Kinda Shit Sunday
Sep. 22nd, 2024 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickNot totally shit, but --
-->I went to bed later than I wanted to, meaning I got up later than I wanted to and had a much slower start to my day
-->Dad was dealing with a pain in his ribs after eating breakfast (Mom thought it had to do with his spleen) which was making him cranky
-->I tried making a smoothie for breakfast, only to discover that the yogurt I thought was still good was starting to get moldy, meaning we had to toss it and I couldn't have any for my drink
-->My parents had to deal with some bullshit with their various online selling stores (apparently eBay and ABE never show their listings correctly)
-->My parents ALSO had to deal with the TV not correctly picking up channels through our antenna, which involved having to go out and buy some connectors -- this also made Dad extra-cranky
-->And the two "Last Week Tonight" episodes we watched today just made everyone cranky (a recent one on school lunches and an old one on vaccines)
So -- yeah. Definitely not a great day over here today. *sigh* I hate it when one of my days off is almost nothing but bad vibes. Ruins the whole point of it being a day off.
Still, despite all that, I did get everything that I wanted to get done, done today --
Tumblr: Didn’t get as much done on here as I would have liked, but at least I got something done on each –
Victor Luvs Alice – I caught up on my dash and reblogged a post about how the worst part of writing (or any other craft) is having an awesome idea...and then realizing how much work it’s going to take to make the idea a reality; then got about halfway through my draft of a post on the occult statuses of my potential Multifandom Tiny Town members (Smiler and Victor would both be spellcasters – Smiler an alchemist, Victor specializing in untamed magic – and Alice a mermaid) before having to stop for lunch. I really wanted to finish it after lunch, but I just didn’t have the time, sadly. Maybe tomorrow at some point I can work on it again.
Valice Multiverse – Got two asks to put into the queue tonight – one anon ask for my ask game, “Cuddlepile meets Technicolor Phase” (I had TP!Victor goggle over CP!Victor’s nine-person polycule, then ask what colors he got from them...causing CP!Victor to get really confused about what the hell TP!Victor was talking about, and then get even more confused when he learned how color vision worked in that universe, with TP!Victor getting confused right back over the fact that CP!Victor can, you know, just SEE COLOR XD); and one ask from Toonsisters asking Cuddlepile!Alice for information about herself because she wanted to design her as Pokemon as well (like she designed one for Victor), but isn’t actually familiar with the American McGee’s Alice games (Alice gave her a quick run-down of her awful, sad history, and also said that working in the Vorpal Blade somehow would be a good idea, and that her favorite animals were cats and rabbits if that would help). So that’s all good at least!
Fallout 4: Had a pretty decent day in the Commonwealth today, with Victor and Ada exploring Vault 75 and slowly starting to get a picture of just how fucked up it really was –
A) Well, I say slowly – one of the first things I did upon booting up the game was go and explore the unfinished reactor room to the side of the main atrium, where I’d left the pair after last week’s firefight. Can leave no stone unturned in the search for goodies, after all! And you know what I found in there, apart from one Gunner up on an inaccessible balcony (the stairs to reach it had collapsed)? All the various reactor elements –
And fucking playground equipment. Like, there was a seesaw to the side near the stairs up, there was a swingset with some toy cars under it, there were even baseball bases set up in a crude diamond. Apparently the kids were allowed, nah, encouraged to play here. O.o Like, I know you’re fucked up, Vault 75, but what the fuck.
B) Anyway – after killing the remaining Gunner and looping through the reactor room to gather good junk and loot (I may be horrified that the kids were playing in there, but I won’t say no to toy cars, those have screws), I had Victor return to the atrium and explore all the rooms coming off it. In addition to the kitchen, he found a side room with a bunch of bunk beds and containers for ammo (must be where some of the Gunners were kipping), and – through a hole in the wall – a bathroom with toilet stalls, urinals, and showers, plus lots of lockers (most empty, but some with a bit more ammo in them). There was also a more standard locker area to the left of the bathroom hole, with stuff like clipboards and Vault-Tec labcoats inside –
And a door on the right-side wall, leading to some sort of side hallway. I ventured down it briefly, curious to see where it led – then went “hang on, I saw one more archway leading off the main atrium on the far left wall, let’s see where that goes first.” I thus backtracked and checked said archway out – turns out THAT led to the stairs up to the catwalk level overlooking the main atrium. Which, I didn’t think there would be much up there, but – you never knew what secrets might be lurking up top! I thus decided to explore the side hallway from the locker room a bit more to see where that went first –
C) And found two more doors – one locked security door at the very end needing the “lab access” keycard (which Victor hadn’t found yet), and another door to the left with stairs leading deeper down. Hmmmm. I decided “okay, let’s clear the catwalk level first” and headed back to the stairs leading up to do just that (leaving Ada behind accidentally – she must have gotten stuck on something downstairs). Up on the catwalk level, I found the Gunners that Ada and Victor had killed last time (most without anything particularly good on them); what I THOUGHT was a mess hall of sorts until I realized it had stuff like burnt textbooks, broken terminals, mentats, and toolboxes in it, and realized it must have been some kind of study hall instead –
And, around on the other side, two bunk rooms that were clearly where the kids slept in days of yore. Mostly because the one on the far end was full of teddy bears (plus one toy alien), while the other on the side had toy rockets and trucks, chessboards, and a bunch of toy blocks spelling out “GARY” around the shop. Which, okay, if that isn’t a reference to the infamous Gary Vault of Fallout 3, I will eat my hat. XD Oh, and that room ALSO had three mini-nukes in it – best case scenario, the Gunners put them there; worst-case scenario, Vault-Tec wanted the kids to cuddle up with nukes at night as well as play in the reactor room. We can and will never know for sure. Fallout 4, everybody!
D) Anyway – with as much of the catwalk level cleared as I could reach (there was a little private balcony off to the side coming off the Overseer’s office that I couldn’t get to), I headed downstairs (taking a moment to catch up with Ada and give her a bunch of crap to carry), then went back to that side hall off the locker room and to the stairs going down to see what was down there. First answer proved to be a handful of Gunners – I picked off one guy with a sneak attack, then tried to figure out where the hell the other enemy I was supposed to be shooting was until she finally ran into the hallway just beyond the storage room Victor and Ada were in and took up cover in a spot where Victor could actually take her out. XD I then tried to find the final enemy that the game was telling me was there, only for said enemy to lose interest before I could, taking them off my compass. I shrugged, figured I’d find them eventually (I knew what general direction they were in, anyway), then started exploring. First stop was what looked like a medbay directly across from the storage room, with a bed and a chemistry bench inside – I had Victor go and combine a bunch of the drugs he’d picked up (so much Buffout, Mentats, and Jet taking up space in my inventory) and make a couple of healing items before he had to stop and answer the call of nature. XD Once he’d done his business in his port-a-potty, he continued onward, first heading left to find some lockers and a bathroom (ironic) –
And a Gunner private hanging out in one of the stalls! Aha! Knew I’d find them eventually! XD Victor took the guy out without even being seen (seriously, some of the enemies in this game have Jon-level Perception) and stole his plunger to boot. XD Hey, not like he needed it anymore! And I have learned the value of grabbing anything with rubber.
E) With that sorted, Victor then headed right to see what was further down the hallway. He came across another medbay with some weird machinery in it, along with some Rad-Away (perhaps used to see how radioactive the kids were after playtime in the reactor room); a room with those medical treadmills that measure heart rate and all that (couldn’t run on any of them to test his own stats, sadly); a big old locker room further on, with lots of ammo in the lockers; a storage room after that, with boxes on the shelves and a big old sniper rifle and a couple of 10mms in the middle of the room –
And, right at the end of the hallway, a faux street corner with a fake diner on it that looked very much like some sort of shooting gallery! Though this fake diner housed one very real Gunner commander hiding on the top floor, peeping his head out to look for trouble. I had Victor snipe the guy to avoid said trouble, then consult the nearby “Combat Simulation Terminal.” There wasn’t much on it – just a list of high scores (with the leader, “ToppedYaAll!!” having completed the course in 25.32 seconds apparently), and an option to reset the course. Curious, I had Victor go ahead and reset so he could run through it –
And after a short countdown, a bunch of weird-looking human targets popped up in and around the front of the diner! :) I happily used Victor’s beloved Two-Shot combat rifle to take them all down (using the scope to help me aim, as I’m not great at hip-firing) –
Aaand didn’t get any indication that I’d completed the course. O.o Puzzled, I started looking for targets elsewhere, like on the other side of the “street” they’d set up, but didn’t see any. Wondering if the course had malfunctioned or something, and already seeing that my current quest target – that lab access keycard – was inside the diner, I headed into the building –
Where two more (what I then realized were holographic) targets popped up. Aaaah – I was meant to storm the diner! Makes sense, I guess! I took them out, then found the stairs up and headed to the second story, where I took out two more targets – and FINALLY got my “course complete” announcement. *nods* Well then – guess I was the one with Jon-level Perception in this case!
F) Anyway – with the course complete, I had Victor claim the keycard out of a nearby toolbox, then go goodies-hunting. There wasn’t much to grab, though – just some ammo and stuff off the Commander’s corpse; duct tape and other useful junk in the toolbox; and – back down on ground level – some items hidden in a chest behind the fake diner, where I guess the construction guys had been hanging out with their radio on their downtime. Having gotten pretty much everything I could get out of the area, I thus made to leave –
And then I paused, wondering, “Hey – does the Combat Sim terminal update the high scores list if your character does the course in a decent time?” I thus consulted it again –
And indeed found Victor’s name on there, with a time of 87.90 seconds! Which would have been a lot cooler if the next person up, Bob, hadn’t completed it in 45.16 seconds. XD I thus decided for the sake of Victor’s dignity that I’d give the course a second run now that I knew exactly how it worked and hit the reset button, then took out all the targets as quickly as possible with the Two-Shot. I lost a bit of time by initially missing one target in an upper window (as in “I didn’t see it right away” not “I missed my initial shot at it”), but I finished that run at a much more respectable 50.77 seconds. *nods* Maybe I’ll try again one more time before we leave and see if I can at least beat Bob’s time!
G) Anyway – time to advance the quest! I returned to the locked Security door in the hallway upstairs and swiped the keycard, gaining access to the lab area beyond! It wasn’t particularly impressive – mostly just more stacked crates and clipboards and Vault-Tec scientist skeletons – but there were a couple of doors to poke at. One, the Overseer’s door, was locked up tight and required an Admin keycard that Victor didn’t have (putting another quest marker on his compass); another, the Screening door, just looped Victor back around to the entrance of the vault (guess it kind of functions like the “Skyrim” door of the dungeon). There was also a third door with stairs leading upward, so I had Victor and Ada head up there, following the quest marker for the keycard they needed –
And found some kind of big central stairwell area leading to some offices at the far end of the room, with more Gunners inside. Fortunately, none of them were particularly tough, and with a little help from VATS and opening a particular door in the way that the NPCs apparently couldn’t figure out, Victor was able to kill the lot (making one unfortunate dude coming up the stairs spin around like a ballerina, amusingly). As it turns out, one of the last Gunners to go down in the back office had the keycard Victor was looking for on him –
And better yet, on the desk right to him was the Science Bobblehead! :) Which, uh, had a rather shitty perk attached to it (Victor just gets one extra guess while hacking terminals – like, game, I already know how to clear pretty much every dud “password” from a terminal now, I don’t need the extra guesses), but at least got me the “They’re Not Dolls…” achievement from Steam for collecting ten bobbleheads. I’ll take that! XD Anyway, I was prepared to head back to the lab and crack open that Overseer’s door now that I had the right keycard –
But poor Victor passed into the “so exhausted he couldn’t run or sprint” stage right after killing the last of the Gunners, so instead of doing that, I had him head back to the other end of the room, set up his tent, and hit the sheets at 8:55 PM. He woke up at 4:55 AM rested and refreshed, and I ended the playsession by packing up the tent and looting some cans and a toolbox nearby (must never leave behind any aluminum or adhesive!). So yeah – next time, we’ll crack open the Overseer’s office, finish exploring the vault and finding out all its dark secrets, and complete the “Vault 75” quest! And then maybe I can wrench myself back toward doing main quest stuff. XD That courser’s gotta go down sometime!
Writing: Another Sunday spent playing Fallout 4, another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression – and, as usual, the adventures of Victor, Ada, and Alice in the fanfic universe matched up pretty closely with those of Victor and Ada in the actual game – getting horrified over the playground in the reactor room; exploring the various rooms and hallways and finding the shooting gallery and the keycard to get through the Security door into the lab; then clearing out that area off the lab to get the keycard into the Overseer’s office before Victor was forced to get some sleep. There were really only three small ways the fanfic world differed from the game one –
A) Alice and Ada helped Victor explore the atrium and the side rooms off it once they were done with the reactor room – Ada checked out the bunk room; Victor explored the bathroom and the locker room; and Alice went upstairs and looked around the study hall and the kids’ bedrooms (commenting that it was weird the Gunners didn’t clean up any of the kids’ toys, and wondering if it was them or the Vault-Tec scientists who stashed those three mini-nukes in a kid’s footlocker). More people to look around means more ground covered more quickly!
B) Similarly, when they went downstairs into the “medical” wing, Victor checked out the initial medbay room (and had a sneaky poop in there, because if my game Victor has to poop, he does too); Ada headed right and found the “radiation check” room and the treadmill room; and Alice headed left and was the one to kill the Gunner private hiding the bathroom with her new Ripper (hey, I had to give her a chance to use it!). I also had Victor recognize the treadmills as the kind he ran on when he was taking his Army physical when he and Alice caught up with Ada, and start wondering if they were doing super-soldier experiments in this vault. As I recall, Victor, it’s actually a little creepier than that...
C) And when they reached the “combat simulation room” at the end of the hallway, after killing the Gunner hiding there, Victor accidentally activated the shooting gallery while looking at the terminal there (he was trying to exit out after getting disgusted by the high score list there). He was very relieved to discover it was just holographic targets, not turrets firing back at him or anything like that! He also only did it the once – I let him have the better of my two times (mostly because I had him figure out quicker that he had to go into the diner), and had Alice put in his name on the high score list when he came back out after discovering the keycard on the second floor (he was like “Really?” XD). Hey, the computer in the fanfic verse isn’t magically going to know Victor’s name! And it seemed like the kind of thing Alice would do. XD
So yeah – just a few differences, nothing major. So next time, like their game counterparts, the trio will be entering the Overseer’s office and finally getting some answers about what the hell was going on in this vault! I don’t think they’ll like said answers, but they will get them. *nods*
YouTube: Again, started later than I would have liked, but I did get in my Sunday Two –
A) First up, we had GrayStillPlays and “Mobile games but they get more brain rot every minute!” Another video where Gray played a collection of mobile games, these ones of the type that drain your IQ just by existing in your space, and ranked them by how brain-rotty they actually were. And let me tell you, they were all pretty strong contenders for the old rot –
I. Jaw Evolution – Mewing Game: A clicker game where you click on a guy’s jaw to increase its size, and every time you complete a level, the guy gets gradually Chaddier (getting muscles, sunglasses, and sweet sneakers). There’s also a “Capy” mode that turns the guy into a capybara for some reason. Pretty standard clicker game, but Gray felt it was decently damaging his brain cells because of the whole “increasing a guy’s jaw so it was over half his body mass” premise, so he gave it a 6/10.
II. Twerk Race 3D: A runner game where you must eat hamburgers and avoid broccoli to expand a woman’s butt to the point where she can hit her friend into a brick wall for bonuses and beat any woman at a twerk battle – oh, and earn hammers so she can build her own gym. Gray gave this one a 5.5/10 simply because it had more to do than the previous game and thus wasn’t killing his brain cells nearly as quickly.
III. Toilet Agents: A beat-em-up game where you play as a camera-head being wandering around an area beating up Skibidi Toilet creatures (if you are unfamiliar, they are a human head coming out of a toilet and they hate object-head creatures). You have exactly one move with which to beat them up with, and the grammar in the game is, uh, questionable. Gray said that playing it sapped his will to live and gave it an 8.5/10 as a result. (You’re just not down with the kids, Gray. :P)
IV. Omega Nuggets Clicker: Another clicker game, this one saw you click on an egg in order to earn points to upgrade it to various forms of chicken nugget (standard, cowboy, gangster, old dude, tortilla, etc). The numbers got pretty out of control pretty fast on this one, especially when Gray brought out the autoclicker – he was maxing out abilities and gaining new nuggets very, VERY quickly. He decided that it wasn’t nearly as bad as Toilet Agents, but worse than Jaw Evolution or Twerk Race 3D, so he gave it the old 6.9/10. (Maybe Alex threatened to quit if he didn’t fit in a 69 somewhere. XD)
V. DIY Grim Shake: A game that I think was based on the old “Grimace Shake” meme (where drinking that thing was supposed to kill you instantly or something), this saw you make drinks for a variety of concerning-looking cartoon monsters by choosing your glass, liquid (brown or green), topping (which could include things like baked beans and little multicolored dolphins), straw, and table setting, then hoping the monsters froze instead of burping your shake all over you. In between, you could try abusing your weird Grimace-cat pet until it refused to play with you. Gray was like “I didn’t think any game was going to beat Toilet Agents on the brainrot meter, but this thing is sooo much worse” and crowned it champion with a 9/10 for being the same horrible thing over and over. So yeah – if you want brain rot, go make horrible shakes for weird cyborg pigs on your phone!
B) And second up, we had Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 53 - The Ivarstead Expedition!” Featuring the continuing adventures of Mayor Bob as he planned to go investigate Magnusson (the apparent creator of the ASAMs) and his secret cache near the Skylanes 1981 plane crash (you know, by the Wildwood Cemetery, I was there recently in my own game) – but, uh, got VERY distracted along the way. Here’s what happened –
I. He decided to stop at The Castle to refresh his supply of artillery grenades (as he was running REALLY low) before setting out – only to discover two new potential settlers who were bumming around the place! Specifically, there was O-M-0R the Assaultron, who needed some basic repairs (a fusion core and an assaultron circuit board); and April Li, a potential dog breeder who needed supplies from Diamond City before she could get started. Bob was like “I love dogs and I would ESPECIALLY love an Assaultron in my army, so I will DEFINITELY take your personal quests under consideration on my journeys.” XD
II. Then he stopped at Jamaica Plain just to see how many warriors he had available for future assaults on Gunner territory (a nice healthy ten at this settlement), before noting he wasn’t sure where he had to DIRECT those assaults – it wasn’t until he was on his way out of Boston (past the wreck of the USS Constitution), having not seen any Gunners around to tag, that he remembered that any places on his map that he knew he’d previously visited that were now appearing as hollow “unfound” places had probably been taken over by Gunners. Allowing him to realize that he needed to launch an assault to capture Fort Strong at some point. Remember that for later. :p
III. On his way out of Boston, he found a trio of Rust Devils on the road – and while they didn’t have any robots with them that he could loot for parts, they DID have a Legendary, who happened to have a Powered Polymer Combat Armor right arm. Powered increases AP refresh speed, which means it’s a Jon favorite (and a Vicky favorite too), and while he already had a good one on his right arm (VATS Enhanced, which reduces AP cost for weapons), it was on a piece of LEATHER armor, and Jon was willing to go with the combat armor just because it provided better protection. *nods* Fair enough, I probably would have made the same choice!
IV. Bob then ran into some more Rust Devils, this time with Assaultron Devils, over in the random encounter house nearby to County Crossing and Finch Farm – however, when he murdered them with his beloved explosive ammo, he was disappointed to find the Automatron Assaultrons didn’t have the parts he needed (the comments explained they don’t use the same loot table). So, after making sure that Finch Farm was not under Gunner control (it was not, he’d just never bothered visiting the place and doing their quest), he headed over to what he called the “weird bridge area” to kill some robots, as some sort of Assaultron was apparently guaranteed to spawn there (judging by the look of the place, I think it’s the bridge that leads to Nahant and Croup Manor? Don’t quote me on that though). And after taking out a sentry bot on the way, he was able to find and kill an Assaultron Dominator –
Who immediately fell victim to physics and cartwheeled into the nearby ocean. XD And then he was immediately distracted by a Legendary Mr. Gutsy appearing on the scene. Fortunately he was able to kill the Legendary Gutsy (despite missing half of his shots thanks to the damn thing constantly ducking behind containers – and it turned out to have a Penetrating Hunting Rifle, which was nice, but not as good as the Explosive Sniper Bob loved so much), and dive into the ocean to find the Dominator and loot its circuit board. Still, physics nearly screwed him over big-time there! Even if it WAS very funny to see that assaultron go flying. XD
V. After getting the parts to help fix O-M-0R, Bob checked his map and realized that Kingsport Lighthouse (the place where he’d once hoped to build some sort of blimp-house) was now under Gunner control – and when he went to tag the interlopers and set up an assault, the game told him that he didn’t have any outposts nearby enough to summon the warriors he needed. However, when he looked at the map, he realized that, according to the mod’s logic, one Nordhagen Beach was actually close enough to supply troops – and was right next to Fort Strong, meaning that if he wanted to take BOTH places, all he had to do was run over to that settlement and turn it into an outpost!
VI. Cue him running over to that settlement and turning it into an outpost. XD He thus marshaled a handful of brave settlers from Nordhagen to help him take Fort Strong – and while he and his scrubs did reasonably well destroying the initial Gunner presence there (well, BOB did reasonably well, his army was mainly using pipe weaponry and whatever they could grab from dead enemies), they ran into some trouble with the enemy reinforcements. Mostly because, first, the reinforcements refused to show up right away (as they often do); then, when they did appear, they just randomly spawned into the middle of the group not far from Nordhagen itself, taking Bob and company completely by surprise; and finally, when they were down to the last Gunner Captain they had to kill to complete the mission –
Bob discovered the woman had fallen under the ground. Because, you know, Bethesda game. *shakehead* Bob’s initial thought was “hey, I’ve got a level-up – let me take the final rank of the Intimidate perk and see if I can pacify her,” but then immediately decided that he’d rather try and grenade her out of the ground. Which, again, was right near Nordhagen.
Cue Bob accidentally killing one of his own settlers with grenades and turning YET ANOTHER SETTLEMENT hostile to him. XD Which included turning members of HIS OWN ARMY against him, as he discovered when he tried to flee to Fort Strong to wait out the hostilities and some of them started shooting at him. (Amusingly, it seemed to be everyone wearing the official Vault 111 uniform, leading Jon to crack a joke that the anger was in fact fashion-related). Bob managed to successfully kill everyone threatening him, then managed to successfully take Fort Strong (with an S-rank assault, no less) when that one enemy under the world somehow died or despawned – but thanks to not finding any beds to sleep in at the fort (apparently Jon completely forgot that the upstairs barracks that you can parkour to if you’re careful even existed), he had to wait in a chair at a nearby pier for 72 hours instead, getting extremely dehydrated, hungry, and exhausted as he ran out the clock on Nordhagen being angry at him. Jon roleplayed it as Bob staring at the horizon and having a little mental breakdown about how it had all come to this. XD
VII. ANYWAY – Bob eventually got to the point where Nordhagen Beach wasn’t immediately shooting at him, and – after getting some water, food, and sleep in him – recruited a bunch more warriors to assault the Kingsport Lighthouse! Did this go any more smoothly than Bob’s attempts to clear the Gunners out of Fort Strong?
Well, Bob had to take out a fucking Super Mutant Overlord AND a Suicider just meters away from his army before he could officially start the assault, so no, no it didn’t. To be fair, he was able to take out the super mutants pretty easily, and he didn’t upset any of his own settler army this time with his use of explosive weapons – but he also had a problem actually GETTING them to the lighthouse as they had problems climbing the rocks nearby, and once they got there, the place was utterly swarming with Gunners. Like, so many fucking Gunners. Things got bad enough at one point that Bob’s forces had to summon reinforcements from the Murkwater Construction Site! But they managed to kill them all in the end, AND take out the reinforcements the game spawned into the lighthouse right afterward (Bob making good use of his explosive sniper to explode some power armor on a few of the higher-ranked Gunners) and secure the site. Yes, it was a sad E-rank victory, but it was still a VICTORY, damn it.
VIII. With Kingsport now once again under his command, Bob turned it into an outpost and set up some army-appropriate buildings (starting with the medical center, because holy hell the injuries), then went straight to bed because he deserved a good night’s sleep. However, right after he got up the next morning, he got a signal on his Pip-Boy from someone asking him to come visit the bunker at the rear of the Revere Satellite Array. Bob, curious and figuring his new outpost need time to attract new recruits and build itself up anyway, went and checked out the bunker, and found an intercom and a fellow named Rob on the other end of it. Rob explained that he was a pre-War survivor (aka a ghoul) who was trapped below thanks to the Commander at the National Guard Armory putting the place on lockdown. He’d been able to monitor the surface with his equipment (and thus knew about the current state of the Commonwealth), but he was unable to actually free himself without the Commander’s password, in the guy’s safe. Fortunately, Bob had already cleared out that place a while back, and was easily able to free Rob. Rob thanked him, gave him 50 bottlecaps (as he’d learned that was the local currency now and gathered up all he could find in his bunker), and offered to work for Bob, explaining he knew a lot about pre-War security. Bob was like “great, I could use someone like you in my new Lighthouse army” and sent him straight to Kingsport. XD
IX. With that done, and his new friend and a bunch of new recruits at the Lighthouse, Bob decided it was time to go ahead and capture one more chunk of Gunner territory nearby – namely, the Museum of Witchcraft over at Salem! He thus led his army over there to destroy the Gunner presence –
And this time, things actually went relatively smoothly! Bob didn’t blow up anyone he didn’t want to blow up with his Explosive Sniper; the army was better able to contribute because they’d been looting guns from their enemies with abandon (one lady was hauling around what I think was a Gauss rifle, which was nice); and the reinforcements even managed to path in correctly for a change, allowing Bob to murder them at range instead of being surprised by them just spawning in next to him! Meaning the liberation of the Museum and Salem was, appropriately, an S-rank victory, yay. :) This also completed one of the quest objectives that Bob had to complete to advance the main storyline, meaning that we got that fun bug again where Salvador tried to call Bob during his fly-over cutscene as the game showed him how well he did. XD Anyway, Salvador called back once Bob was done levitating, warning him that Gunner attacks were getting more dangerous and more coordinated – Bob gave him leave to double the intel-gathering and recon efforts, and got a new quest objective in return – capture more Gunner territory deeper in the Commonwealth. Bob wasn’t sure what exactly that meant –
But he did know that, at some point, Jamaica Plain had been taken over again, so he figured getting THAT place back onside might fulfill the brief. He also noted that Oberland Station had fallen, so figured that what he’d do in THAT case was head over to Starlight Drive-In and make IT an outpost (which he’d been planning to do anyway to get full outpost coverage over Boston), then retake Oberland and hope that helped his quest too. So we know what he’s probably doing next time!
X. And it was then, with like two minutes left to go in the video, that he remembered, “Oh FUCK, I was supposed to be getting Magnusson’s cache, wasn’t I?” XD So he ran over to Wildwood Cemetery, took out the ghouls hanging around, and –
Decided to call it a part there, because fuck it, cliffhanger I guess. XD So yes, next episode we’ll get Magnusson’s stuff and possibly even meet the man (or whatever he is now) himself; work on taking more Gunner territory; and head back to HQ to meet with another envoy, as Bob saw that sitting in his quest log right at the end. Oh, and hopefully level up, because Bob’s sitting on two of them again. XD Oh Jon, you and your -1 Perception, I swear...
Workout: Back on the bike this week, and back to James Turner with “The finale of the Every Life Stage Challenge! - Part 8!” A two-and-a-half-hour monster of an episode to wrap things up for Semaj and his extremely large family. XD The half-hour I watched today focused on –
A) The reveal of who Semaj would be kindling a romance and settling down with out of all of his various DNA donors via YouTube poll – and frankly, to no one’s surprise, Nalani (who had Camilo with Semaj via scientific means) won. Because I think we all found them much too cute together back in the “Every Occult Challenge.” :) Though you do have to feel a BIT bad for Mei Prescott, who was the only woman who had a baby with Semaj the NATURAL way, actually lived in his house while pregnant, and even married him when asked (not realizing Semaj was only doing it for the cash), and only got 6% of the YouTube poll vote. Sorry, Mei – just wasn’t meant to be! Anyway, James aged Nalani (and all the other parents) up to an elder off-screen and got started kindling the romance by having her come over and watch a movie with Semaj – she arrived flirty and was more than amenable to cuddling a bit on the couch. Good sign! :D
B) The further expansion of the house to make sure everyone had enough room – after trying to add another room onto the side of the house, James decided that if building a second story apartment worked for first-born Krystoff once he became an adult, it would work for second-born Pablo and created a space upstairs for him as well (with its own separate stairs). It even has its own little balcony out the back! James is still in the process of making it look nice, but it has floors and wall paneling and a nice big bed, so that’s good. :) He also renovated Pablo’s old room into a toddler room for Scarlet, and was in the process of getting Silas’s room sorted when I paused.
C) The makeovers of some of the kids who aged up into, ah, UNFORTUNATE looks. XD Specifically, Vivienne lost her turban to reveal her very cute hairstyle and got the world’s pinkest wardrobe (with the help of the GOTH FASHION kit, so – I guess she’s a pastel goth?); Sonny grew his hair long and became one of those guys who always wears shorts no matter the weather; and Scarlett and Pablo both got some cute outfits in their chosen colors of green and yellow respectively. So everyone looks a bit less like the townies dressed them now! (Though James NEARLY accidentally deleted Pablo from the family by going into CAS the wrong way – since he’s using mods to increase the family size, if he goes in via the traditional methods, the game will only load eight members of the family and chuck out anyone who doesn’t fit. Fortunately he realized his mistake in time, and Pablo was saved – and even if he hadn’t, he assured us he’d saved like a minute before and could just roll things back.)
D) The endless search for cash, because if nothing else, the house renovations ain’t cheap! Krystoff is of course still painting, and churning out a decent number of masterpieces; Semaj has another pirate show gig coming up despite his advanced age (and hatred of acting); and Pablo just entered the Athletic career, since he’s the Fitness guy. Plus the magical trash-eating trashcan is still spitting out $90 for every trash pile and baby bottle James chucks in there. Still, money is probably sure to be tight for a while!
And that’s about it for now! We’ll see how things go next time – James is already thinking of trying to make a basement theater room for everyone to enjoy movie night together in. And while he’s been reluctant to start the StrangerVille storyline to get Semaj, Krystoff, and Pablo uninfected, you can see his patience with the whole “Possessed” thing happening every night wearing a bit thin...just have to wait and see if he cracks! Would explain why this episode is so long...
Whew -- really good thing that I don't have work tomorrow, because writing all that up too a WHILE. Damn. *shakehead* I really gotta solve either my wordiness problem or my "getting to certain videos late" problem... And right now, I have to solve my bed problem, because we ARE supposed to be going to Southwick Zoo tomorrow, and though it doesn't open until 10 AM, I still want to get up in plenty of time to have breakfast and a few minutes to myself before we head out. *nods* So yeah, bedtime for me here -- night all!
-->I went to bed later than I wanted to, meaning I got up later than I wanted to and had a much slower start to my day
-->Dad was dealing with a pain in his ribs after eating breakfast (Mom thought it had to do with his spleen) which was making him cranky
-->I tried making a smoothie for breakfast, only to discover that the yogurt I thought was still good was starting to get moldy, meaning we had to toss it and I couldn't have any for my drink
-->My parents had to deal with some bullshit with their various online selling stores (apparently eBay and ABE never show their listings correctly)
-->My parents ALSO had to deal with the TV not correctly picking up channels through our antenna, which involved having to go out and buy some connectors -- this also made Dad extra-cranky
-->And the two "Last Week Tonight" episodes we watched today just made everyone cranky (a recent one on school lunches and an old one on vaccines)
So -- yeah. Definitely not a great day over here today. *sigh* I hate it when one of my days off is almost nothing but bad vibes. Ruins the whole point of it being a day off.
Still, despite all that, I did get everything that I wanted to get done, done today --
Tumblr: Didn’t get as much done on here as I would have liked, but at least I got something done on each –
Victor Luvs Alice – I caught up on my dash and reblogged a post about how the worst part of writing (or any other craft) is having an awesome idea...and then realizing how much work it’s going to take to make the idea a reality; then got about halfway through my draft of a post on the occult statuses of my potential Multifandom Tiny Town members (Smiler and Victor would both be spellcasters – Smiler an alchemist, Victor specializing in untamed magic – and Alice a mermaid) before having to stop for lunch. I really wanted to finish it after lunch, but I just didn’t have the time, sadly. Maybe tomorrow at some point I can work on it again.
Valice Multiverse – Got two asks to put into the queue tonight – one anon ask for my ask game, “Cuddlepile meets Technicolor Phase” (I had TP!Victor goggle over CP!Victor’s nine-person polycule, then ask what colors he got from them...causing CP!Victor to get really confused about what the hell TP!Victor was talking about, and then get even more confused when he learned how color vision worked in that universe, with TP!Victor getting confused right back over the fact that CP!Victor can, you know, just SEE COLOR XD); and one ask from Toonsisters asking Cuddlepile!Alice for information about herself because she wanted to design her as Pokemon as well (like she designed one for Victor), but isn’t actually familiar with the American McGee’s Alice games (Alice gave her a quick run-down of her awful, sad history, and also said that working in the Vorpal Blade somehow would be a good idea, and that her favorite animals were cats and rabbits if that would help). So that’s all good at least!
Fallout 4: Had a pretty decent day in the Commonwealth today, with Victor and Ada exploring Vault 75 and slowly starting to get a picture of just how fucked up it really was –
A) Well, I say slowly – one of the first things I did upon booting up the game was go and explore the unfinished reactor room to the side of the main atrium, where I’d left the pair after last week’s firefight. Can leave no stone unturned in the search for goodies, after all! And you know what I found in there, apart from one Gunner up on an inaccessible balcony (the stairs to reach it had collapsed)? All the various reactor elements –
And fucking playground equipment. Like, there was a seesaw to the side near the stairs up, there was a swingset with some toy cars under it, there were even baseball bases set up in a crude diamond. Apparently the kids were allowed, nah, encouraged to play here. O.o Like, I know you’re fucked up, Vault 75, but what the fuck.
B) Anyway – after killing the remaining Gunner and looping through the reactor room to gather good junk and loot (I may be horrified that the kids were playing in there, but I won’t say no to toy cars, those have screws), I had Victor return to the atrium and explore all the rooms coming off it. In addition to the kitchen, he found a side room with a bunch of bunk beds and containers for ammo (must be where some of the Gunners were kipping), and – through a hole in the wall – a bathroom with toilet stalls, urinals, and showers, plus lots of lockers (most empty, but some with a bit more ammo in them). There was also a more standard locker area to the left of the bathroom hole, with stuff like clipboards and Vault-Tec labcoats inside –
And a door on the right-side wall, leading to some sort of side hallway. I ventured down it briefly, curious to see where it led – then went “hang on, I saw one more archway leading off the main atrium on the far left wall, let’s see where that goes first.” I thus backtracked and checked said archway out – turns out THAT led to the stairs up to the catwalk level overlooking the main atrium. Which, I didn’t think there would be much up there, but – you never knew what secrets might be lurking up top! I thus decided to explore the side hallway from the locker room a bit more to see where that went first –
C) And found two more doors – one locked security door at the very end needing the “lab access” keycard (which Victor hadn’t found yet), and another door to the left with stairs leading deeper down. Hmmmm. I decided “okay, let’s clear the catwalk level first” and headed back to the stairs leading up to do just that (leaving Ada behind accidentally – she must have gotten stuck on something downstairs). Up on the catwalk level, I found the Gunners that Ada and Victor had killed last time (most without anything particularly good on them); what I THOUGHT was a mess hall of sorts until I realized it had stuff like burnt textbooks, broken terminals, mentats, and toolboxes in it, and realized it must have been some kind of study hall instead –
And, around on the other side, two bunk rooms that were clearly where the kids slept in days of yore. Mostly because the one on the far end was full of teddy bears (plus one toy alien), while the other on the side had toy rockets and trucks, chessboards, and a bunch of toy blocks spelling out “GARY” around the shop. Which, okay, if that isn’t a reference to the infamous Gary Vault of Fallout 3, I will eat my hat. XD Oh, and that room ALSO had three mini-nukes in it – best case scenario, the Gunners put them there; worst-case scenario, Vault-Tec wanted the kids to cuddle up with nukes at night as well as play in the reactor room. We can and will never know for sure. Fallout 4, everybody!
D) Anyway – with as much of the catwalk level cleared as I could reach (there was a little private balcony off to the side coming off the Overseer’s office that I couldn’t get to), I headed downstairs (taking a moment to catch up with Ada and give her a bunch of crap to carry), then went back to that side hall off the locker room and to the stairs going down to see what was down there. First answer proved to be a handful of Gunners – I picked off one guy with a sneak attack, then tried to figure out where the hell the other enemy I was supposed to be shooting was until she finally ran into the hallway just beyond the storage room Victor and Ada were in and took up cover in a spot where Victor could actually take her out. XD I then tried to find the final enemy that the game was telling me was there, only for said enemy to lose interest before I could, taking them off my compass. I shrugged, figured I’d find them eventually (I knew what general direction they were in, anyway), then started exploring. First stop was what looked like a medbay directly across from the storage room, with a bed and a chemistry bench inside – I had Victor go and combine a bunch of the drugs he’d picked up (so much Buffout, Mentats, and Jet taking up space in my inventory) and make a couple of healing items before he had to stop and answer the call of nature. XD Once he’d done his business in his port-a-potty, he continued onward, first heading left to find some lockers and a bathroom (ironic) –
And a Gunner private hanging out in one of the stalls! Aha! Knew I’d find them eventually! XD Victor took the guy out without even being seen (seriously, some of the enemies in this game have Jon-level Perception) and stole his plunger to boot. XD Hey, not like he needed it anymore! And I have learned the value of grabbing anything with rubber.
E) With that sorted, Victor then headed right to see what was further down the hallway. He came across another medbay with some weird machinery in it, along with some Rad-Away (perhaps used to see how radioactive the kids were after playtime in the reactor room); a room with those medical treadmills that measure heart rate and all that (couldn’t run on any of them to test his own stats, sadly); a big old locker room further on, with lots of ammo in the lockers; a storage room after that, with boxes on the shelves and a big old sniper rifle and a couple of 10mms in the middle of the room –
And, right at the end of the hallway, a faux street corner with a fake diner on it that looked very much like some sort of shooting gallery! Though this fake diner housed one very real Gunner commander hiding on the top floor, peeping his head out to look for trouble. I had Victor snipe the guy to avoid said trouble, then consult the nearby “Combat Simulation Terminal.” There wasn’t much on it – just a list of high scores (with the leader, “ToppedYaAll!!” having completed the course in 25.32 seconds apparently), and an option to reset the course. Curious, I had Victor go ahead and reset so he could run through it –
And after a short countdown, a bunch of weird-looking human targets popped up in and around the front of the diner! :) I happily used Victor’s beloved Two-Shot combat rifle to take them all down (using the scope to help me aim, as I’m not great at hip-firing) –
Aaand didn’t get any indication that I’d completed the course. O.o Puzzled, I started looking for targets elsewhere, like on the other side of the “street” they’d set up, but didn’t see any. Wondering if the course had malfunctioned or something, and already seeing that my current quest target – that lab access keycard – was inside the diner, I headed into the building –
Where two more (what I then realized were holographic) targets popped up. Aaaah – I was meant to storm the diner! Makes sense, I guess! I took them out, then found the stairs up and headed to the second story, where I took out two more targets – and FINALLY got my “course complete” announcement. *nods* Well then – guess I was the one with Jon-level Perception in this case!
F) Anyway – with the course complete, I had Victor claim the keycard out of a nearby toolbox, then go goodies-hunting. There wasn’t much to grab, though – just some ammo and stuff off the Commander’s corpse; duct tape and other useful junk in the toolbox; and – back down on ground level – some items hidden in a chest behind the fake diner, where I guess the construction guys had been hanging out with their radio on their downtime. Having gotten pretty much everything I could get out of the area, I thus made to leave –
And then I paused, wondering, “Hey – does the Combat Sim terminal update the high scores list if your character does the course in a decent time?” I thus consulted it again –
And indeed found Victor’s name on there, with a time of 87.90 seconds! Which would have been a lot cooler if the next person up, Bob, hadn’t completed it in 45.16 seconds. XD I thus decided for the sake of Victor’s dignity that I’d give the course a second run now that I knew exactly how it worked and hit the reset button, then took out all the targets as quickly as possible with the Two-Shot. I lost a bit of time by initially missing one target in an upper window (as in “I didn’t see it right away” not “I missed my initial shot at it”), but I finished that run at a much more respectable 50.77 seconds. *nods* Maybe I’ll try again one more time before we leave and see if I can at least beat Bob’s time!
G) Anyway – time to advance the quest! I returned to the locked Security door in the hallway upstairs and swiped the keycard, gaining access to the lab area beyond! It wasn’t particularly impressive – mostly just more stacked crates and clipboards and Vault-Tec scientist skeletons – but there were a couple of doors to poke at. One, the Overseer’s door, was locked up tight and required an Admin keycard that Victor didn’t have (putting another quest marker on his compass); another, the Screening door, just looped Victor back around to the entrance of the vault (guess it kind of functions like the “Skyrim” door of the dungeon). There was also a third door with stairs leading upward, so I had Victor and Ada head up there, following the quest marker for the keycard they needed –
And found some kind of big central stairwell area leading to some offices at the far end of the room, with more Gunners inside. Fortunately, none of them were particularly tough, and with a little help from VATS and opening a particular door in the way that the NPCs apparently couldn’t figure out, Victor was able to kill the lot (making one unfortunate dude coming up the stairs spin around like a ballerina, amusingly). As it turns out, one of the last Gunners to go down in the back office had the keycard Victor was looking for on him –
And better yet, on the desk right to him was the Science Bobblehead! :) Which, uh, had a rather shitty perk attached to it (Victor just gets one extra guess while hacking terminals – like, game, I already know how to clear pretty much every dud “password” from a terminal now, I don’t need the extra guesses), but at least got me the “They’re Not Dolls…” achievement from Steam for collecting ten bobbleheads. I’ll take that! XD Anyway, I was prepared to head back to the lab and crack open that Overseer’s door now that I had the right keycard –
But poor Victor passed into the “so exhausted he couldn’t run or sprint” stage right after killing the last of the Gunners, so instead of doing that, I had him head back to the other end of the room, set up his tent, and hit the sheets at 8:55 PM. He woke up at 4:55 AM rested and refreshed, and I ended the playsession by packing up the tent and looting some cans and a toolbox nearby (must never leave behind any aluminum or adhesive!). So yeah – next time, we’ll crack open the Overseer’s office, finish exploring the vault and finding out all its dark secrets, and complete the “Vault 75” quest! And then maybe I can wrench myself back toward doing main quest stuff. XD That courser’s gotta go down sometime!
Writing: Another Sunday spent playing Fallout 4, another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression – and, as usual, the adventures of Victor, Ada, and Alice in the fanfic universe matched up pretty closely with those of Victor and Ada in the actual game – getting horrified over the playground in the reactor room; exploring the various rooms and hallways and finding the shooting gallery and the keycard to get through the Security door into the lab; then clearing out that area off the lab to get the keycard into the Overseer’s office before Victor was forced to get some sleep. There were really only three small ways the fanfic world differed from the game one –
A) Alice and Ada helped Victor explore the atrium and the side rooms off it once they were done with the reactor room – Ada checked out the bunk room; Victor explored the bathroom and the locker room; and Alice went upstairs and looked around the study hall and the kids’ bedrooms (commenting that it was weird the Gunners didn’t clean up any of the kids’ toys, and wondering if it was them or the Vault-Tec scientists who stashed those three mini-nukes in a kid’s footlocker). More people to look around means more ground covered more quickly!
B) Similarly, when they went downstairs into the “medical” wing, Victor checked out the initial medbay room (and had a sneaky poop in there, because if my game Victor has to poop, he does too); Ada headed right and found the “radiation check” room and the treadmill room; and Alice headed left and was the one to kill the Gunner private hiding the bathroom with her new Ripper (hey, I had to give her a chance to use it!). I also had Victor recognize the treadmills as the kind he ran on when he was taking his Army physical when he and Alice caught up with Ada, and start wondering if they were doing super-soldier experiments in this vault. As I recall, Victor, it’s actually a little creepier than that...
C) And when they reached the “combat simulation room” at the end of the hallway, after killing the Gunner hiding there, Victor accidentally activated the shooting gallery while looking at the terminal there (he was trying to exit out after getting disgusted by the high score list there). He was very relieved to discover it was just holographic targets, not turrets firing back at him or anything like that! He also only did it the once – I let him have the better of my two times (mostly because I had him figure out quicker that he had to go into the diner), and had Alice put in his name on the high score list when he came back out after discovering the keycard on the second floor (he was like “Really?” XD). Hey, the computer in the fanfic verse isn’t magically going to know Victor’s name! And it seemed like the kind of thing Alice would do. XD
So yeah – just a few differences, nothing major. So next time, like their game counterparts, the trio will be entering the Overseer’s office and finally getting some answers about what the hell was going on in this vault! I don’t think they’ll like said answers, but they will get them. *nods*
YouTube: Again, started later than I would have liked, but I did get in my Sunday Two –
A) First up, we had GrayStillPlays and “Mobile games but they get more brain rot every minute!” Another video where Gray played a collection of mobile games, these ones of the type that drain your IQ just by existing in your space, and ranked them by how brain-rotty they actually were. And let me tell you, they were all pretty strong contenders for the old rot –
I. Jaw Evolution – Mewing Game: A clicker game where you click on a guy’s jaw to increase its size, and every time you complete a level, the guy gets gradually Chaddier (getting muscles, sunglasses, and sweet sneakers). There’s also a “Capy” mode that turns the guy into a capybara for some reason. Pretty standard clicker game, but Gray felt it was decently damaging his brain cells because of the whole “increasing a guy’s jaw so it was over half his body mass” premise, so he gave it a 6/10.
II. Twerk Race 3D: A runner game where you must eat hamburgers and avoid broccoli to expand a woman’s butt to the point where she can hit her friend into a brick wall for bonuses and beat any woman at a twerk battle – oh, and earn hammers so she can build her own gym. Gray gave this one a 5.5/10 simply because it had more to do than the previous game and thus wasn’t killing his brain cells nearly as quickly.
III. Toilet Agents: A beat-em-up game where you play as a camera-head being wandering around an area beating up Skibidi Toilet creatures (if you are unfamiliar, they are a human head coming out of a toilet and they hate object-head creatures). You have exactly one move with which to beat them up with, and the grammar in the game is, uh, questionable. Gray said that playing it sapped his will to live and gave it an 8.5/10 as a result. (You’re just not down with the kids, Gray. :P)
IV. Omega Nuggets Clicker: Another clicker game, this one saw you click on an egg in order to earn points to upgrade it to various forms of chicken nugget (standard, cowboy, gangster, old dude, tortilla, etc). The numbers got pretty out of control pretty fast on this one, especially when Gray brought out the autoclicker – he was maxing out abilities and gaining new nuggets very, VERY quickly. He decided that it wasn’t nearly as bad as Toilet Agents, but worse than Jaw Evolution or Twerk Race 3D, so he gave it the old 6.9/10. (Maybe Alex threatened to quit if he didn’t fit in a 69 somewhere. XD)
V. DIY Grim Shake: A game that I think was based on the old “Grimace Shake” meme (where drinking that thing was supposed to kill you instantly or something), this saw you make drinks for a variety of concerning-looking cartoon monsters by choosing your glass, liquid (brown or green), topping (which could include things like baked beans and little multicolored dolphins), straw, and table setting, then hoping the monsters froze instead of burping your shake all over you. In between, you could try abusing your weird Grimace-cat pet until it refused to play with you. Gray was like “I didn’t think any game was going to beat Toilet Agents on the brainrot meter, but this thing is sooo much worse” and crowned it champion with a 9/10 for being the same horrible thing over and over. So yeah – if you want brain rot, go make horrible shakes for weird cyborg pigs on your phone!
B) And second up, we had Jon and “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 53 - The Ivarstead Expedition!” Featuring the continuing adventures of Mayor Bob as he planned to go investigate Magnusson (the apparent creator of the ASAMs) and his secret cache near the Skylanes 1981 plane crash (you know, by the Wildwood Cemetery, I was there recently in my own game) – but, uh, got VERY distracted along the way. Here’s what happened –
I. He decided to stop at The Castle to refresh his supply of artillery grenades (as he was running REALLY low) before setting out – only to discover two new potential settlers who were bumming around the place! Specifically, there was O-M-0R the Assaultron, who needed some basic repairs (a fusion core and an assaultron circuit board); and April Li, a potential dog breeder who needed supplies from Diamond City before she could get started. Bob was like “I love dogs and I would ESPECIALLY love an Assaultron in my army, so I will DEFINITELY take your personal quests under consideration on my journeys.” XD
II. Then he stopped at Jamaica Plain just to see how many warriors he had available for future assaults on Gunner territory (a nice healthy ten at this settlement), before noting he wasn’t sure where he had to DIRECT those assaults – it wasn’t until he was on his way out of Boston (past the wreck of the USS Constitution), having not seen any Gunners around to tag, that he remembered that any places on his map that he knew he’d previously visited that were now appearing as hollow “unfound” places had probably been taken over by Gunners. Allowing him to realize that he needed to launch an assault to capture Fort Strong at some point. Remember that for later. :p
III. On his way out of Boston, he found a trio of Rust Devils on the road – and while they didn’t have any robots with them that he could loot for parts, they DID have a Legendary, who happened to have a Powered Polymer Combat Armor right arm. Powered increases AP refresh speed, which means it’s a Jon favorite (and a Vicky favorite too), and while he already had a good one on his right arm (VATS Enhanced, which reduces AP cost for weapons), it was on a piece of LEATHER armor, and Jon was willing to go with the combat armor just because it provided better protection. *nods* Fair enough, I probably would have made the same choice!
IV. Bob then ran into some more Rust Devils, this time with Assaultron Devils, over in the random encounter house nearby to County Crossing and Finch Farm – however, when he murdered them with his beloved explosive ammo, he was disappointed to find the Automatron Assaultrons didn’t have the parts he needed (the comments explained they don’t use the same loot table). So, after making sure that Finch Farm was not under Gunner control (it was not, he’d just never bothered visiting the place and doing their quest), he headed over to what he called the “weird bridge area” to kill some robots, as some sort of Assaultron was apparently guaranteed to spawn there (judging by the look of the place, I think it’s the bridge that leads to Nahant and Croup Manor? Don’t quote me on that though). And after taking out a sentry bot on the way, he was able to find and kill an Assaultron Dominator –
Who immediately fell victim to physics and cartwheeled into the nearby ocean. XD And then he was immediately distracted by a Legendary Mr. Gutsy appearing on the scene. Fortunately he was able to kill the Legendary Gutsy (despite missing half of his shots thanks to the damn thing constantly ducking behind containers – and it turned out to have a Penetrating Hunting Rifle, which was nice, but not as good as the Explosive Sniper Bob loved so much), and dive into the ocean to find the Dominator and loot its circuit board. Still, physics nearly screwed him over big-time there! Even if it WAS very funny to see that assaultron go flying. XD
V. After getting the parts to help fix O-M-0R, Bob checked his map and realized that Kingsport Lighthouse (the place where he’d once hoped to build some sort of blimp-house) was now under Gunner control – and when he went to tag the interlopers and set up an assault, the game told him that he didn’t have any outposts nearby enough to summon the warriors he needed. However, when he looked at the map, he realized that, according to the mod’s logic, one Nordhagen Beach was actually close enough to supply troops – and was right next to Fort Strong, meaning that if he wanted to take BOTH places, all he had to do was run over to that settlement and turn it into an outpost!
VI. Cue him running over to that settlement and turning it into an outpost. XD He thus marshaled a handful of brave settlers from Nordhagen to help him take Fort Strong – and while he and his scrubs did reasonably well destroying the initial Gunner presence there (well, BOB did reasonably well, his army was mainly using pipe weaponry and whatever they could grab from dead enemies), they ran into some trouble with the enemy reinforcements. Mostly because, first, the reinforcements refused to show up right away (as they often do); then, when they did appear, they just randomly spawned into the middle of the group not far from Nordhagen itself, taking Bob and company completely by surprise; and finally, when they were down to the last Gunner Captain they had to kill to complete the mission –
Bob discovered the woman had fallen under the ground. Because, you know, Bethesda game. *shakehead* Bob’s initial thought was “hey, I’ve got a level-up – let me take the final rank of the Intimidate perk and see if I can pacify her,” but then immediately decided that he’d rather try and grenade her out of the ground. Which, again, was right near Nordhagen.
Cue Bob accidentally killing one of his own settlers with grenades and turning YET ANOTHER SETTLEMENT hostile to him. XD Which included turning members of HIS OWN ARMY against him, as he discovered when he tried to flee to Fort Strong to wait out the hostilities and some of them started shooting at him. (Amusingly, it seemed to be everyone wearing the official Vault 111 uniform, leading Jon to crack a joke that the anger was in fact fashion-related). Bob managed to successfully kill everyone threatening him, then managed to successfully take Fort Strong (with an S-rank assault, no less) when that one enemy under the world somehow died or despawned – but thanks to not finding any beds to sleep in at the fort (apparently Jon completely forgot that the upstairs barracks that you can parkour to if you’re careful even existed), he had to wait in a chair at a nearby pier for 72 hours instead, getting extremely dehydrated, hungry, and exhausted as he ran out the clock on Nordhagen being angry at him. Jon roleplayed it as Bob staring at the horizon and having a little mental breakdown about how it had all come to this. XD
VII. ANYWAY – Bob eventually got to the point where Nordhagen Beach wasn’t immediately shooting at him, and – after getting some water, food, and sleep in him – recruited a bunch more warriors to assault the Kingsport Lighthouse! Did this go any more smoothly than Bob’s attempts to clear the Gunners out of Fort Strong?
Well, Bob had to take out a fucking Super Mutant Overlord AND a Suicider just meters away from his army before he could officially start the assault, so no, no it didn’t. To be fair, he was able to take out the super mutants pretty easily, and he didn’t upset any of his own settler army this time with his use of explosive weapons – but he also had a problem actually GETTING them to the lighthouse as they had problems climbing the rocks nearby, and once they got there, the place was utterly swarming with Gunners. Like, so many fucking Gunners. Things got bad enough at one point that Bob’s forces had to summon reinforcements from the Murkwater Construction Site! But they managed to kill them all in the end, AND take out the reinforcements the game spawned into the lighthouse right afterward (Bob making good use of his explosive sniper to explode some power armor on a few of the higher-ranked Gunners) and secure the site. Yes, it was a sad E-rank victory, but it was still a VICTORY, damn it.
VIII. With Kingsport now once again under his command, Bob turned it into an outpost and set up some army-appropriate buildings (starting with the medical center, because holy hell the injuries), then went straight to bed because he deserved a good night’s sleep. However, right after he got up the next morning, he got a signal on his Pip-Boy from someone asking him to come visit the bunker at the rear of the Revere Satellite Array. Bob, curious and figuring his new outpost need time to attract new recruits and build itself up anyway, went and checked out the bunker, and found an intercom and a fellow named Rob on the other end of it. Rob explained that he was a pre-War survivor (aka a ghoul) who was trapped below thanks to the Commander at the National Guard Armory putting the place on lockdown. He’d been able to monitor the surface with his equipment (and thus knew about the current state of the Commonwealth), but he was unable to actually free himself without the Commander’s password, in the guy’s safe. Fortunately, Bob had already cleared out that place a while back, and was easily able to free Rob. Rob thanked him, gave him 50 bottlecaps (as he’d learned that was the local currency now and gathered up all he could find in his bunker), and offered to work for Bob, explaining he knew a lot about pre-War security. Bob was like “great, I could use someone like you in my new Lighthouse army” and sent him straight to Kingsport. XD
IX. With that done, and his new friend and a bunch of new recruits at the Lighthouse, Bob decided it was time to go ahead and capture one more chunk of Gunner territory nearby – namely, the Museum of Witchcraft over at Salem! He thus led his army over there to destroy the Gunner presence –
And this time, things actually went relatively smoothly! Bob didn’t blow up anyone he didn’t want to blow up with his Explosive Sniper; the army was better able to contribute because they’d been looting guns from their enemies with abandon (one lady was hauling around what I think was a Gauss rifle, which was nice); and the reinforcements even managed to path in correctly for a change, allowing Bob to murder them at range instead of being surprised by them just spawning in next to him! Meaning the liberation of the Museum and Salem was, appropriately, an S-rank victory, yay. :) This also completed one of the quest objectives that Bob had to complete to advance the main storyline, meaning that we got that fun bug again where Salvador tried to call Bob during his fly-over cutscene as the game showed him how well he did. XD Anyway, Salvador called back once Bob was done levitating, warning him that Gunner attacks were getting more dangerous and more coordinated – Bob gave him leave to double the intel-gathering and recon efforts, and got a new quest objective in return – capture more Gunner territory deeper in the Commonwealth. Bob wasn’t sure what exactly that meant –
But he did know that, at some point, Jamaica Plain had been taken over again, so he figured getting THAT place back onside might fulfill the brief. He also noted that Oberland Station had fallen, so figured that what he’d do in THAT case was head over to Starlight Drive-In and make IT an outpost (which he’d been planning to do anyway to get full outpost coverage over Boston), then retake Oberland and hope that helped his quest too. So we know what he’s probably doing next time!
X. And it was then, with like two minutes left to go in the video, that he remembered, “Oh FUCK, I was supposed to be getting Magnusson’s cache, wasn’t I?” XD So he ran over to Wildwood Cemetery, took out the ghouls hanging around, and –
Decided to call it a part there, because fuck it, cliffhanger I guess. XD So yes, next episode we’ll get Magnusson’s stuff and possibly even meet the man (or whatever he is now) himself; work on taking more Gunner territory; and head back to HQ to meet with another envoy, as Bob saw that sitting in his quest log right at the end. Oh, and hopefully level up, because Bob’s sitting on two of them again. XD Oh Jon, you and your -1 Perception, I swear...
Workout: Back on the bike this week, and back to James Turner with “The finale of the Every Life Stage Challenge! - Part 8!” A two-and-a-half-hour monster of an episode to wrap things up for Semaj and his extremely large family. XD The half-hour I watched today focused on –
A) The reveal of who Semaj would be kindling a romance and settling down with out of all of his various DNA donors via YouTube poll – and frankly, to no one’s surprise, Nalani (who had Camilo with Semaj via scientific means) won. Because I think we all found them much too cute together back in the “Every Occult Challenge.” :) Though you do have to feel a BIT bad for Mei Prescott, who was the only woman who had a baby with Semaj the NATURAL way, actually lived in his house while pregnant, and even married him when asked (not realizing Semaj was only doing it for the cash), and only got 6% of the YouTube poll vote. Sorry, Mei – just wasn’t meant to be! Anyway, James aged Nalani (and all the other parents) up to an elder off-screen and got started kindling the romance by having her come over and watch a movie with Semaj – she arrived flirty and was more than amenable to cuddling a bit on the couch. Good sign! :D
B) The further expansion of the house to make sure everyone had enough room – after trying to add another room onto the side of the house, James decided that if building a second story apartment worked for first-born Krystoff once he became an adult, it would work for second-born Pablo and created a space upstairs for him as well (with its own separate stairs). It even has its own little balcony out the back! James is still in the process of making it look nice, but it has floors and wall paneling and a nice big bed, so that’s good. :) He also renovated Pablo’s old room into a toddler room for Scarlet, and was in the process of getting Silas’s room sorted when I paused.
C) The makeovers of some of the kids who aged up into, ah, UNFORTUNATE looks. XD Specifically, Vivienne lost her turban to reveal her very cute hairstyle and got the world’s pinkest wardrobe (with the help of the GOTH FASHION kit, so – I guess she’s a pastel goth?); Sonny grew his hair long and became one of those guys who always wears shorts no matter the weather; and Scarlett and Pablo both got some cute outfits in their chosen colors of green and yellow respectively. So everyone looks a bit less like the townies dressed them now! (Though James NEARLY accidentally deleted Pablo from the family by going into CAS the wrong way – since he’s using mods to increase the family size, if he goes in via the traditional methods, the game will only load eight members of the family and chuck out anyone who doesn’t fit. Fortunately he realized his mistake in time, and Pablo was saved – and even if he hadn’t, he assured us he’d saved like a minute before and could just roll things back.)
D) The endless search for cash, because if nothing else, the house renovations ain’t cheap! Krystoff is of course still painting, and churning out a decent number of masterpieces; Semaj has another pirate show gig coming up despite his advanced age (and hatred of acting); and Pablo just entered the Athletic career, since he’s the Fitness guy. Plus the magical trash-eating trashcan is still spitting out $90 for every trash pile and baby bottle James chucks in there. Still, money is probably sure to be tight for a while!
And that’s about it for now! We’ll see how things go next time – James is already thinking of trying to make a basement theater room for everyone to enjoy movie night together in. And while he’s been reluctant to start the StrangerVille storyline to get Semaj, Krystoff, and Pablo uninfected, you can see his patience with the whole “Possessed” thing happening every night wearing a bit thin...just have to wait and see if he cracks! Would explain why this episode is so long...
Whew -- really good thing that I don't have work tomorrow, because writing all that up too a WHILE. Damn. *shakehead* I really gotta solve either my wordiness problem or my "getting to certain videos late" problem... And right now, I have to solve my bed problem, because we ARE supposed to be going to Southwick Zoo tomorrow, and though it doesn't open until 10 AM, I still want to get up in plenty of time to have breakfast and a few minutes to myself before we head out. *nods* So yeah, bedtime for me here -- night all!
