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Not-So-Happy Mother's Day
May. 8th, 2022 11:28 pmMostly thanks to my Dad not being able to find a book (he sells them online) and being in a mood because of that and because he did something to his ankle. . .and then my Mom did something to her ankle, and it was windy all day, which made it colder than it should be, and -- yeah. Good thing I already spend most of my time off holed up in my room. . .
Anyway, despite the bad vibes on the other side of my bedroom door, I got a good chunk of stuff done:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – got that done after my playthrough below, natch. Victor and Piper ended up spending most of the day clearing out the old Gwinnet Main Brewery of Mirelurks, and Victor’s dedication to destroying monsters to keep the Commonwealth safe has prompted Piper to tell him about her father and her own decision to start up a newspaper to keep people informed. They may not be anywhere near their ultimate goal right at the minute, but at least they’re developing a firm friendship! :)
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, OXtra Show of the Weekend, and Jon's Fallout Sunday video: Check on all these – and even got in a little extra bonus!
A) Started this afternoon with the latest OXtra Show of the Weekend, as the title intrigued me: “5-Second Videogame Pictionary Head-to-Head!” Though I’m not sure how accurate said title was, as there was no guessing involved – instead, it was a straight-up art competition between Luke and Ellen, with Producer Jon calling out various video game characters for them to draw in five seconds and then judging the results. This produced some – interesting pictures, as you might imagine. XD The characters were – Pac-Man (Ellen, for being more game-accurate (Luke went with the box art/arcade machine Pac with arms and legs)), a Fall Guy (Luke), Astro (Ellen, and I have no idea what game this little robot is from), Tom Nook (Luke despite CLEARLY drawing something with a BEAK), Spider-Man (Luke), Toad (from Super Mario) (Luke), Jigglypuff (Ellen), E. Honda from Street Fighter (Luke), Crewmate from Among Us (Luke – Ellen foolishly drew an Impostor), Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII (Ellen, having gone for the more modern take), Donald Duck from Kingdom Hearts (Luke), Link specifically from Link’s Awakening, aka their “BOB” character (draw! Jon couldn’t decide), Sans (Ellen), Samus Aran (Ellen – she got a passing Mike’s help, and he said her visor looked more correct and that Luke’s could easily just be Doom Guy), and specifically E. T. from the Atari game (Ellen, with Luke admitting his hatred of E. T. gave him a disadvantage). This actually resulted in a 7-7 tie, so Jon set a tiebreaker – and of course, it was Pikachu. XD As usual, the two drew the world’s most famous Pokemon wrong in the usual ways, but Ellen’s cuter Pika-face won her the day. XD And then, to end the show, they drew five-second drawings of each other, which resulted in some sort of crown-wearing dude and a girl with a snake on her head. XD To be fair, Luke DOES have weird sticky-up hair, and Ellen DOES have a super-long ponytail these days. . .
B) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin and Ravenous Devils – AKA “we wanted to make a Sweeney Todd game but decided to make the dude half a deadly tailor instead of a barber.” Yes, this is a game where you run a dual business as a murderous married couple – the husband acting as a tailor who kills customers who come in to be “measured” and dumps them down the trap door into the kitchen, where the wife grinds up the corpses into pies and sausages for their little cafe. They also actually sell clothes made from the scavenged outfits of their victims. You, as the player, can only control one at a time, so you have to bounce back and forth between them to get a good workflow going and keep customers happy by having clothes and food to sell out before they get impatient and leave. Kevin had a bit of trouble at the beginning as it was much easier for him to focus on the dude committing his murders over the woman actually cooking up the flesh (her tasks generally take longer), and he suffered his fair share of angry customers, but eventually – with the help of a few kitchen upgrades – he was able to establish a good rhythm, get the attention of a connoisseur cannibal in the city, and turn his tailor guy into a spooky scary skeleton (yes, this is a real character skin you can purchase for him). He even ended on a song to make it even more like Sweeney Todd. Perfect Kevin cooking game, is what I’m saying! XD
C) And then we had GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! We started with the Holy Bottle Flip today (including two Holy Pockets, a Holy Hot Pocket, and a Holy Trash Can – and a Trash Can’t; Gray got them all), then moved onto Pogo Man committing a bank robbery (including a code to unlock the vault and dragon treasure at the end); a ball throw with a couple of ways to die and a jet fall underneath (which came in handy when the “death” option glitched out and freed Nixon, allowing Gray to cheat-win through dropping him through the unleashed jet fall); Nixon going through a “Don’t Move” board (that severed his leg and gave it to Tom Hardy); an impossible pogo board where a mixture of harpoons and yeeters would mulch you (unless you’re Gray, who knows how to position himself so that the mulching isn’t immediately fatal and he hits the win still alive); an isosceles triangle fall (where Nixon survived right until he hit the win and severed his spine); a baby throw though the spikes (Mom nearly threw HERSELF in as well, but Baby Chaddicus got the coin); a hell harpoon run with Hobo In A Wheelchair needing to fly over ALL the harpoons (to the point where, about halfway through, the game freezes as its trying to fire so many harpoons from one gun – unless you find a way to fly above the majority of the board and never see it); and a Pogo Adventure featuring a heavily-mined win in the pink void, a Pit of Despair, a moving Stairway To More Despair, two Iron “Golum” fists ready to smash you to bits, and a steep slide where you had to jump at JUST the right moment to make it through the thumbnail hole of spikes to the win (also a pity win if you fall down in the wrong spot – took Gray ages just to make it to that, never mind the real win and all its pineapples). As usual, the community proves to be a bastion of ridiculousness and I love it. :P
D) Then, this evening, took a quick trip over to Simmer Erin for her latest – “WILD "HONEST" REVIEWS OF SIMS 4!” Just a fun video where she looks a variety of reviews of the game over the years, from very positive (someone praising the Sims for being more “realistic,” which Erin was like “I have never heard that before???”) to very negative (someone claiming the game sucked the life from them). It was pretty amusing to see what people said about the game (someone claiming to be a nine-year-old screaming the game was ageist as child Sims couldn’t skip a grade or cook – obviously before the “cook together” update; another complaining about skintones (fair) and all the “fantasy crap” (hey, some of us like that); console players being like “we want to like the game but it buggy”). Personally, as someone who EA would probably see as the ideal Sims 4 player (play for short bursts once or twice a week, focus on Young Adult Sims of my favorite characters, has bought plenty of DLC), I’m still having fun with the game, but you all know I’m slowly falling down the mod rabbit hole, soooo. . . We’ll see where things go from here!
E) And, finally, we had good old Jon and “My First Fallout Playthroughs - The Many Mistakes Of Young Jon!” Yeah, turns out he had an idea for another quick one-off this week, inspired by finding his old XBox 360 and wondering if some of his earliest saves of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas were still stored on the hard drive. Turns out, they were! So say hello to the two Arias (Jon’s go-to name for his characters in RPGs at the time), two of Jon’s earliest characters in these games –
FO3 Aria – We only have one save for her, save 36. Jon doesn’t think she’s his FIRST character, but his second (he recalls being really frustrated with the game when he first started playing because he didn’t understand all the mechanics, and thinks he probably deleted his original starting character during an uninstall). Aria was found hiding from a Deathclaw that kept getting randomly flung into space because physics is a thing Bethesda believes happens to other games. She was apparently hyper-focused on completing the main quest, though she did disarm Megaton’s bomb and do some studies for Moira for the Wasteland Survival Guide. At the time Jon found her, she was supposed to be going to Little Lamplight, but had for some reason gone to the north to start poking at “The Pitt” DLC, but backed out quickly. None of the other DLC was attempted. She had a decent loadout of guns and a decent-enough build, though some weird skill distributions (VERY focused on either 0s or 5s at the end of the skill points) and a couple of bad perks (Jon disdained “Daddy’s Girl” giving her free skill points – apparently you get enough just by playing – and “Strong Back” – inventory management!). Jon thinks she was abandoned possibly because of the bouncy Deathclaw – his younger self wrongly thinking the game was broken and he needed to make a new save. Poor Moira – she never got her mole rat data.
F:NV Aria – We have three saves for this Aria, and Jon is quite certain that she’s his first character given how early one of the saves is (save 21!). Though one save is an absurdly high number, sandwiched between a save from Evil Jon in the “Kill Everything” run, and regular Jon in the “Kill Nobody” run – Jon thinks he must have used the save to get some footage for something at some point and then resaved over it, meaning the numbering got messed up (apparently in these games, at least on the 360, every save number goes up by one no matter the actual file you’re using – if you’ve saved twice on one character, then start a new one, the new one’s first save is save #3). Anyway, the first save we had for this Aria was her at Level 15 – she was traveling with Boone, and according to her quest logs, she’d been doing largely NCR missions, along with settling Boone’s personal quests. Hadn’t even gotten to Benny, was doing her best to be a good person liked by all. Aw. Second save at level 34 –
FUCKING MASSACRE IN A CASINO. Yes, apparently a switch flipped in Aria’s brain and she just went through an entire casino and PUNCHED EVERYONE except ONE gambler (whom Jon said was actually a dick) to death with a super-heated power fist. Jon was like “What the FLIP was I thinking?? Young Jon, did you need therapy?”
And finally we had the third save at Level 38, which had Aria crouched outside the exit to Honest Hearts, having just completed that DLC. Looking at her quest log, Jon determined that she’d done almost every side quest possible before actually doing anything with Benny, then played all factions against each other – before becoming paralyzed with indecision over who to side with, as they ALL liked her. Along the way, she ran away to Old World Blues and did that DLC to death, picking up pretty much every perk and the fancy stealth suit and resolving it peacefully, then did the casino massacre (according to the quest logs, to deprive the sole survivor of employment there, which – killing HIM would have worked better, I think, in that case?), then ran away again to Honest Hearts where she sided with Daniel. Again, fairly decent build, though Jon noted with some amusement that he boosted Perception to the max with this character under the impression it would help with her VATS-based build – apparently it does NOT (Perception only became good in Fallout 4, if I recall his previous videos correctly). Also she had WAAAAY too many guns, thus necessitating the “Strong Back” perk again (look, Jon, some of us have a LOT of stuff we’re carrying – including stuff added by mods. The main reason I want it is because all of Victor’s camping equipment be heavy!)
So yeah – one main-story-focused Aria who was seemingly abandoned because Young Jon didn’t realize that glitches were the name of the game; one everything-but-main-story Aria who was abandoned because Young Jon couldn’t make a choice. An interesting look back into Jon’s gaming history! :)
3. Play Fallout 4 and find that darn statehouse with Piper: I guess I have to call this a half-check, as I played FO4, but I most certainly did not find that statehouse. What happened is, I booted up the game, then attempted to reorient myself as to the best way to go to be on the track to Goodneighbor (as a) the statehouse I want to visit is on the way there, and b) I do want to go to Goodneighbor before actually saving Nick, because I want to do the traumatic Memory Den thing). Went down a side street toward a little plaza with a big tower in the middle of it – and found one Parker Quinn! The con artist who tries to sell you a post-apocalyptic “charge card.” Victor, being a bastion of politeness, told him he’d “think about it” before moving on. I went over to the little sitting area around the tower –
And heard beeping. Baffled, I got down into a crouch and started looking around. No immediate enemies that I could see, and Piper wasn’t reacting to anything. . .
And then I spotted it. Right in front of me.
A MINED-UP SQUIRREL.
Well, fortunately Victor was able to explode it before it exploded HIM, but what the fuck?! Commonwealth Squirrels, this was not on the menu! XD With the squirrel exploded, Victor and Piper proceeded up to the plaza, where I discovered there was a super mutant camp relatively close –
And a raider camp a HELL OF A LOT CLOSER. As in right on the other side of the damn tower. Victor and Piper actually managed to successfully kill a few of the raiders, but then a damn Legendary Mutant Hound joined the mix, and yeah – one dead Victor. Whoops.
Okay, so, have determined THAT way is not good to go! I saved right before blasting the mine squirrel, so I did that again, got the meat, then had Victor and Piper turn around and go back the way they came, before heading down another side street. This one brought them to a factory – curious, I went over to investigate and found it was the Gwinnet Main Brewery. Decided there was no harm in investigating and poked Victor’s head in –
Mirelurks. Fortunately on the other side of a locked door. Victor raided the lobby (unlocking a locker that had nothing in it just for XP and Piper Affinity Points), checked the main terminal – then I figured “you know, I have mines, and this is a good chokepoint” and set a couple up before having Victor unlock the main doors, get a mirelurk’s attention, then scramble back and wait.
Trap worked well on ONE mirelurk – I didn’t get a chance to throw out more before its buddy showed up. Fortunately, that one was a softshell, and Victor and Piper were able to easily kill it. They headed onto the main brewery floor, which proved to be a whole NESTING ground for these little assholes. My initial attempt to kill some of the more obvious nests by throwing some mines around and then luring the hatchlings into said mines just ended in Victor getting blown up, so he instead sniped off what eggs he could, took out any hatchlings that survived the cracking, and killed the remaining two mirelurks on the flooded ground floor. From there it was Pipe Parkour Time to get up to the upper office (where he picked up a “Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor” magazine for better vendor prices and a bunch of ammo), then up to the rooftop door –
Where the super mutants in the restaurant just across the way started taking notice. Once Victor got a bead on them, he was able to snipe them off pretty efficiently, and he and Piper were able to explore the roof, locating a nice hunting rifle in the process. Victor used it to take care of a mirelurk skittering around the foundations below, then sniped off some more super mutants –
And that triggered Piper’s first affinity talk! :) Which might have been more touching if a) something hadn’t exploded midway through the conversation, and b) Victor hadn’t been struck by a sudden need to use the toilet shortly thereafter. But he and Piper had a nice chat about the value of the truth and how she got into the paper business thanks to the death of her dad and taking down the corrupt captain who killed him, and THEN Victor used his port-a-potty.
And then PIPER used it! O.O I didn’t know this was a thing! I knew NPCs could use the bathroom stuff you built in your SETTLEMENTS, but the portable one – this was new! Huh. . .well, anyway, once that was all sorted, Victor hopped off the roof and went back again toward the police station to reorient. He spent some time exploring the various shacks and whatnot by the water – and then, taking on some bloodbugs feeding on a Brahmin, leveled up! :) After going over my options, I elected to shove Strength up a point, for more carry capacity and to get him one step closer to the “Strong Back” perk and clothes being suddenly a lot lighter thanks to my mods. :P He ended up camping in that general area, cooking up loads of food before dragging himself to bed at 10:25 PM. Productive day, I suppose – especially when it comes to companion affinity and suchlike – but I REALLY gotta make getting to the Commons and the statehouse a priority! Poor lost Victor, I put him through so much. . .
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – spent some time this evening after supper and showering catching up on tags on Victor Luvs Alice and drafting the Chill Save update of the week – Smiler Always completing Prank Day over at Britechester before joining the Bot Savants and spending some time at the bar with their fellow Spirit Squad members. Nice easy three-poster for this upcoming Wednesday! And two ask replies tonight for Valice Multiverse, so that’s all set too, yay.
5. Get in a workout: Yeah, no check – I started my YouTube videos later than expected thanks to all my write-ups on my Fallout 4 session of the day, meaning I never got down to the basement. *shrug* Tomorrow!
*nods* Four out of five items, and we already knew the fifth was a "maybe," so yeah. Not too shabby. :p And now it is time to turn in again and get ready for another week at work -- at least this one's shorter than normal for me! . . .did I mention I took Friday off here? No clue. Well, I did, so yeah. Three-day weekend coming up, and hopefully parents are in a better mood during it. *shrug* Night all!
Anyway, despite the bad vibes on the other side of my bedroom door, I got a good chunk of stuff done:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – got that done after my playthrough below, natch. Victor and Piper ended up spending most of the day clearing out the old Gwinnet Main Brewery of Mirelurks, and Victor’s dedication to destroying monsters to keep the Commonwealth safe has prompted Piper to tell him about her father and her own decision to start up a newspaper to keep people informed. They may not be anywhere near their ultimate goal right at the minute, but at least they’re developing a firm friendship! :)
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, OXtra Show of the Weekend, and Jon's Fallout Sunday video: Check on all these – and even got in a little extra bonus!
A) Started this afternoon with the latest OXtra Show of the Weekend, as the title intrigued me: “5-Second Videogame Pictionary Head-to-Head!” Though I’m not sure how accurate said title was, as there was no guessing involved – instead, it was a straight-up art competition between Luke and Ellen, with Producer Jon calling out various video game characters for them to draw in five seconds and then judging the results. This produced some – interesting pictures, as you might imagine. XD The characters were – Pac-Man (Ellen, for being more game-accurate (Luke went with the box art/arcade machine Pac with arms and legs)), a Fall Guy (Luke), Astro (Ellen, and I have no idea what game this little robot is from), Tom Nook (Luke despite CLEARLY drawing something with a BEAK), Spider-Man (Luke), Toad (from Super Mario) (Luke), Jigglypuff (Ellen), E. Honda from Street Fighter (Luke), Crewmate from Among Us (Luke – Ellen foolishly drew an Impostor), Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII (Ellen, having gone for the more modern take), Donald Duck from Kingdom Hearts (Luke), Link specifically from Link’s Awakening, aka their “BOB” character (draw! Jon couldn’t decide), Sans (Ellen), Samus Aran (Ellen – she got a passing Mike’s help, and he said her visor looked more correct and that Luke’s could easily just be Doom Guy), and specifically E. T. from the Atari game (Ellen, with Luke admitting his hatred of E. T. gave him a disadvantage). This actually resulted in a 7-7 tie, so Jon set a tiebreaker – and of course, it was Pikachu. XD As usual, the two drew the world’s most famous Pokemon wrong in the usual ways, but Ellen’s cuter Pika-face won her the day. XD And then, to end the show, they drew five-second drawings of each other, which resulted in some sort of crown-wearing dude and a girl with a snake on her head. XD To be fair, Luke DOES have weird sticky-up hair, and Ellen DOES have a super-long ponytail these days. . .
B) Then it was over to Call Me Kevin and Ravenous Devils – AKA “we wanted to make a Sweeney Todd game but decided to make the dude half a deadly tailor instead of a barber.” Yes, this is a game where you run a dual business as a murderous married couple – the husband acting as a tailor who kills customers who come in to be “measured” and dumps them down the trap door into the kitchen, where the wife grinds up the corpses into pies and sausages for their little cafe. They also actually sell clothes made from the scavenged outfits of their victims. You, as the player, can only control one at a time, so you have to bounce back and forth between them to get a good workflow going and keep customers happy by having clothes and food to sell out before they get impatient and leave. Kevin had a bit of trouble at the beginning as it was much easier for him to focus on the dude committing his murders over the woman actually cooking up the flesh (her tasks generally take longer), and he suffered his fair share of angry customers, but eventually – with the help of a few kitchen upgrades – he was able to establish a good rhythm, get the attention of a connoisseur cannibal in the city, and turn his tailor guy into a spooky scary skeleton (yes, this is a real character skin you can purchase for him). He even ended on a song to make it even more like Sweeney Todd. Perfect Kevin cooking game, is what I’m saying! XD
C) And then we had GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! We started with the Holy Bottle Flip today (including two Holy Pockets, a Holy Hot Pocket, and a Holy Trash Can – and a Trash Can’t; Gray got them all), then moved onto Pogo Man committing a bank robbery (including a code to unlock the vault and dragon treasure at the end); a ball throw with a couple of ways to die and a jet fall underneath (which came in handy when the “death” option glitched out and freed Nixon, allowing Gray to cheat-win through dropping him through the unleashed jet fall); Nixon going through a “Don’t Move” board (that severed his leg and gave it to Tom Hardy); an impossible pogo board where a mixture of harpoons and yeeters would mulch you (unless you’re Gray, who knows how to position himself so that the mulching isn’t immediately fatal and he hits the win still alive); an isosceles triangle fall (where Nixon survived right until he hit the win and severed his spine); a baby throw though the spikes (Mom nearly threw HERSELF in as well, but Baby Chaddicus got the coin); a hell harpoon run with Hobo In A Wheelchair needing to fly over ALL the harpoons (to the point where, about halfway through, the game freezes as its trying to fire so many harpoons from one gun – unless you find a way to fly above the majority of the board and never see it); and a Pogo Adventure featuring a heavily-mined win in the pink void, a Pit of Despair, a moving Stairway To More Despair, two Iron “Golum” fists ready to smash you to bits, and a steep slide where you had to jump at JUST the right moment to make it through the thumbnail hole of spikes to the win (also a pity win if you fall down in the wrong spot – took Gray ages just to make it to that, never mind the real win and all its pineapples). As usual, the community proves to be a bastion of ridiculousness and I love it. :P
D) Then, this evening, took a quick trip over to Simmer Erin for her latest – “WILD "HONEST" REVIEWS OF SIMS 4!” Just a fun video where she looks a variety of reviews of the game over the years, from very positive (someone praising the Sims for being more “realistic,” which Erin was like “I have never heard that before???”) to very negative (someone claiming the game sucked the life from them). It was pretty amusing to see what people said about the game (someone claiming to be a nine-year-old screaming the game was ageist as child Sims couldn’t skip a grade or cook – obviously before the “cook together” update; another complaining about skintones (fair) and all the “fantasy crap” (hey, some of us like that); console players being like “we want to like the game but it buggy”). Personally, as someone who EA would probably see as the ideal Sims 4 player (play for short bursts once or twice a week, focus on Young Adult Sims of my favorite characters, has bought plenty of DLC), I’m still having fun with the game, but you all know I’m slowly falling down the mod rabbit hole, soooo. . . We’ll see where things go from here!
E) And, finally, we had good old Jon and “My First Fallout Playthroughs - The Many Mistakes Of Young Jon!” Yeah, turns out he had an idea for another quick one-off this week, inspired by finding his old XBox 360 and wondering if some of his earliest saves of Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas were still stored on the hard drive. Turns out, they were! So say hello to the two Arias (Jon’s go-to name for his characters in RPGs at the time), two of Jon’s earliest characters in these games –
FO3 Aria – We only have one save for her, save 36. Jon doesn’t think she’s his FIRST character, but his second (he recalls being really frustrated with the game when he first started playing because he didn’t understand all the mechanics, and thinks he probably deleted his original starting character during an uninstall). Aria was found hiding from a Deathclaw that kept getting randomly flung into space because physics is a thing Bethesda believes happens to other games. She was apparently hyper-focused on completing the main quest, though she did disarm Megaton’s bomb and do some studies for Moira for the Wasteland Survival Guide. At the time Jon found her, she was supposed to be going to Little Lamplight, but had for some reason gone to the north to start poking at “The Pitt” DLC, but backed out quickly. None of the other DLC was attempted. She had a decent loadout of guns and a decent-enough build, though some weird skill distributions (VERY focused on either 0s or 5s at the end of the skill points) and a couple of bad perks (Jon disdained “Daddy’s Girl” giving her free skill points – apparently you get enough just by playing – and “Strong Back” – inventory management!). Jon thinks she was abandoned possibly because of the bouncy Deathclaw – his younger self wrongly thinking the game was broken and he needed to make a new save. Poor Moira – she never got her mole rat data.
F:NV Aria – We have three saves for this Aria, and Jon is quite certain that she’s his first character given how early one of the saves is (save 21!). Though one save is an absurdly high number, sandwiched between a save from Evil Jon in the “Kill Everything” run, and regular Jon in the “Kill Nobody” run – Jon thinks he must have used the save to get some footage for something at some point and then resaved over it, meaning the numbering got messed up (apparently in these games, at least on the 360, every save number goes up by one no matter the actual file you’re using – if you’ve saved twice on one character, then start a new one, the new one’s first save is save #3). Anyway, the first save we had for this Aria was her at Level 15 – she was traveling with Boone, and according to her quest logs, she’d been doing largely NCR missions, along with settling Boone’s personal quests. Hadn’t even gotten to Benny, was doing her best to be a good person liked by all. Aw. Second save at level 34 –
FUCKING MASSACRE IN A CASINO. Yes, apparently a switch flipped in Aria’s brain and she just went through an entire casino and PUNCHED EVERYONE except ONE gambler (whom Jon said was actually a dick) to death with a super-heated power fist. Jon was like “What the FLIP was I thinking?? Young Jon, did you need therapy?”
And finally we had the third save at Level 38, which had Aria crouched outside the exit to Honest Hearts, having just completed that DLC. Looking at her quest log, Jon determined that she’d done almost every side quest possible before actually doing anything with Benny, then played all factions against each other – before becoming paralyzed with indecision over who to side with, as they ALL liked her. Along the way, she ran away to Old World Blues and did that DLC to death, picking up pretty much every perk and the fancy stealth suit and resolving it peacefully, then did the casino massacre (according to the quest logs, to deprive the sole survivor of employment there, which – killing HIM would have worked better, I think, in that case?), then ran away again to Honest Hearts where she sided with Daniel. Again, fairly decent build, though Jon noted with some amusement that he boosted Perception to the max with this character under the impression it would help with her VATS-based build – apparently it does NOT (Perception only became good in Fallout 4, if I recall his previous videos correctly). Also she had WAAAAY too many guns, thus necessitating the “Strong Back” perk again (look, Jon, some of us have a LOT of stuff we’re carrying – including stuff added by mods. The main reason I want it is because all of Victor’s camping equipment be heavy!)
So yeah – one main-story-focused Aria who was seemingly abandoned because Young Jon didn’t realize that glitches were the name of the game; one everything-but-main-story Aria who was abandoned because Young Jon couldn’t make a choice. An interesting look back into Jon’s gaming history! :)
3. Play Fallout 4 and find that darn statehouse with Piper: I guess I have to call this a half-check, as I played FO4, but I most certainly did not find that statehouse. What happened is, I booted up the game, then attempted to reorient myself as to the best way to go to be on the track to Goodneighbor (as a) the statehouse I want to visit is on the way there, and b) I do want to go to Goodneighbor before actually saving Nick, because I want to do the traumatic Memory Den thing). Went down a side street toward a little plaza with a big tower in the middle of it – and found one Parker Quinn! The con artist who tries to sell you a post-apocalyptic “charge card.” Victor, being a bastion of politeness, told him he’d “think about it” before moving on. I went over to the little sitting area around the tower –
And heard beeping. Baffled, I got down into a crouch and started looking around. No immediate enemies that I could see, and Piper wasn’t reacting to anything. . .
And then I spotted it. Right in front of me.
A MINED-UP SQUIRREL.
Well, fortunately Victor was able to explode it before it exploded HIM, but what the fuck?! Commonwealth Squirrels, this was not on the menu! XD With the squirrel exploded, Victor and Piper proceeded up to the plaza, where I discovered there was a super mutant camp relatively close –
And a raider camp a HELL OF A LOT CLOSER. As in right on the other side of the damn tower. Victor and Piper actually managed to successfully kill a few of the raiders, but then a damn Legendary Mutant Hound joined the mix, and yeah – one dead Victor. Whoops.
Okay, so, have determined THAT way is not good to go! I saved right before blasting the mine squirrel, so I did that again, got the meat, then had Victor and Piper turn around and go back the way they came, before heading down another side street. This one brought them to a factory – curious, I went over to investigate and found it was the Gwinnet Main Brewery. Decided there was no harm in investigating and poked Victor’s head in –
Mirelurks. Fortunately on the other side of a locked door. Victor raided the lobby (unlocking a locker that had nothing in it just for XP and Piper Affinity Points), checked the main terminal – then I figured “you know, I have mines, and this is a good chokepoint” and set a couple up before having Victor unlock the main doors, get a mirelurk’s attention, then scramble back and wait.
Trap worked well on ONE mirelurk – I didn’t get a chance to throw out more before its buddy showed up. Fortunately, that one was a softshell, and Victor and Piper were able to easily kill it. They headed onto the main brewery floor, which proved to be a whole NESTING ground for these little assholes. My initial attempt to kill some of the more obvious nests by throwing some mines around and then luring the hatchlings into said mines just ended in Victor getting blown up, so he instead sniped off what eggs he could, took out any hatchlings that survived the cracking, and killed the remaining two mirelurks on the flooded ground floor. From there it was Pipe Parkour Time to get up to the upper office (where he picked up a “Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor” magazine for better vendor prices and a bunch of ammo), then up to the rooftop door –
Where the super mutants in the restaurant just across the way started taking notice. Once Victor got a bead on them, he was able to snipe them off pretty efficiently, and he and Piper were able to explore the roof, locating a nice hunting rifle in the process. Victor used it to take care of a mirelurk skittering around the foundations below, then sniped off some more super mutants –
And that triggered Piper’s first affinity talk! :) Which might have been more touching if a) something hadn’t exploded midway through the conversation, and b) Victor hadn’t been struck by a sudden need to use the toilet shortly thereafter. But he and Piper had a nice chat about the value of the truth and how she got into the paper business thanks to the death of her dad and taking down the corrupt captain who killed him, and THEN Victor used his port-a-potty.
And then PIPER used it! O.O I didn’t know this was a thing! I knew NPCs could use the bathroom stuff you built in your SETTLEMENTS, but the portable one – this was new! Huh. . .well, anyway, once that was all sorted, Victor hopped off the roof and went back again toward the police station to reorient. He spent some time exploring the various shacks and whatnot by the water – and then, taking on some bloodbugs feeding on a Brahmin, leveled up! :) After going over my options, I elected to shove Strength up a point, for more carry capacity and to get him one step closer to the “Strong Back” perk and clothes being suddenly a lot lighter thanks to my mods. :P He ended up camping in that general area, cooking up loads of food before dragging himself to bed at 10:25 PM. Productive day, I suppose – especially when it comes to companion affinity and suchlike – but I REALLY gotta make getting to the Commons and the statehouse a priority! Poor lost Victor, I put him through so much. . .
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – spent some time this evening after supper and showering catching up on tags on Victor Luvs Alice and drafting the Chill Save update of the week – Smiler Always completing Prank Day over at Britechester before joining the Bot Savants and spending some time at the bar with their fellow Spirit Squad members. Nice easy three-poster for this upcoming Wednesday! And two ask replies tonight for Valice Multiverse, so that’s all set too, yay.
5. Get in a workout: Yeah, no check – I started my YouTube videos later than expected thanks to all my write-ups on my Fallout 4 session of the day, meaning I never got down to the basement. *shrug* Tomorrow!
*nods* Four out of five items, and we already knew the fifth was a "maybe," so yeah. Not too shabby. :p And now it is time to turn in again and get ready for another week at work -- at least this one's shorter than normal for me! . . .did I mention I took Friday off here? No clue. Well, I did, so yeah. Three-day weekend coming up, and hopefully parents are in a better mood during it. *shrug* Night all!
