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Bad Time Management Sunday Returns
May. 22nd, 2022 11:29 pmAKA I have GOT to get back into the habit of watching some of my YouTube videos for the day EARLIER -- you'll see below:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – took a little futzing, but I completed it not long after my play session (and beanbags; see below). As stated in Item 3, I have decided that Alice was in fact in the state house’s storage room with all the paintings and artifacts Provisional Governor Graham was hiding from the people who despised his ass – while writing, I further decided that she was hiding there because whoever was in charge of Boston at the time – Camarilla or Anarchs; my money’s on the former – found out about her presence, saw her as a threat, and tried to kill her – she hid in the basement both to avoid her pursuers and the sun, decided the storeroom with all the treasures should DEFINITELY be safe for a day, and disguised herself by hiding under some mannequin clothes and paintings. When the bombs hit and the building partially collapsed, one of the picture frames broke and stabbed her in the heart – and, thanks to the mirelurks taking over the building/a trapped eldritch god having a distinct interest in keeping her alive, no one disturbed her until a raider looking for treasure made it down there at the same time as Victor and Piper fell into the basement, and he yanked out the broken chunk of wood to use as a weapon. This means I need to SEVERELY edit my original “first meetings” idea (which had them meet Alice in a spot that was primarily raider-populated and above the basement), but hey – fighting a Legendary Razorclaw Mirelurk together instead of some raiders is also a good way to quickly bond! XD Not to mention, they still need to figure out how to handle the Mirelurk Queen down there. . .
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, OXBoxtra lists, and Jon's FO4: Point Lookout video: Four-fifth’s check – due to needing longer than expected to answer the weekly FF.net PM (see below), I didn’t have time to get all five videos in – and as I dropped Gray last time this happened, I chose to drop Call Me Kevin today. So long as he doesn’t surprise me with another sponsored video tomorrow, it’ll be fine. :p But I did get to all the others –
A) Started with those two OXBoxtra lists in the Watch Later:
I. “7 Laughably Easy Achievements You Got Just for Starting the Game” from OXtra – where just pressing “start” causes the game to give you a trophy, or achievement, or whatever they’re called on the platform you’re playing on. These range from The Simpsons Game giving you a silly “Press START To Play” achievement (called the easiest ever), to Double Dragon Neon being mean by giving you a 1G “Skullmaggedeon!” trophy to unbalance your gamer score, with your only recourse being to play through the game and get the 19G achievement at the end, to Kingdom Hearts III giving you a trophy for “A New Journey” a half-hour into the game (after a plot recap and some tutorial stuff) – which Ellen says still counts because that first half-hour is TECHNICALLY, according to the titles, Kingdom Hearts II.9. Because Kingdom Hearts, everybody. XD Someone needs to have a talk with them about numbering.
II. “7 Bosses That Were Immediately Killed by a Much Scarier Boss: Commenter’s Edition” from OXBox – more bosses that were instantly replaced by the even scarier boss you’re actually MEANT to fight. A random slightly-fancier mook shows up behind a fog gate in Demon’s Souls? Sike, he’s just there to show you why the Penetrator has that name. Think Conker from Conker’s Bad Fur Day will battle the Panther King who wants him as a replacement leg for his table – especially after the guy has his girlfriend killed? Nope, turns out a chestburster got to him first, and your actual fight is a Xenomorph. Worried about going up against tentacle monster Zenobia the Butcher in Final Fantasy XIII? Don’t worry, she’s taken out by a Tonberry – OH FUCK SHE WAS TAKEN OUT BY A TONBERRY RUN! (If you’re wondering – fish-lizard creature with a lantern and a knife that somehow ONE HIT KILLS people.) Yeah, sometimes, the boss gods are not kind.
B) Then it was over to the Subs, where GrayStillPlays had some more Happy Wheels! We started with the usual baffling bottle flip (with Gray getting things like the Lesser Yeet, the Infinite Yeet, and the 99.99% Yeet on top of a ball), then moved onto a coin grab (where Gray got killed by tennis balls early on but still won); an extremely long bottle run (with spikes at the end so that if you didn’t let go or slow down at JUST the right time, you dead); an extreme table race with three levels equaling three chances to get minced (it wasn’t until Gray managed to rig it so there was only one other competitor who made it to the end of the first “lane” that he managed to survive until the end); an extreme jet run (with many angry jets); a “survive all this shit falling on you box” with Pogo Man (hug the left wall and you might just do it!); a bike ride through crossbows, mines, and other pain with Bike Dad (the usual nonsense he deals with when out on a ride); the world’s hardest pogo fight in the Colosseum (mines! shit raining down from the ceiling! So many weapons to get stabbed with! A second, even harder bit with more explosives! Gray nearly completed it upside-down with no legs before getting blown up!); and a run through Paradise Lane with Dyan’s weird jet scooter thing and Nixon (bouncing off clouds and getting yeeted by seesaws – checks out). Good times!
C) And finally, we had Jon doing another episode of his spontaneous FO4: Point Lookout miniseries, checking out more of this incredible mod! Jon made his way through three main missions today:
Desmond’s Fight Against The Tribals – Desmond being a ghoul who lives on the island, and who I believe gives you the mission to get him the evil Ug-Qualtoth book lying around out here. But first you gotta help him against the tribals living on the island, who are currently storming his mansion and causing trouble with their level 46 selves. Jon was DEEPLY impressed with the voice acting on Desmond, who apparently has one of the most unique voices in the franchise, but wasn’t too fond of how tough those damn tribals were – not even crits were taking down the harder ones! Though he did get a level-up that allowed him to take another rank of “Lone Wanderer” for an extra damage increase about midway through. Also, his trip to the basement of the building via falling through a collapsing floor got bugged and didn’t trigger properly, sadly – apparently it HAS worked for others and looks awesome. Good to know! Either way, it was a pretty awesome set piece – I like the mansion with all its security cameras and whatnot, and Desmond and his dogs are pretty badass – and Jon acquitted himself pretty well in the end. And even got a Legendary, with a Wounding FO3-style Sniper Rifle! Cool. :D
The Search For More Bio-Gas – Jon decided to finish up the mini-mission regarding finding all the corpses of the soil sample research team because he likes the bio-gas grenades (you toss them, then shoot them to ignite the gas cloud they emit) a lot more here than he did in the original game (FO3 has grenades as a separate weapon type, not a sub-weapon assigned to a specific button, so it was hard to do the swaps necessary to properly ignite them). This involved going to the other two soil sample sites (taking out a few locals along the way, because the stealth armor is not always as stealthy as you’d like), then hitting up the research ship Ozymandias for the final reward and the revelation that I guess the gas is a lot more deadly than you might think? I don’t know the original story, but it looks like the gas was responsible for some mass graves, and that mean the person blowing the whistle on the operation had to be eliminated. Typical Fallout-series “corrupt corporations and government” stuff.
Oh, and side trip around here – Jon made a point of swinging by a particular crashed plane in the area, which has a mini-horror story all of its own thanks to the plane’s still-working black box recording. Basically, the poor bastard was in the air when the nukes hit, was baffled to find air control suddenly silent, made an emergency landing in the swamp – and ended up swarmed and murdered by the locals while trying to fix his plane, because the people here were a bit ax-murdery even BEFORE the damn apocalypse. Jon calls it one of the most effective bits of micro-horror in the DLC.
The Hallucination Sequence That I Swear Must Have Informed The Fog Mother One in Far Harbor – the second half of the main missions, which involved Jon taking his character to the church of the Tribals, and being told he had to go seek out the Mother Punga Tree and gather its seeds to be allowed into its sacred halls. This meant that Jon had to go into a swamp, kill a bunch of relatively-tough mirelurks, make his way to the world’s creepiest tree, gather some seeds, get gassed – and then go through a pretty EPIC hallucination sequence as his character implicitly got BRAIN SURGERY in the damn background. O.o No, seriously – some of the hallucinations are of saws and needles and threads, and you wake up back at the church with a bald head and a scar on your scalp. O.O The rest of the hallucination is pretty creepy too – fake enemies; off-brand “Schmault-Tec” bobbleheads claiming you’re stupid for walking into a trap, and that your life is not blessed, and things like that; little Nuka-Cola bombs to frighten you as you go along –
And a few changed sequences, because the modders are nothing but not thorough. Where the protagonist of FO3 would have found their dead mother on her birthing table, the protagonist of FO4 finds their dead spouse’s cryopod! Where the FO3 protag would have seen their friends floating dead in the water of the swamp, FO4’s protag sees the various faction leaders (Father, Elder Maxson, Desdemona, and Preston Garvey – whom Jon discovered had floating physics and decided to take with him by shooting the corpse repeatedly)! The giant bomb from the city of Megaton is unchanged, but as people noted, that still makes sense from a thematic point of view, as the bombs being launched is what destroyed the FO4’s protag’s old life – and they thought to put Kellogg next to it too, for an extra kick in the pants. Basically, the modders made sure this sequence fit into the FO4 universe, which is a nice attention to detail. :)
. . .on the other hand, it looks like they didn’t recall to code what happens to the full-body Chinese Stealth Armor when your character is forced to have a custom bald, scarred head, so when Jon put that back on after his adventures, his character suddenly had no head. Whoops. The tribals don’t seem to mind, though. XD But yeah, it’s been a very fun adventure so far, even without me knowing much about the DLC – I’m looking forward to what Jon thinks will be the final episode next week!
3. Play Fallout 4 and continue clearing out the Statehouse: Check, though I actually ended up removing some of my progress by the end. . .here’s what happened – Victor and Piper had gotten up early and were on the move to explore some more of the upper levels of the State House (as the game calls it). They successfully worked their way around the corpse of the mirelurk Victor killed the other day and avoided catching any raider attention as they went through the hallway – just to find another ramp on the other side, leading down again, with a few hatchlings around. Piper killed them before Victor could, then led the way down the ramp as I looked around for good Alice staking spots. The ramp led back to the second floor, which took us to The Big Pit in the middle. Victor managed to go in a complete circle around The Big Pit as I continued to look for other places to go –
And then Piper fell down into said Pit. Welp, looks like were going down. I had Victor carefully make his way into the giant basement puddle she’d fallen into to join her and make sure she was okay –
CUE THE KILLER LOBSTER! One hunter and a bunch of hatchlings popped up, and Victor did NOT have a good time of it! It’s a very good thing I’ve got a healthy supply of stimpacks for him, that’s for sure! O.O And a companion to take the heat off him, because without Piper doing a little bit of damage herself and distracting it, I’m pretty sure Victor would have died there. Yikes.
Anyway, once that was done, I explored the big puddle room – mostly mud and brick and whatnot – checked out the locked double doors, noted that there was a Legendary Raider around here SOMEWHERE, and then found the exit – a big basement full of paintings, mannequins, other sundries – and rads. Loads of rad barrels. I had Victor pop a Rad-X and head inside –
And to no one’s surprise, there were more mirelurks! Though to everyone’s surprise, ONE OF THEM WAS A LEGENDARY RAZORCLAW. Victor took care of the other, a softshell, without too much trouble, and got the damn razorclaw down to half-health/the regeneration stage – but the legendary was relentless, and he ended up dying. Fortunately, I’d saved right before entering the room. . .
And even more fortunately, I had grenades. On take TWO of their adventures in the radiation storage room, Victor was able to blow up the softshell, avoid immediately getting spotted by the razorclaw and get a few potshots on it, then blow that one up too. Hah. The razorclaw yielded a Troubleshooter’s Leather Left Arm (reduces damage from robots by 15% – too bad it’s on lousy armor), and Victor and Piper got out of there, with a brief stop to loot a raider corpse in the area. From there they found the main pipe room, which was smashed up, flooded to hell, and FULL of mirelurk eggs. Victor and Piper were able to take out most of the eggs and the hatchlings there –
But then Victor suddenly and desperately needed to go to the toilet. Damn. I had them rapidly move on, only to discover they were in ANOTHER room with radiation – this one with some busted-down catwalks, rad barrels, a dead raider in a pipe, and a terminal. Fortunately the catwalk in one spot was flat enough for Victor to take a quick poop, but what is with all these rad barrels under the state house?? Anyway, I recognized where I was – the terminal is in fact the one that opens the locked doors on the other side of the initial basement puddle room, AND causes the Mirelurk Queen down there to spawn in. I dropped down a save before opening the doors and waiting. One softshell spawned, which Victor easily took down with his sniper rifle, but no sign of the Queen. “Do I have to drop down?” I thought, and did just that –
YUP. Victor somehow got across the room, but took a gob of acid spit to the face and ended up dying very rapidly from that. Okay, take two, let’s just go full-on sprint this time. . .
I FUCKIN’ MADE IT. VICTOR ACTUALLY MADE IT ACROSS THE ROOM BY LOOPING AROUND THE SIDE WITH THE MOST WALLS AND JUST BOOKING IT. Victor shot past the rad barrels on the other side and into the safe zone past the next set of doors. . .
And that’s when I realized he didn’t have Piper with him. I don’t know if she didn’t follow me down, or if she stayed behind to fight the Queen, but either way, nope – no Piper. Unsure what to do, but not wanting to go back, I explored the other side of the basement, where the raiders were setting up camp – there was a surprise softshell that burst up from beneath the floorboards in one hallway, various mines that Victor was able to disarm and collect, and some ramps up to where the actual raiders were on the back stairs. Victor started going up the stairs, killing all the raiders he could (including the Legendary I had heard before – only had a shitty Punishing Raider Chest Piece, though (reflects 10% of melee damage back on attackers)) – but right near the top, after shooting a turret, he was taken out by some guy with a melee weapon as he managed to cripple Victor’s head (admittedly, Victor had had a ROUGH trip up those stairs, especially thanks to a mine incident that broke both his arms), and I wasn’t able to get Victor to shoot him in time after using his stimpack. *sigh* This sent me back all the way to where I’d saved after sprinting past the Queen. . .
But then I decided “okay, let me see if I can get Piper to come WITH me this time” and reloaded the save BEFORE the Queen spawned, trying to get Piper to follow me. Still no luck (again, I think she may have stayed behind to fight the Queen), and this time Victor took some less-lethal acid to the face before being murdered by floorboards mirelurk and a bunch of spawn. So I reloaded again to before I used the terminal entirely, and instead did some backtracking and thinking. Mainly, about where it would make the most sense for Alice to be in this building. My conclusion?
It’s actually the basement storage room with the paintings and whatnot. I feel like Alice, looking for a place to stay, would consider that spot well-guarded (because Provisional Governor Graham was trying to protect state treasures from looters and rioters), and could wrap herself up in some mannequin clothes and pretend to be a mannequin or something. It was only supposed to be an emergency “shit I’m too far away from my haven to make it back before sunrise gotta improvise” sort of deal, after all. And there’s a raider corpse in there – dude could be still alive in the fanfic verse to unstake Alice! The only trouble is all the rad barrels in the room – but you know what, I have NO IDEA why they’re down there except to make it more dangerous to the player (why the hell would Graham put all those priceless treasures around RADIATION BARRELS, and the raiders couldn’t have put them there, they’re still working on actually RAIDING the place), so you know what? Screw ‘em – in fanfic world, they don’t exist. You can thank me for the savings on Rad-X by coming up with a brilliant plan to kill the Mirelurk Queen, Victor. XD
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – usual weekend morning tumblr catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice, and I found some stuff in the “vtmb,” “alice madness returns,” and “corpse bride” tags to slap into my drafts for later. And then, just after lunch, I did all three posts for the Wednesday Smiler Always Chill Save update of them at GeekCon! So that’s nice and taken care of. :)
What isn’t fully taken care of is Valice Multiverse – because it took me longer than expected to watch Jon’s Point Lookout mod video, I was blindsided when I had two thread replies waiting for me from a suddenly-reactivated partner. I couldn’t get to them in time – all I could do was the much shorter-ask in the inbox. I did make sure to leave her a message that I DID see them and I WILL be getting to them when I can actually write a proper reply!
5. Get in a workout (optional): No check – I marked this optional for a reason, and that reason is heat. Apparently it got up to over 100 in direct sunlight this afternoon! At least, as per our little thermostat thing. . .at any rate, while we finished beanbags early enough this afternoon for me to go down (see below), I just felt too hot and disgusting to actually do it. I mean, I’ll have to get over that once summer REALLY hits, but given this is the first really HOT weekend of the year, I think I can give myself a pass. We’ll start again tomorrow with “Tower Rangers!”
Additionally:
-->As stated in Item 5, we did play beanbags despite the heat – we started around 5 PM, and fortunately it was bearable in the shade (if still freaking humid, ick). Not an even day at all, this one – Dad dominated the first few games, then I came back with some good throws to win the last two. Final scores were me 2-3-3-W-W; Dad W-W-W-2-3; Mom 3-2-2-2-3. Ah well – hopefully the next week will be more conducive to better beanbagging!
-->Answered my FF.net friend Ace’s latest PM – the weekly communication continues! XD Though this took longer than expected too because I had to review their latest fanfic chapter in the bargain. . .becoming increasingly obvious to me what I should have done is dropped the OX lists and just gone with the Subs and Jon for YouTube. Ugh.
Yeah, I've REALLY got to think more about how long any particular activity I'm gonna do is gonna take, because I was running SO behind tonight. . . At least I've got a long weekend coming up to try and reset on a few things. But right now, I've got to try and get some sleep in my ANNOYINGLY hot room. It is just REFUSING to cool off properly in here. >( Night all!
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – took a little futzing, but I completed it not long after my play session (and beanbags; see below). As stated in Item 3, I have decided that Alice was in fact in the state house’s storage room with all the paintings and artifacts Provisional Governor Graham was hiding from the people who despised his ass – while writing, I further decided that she was hiding there because whoever was in charge of Boston at the time – Camarilla or Anarchs; my money’s on the former – found out about her presence, saw her as a threat, and tried to kill her – she hid in the basement both to avoid her pursuers and the sun, decided the storeroom with all the treasures should DEFINITELY be safe for a day, and disguised herself by hiding under some mannequin clothes and paintings. When the bombs hit and the building partially collapsed, one of the picture frames broke and stabbed her in the heart – and, thanks to the mirelurks taking over the building/a trapped eldritch god having a distinct interest in keeping her alive, no one disturbed her until a raider looking for treasure made it down there at the same time as Victor and Piper fell into the basement, and he yanked out the broken chunk of wood to use as a weapon. This means I need to SEVERELY edit my original “first meetings” idea (which had them meet Alice in a spot that was primarily raider-populated and above the basement), but hey – fighting a Legendary Razorclaw Mirelurk together instead of some raiders is also a good way to quickly bond! XD Not to mention, they still need to figure out how to handle the Mirelurk Queen down there. . .
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, OXBoxtra lists, and Jon's FO4: Point Lookout video: Four-fifth’s check – due to needing longer than expected to answer the weekly FF.net PM (see below), I didn’t have time to get all five videos in – and as I dropped Gray last time this happened, I chose to drop Call Me Kevin today. So long as he doesn’t surprise me with another sponsored video tomorrow, it’ll be fine. :p But I did get to all the others –
A) Started with those two OXBoxtra lists in the Watch Later:
I. “7 Laughably Easy Achievements You Got Just for Starting the Game” from OXtra – where just pressing “start” causes the game to give you a trophy, or achievement, or whatever they’re called on the platform you’re playing on. These range from The Simpsons Game giving you a silly “Press START To Play” achievement (called the easiest ever), to Double Dragon Neon being mean by giving you a 1G “Skullmaggedeon!” trophy to unbalance your gamer score, with your only recourse being to play through the game and get the 19G achievement at the end, to Kingdom Hearts III giving you a trophy for “A New Journey” a half-hour into the game (after a plot recap and some tutorial stuff) – which Ellen says still counts because that first half-hour is TECHNICALLY, according to the titles, Kingdom Hearts II.9. Because Kingdom Hearts, everybody. XD Someone needs to have a talk with them about numbering.
II. “7 Bosses That Were Immediately Killed by a Much Scarier Boss: Commenter’s Edition” from OXBox – more bosses that were instantly replaced by the even scarier boss you’re actually MEANT to fight. A random slightly-fancier mook shows up behind a fog gate in Demon’s Souls? Sike, he’s just there to show you why the Penetrator has that name. Think Conker from Conker’s Bad Fur Day will battle the Panther King who wants him as a replacement leg for his table – especially after the guy has his girlfriend killed? Nope, turns out a chestburster got to him first, and your actual fight is a Xenomorph. Worried about going up against tentacle monster Zenobia the Butcher in Final Fantasy XIII? Don’t worry, she’s taken out by a Tonberry – OH FUCK SHE WAS TAKEN OUT BY A TONBERRY RUN! (If you’re wondering – fish-lizard creature with a lantern and a knife that somehow ONE HIT KILLS people.) Yeah, sometimes, the boss gods are not kind.
B) Then it was over to the Subs, where GrayStillPlays had some more Happy Wheels! We started with the usual baffling bottle flip (with Gray getting things like the Lesser Yeet, the Infinite Yeet, and the 99.99% Yeet on top of a ball), then moved onto a coin grab (where Gray got killed by tennis balls early on but still won); an extremely long bottle run (with spikes at the end so that if you didn’t let go or slow down at JUST the right time, you dead); an extreme table race with three levels equaling three chances to get minced (it wasn’t until Gray managed to rig it so there was only one other competitor who made it to the end of the first “lane” that he managed to survive until the end); an extreme jet run (with many angry jets); a “survive all this shit falling on you box” with Pogo Man (hug the left wall and you might just do it!); a bike ride through crossbows, mines, and other pain with Bike Dad (the usual nonsense he deals with when out on a ride); the world’s hardest pogo fight in the Colosseum (mines! shit raining down from the ceiling! So many weapons to get stabbed with! A second, even harder bit with more explosives! Gray nearly completed it upside-down with no legs before getting blown up!); and a run through Paradise Lane with Dyan’s weird jet scooter thing and Nixon (bouncing off clouds and getting yeeted by seesaws – checks out). Good times!
C) And finally, we had Jon doing another episode of his spontaneous FO4: Point Lookout miniseries, checking out more of this incredible mod! Jon made his way through three main missions today:
Desmond’s Fight Against The Tribals – Desmond being a ghoul who lives on the island, and who I believe gives you the mission to get him the evil Ug-Qualtoth book lying around out here. But first you gotta help him against the tribals living on the island, who are currently storming his mansion and causing trouble with their level 46 selves. Jon was DEEPLY impressed with the voice acting on Desmond, who apparently has one of the most unique voices in the franchise, but wasn’t too fond of how tough those damn tribals were – not even crits were taking down the harder ones! Though he did get a level-up that allowed him to take another rank of “Lone Wanderer” for an extra damage increase about midway through. Also, his trip to the basement of the building via falling through a collapsing floor got bugged and didn’t trigger properly, sadly – apparently it HAS worked for others and looks awesome. Good to know! Either way, it was a pretty awesome set piece – I like the mansion with all its security cameras and whatnot, and Desmond and his dogs are pretty badass – and Jon acquitted himself pretty well in the end. And even got a Legendary, with a Wounding FO3-style Sniper Rifle! Cool. :D
The Search For More Bio-Gas – Jon decided to finish up the mini-mission regarding finding all the corpses of the soil sample research team because he likes the bio-gas grenades (you toss them, then shoot them to ignite the gas cloud they emit) a lot more here than he did in the original game (FO3 has grenades as a separate weapon type, not a sub-weapon assigned to a specific button, so it was hard to do the swaps necessary to properly ignite them). This involved going to the other two soil sample sites (taking out a few locals along the way, because the stealth armor is not always as stealthy as you’d like), then hitting up the research ship Ozymandias for the final reward and the revelation that I guess the gas is a lot more deadly than you might think? I don’t know the original story, but it looks like the gas was responsible for some mass graves, and that mean the person blowing the whistle on the operation had to be eliminated. Typical Fallout-series “corrupt corporations and government” stuff.
Oh, and side trip around here – Jon made a point of swinging by a particular crashed plane in the area, which has a mini-horror story all of its own thanks to the plane’s still-working black box recording. Basically, the poor bastard was in the air when the nukes hit, was baffled to find air control suddenly silent, made an emergency landing in the swamp – and ended up swarmed and murdered by the locals while trying to fix his plane, because the people here were a bit ax-murdery even BEFORE the damn apocalypse. Jon calls it one of the most effective bits of micro-horror in the DLC.
The Hallucination Sequence That I Swear Must Have Informed The Fog Mother One in Far Harbor – the second half of the main missions, which involved Jon taking his character to the church of the Tribals, and being told he had to go seek out the Mother Punga Tree and gather its seeds to be allowed into its sacred halls. This meant that Jon had to go into a swamp, kill a bunch of relatively-tough mirelurks, make his way to the world’s creepiest tree, gather some seeds, get gassed – and then go through a pretty EPIC hallucination sequence as his character implicitly got BRAIN SURGERY in the damn background. O.o No, seriously – some of the hallucinations are of saws and needles and threads, and you wake up back at the church with a bald head and a scar on your scalp. O.O The rest of the hallucination is pretty creepy too – fake enemies; off-brand “Schmault-Tec” bobbleheads claiming you’re stupid for walking into a trap, and that your life is not blessed, and things like that; little Nuka-Cola bombs to frighten you as you go along –
And a few changed sequences, because the modders are nothing but not thorough. Where the protagonist of FO3 would have found their dead mother on her birthing table, the protagonist of FO4 finds their dead spouse’s cryopod! Where the FO3 protag would have seen their friends floating dead in the water of the swamp, FO4’s protag sees the various faction leaders (Father, Elder Maxson, Desdemona, and Preston Garvey – whom Jon discovered had floating physics and decided to take with him by shooting the corpse repeatedly)! The giant bomb from the city of Megaton is unchanged, but as people noted, that still makes sense from a thematic point of view, as the bombs being launched is what destroyed the FO4’s protag’s old life – and they thought to put Kellogg next to it too, for an extra kick in the pants. Basically, the modders made sure this sequence fit into the FO4 universe, which is a nice attention to detail. :)
. . .on the other hand, it looks like they didn’t recall to code what happens to the full-body Chinese Stealth Armor when your character is forced to have a custom bald, scarred head, so when Jon put that back on after his adventures, his character suddenly had no head. Whoops. The tribals don’t seem to mind, though. XD But yeah, it’s been a very fun adventure so far, even without me knowing much about the DLC – I’m looking forward to what Jon thinks will be the final episode next week!
3. Play Fallout 4 and continue clearing out the Statehouse: Check, though I actually ended up removing some of my progress by the end. . .here’s what happened – Victor and Piper had gotten up early and were on the move to explore some more of the upper levels of the State House (as the game calls it). They successfully worked their way around the corpse of the mirelurk Victor killed the other day and avoided catching any raider attention as they went through the hallway – just to find another ramp on the other side, leading down again, with a few hatchlings around. Piper killed them before Victor could, then led the way down the ramp as I looked around for good Alice staking spots. The ramp led back to the second floor, which took us to The Big Pit in the middle. Victor managed to go in a complete circle around The Big Pit as I continued to look for other places to go –
And then Piper fell down into said Pit. Welp, looks like were going down. I had Victor carefully make his way into the giant basement puddle she’d fallen into to join her and make sure she was okay –
CUE THE KILLER LOBSTER! One hunter and a bunch of hatchlings popped up, and Victor did NOT have a good time of it! It’s a very good thing I’ve got a healthy supply of stimpacks for him, that’s for sure! O.O And a companion to take the heat off him, because without Piper doing a little bit of damage herself and distracting it, I’m pretty sure Victor would have died there. Yikes.
Anyway, once that was done, I explored the big puddle room – mostly mud and brick and whatnot – checked out the locked double doors, noted that there was a Legendary Raider around here SOMEWHERE, and then found the exit – a big basement full of paintings, mannequins, other sundries – and rads. Loads of rad barrels. I had Victor pop a Rad-X and head inside –
And to no one’s surprise, there were more mirelurks! Though to everyone’s surprise, ONE OF THEM WAS A LEGENDARY RAZORCLAW. Victor took care of the other, a softshell, without too much trouble, and got the damn razorclaw down to half-health/the regeneration stage – but the legendary was relentless, and he ended up dying. Fortunately, I’d saved right before entering the room. . .
And even more fortunately, I had grenades. On take TWO of their adventures in the radiation storage room, Victor was able to blow up the softshell, avoid immediately getting spotted by the razorclaw and get a few potshots on it, then blow that one up too. Hah. The razorclaw yielded a Troubleshooter’s Leather Left Arm (reduces damage from robots by 15% – too bad it’s on lousy armor), and Victor and Piper got out of there, with a brief stop to loot a raider corpse in the area. From there they found the main pipe room, which was smashed up, flooded to hell, and FULL of mirelurk eggs. Victor and Piper were able to take out most of the eggs and the hatchlings there –
But then Victor suddenly and desperately needed to go to the toilet. Damn. I had them rapidly move on, only to discover they were in ANOTHER room with radiation – this one with some busted-down catwalks, rad barrels, a dead raider in a pipe, and a terminal. Fortunately the catwalk in one spot was flat enough for Victor to take a quick poop, but what is with all these rad barrels under the state house?? Anyway, I recognized where I was – the terminal is in fact the one that opens the locked doors on the other side of the initial basement puddle room, AND causes the Mirelurk Queen down there to spawn in. I dropped down a save before opening the doors and waiting. One softshell spawned, which Victor easily took down with his sniper rifle, but no sign of the Queen. “Do I have to drop down?” I thought, and did just that –
YUP. Victor somehow got across the room, but took a gob of acid spit to the face and ended up dying very rapidly from that. Okay, take two, let’s just go full-on sprint this time. . .
I FUCKIN’ MADE IT. VICTOR ACTUALLY MADE IT ACROSS THE ROOM BY LOOPING AROUND THE SIDE WITH THE MOST WALLS AND JUST BOOKING IT. Victor shot past the rad barrels on the other side and into the safe zone past the next set of doors. . .
And that’s when I realized he didn’t have Piper with him. I don’t know if she didn’t follow me down, or if she stayed behind to fight the Queen, but either way, nope – no Piper. Unsure what to do, but not wanting to go back, I explored the other side of the basement, where the raiders were setting up camp – there was a surprise softshell that burst up from beneath the floorboards in one hallway, various mines that Victor was able to disarm and collect, and some ramps up to where the actual raiders were on the back stairs. Victor started going up the stairs, killing all the raiders he could (including the Legendary I had heard before – only had a shitty Punishing Raider Chest Piece, though (reflects 10% of melee damage back on attackers)) – but right near the top, after shooting a turret, he was taken out by some guy with a melee weapon as he managed to cripple Victor’s head (admittedly, Victor had had a ROUGH trip up those stairs, especially thanks to a mine incident that broke both his arms), and I wasn’t able to get Victor to shoot him in time after using his stimpack. *sigh* This sent me back all the way to where I’d saved after sprinting past the Queen. . .
But then I decided “okay, let me see if I can get Piper to come WITH me this time” and reloaded the save BEFORE the Queen spawned, trying to get Piper to follow me. Still no luck (again, I think she may have stayed behind to fight the Queen), and this time Victor took some less-lethal acid to the face before being murdered by floorboards mirelurk and a bunch of spawn. So I reloaded again to before I used the terminal entirely, and instead did some backtracking and thinking. Mainly, about where it would make the most sense for Alice to be in this building. My conclusion?
It’s actually the basement storage room with the paintings and whatnot. I feel like Alice, looking for a place to stay, would consider that spot well-guarded (because Provisional Governor Graham was trying to protect state treasures from looters and rioters), and could wrap herself up in some mannequin clothes and pretend to be a mannequin or something. It was only supposed to be an emergency “shit I’m too far away from my haven to make it back before sunrise gotta improvise” sort of deal, after all. And there’s a raider corpse in there – dude could be still alive in the fanfic verse to unstake Alice! The only trouble is all the rad barrels in the room – but you know what, I have NO IDEA why they’re down there except to make it more dangerous to the player (why the hell would Graham put all those priceless treasures around RADIATION BARRELS, and the raiders couldn’t have put them there, they’re still working on actually RAIDING the place), so you know what? Screw ‘em – in fanfic world, they don’t exist. You can thank me for the savings on Rad-X by coming up with a brilliant plan to kill the Mirelurk Queen, Victor. XD
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – usual weekend morning tumblr catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice, and I found some stuff in the “vtmb,” “alice madness returns,” and “corpse bride” tags to slap into my drafts for later. And then, just after lunch, I did all three posts for the Wednesday Smiler Always Chill Save update of them at GeekCon! So that’s nice and taken care of. :)
What isn’t fully taken care of is Valice Multiverse – because it took me longer than expected to watch Jon’s Point Lookout mod video, I was blindsided when I had two thread replies waiting for me from a suddenly-reactivated partner. I couldn’t get to them in time – all I could do was the much shorter-ask in the inbox. I did make sure to leave her a message that I DID see them and I WILL be getting to them when I can actually write a proper reply!
5. Get in a workout (optional): No check – I marked this optional for a reason, and that reason is heat. Apparently it got up to over 100 in direct sunlight this afternoon! At least, as per our little thermostat thing. . .at any rate, while we finished beanbags early enough this afternoon for me to go down (see below), I just felt too hot and disgusting to actually do it. I mean, I’ll have to get over that once summer REALLY hits, but given this is the first really HOT weekend of the year, I think I can give myself a pass. We’ll start again tomorrow with “Tower Rangers!”
Additionally:
-->As stated in Item 5, we did play beanbags despite the heat – we started around 5 PM, and fortunately it was bearable in the shade (if still freaking humid, ick). Not an even day at all, this one – Dad dominated the first few games, then I came back with some good throws to win the last two. Final scores were me 2-3-3-W-W; Dad W-W-W-2-3; Mom 3-2-2-2-3. Ah well – hopefully the next week will be more conducive to better beanbagging!
-->Answered my FF.net friend Ace’s latest PM – the weekly communication continues! XD Though this took longer than expected too because I had to review their latest fanfic chapter in the bargain. . .becoming increasingly obvious to me what I should have done is dropped the OX lists and just gone with the Subs and Jon for YouTube. Ugh.
Yeah, I've REALLY got to think more about how long any particular activity I'm gonna do is gonna take, because I was running SO behind tonight. . . At least I've got a long weekend coming up to try and reset on a few things. But right now, I've got to try and get some sleep in my ANNOYINGLY hot room. It is just REFUSING to cool off properly in here. >( Night all!
