 Get Famous” by Petey Plays It! A very short video about how Drama Club as an after-school activity for kids and teens works, what you can expect from it in terms of rewards, and what it’s good for (essentially preparing a kid for becoming an actor in the future). There’s not much to it (as evidenced by the fact the video is three minutes), but it has some interactivity in the form of fun pop-ups, and apparently parents can go see their kids’ performances when the game informs you that there is one, so that’s something. *shrug* For all of you who don’t want to put your kids in Scouts from Seasons for whatever reason!
Other: Another round of beanbags did happen this afternoon, and – well, it didn’t FEEL like it at the time, but looking at my scores, I did about the same as yesterday, just in a different order. Dad, meanwhile, had a worse day, while Mom had a much better one – she only lost or won, but she won more than she lost! Final scores were me 2-3-3-2-W; Dad W-2-2-3-2; Mom 3-W-W-W-3. Not too shabby – we’ll see if we play tomorrow, or if the predicted rain comes in early.
Whew! Long one, huh? Good thing I could stay up a little later tonight to get all of that sorted. . .but as it stands, in an attempt to NOT completely destroy my sleep schedule, I am heading to bed now so I can get up at a decent hour in the morning. Main goals for tomorrow are to try and complete all the drafts for this week's Chill Valicer Save update on Victor Luvs Alice; keep up on my YouTube Subs and watch that one remaining video in my Watch Later; do SOMETHING with Sims 4; and do some more writing/editing on my Valicer In The Dark fanfic snippets. :) I think that's all very achievable, at least! Night all!
Tumblr: Had a pretty good day over on the old tumbls –
Victor Luvs Alice – I finished off prepping all the Chill Valicer Save pictures for this week’s update (the end of the honeymoon and Spookfest – ended up being sixty in total) and got them all into their starter drafts before lunch, then finished up the full text, tags, and image alt text after lunch. I also started another draft as well – another Not-Incorrect Valicer In The Dark Quotes collection, mostly because I’ve had one about a gang not being intimidated by Alice and her Hobbyhor – Hobbygoat because horses aren’t a thing in my Duskwall until she performs the ground pound maneuver on them stuck in my head for a while and wanted to get it out. Not too shabby, I think!
Valice Multiverse – my decision to reblog a set of insomnia-themed starters bore fruit in the form of an ask from Brynlee Marie, with her character Maddie informing an insomniac Alice that it’s 4 AM and she needs sleep. I haven’t decided if Alice is having nightmares or just can’t shut her brain off, but either way, she doesn’t have high hopes so for sleep happening! That response is in my queue for tomorrow, yay. :)
Fallout 4: Hey, I actually made progress toward one of my chosen goals/destinations today! :D Aren’t you all proud of me? At least a little? XD Anyway, let me give you the scoop –
A) Picked up where I’d left off last time, atop the roof of the parking lot death-maze (still mazey but a whole lot less deadly now). I had Victor and Ada take the stairs back down by Fallon’s, since I knew those were clear, then directed them back down the road the way they’d come, past the high school, picking up a few bits of junk from the trash cans and such nearby (and dumping a bunch of heavy stuff on Ada again when that put Victor overweight and slowed him down to a crawl. There is never enough carry capacity in this game, I swear. . .) This brought them to an intersection by a crashed truck – I had Victor consult his map, then take the left road to get back to Boston and thus the general area of Goodneighbor. This brought him and Ada past through a bunch of wrecked cars to what looked like a temporarily military checkpoint, complete with barriers, flags, bunch of ammo boxes –
And a partial set of X-01 power armor. O.O If you don’t know what that means, X-01 is the FANCY power armor, the kind that you often see on the front of the box art for these games. (I actually think it’s generally used by Enclave in the older titles, but as they don’t exist here.) I was like “oh cripes, I should probably take that – but Victor getting into power armor is probably going to actually CUT his carry capacity thanks to my mods, and it’s kind of slow and clunky, and I already have power armor waiting for me back in Sanctuary. . .”
And then I realized, “wait – I don’t need to have Victor climb into the FRAME – I can just strip the armor off said frame and carry it around!” *strips head, torso, arm piece* “Have ADA carry it around because shit’s heavy, yo.” XD
B) While I was doing that, I spotted a vertibird circling around overhead, fighting someone on the ground. I figured I’d go ahead and see what was what in a moment, but while I was finishing my looting of the temporary checkpoint, there was a big BOOM, and the vertibird ended up crashing. I could still hear loads of gun and laser fire, though, so I headed forward cautiously, with a VATS scan of a nearby ruined house revealing the outline of a mutant hound. A little bit later, I got close enough to the location to officially discover it, and found it was Big John’s Salvage, a known super mutant base! Apparently the Brotherhood Of Steel had spotted them on a fly-over and decided that having super mutants all over the shop wouldn’t stand. Which, you know, given what most super mutants are like in this game, is a perfectly acceptable decision to make. I had Victor wander in to help, figuring the BOS could use the assistance –
Eh, not really. Even though most of the BOS crew had perished in the crash (which had landed neatly in the yard behind the ruined house I’d spotted the mutant hound in before), there were still one aspirant and one knight that were still kicking, and they were doing pretty well with the super mutants. Victor was still able to help take out a few mutants and a mutant hound in a pen nearby, though. I may not be the biggest fan of the BOS, but I’ll help them take out monsters, sure! Especially since Victor at this point doesn’t know how bigoted they can be.
C) With all hostiles dead, I had Victor start exploring and looting, picking up pretty much everything useful off the corpses and working his way around to the little “general store” area near the front of the salvage yard. Along the way, I spotted the BOS aspirant patrolling just outside the main yard – but when Victor scanned him in VATS, just to see how he was doing, he showed up in red! AKA as hostile! O.o I’m not sure why – though it’s possible that he took a friendly fire bullet from Victor or a friendly fire laser from Ada. Fortunately, he was easy enough to avoid, with Victor working his way into the store from the top and cracking a few locked items along the way (a toolbox for tools and adhesive; a safe for ammo and pre-War cash; and a door into the back room for more ammo and some stimpacks). Victor then looped back around, closer to where he’d originally come in (the Aspirant may have noticed him, but didn’t immediately start shooting, which is good), and found another path around the edge of the salvage yard –
Which had a bunch of mannequins on and around it, and a line of raider corpses. (Plus one decapitated trader head with cherries.) Going up a nearby ramp even had a Super Mutant Master with a minigun and a raider right next to each other, as if they’d managed to kill each other. I’m guessing what happened here is that either a pack of raiders tried to take on the super mutants, or the mutants took over from the raiders, and then the BOS came in and basically nobody won the ensuing fight. Except Victor, who got to steal the loot off everyone while taking minimal damage and firing minimal ammo. :p
D) Case in point – having found his way up to the “reward chest house” (which had a raider looking like he was trying to protect something in a chair, suggesting that the raiders were first wiped out by the super mutants, and then the mutants by the BOS), Victor discovered not only more ammo, drugs, and good junk, but also a copy of “Tales Of A Junktown Jerky Vendor,” which permanently gave him better prices from vendors! Nice. :D I had Victor take pretty much everything he could carry, then had him head out through the back of the yard (near some glitching glowing radstags) and park himself on one of the rocks overlooking the place so he’d have a nice, safe, relatively flat spot to whip out the old portable workbench. :) After a quick snack of melon flambe to handle the old hunger and thirst needs, I had him spend some time scrapping down some of the weapons he’d picked up and didn’t need (Two Shot Combat Rifle BELOVED) and do some cooking to help with his carry weight. Every little bit helps, after all!
E) With that done, it was onward, toward the heart of the city! Victor and Ada proceeded around the back of the salvage yard, past a horrible radioactive crater-lake infested with bugs. One of which, a stingwing, took an interest in them – fortunately, Ada managed to kill it before it could do anything to Victor. He looted the meat and continued onward, past an old Red Rocket –
WITH A SENTRY BOT PATROLLING OUTSIDE. O.o I definitely wanted to avoid THAT bastard if I could, so I tried to sneak around it, keeping well away from the Red Rocket –
No dice. It spotted Victor and Ada – BUT! In a lucky break, the damn thing was already in an overheated state, so it couldn’t immediately start raining death down upon them – it had to cool off first. And with Ada’s newly-upgraded hand laser keeping it VERY distracted, Victor was able to get off a few shots and blow it up! :D Yaaay! Once it had stopped burning quite so much, I had Victor loot the wreckage, then go around and loot everything in the Red-Rocket that seemed useful. More inventory management with Ada followed (seriously, she can carry SO MUCH now, so worth upgrading her), along with Victor chugging a Nuka-Cola because he had the fatigue at 4 in the afternoon and I wanted him to keep pressing on.
F) With the Red Rocket sorted, the duo continued onward, down the road and over the bridge, straight into a raider camp. A very low-level raider camp just outside DB Technical High School, to be precise – Victor and Ada easily took care of the three raiders out front and their attack dog. From there it was around the corner to Med Center Metro, then right down the busted and rubble-strewn streets, working my way toward the Shamrock Taphouse map marker (as I decided I wanted to get Drinking Buddy first). This took Victor and Ada down to a boardwalk area, then into a little boathouse as I looked for goodies. Not finding much of anything, though, I had them stop and turn around, toward the houses they’d passed on the way –
Only for a radscorpion to burst from the earth right in front of Victor. Startled, I hit VATS and lined up all the shots I was allowed –
ONE HIT, ONE KILL. :D It is so nice having a gun that can just end so many lives without issue! Still, this made me aware that there were radscorpions, and possibly other burrowing nasties, in the area, so I had Victor head right toward a ruined house, then work his way up the rubble onto the bit of still-standing roof to set up his tent for the night, as he was starting to feel the tired again. He hit the hay at 8:16 PM, and I let him have a full eight hours – he’d earned it. :)
G) Up at 4:16 AM, Victor stowed his tent (freeing a glitching Ada in the process), then headed back down to street level and toward the Taphouse. He managed to successfully sneak past a raider camp, then found a little waterfront Drumlin Diner nearby with an Advanced locked door – after dropping a quick save to make sure that I had a way to continue if it was trapped, I had Victor crack it, then – after discovering nope, it was fine – raided the inside and used the stove to do a little more cooking (I had radscorpion meat to fry up, after all ;) ). From there, it was through another raider camp (a cleared one – in fact, I’m pretty sure I’m the one who cleared it earlier) in front of a boarded-up building –
And THAT put Victor right in front of the Shamrock Taphouse! So that is where I saved and left it for the day. :) Next time, Victor heads inside, clears the enemies, and meets Drinking Buddy, the micro-brewery robot with a terrible sense of humor. XD Should be fun!
Writing: Another Sunday playing Fallout 4, another Sunday updating the FO4 Playthrough Progression document. . .and honestly, today’s entry was pretty much EXACTLY like the write-up above, only with “Alice is being dragged along on a cart through most of this nonsense” and “Victor knew the BOS aspirant was hostile because the guy told him to fuck off when he tried to say hello.” I even threw in Ada getting caught in the tent just because it amused me. XD Nice and easy this time – we’ll see how summarizing the Shamrock Taphouse fight goes next time I play!
YouTube: Got through my typical Sunday two –
A) First, from the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays and “When your IQ is 1,000,000,000,” aka Gray plays Big Brain Run! Remember that neck-stretching mobile game that he played a while back, where you had to go down the course collecting neck rings of the correct color to stretch your neck while dodging various violent spiky pretzels, then at the end you got a ridiculous multiplier and then walked past a bunch of stuff to see what your neck was taller than? This is that game, only now you’re collecting BRAINS of the correct color to swell your head to gigantic proportions, and the walk at the end is to see what animals you’re smarter than (it starts at “ant” and Gray managed to get all the way to “fox”). Just – who comes up with these ideas, seriously? What possesses someone to look at all the other “run” games on the mobile market and go “I know what will set us apart – collecting brains!” XD I mean, it got Gray to play the game on the channel, and he seemed to have a reasonable amount of fun with it (especially enjoying the brain at the end getting bigger and bigger with all the multipliers and overshadowing his body more and more), but still. XD
B) And second, from the Recommended (as that’s where he usually pops up for me), we had Jon and “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 40 - Rolling The Die,” aka Jon and Wanda play with Random Events in Fallout 3! Random events (or “freeform encounters,” as the game itself seems to call them), as you might expect, are things that can happen randomly in the Capital Wasteland – though they’re not exactly as random as you might think. How it works is, there are certain spots on the map that the game has designated as places where random events can spawn. Whenever the player approaches one of these spots, the game checks an internal list and picks one at random from what’s available. There are two types of random events – Type A, which are static and can only appear at one location, and Type B, which are roaming, meaning the event characters spawn at a certain location, and then start walking. What events you get can vary by location (for example, you will almost never see “humans captured by super mutant” events unless you’re near established super mutant bases, like Vault 87 or the Germantown Police Station), how you resolved certain quests (for example, Jon CANNOT get the “Ant-Agonizer going around with her ants killing random people” event, because he resolved that quest peacefully, talking the Ant-Agonizer down), time of day, and in one case even by what you’re wearing at the time. Some are repeatable, and some, unfortunately, are one-and-dones – if you spawn them once, they can never spawn again. Jon loves the random events because he likes how they make the wasteland a little more chaotic and interesting, and enforces the idea that there is danger around every corner, and he likes the quest-related ones in particular because they show the consequences of your actions in a more natural way than just a slideshow at the end (though he did admit that the benefit of a slideshow at the end is, unless it severely glitches out, you’re guaranteed to see it, rather than possibly missing it like a random event that spawns when you’re in a hurry or runs into a monster and gets eaten). So, today’s episode saw him largely hanging around two specific locations, constantly reloading them to try and get as many of the interesting and unique random events that he could to spawn! His success rate was – variable. Here’s how it went down –
I. Location #1 was the Jalbert Brothers Disposal site (full of radioactive waste), where Jon parked Wanda to cycle through as many Type A static events as he could. The events he showed us in detail were –
First: The “robot repair” event, where you find a wandering mechanic with a Mr. Handy who is stuck in a diagnostic loop that he can’t fix. Wanda, who had enough repair skill to know her way around robots, was able to repair the guy by rewiring a few things inside, and the grateful mechanic gave her some payment for her trouble! Unfortunately for him, that payment was a mere two energy cells, and an annoyed Wanda/Jon promptly blew his head off. Because this is True Neutral Wanda, who is only second to True Neutral Merilwen when it comes to war crimes. XD
Second: The “purified water fridge” event – this involves some random wastelanders (in this case ghouls versus an escaped slave) fighting over a fridge that happens to have some purified water in it. The ghoul in charge told Wanda to take a hike, but her speech was high enough that she was able to pass a speech check to ask him to split the water (he was very grumpy, but agreed) and thus got ten cans of purified water for herself, nice.
Third: One of the “hunters” events – this one is a repeatable event that sees up to four “hunter” NPCs against a random animal, ranging from dogs to freaking yao guais (aka bears). If they kill the animal and survive, and you talk to them, they have a unique line about how the animal tastes, and turn into a trader who sells meat from that animal. This one was the hunters versus a dog, who told Wanda that most everyone likes dog meat. (I would agree, but I think most people prefer the “dog” capitalized and the “meat” part of the same word. ;) )
Fourth: A quest-related one – “dead Vault 101 resident!” Specifically in this instance, the corpse of one Freddie Gomez from the Tunnel Snakes! This is a result of Wanda choosing to blow up the generator as Butch asked her to and forcing all the residents of Vault 101 out into the Wasteland, and kind of pairs with the “Amata runs into the Enclave” random event Jon saw before while vault-diving – because the residents were forced to flee unprepared, every so often now Wanda will find dead Vault 101 residents out in the wastes. If she’d just convinced them to open up the vault to the outside world, she’d have found a perfectly alive former resident, Sally, who would have told her that everything was fine and thanked her for her help. But Wanda chose violence, and thus dead Freddie. Sorry Freddie!
Fifth: The “wandering ghouls” event – Wanda coming across some ghouls who were TRYING to make it to Underworld, the ghoul city, but couldn’t make it past the super mutants. So now they’re trying to find their own place in the wasteland. If you’re not already familiar with Underworld, these guys can add the location to your map!
Sixth: The “Lazlo Radford” – Lazlo being some random dickhead who thinks the PC is a communist and promptly tries to kill them. He’s a random event that’s tied you having picked up something in the world – specifically, a schematic for a railway rifle, as that happens to be his weapon of choice. He can’t spawn in until you’ve gotten that schematic and thus know what the hell the gun is. As Wanda happened to be carrying HER railway rifle, she and Lazlo had a brief shootout, which was ended by Wanda taking him out in one critical hit that pinned his head to a rock. Without the rest of him attached.
Seventh: Another “hunters” event, this time with them versus a giant soldier ant! Apparently you can get some nice, juicy steaks out of your average giant ant. XD
Eighth: The outfit-related one that Jon was really hoping to get – the “child superhero fan” event! If you resolve the superheroes quest in such a way that you end up with either the Mechanist or Ant-Agonizer costumes (or both, like Wanda) and have them on while running around random encounter areas, you can spawn in a child who tells you how cool you are and asks for an autograph. Your options are to just give the kid the autograph; attempt to charge them ten caps for the autograph; or straight up give the kid the suit, which as you can imagine, REALLY makes their day. Wanda chose the last option, and the kid put it on and raced off – though he didn’t take the helmet. Leaving Wanda just standing there staring after him in her undies and the Mechanist helmet. Jon considered it pretty amusing. XD
Ninth: Another quest-related one – a “wasteland survivor” event! This event is tied to the “Wasteland Survival Guide” quest, and comes in two variants. If you half-assed the book and it ended up bad quality, you’ll come across a wastelander fleeing a fight with something, and when you talk to them, they’ll complain that the book was utterly useless. Wanda made sure to do every optional objective and made the book the best quality could be, however, so she found a wastelander easily slaughtering a mole rat, who, when questioned, told her how awesome the book was and how it’s responsible for him and his family being up to TWO meals a day again! And then thanked her for her contributions when she informed him that she helped write it. Jon really liked this one because he likes the warm feeling he gets from knowing the book is genuinely helping people. :)
Tenth: Another “hunters” one, this time with them versus a mole rat. Apparently it’s a very gamey meat, which probably explains why there was that set-up Jon found in a tunnel ages ago all about trying to improve its taste. XD
Eleventh: A repeat of the “dead Freddie Gomez” event that Jon had to show us because this time the poor bastard was just exploded hunks of meat.
Twelfth: Another “wasteland survivor” event related to the Wasteland Survival Guide, and one that was actually a random event Jon himself had never seen before! This one featured a woman kicking mirelurk ass and treating the Guide like it was basically a new HOLY TEXT showing the wastelanders the way back to paradise, showering blessings upon Wanda when she admitted to helping write it. Wanda even got ten caps as a donation from the grateful lady (though possibly that was the result of Jon asking for a “tithe” as per the dialogue options, but I can’t be sure). Jon found the first guy heartwarming, but this survivor kind of unsettled him because he felt like he’d started a cult.
Thirteenth: A “dead scavenger” event (literally just a scavenger corpse that spawns in for the PC to loot) that was only notable because Jon suspected it of being weighted somehow to be picked more often, stating he’d seen it like five times during his reload spree.
Fourteenth: A “random frag mines” event, that spawns random frag mines in the location! Ones that you can’t even disarm – you just have to set them off and then run away. So if you’ve ever exploded for no reason while traveling the Capital Wasteland, now you know why!
After that, Jon decided he was done reloading and just told us about the events that he couldn’t trigger in this area for whatever reason – meeting a trader who is going to Big Town either to sell them something (what depends on how you helped them with their super-mutant problem – in Jon’s case, since Wanda set them up with protector robots, he’s going to sell them robot parts for repairs) or to scavenge their corpses (if you didn’t help them at all and just let them die); some wastelanders being chased by a wounded deathclaw who, if you help them by killing the deathclaw, give you a “treasure map” to Rock Creek Caverns (Jon was pretty sure he’d already done this one earlier as he had the location on his Pip-Boy map, and the comments confirmed it was in an early episode of the series; also there’s no treasure in the Caverns, just a lot of mirelurks); the water beggar Ben Canning deciding randomly to roam the Wasteland if you give him water (he doesn’t become a trader or anything, he just follows the safe routes as a tourist); and Mel the incompetent raider who was kicked out of his gang and attempts to rob you with an unloaded weapon (he is apparently very easy to talk down, as you might expect XD).
II. With that sorted, it was time for location #2 – a road with a big rock beside it just outside of Minefield, which was a perfect locale to spawn Type B wandering events! Jon had Wanda loop around the same car toward that rock a few times and got –
First: One of the “fight” events, with a bunch of Brotherhood Outcasts appearing from behind the rock to fight some Enclave that had spawned in by some busted cars nearby! The two promptly began firing at each other, and Wanda gave the Outcasts a hand by shooting the Hellfire trooper amongst the regular scrub troopers. :p
Second: Another “fight” event, this time featuring a couple of Outcasts taking their Sentry Bot out for a walk and running into some raiders. Wanda didn’t feel the need to help out the Outcasts with this one. XD
Third: A “vertibird drop-off” event, where a vertibird lands on the road, drops off an Enclave soldier or two, and then departs – though apparently this one can glitch our and kind of repeat forever on a loop. Fortunately this didn’t happen here, as Wanda does NOT need more trouble with waves of Enclave coming after her!
Fourth: In Jon’s own words, “a single eyebot and that’s it.” Apparently some of these events are a lot less dramatic than others. XD
Fifth: An “escaped slaves” event, where a couple of escaped slaves start coming up the road, and if you talk to them, they’ll explain that they’re looking for the Temple of the Union to join Hannibal’s cause – and then admit they need directions. If you’ve only just found the Temple, you can direct them to its original location; if you did the associated quest, you can direct them to the new site in the Lincoln Memorial; or if you’re an asshole, you can lie and direct them northwest of DC, aka straight to slaver headquarters. Wanda was nice and sent them to the correct place. . .though I wonder how they’ll react when they get there and find all the bodies, since Wanda DID murder Hannibal and all his people after getting them settled because she wanted Lincoln’s hat back.
Sixth: A “super mutant versus wastelanders” event, with the super mutant making mincemeat of the wastelanders. This one got Jon’s hopes up, because he thought it was one of the two special events that he really wanted to show us, but no. Just a random super mutant killing a bunch of people, as random super mutants so often do.
Seventh: Another “Outcasts versus Enclave” fight, only notable because of a frustrated Jon commenting that there are a lot more repeatable Type B events than there are Type A ones, and since the game chooses randomly – yeah, can be hard to get the ones you want!
Eighth: Another “they’re not all dramatic” one, with Jon bitching about how he can’t get the ones he wants to spawn while wandering around a random herd of brahmin in the middle of the road. XD
III. So, did Jon ever get the two Type B events he really wanted to spawn to show up? No, unfortunately, at least not the way he wanted –
The first one he wanted to show up was “Donovan versus the super mutants” – this is the one he thought the super mutant one above was. It involves Donovan of Reilly’s Rangers going up against some super mutants, and if you talk to him afterwards, he will give you a mini-nuke (with him being more enthusiastic about it if you help him with the mutants). However, upon heading to Rangers headquarters, Jon noted that Donovan was very much not there, and so he thinks that what happened is that he DID trigger the event, but never noticed it, and thus Donovan ended up dying to the super mutants. :( Sad times!
And the second one he wanted to show was “Uncle Leo” – and another hour and a half spent at the Minefield spot trying to get him to spawn, Jon snapped and decided to use cheats to enter the “holding pen for freeform encounters” – a literal flat void in which the NPCs for all these events are held until needed (and yes, that is the official name for it) – and summon Uncle Leo himself! Uncle Leo, as it turns out, is the only other friendly super mutant in the game, who is as philosophical and chill as Fawkes. Possibly even more chill – if you attempt to rob him, he just gives you a set of dirty businesswear, and insists that it’s a gift if you’re like “dude, I’m robbing you,” saying that if he was able, he’d give you the experience of the moon rising over the Wasteland, aww. He’s also a great source of information to newbies about how super mutants are made –
AND he’s a MULTIPLE ENCOUNTER event. Because you can find him up to THREE TIMES in the Wasteland if you’re lucky, and each time he has unique dialogue! On the second time you find him, he’ll tell you about how he fell into a basement once and hurt himself, escaped after healing with a bunch of purified water, then was attacked by some humans for said water and ran away, leaving it for them. On the third time, you can express concern about how he’s doing, but he insists he’s fine, he’s making do. Jon couldn’t show off those conversations (the game wouldn’t trigger them in the void), but at least he was able to tell us about them!
And so the episode ended with Wanda escaping the void and returning to the normal world, having had her fill of random encounters for now. Next week – back to the plot, as I think we’re going back up against the Enclave properly. . .
Workout: Back on the bike today, with a couple more James Turner and Petey Plays It Sims videos –
A) “This house costs $0 Simoleons” by James Turner – this is apparently a follow-up to a video he did entitled “This house is 100% free,” where he built a base-game-only starter home for people to use to celebrate the fact that Sims 4’s base game was now free-to-play. A lot of people pointed out to him that the title felt kinda clickbaity, so he chose to atone for his sins by building a GENUINELY free house in the game. How, you ask? By taking advantage of debug items (most of which don’t cost anything) AND an interesting glitch in the game that I never knew about – apparently, if you bulldoze any of the lots in the commercial Starlight Boulevard area of Del Sol Valley from Get Famous, the lot value gets set to $0. So your Sims could buy said lot for free. O.o How bizarre. . .but James made good use of it, wiping out Ward Park and using free flooring, free roofs, a few free decorations (like cracks for the walls and floors) and a whole bunch of various free debug items like walls and columns and not-really-there doors to make a semi-abandoned house under construction for his Semaj Sim to live in! It came out looking pretty cool, I must say – he put a lot of thought into making it look like a genuinely partially-constructed house, picking out all sorts of bits of decorative scaffolding and fencing and old cut lumber to stick around the place. He even stuck a crane in there, lifting pieces of wood to make the garage. XD However, because debug items aren’t generally FUNCTIONAL, there wasn’t a lot of ways to satisfy needs in the house. While James was able to get the bathroom sorted out by putting a free public toilet in the corner (and pretending it was a temporary construction for the workers), he was never able to find a working chair or bed, nor a working fridge or stove. So if Semaj wants to sleep on this lot, he needs to go to the bench near the fountain next to the lot, and if he wants to eat. . .well, there’s a cherry tree nearby that will grow EVENTUALLY. XD But it is 100% free in-game, and as he said, it could be an interesting start for a Rags-to-Riches LP. It’s just fun, you know? We like fun around here. :p
B) “Complete Guide To Drama Club | The Sims 4 Get Famous” by Petey Plays It! A very short video about how Drama Club as an after-school activity for kids and teens works, what you can expect from it in terms of rewards, and what it’s good for (essentially preparing a kid for becoming an actor in the future). There’s not much to it (as evidenced by the fact the video is three minutes), but it has some interactivity in the form of fun pop-ups, and apparently parents can go see their kids’ performances when the game informs you that there is one, so that’s something. *shrug* For all of you who don’t want to put your kids in Scouts from Seasons for whatever reason!
Other: Another round of beanbags did happen this afternoon, and – well, it didn’t FEEL like it at the time, but looking at my scores, I did about the same as yesterday, just in a different order. Dad, meanwhile, had a worse day, while Mom had a much better one – she only lost or won, but she won more than she lost! Final scores were me 2-3-3-2-W; Dad W-2-2-3-2; Mom 3-W-W-W-3. Not too shabby – we’ll see if we play tomorrow, or if the predicted rain comes in early.
Whew! Long one, huh? Good thing I could stay up a little later tonight to get all of that sorted. . .but as it stands, in an attempt to NOT completely destroy my sleep schedule, I am heading to bed now so I can get up at a decent hour in the morning. Main goals for tomorrow are to try and complete all the drafts for this week's Chill Valicer Save update on Victor Luvs Alice; keep up on my YouTube Subs and watch that one remaining video in my Watch Later; do SOMETHING with Sims 4; and do some more writing/editing on my Valicer In The Dark fanfic snippets. :) I think that's all very achievable, at least! Night all!
