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Cooler Drier Nicer Sunday
May. 29th, 2022 11:52 pmYeah, after the general ickiness of Saturday, the weather went right back to nice again for today -- though it did get a little hotter than I might have liked in the afternoon. Nothing too oppressive, though! And I was able to make good progress on my to-dos:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – and let me tell you, FOD Victor and Piper had a much easier time with the Power Armor Raider than I did, that’s for sure. Mostly because, in their reality, they have Alice with them, and Alice has things like Celerity (super-speed), Potence (super-strength and punching), and Dementation (able to incapacitate an enemy via extreme emotion among other things). So yeah, Alice basically took care of that guy and his friends without even breaking a bloody sweat. XD She ended up catching them up on her life story while Victor cooked all the mirelurk meat he’d picked up once they got back to the cooking pot room near the entrance, and – having heard what’s going on with Victor – has offered her services in finding Shaun, which he appreciates. They’ve made it out of the state house now and up to the gates of Goodneighbor, where they camped out for the night – and while I was initially a bit “shit, the introduction to Hancock is taking place in the daytime now, I wanted Alice to react to it by acting like he’s an Anarch Baron,” I’ve realized it’s going to be much funnier if she has that reaction as a talking sunproofed sleeping bag. XD Hancock is gonna be like “what the fuck was in that last inhaler of Jet??” XD
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's FO4: Point Lookout video: Three-fourths check again – I have a video from James Turner to catch up with tomorrow. But all the others got watched –
A) Started with the Subs video I had to miss yesterday – the latest from the Wyrd Sisters Podcast, covering Snuff! The last Watch book and third-to-last Discworld book published overall. The general opinion here was “not a bad book, but not Pratchett’s best” – Manning and Liz felt that the book was kind of weirdly paced (the first fifty pages could have been thirty or so), and that some things were handled a bit poorly (like the goblins getting rights based on one of them being a harp virtuoso – I think it was meant to CRITICIZE that those in power would only be interested in helping those below them if they could get something out of it, but didn’t quite hit the mark). Which, yeah, I totally agree with – Terry’s own biases (like Sam and Sybil being the “right” sort of rich person – Manning thought it would have been much more interesting if, in their pursuit to make the world a better place, they’d actually dissolved their entire fortune and ended up working-class by the end) are on display here, even if he’s doing his best to bring up real important issues. But he’s trying, and he still puts in some good scenes – Manning and Liz praised the riverboat sequence, which I recall really liking when I read the book. It’s just not the greatest Discworld book in the world. And I think it’s going to be a similar story when they do the next novel, Raising Steam, as this “wanting to cover a real-world issue and make people see the world can be better, but not always doing it quite right” issue is something that pops up THERE too. But we shall see!
B) From there it was over to GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! We started with a cheese-themed bottle flip (complete with bottles of melted cheese and the Cheese Yeeter to spirit them away), then moved onto a parkour board with a lot of flying through the air; a troll board with carefully riding over the triangles of sadness before having to make your way past a ton of mines without being blown up (your son, however. . .yeah, Tom Hardy didn’t have a good time of it); a “throw this cleaver into the watermelon” board (which Gray discovered was still winnable if you hit the pineapple behind you instead); an “epic glass break” which included breaking walls of glass, spinning glass, and floors of glass (and which Gray liked because it praised him throughout instead of being mean for no reason); a board where you had to make choices about your route and face the consequences (which could be mines versus harpoons, or jet walls versus crossbows, because pain); an epic bottle run that flings you into a spike wall and endlessly spawning watermelons if you’re not careful (and if you’re Gray, you end up going backwards onto the proper win by accident); another glass break run with a glass floor section and Tom Hardy daycare (and loads of homing mines, meaning speed was DEFINITELY A THING); a 99% impossible pogo board of mines and harpoons and everything (which Gray won on the SECOND TRY); a troll board of sadness where you could either try to get the coin from the bottom spike area (while deflecting ten million crossbow bolts and harpoons), or reach the winning area up top past mines and wrecking balls (or, if you’re Gray, accidentally bonking your head against the ONE UNPROTECTED PIXEL of the “fake win” before the wrecking balls); and a short concept board of someone going into Gray’s head to make him hate life again enough to wake up from a coma (no actual real board yet, because they couldn’t shrink Bike Dad down enough to get into Gray’s brain XD). The usual delightful mix of ridiculous nonsense you get from the Happy Wheels community!
C) And finally, the Grand Finale (such as it is) of Jon’s FO4 Point Lookout mod mini-series! This saw him wrap up all the major points of interest, including the main quest and the creepy eldritch horror that we all came here for. Though first player character Claire had to get her head back from Nadine in the church of the Punga Fruit after her, uh, brain surgery. *shudder* What is it with Fallout games and messing with people’s brains. . .
Anyway – after obtaining the key to reach the person in charge of the tribals and their strange religion, Claire set off across what I now understand to be part of Maryland! Her trip across the coast took her to a wrecked boat, beyond which was a sea cave (with a few annoying mirelurks) and – one Professor Calvert, a brain in a jar talking through a holographic projector. Instructing his followers to destroy Desmond’s mansion so he could happily mind control everyone around him without issue. And being annoyed that his followers considered this “sharing his astral knowledge” or some nonsense like that. :p Claire turned off the holographic projector and tucked it in her pocket to take to Desmond later, as she had some other places to visit first.
Like, say, Plik’s Safari! This is a terrible ghoul arena run by a ghoul named Plik, who charges you 1,000 caps to hunt ghouls in a terrible cave with NPCs who are definitely going to die. This mini-quest was bad in FO3 because it broke a lot (namely, ghouls would just stop showing up at one point, leaving the quest uncompletable and you trapped in the arena), and it’s terrible in FO4 because ghouls are faster and have lunge attacks. It is only because Claire had tons of stimpacks, a good shotgun, a few mines that she laid around the place early, and the good version of Jet from FO4 that she was able to survive to the end of the waves. But she did get a nice +5 damage to ghouls from reading Plik’s Journal, a new ax for dismembering people, and her money back when she snuck up on Plik and took his head off. XD Because fuck this guy and his “safari,” seriously.
After dismembering Plik and seeing a smuggler thrown off a plank onto the rocks by the locals, Claire found her next destination – a supposedly “haunted” mine that is in fact the hideout of a little kid named Kenny, who has set up some traps (like a pitching machine triggered by the flash of a camera that throws baseballs – and also a couple of grenades) to keep unwanted visitors out. You can win Kenny’s trust by retrieving his teddy bear from the mine below, though it does involve having to kill some bastard mirelurks first. Your reward is the Pint-Size Slasher Mask, but – well, since Claire already found that in a secret room in the motel, it's kinda pointless, sadly. But still, good XP – Claire actually leveled up twice during this whole thing, and got a couple ranks of “Bloody Mess” to deal with all the bastards trying to kill her. XD
After Kenny, it was time to go back to the main mission – Desmond versus Calvert! After reporting back to Desmond, Claire got a device that she was supposed to install up on the Ferris wheel on the dock to block Calvert’s signal – only for Calvert to beam a message into Claire’s brain to destroy the device and side with him instead. As Jon has played this DLC back when it was in FO3 and knows how this goes down (installing the device and having to fight a giant crowd of tribals, versus not installing it, avoiding the fight, and then just teaming back up with Desmond later if you wish), Claire destroyed the device, returned to the mansion just in time to see it get blown to smithereens, raided the secret bunker below the ruins, then tracked down Desmond to where the ghoul had found Calvert’s secret hideout under the lighthouse. Desmond was pissed off, but willing to let Claire redeem herself if she sided with him to take down Calvert once and for all. Claire was willing to do that – sort of. She picked up all the goodies she could from the secret bunker (including a nice laser Gatling gun), but figured it was all right to let Desmond take care of most of the security, because he’s totally badass, it would be fine.
Yes, guess who died to the first couple of bots. XD Jon was – pretty well stunned. Fortunately Claire was bad-ass enough to take out the remaining turrets and whatnot herself. Calvert as a brain-in-a-tank in the lowest level greeted her as a friend, thanking her for killing Desmond – then revealed he was only too happy to kill her anyway because he’s a betraying bastard. Fortunately, a brain-in-a-tank does not do well against a Gatling Laser, and he was taken out before he could even think of activating all his various robots. XD Claire picked up the Microwave Emitter gun reward, tried it out on some mirelurks nearby, and determined it was not a particularly good weapon as it wasn’t really ignoring armor like it should have. The PULSE grenades she picked up murdered them a treat, though, so Jon decided to see if these recreated FO3 versions worked better against robots than the FO4 versions at the detention center. . .
Nooope! Did SOME damage to the biggest, meanest sentry bot there, but not enough, and Claire had to run for her life. Damn. Ah well – they can’t all be winners!
And with that sorted, it was time for Jon to take on the final challenge of the DLC – the creepy eldritch horror! Namely, picking up Ug-Qualtoth’s favorite book, the Krivbeknih, at the behest of one Obadiah Blackhall, and then deciding what to do with it. Claire plunged into a creepy ritual site set up by the local Scrappers and Bruisers to retrieve the book, laying mines all along the way to kill as many of the enemies set to follow her in and stop her along the way – which mostly worked, although there was one extra-tough bruiser who required a LOT more Gatling laser fire to finally go down. But she got the book, and thus was faced with a choice – give to Obadiah Blackhall, the original owner, for 1,000 caps, no question asked? Or find the missionary Marcella, who met her outside the mansion and warned her the book was an evil thing, and give it to her to destroy it?
Well, the nice thing about this being a video game is, she could do both! Jon had Claire first give the book to Obadiah to get her reward, then sneak after him to see his horrible murder basement altar where he prayed to Ug-Qualtoth. And then blew his head off with her shotgun because he’s a rude evil-worshiping bastard. Then, by rewinding to a previous save, Claire instead went to give the book to Marcella in her camp, only to find it overrun by smugglers and Marcella dead, killed on Obadiah’s word. She did leave a holotape with her final instructions on it, though – and it was that holotape that Jon was most interested in. Because in the ACTUAL FO3 DLC, the alternate method of dealing with the book is to take it back to the Capital Wasteland with you and press it against an obelisk in the basement of the Dunwich Building, which consumes it. But obviously, this is FO4, and there is no Capital Wasteland. What do?
Take it to the Dunwich Borers quarry, of course! The holotape was appropriately re-recorded to direct the Sole Survivor to the creepy Dunwich location of their game! Jon promptly had Claire hop on the riverboat to get back to Massachusetts (now captained by Nadine, who happened to be a) the missing girl she was tasked to find in the first place and b) the actual captain, with Tabor being a creepy bastard who REMOVED PART OF CLAIRE’S BRAIN AND KEPT IT IN A JAR IN THE BOAT – on the plus side, interacting with it gave Claire a perk which helped reduce damage from headshots? (Or something like that, it was only up on the screen briefly)) and head over to Dunwich Borers, using her new snazzy stealth suit to sneak past all the raiders and into the quarry itself. And right at the main ritual site, where you see the hallucination of everyone worshipping and have to kill the ghouls of the main bosses of the site, the modders had put an obelisk for Claire to shove the Krivbeknih again. Evil book destroyed, world is a better place, mod pretty much completed! :D Jon was very pleased by the experience, saying that the modders had done a fantastic job in recreating the location in FO4 (barring a few hiccups, like Kenny the mine child’s lines not being voiced) and saying they’d set a high bar for Bethesda if they ever do a remaster of the original game! :) High praise indeed. We’ll see what he brings next week!
3. Play Fallout 4 and get past Power Armor Raider: Check! Picked up where I left off with Victor and Piper on the other side of the bridge across the big atrium gap from Power Armor Raider and his buddies. I had Victor sneak forward again, then tried a couple of times to lay a bottlecap mine trap for Power Armor while trying to figure out ways to lure him over or otherwise murder him. First attempt involved me seeing if I could toss a frag grenade through one of the gaps in the nearby wall – answer was “I’m pretty sure I can’t and even if it made it through, explosion was near enough Victor got exploded too.” Second attempt was more along the lines of trying to get the power armor raider to come to my position so he’d trip on the mines and blow up – however, as per usual, the attack dog showed up first, and blew up my mines, leaving Victor with two broken arms. I decided that the mines were not in a good place and that the dog needed to go first, so I reloaded, picked up the mines, and did little dances to get the attack dog to zone in on Victor’s position. This worked to get the dog out, and Victor and Piper killed it together – Piper ALSO apparently killed the other raider on the other side of the wall through the gaps (as I found them later lying on a mattress sans a head). So that was good, and just left Power Armor. I once again tried to get them into a mine trap by setting up a couple of mines where they should have to come out to kill Victor and Piper and then firing off a round with Righteous Authority –
And then Piper just charged in, found the guy, and started shooting him from around the corner. I was like, okay, if this gets him over to the mines, this’ll work –
And THEN I realized Piper was doing some genuine damage to the asshole. Meaning that he wasn’t as dangerous as I thought so long as I didn’t get on the wrong end of the minigun. Once Piper was downed, I started looking for a good way to get a bead on him –
And yup, there he was, easily seen through one of the busted walls! Victor nailed him a few times with Righteous Authority, and the guy melted into a pile of glowing red ashes. :D FINALLY. Victor stimpacked Piper, grabbed the mines, and moved in around the corner, taking out the turret on the other side of another busted wall and taking all things useful. The steamer trunk with all the necessaries was on this level, with Victor taking a bunch of good ammo for either use or sale – and then he and Piper found the elevator I spotted before, and took that down to the podium room! :D So close to finally getting out of here. . .I ended up wandering back into the little raider “bedroom” with Governor Graham’s terminal by accident, and decided to make the most of it by taking a moment to scrap a bunch of junk to reduce Victor’s weight, then wandered around, going past the lions room and up until I found the cooking pot again. Cooked up a ton of stuff (including almost all of the mirelurk meat), which ended up getting Victor to Level 19! Oh, he’s earned it. XD I considered the available perks and decided Rifleman rank 2 was the best – he uses rifles and shotguns a LOT, and the more stopping power, the better.
And from there, around 9 PM in game, Victor and Piper FINALLY left that hellish fuckin’ statehouse. XD I took a moment to orient myself, then turned left, toward Goodneighbor –
Only to almost immediately run into a super mutant. Fortunately Victor was able to back up and hide quickly, and it wandered off and lost interest. Victor crept forward more carefully then, he and Piper working their way around the ruined buildings and a potential super mutant camp –
Only to discover a pair coming their way. Including a Legendary. -.- Fortunately it turned out to be a pretty shit Legendary, especially with Victor’s new better sniper rifle, and they were able to take the pair out without much issue. And Victor got a Staggering Auto Laser Pistol out of it, which will either make a good gun or fetch a decent price. :) I consulted my map again, looped around where the mutants had come from, and snuck my way past a barricade to see what was on the other side –
Mass Fusion. AKA, Gunner territory. Fortunately the ones outside didn’t seem interested in starting a fight right away – Victor and Piper were able to ease their way past without causing a fuss. And that, finally, led them to Goodneighbor! Though I haven’t actually gone in yet – as it was nearly midnight in-game (with Victor only functional thanks to having chugged a Nuka-Cola), I had Victor and Piper set up camp just outside the main gates. I’ve left it with Victor having taken his morning bucket poop and packed up all his stuff at 8 AM or so the next morning. . .time to meet Hancock and relive some traumatic memories!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – usual pre-lunch dashboard-and-tags check for Victor Luvs Alice after I made my bed, which led me back into my drafts where I completed my “Victor, Alice, and friends gender identification and sexual attractions” post for a future Thursday, yay. Took a while, but now at least I have the definitive edition of how I see these characters at this time! (Short version is, it’s mostly bisexual disasters with a few more complicated identities thrown into the mix.) And there's not anything happening on Valice Multiverse tonight, so. . .we'll see if I find anything in my tracked tags to throw in there!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, to start the next Oxventure Stream, “Watch Out!” Which is unusual in that a) it is three hours long, instead of the standard two, and b) Luke is the DM, not Johnny! Apparently over on Johnny’s show, “Dicebreaker,” Johnny was teaching Luke how to run tabletop RPGs, and this particular stream is Luke’s “homework” to show how much he’s learned. XD But what about the ongoing story, you may ask? Didn’t we leave off with the Oxventurers running off to try and get Egbert to Dob’s sister Suzette so she could hopefully put her scientist chops to work helping him?
Well, we did, and it turns out that, off-screen, the group was successful in getting Egbert to her! (It took a brief detour where they accidentally met up with the wrong Suzette, but it turns out she and Dob’s Suzette are in a club together based on their similar names and she was able to point them in the right direction.) However, Suzette, while willing to do what she could to help Egbert, was not exactly so willing to have the entire Oxventure gang in her rather small cabin for an extended period of time, and ended up politely but firmly ejecting Merilwen, Prudence, and Corazon for at least a little while so she could have some peace and maybe catch up with her brother. The three weren’t exactly pleased about this (with Prudence trying to Message Dob and tell him that the Oxventurers were his real family – a good-but-not-high-enough roll meant that her attempt to send the message outside of normal limits hit a random stranger, Bob, who was only too happy to accept the weird tiefling warlock voice in his head as his “true” family), but did indeed leave, going to the nearby town of Ransom. It’s a very nice place, with properly paved streets, two-story buildings, and even some indoor toilets! Too bad Dob managed to spend all of their hard-earned gold buying his new rapier and Corazon’s new scimitars pre-saving-Egbert. The adventure thus picked up with Corazon, Merilwen, and Prudence in the local tavern, nursing tap waters. XD The barmaid was getting a little sick of their cheapskate ways, trying to quietly bully them into ordering actual drinks or food – but when she noticed Corazon’s swords, she guessed that they might be adventurers looking for work and said that she had a potential quest for them. She retrieved it and said that it was being offered by the local museum, and the reward included both “beyond gold” and “gold” on separate bullet points. The gang was willing to try it out for at least the “gold” part of the reward (especially with Dob not there to throw it in a lake), but then the barmaid noted that the job indicated it was really intended for four people minimum, and with the active Oxventurers down to three. . .
Cue a knock on the tavern door, which everyone promptly noted as weird. XD Turned out that knock was the result of a new character coming in – Hengist the dwarf, as played by our own Johnny! Hengist promptly got all the barmaid’s attention as he DID have money and was willing to buy not only booze but a pie. Corazon promptly started wondering if he should rob him, especially as the guy had a cool “hammer hammer” (that is, a war hammer where the head looks like an anvil and somehow has some other manner of hammer attached to it) that might fetch a good price. XD They invited Hengist to sit with them, and he proved to be an extremely friendly sort, spreading the word of the first dwarf – that word being “dwarves are great!” XD So he was working on being the best dwarf he could be, which included buying the Oxventurers a round of ales and – after getting to know them a bit (sort of, Corazon told him his name was “Jet Blue”) – agreeing to do the museum job with them! The barmaid, not exactly approving of this turn of events, pulled the group some truly awful ales (mostly foam, getting all in Hengist’s beard), told them that they needed to go see Professor Shoelacey at the museum, and snottily drew them a map when they asked where it was. Prudence went out and nailed a one-star review to the door in retaliation, while Corazon cast Grease on the door jamb to make potential new customers slip and fall, and Hengist just straight up told the lady off and got a “voucher” for a free pie from her in an attempt to smooth things over. XD Well, better than nothing, right?
Anyway – with that covered, the “Reboot Oxventurers” headed to the Museum of Unnatural History, a truly grand building that actually lets people enter through the gift shop if they like! The gang promptly did that to check out the goods, and Hengist noticed a display of dwarven jewelry near the counter. He asked the counter person, Gus, if he could take a look at some of the pieces – Gus opened up the display case, and Hengist took a thick and fancy necklace and tried to tear it apart with his bare hands to check its authenticity. All while Corazon, seeing this as a great distraction, decided to rob the store of all its best shiny pebbles and gummy candies and whatnot. Luke made them both roll –
Hengist got a nat one, Corazon a nat twenty. Luke decided that what happened was, Hengist’s attempt to tear apart the necklace resulted in him dropping it on his foot and crushing a few toes (though he was at least pleased to find that the shop stocked the real deal and even offered his own certificate of authenticity for item), and the resultant panic over a patron getting injured allowed Corazon to steal a tote bag and just fill it with stuff with no one being the wiser. Gus brought the group to the staff room (past Double Dippy the two-headed lizard beast skeleton) to rest up and get any required first aid, then asked what they would most like to see. They asked in turn what the most popular exhibit was, and Gus explained they’d just opened an exhibit on cursed antiquities and offered a private chat with the curator, Professor Shoelacey! Everyone was all for that, and Gus led them to the exhibit, full of the remains of strange creatures, unholy grails, and other such things. Prudence used her Detect Magic to locate the most magical item of all – a pair of bracers used by an ancient warlord, apparently the reason for his incredible strength. I left it off with Prudence, rather sweetly, commenting that Egbert would probably like those (though Corazon thought, since they’re kind of on the dark magic side, he’d probably reject them – I dunno, Corazon, he quite likes his Wabberjack mace. . .) I’m very much looking forward to seeing how the rest of this weird adventure goes over the rest of the week!
Additionally:
-->Back to lovely weather means back to beanbags! Dad had the best game out of all of us, winning one round in three throws (ten, three, ten), but Mom and I both pulled out one win apiece (thanks to Dad having one horrific game after the three-thrower), and I actually managed to come second in every other game. Final scores were me W-2-2-2-2; Dad 2-W-W-3-W; Mom 3-3-3-W-3. It’s better than she did last time!
Not bad, not bad. . .but now, sadly, the clock is ticking on my time off. :( Just one more day. . .at least it's been a good weekend for chilling. Let's set up the Memorial Day to-dos:
1. Continue working on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland"
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and at least the Plumbella in the Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and either do another day with Smiler or do some more building
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
Hopefully this is all doable in my final day of freedom. Shouldn't be an issue, but you never really know. . .but as it stands, I have some social stuff to do, and a final late night to make the most of. Night all!
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – and let me tell you, FOD Victor and Piper had a much easier time with the Power Armor Raider than I did, that’s for sure. Mostly because, in their reality, they have Alice with them, and Alice has things like Celerity (super-speed), Potence (super-strength and punching), and Dementation (able to incapacitate an enemy via extreme emotion among other things). So yeah, Alice basically took care of that guy and his friends without even breaking a bloody sweat. XD She ended up catching them up on her life story while Victor cooked all the mirelurk meat he’d picked up once they got back to the cooking pot room near the entrance, and – having heard what’s going on with Victor – has offered her services in finding Shaun, which he appreciates. They’ve made it out of the state house now and up to the gates of Goodneighbor, where they camped out for the night – and while I was initially a bit “shit, the introduction to Hancock is taking place in the daytime now, I wanted Alice to react to it by acting like he’s an Anarch Baron,” I’ve realized it’s going to be much funnier if she has that reaction as a talking sunproofed sleeping bag. XD Hancock is gonna be like “what the fuck was in that last inhaler of Jet??” XD
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's FO4: Point Lookout video: Three-fourths check again – I have a video from James Turner to catch up with tomorrow. But all the others got watched –
A) Started with the Subs video I had to miss yesterday – the latest from the Wyrd Sisters Podcast, covering Snuff! The last Watch book and third-to-last Discworld book published overall. The general opinion here was “not a bad book, but not Pratchett’s best” – Manning and Liz felt that the book was kind of weirdly paced (the first fifty pages could have been thirty or so), and that some things were handled a bit poorly (like the goblins getting rights based on one of them being a harp virtuoso – I think it was meant to CRITICIZE that those in power would only be interested in helping those below them if they could get something out of it, but didn’t quite hit the mark). Which, yeah, I totally agree with – Terry’s own biases (like Sam and Sybil being the “right” sort of rich person – Manning thought it would have been much more interesting if, in their pursuit to make the world a better place, they’d actually dissolved their entire fortune and ended up working-class by the end) are on display here, even if he’s doing his best to bring up real important issues. But he’s trying, and he still puts in some good scenes – Manning and Liz praised the riverboat sequence, which I recall really liking when I read the book. It’s just not the greatest Discworld book in the world. And I think it’s going to be a similar story when they do the next novel, Raising Steam, as this “wanting to cover a real-world issue and make people see the world can be better, but not always doing it quite right” issue is something that pops up THERE too. But we shall see!
B) From there it was over to GrayStillPlays and more Happy Wheels! We started with a cheese-themed bottle flip (complete with bottles of melted cheese and the Cheese Yeeter to spirit them away), then moved onto a parkour board with a lot of flying through the air; a troll board with carefully riding over the triangles of sadness before having to make your way past a ton of mines without being blown up (your son, however. . .yeah, Tom Hardy didn’t have a good time of it); a “throw this cleaver into the watermelon” board (which Gray discovered was still winnable if you hit the pineapple behind you instead); an “epic glass break” which included breaking walls of glass, spinning glass, and floors of glass (and which Gray liked because it praised him throughout instead of being mean for no reason); a board where you had to make choices about your route and face the consequences (which could be mines versus harpoons, or jet walls versus crossbows, because pain); an epic bottle run that flings you into a spike wall and endlessly spawning watermelons if you’re not careful (and if you’re Gray, you end up going backwards onto the proper win by accident); another glass break run with a glass floor section and Tom Hardy daycare (and loads of homing mines, meaning speed was DEFINITELY A THING); a 99% impossible pogo board of mines and harpoons and everything (which Gray won on the SECOND TRY); a troll board of sadness where you could either try to get the coin from the bottom spike area (while deflecting ten million crossbow bolts and harpoons), or reach the winning area up top past mines and wrecking balls (or, if you’re Gray, accidentally bonking your head against the ONE UNPROTECTED PIXEL of the “fake win” before the wrecking balls); and a short concept board of someone going into Gray’s head to make him hate life again enough to wake up from a coma (no actual real board yet, because they couldn’t shrink Bike Dad down enough to get into Gray’s brain XD). The usual delightful mix of ridiculous nonsense you get from the Happy Wheels community!
C) And finally, the Grand Finale (such as it is) of Jon’s FO4 Point Lookout mod mini-series! This saw him wrap up all the major points of interest, including the main quest and the creepy eldritch horror that we all came here for. Though first player character Claire had to get her head back from Nadine in the church of the Punga Fruit after her, uh, brain surgery. *shudder* What is it with Fallout games and messing with people’s brains. . .
Anyway – after obtaining the key to reach the person in charge of the tribals and their strange religion, Claire set off across what I now understand to be part of Maryland! Her trip across the coast took her to a wrecked boat, beyond which was a sea cave (with a few annoying mirelurks) and – one Professor Calvert, a brain in a jar talking through a holographic projector. Instructing his followers to destroy Desmond’s mansion so he could happily mind control everyone around him without issue. And being annoyed that his followers considered this “sharing his astral knowledge” or some nonsense like that. :p Claire turned off the holographic projector and tucked it in her pocket to take to Desmond later, as she had some other places to visit first.
Like, say, Plik’s Safari! This is a terrible ghoul arena run by a ghoul named Plik, who charges you 1,000 caps to hunt ghouls in a terrible cave with NPCs who are definitely going to die. This mini-quest was bad in FO3 because it broke a lot (namely, ghouls would just stop showing up at one point, leaving the quest uncompletable and you trapped in the arena), and it’s terrible in FO4 because ghouls are faster and have lunge attacks. It is only because Claire had tons of stimpacks, a good shotgun, a few mines that she laid around the place early, and the good version of Jet from FO4 that she was able to survive to the end of the waves. But she did get a nice +5 damage to ghouls from reading Plik’s Journal, a new ax for dismembering people, and her money back when she snuck up on Plik and took his head off. XD Because fuck this guy and his “safari,” seriously.
After dismembering Plik and seeing a smuggler thrown off a plank onto the rocks by the locals, Claire found her next destination – a supposedly “haunted” mine that is in fact the hideout of a little kid named Kenny, who has set up some traps (like a pitching machine triggered by the flash of a camera that throws baseballs – and also a couple of grenades) to keep unwanted visitors out. You can win Kenny’s trust by retrieving his teddy bear from the mine below, though it does involve having to kill some bastard mirelurks first. Your reward is the Pint-Size Slasher Mask, but – well, since Claire already found that in a secret room in the motel, it's kinda pointless, sadly. But still, good XP – Claire actually leveled up twice during this whole thing, and got a couple ranks of “Bloody Mess” to deal with all the bastards trying to kill her. XD
After Kenny, it was time to go back to the main mission – Desmond versus Calvert! After reporting back to Desmond, Claire got a device that she was supposed to install up on the Ferris wheel on the dock to block Calvert’s signal – only for Calvert to beam a message into Claire’s brain to destroy the device and side with him instead. As Jon has played this DLC back when it was in FO3 and knows how this goes down (installing the device and having to fight a giant crowd of tribals, versus not installing it, avoiding the fight, and then just teaming back up with Desmond later if you wish), Claire destroyed the device, returned to the mansion just in time to see it get blown to smithereens, raided the secret bunker below the ruins, then tracked down Desmond to where the ghoul had found Calvert’s secret hideout under the lighthouse. Desmond was pissed off, but willing to let Claire redeem herself if she sided with him to take down Calvert once and for all. Claire was willing to do that – sort of. She picked up all the goodies she could from the secret bunker (including a nice laser Gatling gun), but figured it was all right to let Desmond take care of most of the security, because he’s totally badass, it would be fine.
Yes, guess who died to the first couple of bots. XD Jon was – pretty well stunned. Fortunately Claire was bad-ass enough to take out the remaining turrets and whatnot herself. Calvert as a brain-in-a-tank in the lowest level greeted her as a friend, thanking her for killing Desmond – then revealed he was only too happy to kill her anyway because he’s a betraying bastard. Fortunately, a brain-in-a-tank does not do well against a Gatling Laser, and he was taken out before he could even think of activating all his various robots. XD Claire picked up the Microwave Emitter gun reward, tried it out on some mirelurks nearby, and determined it was not a particularly good weapon as it wasn’t really ignoring armor like it should have. The PULSE grenades she picked up murdered them a treat, though, so Jon decided to see if these recreated FO3 versions worked better against robots than the FO4 versions at the detention center. . .
Nooope! Did SOME damage to the biggest, meanest sentry bot there, but not enough, and Claire had to run for her life. Damn. Ah well – they can’t all be winners!
And with that sorted, it was time for Jon to take on the final challenge of the DLC – the creepy eldritch horror! Namely, picking up Ug-Qualtoth’s favorite book, the Krivbeknih, at the behest of one Obadiah Blackhall, and then deciding what to do with it. Claire plunged into a creepy ritual site set up by the local Scrappers and Bruisers to retrieve the book, laying mines all along the way to kill as many of the enemies set to follow her in and stop her along the way – which mostly worked, although there was one extra-tough bruiser who required a LOT more Gatling laser fire to finally go down. But she got the book, and thus was faced with a choice – give to Obadiah Blackhall, the original owner, for 1,000 caps, no question asked? Or find the missionary Marcella, who met her outside the mansion and warned her the book was an evil thing, and give it to her to destroy it?
Well, the nice thing about this being a video game is, she could do both! Jon had Claire first give the book to Obadiah to get her reward, then sneak after him to see his horrible murder basement altar where he prayed to Ug-Qualtoth. And then blew his head off with her shotgun because he’s a rude evil-worshiping bastard. Then, by rewinding to a previous save, Claire instead went to give the book to Marcella in her camp, only to find it overrun by smugglers and Marcella dead, killed on Obadiah’s word. She did leave a holotape with her final instructions on it, though – and it was that holotape that Jon was most interested in. Because in the ACTUAL FO3 DLC, the alternate method of dealing with the book is to take it back to the Capital Wasteland with you and press it against an obelisk in the basement of the Dunwich Building, which consumes it. But obviously, this is FO4, and there is no Capital Wasteland. What do?
Take it to the Dunwich Borers quarry, of course! The holotape was appropriately re-recorded to direct the Sole Survivor to the creepy Dunwich location of their game! Jon promptly had Claire hop on the riverboat to get back to Massachusetts (now captained by Nadine, who happened to be a) the missing girl she was tasked to find in the first place and b) the actual captain, with Tabor being a creepy bastard who REMOVED PART OF CLAIRE’S BRAIN AND KEPT IT IN A JAR IN THE BOAT – on the plus side, interacting with it gave Claire a perk which helped reduce damage from headshots? (Or something like that, it was only up on the screen briefly)) and head over to Dunwich Borers, using her new snazzy stealth suit to sneak past all the raiders and into the quarry itself. And right at the main ritual site, where you see the hallucination of everyone worshipping and have to kill the ghouls of the main bosses of the site, the modders had put an obelisk for Claire to shove the Krivbeknih again. Evil book destroyed, world is a better place, mod pretty much completed! :D Jon was very pleased by the experience, saying that the modders had done a fantastic job in recreating the location in FO4 (barring a few hiccups, like Kenny the mine child’s lines not being voiced) and saying they’d set a high bar for Bethesda if they ever do a remaster of the original game! :) High praise indeed. We’ll see what he brings next week!
3. Play Fallout 4 and get past Power Armor Raider: Check! Picked up where I left off with Victor and Piper on the other side of the bridge across the big atrium gap from Power Armor Raider and his buddies. I had Victor sneak forward again, then tried a couple of times to lay a bottlecap mine trap for Power Armor while trying to figure out ways to lure him over or otherwise murder him. First attempt involved me seeing if I could toss a frag grenade through one of the gaps in the nearby wall – answer was “I’m pretty sure I can’t and even if it made it through, explosion was near enough Victor got exploded too.” Second attempt was more along the lines of trying to get the power armor raider to come to my position so he’d trip on the mines and blow up – however, as per usual, the attack dog showed up first, and blew up my mines, leaving Victor with two broken arms. I decided that the mines were not in a good place and that the dog needed to go first, so I reloaded, picked up the mines, and did little dances to get the attack dog to zone in on Victor’s position. This worked to get the dog out, and Victor and Piper killed it together – Piper ALSO apparently killed the other raider on the other side of the wall through the gaps (as I found them later lying on a mattress sans a head). So that was good, and just left Power Armor. I once again tried to get them into a mine trap by setting up a couple of mines where they should have to come out to kill Victor and Piper and then firing off a round with Righteous Authority –
And then Piper just charged in, found the guy, and started shooting him from around the corner. I was like, okay, if this gets him over to the mines, this’ll work –
And THEN I realized Piper was doing some genuine damage to the asshole. Meaning that he wasn’t as dangerous as I thought so long as I didn’t get on the wrong end of the minigun. Once Piper was downed, I started looking for a good way to get a bead on him –
And yup, there he was, easily seen through one of the busted walls! Victor nailed him a few times with Righteous Authority, and the guy melted into a pile of glowing red ashes. :D FINALLY. Victor stimpacked Piper, grabbed the mines, and moved in around the corner, taking out the turret on the other side of another busted wall and taking all things useful. The steamer trunk with all the necessaries was on this level, with Victor taking a bunch of good ammo for either use or sale – and then he and Piper found the elevator I spotted before, and took that down to the podium room! :D So close to finally getting out of here. . .I ended up wandering back into the little raider “bedroom” with Governor Graham’s terminal by accident, and decided to make the most of it by taking a moment to scrap a bunch of junk to reduce Victor’s weight, then wandered around, going past the lions room and up until I found the cooking pot again. Cooked up a ton of stuff (including almost all of the mirelurk meat), which ended up getting Victor to Level 19! Oh, he’s earned it. XD I considered the available perks and decided Rifleman rank 2 was the best – he uses rifles and shotguns a LOT, and the more stopping power, the better.
And from there, around 9 PM in game, Victor and Piper FINALLY left that hellish fuckin’ statehouse. XD I took a moment to orient myself, then turned left, toward Goodneighbor –
Only to almost immediately run into a super mutant. Fortunately Victor was able to back up and hide quickly, and it wandered off and lost interest. Victor crept forward more carefully then, he and Piper working their way around the ruined buildings and a potential super mutant camp –
Only to discover a pair coming their way. Including a Legendary. -.- Fortunately it turned out to be a pretty shit Legendary, especially with Victor’s new better sniper rifle, and they were able to take the pair out without much issue. And Victor got a Staggering Auto Laser Pistol out of it, which will either make a good gun or fetch a decent price. :) I consulted my map again, looped around where the mutants had come from, and snuck my way past a barricade to see what was on the other side –
Mass Fusion. AKA, Gunner territory. Fortunately the ones outside didn’t seem interested in starting a fight right away – Victor and Piper were able to ease their way past without causing a fuss. And that, finally, led them to Goodneighbor! Though I haven’t actually gone in yet – as it was nearly midnight in-game (with Victor only functional thanks to having chugged a Nuka-Cola), I had Victor and Piper set up camp just outside the main gates. I’ve left it with Victor having taken his morning bucket poop and packed up all his stuff at 8 AM or so the next morning. . .time to meet Hancock and relive some traumatic memories!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – usual pre-lunch dashboard-and-tags check for Victor Luvs Alice after I made my bed, which led me back into my drafts where I completed my “Victor, Alice, and friends gender identification and sexual attractions” post for a future Thursday, yay. Took a while, but now at least I have the definitive edition of how I see these characters at this time! (Short version is, it’s mostly bisexual disasters with a few more complicated identities thrown into the mix.) And there's not anything happening on Valice Multiverse tonight, so. . .we'll see if I find anything in my tracked tags to throw in there!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike today, to start the next Oxventure Stream, “Watch Out!” Which is unusual in that a) it is three hours long, instead of the standard two, and b) Luke is the DM, not Johnny! Apparently over on Johnny’s show, “Dicebreaker,” Johnny was teaching Luke how to run tabletop RPGs, and this particular stream is Luke’s “homework” to show how much he’s learned. XD But what about the ongoing story, you may ask? Didn’t we leave off with the Oxventurers running off to try and get Egbert to Dob’s sister Suzette so she could hopefully put her scientist chops to work helping him?
Well, we did, and it turns out that, off-screen, the group was successful in getting Egbert to her! (It took a brief detour where they accidentally met up with the wrong Suzette, but it turns out she and Dob’s Suzette are in a club together based on their similar names and she was able to point them in the right direction.) However, Suzette, while willing to do what she could to help Egbert, was not exactly so willing to have the entire Oxventure gang in her rather small cabin for an extended period of time, and ended up politely but firmly ejecting Merilwen, Prudence, and Corazon for at least a little while so she could have some peace and maybe catch up with her brother. The three weren’t exactly pleased about this (with Prudence trying to Message Dob and tell him that the Oxventurers were his real family – a good-but-not-high-enough roll meant that her attempt to send the message outside of normal limits hit a random stranger, Bob, who was only too happy to accept the weird tiefling warlock voice in his head as his “true” family), but did indeed leave, going to the nearby town of Ransom. It’s a very nice place, with properly paved streets, two-story buildings, and even some indoor toilets! Too bad Dob managed to spend all of their hard-earned gold buying his new rapier and Corazon’s new scimitars pre-saving-Egbert. The adventure thus picked up with Corazon, Merilwen, and Prudence in the local tavern, nursing tap waters. XD The barmaid was getting a little sick of their cheapskate ways, trying to quietly bully them into ordering actual drinks or food – but when she noticed Corazon’s swords, she guessed that they might be adventurers looking for work and said that she had a potential quest for them. She retrieved it and said that it was being offered by the local museum, and the reward included both “beyond gold” and “gold” on separate bullet points. The gang was willing to try it out for at least the “gold” part of the reward (especially with Dob not there to throw it in a lake), but then the barmaid noted that the job indicated it was really intended for four people minimum, and with the active Oxventurers down to three. . .
Cue a knock on the tavern door, which everyone promptly noted as weird. XD Turned out that knock was the result of a new character coming in – Hengist the dwarf, as played by our own Johnny! Hengist promptly got all the barmaid’s attention as he DID have money and was willing to buy not only booze but a pie. Corazon promptly started wondering if he should rob him, especially as the guy had a cool “hammer hammer” (that is, a war hammer where the head looks like an anvil and somehow has some other manner of hammer attached to it) that might fetch a good price. XD They invited Hengist to sit with them, and he proved to be an extremely friendly sort, spreading the word of the first dwarf – that word being “dwarves are great!” XD So he was working on being the best dwarf he could be, which included buying the Oxventurers a round of ales and – after getting to know them a bit (sort of, Corazon told him his name was “Jet Blue”) – agreeing to do the museum job with them! The barmaid, not exactly approving of this turn of events, pulled the group some truly awful ales (mostly foam, getting all in Hengist’s beard), told them that they needed to go see Professor Shoelacey at the museum, and snottily drew them a map when they asked where it was. Prudence went out and nailed a one-star review to the door in retaliation, while Corazon cast Grease on the door jamb to make potential new customers slip and fall, and Hengist just straight up told the lady off and got a “voucher” for a free pie from her in an attempt to smooth things over. XD Well, better than nothing, right?
Anyway – with that covered, the “Reboot Oxventurers” headed to the Museum of Unnatural History, a truly grand building that actually lets people enter through the gift shop if they like! The gang promptly did that to check out the goods, and Hengist noticed a display of dwarven jewelry near the counter. He asked the counter person, Gus, if he could take a look at some of the pieces – Gus opened up the display case, and Hengist took a thick and fancy necklace and tried to tear it apart with his bare hands to check its authenticity. All while Corazon, seeing this as a great distraction, decided to rob the store of all its best shiny pebbles and gummy candies and whatnot. Luke made them both roll –
Hengist got a nat one, Corazon a nat twenty. Luke decided that what happened was, Hengist’s attempt to tear apart the necklace resulted in him dropping it on his foot and crushing a few toes (though he was at least pleased to find that the shop stocked the real deal and even offered his own certificate of authenticity for item), and the resultant panic over a patron getting injured allowed Corazon to steal a tote bag and just fill it with stuff with no one being the wiser. Gus brought the group to the staff room (past Double Dippy the two-headed lizard beast skeleton) to rest up and get any required first aid, then asked what they would most like to see. They asked in turn what the most popular exhibit was, and Gus explained they’d just opened an exhibit on cursed antiquities and offered a private chat with the curator, Professor Shoelacey! Everyone was all for that, and Gus led them to the exhibit, full of the remains of strange creatures, unholy grails, and other such things. Prudence used her Detect Magic to locate the most magical item of all – a pair of bracers used by an ancient warlord, apparently the reason for his incredible strength. I left it off with Prudence, rather sweetly, commenting that Egbert would probably like those (though Corazon thought, since they’re kind of on the dark magic side, he’d probably reject them – I dunno, Corazon, he quite likes his Wabberjack mace. . .) I’m very much looking forward to seeing how the rest of this weird adventure goes over the rest of the week!
Additionally:
-->Back to lovely weather means back to beanbags! Dad had the best game out of all of us, winning one round in three throws (ten, three, ten), but Mom and I both pulled out one win apiece (thanks to Dad having one horrific game after the three-thrower), and I actually managed to come second in every other game. Final scores were me W-2-2-2-2; Dad 2-W-W-3-W; Mom 3-3-3-W-3. It’s better than she did last time!
Not bad, not bad. . .but now, sadly, the clock is ticking on my time off. :( Just one more day. . .at least it's been a good weekend for chilling. Let's set up the Memorial Day to-dos:
1. Continue working on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland"
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and at least the Plumbella in the Watch Later
3. Play Sims 4 and either do another day with Smiler or do some more building
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
Hopefully this is all doable in my final day of freedom. Shouldn't be an issue, but you never really know. . .but as it stands, I have some social stuff to do, and a final late night to make the most of. Night all!
