Knew It Was Coming!
Aug. 13th, 2023 11:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYes, I got my period today, with the first signs of blood after lunch. It hasn't really ramped up yet -- been very light all afternoon -- but it's definitely there, and definitely affecting my concentration, blah. At least I still have two days off so I can just relax at home instead of immediately dealing with this at work! *shakehead* Fortunately, though, even with some period brain fog, I managed to accomplish some stuff --
Tumblr: Not my most productive day on here, but I kept up as best I could –
Victor Luvs Alice – Caught up on my dashboard and tracked tags and started doing alt text for the images in the Tranquil Circle Spa post before lunch; then finished up the alt text, cleaned up the main text, and did the tags for that post after lunch! So that’s all good.
Valice Multiverse – Another day of nothing happening on here, so I search out an RP meme and chucked that in the queue. *shrug* Just to let everyone know I’m still around!
Fallout 4: Today proved to be Drinkin’ Buddy Day in FO4, which was just fine with me – here’s how we got on with getting the brewery on legs out of the Shamrock Taphouse –
A) Started at 6:36 AM in game by sneaking into the Taphouse – right at the front entrance were a couple of can chimes that Victor had to disarm. He did that and then carefully snuck into the main bar room, keeping an eye out for traps and an ear out for enemy “barks” – to my relief, the first one I heard was a RAIDER bark, not a super mutant one like I was expecting. I continued having Victor creep forward, keeping an eye out for enemies. . .
B) And then came across a raider sitting at a table, apparently chain-smoking cigarettes and chain-drinking beer, practically right next to Victor. Who hadn’t noticed him. Victor took him out with one shot from the Two-Shot, no problem, raided the corpse, picked up all his beer bottles and cigarettes, waited for the [CAUTION] sign to turn back to [HIDDEN], then proceeded to sneak behind the bar to see what was there – a baseball bat and a baseball, a cash register, some other odds and ends –
And a tripwire trap Victor accidentally set off, triggering a pipe pistol in a brace on the ceiling. Victor avoided the actual shot, but I wanted that sweet trap-disarming XP (as he was VERY close to getting Level 37), so I quickly reloaded from where I’d saved (right after disarming the can chimes), rekilled the raider, retook all his stuff, and THEN went behind the bar and disarmed the trap. Ha. :p
C) With THAT taken care of, it was just a matter of finding goodies behind the bar (the bits I could reach, anyway, given there was a chunk of collapsed second floor balcony blocking the end nearest the front door) and reorganizing Victor’s inventory when it inevitably got too full. XD I found a few things of note, but the funniest was a pair of teddy bears playing checkers with caps while smoking cigars and having a Gwinnett. XD I left them to their game and continued onward, back past the stairs upward and into the hallway just beyond, where a raider was standing examining something on the wall. He too was easily taken out with a sneak attack from the Two-Shot – but as he fell, I noticed he’d been standing very near a door with a tension trap trigger and a homemade bomb on it. So I had Victor VERY CAREFULLY approach that door, disarm the tension trigger, disarm the bomb, and then unlock the Advanced locked door. What was behind all that security, you may ask?
D) Why, a bathroom chem lab with loads of drugs, some various liquors, and a bunch of plastic flamingos scattered about, doing things like drinking from the urinals! (Also a mannequin in one of the stalls wielding a flamingo like a weapon.) Victor looted everything, then continued on to the other door behind the recently-downed raider – this one was a bathroom that one of the raiders was apparently using as a bedroom, complete with a mattress in a stall, bottles of beer in the toilet bowl (ew), and a telephone shoved in a sink with bloody handprints (eep). There was also a giant hole in the wall which allowed easy access to the kitchen, which had more goodies – and, more importantly, a door leading to that bit of the behind-the-bar area that was blocked by the collapsed second floor. Which contained a holotape with the proprietary formula for the Gwinett “Dead Redcoat Ale” and a safe, which, when cracked, yielded quite a lot of ammo! I was very pleased. :)
E) However, all this goodie-stealing had once again put Victor overweight – and getting worried about Ada’s carry capacity, I chose to instead try to lighten his load by having him head over to the chem bench in the bathroom and start combining stuff – specifically, making some cutting fluid out of bone and acid, then combining all the Buffout, Jet, Psycho, and Mentats he’d picked up in various combinations. This brought him up to Level 37 – I finished off by having him make some robot repair kits (important when traveling with Ada!) and glowing blood packs (rad resist is a good thing), then chose his new perk – Robotics Expert! Victor can now hack robots and get them to attack his enemies, and can make more stuff on the robot bench, yay. :) Next level-up should be for improving his hacking, and THEN we can finally start moving onto the big three of Gun Nut 4, Armorer 4, and Science! 4. I am excite. :D
F) With Victor’s drug load lightened and his level increased, I decided the next thing to do was to clear out the upstairs, as I could still hear some raiders bopping around. So Victor and Ada headed upstairs, Victor disarming another bunch of can chimes, then took a look around. To the right, in the old billiards room overlooking the main bar, were a couple of raiders who were very easily taken out with the Two-Shot; to the left, in an office, was the leader, Gaff, who managed to get out his shotgun and get off one missed shot before Victor killed him (though he at least required TWO shots from the Two-Shot :p). Victor went around looting again, grabbing all things useful (including more caps and ammo from the “hooray, you killed a raider leader” steamer trunk) and discovering that Gaff in particular had been trying to crack open a safe by levering it open with a screwdriver (still stuck IN the safe, to my amusement). Granted, when Victor cracked it open the PROPER way, it had some good stuff in it – like a cryo mine and a stealth boy! Oh, and wonderglue. :p Victor grabbed it all, ended up overweight again, attempted to reduce his load by doing some cooking and a little bit of gun scrapping (that pipe pistol he fished out of the gun brace after disarming the tripwire), and when that didn’t really work, instead dumped more stuff on Ada. Fortunately, it appears she can carry a HELL of a lot now, as I didn’t get the “Ada can’t carry any more message” I was half expecting. Nice. :p
G) With THAT sorted, it was time to find Drinkin’ Buddy! The quest marker indicated he was downstairs, so Victor went down some stairs in the billiards room to the employee lounge area (which also had a door connecting to the kitchen, and the hallway Victor had gone down before – that one needed to be unlocked, which I did just for the XP). Victor took a bathroom break in this room, then raided it for goodies like duct tape, Nuka-Cola and Nuka-Cola bottles (which led to a cardboard box with some of those bottles in it vibrating WORRYINGLY for a little bit), and an issue of Total Hack (the magazine that lets you hack things like protectrons and turrets – this one was for spotlights, which feels – mildly useless?) clutched in the hand of a lady mannequin that was on the coffee table for some reason. Victor also took a moment to pop back into the kitchen and open the big double doors I’d seen in there – turned out behind those was the pantry, containing lots of old pre-War food, a couple of Nuka-Quantums –
And a couple of radroaches, popping out of the ground jumpscare-style. Fortunately they didn’t immediately attack, and Victor was very easily able to take them out with VATS. *shudder* Damn bugs. . .at least the meat is good eatin’?
H) With that, there was only one more door to check – the one off the employee room that led down into the basement! Victor and Ada started down the stairs, and spotted Drinkin’ Buddy in his little charging pod on the other side of the room –
And then a bunch of mole rats exploded out of the floor. Victor managed to take them out without an issue, but was a little slow to murder the last one (as VATS tried to target Drinkin’ Buddy instead), causing Ada to fire off a laser shot.
A laser shot that missed, hit the oil-covered floor, and SET IT ON FIRE. Fortunately Victor was well out of danger on the stairs, and it burned out quickly, but yeesh. Alice is gonna yell at you for that one in the Playthrough Progression, Ada!
I) Well, once the fire was out, it was time to actually go downstairs, explore, get the meat, hides, and teeth off the mole rats, and see what was what. What was what was a terminal on a nearby cabinet belonging to someone named Patrick – using it revealed he was the creator of Drinkin’ Buddy, with all his relevant notes (including how, in solving the problem of overheating gaskets from the flash fermentation process, he accidentally figured out how to cool the beer as it was bottled, his deal with Jack West at the Hotel Rexford, how he got Drinkin’ Buddy to serve Gwinnett (he knew a guy who knew a guy who could crack their tapes), his annoyance with West trying to insist Drinkin’ Buddy have a face, and his problems with transporting it). He indicated he’d left the boot-up password for Buddy somewhere nearby in the final note –
J) But who needs a boot-up password when you can just hack the terminal? Especially when you know all the tricks to removing dud passwords? :p One successful hacking later, Buddy booted up, went through his initial checks, and produced a cold beer for Victor to sample. And while Victor isn’t really a drinker, I figured it would be rude not to try Buddy’s drink and pronounced it cold and refreshing. :) Buddy asked if they were ready to head to the Hotel Rexford, and Victor said they were – though before they left the basement, Victor handed over the additional recipe holotape he’d found (as Buddy only had the “Pale Ale” recipe available upon first booting) and got a silly joke about Charles Dickens walking into a bar and ordering a martini (bartender asked “Olive or Twist?” XD). Oh Buddy. . .
K) And with that, it was out through the basement hatch into the waterfront district, and from there over to Goodneighbor, following Buddy as he trekked along! Fortunately it was a relatively quiet trip for Victor, Ada, and Buddy – yes, there was a vertibird who was fighting some raiders or gunners nearby that blew up as the trio passed (right over the old raider camp Victor had cleared out), but none of the flaming debris hit them. :p They also safely made it past a super mutant camp, around some dead gunners with more goodies to loot (and then dump on poor Ada), past the parking garage, and around past the super mutant diner without having to fight anything more than a couple of bloodbug hatchlings. By 8 PM in-game, they’d made it to the Rexford, where Buddy was safely delivered and instructed to hang out near the bar by the proprietor, and Rufus praised Victor for his hard work and gave him 100 caps as a reward. Which – is a pretty shitty reward in caps, but I’ll allow it because of all the good junk Victor got. Plus the quest XP. :p
And so the playsession ended with Victor renting his usual room at the Rexford for the evening after a quick dinner of melon flambe, as he was starting to feel the tired. Had him hit the sheets at 8:40 PM and let him sleep for a whole nine hours – he deserved it. :) I left it with him having woken up at 5:42 AM to find Ada standing on the sofa in his room. :p Next week – let’s get us a Silver Shroud costume! :D
Writing: Updated the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the adventures in the Shamrock Taphouse above! As usual, there weren’t MANY changes to what actually happened in the game – mostly, I just had Alice help Victor out with disarming some of the traps (she disarmed the tripwire trap behind the bar, and helped Victor with the bomb trap before unlocking the door), killing some of the raiders (putting her blade to work >D), and hacking the terminal to turn on Buddy (two heads are better than one!); had them open the pantry and kill the radroaches inside when they first entered the kitchen, instead of coming back to it later; and yes, had Alice yell at Ada for setting the basement alight with a missed laser shot at a mole rat after getting a tarp to smother the flames while they burned out. Because woman has issues with fire, yo. Oh, and no drug-combining at the chem lab, as Victor’s not really a chemist in-story – I just do that for carry weight and XP purposes in-game. :p Other than that, though, everything was pretty much identical to the above write-up, with the gang clearing the raiders, activating Buddy, and bringing him back to the Rexford, with Victor getting his reward and then renting a room for the night because tired. *nods* Next time – think it’s time to sell some stuff at the shops, and then go get a Silver Shroud costume to kick THAT stuff off. . .along with Victor finally meeting the Railroad. . .
YouTube: Standard Sunday Two, as always –
A) First up, from GrayStillPlays, we had “When a sledgehammer hits you at light speed,” aka Gray plays Crash Master 3D! This is a mobile game where you drive cars through obstacle courses, dodging killer hammers, presses, various roller things (going from side to side AND up and down), and navigating over various speed bumps, ramps, and seesaws – and one chomping crocodile – to get to the end, mow down as many crash dummies as possible for money, and then try and beat your best distance. As you do so, you unlock new cars – Gray started out with a standard sports car, and got a jeep, a Mini Cooper (complete with the English flag up top), a semi-truck, a school bus, a old-timey car, a tractor, and a smart car. Each car can be upgraded separately to have more speed and durability, allowing you complete the courses faster, take more hits, and run over more people. It was a pretty repetitive game, but Gray going through all the levels, unlocking more and more stuff and dealing with more and more janky physics from being crushed and smacked around was a lot of fun. Gray swore not to stop until he unlocked the final vehicle, a full-on plane –
And then, after many hours of play, he discovered the plane WAS A COMPLETE LIE. They hadn’t bothered to actually put a functional model in the game. Furious, he turned to his buddy Outwit to hack the game and get him an ACTUAL secret vehicle – and they found a bulldozer. One that, with the help of Outwit’s mods, Gray was able to immediately upgrade to full speed and durability and just SMASH his way through the course. And then up the speed even MORE to murder everyone on the board. XD He may have not gotten the plane he wanted, but at least he got a bulldozer that, when given enough 9s, could shoot through the stratosphere, and that was good enough! XD
B) And second up, from Jon of Many A True Nerd, we had “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 41 - The Dumbest Fight In Fallout 3!” Jon was actually up for advancing the plot of Broken Steel this episode after all his alternate universe shenanigans showing off random events last week, and completed two quests, each with their own weirdness attached:
I. The Titular Dumbest Fight – This was the result of a super-short mission given to Wanda by Scribe Bigsley of the Brotherhood, to go talk with Officer Lepelletier of Rivet City about this “coordinated bandit attacks” problem she and her fellow police have been having while trying to protect the water caravans. Wanda dutifully visited Rivet City and met up with Lepelletier, who let her know that their caravans kept being ambushed by some very organized raiders, and that she needed Wanda to catch up with the latest caravan (which had some of her greenest recruits on it), help repel the attack Lepelletier KNEW was coming, and get to the bottom of things. Wanda did so, following the caravan along its unusual route under the nearby bridge (Jon was puzzled about why it went THAT way instead of following the usual caravan route – probably because it’s a special quest caravan?) and coming across the ambush – the bramhin and its driver were already dead, but the security officers themselves were still alive and kicking. Wanda managed to save the officers with some quick shooting (the brahmin and driver will always die according to Jon), and examined the bandit corpses while they headed back to report to Lepelletier. And, on one, she found a holotape from someone named Split Jack – a recruitment tape into his gang to be precise! It outlined his plan – harass the water caravans until they were ready to just give up, then offer “protection” for the right amount of caps, along with selling all the stolen water to whichever buyer they chose – the gang’s meeting place – Wilhelm Wharf, by Grandma Sparkle’s (former) place – and the password to get in – “Mirelurk Stew.” Wanda promptly stole some armor from the dead raiders to wear to fit in, headed for the meeting spot, found Jack, and gave him the passcode. Jack then directed her to sit down and wait for some returning gang members –
And if you think there was some big, long, interesting “infiltrate this raider gang” quest coming up, you were SORELY mistaken. Because all Wanda had to do after that to resolve the quest was speak to Jack again and do one of three things – pass a speech check to make him realize that the Brotherhood/River City would probably be very unwilling to pay for protection for something they’re giving away for FREE (which makes him wander off and try a new plan); declare war on him and his cronies and kill them all; or challenge him to a duel for leadership of the gang – the titular “Dumbest Fight.” What makes it the dumbest fight in Fallout 3?
-->First, you can only duel with combat knives, lead pipes, or nail boards – aka, all melee weapons that start out in middling condition and are being used against the gang’s trademark metal armor. If your character isn’t built for melee, they’re going to have a real tough time, and if their weapon breaks – well, there’s just no way to win the fight, making it all for naught.
-->Second, if you try to use ANY other weapon during the fight, or have a companion that comes in and tries to help you against Jack, or have the “Mysterious Stranger” perk and have him show up to fire a shot in VATS, or hit any of the other gang members at any point, the fight will be ruined, all the other gang members will join in, and you’ll have to kill them all anyway. Now, avoiding the first three – wrong weapon, bloodthirsty companion, and Mysterious Stranger – are relatively easily done (though if you’ve taken the Stranger’s perk you might just have to avoid VATS – fortunately Wanda hadn’t). Not hitting the other gang members, though, is a task and a half, as they love to follow the fight around and crowd around their boss. Jon had to try THREE TIMES to complete the duel properly (one time with each weapon) because Wanda kept hitting another gang member and turning it into a free-for-all.
-->Third, if you DO manage to win the duel properly (as Wanda did on the third try with the nail boards), and then talk to the remaining raiders, they inform you that “well, you killed the boss fair and square, but we’ve decided that bosses are dumb now and won’t let you lead us.” That’s right, even if you win, you don’t get to become the gang leader or anything – they just go “lol nope.” Jon was very annoyed by it all.
However! There IS a reason to try and complete the Dumbest Fight, and it is this – moolah. Namely, if you win the fight, while the other raiders will inform you that they won’t let you become boss, they will ALSO tell you that they liked the plan about getting protection money, and say if you can set something up with Officer Lepelletier, they’ll cut you in on the deal. This allows you to go back to Lepelletier, tell her that you killed the old leader, but that you’re setting up a protection racket for the remaining raiders, and that she can either pay 500 caps up-front to stop all the attacks forever (this option requires a speech check), or 200 a week to keep the attackers satisfied on the regular (this option doesn’t, despite being the SUPERIOR option that gets you money FOREVER). Lepelletier will NOT LIKE being extorted, but will agree to pay, saying she’ll find the money somehow. However, she will also warn the player character that if she ever sees them again, she will kill them – and she is NOT KIDDING. Approach her again and try to speak with her, and she will whip out a gun and end you. So yes – if you want a steady source of cash for the rest of your Fallout 3 experience, take this absurdly short quest, figure out how to win the duel, get Lepelletier to pay the 200 a week, and then just avoid her for the rest of time. Easy peasy. :p
II. Fun And Science In Old Olney – This was actually the next major plot mission in Broken Steel – after visiting Elder Lyon and completing the previous quest (by letting him know about Liberty Prime – this got Wanda up to Level 42, where Jon noted that he couldn’t actually take the “Better Criticals” perk she SHOULD have because it required Perception 6 and Perception is for some reason garbage in Fallout 3, so instead he was taking “Meltdown” (which can make enemies killed with energy weapons explode, sometimes in a chain reaction) because it’s funny and while it never works quite like it should in his head, he’s still fond of it), Wanda got told to report to Paladin Tristan, who in turn told her that she needed to go get them a Tesla coil from the Olney Powerworks to help them build a weapon they could use against the Enclave’s inevitable counter-attack. Olney Powerworks, as you might imagine, is in Old Olney –
And Old Olney is in fact a GIANT DEATHCLAW NEST. Deathclaws all over the shop! Tristan will not allow you to turn down the quest, but if you tell him you’d like something to help keep you safe, he will direct you to go talk to Scribe Vallincourt. Wanda did indeed talk to Vallincourt, who handed over a special prototype signal scrambler – designed to disrupt the signals the Enclave used to control their mind-controlled deathclaws. Sadly, the device is only useful in a few limited places, but one of those is at the Enclave camp near Old Olney, and Jon was only too happy to get Wanda to super-speed crouch-walk her way there and set the monster free on the unsuspecting Enclave there – though unfortunately she did also have to deal with a Hellfire trooper (fortunately her knockback shotgun ended up taking care of him). Not the most useful item, but certainly a fun one!
With that taken care of it, it was into Old Olney itself, and straight into the sewers to avoid as many deathclaws as possible (though there is a faster route if you come at the city from the right direction, that if you’re lucky, will allow you to tangle with just one, two deathclaws at most). From there, you have to take a rather roundabout route to the actual powerworks, encountering the following –
-->If you go to the left when you first enter the sewers, you may find a bunch of corpses – one of which is a Brotherhood Initiate. That BOS soldier happens to be wearing Prototype Medical Power Armor! The armor will inject you with a special form of Med-X if you get injured and allow you to keep moving normally if you end up with crippled limbs, AND allows you to stack regular Med-X on top of that for extra bonuses! What’s the downside?
It talks. Yes, much like the special stealth suit in New Vegas is a surprisingly chatty suit, this is a surprisingly chatty set of power armor with its own onboard AI which talks like a drill sargent. It’s a bit funny, but the bit can get old fast. Jon is not a fan.
-->Going to the right eventually leads you to a ladder leading into the Old Olney Underground – and two ghouls, Wint and Kidd, hiding from the deathclaws. Ask them what they’re doing there, and Wint will explain that they were part of an expedition to set up a new ghoul city under Olney – like Underworld but better – but when they started knocking down walls, they found deathclaws galore. Wint and Kidd only survived thanks to being faster than the others. After briefly chatting with you, they will happily take advantage of the fact that you’ve cleared out a few levels for them to escape, and if you continue on, you’ll find the remains of the city they tried to set up, along with the remains of their ghoul compatriots – Badger, Connelly, Dunbar, Carl, and Sanders (with the latter being tossed down to you over a pile of rubble by a wandering deathclaw). There’s not much about them in the actual game – Dunbar is carrying a note talking about how the team needs strong backs to help set up the settlement, signed “S” indicating it was probably penned by Sanders – but apparently the strategy guide gives them all some backstory and indicates what their jobs were (for example, Sanders used to hang around with Roy Philips, but chose to go and try and form his own society instead of take over Tenpenny Tower; Connelly was a complainer who wanted to join up with the ghoul resistance movement, but reluctantly decided to try and follow Sanders; Badger was an exile from Underworld and the group’s forager; Carl was the team doctor; and Dunbar was also from Underworld and had a crush on Tulip, a shopkeeper there – he left and joined the group to help get over her). Jon really enjoyed how someone basically took the opportunity to write fanfic about all of them in the strategy guide, considering it quite cute. He also thinks their expedition is the REASON Old Olney is full of deathclaws, and yet no one seems to know that fact – he’s pretty sure that the deathclaws were all underground until they were disturbed, and their appearance on the surface is a recent development. Probably not the intent of the creators, but it DOES fill in that plot hole, so nice. :p
-->From the Underground, you move into the hospital, which shows signs of actual human conflict as well as wandering deathclaws – based on all the skeletons and the presence of a Chinese assault rifle and loads of ammo near one particular pair, Jon’s guess is a Chinese infiltration into the hospital gone bad. But then he thinks the Chinese were infiltrating everything in FO3. XD
-->From the hospital you go to the S. Wilson building – the weirdest building in all of Old Olney. Reason #1 – instead of deathclaws, you are instead fighting Enclave, who have apparently arrived her by vertibird. Happily, you can actually shoot down the vertibird if you know what you’re doing, and if you have a power-armor-disabling weapon, the Enclave aren’t that dangerous either. Reason #2 – this building one hidden gnome-and-teddy-bear scene inside of it (a gnome and a teddy playing strip poker, with the teddy definitely losing). . .and another floating in the void OUTSIDE it (if you no-clip, you’ll find a gnome holding an iron and a teddy on an ironing board floating in the void – a commenter suggested it was probably an idea for a hospital scene, with the gnome “defibrillating” the teddy, and was just left there when they decided not to use it). Reason #3 – there is also a random floating police hat in the building, which Jon has personal beef with because this stupid hat exists nowhere else in the game, shouldn’t be here because this building is not a police station, and then continues to show up randomly in all of the other DLC – including freaking Mothership Zeta, the one set on an ALIEN SPACESHIP. He admits this is a weird and petty complaint and he’s not sure why he’s wired like this either. XD And Reason #4 –
The building doesn’t actually exist in the overworld. If you go out into Old Olney itself and look around, there is no building whose facade matches what you can see from the inside (namely, a building with a big crack down the middle and a radio tower toppled over onto it). It’s an utterly bizarre little corridor level and Jon does not understand it.
-->Fortunately, from there you finally get to the Powerworks, which Jon loves because there is so much general sciencey shit in all the side rooms. Someone wanted to make this place look as science as possible. Now, there are sentry bots roaming around, but fortunately there are also terminals available to shut them off, plus a terminal-locked door that, if you have the science, you can use to skip straight to the cool Tesla Coil room that you need to enter, with electricity arcing everywhere. The things you need to grab here are the Tesla Coil (preferably after turning the current OFF, though Wanda braved the shock and actually survived, if badly hurt – Jon was stunned) – and the alien power cells scattered in the side labs, more proof that the pre-War government knew about aliens and was actively researching their stuff. Wild.
And then it was out of the sewers through a certain manhole that is locked until you come up through it and back to the citadel! Though Jon decided to hold off on deliver the Tesla Coil just yet – instead, he plans to do so to start off next week’s episode, which will allow him to start the final plot mission of Broken Steel – but, more importantly, seek out a few more weird side missions that he very much wants to show off first. XD I’m looking forward to it!
Workout: Back on the bike today, and back to James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches Generational Epic, with “Last day as teenagers! High School Years (Part 42)!” Yes, this was an extra-long episode dedicated to ending Addison and Breanne’s time as teenagers by completing their aspirations, by hook or by crook! And by that I mean “using the ‘complete current milestone’ cheat,” because teen aspirations in this pack are apparently buggy as all get out. *sigh* But he did try to do what he could legit! I’m about halfway through at the moment, and here are the highlights:
A) Breanne’s teenage aspiration is completed (she only had to fulfill the “250 followers on Social Bunny” goal, and as she had WAAAY more than that, James just completed that for her), and she’s currently hoping to become a famous celebrity through her photography! In the meantime, James has her working on yoga to teach her emotional control, so she can maybe help fulfill Reginald’s Super Parent aspiration and grow up with three position character value traits. And she needs that emotional control, as her love life is in shambles – she went to prom dateless, then met her current crush Haven there and did a little flirting – only to be shunted to the side by classmate Andre wanting Haven’s attention, which led to her rejecting Haven’s attempt to kiss her; and then AFTER prom, she had a brief flirtation with Latasha on the pier cuddle carts, only to not be able to follow up at all because of Latasha leaving right afterward as the prom afterparty ended. At least she was voted prom royalty? That’s something?
B) Addison’s teenage aspiration is still in progress (though James did advance it by one milestone because that invite to sneak out just WASN’T coming) – the need to have a fight led James to send them to the Cheerleading Day event and fight a random cheerleader (while Hilary defaced one of the photo backgrounds, to James’s amusement and approval); the need to ask a Sim out on a date five times led James to have them speed-date Hilary all through New Year’s Eve (calling her up to go to ThrifTea didn’t work, but inviting her out to sit on the pier, then visit one of Sulani’s beaches, then hit the Waterside Warble karaoke bar and the Casbah Art Gallery in San Myshuno did); and the need to spook a Sim by summoning an urban myth is currently seeing them pester everyone around them by doing constant mischief interactions to get their skill up (such as the librarian in the town library, their own father, and the custodian at the school). However, the interaction to actually summon the myth has yet to show up (they’re currently at Mischief level 7; reports vary about if the interaction appears then, at level 8, or at level 10), and the game recently reset all the date progress to zero, soo – I suspect Addison will be cheating their way through their aspiration again!
C) The one plus to all this? We have gotten confirmation that creepy Kenta (now creepy ghost Kenta thanks to James’s fiddling) is no longer a teacher at the school! Both have been replaced, in fact, though the original principal is still there. Hooray, hopefully we have no more “Erratic” teachers trying to shower in the rain in front of students! :p
So yeah, we’ve got a “race to the finish” situation going on in this episode, with James desperate to get Addison and Breanne to age up! We’ll see how well he does on getting Addison to complete those milestones (legitimately) tomorrow!
Whew, that was a lot -- I gotta find a way to more concisely sum up those Jon videos! Sheesh. . .but at least I got stuff done. Right now, though, I have to head to bed so I don't get up too late tomorrow. Goals tomorrow include working on more drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (I especially want to get some stuff done with my ideas for Smiler's Otherland); playing Sims 4 (either more fooling around in CAS or some Chill Valicer Save Harvestfest stuff); keeping up with Gray and any other videos that strike my fancy; and I think working on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" (want to keep my momentum on that, and I'll probably have more inspiration for Valicer In The Dark stuff when I start the next episode of Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark, which won't be until Tuesday). We'll see how I do! Night all!
Tumblr: Not my most productive day on here, but I kept up as best I could –
Victor Luvs Alice – Caught up on my dashboard and tracked tags and started doing alt text for the images in the Tranquil Circle Spa post before lunch; then finished up the alt text, cleaned up the main text, and did the tags for that post after lunch! So that’s all good.
Valice Multiverse – Another day of nothing happening on here, so I search out an RP meme and chucked that in the queue. *shrug* Just to let everyone know I’m still around!
Fallout 4: Today proved to be Drinkin’ Buddy Day in FO4, which was just fine with me – here’s how we got on with getting the brewery on legs out of the Shamrock Taphouse –
A) Started at 6:36 AM in game by sneaking into the Taphouse – right at the front entrance were a couple of can chimes that Victor had to disarm. He did that and then carefully snuck into the main bar room, keeping an eye out for traps and an ear out for enemy “barks” – to my relief, the first one I heard was a RAIDER bark, not a super mutant one like I was expecting. I continued having Victor creep forward, keeping an eye out for enemies. . .
B) And then came across a raider sitting at a table, apparently chain-smoking cigarettes and chain-drinking beer, practically right next to Victor. Who hadn’t noticed him. Victor took him out with one shot from the Two-Shot, no problem, raided the corpse, picked up all his beer bottles and cigarettes, waited for the [CAUTION] sign to turn back to [HIDDEN], then proceeded to sneak behind the bar to see what was there – a baseball bat and a baseball, a cash register, some other odds and ends –
And a tripwire trap Victor accidentally set off, triggering a pipe pistol in a brace on the ceiling. Victor avoided the actual shot, but I wanted that sweet trap-disarming XP (as he was VERY close to getting Level 37), so I quickly reloaded from where I’d saved (right after disarming the can chimes), rekilled the raider, retook all his stuff, and THEN went behind the bar and disarmed the trap. Ha. :p
C) With THAT taken care of, it was just a matter of finding goodies behind the bar (the bits I could reach, anyway, given there was a chunk of collapsed second floor balcony blocking the end nearest the front door) and reorganizing Victor’s inventory when it inevitably got too full. XD I found a few things of note, but the funniest was a pair of teddy bears playing checkers with caps while smoking cigars and having a Gwinnett. XD I left them to their game and continued onward, back past the stairs upward and into the hallway just beyond, where a raider was standing examining something on the wall. He too was easily taken out with a sneak attack from the Two-Shot – but as he fell, I noticed he’d been standing very near a door with a tension trap trigger and a homemade bomb on it. So I had Victor VERY CAREFULLY approach that door, disarm the tension trigger, disarm the bomb, and then unlock the Advanced locked door. What was behind all that security, you may ask?
D) Why, a bathroom chem lab with loads of drugs, some various liquors, and a bunch of plastic flamingos scattered about, doing things like drinking from the urinals! (Also a mannequin in one of the stalls wielding a flamingo like a weapon.) Victor looted everything, then continued on to the other door behind the recently-downed raider – this one was a bathroom that one of the raiders was apparently using as a bedroom, complete with a mattress in a stall, bottles of beer in the toilet bowl (ew), and a telephone shoved in a sink with bloody handprints (eep). There was also a giant hole in the wall which allowed easy access to the kitchen, which had more goodies – and, more importantly, a door leading to that bit of the behind-the-bar area that was blocked by the collapsed second floor. Which contained a holotape with the proprietary formula for the Gwinett “Dead Redcoat Ale” and a safe, which, when cracked, yielded quite a lot of ammo! I was very pleased. :)
E) However, all this goodie-stealing had once again put Victor overweight – and getting worried about Ada’s carry capacity, I chose to instead try to lighten his load by having him head over to the chem bench in the bathroom and start combining stuff – specifically, making some cutting fluid out of bone and acid, then combining all the Buffout, Jet, Psycho, and Mentats he’d picked up in various combinations. This brought him up to Level 37 – I finished off by having him make some robot repair kits (important when traveling with Ada!) and glowing blood packs (rad resist is a good thing), then chose his new perk – Robotics Expert! Victor can now hack robots and get them to attack his enemies, and can make more stuff on the robot bench, yay. :) Next level-up should be for improving his hacking, and THEN we can finally start moving onto the big three of Gun Nut 4, Armorer 4, and Science! 4. I am excite. :D
F) With Victor’s drug load lightened and his level increased, I decided the next thing to do was to clear out the upstairs, as I could still hear some raiders bopping around. So Victor and Ada headed upstairs, Victor disarming another bunch of can chimes, then took a look around. To the right, in the old billiards room overlooking the main bar, were a couple of raiders who were very easily taken out with the Two-Shot; to the left, in an office, was the leader, Gaff, who managed to get out his shotgun and get off one missed shot before Victor killed him (though he at least required TWO shots from the Two-Shot :p). Victor went around looting again, grabbing all things useful (including more caps and ammo from the “hooray, you killed a raider leader” steamer trunk) and discovering that Gaff in particular had been trying to crack open a safe by levering it open with a screwdriver (still stuck IN the safe, to my amusement). Granted, when Victor cracked it open the PROPER way, it had some good stuff in it – like a cryo mine and a stealth boy! Oh, and wonderglue. :p Victor grabbed it all, ended up overweight again, attempted to reduce his load by doing some cooking and a little bit of gun scrapping (that pipe pistol he fished out of the gun brace after disarming the tripwire), and when that didn’t really work, instead dumped more stuff on Ada. Fortunately, it appears she can carry a HELL of a lot now, as I didn’t get the “Ada can’t carry any more message” I was half expecting. Nice. :p
G) With THAT sorted, it was time to find Drinkin’ Buddy! The quest marker indicated he was downstairs, so Victor went down some stairs in the billiards room to the employee lounge area (which also had a door connecting to the kitchen, and the hallway Victor had gone down before – that one needed to be unlocked, which I did just for the XP). Victor took a bathroom break in this room, then raided it for goodies like duct tape, Nuka-Cola and Nuka-Cola bottles (which led to a cardboard box with some of those bottles in it vibrating WORRYINGLY for a little bit), and an issue of Total Hack (the magazine that lets you hack things like protectrons and turrets – this one was for spotlights, which feels – mildly useless?) clutched in the hand of a lady mannequin that was on the coffee table for some reason. Victor also took a moment to pop back into the kitchen and open the big double doors I’d seen in there – turned out behind those was the pantry, containing lots of old pre-War food, a couple of Nuka-Quantums –
And a couple of radroaches, popping out of the ground jumpscare-style. Fortunately they didn’t immediately attack, and Victor was very easily able to take them out with VATS. *shudder* Damn bugs. . .at least the meat is good eatin’?
H) With that, there was only one more door to check – the one off the employee room that led down into the basement! Victor and Ada started down the stairs, and spotted Drinkin’ Buddy in his little charging pod on the other side of the room –
And then a bunch of mole rats exploded out of the floor. Victor managed to take them out without an issue, but was a little slow to murder the last one (as VATS tried to target Drinkin’ Buddy instead), causing Ada to fire off a laser shot.
A laser shot that missed, hit the oil-covered floor, and SET IT ON FIRE. Fortunately Victor was well out of danger on the stairs, and it burned out quickly, but yeesh. Alice is gonna yell at you for that one in the Playthrough Progression, Ada!
I) Well, once the fire was out, it was time to actually go downstairs, explore, get the meat, hides, and teeth off the mole rats, and see what was what. What was what was a terminal on a nearby cabinet belonging to someone named Patrick – using it revealed he was the creator of Drinkin’ Buddy, with all his relevant notes (including how, in solving the problem of overheating gaskets from the flash fermentation process, he accidentally figured out how to cool the beer as it was bottled, his deal with Jack West at the Hotel Rexford, how he got Drinkin’ Buddy to serve Gwinnett (he knew a guy who knew a guy who could crack their tapes), his annoyance with West trying to insist Drinkin’ Buddy have a face, and his problems with transporting it). He indicated he’d left the boot-up password for Buddy somewhere nearby in the final note –
J) But who needs a boot-up password when you can just hack the terminal? Especially when you know all the tricks to removing dud passwords? :p One successful hacking later, Buddy booted up, went through his initial checks, and produced a cold beer for Victor to sample. And while Victor isn’t really a drinker, I figured it would be rude not to try Buddy’s drink and pronounced it cold and refreshing. :) Buddy asked if they were ready to head to the Hotel Rexford, and Victor said they were – though before they left the basement, Victor handed over the additional recipe holotape he’d found (as Buddy only had the “Pale Ale” recipe available upon first booting) and got a silly joke about Charles Dickens walking into a bar and ordering a martini (bartender asked “Olive or Twist?” XD). Oh Buddy. . .
K) And with that, it was out through the basement hatch into the waterfront district, and from there over to Goodneighbor, following Buddy as he trekked along! Fortunately it was a relatively quiet trip for Victor, Ada, and Buddy – yes, there was a vertibird who was fighting some raiders or gunners nearby that blew up as the trio passed (right over the old raider camp Victor had cleared out), but none of the flaming debris hit them. :p They also safely made it past a super mutant camp, around some dead gunners with more goodies to loot (and then dump on poor Ada), past the parking garage, and around past the super mutant diner without having to fight anything more than a couple of bloodbug hatchlings. By 8 PM in-game, they’d made it to the Rexford, where Buddy was safely delivered and instructed to hang out near the bar by the proprietor, and Rufus praised Victor for his hard work and gave him 100 caps as a reward. Which – is a pretty shitty reward in caps, but I’ll allow it because of all the good junk Victor got. Plus the quest XP. :p
And so the playsession ended with Victor renting his usual room at the Rexford for the evening after a quick dinner of melon flambe, as he was starting to feel the tired. Had him hit the sheets at 8:40 PM and let him sleep for a whole nine hours – he deserved it. :) I left it with him having woken up at 5:42 AM to find Ada standing on the sofa in his room. :p Next week – let’s get us a Silver Shroud costume! :D
Writing: Updated the FO4 Playthrough Progression with the adventures in the Shamrock Taphouse above! As usual, there weren’t MANY changes to what actually happened in the game – mostly, I just had Alice help Victor out with disarming some of the traps (she disarmed the tripwire trap behind the bar, and helped Victor with the bomb trap before unlocking the door), killing some of the raiders (putting her blade to work >D), and hacking the terminal to turn on Buddy (two heads are better than one!); had them open the pantry and kill the radroaches inside when they first entered the kitchen, instead of coming back to it later; and yes, had Alice yell at Ada for setting the basement alight with a missed laser shot at a mole rat after getting a tarp to smother the flames while they burned out. Because woman has issues with fire, yo. Oh, and no drug-combining at the chem lab, as Victor’s not really a chemist in-story – I just do that for carry weight and XP purposes in-game. :p Other than that, though, everything was pretty much identical to the above write-up, with the gang clearing the raiders, activating Buddy, and bringing him back to the Rexford, with Victor getting his reward and then renting a room for the night because tired. *nods* Next time – think it’s time to sell some stuff at the shops, and then go get a Silver Shroud costume to kick THAT stuff off. . .along with Victor finally meeting the Railroad. . .
YouTube: Standard Sunday Two, as always –
A) First up, from GrayStillPlays, we had “When a sledgehammer hits you at light speed,” aka Gray plays Crash Master 3D! This is a mobile game where you drive cars through obstacle courses, dodging killer hammers, presses, various roller things (going from side to side AND up and down), and navigating over various speed bumps, ramps, and seesaws – and one chomping crocodile – to get to the end, mow down as many crash dummies as possible for money, and then try and beat your best distance. As you do so, you unlock new cars – Gray started out with a standard sports car, and got a jeep, a Mini Cooper (complete with the English flag up top), a semi-truck, a school bus, a old-timey car, a tractor, and a smart car. Each car can be upgraded separately to have more speed and durability, allowing you complete the courses faster, take more hits, and run over more people. It was a pretty repetitive game, but Gray going through all the levels, unlocking more and more stuff and dealing with more and more janky physics from being crushed and smacked around was a lot of fun. Gray swore not to stop until he unlocked the final vehicle, a full-on plane –
And then, after many hours of play, he discovered the plane WAS A COMPLETE LIE. They hadn’t bothered to actually put a functional model in the game. Furious, he turned to his buddy Outwit to hack the game and get him an ACTUAL secret vehicle – and they found a bulldozer. One that, with the help of Outwit’s mods, Gray was able to immediately upgrade to full speed and durability and just SMASH his way through the course. And then up the speed even MORE to murder everyone on the board. XD He may have not gotten the plane he wanted, but at least he got a bulldozer that, when given enough 9s, could shoot through the stratosphere, and that was good enough! XD
B) And second up, from Jon of Many A True Nerd, we had “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 41 - The Dumbest Fight In Fallout 3!” Jon was actually up for advancing the plot of Broken Steel this episode after all his alternate universe shenanigans showing off random events last week, and completed two quests, each with their own weirdness attached:
I. The Titular Dumbest Fight – This was the result of a super-short mission given to Wanda by Scribe Bigsley of the Brotherhood, to go talk with Officer Lepelletier of Rivet City about this “coordinated bandit attacks” problem she and her fellow police have been having while trying to protect the water caravans. Wanda dutifully visited Rivet City and met up with Lepelletier, who let her know that their caravans kept being ambushed by some very organized raiders, and that she needed Wanda to catch up with the latest caravan (which had some of her greenest recruits on it), help repel the attack Lepelletier KNEW was coming, and get to the bottom of things. Wanda did so, following the caravan along its unusual route under the nearby bridge (Jon was puzzled about why it went THAT way instead of following the usual caravan route – probably because it’s a special quest caravan?) and coming across the ambush – the bramhin and its driver were already dead, but the security officers themselves were still alive and kicking. Wanda managed to save the officers with some quick shooting (the brahmin and driver will always die according to Jon), and examined the bandit corpses while they headed back to report to Lepelletier. And, on one, she found a holotape from someone named Split Jack – a recruitment tape into his gang to be precise! It outlined his plan – harass the water caravans until they were ready to just give up, then offer “protection” for the right amount of caps, along with selling all the stolen water to whichever buyer they chose – the gang’s meeting place – Wilhelm Wharf, by Grandma Sparkle’s (former) place – and the password to get in – “Mirelurk Stew.” Wanda promptly stole some armor from the dead raiders to wear to fit in, headed for the meeting spot, found Jack, and gave him the passcode. Jack then directed her to sit down and wait for some returning gang members –
And if you think there was some big, long, interesting “infiltrate this raider gang” quest coming up, you were SORELY mistaken. Because all Wanda had to do after that to resolve the quest was speak to Jack again and do one of three things – pass a speech check to make him realize that the Brotherhood/River City would probably be very unwilling to pay for protection for something they’re giving away for FREE (which makes him wander off and try a new plan); declare war on him and his cronies and kill them all; or challenge him to a duel for leadership of the gang – the titular “Dumbest Fight.” What makes it the dumbest fight in Fallout 3?
-->First, you can only duel with combat knives, lead pipes, or nail boards – aka, all melee weapons that start out in middling condition and are being used against the gang’s trademark metal armor. If your character isn’t built for melee, they’re going to have a real tough time, and if their weapon breaks – well, there’s just no way to win the fight, making it all for naught.
-->Second, if you try to use ANY other weapon during the fight, or have a companion that comes in and tries to help you against Jack, or have the “Mysterious Stranger” perk and have him show up to fire a shot in VATS, or hit any of the other gang members at any point, the fight will be ruined, all the other gang members will join in, and you’ll have to kill them all anyway. Now, avoiding the first three – wrong weapon, bloodthirsty companion, and Mysterious Stranger – are relatively easily done (though if you’ve taken the Stranger’s perk you might just have to avoid VATS – fortunately Wanda hadn’t). Not hitting the other gang members, though, is a task and a half, as they love to follow the fight around and crowd around their boss. Jon had to try THREE TIMES to complete the duel properly (one time with each weapon) because Wanda kept hitting another gang member and turning it into a free-for-all.
-->Third, if you DO manage to win the duel properly (as Wanda did on the third try with the nail boards), and then talk to the remaining raiders, they inform you that “well, you killed the boss fair and square, but we’ve decided that bosses are dumb now and won’t let you lead us.” That’s right, even if you win, you don’t get to become the gang leader or anything – they just go “lol nope.” Jon was very annoyed by it all.
However! There IS a reason to try and complete the Dumbest Fight, and it is this – moolah. Namely, if you win the fight, while the other raiders will inform you that they won’t let you become boss, they will ALSO tell you that they liked the plan about getting protection money, and say if you can set something up with Officer Lepelletier, they’ll cut you in on the deal. This allows you to go back to Lepelletier, tell her that you killed the old leader, but that you’re setting up a protection racket for the remaining raiders, and that she can either pay 500 caps up-front to stop all the attacks forever (this option requires a speech check), or 200 a week to keep the attackers satisfied on the regular (this option doesn’t, despite being the SUPERIOR option that gets you money FOREVER). Lepelletier will NOT LIKE being extorted, but will agree to pay, saying she’ll find the money somehow. However, she will also warn the player character that if she ever sees them again, she will kill them – and she is NOT KIDDING. Approach her again and try to speak with her, and she will whip out a gun and end you. So yes – if you want a steady source of cash for the rest of your Fallout 3 experience, take this absurdly short quest, figure out how to win the duel, get Lepelletier to pay the 200 a week, and then just avoid her for the rest of time. Easy peasy. :p
II. Fun And Science In Old Olney – This was actually the next major plot mission in Broken Steel – after visiting Elder Lyon and completing the previous quest (by letting him know about Liberty Prime – this got Wanda up to Level 42, where Jon noted that he couldn’t actually take the “Better Criticals” perk she SHOULD have because it required Perception 6 and Perception is for some reason garbage in Fallout 3, so instead he was taking “Meltdown” (which can make enemies killed with energy weapons explode, sometimes in a chain reaction) because it’s funny and while it never works quite like it should in his head, he’s still fond of it), Wanda got told to report to Paladin Tristan, who in turn told her that she needed to go get them a Tesla coil from the Olney Powerworks to help them build a weapon they could use against the Enclave’s inevitable counter-attack. Olney Powerworks, as you might imagine, is in Old Olney –
And Old Olney is in fact a GIANT DEATHCLAW NEST. Deathclaws all over the shop! Tristan will not allow you to turn down the quest, but if you tell him you’d like something to help keep you safe, he will direct you to go talk to Scribe Vallincourt. Wanda did indeed talk to Vallincourt, who handed over a special prototype signal scrambler – designed to disrupt the signals the Enclave used to control their mind-controlled deathclaws. Sadly, the device is only useful in a few limited places, but one of those is at the Enclave camp near Old Olney, and Jon was only too happy to get Wanda to super-speed crouch-walk her way there and set the monster free on the unsuspecting Enclave there – though unfortunately she did also have to deal with a Hellfire trooper (fortunately her knockback shotgun ended up taking care of him). Not the most useful item, but certainly a fun one!
With that taken care of it, it was into Old Olney itself, and straight into the sewers to avoid as many deathclaws as possible (though there is a faster route if you come at the city from the right direction, that if you’re lucky, will allow you to tangle with just one, two deathclaws at most). From there, you have to take a rather roundabout route to the actual powerworks, encountering the following –
-->If you go to the left when you first enter the sewers, you may find a bunch of corpses – one of which is a Brotherhood Initiate. That BOS soldier happens to be wearing Prototype Medical Power Armor! The armor will inject you with a special form of Med-X if you get injured and allow you to keep moving normally if you end up with crippled limbs, AND allows you to stack regular Med-X on top of that for extra bonuses! What’s the downside?
It talks. Yes, much like the special stealth suit in New Vegas is a surprisingly chatty suit, this is a surprisingly chatty set of power armor with its own onboard AI which talks like a drill sargent. It’s a bit funny, but the bit can get old fast. Jon is not a fan.
-->Going to the right eventually leads you to a ladder leading into the Old Olney Underground – and two ghouls, Wint and Kidd, hiding from the deathclaws. Ask them what they’re doing there, and Wint will explain that they were part of an expedition to set up a new ghoul city under Olney – like Underworld but better – but when they started knocking down walls, they found deathclaws galore. Wint and Kidd only survived thanks to being faster than the others. After briefly chatting with you, they will happily take advantage of the fact that you’ve cleared out a few levels for them to escape, and if you continue on, you’ll find the remains of the city they tried to set up, along with the remains of their ghoul compatriots – Badger, Connelly, Dunbar, Carl, and Sanders (with the latter being tossed down to you over a pile of rubble by a wandering deathclaw). There’s not much about them in the actual game – Dunbar is carrying a note talking about how the team needs strong backs to help set up the settlement, signed “S” indicating it was probably penned by Sanders – but apparently the strategy guide gives them all some backstory and indicates what their jobs were (for example, Sanders used to hang around with Roy Philips, but chose to go and try and form his own society instead of take over Tenpenny Tower; Connelly was a complainer who wanted to join up with the ghoul resistance movement, but reluctantly decided to try and follow Sanders; Badger was an exile from Underworld and the group’s forager; Carl was the team doctor; and Dunbar was also from Underworld and had a crush on Tulip, a shopkeeper there – he left and joined the group to help get over her). Jon really enjoyed how someone basically took the opportunity to write fanfic about all of them in the strategy guide, considering it quite cute. He also thinks their expedition is the REASON Old Olney is full of deathclaws, and yet no one seems to know that fact – he’s pretty sure that the deathclaws were all underground until they were disturbed, and their appearance on the surface is a recent development. Probably not the intent of the creators, but it DOES fill in that plot hole, so nice. :p
-->From the Underground, you move into the hospital, which shows signs of actual human conflict as well as wandering deathclaws – based on all the skeletons and the presence of a Chinese assault rifle and loads of ammo near one particular pair, Jon’s guess is a Chinese infiltration into the hospital gone bad. But then he thinks the Chinese were infiltrating everything in FO3. XD
-->From the hospital you go to the S. Wilson building – the weirdest building in all of Old Olney. Reason #1 – instead of deathclaws, you are instead fighting Enclave, who have apparently arrived her by vertibird. Happily, you can actually shoot down the vertibird if you know what you’re doing, and if you have a power-armor-disabling weapon, the Enclave aren’t that dangerous either. Reason #2 – this building one hidden gnome-and-teddy-bear scene inside of it (a gnome and a teddy playing strip poker, with the teddy definitely losing). . .and another floating in the void OUTSIDE it (if you no-clip, you’ll find a gnome holding an iron and a teddy on an ironing board floating in the void – a commenter suggested it was probably an idea for a hospital scene, with the gnome “defibrillating” the teddy, and was just left there when they decided not to use it). Reason #3 – there is also a random floating police hat in the building, which Jon has personal beef with because this stupid hat exists nowhere else in the game, shouldn’t be here because this building is not a police station, and then continues to show up randomly in all of the other DLC – including freaking Mothership Zeta, the one set on an ALIEN SPACESHIP. He admits this is a weird and petty complaint and he’s not sure why he’s wired like this either. XD And Reason #4 –
The building doesn’t actually exist in the overworld. If you go out into Old Olney itself and look around, there is no building whose facade matches what you can see from the inside (namely, a building with a big crack down the middle and a radio tower toppled over onto it). It’s an utterly bizarre little corridor level and Jon does not understand it.
-->Fortunately, from there you finally get to the Powerworks, which Jon loves because there is so much general sciencey shit in all the side rooms. Someone wanted to make this place look as science as possible. Now, there are sentry bots roaming around, but fortunately there are also terminals available to shut them off, plus a terminal-locked door that, if you have the science, you can use to skip straight to the cool Tesla Coil room that you need to enter, with electricity arcing everywhere. The things you need to grab here are the Tesla Coil (preferably after turning the current OFF, though Wanda braved the shock and actually survived, if badly hurt – Jon was stunned) – and the alien power cells scattered in the side labs, more proof that the pre-War government knew about aliens and was actively researching their stuff. Wild.
And then it was out of the sewers through a certain manhole that is locked until you come up through it and back to the citadel! Though Jon decided to hold off on deliver the Tesla Coil just yet – instead, he plans to do so to start off next week’s episode, which will allow him to start the final plot mission of Broken Steel – but, more importantly, seek out a few more weird side missions that he very much wants to show off first. XD I’m looking forward to it!
Workout: Back on the bike today, and back to James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches Generational Epic, with “Last day as teenagers! High School Years (Part 42)!” Yes, this was an extra-long episode dedicated to ending Addison and Breanne’s time as teenagers by completing their aspirations, by hook or by crook! And by that I mean “using the ‘complete current milestone’ cheat,” because teen aspirations in this pack are apparently buggy as all get out. *sigh* But he did try to do what he could legit! I’m about halfway through at the moment, and here are the highlights:
A) Breanne’s teenage aspiration is completed (she only had to fulfill the “250 followers on Social Bunny” goal, and as she had WAAAY more than that, James just completed that for her), and she’s currently hoping to become a famous celebrity through her photography! In the meantime, James has her working on yoga to teach her emotional control, so she can maybe help fulfill Reginald’s Super Parent aspiration and grow up with three position character value traits. And she needs that emotional control, as her love life is in shambles – she went to prom dateless, then met her current crush Haven there and did a little flirting – only to be shunted to the side by classmate Andre wanting Haven’s attention, which led to her rejecting Haven’s attempt to kiss her; and then AFTER prom, she had a brief flirtation with Latasha on the pier cuddle carts, only to not be able to follow up at all because of Latasha leaving right afterward as the prom afterparty ended. At least she was voted prom royalty? That’s something?
B) Addison’s teenage aspiration is still in progress (though James did advance it by one milestone because that invite to sneak out just WASN’T coming) – the need to have a fight led James to send them to the Cheerleading Day event and fight a random cheerleader (while Hilary defaced one of the photo backgrounds, to James’s amusement and approval); the need to ask a Sim out on a date five times led James to have them speed-date Hilary all through New Year’s Eve (calling her up to go to ThrifTea didn’t work, but inviting her out to sit on the pier, then visit one of Sulani’s beaches, then hit the Waterside Warble karaoke bar and the Casbah Art Gallery in San Myshuno did); and the need to spook a Sim by summoning an urban myth is currently seeing them pester everyone around them by doing constant mischief interactions to get their skill up (such as the librarian in the town library, their own father, and the custodian at the school). However, the interaction to actually summon the myth has yet to show up (they’re currently at Mischief level 7; reports vary about if the interaction appears then, at level 8, or at level 10), and the game recently reset all the date progress to zero, soo – I suspect Addison will be cheating their way through their aspiration again!
C) The one plus to all this? We have gotten confirmation that creepy Kenta (now creepy ghost Kenta thanks to James’s fiddling) is no longer a teacher at the school! Both have been replaced, in fact, though the original principal is still there. Hooray, hopefully we have no more “Erratic” teachers trying to shower in the rain in front of students! :p
So yeah, we’ve got a “race to the finish” situation going on in this episode, with James desperate to get Addison and Breanne to age up! We’ll see how well he does on getting Addison to complete those milestones (legitimately) tomorrow!
Whew, that was a lot -- I gotta find a way to more concisely sum up those Jon videos! Sheesh. . .but at least I got stuff done. Right now, though, I have to head to bed so I don't get up too late tomorrow. Goals tomorrow include working on more drafts on Victor Luvs Alice (I especially want to get some stuff done with my ideas for Smiler's Otherland); playing Sims 4 (either more fooling around in CAS or some Chill Valicer Save Harvestfest stuff); keeping up with Gray and any other videos that strike my fancy; and I think working on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" (want to keep my momentum on that, and I'll probably have more inspiration for Valicer In The Dark stuff when I start the next episode of Oxventure Presents Blades In The Dark, which won't be until Tuesday). We'll see how I do! Night all!
