The Penultimate Sunday

Yes, today was the second-to-last day of my time off -- the sad realization that I must resume my normal work schedule this upcoming Tuesday is starting to set in. :( At least it's been a pretty good Sunday -- and a very Fallout-y one as well:

1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – a busy day for Victor and Piper, that’s for sure! As per below, they raided the National Guard Armory, disarming all the traps and killing the ghouls in there; took out the sentry bot that was activated when they opened up the Power Armor Storage room in there; found their way over to Revere Satellite Array and took out the clan of super mutants who had claimed it; found the corpse of Scribe Faris and learned that Brandis would have fallen back to Recon Bunker Theta; and finally returned to the National Guard Training Yard to camp out overnight again and meet back up with Alice (who was a little stressed out by all the trouble her friends had been getting into while she’d been trapped in a sleeping bag). XD Hey, Alice, at least they didn’t die as many times as they did while I was actually playing the game. . .

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Jon's old Fallout board game video, and the latest "Legendary Roulette" video: Check! Plus a bonus from the old Recommendeds, nice –

A) Started after all my FO4 stuff with a video from Simmer Erin – “HOW TO FIX YOUR BROKEN SIMS 4 GAME- BUGS & GLITCHES FROM HIGH SCHOOL YEARS &JULY/ AUGUST UPDATE!” Basically Erin wanted to take us through some of the more common bugs from the new pack and the Update From Hell and how to fix them – some, like black UI icons and invisible doors are due to mods (like UI Cheats and Basemental’s drug mods, respectively); some might be mods OR in-game bugs (like the “not saving” thing – oooh, fingers crossed for the Chill Save. . .), and some are just bugs – like the confirmation that graduation isn’t working in High School Years (and prom doesn’t work if there’s a Get Famous talent show scheduled for the same date). Thanks for the info, Erin – and for confirming that I made the right choice in not buying High School Years.

B) Then it was over to the Subs for the latest from GrayStillPlays – “When you literally speedrun through life,” with First To Life! Another in his “crappy mobile game themed around racing along a course collecting things and avoiding obstacles” series, this one allowed you to play out a life – starting with the fertilization of the egg. I’m dead serious, the first thing you play as is a pack of sperm. You avoid obstacles and custom-design your baby from the options given (choice of binary gender, two skin colors, two hair colors, and two eye colors). Then your baby plays dress-up for no reason, collecting whatever you like from the onesies, hats, and accessories on offer; then you send them to school, where they must collect books to form a tower to ride on to get over obstacles like small walls and pits of lava in order to get good grades; then you have them pick from two options for what they want to be when they grow up, and they must collect enough of the associated symbol to max out their multipler; THEN if you have the gems, you can unlock the “collect money and choose the right options to get the stack as high as possible” level and see what kind of cool-ass car you get; THEN you can unlock the “design your partner and get them to the altar” level. It’s – it’s WEIRD. Gray played a girl, End of Days, who was a terrifying monster who took up the guitar in her teenage years; a blue-haired boy, Run For Your Lives, who build up the neighborhood with Gray’s spare gems before becoming an astronaut; a LITERAL DEVIL BOY whom the game named JOTARO – Gray obviously made him become an Evil Overlord with a devil tank; and a purple alien girl with pink hair, A Vote For Me Is A Vote For The Eventual Heat Death Of The Universe, who became a space pirate and married a pink-haired clown person. XD Usual terrible mobile game made sooo much better with the addition of Gray.

C) And then, this evening, after supper, we had a double-dose of Jon and Fallout stuff –

I. First, that video of his from a few years ago that was Recommended to me recently – “Fallout: The Board Game – War Changed Somewhat!” This is Jon and Claire playing through the Fallout board game – and it’s one of those complicated “build the board as you go, every character has multiple moves and cards you can exhaust, and you can start and play through multiple quests” games that kind of makes my head spin. @.@ (There’s a reason Mom and I only attempted the BTTF game of that type a couple of times!) Jon and Claire had fun, though, playing the Fallout 3 Capital Wasteland-themed board set – Claire was playing as a Brotherhood Outcast in power armor with a combat knife, while Jon was a Wastelander with a tire iron and big dreams. XD The first goal of the game was to either locate the crash of a vertibird and check for survivors, or go to the settlement of Megaton and see what was going on – Jon ended up finding the crash and discovering it was Enclave, and now he can get them supplies in exchange for advancing their position on the board – or, thanks to another quest that activated at the same location he was at, he can go and get himself abducted by aliens, which he is VERY excited about. Meanwhile, Claire has been trapped killing raiders, bugs, and bounty hunters in her corner of the “board,” and her attempts to explore further down have woken up a deathclaw. She is honestly considering dying just to reset her position and try for a better set of loot. XD It’s EXTREMELY complicated, but I think I’m following along okay. It’s also the first part of a miniseries they ran, but I can’t watch Part 2 tonight – I’m thinking I might double up on Sundays for a bit instead. (Or watch it tomorrow, though it is an hour and a half. . .we’ll see!)

II. And secondly, of course, the current regular Sunday series, “Legendary Roulette!” And ooooh boy, did Jon’s luck turn tonight. And all because he decided to use the Minutemen to build his teleporter into the Institute. . .let me break it down for you:

-->After discovering that Preston wouldn’t help him build the teleporter without doing the starting Minutemen mission with Tenpines and Corvega, Jon BRIEFLY went “screw you, I’m going with the Brotherhood, who will let me shoot Danse with the vertibird minigun when we first fly up to the Prydwen and no one, not even Danse, will care because AI in this game is weird” (no, seriously, you can fire all you want on him and it aggros no one) – and then was told by Maxson, “No, you have to do OUR starting faction mission clearing out the super mutants in Fort Strong first – what you did for Danse doesn’t count.” Which left Jon with the question of “do I do Fort Strong or Corvega” – Fort Strong was closer, but Corvega had more enemies which meant more legendaries, so Jon decided to go back to the Minutemen. Though he did appreciate all the ammo he was able to pick up at the Brotherhood base – dude is definitely a Scrounger convert these days. XD

-->Before the trip to Tenpines, though, Jon had to make a few detours! Side trip one – hitting up the Robot Disposal Yard to wake up Sentry Bot friend (who was also Legendary, to Jon’s delight) and using him to help kill a bunch of mole rats, then trundle over to USAF Station Olivia and take out the raiders there. Sentry Bot Friend left kind of early after killing some raiders at Olivia, leaving Jon to take out the final mole rat spawns there on his own, but fortunately none of them (not even the mined-up one) were too difficult. Sadly, none of them had any particularly good gear on them either.

-->Side trip two, though. . .this was a quick stop along the way to search the corpses after some wandering Brotherhood soliders took down some mutants and their dogs – and on one said dog was the wonder that was a Staggering Fat Man! Now, Staggering on a Fat Man is pretty well useless as a legendary, but Jon was excited because it was a Fat Man he was ALLOWED TO USE under the rules of the LP! Doesn’t matter if the legendary effect actually fired or not – as long as it WAS an in-the-wild legendary (instead of a guaranteed spawn), he could use it. Didn’t this episode, but it is an option!

-->And finally, it was time to hit Corvega – Jon choosing to use the sewer entrance for a change to take out the ghouls in the basement and see if he could get anything off them. Not really, but he was able to get upstairs without issue and get another Robot Friend (a Legendary Protectron Watcher) going against the raiders in there. Cue like ALL the explosions as Watcher Protectron Friend and Jon with his Explosive weapons took on the Legendary Raiders (Jon getting Jared the leader easily with a quick sneak attack) and all the cars around them began blowing up all over the place. XD Chaos central, BUT! But. Having cleared the mission objective, and working his way through the remaining raiders both inside and out, Jon found among all the usual crap such goodies as a Staggering Submachine Gun, a Kneecapper Laser Pistol, and the sexy one – a Wounding Laser Pistol. These are guns he has ammo for AND can be heavily modified to be whatever he wants them to be! Yes!

-->So, after that, and with Preston and Sturges on board with the teleporter, Jon’s next goal became either a) upping his Science! perk for upgrades, or b) acquiring parts from laser guns already in the world. Jon was able to find a couple of nice ones over in Diamond City at Arturo’s and Myra’s shops, but he knew the best faction for getting laser weapons, and thus laser weapon parts, would be the Gunners. So, time to find a bunch of them! Jon’s first thought was to head back to Greentech Genetics and see if the corpses were still there – they were, but pretty much all their GUNS had despawned, so no luck there. So Jon instead went over to Mass Fusion to murder all the Gunners in there! Which was not only not even that difficult, but paid some massive dividends – not only did he get the Strength Bobblehead at the top, and loads and loads of laser guns, he also picked up from the enemies along the way the Wounding Submachine Gun he’d missed out on in an earlier episode and a QUICKDRAW Fat Man, which is at least somewhat better than Staggering. XD (Granted, that Fat Man was nearly used on HIM – good thing Wounding does the job, huh?)

-->With all of his new kit, Jon headed back to Sanctuary and began trading across parts, to create the wonder that was the Wounding Overcharged Improved Automatic Laser Rifle – essentially, a wounding automatic laser shotgun. Jon decided to test it out against the Carhenge Behemoth over near Walden Pond and compare it to his old Wounding Shotgun. A Behemoth has a LOT of health, so his usual “manipulate time with VATS” strategy with the shotgun didn’t work as well as usual – he only got it down to about half health before the damn thing flattened him like a pancake. The WOIALR, on the other hand – a VATS round to get the fucker’s health going down, then some manual fire took the Behemoth down like a dream. Jon in fact felt like the manual fire was better than the VATS fire in this case (especially since one VATS shot missed) and tried a round with it totally manual – the recoil was a bit of an issue, but he still took it down with little trouble. That baby is DEFINITELY gonna be a favorite for any big and dangerous enemies for sure. :D

-->And now, with a new super weapon in hand, it was finally time to advance the main plot a bit! With the teleporter build, The Legend of Boston entered the Institute, got a load of XP (she actually leveled up three times today, taking a level of Grim Reaper’s Sprint and two points of Agility for the AP), met up with Shaun – and then moved into the backstage area of Biotech to pick up the cure for Virgil! Now, given that Jon has indicated that he hates Virgil in this particular run because the guy’s turrets killed Paramedic Protectron Friend, this seemed out of character. But, you see, Jon had a plan! A plan that involved getting the cure –

And then running to Swann’s Pond. To read the notes there about poor Swann’s history. Said history being his transformation into a super mutant for stealing cigs in the Institute (he was a janitor there) and briefly becoming super-smart – only to become the behemoth monster that scares all of us in the early game when his mutations destabilized. With this knowledge in hand, Legend headed over to Virgil’s cave, lied straight to his face that she couldn’t find the cure, reminded him of what happened to Swann –

And talked Virgil into letting her kill him so he didn’t become a monster. Which Jon did with glee. And then shoved the corpse in Virgil’s own cooking pot. And then hit him in the face so hard HIS FACE DESPAWNED. Damn – when Jon goes for revenge, he does not mess around!

And that ended that particular episode! :D Next week – starting all the big fights at Libertalia and Bunker Hill! That’ll be fun. :D Jon admitted in the comments he’s actually really enjoying playing with this mod, and it shows. I’m certainly enjoying watching it!

3. Play Fallout 4 and finish up the National Guard Training Yard: Check – though I must confess, today was a day of a lot of death and pain for Victor and Piper. . .here’s how it went down –

-->Started with going to one of the little outbuildings just to see what was inside – turns out what was OUTSIDE was a mine, which Victor didn’t get away from fast enough – didn’t die, but he did break his arm. One stimpack and some water later, he was able to get in and find – one thing of Radaway. Ugh.

-->From there, Victor and Piper proceeded inside the Armory, which, upon loading proved to be full of laser tripwires. I promptly had Victor ask Piper to wait by the door so she didn’t wander through them and set them all off, then had him carefully disarm each one before taking care of the feral ghoul at the back. I also knew that there was a Withered feral in the locked Power Armor Storage room, so I had Victor carefully open that using the Officer’s Password he’d picked up, then get out of the way as the Withered came out – to my surprise, I was able to take it down pretty effectively just with my Tactical 10mm! This is why you upgrade your guns, people. XD Though Piper distracting it and getting a few hits in helped too. With that taken care of, Victor explored the Power Armor Storage, took all the adhesive, then took a moment to eat some Yao Guai Ribs and down some Radaway for his health before heading back outside. . .

-->Where, oh right, that surprise Sentry Bot that gets released when you open that station awaits. I was hoping it wouldn’t be RIGHT on top of us! Victor managed to survive for a little while while I tried to decide what gun would be best against it, but the sheer amount of bullets being fired in his direction overwhelmed his ability to stimpack himself, and he went down pretty quickly.

-->Reloaded into the Power Armor Storage, right before de-radding and eating – repeated that, took a moment to answer the call of nature and grab some extra fuses I hadn’t spotted before, had Victor get down low to hide, then dropped a save right before opening the door to head out. Result was – an even quicker death.

-->. . .Okay, at least I have a later save this time. One more try before I reload from my start point and try to figure out a better way to deal with this. Had Victor go outside. . .

And third time’s the charm – sentry bot did not IMMEDIATELY notice Victor and Piper! Promptly had them scurry away from line of sight around a brick pile and dropped another save. Now, what I should have really done was just leave the stupid thing to just wander back and forth between its little storage cubby and the back of the recruitment office forever, but – well, I figured Victor would notice the nearby settlement and think its his duty to try and kill it. So I had him try to loop around the whole building to get a better angle, maybe a rare shot at its fusion cores. . .

And then Piper got its attention, and while Victor was able to BRIEFLY get away, a moment too long trying to get a shot at those cores meant that he got murderlated right quick when it spotted him again. *wince*

-->Reload by our hiding spot. . .you know, if I could get on the roof. . .tried to get Victor up there, but then he got stuck on the ramp up and got murdered. Damn.

-->Reload – maybe if we try going the OTHER way, then? Sneak around it? Victor and Piper tried going BEHIND it instead, by its cubby – but then it spotted Piper.

But not Victor. Realizing that I could FINALLY get my roof plan to work, I sent Victor sprinting toward the stairs up top – he took a few hits, but he made it. It was a bit tricky to actually FIRE on the Sentry Bot from up there, but he and his Two-Shot Combat Rifle eventually managed to blast it into submission, causing it to blow up and burn itself into scrap. Hah. Piper rejoined Victor as he came down to loot the corpse, and I made an immediate save. XD

-->And with THAT done, it was time to get to the Revere Satellite Array! You know, the place with all the super mutants! I had Victor and Piper creep up as close as they dared and scope the place out – and spotted a Suicider within sniping range. I had Victor take out his Mighty Sniper and attempt to blast the guy in the head. . .

Unfortunately didn’t kill him. Even more unfortunately, got the attention of all the OTHER super mutants. Victor and Piper held their own for a while, but sheer numbers got to them eventually, with Victor personally taken out by a hound he’d missed. Damn.

-->Reload just outside the place – must be a better way to handle this. . .hey, actually, hasn’t Jon demonstrated that if you shoot Suiciders in the right arm, they auto-explode? I had Victor try THAT plan with VATS –

BOOM, one dead Suicider! :D Again, the mutants started coming out, but THIS time Piper and Victor were able to keep a handle on them! I mean, one asshole had an Incendiary Laser Rifle, so they ended up burning for a bit, but the damage was nowhere NEAR what it was on their first assault. Victor was even able to take down a Butcher with a Missile Launcher, who is one of the big boys. :D

-->With mutants cleared out by 3 PM in-game, it was time to explore. Victor poked around the remains of what was originally a raider camp on the edges (finding and scrapping some nice leather armor for the components), then poked around all the towers – up in one dish, there was a power armor frame, a chest with goodies, and a FAT MAN. I left that there because Victor is not a “fire the nukes” guy, but it’s good to know where it is, I suppose! And over on the central tower, there was the Incendiary rifle, plus another issue of the US Covert Ops mag, nice. :D

-->And, of course, in the far corner, there was the corpse of Scribe Faris, taken down by a bullet wound to the leg in the exact wrong spot. Victor took his tags and his holotape and learned that Brandis probably fell back to Recon Bunker Theta – that shall be explored later! (Mostly because, well, in-universe, Victor would be reasonably certain Brandis is dead, like the rest of his team. . .)

-->With the “Lost Patrol” quest followed as far as I could take it at the moment, I had Victor go back to the armor bench in the raider trailers to add deep pockets to his painted metal left leg (more carry capacity away!), then had him and Piper return to the Training Yard to loot the remaining outbuilding and make camp on the roof for the night. Next time – FINALLY Finch Farm! And the Forged, which should be fun. At least I know which dialogue option to pick with Jake! (Either that or chug some Charisma-boosting juice. . .)

4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – actually got an early start on this last night, uploading the pictures for the first of the five posts that will make up this week’s Chill Save update on Victor Luvs Alice (45 pictures covering Smiler moving in with Victor and Alice, attending the Mt. Komorebi snow festival, and celebrating New Year’s) – I was testing to see if the picture limit really had been raised (someone I’d seen on a different tumblr had claimed it was 30 now – I only got the usual ten). Then, this morning, after the usual dash-and-tags catch-up, I uploaded the rest of the pictures and then started doing the proper text for each post. Got through about two and a half before lunch, yay~ I'll finish those off tomorrow. As for Valice Multiverse, there was NOTHING going on there, so I ended up just leaving it alone. *shrug*

5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, but not yet back with the Oxventure. As I had a long video to watch tonight, and writing up the summaries for each chunk of Oxventure I watch during a workout tends to take a while, I decided to delay “Silent Knight” one more day and instead rewatched Call Me Kevin’s mini-series on Superliminal! Because why not go back to where I first saw the game? :D Got through two and a half of the three episodes on the bike, and finished off the third after supper. Poor Kevin spent most of his time complaining about how the puzzles made his brain hurt – and managed to accidentally glitch himself straight through the lockbox one (where you have to use a pair of linked doors to get yourself out of a lockbox through the lock), which, good for him! XD And the ending really freaked him out because he became convinced there was going to be some sort of monster jumpscare (which, to be fair, is something someone might worry about after “Blackout”). Poor Kevin. . .interesting to see how his version of the game differed from mine too, as I believe he played the original Epic Games release – some of the Easter Eggs and whatnot weren’t in his version (like the Dog ending, which I believe came with the later multiplayer update), and the evil door puzzle was slightly different (same idea – whichever way you look first is blocked off – but different visuals – his had a literally bricked-up exit as opposed to my dead-end corridor with the signs). But yeah, fun to revisit this after having played the game myself!

Not bad, not bad at all! Fairly typical Sunday in all of that, really. And now it's time to set up my final day-off to-do lists before heading to bed at a not-too-late time (because still trying not to kill my sleep schedule AND I have stayed up WAAY too late the last couple of days):

1. Either continue writing "Londerland Bloodlines: Downtown Queensland" or do some more Blades in the Dark stuff

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs

3. Play Sims 4 and finish off decorating the new Valicer house (and hopefully actually play the trio a bit)

4. Work on tumblr drafts

5. Get in a workout

*nods* We'll see what comes of all of that tomorrow -- night all!