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Slightly More Irritating Sunday
Jul. 31st, 2022 11:44 pmMostly because I kept getting interrupted during breakfast to talk about things like the upcoming Real ID switchover (technically not happening until May of next year, but still) and whether I had my birth certificate or not for the inevitable appointment. Which led to me spending a chunk of my morning going through all my financial and personal papers to confirm I did. Ah well, it did need organizing. . .and I DO have it, so that's good. Also does help that I woke up early thanks to a full bladder and couldn't quite get back to sleep, hmph. . . Fortunately, things got better as the day went on, as evidenced by the to-do list:
1. Keep up with the FO4 playthrough progression: Check! As per my play session below, Victor, Piper and Alice have made some good progress indeed! Victor’s given Preston the go-ahead to start gathering people willing to take back the Castle and to let him know when they're ready; he, Alice, and Piper looted the Concord Speakeasy and found a creepy mannequin room up top which gave them all the willies (even as Piper insisted it was probably raiders who set up the scene); Victor encountered a traveler with tummy trouble thanks to “Longneck Lukowski’s Potted Meat,” with Piper seeing a potential story should they go investigate; the gang managed to avoid being blown up by Super Mutants or drained by bloodbugs as they snuck around the edges of Malden (though, uh, I should probably note at some point how Alice is feeding – Victor and Piper have probably both donated by now); and a distress signal on his Pip-Boy has led Victor into solving the mystery of the Brotherhood of Steel’s Lost Patrol! Not because he intends to join up with the BOS, but because he thinks it’ll give Danse a bit of peace of mind to learn what happened to them. *nods* He, Alice, and Piper are currently prepared to take on whatever’s in the National Guard’s Training Yard recruiting office to find the next piece of the puzzle, with Alice able to be out and about because of a massive thunderstorm blocking out the sun. Fun times!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's FO4 "Legendary Roulette" video: Check! Took a bit longer than expected tonight, but then it always does –
A) Started just before beanbags with a quick one in the Recommendeds – “How CallMeKevin and RTGame Met!” This is a clip of a stream during which Kevin recounted how he met RTGame, aka Dan – seems that a lot of people were telling him to “add Bob Ross” into his Sims 4 videos, which completely confused him until he found Dan’s channel (Bob being a character in Dan’s Sims videos – though I think he usually plays Sims 3). Kevin liked what he saw, and they ended up contacting each other on Twitter, and then they did a collab video on Payday, and the rest is history! The comments further clarified that apparently Dan was a fan of Kevin’s previously and used Kev’s channel to find his own YouTube voice. :) And of course someone mentioned that Dan was the one to introduce Kevin to his girlfriend Anna Chess, so those commenters confusing the two really led to some good things for Kevin. :)
B) Speaking of Call Me Kevin, this evening we started with his latest – “Hitman has the craziest mods ever!” Yes, Kevin went on a modding spree in Hitman 3, and his computer very much did not like it. XD I mean, the damn thing froze up and shut off the game in the first couple of minutes when he went to the Florida level with both a “everyone follows me” mod and a “everyone around me gets SET ON FIRE” mod. He managed to avoid more crashes as he went on, but he continued to get into shenanigans – a mod that allowed him to “vault” anywhere also allowed him to CLIP THROUGH WALLS, letting him do things like get selfies with the race cars on the Florida race track and speed-“jump” though the hotel in Bangkok; corpses and items floated through all the levels thanks to a “low gravity” mod (meaning EVERYONE could be sent to heaven, not just Kevin’s Hitman VR victims!); and when he hit the tropics, he gave himself every item just for convenience’s sake (meaning it took him FOREVER to find anything specific) and then found a way to stuff more than two bodies into a closet through clipping. XD It’s worth noting he was NOT a very effective hitman during all of this, though – I think the only level he properly finished was the Florida one! (Admittedly with one very cool kill as he shot the race car driver target WHILE SHE WAS SPEEDING AT HIM.) His two attempts at Elusive Targets were foiled when a) his attempt to get the food critic target to follow him to his exit point (a separate mod that allowed Kevin to PICK AND CHOOSE who followed him) ended with him successfully killing the target but not able to use the exit and dying and b) he couldn’t FIND the second target and kept falling out of the map thanks to his “vault” ability; and his attempt to kill EVERYONE in the Bangkok level was stymied by a) his explosive ducks not taking out as many of his mod-induced followers as he thought and b) after hanging over the edge of a balcony and pulling people over for a good ten minutes (including both of his targets!), he was then somehow murdered by two glitchy guard NPCs who seemingly punched him to death; and his attempt at blowing up his targets on the tropical island in the Maldives ended up a) just launching one of them into the sky instead of killing her and b) killing HIM when he tried to pick up one of his own mines that had missed the target. XD Ah well – at least 47 always had a smile on his face! Thanks to another mod that was probably the creepiest of all. XD
C) Then it was over to GrayStillPlays and “GTA 5 but every 60 seconds gets more satisfying” – aka, time for more tortorous Alex parkour boards in GTA V! The theme of this course was “satisfying videos,” though I’m not sure who they were satisfying FOR. Definitely not Gray. XD I mean, the course STARTED with Gray having to find the real car hidden inside two fake cars, then make his way across a bridge with pulsating windmills without getting knocked off. Then he had to drive along the twisty-turny heart road until he reached a wall and a checkpoint he had to reach on foot; then dive down a giant hole and hope he hit the right color teleporter to get to the rest of the course instead of a giant plant pot; then he had to wall ride up the sides of a black-and-white spiral bowl, trying to find the right hidden exit that would allow him to escape (and trust me, it was HARD – those holes were well-hidden, and the alternating bands really played tricks with your eyes); THEN he had to make it around the spiraling half-opacity tube of rainbows into what I presume was supposed to be a satisfying Play-Doh noodle-maker; THEN he had to wall ride around the noodle maker and its watermelon chunks (and random cars being flung out) to get past the mega-windmills to the platform with the checkpoint, THEN he had to go down a spiral wall ride, though a thumbnail hole past two windmills, and down a secret tunnel (he NEARLY cheated this when he missed the spiral by just launching himself off the wall itself, but then fell off the final area); and FINALLY he had to go around a loop that was half-opacity on one half, fully transparent on the other, to land his car on the platform just above so he could get out and run through the finisher. He did indeed complete the course, but MAN did it take a lot out of him. This was one of those boards where he spent half of his time babbling out “oh no nononono” and variations because shit was just coming at him everywhere all the time. XD Poor Gray, he suffers so much for our amusement. . .
D) And finally, we had Jon and the next episode of “Legendary Roulette!” This was a slightly shorter one than normal, and it had some interesting twists and turns –
I. Jon, after promising revenge on Virgil for his turrets killing Paramedic Bot Friend in the last episode, headed over to the CIT Ruins to properly start “Hunter/Hunted” – but couldn’t resist a poke inside to check out the fight between the Super Mutants and the synths, because hey, legendaries that he doesn’t necessarily have to kill himself! Unfortunately it didn’t actually yield anything particularly good, and Jon just got confused by a blue ash pile, because he thought that meant an alien blaster and he couldn’t find one (the comments later corrected him by pointing out the Institute laser rifles fire blue lasers, so they leave blue ash piles as well). Ah well, got a bit of ammo out of it.
II. From there it was over to Greentech Genetics to work his way through the Gunners and take out the Courser – something that he was rather nervous about, because, well, Courser dude be tough, yo. He actually took a moment to swing back by Diamond City and pick up lots of ammo just to be on the safe side. He did pretty well against the Gunners, taking advantage of all the cover and little doorways to pop through – and while they didn’t yield much in the way of good legendaries (either copies of stuff he already had, rubbish effects, or good stuff on the wrong type of gun – though there was one Junkie’s Laser Musket that Jon took a moment to wax poetic about. Not good for his current build, but if you’re willing to take on all the downsides of multiple addictions and spend the time upgrading the capacitor and whatnot, you can have a sniping weapon that does ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS amounts of damage. It’s the only legendary effect not capped at double damage, you see, and since there are SO MANY addictions in the game. . .), he was able to scavenge some nice headwear to boost his Perception and just make The Legend Of Boston look more badass (nice military cap, glasses, and a skull bandana). PLUS all the desks and whatnot scattered around the building meant that he actually exited the building with MORE AMMO THAN HE WENT IN WITH. Jon is now a “Scrounger” perk convert, everyone. XD
III. But what about the Courser, Z2-47? The fight that the game gives you the option to nope out of? The fight that really worried Jon because Coursers generally tend to be really tough, and their abililty to go invisible means that VATS can’t detect them?
Yeah, turns out a Courser is just as susceptible to Wounding as everything else. A few shots with Legend’s shotgun, some intense Wounding damage speeding down the health bar while in VATS, and the Courser going invisible just too late, and Z2-47 was a walk in the park. XD Awesome.
IV. With the courser chip snagged and all legendaries (both real and “fake” – the ones on the top floor had no weapons) taken care of, Jon proceeded onward toward the Old North Church and the Railroad – but then had an idea. Because also nearby to all this was everybody’s favorite robot-run ship, the USS Constitution! And Jon figured, the scavengers who attack the ship are gonna be legendary, right? The robots on the ship are gonna be legendary right? Why not kick off the initial fight and loot the corpses? Now, I thought I knew how this was gonna go – Jon would start the quest, decide the best course of action would be to do the “evil” ending and side with the scavvers, and just kill EVERYBODY in the end for the maximum amount of legendary corpses and thus legendary stuff laying around (because in the “evil” ending the scavvers you helped turn on you so they can keep all the scrap for themselves).
Nope! After doing the initial fight with the robots and confirming he could not just repair the ship because his Intelligence score was too low, he just started shooting the robots. Failed the quest outright, nearly got blown up multiple times because, you know, legendary robots EXPLODE, and didn’t even get anything good out of it because most of the legendary robots (the Protectrons on the crew) were carrying stuff like Safecracker’s armor. Boooo, Jon. I’m glad that Ironsides doesn’t drop his lovely hat when you kill him. Booo.
V. With loads of pointless robot murder on his hands, Jon then proceeded over to the Old North Church, where he managed to pick up something actually halfway decent off an enemy outside – a VATS Enhanced Laser Rifle! This has the same “25% less action points spent” effect that the Quickdraw Laser Pistol he picked up recently has, but also better VATS accuracy and range. Combine that with an already upgraded laser rifle he picked up in Greentech, and now he has a pretty good laser weapon, yay!
VI. And after that, it was into the Old North Church, where the ghouls didn’t yield anything good either, to get the courser chip decoded – and then back over to Virgil to get the plans for the teleporter! Which meant, once those were handed over – Jon no longer really needed Virgil alive.
Cue murder spree against Virgil and his robots for killing Paramedic Robot Friend! The turrets and the protectron went down pretty easy, but Virgil himself was a LOT harder – and, as it turned out, essential, so unkillable. Damn. Jon reluctantly left and headed back to Sanctuary, swearing further revenge once he got the opportunity – and while ending the video, he did recall that the Brotherhood has a mission specifically to kill Virgil. . .
But that is for next week, probably! As is building the teleporter – and The Legend of Boston joining the Institute! Yeah, apparently that is the end-game Jon is going with, because a) he hasn’t done it since his very first playthrough, and b) it’s short, and this is supposed to be a mini-series, damn it. XD So that’ll be interesting! Looking forward to that. :D
3. Play Fallout 4 and ACTUALLY start moving toward Finch Farm: Check! Made some good progress on this too – I’m within sight of the farm! Though I’m ACTUALLY doing another quest right at the moment – it’s one that takes place mostly near the farm, though. . .let me get you up to speed:
-->Started with Victor and Piper in Sanctuary, right by Preston – after giving his textures a moment to not freak out (Bethesda), Victor said hello and Preston asked about the Castle. Victor confirmed the story of how it fell – giant sea monster – and then told Preston, “sure, let’s do this.” Preston went off to gather some recruits and perform recon, while Victor reorganized his inventory slightly (dropped off the Vault Suit in his Sanctuary bedroom, he’s not using it), checked his perks (can’t get Gun Nut 3 until Level 25!), then set off for Finch Farm at noon with Piper!
-->First stop was a quick cut through one of the side streets of Concord – ended up detouring into the local speakeasy just because it was there and I was curious. Definitely worth it – Victor found a BUNCH of adhesive inside! Plus some other good junk bits and bobs, and a couple of advanced locks to crack. There was also the creepy mannequin room upstairs, with one skeleton in bed with a lady mannequin and three other male mannequins arranged around the bathtub with machetes and a plunger, but – let’s not talk about that. XD Victor and Piper sure don’t!
-->After that it was back onto the ruined streets of Massachusetts, where Victor spotted a settler at the cookpot in the random spawn parking lot – upon saying hello, the dude warned him to stay back. Not because he was hostile, but because he had the shits something fierce after eating three cans of Longneck Lukowski’s potted meat. He gave the remainder to Victor and warned him off before he had another accident, so now THAT’S marked on Victor’s map and he can do that mini-quest later.
-->From there it was just past a few of the usual landmarks – Thicket Excavations, Bedford Station, and the Rotten Landfill, where Victor started to feel tired. I had him keep going though, as it was only 4:30 in the afternoon, and Piper ended up giving him a Nuka-Cola after a brief chat, so that was nice. :) After orienting them in the right direction, I spotted a bunch of neutral turrets nearby on what seemed like a housing complex of some sort and started moving in for a closer look. . .
-->Oh, that’s Covenant! I decided to turn around and head in a slightly different direction instead, as I feel like Victor should discover Covenant AFTER he ends up a member of the Railroad. So instead Victor and Piper went up the other road off the roundabout, avoiding some rad barrels and wandering off the beaten path to find a trailer Victor could pick open. Inside was a bunch of skeletons with pillows and suitcases – human trafficking? People smuggling themselves across a border? Unsure. It was near a decent spot to camp, though, so Victor threw up the tent and the wall, and used the new cooking stove function on his portable workbench to make some fresh meals before his exhaustion really caught up with him. One noodle cup later, it was bedtime at about 7 PM.
-->Victor woke up the next day at 3 AM with a need to use the facilities – sent him down to the street so he could use his port-a-potty with the least issue, then went back, packed up all his gear, and sent him further down the road to the medical center nearby. . .
-->And then I saw a familiar flashing red light and remembered “Oh yeah, this is Malden, isn’t it? Super Mutant territory?” Victor and Piper promptly went out of their way a little bit to sneak by. . .only to disturb a bunch of bloodbug hatchlings. *facepalm* Which are hard to hit even WITH VATS. Victor and Piper were able to take them out without TOO much trouble, though, and were able to get past what I believe is the hospital without issue. Which is good, because SOMETHING upset that Super Mutant Suicider I saw before and caused him to blow up. *shrug* Better it than me!
-->Victor and Piper continued on, to another building that looked vaguely medical – I decided to go ahead and tag this one for later. . .only to find the outside courtyard full of feral ghouls. And while Victor and Piper were dealing with those, a pack of vicious mongrels ran to join the fight! Fortunately everyone only suffered minor injuries and a couple more rads during the fight. And I successfully discovered the building once all the combatants were dead and their corpses looted – Med-Tek Research! No real point in going in now, as you’re meant to come here with MacCready when you pick him up, but good to have on the map for later.
-->Around this time, I noticed Victor had picked up a “Distress Signal” and decided to listen to it. It was just a steady beeping, which confused me briefly – and then I remembered, “Oh yeah, that ‘Lost Patrol’ quest starts around here, doesn’t it?” This is technically a Brotherhood of Steel quest (Danse assigns it to you if you join up), but you can do it on your own if you stumble across the bodies. After a moment’s contemplation, I decided to have Victor go ahead and start it, as the vast majority of the quest actually takes place around Finch Farm – he could easily pick this up along the way in fanfic land. So he and Piper investigated the blown suits of power armor and the corpse of Knight Varhan, and Victor listened to the battlefield holotape which indicated everyone had fallen back to the National Guard Training Yard! Which was nice and nearby – good for poor Victor and Piper, as it had started POURING in-game at that point.
-->And so they headed over to the Training Yard, the discovery of which put Victor at Level 22! :D I had him pull up the perk list, and though I was tempted to get the ability to hack more terminals, I decided the second rank of “Action Boy,” which boosts his action point refill rate up to 50% faster, was probably the better option – Victor DOES use a lot of VATS these days! After that, it was just a matter of sneaking around and taking out all the turrets and ferals and disarming all the mines around the place, then heading in the front door of the Recruitment office! This is where I’ve left them for the moment, ready to fight some more feral ghouls and find the next Brotherhood corpse. *nods* Next time – finish up as much of this quest as possible, then hit up Finch Farm!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Did a nice catch-up this morning on the Victor Luvs Alice dash AND my tracked tags, reblogged Moose’s final three “McFlyJuly” fics, then around lunchtime (that is, started before lunch, finished after) did my drafts for the upcoming Chill Save two-parter covering Smiler’s Winter Friday! AKA the “Night On The Town” in Henford-On-Bagley that didn’t go entirely according to plan. Ah well, at least the update afterward is them finally moving in with Victor and Alice and me getting all the serotonin from my Valicer polycule finally being properly together. :) . . .which I have not been able to play since because, you know, buggy as hell patch. *sigh* Ah well. . . Oh, and one ask reply for Valice Multiverse tonight in the queue – nice and easy after Jon!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, but not exactly back to the Oxventure! Instead, thanks to my new purchase and mini-obsession, I chose to watch instead the trailer for and first episode of their spin-off sequel series, “Oxventure Presents: Blades in the Dark!” AKA, the reason I looked up the game on TV Tropes in the first place (I followed the link from one of the Oxventure “funny moments” pages). This series takes the lore of Blades in the Dark and tweaks it a little to match up with the shenanigans of the main Oxventure – rather than the Shattered Isles, we are still in Geth, just centuries into the future; rather than being set in Duskwall, the main city the characters live and operate in is called Volisport (though so far this seems to be “Luke has simply renamed Duskwall to perhaps fit in a bit better with the names of towns in the main Oxventure”); and rather than a great cataclysm that shattered the world and broke the gates of death eight centuries ago, the reason for all the ghosts and all the bad things is magic slowly seeping out of the world. On the plus side for the characters, this means they will probably see the sun at some point, because that’s not a thing in the “standard” setting. Said characters are:
Barnaby “The Butcher” Fortescue III – the manipulative, smooth-talking Slide, a rich boy who has taken up crime as a bit of a lark from boredom. He is played by – Mike. Yes, MIKE. I was surprised too that Barnaby wasn’t someone who blows up his problems. XD
Edvard Lumiere – the tinkering-obsessed Leech, formerly from a good merchant family who has burned through all his money making his inventions and has a REAL chip on his shoulder about his hated rival who keeps making all his inventions look bad. He is played by Andy!
Zillah “The Bruiser” Bruzaud – the fight-loving Cutter, she used to be a pugilist but was retired in disgrace some time ago, and now she’s looking for ways to support her cousins and whatnot. She is played by Jane!
Lilith Capellinaga – the studious Whisper, she’s from foreign nobility and has come to Volisport to study ghosts and the ghost problem, and is running into problems trying to pay her own way. She is played by Ellen!
Kasimir Jones – the veteran Spider, a career criminal with a wonky leg and not much patience with all of these weird newbies. He is played by – Johnny, because LUKE is the DM in this series! Maybe Johnny really wanted to be on the player side for this one – as per the Dicebreaker review I watched, it’s one of their favorite RPGs.
The story began with the five of them being lured to a certain antiques shop in the Nightmarket area of Volisport, each having been summoned by a letter – Zillah, Edvard, and Lilith explicitly said theirs were of the “if you wanna make money, I have an opportunity” vein; I don’t recall if Kasimir said what his said; and Barnaby declined to say what was written on his letter, possibly because it’ll be a plot point later. :p They introduced themselves and went inside –
Just in time for a bunch of Spirit Wardens, keepers of the dead and destroyers of ghosts, to burst out of a hidden back room and rush out with the body of a surprised-looking man. The curious group investigated the room, which was strewn with blueprints and maps and whatnot, and had a crude crafting bench in one corner. Kasimir immediately recognized it as a thieves’ den and made himself comfortable while the others poked around –
Only to be interrupted by a strange woman, with two enormous bodyguards. Turns out she’s a member of the Lampblacks gang from Crow’s Foot, the most crime-ridden area of the city, and was coming to “pay her respects” to the dead man, who, as it turned out, owed her a rather large gambling debt. And because the five are the closest warm bodies in the area, she’s decided that they now have to pay it off. Zillah tried to explain about the letters, and Kasimir pointed out that was very unfair, but the woman disclaimed all knowledge of the notes and told Kasimir that life was unfair. She informed the lot that they have 24 hours to get her 8 Coin’s worth of money or valuable goods (the monthly take of a small business in good standing, aka a pretty hefty amount), or she’d kill them all.
So – this new gang suddenly needed a score, and a good one! Mostly because Barnaby refuses to take any of this seriously, and refuses to “mix pots” by donating some of his OWN money to this cause (admittedly, at Luke’s prompting, he then said that his assets are mostly tied up in real estate). An annoyed Kasimir started scanning the notes of the dead thief and informed them of three potential opportunities – a new invention being shown at the Cab Driver’s Convention; a strange yacht out just beyond the docks, with signs of revelry coming from it; or a cursed artifact recently bought by a woman who serves on the Council of Six and is going to be displayed at her house. Nobody was keen on trying to reach the yacht – Edvard was eager to hit the convention and see the invention, being someone who likes that kind of thing, but Barnaby was not keen on talking to cab drivers. After some discussion, it was agreed that they would try to steal the cursed artifact from the councilwoman’s townhouse, and that – with the help of one of Edvard’s inventions, essentially a steampunk grappling hook, they’d infiltrate through the roof. Barnaby would be packing light (“it’s possible to be overprepared”); Zillah would be taking as much as possible; and the rest would take a normal scoundrel’s load. It’s a daring plan, and Barnaby probably has a friend in his social circle who could tell him about the house, so Luke rolled three dice in his first roll as GM to determine how good a position they were in when they went to infiltrate –
Highest result was a 2. That is – basically very much not good. XD Luke decided that this meant they got to the house all right, and that the three boys made it onto the roof fine with the grappling hook gun – but when ZILLAH got her hands on it, the damn thing malfunctioned and caught fire (leading to an argument between Zillah and Edvard about the quality of the thing). So the two girls are stuck at ground level – just in time for a pair of Bluecoat police to come patrolling by. The boys are fleeing to cover on the roof, but the girls have to think of a plan and quick! I left it off with Jane trying to ask Luke if the townhouse also had a basement, and Luke telling her that she could tell him, as this game is all about very collaborative storytelling. I’m already enjoying it – the characters seem like interesting people (and very different, at least in some respects, to their Oxventure characters), and there’s already been quite a few amusing rants from Edvard and some very poorly-received pithy comments from Barnaby. XD Looking forward to the next bit of the episode tomorrow!
Additionally:
-->A pretty nice day out there, so we did head out and play beanbags – and while Dad had a bad first game, he rallied pretty hard for the remaining four, while Mom managed to improve a little bit and I had a good start and then slowly slid downward. XD Final scores were me W-2-2-3-3; Dad 3-W-W-W-W; Mom 2-3-3-2-2. Well, at least I still did win ONE. . .
*nods* Not bad at all. :) And now it's time to wrap things up with tomorrow's to-do list:
1. Continue writing on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland"
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and see about getting something out of the Watch Later
3. Play Superliminal
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
*nods* I think that'll all do nicely. And now it's time for me to wrap up and head to bed -- yes, really. I'm trying to hit the sheets roughly around the same time I do on a work night just to not COMPLETELY wreck my sleep schedule. (Though I will probably not GET UP at the same time. . .) So yeah, night all!
1. Keep up with the FO4 playthrough progression: Check! As per my play session below, Victor, Piper and Alice have made some good progress indeed! Victor’s given Preston the go-ahead to start gathering people willing to take back the Castle and to let him know when they're ready; he, Alice, and Piper looted the Concord Speakeasy and found a creepy mannequin room up top which gave them all the willies (even as Piper insisted it was probably raiders who set up the scene); Victor encountered a traveler with tummy trouble thanks to “Longneck Lukowski’s Potted Meat,” with Piper seeing a potential story should they go investigate; the gang managed to avoid being blown up by Super Mutants or drained by bloodbugs as they snuck around the edges of Malden (though, uh, I should probably note at some point how Alice is feeding – Victor and Piper have probably both donated by now); and a distress signal on his Pip-Boy has led Victor into solving the mystery of the Brotherhood of Steel’s Lost Patrol! Not because he intends to join up with the BOS, but because he thinks it’ll give Danse a bit of peace of mind to learn what happened to them. *nods* He, Alice, and Piper are currently prepared to take on whatever’s in the National Guard’s Training Yard recruiting office to find the next piece of the puzzle, with Alice able to be out and about because of a massive thunderstorm blocking out the sun. Fun times!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and Jon's FO4 "Legendary Roulette" video: Check! Took a bit longer than expected tonight, but then it always does –
A) Started just before beanbags with a quick one in the Recommendeds – “How CallMeKevin and RTGame Met!” This is a clip of a stream during which Kevin recounted how he met RTGame, aka Dan – seems that a lot of people were telling him to “add Bob Ross” into his Sims 4 videos, which completely confused him until he found Dan’s channel (Bob being a character in Dan’s Sims videos – though I think he usually plays Sims 3). Kevin liked what he saw, and they ended up contacting each other on Twitter, and then they did a collab video on Payday, and the rest is history! The comments further clarified that apparently Dan was a fan of Kevin’s previously and used Kev’s channel to find his own YouTube voice. :) And of course someone mentioned that Dan was the one to introduce Kevin to his girlfriend Anna Chess, so those commenters confusing the two really led to some good things for Kevin. :)
B) Speaking of Call Me Kevin, this evening we started with his latest – “Hitman has the craziest mods ever!” Yes, Kevin went on a modding spree in Hitman 3, and his computer very much did not like it. XD I mean, the damn thing froze up and shut off the game in the first couple of minutes when he went to the Florida level with both a “everyone follows me” mod and a “everyone around me gets SET ON FIRE” mod. He managed to avoid more crashes as he went on, but he continued to get into shenanigans – a mod that allowed him to “vault” anywhere also allowed him to CLIP THROUGH WALLS, letting him do things like get selfies with the race cars on the Florida race track and speed-“jump” though the hotel in Bangkok; corpses and items floated through all the levels thanks to a “low gravity” mod (meaning EVERYONE could be sent to heaven, not just Kevin’s Hitman VR victims!); and when he hit the tropics, he gave himself every item just for convenience’s sake (meaning it took him FOREVER to find anything specific) and then found a way to stuff more than two bodies into a closet through clipping. XD It’s worth noting he was NOT a very effective hitman during all of this, though – I think the only level he properly finished was the Florida one! (Admittedly with one very cool kill as he shot the race car driver target WHILE SHE WAS SPEEDING AT HIM.) His two attempts at Elusive Targets were foiled when a) his attempt to get the food critic target to follow him to his exit point (a separate mod that allowed Kevin to PICK AND CHOOSE who followed him) ended with him successfully killing the target but not able to use the exit and dying and b) he couldn’t FIND the second target and kept falling out of the map thanks to his “vault” ability; and his attempt to kill EVERYONE in the Bangkok level was stymied by a) his explosive ducks not taking out as many of his mod-induced followers as he thought and b) after hanging over the edge of a balcony and pulling people over for a good ten minutes (including both of his targets!), he was then somehow murdered by two glitchy guard NPCs who seemingly punched him to death; and his attempt at blowing up his targets on the tropical island in the Maldives ended up a) just launching one of them into the sky instead of killing her and b) killing HIM when he tried to pick up one of his own mines that had missed the target. XD Ah well – at least 47 always had a smile on his face! Thanks to another mod that was probably the creepiest of all. XD
C) Then it was over to GrayStillPlays and “GTA 5 but every 60 seconds gets more satisfying” – aka, time for more tortorous Alex parkour boards in GTA V! The theme of this course was “satisfying videos,” though I’m not sure who they were satisfying FOR. Definitely not Gray. XD I mean, the course STARTED with Gray having to find the real car hidden inside two fake cars, then make his way across a bridge with pulsating windmills without getting knocked off. Then he had to drive along the twisty-turny heart road until he reached a wall and a checkpoint he had to reach on foot; then dive down a giant hole and hope he hit the right color teleporter to get to the rest of the course instead of a giant plant pot; then he had to wall ride up the sides of a black-and-white spiral bowl, trying to find the right hidden exit that would allow him to escape (and trust me, it was HARD – those holes were well-hidden, and the alternating bands really played tricks with your eyes); THEN he had to make it around the spiraling half-opacity tube of rainbows into what I presume was supposed to be a satisfying Play-Doh noodle-maker; THEN he had to wall ride around the noodle maker and its watermelon chunks (and random cars being flung out) to get past the mega-windmills to the platform with the checkpoint, THEN he had to go down a spiral wall ride, though a thumbnail hole past two windmills, and down a secret tunnel (he NEARLY cheated this when he missed the spiral by just launching himself off the wall itself, but then fell off the final area); and FINALLY he had to go around a loop that was half-opacity on one half, fully transparent on the other, to land his car on the platform just above so he could get out and run through the finisher. He did indeed complete the course, but MAN did it take a lot out of him. This was one of those boards where he spent half of his time babbling out “oh no nononono” and variations because shit was just coming at him everywhere all the time. XD Poor Gray, he suffers so much for our amusement. . .
D) And finally, we had Jon and the next episode of “Legendary Roulette!” This was a slightly shorter one than normal, and it had some interesting twists and turns –
I. Jon, after promising revenge on Virgil for his turrets killing Paramedic Bot Friend in the last episode, headed over to the CIT Ruins to properly start “Hunter/Hunted” – but couldn’t resist a poke inside to check out the fight between the Super Mutants and the synths, because hey, legendaries that he doesn’t necessarily have to kill himself! Unfortunately it didn’t actually yield anything particularly good, and Jon just got confused by a blue ash pile, because he thought that meant an alien blaster and he couldn’t find one (the comments later corrected him by pointing out the Institute laser rifles fire blue lasers, so they leave blue ash piles as well). Ah well, got a bit of ammo out of it.
II. From there it was over to Greentech Genetics to work his way through the Gunners and take out the Courser – something that he was rather nervous about, because, well, Courser dude be tough, yo. He actually took a moment to swing back by Diamond City and pick up lots of ammo just to be on the safe side. He did pretty well against the Gunners, taking advantage of all the cover and little doorways to pop through – and while they didn’t yield much in the way of good legendaries (either copies of stuff he already had, rubbish effects, or good stuff on the wrong type of gun – though there was one Junkie’s Laser Musket that Jon took a moment to wax poetic about. Not good for his current build, but if you’re willing to take on all the downsides of multiple addictions and spend the time upgrading the capacitor and whatnot, you can have a sniping weapon that does ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS amounts of damage. It’s the only legendary effect not capped at double damage, you see, and since there are SO MANY addictions in the game. . .), he was able to scavenge some nice headwear to boost his Perception and just make The Legend Of Boston look more badass (nice military cap, glasses, and a skull bandana). PLUS all the desks and whatnot scattered around the building meant that he actually exited the building with MORE AMMO THAN HE WENT IN WITH. Jon is now a “Scrounger” perk convert, everyone. XD
III. But what about the Courser, Z2-47? The fight that the game gives you the option to nope out of? The fight that really worried Jon because Coursers generally tend to be really tough, and their abililty to go invisible means that VATS can’t detect them?
Yeah, turns out a Courser is just as susceptible to Wounding as everything else. A few shots with Legend’s shotgun, some intense Wounding damage speeding down the health bar while in VATS, and the Courser going invisible just too late, and Z2-47 was a walk in the park. XD Awesome.
IV. With the courser chip snagged and all legendaries (both real and “fake” – the ones on the top floor had no weapons) taken care of, Jon proceeded onward toward the Old North Church and the Railroad – but then had an idea. Because also nearby to all this was everybody’s favorite robot-run ship, the USS Constitution! And Jon figured, the scavengers who attack the ship are gonna be legendary, right? The robots on the ship are gonna be legendary right? Why not kick off the initial fight and loot the corpses? Now, I thought I knew how this was gonna go – Jon would start the quest, decide the best course of action would be to do the “evil” ending and side with the scavvers, and just kill EVERYBODY in the end for the maximum amount of legendary corpses and thus legendary stuff laying around (because in the “evil” ending the scavvers you helped turn on you so they can keep all the scrap for themselves).
Nope! After doing the initial fight with the robots and confirming he could not just repair the ship because his Intelligence score was too low, he just started shooting the robots. Failed the quest outright, nearly got blown up multiple times because, you know, legendary robots EXPLODE, and didn’t even get anything good out of it because most of the legendary robots (the Protectrons on the crew) were carrying stuff like Safecracker’s armor. Boooo, Jon. I’m glad that Ironsides doesn’t drop his lovely hat when you kill him. Booo.
V. With loads of pointless robot murder on his hands, Jon then proceeded over to the Old North Church, where he managed to pick up something actually halfway decent off an enemy outside – a VATS Enhanced Laser Rifle! This has the same “25% less action points spent” effect that the Quickdraw Laser Pistol he picked up recently has, but also better VATS accuracy and range. Combine that with an already upgraded laser rifle he picked up in Greentech, and now he has a pretty good laser weapon, yay!
VI. And after that, it was into the Old North Church, where the ghouls didn’t yield anything good either, to get the courser chip decoded – and then back over to Virgil to get the plans for the teleporter! Which meant, once those were handed over – Jon no longer really needed Virgil alive.
Cue murder spree against Virgil and his robots for killing Paramedic Robot Friend! The turrets and the protectron went down pretty easy, but Virgil himself was a LOT harder – and, as it turned out, essential, so unkillable. Damn. Jon reluctantly left and headed back to Sanctuary, swearing further revenge once he got the opportunity – and while ending the video, he did recall that the Brotherhood has a mission specifically to kill Virgil. . .
But that is for next week, probably! As is building the teleporter – and The Legend of Boston joining the Institute! Yeah, apparently that is the end-game Jon is going with, because a) he hasn’t done it since his very first playthrough, and b) it’s short, and this is supposed to be a mini-series, damn it. XD So that’ll be interesting! Looking forward to that. :D
3. Play Fallout 4 and ACTUALLY start moving toward Finch Farm: Check! Made some good progress on this too – I’m within sight of the farm! Though I’m ACTUALLY doing another quest right at the moment – it’s one that takes place mostly near the farm, though. . .let me get you up to speed:
-->Started with Victor and Piper in Sanctuary, right by Preston – after giving his textures a moment to not freak out (Bethesda), Victor said hello and Preston asked about the Castle. Victor confirmed the story of how it fell – giant sea monster – and then told Preston, “sure, let’s do this.” Preston went off to gather some recruits and perform recon, while Victor reorganized his inventory slightly (dropped off the Vault Suit in his Sanctuary bedroom, he’s not using it), checked his perks (can’t get Gun Nut 3 until Level 25!), then set off for Finch Farm at noon with Piper!
-->First stop was a quick cut through one of the side streets of Concord – ended up detouring into the local speakeasy just because it was there and I was curious. Definitely worth it – Victor found a BUNCH of adhesive inside! Plus some other good junk bits and bobs, and a couple of advanced locks to crack. There was also the creepy mannequin room upstairs, with one skeleton in bed with a lady mannequin and three other male mannequins arranged around the bathtub with machetes and a plunger, but – let’s not talk about that. XD Victor and Piper sure don’t!
-->After that it was back onto the ruined streets of Massachusetts, where Victor spotted a settler at the cookpot in the random spawn parking lot – upon saying hello, the dude warned him to stay back. Not because he was hostile, but because he had the shits something fierce after eating three cans of Longneck Lukowski’s potted meat. He gave the remainder to Victor and warned him off before he had another accident, so now THAT’S marked on Victor’s map and he can do that mini-quest later.
-->From there it was just past a few of the usual landmarks – Thicket Excavations, Bedford Station, and the Rotten Landfill, where Victor started to feel tired. I had him keep going though, as it was only 4:30 in the afternoon, and Piper ended up giving him a Nuka-Cola after a brief chat, so that was nice. :) After orienting them in the right direction, I spotted a bunch of neutral turrets nearby on what seemed like a housing complex of some sort and started moving in for a closer look. . .
-->Oh, that’s Covenant! I decided to turn around and head in a slightly different direction instead, as I feel like Victor should discover Covenant AFTER he ends up a member of the Railroad. So instead Victor and Piper went up the other road off the roundabout, avoiding some rad barrels and wandering off the beaten path to find a trailer Victor could pick open. Inside was a bunch of skeletons with pillows and suitcases – human trafficking? People smuggling themselves across a border? Unsure. It was near a decent spot to camp, though, so Victor threw up the tent and the wall, and used the new cooking stove function on his portable workbench to make some fresh meals before his exhaustion really caught up with him. One noodle cup later, it was bedtime at about 7 PM.
-->Victor woke up the next day at 3 AM with a need to use the facilities – sent him down to the street so he could use his port-a-potty with the least issue, then went back, packed up all his gear, and sent him further down the road to the medical center nearby. . .
-->And then I saw a familiar flashing red light and remembered “Oh yeah, this is Malden, isn’t it? Super Mutant territory?” Victor and Piper promptly went out of their way a little bit to sneak by. . .only to disturb a bunch of bloodbug hatchlings. *facepalm* Which are hard to hit even WITH VATS. Victor and Piper were able to take them out without TOO much trouble, though, and were able to get past what I believe is the hospital without issue. Which is good, because SOMETHING upset that Super Mutant Suicider I saw before and caused him to blow up. *shrug* Better it than me!
-->Victor and Piper continued on, to another building that looked vaguely medical – I decided to go ahead and tag this one for later. . .only to find the outside courtyard full of feral ghouls. And while Victor and Piper were dealing with those, a pack of vicious mongrels ran to join the fight! Fortunately everyone only suffered minor injuries and a couple more rads during the fight. And I successfully discovered the building once all the combatants were dead and their corpses looted – Med-Tek Research! No real point in going in now, as you’re meant to come here with MacCready when you pick him up, but good to have on the map for later.
-->Around this time, I noticed Victor had picked up a “Distress Signal” and decided to listen to it. It was just a steady beeping, which confused me briefly – and then I remembered, “Oh yeah, that ‘Lost Patrol’ quest starts around here, doesn’t it?” This is technically a Brotherhood of Steel quest (Danse assigns it to you if you join up), but you can do it on your own if you stumble across the bodies. After a moment’s contemplation, I decided to have Victor go ahead and start it, as the vast majority of the quest actually takes place around Finch Farm – he could easily pick this up along the way in fanfic land. So he and Piper investigated the blown suits of power armor and the corpse of Knight Varhan, and Victor listened to the battlefield holotape which indicated everyone had fallen back to the National Guard Training Yard! Which was nice and nearby – good for poor Victor and Piper, as it had started POURING in-game at that point.
-->And so they headed over to the Training Yard, the discovery of which put Victor at Level 22! :D I had him pull up the perk list, and though I was tempted to get the ability to hack more terminals, I decided the second rank of “Action Boy,” which boosts his action point refill rate up to 50% faster, was probably the better option – Victor DOES use a lot of VATS these days! After that, it was just a matter of sneaking around and taking out all the turrets and ferals and disarming all the mines around the place, then heading in the front door of the Recruitment office! This is where I’ve left them for the moment, ready to fight some more feral ghouls and find the next Brotherhood corpse. *nods* Next time – finish up as much of this quest as possible, then hit up Finch Farm!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check! Did a nice catch-up this morning on the Victor Luvs Alice dash AND my tracked tags, reblogged Moose’s final three “McFlyJuly” fics, then around lunchtime (that is, started before lunch, finished after) did my drafts for the upcoming Chill Save two-parter covering Smiler’s Winter Friday! AKA the “Night On The Town” in Henford-On-Bagley that didn’t go entirely according to plan. Ah well, at least the update afterward is them finally moving in with Victor and Alice and me getting all the serotonin from my Valicer polycule finally being properly together. :) . . .which I have not been able to play since because, you know, buggy as hell patch. *sigh* Ah well. . . Oh, and one ask reply for Valice Multiverse tonight in the queue – nice and easy after Jon!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, but not exactly back to the Oxventure! Instead, thanks to my new purchase and mini-obsession, I chose to watch instead the trailer for and first episode of their spin-off sequel series, “Oxventure Presents: Blades in the Dark!” AKA, the reason I looked up the game on TV Tropes in the first place (I followed the link from one of the Oxventure “funny moments” pages). This series takes the lore of Blades in the Dark and tweaks it a little to match up with the shenanigans of the main Oxventure – rather than the Shattered Isles, we are still in Geth, just centuries into the future; rather than being set in Duskwall, the main city the characters live and operate in is called Volisport (though so far this seems to be “Luke has simply renamed Duskwall to perhaps fit in a bit better with the names of towns in the main Oxventure”); and rather than a great cataclysm that shattered the world and broke the gates of death eight centuries ago, the reason for all the ghosts and all the bad things is magic slowly seeping out of the world. On the plus side for the characters, this means they will probably see the sun at some point, because that’s not a thing in the “standard” setting. Said characters are:
Barnaby “The Butcher” Fortescue III – the manipulative, smooth-talking Slide, a rich boy who has taken up crime as a bit of a lark from boredom. He is played by – Mike. Yes, MIKE. I was surprised too that Barnaby wasn’t someone who blows up his problems. XD
Edvard Lumiere – the tinkering-obsessed Leech, formerly from a good merchant family who has burned through all his money making his inventions and has a REAL chip on his shoulder about his hated rival who keeps making all his inventions look bad. He is played by Andy!
Zillah “The Bruiser” Bruzaud – the fight-loving Cutter, she used to be a pugilist but was retired in disgrace some time ago, and now she’s looking for ways to support her cousins and whatnot. She is played by Jane!
Lilith Capellinaga – the studious Whisper, she’s from foreign nobility and has come to Volisport to study ghosts and the ghost problem, and is running into problems trying to pay her own way. She is played by Ellen!
Kasimir Jones – the veteran Spider, a career criminal with a wonky leg and not much patience with all of these weird newbies. He is played by – Johnny, because LUKE is the DM in this series! Maybe Johnny really wanted to be on the player side for this one – as per the Dicebreaker review I watched, it’s one of their favorite RPGs.
The story began with the five of them being lured to a certain antiques shop in the Nightmarket area of Volisport, each having been summoned by a letter – Zillah, Edvard, and Lilith explicitly said theirs were of the “if you wanna make money, I have an opportunity” vein; I don’t recall if Kasimir said what his said; and Barnaby declined to say what was written on his letter, possibly because it’ll be a plot point later. :p They introduced themselves and went inside –
Just in time for a bunch of Spirit Wardens, keepers of the dead and destroyers of ghosts, to burst out of a hidden back room and rush out with the body of a surprised-looking man. The curious group investigated the room, which was strewn with blueprints and maps and whatnot, and had a crude crafting bench in one corner. Kasimir immediately recognized it as a thieves’ den and made himself comfortable while the others poked around –
Only to be interrupted by a strange woman, with two enormous bodyguards. Turns out she’s a member of the Lampblacks gang from Crow’s Foot, the most crime-ridden area of the city, and was coming to “pay her respects” to the dead man, who, as it turned out, owed her a rather large gambling debt. And because the five are the closest warm bodies in the area, she’s decided that they now have to pay it off. Zillah tried to explain about the letters, and Kasimir pointed out that was very unfair, but the woman disclaimed all knowledge of the notes and told Kasimir that life was unfair. She informed the lot that they have 24 hours to get her 8 Coin’s worth of money or valuable goods (the monthly take of a small business in good standing, aka a pretty hefty amount), or she’d kill them all.
So – this new gang suddenly needed a score, and a good one! Mostly because Barnaby refuses to take any of this seriously, and refuses to “mix pots” by donating some of his OWN money to this cause (admittedly, at Luke’s prompting, he then said that his assets are mostly tied up in real estate). An annoyed Kasimir started scanning the notes of the dead thief and informed them of three potential opportunities – a new invention being shown at the Cab Driver’s Convention; a strange yacht out just beyond the docks, with signs of revelry coming from it; or a cursed artifact recently bought by a woman who serves on the Council of Six and is going to be displayed at her house. Nobody was keen on trying to reach the yacht – Edvard was eager to hit the convention and see the invention, being someone who likes that kind of thing, but Barnaby was not keen on talking to cab drivers. After some discussion, it was agreed that they would try to steal the cursed artifact from the councilwoman’s townhouse, and that – with the help of one of Edvard’s inventions, essentially a steampunk grappling hook, they’d infiltrate through the roof. Barnaby would be packing light (“it’s possible to be overprepared”); Zillah would be taking as much as possible; and the rest would take a normal scoundrel’s load. It’s a daring plan, and Barnaby probably has a friend in his social circle who could tell him about the house, so Luke rolled three dice in his first roll as GM to determine how good a position they were in when they went to infiltrate –
Highest result was a 2. That is – basically very much not good. XD Luke decided that this meant they got to the house all right, and that the three boys made it onto the roof fine with the grappling hook gun – but when ZILLAH got her hands on it, the damn thing malfunctioned and caught fire (leading to an argument between Zillah and Edvard about the quality of the thing). So the two girls are stuck at ground level – just in time for a pair of Bluecoat police to come patrolling by. The boys are fleeing to cover on the roof, but the girls have to think of a plan and quick! I left it off with Jane trying to ask Luke if the townhouse also had a basement, and Luke telling her that she could tell him, as this game is all about very collaborative storytelling. I’m already enjoying it – the characters seem like interesting people (and very different, at least in some respects, to their Oxventure characters), and there’s already been quite a few amusing rants from Edvard and some very poorly-received pithy comments from Barnaby. XD Looking forward to the next bit of the episode tomorrow!
Additionally:
-->A pretty nice day out there, so we did head out and play beanbags – and while Dad had a bad first game, he rallied pretty hard for the remaining four, while Mom managed to improve a little bit and I had a good start and then slowly slid downward. XD Final scores were me W-2-2-3-3; Dad 3-W-W-W-W; Mom 2-3-3-2-2. Well, at least I still did win ONE. . .
*nods* Not bad at all. :) And now it's time to wrap things up with tomorrow's to-do list:
1. Continue writing on "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland"
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs and see about getting something out of the Watch Later
3. Play Superliminal
4. Work on tumblr drafts
5. Get in a workout
*nods* I think that'll all do nicely. And now it's time for me to wrap up and head to bed -- yes, really. I'm trying to hit the sheets roughly around the same time I do on a work night just to not COMPLETELY wreck my sleep schedule. (Though I will probably not GET UP at the same time. . .) So yeah, night all!
