A Decent Sunday
Feb. 18th, 2024 11:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickNot as good as I might have liked (just because my schedule got thrown off a bit because I had to help my parents fix the kitchen sink; see the "Workout" section of my to-do list), but it was still pretty solid. Any day where I can wake up and get a chocolate chip pancake for breakfast is a nice day. :) And I still got a lot done --
Tumblr: Again, maybe didn’t get as much done on here as I wanted, but I still got a good amount sorted –
Victor Luvs Alice – Caught up on the dash (and reblogged a video of a figure skater doing a Charlie-Chaplin-inspired routine, complete with costume, for Moose), then got through adding image alt text to three out of the six Chill Valicer Save update drafts before lunch. Would have liked to have done more, but adding the image alt text is always the most time-consuming part of these updates – I probably over-describe a bit, but I’d rather do that then under-describe, you know? And in this particular case, I have another day to finish off the last three posts – and those all have less pictures, so it SHOULD go faster. Fingers crossed!
Valice Multiverse – Another lone anon ask tonight, with someone pretending to be Fact Core claiming that rabbits are only called “rabbits” when they’re beneath the earth’s crust – when they come out onto the surface, they’re “bunnies.” I had the Aperture Wage Slave!Alice respond that she was going to accept that “fact” just to annoy the White Rabbit – excuse me, the White Bunny. XD Just a bit of fun for Monday’s queue!
Fallout 4: Had a bit of a “wanderer” day in the old Commonwealth today, with Victor and Deacon working their way around the left-hand side of the map as I tried to get them at least within spitting distance of Sanctuary and the Red Rocket –
A) First up, having gotten what I wanted from the Cambridge Police Station (that Guns & Bullets magazine in the safe), and with Rhys telling Victor that the Commonwealth wasn’t getting any safer with him bumming around the place, I had Victor and Deacon exit the police station and hit the road! I took a moment to check the map on Victor’s Pip-Boy and determined that the best course of action would be for him to swing around back through College Square and head over to Graygarden, then start working his way around to the Red Rocket and Sanctuary from there. I thus had the boys start cutting through college square, passing an eyebot advertising jobs at Cambridge Polymer labs –
Aaaand past a couple of raider corpses on the far side of the square, Victor managed to step on a frag mine and explode. Twice. Taking a decent chunk off his health. >.< Dang it. . .well, since I’d only just started, I went ahead and reloaded my save, then had the boys head in the same direction, a little more cautiously this time. I was able to use VATS to spot the first frag grenade tucked in a pothole under a car and had Victor go in to try and disarm it –
But before he could, he set it off. Causing it to blow up the car that was on top of it. I fortunately managed to get Victor away from the mine before he could get too badly hurt by it, and out of range of the car explosion entirely (though Deacon took a hit from that one), but it was still not exactly what I wanted. Didn’t want to reload again, though, so I just had Victor and Deacon hug the wall to get past the burning car (picking up a tiny amount of Rads in the process) and any other mines that might be in the area. Never a dull moment in the Commonwealth!
B) Anyway – Victor and Deacon got past that death trap, then worked their way across the road and through the fog that had blown in over to Graygarden. I had Victor harvest some of the crops there, then consulted my map and decided that my next stop should be Sunshine Tidings, which needed Victor to do a check-in so their defenses and water and stuff could be marked as repaired and maybe general happiness would go up. I thus had Victor and Deacon follow the path of the elevated highway above them, working their way slowly past ArcJet systems and –
Into a weird hole in the ground? O.o It looked like a lake of some kind, though if it was natural or a bit of collapsed scenery that had become a lake over time, I wasn’t sure. It was really hard to see in the fog! I had Victor creep out on a nearby branch for a better look, using VATS to scan for enemies – there were a whole lot of squirrels up on the far bank, and one softshell mirelurk wandering around on the far side of the water. I decided the place wasn’t worth poking into when I couldn’t get a good shot at anything (this was some thick fog), so I had Victor back off his branch and prepare to loop around the other side –
C) Aaaand immediately found a little contingent of Rust Devils – two humans and a Mr. Handy Wrecker. Fortunately none of them had noticed Victor or Deacon, and they were all very low-level, so a few shots of the Deliverer, boosted by the element of the surprise, took them all down nice and quick. :D I had Victor loot the bodies for goodies, then work his way around them and the other side of the weird lake-like area, then keep following the highway until he reached the road that would lead down into Fort Hagen.
Which had ANOTHER party of Rust Devils on it! Though there were a lot more of them, and one of them was a starred Devil, which meant he was harder than the others (in fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the other way you tell if someone’s a Legendary in this game). Fortunately, again, the fog and Victor and Deacon being in crouch mode kept them from immediately noticing the pair, and I was able to sneak around them, occasionally scanning them with VATS to see if I had any good shots (I did not). I eventually chose to just leave them to it – “it” being climbing the nearby hill and murdering a squirrel that had looked at them funny along the way. XD Hey, those squirrels can be dangerous! Oh so I hear, anyway.
D) Anyway – with the Rust Devils safely behind them, Victor and Deacon continued on up the road, in the general direction of ArcJet and Sunshine. Upon reaching an intersection, I consulted the map, then had the pair turn left and continue up that way –
Only for a fucking SENTRY BOT to appear on the road. O.O I immediately panicked and started lining up all the shots with the Deliverer, which did – SOME damage. I really should have changed over to the good old Two Shot before trying to fight this thing. -.- However, by that point, the sentry bot was already trying to murder me with a LOT of machine gun fire, so I had Victor scramble backwards to try and stay out of its way, then line up a bunch more VATS shots on the torso. Fortunately, it rolling in closer gave Victor a better hit chance, and he was eventually able to take it down. Then run away to get away from the resultant explosion. Whew! Not as pretty as murdering the deathclaw over in Kendall with the Deliverer, but I’ll take it. Especially since it gave me lots of aluminum too.
E) After THAT little encounter, Victor needed a little bit of a break – I had him stimpack himself and drink some health tea and some purified water, then – when his stomach started rumbling a little further up the road – let him have some radroach fritters in front of an old Schoelt propane fuel shop that was by the side of the road. Consulting the map revealed that cutting through the ruins would provide a bit of a shortcut to Sunshine Tidings, so Victor and Deacon did just that –
Only to find that there was something else in the way. What looked like a big raider camp of sorts. Sneaking forward, I was able to get Victor to officially mark it on his map – the Federal Ration Stockpile! Right, yes, this is the raider camp run by the lady whose sister was kidnapped and accidentally murdered by the guy at Beantown Brewery. . . I debated whether or not I wanted to take the place on, but eventually decided that I should leave it for later, lest I get even more distracted on my attempt to get back to the game’s main plot. XD So I have Victor and Deacon go around, avoiding notice by sticking to the shadowy side of a nearby hill –
F) When suddenly I heard beeping. Like from a Super Mutant Suicider. Suddenly terrified, I looked around wildly, but I didn’t see any super mutants anywhere, and nobody in the camp was reacting to an attack. Confused, I had Victor continue forward, but the beeping just got louder. Thoroughly rattled now, I had him scan the area with VATS –
And found a squirrel nearby.
WITH MINES STRAPPED TO IT.
Ooookay, seems the squirrels really CAN be dangerous – I FORGOT that the occasional mine-squirrel popped in this mod! Fortunately Victor was able to kill the little bastard in one shot with Deliverer, and the squirrel exploding didn’t set off anything at the Federal Ration camp. *whew* Small mercies today! (And yes, at least it wasn’t a damn Super Mutant Suicider – I HATE those.)
G) With the mine-squirrel taken care of, Victor and Deacon managed to work their way past the camp and up the hill, where they found the Lonely Chapel (aka the alternate entrance into the stockpile) and a few brahmin chilling out nearby. Victor got the chapel marked on his map, then led the way further up the hill to Sunshine Tidings! I promptly had him go into Workshop Mode to check on everything and get the game to realize that all the “broken” stuff was fixed now, so maybe happiness levels could go up again already –
When suddenly there were shouts, and all the settlers started pulling guns. I quickly came out of Workshop Mode to see that a bunch of Mechanist eyebots and junkbots were attacking the settlement! Fortunately, they were pretty weak bots – the settlers took care of the eyebots while Victor finished taking out the junkbots trying to invade the place. The only casualty in Sunshine itself was one of the turrets, and that was very easily fixed. :) Good work, everybody! Victor did a final sweep of the settlement to see if anything else needed fixing (nope), picked a bunch of crops, then did some cooking until his exhaustion got the better of him. I had him drag himself into the nearest bed at 7 PM and let him sleep for nine hours – he deserved it.
H) The next morning, Victor was up at 4 AM – I had him busy himself by combining some drugs, then dragging some of the robot “corpses” over to the edge of town and into a little natural pit under the old outhouse (all the while watching a wandering pack brahmin make its way back and forth through town – not sure where THAT came from). I then had Victor take advantage of the shower, then took a moment to look through the various Workshop menu items to see what I could build that might actually improve happiness in this town a bit.
And came across the full orchestra stage that you can build with my musical instruments mod! Well, why not? I had Victor set up the stage in the mess hall (so everybody could listen to music while they ate), then assigned a scavenger guy to play the guitar for the time being. I’ll assign the other instruments later, after turning on the recruitment beacon again to get more settlers! I then gave the settlement one extra heavy turret for defense purposes (after getting the necessary gears off Deacon) and took my leave, intending to next hit up Abernathy Farm and make sure THEY were set –
I) Only to go the wrong way, have to work my way past a little pack of wolves, and then keep slamming into the side of the map because I couldn’t get myself facing in the right direction for the life of me. *facepalm* No, I don’t know what the hell happened either. I EVENTUALLY managed to get myself turned the right way around, backtracking until I was back between Sunshine and the Lonely Chapel (and avoiding the Nuka-World station, as I’m not interested in starting THAT DLC just yet), then started following the elevated highway as that was at least CLOSER to the right direction –
Which led me to the wonder that was Carhenge. And the Super Mutant Behemoth that was inside. Unable to help myself, I saved, then pulled out the Mighty Sniper Rifle, lined up a few shots in VATS, and fired – and while the monster DID find me and start charging, a few more shots with the Mighty Sniper actually took the bastard down! :D Though I’m lucky this was a Behemoth and thus only capable of throwing rocks, because when I checked what the guy had on him, I found a TARGETING QUAD-BARREL MISSILE LAUNCHER! Which, uh, proved way too heavy to carry, so I had to drop it by the corpse. In fact, looting the Behemoth put both Victor AND Deacon at weight capacity thanks to the various skulls and such. Making it all the more important to get to Abernathy or something and drop some of this junk off. *shakehead* Still worth it, though.
J) Anyway – after poking around the (sadly slightly exploded) Carhenge, and managing to get a gold watch and some wonderglue from the toolchest within without breaking Victor’s legs, I had the boys continue onward, going up past the cat meat trader with his cat meat farm (yes, really – I forget if he’s mod-added or, incredibly, in the actual game) and work their way back toward the elevated highway –
Where I spotted three people standing under the highway, apparently having an argument. With a VATS scan telling me that their names were Fred, Angie, and Jules. “Oh,” I realized, “this is that random encounter where Jules unwisely admitted to Fred and Angie that he’s an escaped synth trying to get to Bunker Hill, and now they’ve turned on him and want to kill him. Better chug some Grape Juice so Victor has a little more Charisma for speech checks!” XD Thus armed, Victor came up and asked what was going on, with Fred telling him the story and Jules pleading with Victor to convince them to let him go. I had Victor first try to tell them that Jules hadn’t hurt them yet, so there wasn’t any reason to assume he would do so in future – Fred wasn’t impressed, saying that he still didn’t trust Jules. Victor then switched tactics to “if he IS an Institute spy, killing him might make the Institute mad, and you don’t want that, do you?” –
And THAT, fortunately, worked (though I think the implication is that Fred didn’t really want to shoot Jules anyway). Fred told Jules to scram, and that if he ever saw him again, he’d put one between his eyes. Jules thanked Fred and Victor and skedaddled, leaving Victor feeling good about himself and having gained some more approval from Deacon –
K) And left him in the middle of the radstorm that had kicked up while the conversation was going on. -.- I had him quickly gulp down some Mutant Noodle Soup to remove his current rads and protect himself a bit more against new ones, then he and Deacon hurried onward, coming across a little military outpost where Victor plopped himself on a chair for an hour to wait out the storm.
And so the playsession ended with Victor getting up from said chair, with the skies clear and the boys ready to hit the road again! Next time, HOPEFULLY I can actually get Victor to Abernathy, and from there to the Red Rocket and Sanctuary to finally turn in “Old Guns,” finish upgrading his power armor, and maybe see about plunging into the Glowing Sea! Fingers crossed!
Writing: Another Fallout 4 playsession, another update to the old FO4 Playthrough Progression! And this one was pretty much identical to what happened above, save for those little tweaks to make things more “realistic” (for example, instead of just magically building an entire orchestra, complete with instruments, in the mess hall at Sunshine Tidings, Victor instead shared his blueprints for building instruments with the settlers and let them get started on building them.) I also canonized the “squirrel was looking at those Rust Devils funny” joke from the above write-up by having the Mr. Handy Wrecker claim that was the reason he sent the gang after it; had Victor decide to radio The Castle later to take a look at the Federal Ration Stockpile and the raiders atop it (and to warn them about the mine-squirrels in the area); had Victor take on the behemoth just to keep it away from Sunshine Tidings (because seriously, if it HAD wandered in there. . .bad times); and had Victor realize he was going in the wrong direction after leaving Sunshine not by hitting an invisible wall at the edge of the map, but by seeing the bottles of the Nuka-World station and going “shit wait that’s not right.” XD But yeah, other than that, same shit as above, pretty much, just with Alice getting towed along for the ride. We’ll see if things change any more drastically next time when the gang works their way back to Abernathy, Sanctuary, and the Red Rocket!
YouTube: Got in my usual Sunday two, no problem –
A) First up, from the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays and “Ending 8 billion lives in 15 minutes,” aka Gray plays Headcrab Invasion! This is a silly, simple game where you are a headcrab who has crashed on Earth, with your goal being to reach the White House and kill the president. To do this, you must jump from head to head of the humans trying to flee you and your terrifying brain-eating ways, essentially crowdsurfing your way through a country farm, a cityscape, and finally the long main hallway of the White House. You get money for each human whose brain you devour while hitching a ride, and you use that money to upgrade your headcrab form (doing things like adding more health and stamina, evolving legs so you don’t immediately die upon hitting the ground, and evolving wings so you can fly for limited amounts of time) and buy new types of humans that you can force into doing special attacks (the Russian guys and gangsters can both shoot other people, the metalheads can smash them with guitars, and a blond woman just straight up hops in her car and runs everybody over). It’s a simple yet extremely chaotic game, and Gray enjoyed chowing down on people’s heads and then using their money to upgrade his crab immensely. XD Enrichment in his enclosure, basically – he can’t spend ALL his time being Alex’s victim!
B) And second up, from Many A True Nerd, we had Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 24 - Rotten To The Core!” A slightly shorter episode than normal, this one saw Bob deciding to skip checking in with the CPD in favor of heading to the Glowing Sea, tracking down Virgil, and advancing the main plot so he could eventually gain access to the Institute teleporter and use THAT to fast-travel all around his beloved Commonwealth and check in on all his awesome, sexy settlements. How did that go? Weeeell –
I. First things first, Bob wanted to swing by Nightingale headquarters outside of Diamond City to see how everything had turned out with Raphael bringing back all those cryogenically-frozen viruses from the sunken ship that might not actually be frozen anymore. Fortunately, when he arrived via his usual vertibird taxi and headed in, he found not a whole bunch of diseased Nightingales, but instead Fiona and Raphael having an argument about investigating some gunfire in the center of the city (Raphael trying to get Fiona to let this one go, especially as it sounded like Gunners, while Fiona was adamant on going to investigate). She stopped the argument long enough to give Bob his caps for a job well done, then managed to convince Raphael (via angrily saying his name) that they should go and investigate. She told Bob that the disturbance was happening outside one of the old pre-War hospitals and that he was welcome to come along and see what was going on if he wanted. Bob said he would and got Mass Bay Medical Center marked on his map as the place to be. Seems like Jon’s hypothesis about the faction taking over an actual hospital might be right on the money. . .however, he reiterated that going to check that out would be for LATER, as his goal for this episode was penetrating the Glowing Sea, damn it.
II. So, with that goal in mind, Bob went into Diamond City to pay the doctor there to heal him up and remove his rads, then started toward Egret Tours Marina as the best place to drop down his needed “safety save” before actually attempting the Sea. Though, as he was in the general area and had a mission to check up on them anyway, he took the long route with a stop by Jamaica Plain to check their defenses (which were already perfect, honestly) and help defend them from a Gunner attack. Which resulted in Bob nearly blowing up one of his own settlers, having mistaken them for a Legendary Gunner he was looking for (which he might have run right past in the process), and then finally finding and taking down the Legendary Gunner, only to find that she had a Sentinel’s Baton on her as her special weapon. The plasma gun she’d been using to great effect against Bob and his settlers? Totally normal gun. “Cocking hilarious,” as an annoyed Jon put it. XD
III. Anyway – with that sorted (and Jamaica Plain set up with a bit of artillery), it was through Malden and over to the Marina, where Bob spent the evening upgrading his Railway Rifle a bit before dropping it off in the workbench (it’s heavy as hell and also he has like no ammo for it, so), before getting a good night’s sleep in his bed and then grabbing as much purified water from the workbench as he could in the morning. Because if you’re going into the Glowing Sea, you want all the water for all the drugs you’ll be doing. :p Not that Bob intended to go into the Glowing Sea using just Rad-X and Rad-Away, no no no. He’d learned his lesson after the last time, when he was hunting that one deathclaw! No, HIS plan was to go and grab a handy suit of power armor from the military checkpoint just underneath Natick Banks, right at the edge of the Sea – he didn’t know what condition it would be in, but it would be better than nothing, at any rate. So he set off, going due west from the Marina to his chosen spot –
Only to run into a handful of Gunners fighting Super Mutants along the way. Including a Commander and a Sergeant. The first of which had a GAMMA gun. You know, the gun that shoots out pure radiation? The one you usually only find on Children of Atom? Yeah, there went all of Bob’s hard work in getting himself healed and scrubbed clean of rads! Irritated, he killed the two with a little help from Psycho Jet, then reluctantly did some Rad-Away to clear out the rads. Poor Bob. *pats him* Fortunately, there were no other battles between him and his destination – just a decently-long swim, which fortunately did NOT result in him getting sick. Once across, he headed straight to the military checkpoint and his prize –
IV. Three pieces of shitty, rusty T-60 power armor stuck to a frame. Dear oh dear. Even worse, when Bob went to get inside, he discovered that he’d completely forgotten to bring a fusion core. Meaning that there was nothing to POWER the power armor and thus he’d be moving at a crawl if he tried to wear it. And just to put the cherry on the shit sundae, the moment he got into the power armor and discovered that yes, it was entirely unpowered, he got attacked by a bear. XD Fortunately he was able to gun down said bear with little issue, but – well. Looks like Bob was venturing into the Glowing Sea using only drugs again! Jon was thrilled, as you can imagine. :p
V. So – with no choice in the matter, Bob popped some Rad-X and plunged into the Glowing Sea, seeking out the Abandoned Shack (and its secret military base underneath) as his first rest stop. He shot down a deathclaw right at the entrance to the place (doing less damage than he thought he ought – comments indicate he forgot deathclaws are very resistant to energy weapons), then managed to skirt around a Legendary Albino Radscorpion once in the Sea proper, because fuck those things. He then stumbled upon, of all things, a distress signal, which came with its own quest – “Fishing Expedition.” Jon was intrigued, but not intrigued enough to try and track down the signal to its source, because Bob had to GO GO GO, damn it. He didn’t have time to wander around following weird signals, he was getting more irradiated by the SECOND and –
Oh hey, a group of mole rats, let’s pick a fight with them. XD Bob immediately regretted this, especially since the Brood Mother mole rat proved to be a Legendary. A Legendary with a Powerful Pipe Wrench on her, of all things. XD (Seriously, he has the SHITTEST luck with Legendaries whenever he’s recording. . .) But he managed to kill them and get on the move again –
VI. And find the Abandoned Shack! He immediately ran inside, got the key and the evacuation plan from the dead scientist’s suitcase, and headed down the secret trap door into Installation K-21B! Once inside, he took out a small patrol of three synths (all of which were below him, which made it easier to pick them off), then explored the place looking for the skill magazine he knew was there –
And stumbled across an ALMOST COMPLETE SET OF X-01 POWER ARMOR. WITH A FUSION CORE. :D Sadly, it was missing probably the most important piece – the helmet – but it was DEFINITELY better than just going out there with Rad-X! Bob went and found his skill magazine (another Covert Ops mag that made him better at sneaking), then hopped in the power armor and headed up back up into the Sea itself, dosing himself up with Rad-X to provide some extra protection from the radiation (since, again, no helmet). Jon was very pleased with his find, but lamented that he couldn’t sprint nor use VATS because that would drain the fusion core really fast, and he couldn’t afford to have that happen –
VII. Cue him stumbling into another, even BIGGER group of mole rats and automatically using VATS to target and kill them. Because, like me, he cannot manually aim to save his fucking life unless he has his slow-down-time drugs. XD To be fair, every time he thought he’d killed all the mole rats, more kept popping up from the ground – AND this group ALSO had a Legendary Brood Mother coming after him! Had to make sure SHE went down. Fortunately, his decision to use the VATS was well-rewarded, as THIS Legendary Brood Mother happened to have a Never-Ending Gamma Gun on her – that is, a radiation-spewing gun that never needs to be reloaded so long as you’ve got ammo for it (that is, the “magazine” is as much ammo as you’ve got). Bob considered that interesting enough to take with him. :) About time poor Jon got a halfway-decent Legendary weapon!
VIII. However, all the VATSing HAD drained his fusion core, so Bob immediately made it a priority to find his way to his destination as soon as possible. He managed to locate the Children of Atom crater soon after his little mole rat adventure, where he got directions to Virgil’s place from Mother Isolde and the “Astoundingly Awesome Tales” magazine that gives you +5% bonus damage to ghouls from her house. He then beelined directly to Virgil’s cave, pausing only a moment to murder some stingwings nearby, which allowed him to pick up a fresh critical from more involuntary VATSing. XD (Though he DID manage to kill one of them via manual aiming!) One final VATS round to murder the apparently-sleeping deathclaw outside the cave with his new crit, and Bob was able to get safely inside Virgil’s little hideaway with 50% fusion core charge remaining!
Where he found that Virgil did NOT have any fresh fusion cores to give him. Damn it. XD Fortunately, with the location now tagged on his map, all Bob had to do was chat with the guy, close out “The Glowing Sea” quest and get “Hunter/Hunted” in his quest log, then venture back out into the irradiated wastes –
And call a FUCKING VERTIBIRD TO TAKE HIM OUT OF THIS HELLHOLE. Because once a location is marked, it is a valid vertibird “fast travel” target. Jon was a LITTLE worried about an angry radscorpion trying to follow Bob and his vertibird back to Egret Tours Marina, but fortunately despite taking offense to the vertibird’s existence when it passed overhead, it apparently lost interest during the trip and didn’t pop up the moment Bob’s feet touched the earth. (They also managed to avoid being gunned down some Super Mutants on the way back, though that was mostly because another vertibird flew in and basically sacrificed itself as a distraction. XD) And so the episode ended with Bob safely back in his beloved Marina, admiring the scenery and trying to decide what he was going to do next week – visit the CPD? Go see the Nightingales by Mass Bay Medical? Check in with Jake? Track down that darn courser? So many choices! We’ll see what he picks next Sunday! :)
Workout: Back on the bike this week (a little later than anticipated, as Dad insisted on me observing and helping as we cleaned out the washer in our kitchen sink faucet – it had gotten all gunked up and was doing bad shit to the water pressure), starting things off with a one-off video that’s been sitting in my Watch Later for a few days – “Apex Predator [Full Run] | All 11 Agents Killed in Accidents during the Meeting | SA/AO | HITMAN 3” by Trzebiat! This is a video by someone who did the “Apex Predator” mission in Hitman 3 (the one set in the Berlin nightclub) and killed all eleven of the ICA agents hunting him in the club – for context, you only have to kill five of the eleven, with the remaining six automatically getting pulled out when you hit your quota. So how do you kill all eleven? From what I could see in the video, by learning the level so well you could set up a variety of explosion and electrocution traps along routes that you know a bunch of the disguised agents will take (along with poisoning one guy for – some reason), then disguising yourself as a certain person (head of security for the club, I think) and triggering a meeting with an ICA agent and his cronies who know who you are but can’t resist actually meeting “the legend” in the flesh. And then, when the meeting starts, setting off any and all traps that need a remote detonator to work before sitting down with the guy and keeping him distracted long enough for the bodies to start hitting the floor. And then kicking over the desk and setting off the explosive trap you set up in the room to kill the agents inside (three of which, hilariously, T-posed right in the middle of the final kills because video game was like “what the FUCK is going on?!). And then coolly walking out like the badass you are as one of the characters goes “Expertly done, 47. Expertly fucking done.” :D It was pretty cool, even if it looked VERY complicated. But then again, Trzebiat was apparently level 645 in the game when they did this, so – they know their fucking Hitman.
Yeah, not too shabby -- though I am a little annoyed still about the workout, as I'd REALLY wanted to start the OTHER video currently in my Watch Later: James Turner starting another LP of the "Every Lot Challenge Challenge," with the new challenges added in since he did the original. But that video was longer, so I simply didn't have the time. Meh. Maybe I can catch up with it tomorrow afternoon at some point. . .and if not, I can start it at a later date. Not really the biggest deal.
Anyway -- one day left in my long weekend now! BUT it is a day where I have to do a chore -- namely, I have to have the oil changed in my car, as it started complaining at me last week about that. And my appointment at the dealership is scheduled for 1:20 PM tomorrow, so that's gonna mean we have to eat an earlier lunch, which means it behooves me to get up earlier in the morning (and NOT stay up past 2 AM like I've been doing, bad Vicky). So the plan is to get to bed earlier, then get up around 9 AM, have breakfast, finish off the image alt text on my Chill Valicer Save post drafts on Victor Luvs Alice, have lunch, get the oil change over and done with, come home, maybe do my taxes as long as I'm getting shit out of the way, then -- depending on how much time there is left in the day -- watch that James Turner video before my workout. Along with the usual "getting in some writing" and "keeping up with GrayStillPlays." *nods* Sounds a plan to me -- we'll see what happens. Night all!
Tumblr: Again, maybe didn’t get as much done on here as I wanted, but I still got a good amount sorted –
Victor Luvs Alice – Caught up on the dash (and reblogged a video of a figure skater doing a Charlie-Chaplin-inspired routine, complete with costume, for Moose), then got through adding image alt text to three out of the six Chill Valicer Save update drafts before lunch. Would have liked to have done more, but adding the image alt text is always the most time-consuming part of these updates – I probably over-describe a bit, but I’d rather do that then under-describe, you know? And in this particular case, I have another day to finish off the last three posts – and those all have less pictures, so it SHOULD go faster. Fingers crossed!
Valice Multiverse – Another lone anon ask tonight, with someone pretending to be Fact Core claiming that rabbits are only called “rabbits” when they’re beneath the earth’s crust – when they come out onto the surface, they’re “bunnies.” I had the Aperture Wage Slave!Alice respond that she was going to accept that “fact” just to annoy the White Rabbit – excuse me, the White Bunny. XD Just a bit of fun for Monday’s queue!
Fallout 4: Had a bit of a “wanderer” day in the old Commonwealth today, with Victor and Deacon working their way around the left-hand side of the map as I tried to get them at least within spitting distance of Sanctuary and the Red Rocket –
A) First up, having gotten what I wanted from the Cambridge Police Station (that Guns & Bullets magazine in the safe), and with Rhys telling Victor that the Commonwealth wasn’t getting any safer with him bumming around the place, I had Victor and Deacon exit the police station and hit the road! I took a moment to check the map on Victor’s Pip-Boy and determined that the best course of action would be for him to swing around back through College Square and head over to Graygarden, then start working his way around to the Red Rocket and Sanctuary from there. I thus had the boys start cutting through college square, passing an eyebot advertising jobs at Cambridge Polymer labs –
Aaaand past a couple of raider corpses on the far side of the square, Victor managed to step on a frag mine and explode. Twice. Taking a decent chunk off his health. >.< Dang it. . .well, since I’d only just started, I went ahead and reloaded my save, then had the boys head in the same direction, a little more cautiously this time. I was able to use VATS to spot the first frag grenade tucked in a pothole under a car and had Victor go in to try and disarm it –
But before he could, he set it off. Causing it to blow up the car that was on top of it. I fortunately managed to get Victor away from the mine before he could get too badly hurt by it, and out of range of the car explosion entirely (though Deacon took a hit from that one), but it was still not exactly what I wanted. Didn’t want to reload again, though, so I just had Victor and Deacon hug the wall to get past the burning car (picking up a tiny amount of Rads in the process) and any other mines that might be in the area. Never a dull moment in the Commonwealth!
B) Anyway – Victor and Deacon got past that death trap, then worked their way across the road and through the fog that had blown in over to Graygarden. I had Victor harvest some of the crops there, then consulted my map and decided that my next stop should be Sunshine Tidings, which needed Victor to do a check-in so their defenses and water and stuff could be marked as repaired and maybe general happiness would go up. I thus had Victor and Deacon follow the path of the elevated highway above them, working their way slowly past ArcJet systems and –
Into a weird hole in the ground? O.o It looked like a lake of some kind, though if it was natural or a bit of collapsed scenery that had become a lake over time, I wasn’t sure. It was really hard to see in the fog! I had Victor creep out on a nearby branch for a better look, using VATS to scan for enemies – there were a whole lot of squirrels up on the far bank, and one softshell mirelurk wandering around on the far side of the water. I decided the place wasn’t worth poking into when I couldn’t get a good shot at anything (this was some thick fog), so I had Victor back off his branch and prepare to loop around the other side –
C) Aaaand immediately found a little contingent of Rust Devils – two humans and a Mr. Handy Wrecker. Fortunately none of them had noticed Victor or Deacon, and they were all very low-level, so a few shots of the Deliverer, boosted by the element of the surprise, took them all down nice and quick. :D I had Victor loot the bodies for goodies, then work his way around them and the other side of the weird lake-like area, then keep following the highway until he reached the road that would lead down into Fort Hagen.
Which had ANOTHER party of Rust Devils on it! Though there were a lot more of them, and one of them was a starred Devil, which meant he was harder than the others (in fact, I’m pretty sure that’s the other way you tell if someone’s a Legendary in this game). Fortunately, again, the fog and Victor and Deacon being in crouch mode kept them from immediately noticing the pair, and I was able to sneak around them, occasionally scanning them with VATS to see if I had any good shots (I did not). I eventually chose to just leave them to it – “it” being climbing the nearby hill and murdering a squirrel that had looked at them funny along the way. XD Hey, those squirrels can be dangerous! Oh so I hear, anyway.
D) Anyway – with the Rust Devils safely behind them, Victor and Deacon continued on up the road, in the general direction of ArcJet and Sunshine. Upon reaching an intersection, I consulted the map, then had the pair turn left and continue up that way –
Only for a fucking SENTRY BOT to appear on the road. O.O I immediately panicked and started lining up all the shots with the Deliverer, which did – SOME damage. I really should have changed over to the good old Two Shot before trying to fight this thing. -.- However, by that point, the sentry bot was already trying to murder me with a LOT of machine gun fire, so I had Victor scramble backwards to try and stay out of its way, then line up a bunch more VATS shots on the torso. Fortunately, it rolling in closer gave Victor a better hit chance, and he was eventually able to take it down. Then run away to get away from the resultant explosion. Whew! Not as pretty as murdering the deathclaw over in Kendall with the Deliverer, but I’ll take it. Especially since it gave me lots of aluminum too.
E) After THAT little encounter, Victor needed a little bit of a break – I had him stimpack himself and drink some health tea and some purified water, then – when his stomach started rumbling a little further up the road – let him have some radroach fritters in front of an old Schoelt propane fuel shop that was by the side of the road. Consulting the map revealed that cutting through the ruins would provide a bit of a shortcut to Sunshine Tidings, so Victor and Deacon did just that –
Only to find that there was something else in the way. What looked like a big raider camp of sorts. Sneaking forward, I was able to get Victor to officially mark it on his map – the Federal Ration Stockpile! Right, yes, this is the raider camp run by the lady whose sister was kidnapped and accidentally murdered by the guy at Beantown Brewery. . . I debated whether or not I wanted to take the place on, but eventually decided that I should leave it for later, lest I get even more distracted on my attempt to get back to the game’s main plot. XD So I have Victor and Deacon go around, avoiding notice by sticking to the shadowy side of a nearby hill –
F) When suddenly I heard beeping. Like from a Super Mutant Suicider. Suddenly terrified, I looked around wildly, but I didn’t see any super mutants anywhere, and nobody in the camp was reacting to an attack. Confused, I had Victor continue forward, but the beeping just got louder. Thoroughly rattled now, I had him scan the area with VATS –
And found a squirrel nearby.
WITH MINES STRAPPED TO IT.
Ooookay, seems the squirrels really CAN be dangerous – I FORGOT that the occasional mine-squirrel popped in this mod! Fortunately Victor was able to kill the little bastard in one shot with Deliverer, and the squirrel exploding didn’t set off anything at the Federal Ration camp. *whew* Small mercies today! (And yes, at least it wasn’t a damn Super Mutant Suicider – I HATE those.)
G) With the mine-squirrel taken care of, Victor and Deacon managed to work their way past the camp and up the hill, where they found the Lonely Chapel (aka the alternate entrance into the stockpile) and a few brahmin chilling out nearby. Victor got the chapel marked on his map, then led the way further up the hill to Sunshine Tidings! I promptly had him go into Workshop Mode to check on everything and get the game to realize that all the “broken” stuff was fixed now, so maybe happiness levels could go up again already –
When suddenly there were shouts, and all the settlers started pulling guns. I quickly came out of Workshop Mode to see that a bunch of Mechanist eyebots and junkbots were attacking the settlement! Fortunately, they were pretty weak bots – the settlers took care of the eyebots while Victor finished taking out the junkbots trying to invade the place. The only casualty in Sunshine itself was one of the turrets, and that was very easily fixed. :) Good work, everybody! Victor did a final sweep of the settlement to see if anything else needed fixing (nope), picked a bunch of crops, then did some cooking until his exhaustion got the better of him. I had him drag himself into the nearest bed at 7 PM and let him sleep for nine hours – he deserved it.
H) The next morning, Victor was up at 4 AM – I had him busy himself by combining some drugs, then dragging some of the robot “corpses” over to the edge of town and into a little natural pit under the old outhouse (all the while watching a wandering pack brahmin make its way back and forth through town – not sure where THAT came from). I then had Victor take advantage of the shower, then took a moment to look through the various Workshop menu items to see what I could build that might actually improve happiness in this town a bit.
And came across the full orchestra stage that you can build with my musical instruments mod! Well, why not? I had Victor set up the stage in the mess hall (so everybody could listen to music while they ate), then assigned a scavenger guy to play the guitar for the time being. I’ll assign the other instruments later, after turning on the recruitment beacon again to get more settlers! I then gave the settlement one extra heavy turret for defense purposes (after getting the necessary gears off Deacon) and took my leave, intending to next hit up Abernathy Farm and make sure THEY were set –
I) Only to go the wrong way, have to work my way past a little pack of wolves, and then keep slamming into the side of the map because I couldn’t get myself facing in the right direction for the life of me. *facepalm* No, I don’t know what the hell happened either. I EVENTUALLY managed to get myself turned the right way around, backtracking until I was back between Sunshine and the Lonely Chapel (and avoiding the Nuka-World station, as I’m not interested in starting THAT DLC just yet), then started following the elevated highway as that was at least CLOSER to the right direction –
Which led me to the wonder that was Carhenge. And the Super Mutant Behemoth that was inside. Unable to help myself, I saved, then pulled out the Mighty Sniper Rifle, lined up a few shots in VATS, and fired – and while the monster DID find me and start charging, a few more shots with the Mighty Sniper actually took the bastard down! :D Though I’m lucky this was a Behemoth and thus only capable of throwing rocks, because when I checked what the guy had on him, I found a TARGETING QUAD-BARREL MISSILE LAUNCHER! Which, uh, proved way too heavy to carry, so I had to drop it by the corpse. In fact, looting the Behemoth put both Victor AND Deacon at weight capacity thanks to the various skulls and such. Making it all the more important to get to Abernathy or something and drop some of this junk off. *shakehead* Still worth it, though.
J) Anyway – after poking around the (sadly slightly exploded) Carhenge, and managing to get a gold watch and some wonderglue from the toolchest within without breaking Victor’s legs, I had the boys continue onward, going up past the cat meat trader with his cat meat farm (yes, really – I forget if he’s mod-added or, incredibly, in the actual game) and work their way back toward the elevated highway –
Where I spotted three people standing under the highway, apparently having an argument. With a VATS scan telling me that their names were Fred, Angie, and Jules. “Oh,” I realized, “this is that random encounter where Jules unwisely admitted to Fred and Angie that he’s an escaped synth trying to get to Bunker Hill, and now they’ve turned on him and want to kill him. Better chug some Grape Juice so Victor has a little more Charisma for speech checks!” XD Thus armed, Victor came up and asked what was going on, with Fred telling him the story and Jules pleading with Victor to convince them to let him go. I had Victor first try to tell them that Jules hadn’t hurt them yet, so there wasn’t any reason to assume he would do so in future – Fred wasn’t impressed, saying that he still didn’t trust Jules. Victor then switched tactics to “if he IS an Institute spy, killing him might make the Institute mad, and you don’t want that, do you?” –
And THAT, fortunately, worked (though I think the implication is that Fred didn’t really want to shoot Jules anyway). Fred told Jules to scram, and that if he ever saw him again, he’d put one between his eyes. Jules thanked Fred and Victor and skedaddled, leaving Victor feeling good about himself and having gained some more approval from Deacon –
K) And left him in the middle of the radstorm that had kicked up while the conversation was going on. -.- I had him quickly gulp down some Mutant Noodle Soup to remove his current rads and protect himself a bit more against new ones, then he and Deacon hurried onward, coming across a little military outpost where Victor plopped himself on a chair for an hour to wait out the storm.
And so the playsession ended with Victor getting up from said chair, with the skies clear and the boys ready to hit the road again! Next time, HOPEFULLY I can actually get Victor to Abernathy, and from there to the Red Rocket and Sanctuary to finally turn in “Old Guns,” finish upgrading his power armor, and maybe see about plunging into the Glowing Sea! Fingers crossed!
Writing: Another Fallout 4 playsession, another update to the old FO4 Playthrough Progression! And this one was pretty much identical to what happened above, save for those little tweaks to make things more “realistic” (for example, instead of just magically building an entire orchestra, complete with instruments, in the mess hall at Sunshine Tidings, Victor instead shared his blueprints for building instruments with the settlers and let them get started on building them.) I also canonized the “squirrel was looking at those Rust Devils funny” joke from the above write-up by having the Mr. Handy Wrecker claim that was the reason he sent the gang after it; had Victor decide to radio The Castle later to take a look at the Federal Ration Stockpile and the raiders atop it (and to warn them about the mine-squirrels in the area); had Victor take on the behemoth just to keep it away from Sunshine Tidings (because seriously, if it HAD wandered in there. . .bad times); and had Victor realize he was going in the wrong direction after leaving Sunshine not by hitting an invisible wall at the edge of the map, but by seeing the bottles of the Nuka-World station and going “shit wait that’s not right.” XD But yeah, other than that, same shit as above, pretty much, just with Alice getting towed along for the ride. We’ll see if things change any more drastically next time when the gang works their way back to Abernathy, Sanctuary, and the Red Rocket!
YouTube: Got in my usual Sunday two, no problem –
A) First up, from the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays and “Ending 8 billion lives in 15 minutes,” aka Gray plays Headcrab Invasion! This is a silly, simple game where you are a headcrab who has crashed on Earth, with your goal being to reach the White House and kill the president. To do this, you must jump from head to head of the humans trying to flee you and your terrifying brain-eating ways, essentially crowdsurfing your way through a country farm, a cityscape, and finally the long main hallway of the White House. You get money for each human whose brain you devour while hitching a ride, and you use that money to upgrade your headcrab form (doing things like adding more health and stamina, evolving legs so you don’t immediately die upon hitting the ground, and evolving wings so you can fly for limited amounts of time) and buy new types of humans that you can force into doing special attacks (the Russian guys and gangsters can both shoot other people, the metalheads can smash them with guitars, and a blond woman just straight up hops in her car and runs everybody over). It’s a simple yet extremely chaotic game, and Gray enjoyed chowing down on people’s heads and then using their money to upgrade his crab immensely. XD Enrichment in his enclosure, basically – he can’t spend ALL his time being Alex’s victim!
B) And second up, from Many A True Nerd, we had Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 24 - Rotten To The Core!” A slightly shorter episode than normal, this one saw Bob deciding to skip checking in with the CPD in favor of heading to the Glowing Sea, tracking down Virgil, and advancing the main plot so he could eventually gain access to the Institute teleporter and use THAT to fast-travel all around his beloved Commonwealth and check in on all his awesome, sexy settlements. How did that go? Weeeell –
I. First things first, Bob wanted to swing by Nightingale headquarters outside of Diamond City to see how everything had turned out with Raphael bringing back all those cryogenically-frozen viruses from the sunken ship that might not actually be frozen anymore. Fortunately, when he arrived via his usual vertibird taxi and headed in, he found not a whole bunch of diseased Nightingales, but instead Fiona and Raphael having an argument about investigating some gunfire in the center of the city (Raphael trying to get Fiona to let this one go, especially as it sounded like Gunners, while Fiona was adamant on going to investigate). She stopped the argument long enough to give Bob his caps for a job well done, then managed to convince Raphael (via angrily saying his name) that they should go and investigate. She told Bob that the disturbance was happening outside one of the old pre-War hospitals and that he was welcome to come along and see what was going on if he wanted. Bob said he would and got Mass Bay Medical Center marked on his map as the place to be. Seems like Jon’s hypothesis about the faction taking over an actual hospital might be right on the money. . .however, he reiterated that going to check that out would be for LATER, as his goal for this episode was penetrating the Glowing Sea, damn it.
II. So, with that goal in mind, Bob went into Diamond City to pay the doctor there to heal him up and remove his rads, then started toward Egret Tours Marina as the best place to drop down his needed “safety save” before actually attempting the Sea. Though, as he was in the general area and had a mission to check up on them anyway, he took the long route with a stop by Jamaica Plain to check their defenses (which were already perfect, honestly) and help defend them from a Gunner attack. Which resulted in Bob nearly blowing up one of his own settlers, having mistaken them for a Legendary Gunner he was looking for (which he might have run right past in the process), and then finally finding and taking down the Legendary Gunner, only to find that she had a Sentinel’s Baton on her as her special weapon. The plasma gun she’d been using to great effect against Bob and his settlers? Totally normal gun. “Cocking hilarious,” as an annoyed Jon put it. XD
III. Anyway – with that sorted (and Jamaica Plain set up with a bit of artillery), it was through Malden and over to the Marina, where Bob spent the evening upgrading his Railway Rifle a bit before dropping it off in the workbench (it’s heavy as hell and also he has like no ammo for it, so), before getting a good night’s sleep in his bed and then grabbing as much purified water from the workbench as he could in the morning. Because if you’re going into the Glowing Sea, you want all the water for all the drugs you’ll be doing. :p Not that Bob intended to go into the Glowing Sea using just Rad-X and Rad-Away, no no no. He’d learned his lesson after the last time, when he was hunting that one deathclaw! No, HIS plan was to go and grab a handy suit of power armor from the military checkpoint just underneath Natick Banks, right at the edge of the Sea – he didn’t know what condition it would be in, but it would be better than nothing, at any rate. So he set off, going due west from the Marina to his chosen spot –
Only to run into a handful of Gunners fighting Super Mutants along the way. Including a Commander and a Sergeant. The first of which had a GAMMA gun. You know, the gun that shoots out pure radiation? The one you usually only find on Children of Atom? Yeah, there went all of Bob’s hard work in getting himself healed and scrubbed clean of rads! Irritated, he killed the two with a little help from Psycho Jet, then reluctantly did some Rad-Away to clear out the rads. Poor Bob. *pats him* Fortunately, there were no other battles between him and his destination – just a decently-long swim, which fortunately did NOT result in him getting sick. Once across, he headed straight to the military checkpoint and his prize –
IV. Three pieces of shitty, rusty T-60 power armor stuck to a frame. Dear oh dear. Even worse, when Bob went to get inside, he discovered that he’d completely forgotten to bring a fusion core. Meaning that there was nothing to POWER the power armor and thus he’d be moving at a crawl if he tried to wear it. And just to put the cherry on the shit sundae, the moment he got into the power armor and discovered that yes, it was entirely unpowered, he got attacked by a bear. XD Fortunately he was able to gun down said bear with little issue, but – well. Looks like Bob was venturing into the Glowing Sea using only drugs again! Jon was thrilled, as you can imagine. :p
V. So – with no choice in the matter, Bob popped some Rad-X and plunged into the Glowing Sea, seeking out the Abandoned Shack (and its secret military base underneath) as his first rest stop. He shot down a deathclaw right at the entrance to the place (doing less damage than he thought he ought – comments indicate he forgot deathclaws are very resistant to energy weapons), then managed to skirt around a Legendary Albino Radscorpion once in the Sea proper, because fuck those things. He then stumbled upon, of all things, a distress signal, which came with its own quest – “Fishing Expedition.” Jon was intrigued, but not intrigued enough to try and track down the signal to its source, because Bob had to GO GO GO, damn it. He didn’t have time to wander around following weird signals, he was getting more irradiated by the SECOND and –
Oh hey, a group of mole rats, let’s pick a fight with them. XD Bob immediately regretted this, especially since the Brood Mother mole rat proved to be a Legendary. A Legendary with a Powerful Pipe Wrench on her, of all things. XD (Seriously, he has the SHITTEST luck with Legendaries whenever he’s recording. . .) But he managed to kill them and get on the move again –
VI. And find the Abandoned Shack! He immediately ran inside, got the key and the evacuation plan from the dead scientist’s suitcase, and headed down the secret trap door into Installation K-21B! Once inside, he took out a small patrol of three synths (all of which were below him, which made it easier to pick them off), then explored the place looking for the skill magazine he knew was there –
And stumbled across an ALMOST COMPLETE SET OF X-01 POWER ARMOR. WITH A FUSION CORE. :D Sadly, it was missing probably the most important piece – the helmet – but it was DEFINITELY better than just going out there with Rad-X! Bob went and found his skill magazine (another Covert Ops mag that made him better at sneaking), then hopped in the power armor and headed up back up into the Sea itself, dosing himself up with Rad-X to provide some extra protection from the radiation (since, again, no helmet). Jon was very pleased with his find, but lamented that he couldn’t sprint nor use VATS because that would drain the fusion core really fast, and he couldn’t afford to have that happen –
VII. Cue him stumbling into another, even BIGGER group of mole rats and automatically using VATS to target and kill them. Because, like me, he cannot manually aim to save his fucking life unless he has his slow-down-time drugs. XD To be fair, every time he thought he’d killed all the mole rats, more kept popping up from the ground – AND this group ALSO had a Legendary Brood Mother coming after him! Had to make sure SHE went down. Fortunately, his decision to use the VATS was well-rewarded, as THIS Legendary Brood Mother happened to have a Never-Ending Gamma Gun on her – that is, a radiation-spewing gun that never needs to be reloaded so long as you’ve got ammo for it (that is, the “magazine” is as much ammo as you’ve got). Bob considered that interesting enough to take with him. :) About time poor Jon got a halfway-decent Legendary weapon!
VIII. However, all the VATSing HAD drained his fusion core, so Bob immediately made it a priority to find his way to his destination as soon as possible. He managed to locate the Children of Atom crater soon after his little mole rat adventure, where he got directions to Virgil’s place from Mother Isolde and the “Astoundingly Awesome Tales” magazine that gives you +5% bonus damage to ghouls from her house. He then beelined directly to Virgil’s cave, pausing only a moment to murder some stingwings nearby, which allowed him to pick up a fresh critical from more involuntary VATSing. XD (Though he DID manage to kill one of them via manual aiming!) One final VATS round to murder the apparently-sleeping deathclaw outside the cave with his new crit, and Bob was able to get safely inside Virgil’s little hideaway with 50% fusion core charge remaining!
Where he found that Virgil did NOT have any fresh fusion cores to give him. Damn it. XD Fortunately, with the location now tagged on his map, all Bob had to do was chat with the guy, close out “The Glowing Sea” quest and get “Hunter/Hunted” in his quest log, then venture back out into the irradiated wastes –
And call a FUCKING VERTIBIRD TO TAKE HIM OUT OF THIS HELLHOLE. Because once a location is marked, it is a valid vertibird “fast travel” target. Jon was a LITTLE worried about an angry radscorpion trying to follow Bob and his vertibird back to Egret Tours Marina, but fortunately despite taking offense to the vertibird’s existence when it passed overhead, it apparently lost interest during the trip and didn’t pop up the moment Bob’s feet touched the earth. (They also managed to avoid being gunned down some Super Mutants on the way back, though that was mostly because another vertibird flew in and basically sacrificed itself as a distraction. XD) And so the episode ended with Bob safely back in his beloved Marina, admiring the scenery and trying to decide what he was going to do next week – visit the CPD? Go see the Nightingales by Mass Bay Medical? Check in with Jake? Track down that darn courser? So many choices! We’ll see what he picks next Sunday! :)
Workout: Back on the bike this week (a little later than anticipated, as Dad insisted on me observing and helping as we cleaned out the washer in our kitchen sink faucet – it had gotten all gunked up and was doing bad shit to the water pressure), starting things off with a one-off video that’s been sitting in my Watch Later for a few days – “Apex Predator [Full Run] | All 11 Agents Killed in Accidents during the Meeting | SA/AO | HITMAN 3” by Trzebiat! This is a video by someone who did the “Apex Predator” mission in Hitman 3 (the one set in the Berlin nightclub) and killed all eleven of the ICA agents hunting him in the club – for context, you only have to kill five of the eleven, with the remaining six automatically getting pulled out when you hit your quota. So how do you kill all eleven? From what I could see in the video, by learning the level so well you could set up a variety of explosion and electrocution traps along routes that you know a bunch of the disguised agents will take (along with poisoning one guy for – some reason), then disguising yourself as a certain person (head of security for the club, I think) and triggering a meeting with an ICA agent and his cronies who know who you are but can’t resist actually meeting “the legend” in the flesh. And then, when the meeting starts, setting off any and all traps that need a remote detonator to work before sitting down with the guy and keeping him distracted long enough for the bodies to start hitting the floor. And then kicking over the desk and setting off the explosive trap you set up in the room to kill the agents inside (three of which, hilariously, T-posed right in the middle of the final kills because video game was like “what the FUCK is going on?!). And then coolly walking out like the badass you are as one of the characters goes “Expertly done, 47. Expertly fucking done.” :D It was pretty cool, even if it looked VERY complicated. But then again, Trzebiat was apparently level 645 in the game when they did this, so – they know their fucking Hitman.
Yeah, not too shabby -- though I am a little annoyed still about the workout, as I'd REALLY wanted to start the OTHER video currently in my Watch Later: James Turner starting another LP of the "Every Lot Challenge Challenge," with the new challenges added in since he did the original. But that video was longer, so I simply didn't have the time. Meh. Maybe I can catch up with it tomorrow afternoon at some point. . .and if not, I can start it at a later date. Not really the biggest deal.
Anyway -- one day left in my long weekend now! BUT it is a day where I have to do a chore -- namely, I have to have the oil changed in my car, as it started complaining at me last week about that. And my appointment at the dealership is scheduled for 1:20 PM tomorrow, so that's gonna mean we have to eat an earlier lunch, which means it behooves me to get up earlier in the morning (and NOT stay up past 2 AM like I've been doing, bad Vicky). So the plan is to get to bed earlier, then get up around 9 AM, have breakfast, finish off the image alt text on my Chill Valicer Save post drafts on Victor Luvs Alice, have lunch, get the oil change over and done with, come home, maybe do my taxes as long as I'm getting shit out of the way, then -- depending on how much time there is left in the day -- watch that James Turner video before my workout. Along with the usual "getting in some writing" and "keeping up with GrayStillPlays." *nods* Sounds a plan to me -- we'll see what happens. Night all!
