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Not TOO Bad First Day Back
Mar. 16th, 2021 11:26 pmI mean, it was busy, but it was fortunately a sort of quieter busy where I could mostly keep on top of things. More credit card bullshit, of course, and a bunch of QC files to master, but I got through pretty much everything that had to be done today, so -- progress? Hopefully tomorrow won't be too much of a clusterfuck either. . .
Anyway -- made it through the chilly day, then came home and got through my to-do list --
1. Get in a workout: Check! Back on the bike today, and back to Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! Caught up with Grills as he continued using his jetpack to sneak into places early – having gotten what he came for out of the Galactic Zone, he headed on over to Dry Rock Gulch to see if he could get over the wall into the employees-only area early. He totally could, to Jon’s delight – he was honestly quite pleased by the fact that the game doesn’t stick invisible walls around the park or anything to stop you doing things before you’re supposed to – if you have power armor with a jetpack, then you’re more than welcome to snipe the ghouls wandering around this section of the map from the wall (if they don’t blow themselves up on the frag mines first) and pick up issue five of the SCAV! perk magazine – which Jon wanted because it gives you bonuses to Strength and Endurance based on how many caps you currently have. Under 100, you can get up to +3 on both! O.o That’s a hell of a magazine. . . He also killed a Legendary Charred Ghoul and got an Instigating Missile Launcher off the corpse – double damage if your target is still at full health, and the base damage was 416! There was even a handy weapons workbench Grills could use to take a better look at it nearby – sadly, turns out there’s no way to improve the damage output on a missile launcher. Probably because it’s a fucking missile launcher and you’re already going to be killing all the things with it. XD Still, it would probably look nice on Grills’s wall!
With that out of the way, Jon decided he didn’t want to wait around and do the main storyline – he wanted to see what happened when you took the “Open Season” quest from Mackenzie in the marketplace right away. No working with raiders for Grills, no sir! His only question was how quickly and efficiently he could murder the raider bosses. He started with Nisha, leader of the torture-happy Disciples, as she’s apparently the hardest to get to in her base. Jon was hoping she would go to sleep like other NPCs do, but her personal quarters at the top of her little area don’t have a bed – just a couch and some paintings. Jon instead quietly sniped her off from cover, then legged it to the entrance before darting outside the outer walls of the park, carefully sniping off furious gang members from the various entrances before jetpacking his way back up onto the walls themselves. He actually found himself behind the area that the Pack, the animal-themed bastards led by Mason, makes their home, and started wondering if he could find a good spot to quietly snipe off Mason –
And then loading screens happened. Loading screens that put him right in the middle of a bunch of furious raiders. Grills managed to snipe off Mason with a couple of crits, and attempted to make a run for it, but sheer numbers, plus the inability to jetpack onto a convenient roof, meant that he died in a hail of bullets. Jon took the whole thing as a learning experience and went about things a little more cautiously the next time, sniping Nisha with the good guns and then finding a corner to hole up in so he could funnel the Disciples towards him to be killed by Gauss and grenades. Fortunately most of the raiders had levels in the low twenties, so it wasn’t really too difficult. I left him slowly clearing out the main gathering area (after failing to get eyes on Gage, up in the Fizztop Grille), having just killed one of the other main named Raiders, Shank – the guy who will coach you on raiding the settlements in the Commonwealth if you’re doing this properly. Oh, what a shame. :p Kinda sad to miss out on the actual story, but I AM planning on watching Bacon’s playthrough at some point, and she apparently did it properly, so. . .
2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Alice has gotten the speech from Jack about keeping vampires secret and has been encouraged to loosen her hold on her human morals. Alice is a bit reluctant, given she was trying to make a clean, legal start in the States, but. . .well, she could use the lockpick. Though that’s not actually going to be necessary to find the keycard to get them out of there, thanks to handy notes and observant Wonderlanders. :p We’ll get you through this tutorial eventually, Alice!
3. Keep up on YouTube Subscriptions: Check! Three videos in my Subs to conquer –
A) Started with James Turner doing a ranking of the various members of the Bigwallet family, the dynasty that makes up the majority of his LPs (starting with Lady Bigwallet for the Get To Work Rags to Riches, and extending now to Isaiah, Brodie, and Candle in the Snowy Escape “3 Brothers” series). Up in the “perfect” top spot were both Lady Bigwallets (the founder and her Get Famous namesake), Sebastian and his wife Luna (Seasons), the original Lady’s friend Bryanna (“Afro Disiac,” as James used to call her), and his own self Sim. XD Down in “Remove Pool Ladder,” by contrast, was Lord Bigwallet (Seasons, Sebastian and Luna’s second son – characterized as something of a jerk), Column Bigwallet (Realm of Magic, placed there because apparently that LP is the least-liked of the lot, which makes me sad), and Mario (Cats & Dogs, Katrina’s husband, really only put there because James couldn’t figure out why he’d added him to the list in the first place). Most of the others went into the “who?” category for not leaving enough of an impression or being mildly disliked. I don’t agree with most of the lowest-ranked Sims – I liked Column well enough, and I have fond memories of Mario just because Katrina was the first of the series where I started watching regularly (I did watch the original Lady’s original series, but never got into it beyond that) – but it was a fun list nonetheless. Especially when he did indeed drown the three lowest-ranked in the “end credits.” XD
B) Then we had Call Me Kevin playing PS1-era The Mummy! Complete with a motivational “do it for him” picture full of Brendan Frasers. XD The actual playable Brendan was something of an off-brand Brendan Frasers, what with his country club jog and – very un-Brendan Fraser voice. Brondon Froser, I dubbed him in my comment. XD Gameplay largely consisted of very janky cutscenes, then stumbling around in ancient Egyptian ruins, shooting excavators and mummies until the thing that makes the button to open the door appears, and occasionally collecting treasures. Kevin managed to make it to level two without getting too badly lost or losing all his lives, but a log-riding section ended up laying him and Brendan low. *nods sympathetically* Yeah, from my experience with American McGee’s Alice and the leaf-ride section, those are a bitch. You did the best you could, Kevin! You and Brondon.
C) And then it was over to GrayStillPlays and more Minecraft! Though this one wasn’t a parkour board. . .this one was “I discovered how to alter the code, and also how to turn a circle of pickaxes in crafting into A HORRIBLE DEATH WHEEL.” No, seriously, he did what he did best and slapped zeroes into things, and made the spinning circle of ultimate death. The WOODEN one literally destroyed anything it touched (obliterating most of the target Gray set up to test it on) – the NETHERITE one made the game glitch out. Gray spent a good fifteen minutes carving holes into the landscape, fighting the Ender Dragon, and – when that proved disappointing – SPAWNING TEN MILLION ENDER DRAGONS AND BASICALLY DROPPING THE GAME TO ONE FPS. XD Oh man, and he’s already talking about modding more stuff to be absolutely stupid. . .I am ALL FOR this new mini-series, seriously.
D) And, again, had a little time, so dropped by The Epic Nate and watched a video on strange and amusing random encounters in Fallout 4. From the curfew Mr. Gutsy (whom you can blow up with a sarcasm-loop of repeating “Will you comply?” back to him), to Lorenzo Cabot slaughtering people (he’s trying to figure out ghouls from the inside out), to the wandering former Brotherhood Scribe who can become an armor merchant at one of your settlements (and sell some pretty spiffy low-health armor), there’s plenty of weird and wacky things wandering the Wasteland in FO4! :)
E) And my friend Gigs just showed me the trailer for "Expedition: Back To The Future," and the Backie in me is annoyed it's on a streaming service we don't have. >.< On the other hand, my mom's gotten pretty adept at scoping out week-long free trials of things, soooo. . .we'll see.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! Just one ask and one thread in Valice Multiverse – and of course with Victor Luvs Alice, I just had to click “queue” on a bunch of pre-drafted posts. XD Well, okay, I also had to make sure all the Newcrest Adventures posts would fire tomorrow, but that was like, what, another minute? All sorted now, and without even breaking a sweat.
So that was all good! Keeping on top of the game there. :) Now I just have to answer my last DW and head to bed -- got three more days of this! At least this weekend I don't have to clean my room. But yeah, time to wrap up and get some sleep. Night all!
Anyway -- made it through the chilly day, then came home and got through my to-do list --
1. Get in a workout: Check! Back on the bike today, and back to Jon’s Fallout 4 Survival Playthrough! Caught up with Grills as he continued using his jetpack to sneak into places early – having gotten what he came for out of the Galactic Zone, he headed on over to Dry Rock Gulch to see if he could get over the wall into the employees-only area early. He totally could, to Jon’s delight – he was honestly quite pleased by the fact that the game doesn’t stick invisible walls around the park or anything to stop you doing things before you’re supposed to – if you have power armor with a jetpack, then you’re more than welcome to snipe the ghouls wandering around this section of the map from the wall (if they don’t blow themselves up on the frag mines first) and pick up issue five of the SCAV! perk magazine – which Jon wanted because it gives you bonuses to Strength and Endurance based on how many caps you currently have. Under 100, you can get up to +3 on both! O.o That’s a hell of a magazine. . . He also killed a Legendary Charred Ghoul and got an Instigating Missile Launcher off the corpse – double damage if your target is still at full health, and the base damage was 416! There was even a handy weapons workbench Grills could use to take a better look at it nearby – sadly, turns out there’s no way to improve the damage output on a missile launcher. Probably because it’s a fucking missile launcher and you’re already going to be killing all the things with it. XD Still, it would probably look nice on Grills’s wall!
With that out of the way, Jon decided he didn’t want to wait around and do the main storyline – he wanted to see what happened when you took the “Open Season” quest from Mackenzie in the marketplace right away. No working with raiders for Grills, no sir! His only question was how quickly and efficiently he could murder the raider bosses. He started with Nisha, leader of the torture-happy Disciples, as she’s apparently the hardest to get to in her base. Jon was hoping she would go to sleep like other NPCs do, but her personal quarters at the top of her little area don’t have a bed – just a couch and some paintings. Jon instead quietly sniped her off from cover, then legged it to the entrance before darting outside the outer walls of the park, carefully sniping off furious gang members from the various entrances before jetpacking his way back up onto the walls themselves. He actually found himself behind the area that the Pack, the animal-themed bastards led by Mason, makes their home, and started wondering if he could find a good spot to quietly snipe off Mason –
And then loading screens happened. Loading screens that put him right in the middle of a bunch of furious raiders. Grills managed to snipe off Mason with a couple of crits, and attempted to make a run for it, but sheer numbers, plus the inability to jetpack onto a convenient roof, meant that he died in a hail of bullets. Jon took the whole thing as a learning experience and went about things a little more cautiously the next time, sniping Nisha with the good guns and then finding a corner to hole up in so he could funnel the Disciples towards him to be killed by Gauss and grenades. Fortunately most of the raiders had levels in the low twenties, so it wasn’t really too difficult. I left him slowly clearing out the main gathering area (after failing to get eyes on Gage, up in the Fizztop Grille), having just killed one of the other main named Raiders, Shank – the guy who will coach you on raiding the settlements in the Commonwealth if you’re doing this properly. Oh, what a shame. :p Kinda sad to miss out on the actual story, but I AM planning on watching Bacon’s playthrough at some point, and she apparently did it properly, so. . .
2. Work some more on “Londerland Bloodlines”: Check! Alice has gotten the speech from Jack about keeping vampires secret and has been encouraged to loosen her hold on her human morals. Alice is a bit reluctant, given she was trying to make a clean, legal start in the States, but. . .well, she could use the lockpick. Though that’s not actually going to be necessary to find the keycard to get them out of there, thanks to handy notes and observant Wonderlanders. :p We’ll get you through this tutorial eventually, Alice!
3. Keep up on YouTube Subscriptions: Check! Three videos in my Subs to conquer –
A) Started with James Turner doing a ranking of the various members of the Bigwallet family, the dynasty that makes up the majority of his LPs (starting with Lady Bigwallet for the Get To Work Rags to Riches, and extending now to Isaiah, Brodie, and Candle in the Snowy Escape “3 Brothers” series). Up in the “perfect” top spot were both Lady Bigwallets (the founder and her Get Famous namesake), Sebastian and his wife Luna (Seasons), the original Lady’s friend Bryanna (“Afro Disiac,” as James used to call her), and his own self Sim. XD Down in “Remove Pool Ladder,” by contrast, was Lord Bigwallet (Seasons, Sebastian and Luna’s second son – characterized as something of a jerk), Column Bigwallet (Realm of Magic, placed there because apparently that LP is the least-liked of the lot, which makes me sad), and Mario (Cats & Dogs, Katrina’s husband, really only put there because James couldn’t figure out why he’d added him to the list in the first place). Most of the others went into the “who?” category for not leaving enough of an impression or being mildly disliked. I don’t agree with most of the lowest-ranked Sims – I liked Column well enough, and I have fond memories of Mario just because Katrina was the first of the series where I started watching regularly (I did watch the original Lady’s original series, but never got into it beyond that) – but it was a fun list nonetheless. Especially when he did indeed drown the three lowest-ranked in the “end credits.” XD
B) Then we had Call Me Kevin playing PS1-era The Mummy! Complete with a motivational “do it for him” picture full of Brendan Frasers. XD The actual playable Brendan was something of an off-brand Brendan Frasers, what with his country club jog and – very un-Brendan Fraser voice. Brondon Froser, I dubbed him in my comment. XD Gameplay largely consisted of very janky cutscenes, then stumbling around in ancient Egyptian ruins, shooting excavators and mummies until the thing that makes the button to open the door appears, and occasionally collecting treasures. Kevin managed to make it to level two without getting too badly lost or losing all his lives, but a log-riding section ended up laying him and Brendan low. *nods sympathetically* Yeah, from my experience with American McGee’s Alice and the leaf-ride section, those are a bitch. You did the best you could, Kevin! You and Brondon.
C) And then it was over to GrayStillPlays and more Minecraft! Though this one wasn’t a parkour board. . .this one was “I discovered how to alter the code, and also how to turn a circle of pickaxes in crafting into A HORRIBLE DEATH WHEEL.” No, seriously, he did what he did best and slapped zeroes into things, and made the spinning circle of ultimate death. The WOODEN one literally destroyed anything it touched (obliterating most of the target Gray set up to test it on) – the NETHERITE one made the game glitch out. Gray spent a good fifteen minutes carving holes into the landscape, fighting the Ender Dragon, and – when that proved disappointing – SPAWNING TEN MILLION ENDER DRAGONS AND BASICALLY DROPPING THE GAME TO ONE FPS. XD Oh man, and he’s already talking about modding more stuff to be absolutely stupid. . .I am ALL FOR this new mini-series, seriously.
D) And, again, had a little time, so dropped by The Epic Nate and watched a video on strange and amusing random encounters in Fallout 4. From the curfew Mr. Gutsy (whom you can blow up with a sarcasm-loop of repeating “Will you comply?” back to him), to Lorenzo Cabot slaughtering people (he’s trying to figure out ghouls from the inside out), to the wandering former Brotherhood Scribe who can become an armor merchant at one of your settlements (and sell some pretty spiffy low-health armor), there’s plenty of weird and wacky things wandering the Wasteland in FO4! :)
E) And my friend Gigs just showed me the trailer for "Expedition: Back To The Future," and the Backie in me is annoyed it's on a streaming service we don't have. >.< On the other hand, my mom's gotten pretty adept at scoping out week-long free trials of things, soooo. . .we'll see.
4. Get my tumblr queues sorted: Check! Just one ask and one thread in Valice Multiverse – and of course with Victor Luvs Alice, I just had to click “queue” on a bunch of pre-drafted posts. XD Well, okay, I also had to make sure all the Newcrest Adventures posts would fire tomorrow, but that was like, what, another minute? All sorted now, and without even breaking a sweat.
So that was all good! Keeping on top of the game there. :) Now I just have to answer my last DW and head to bed -- got three more days of this! At least this weekend I don't have to clean my room. But yeah, time to wrap up and get some sleep. Night all!
