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Very Fallouty Sunday
Aug. 14th, 2022 11:39 pmI watched Fallout, I played Fallout, I even wore one of my Fallout 4 shirts because it was cool enough to do so. (Warmer than yesterday, so I paired it with shorts, but even still.) And I had a great time doing it. :p Let me give you the run-down:
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – as per my playthrough below, Victor, Piper, and Alice have discovered the little settlement of County Crossing and agreed to help with their “greenskin” problem (turns out those super mutants across the way in the Revere Satellite Relay were a scouting party from a larger group in Fanueil Hall); encountered traveling merchant Doc Weathers and traded with him; found Finch Farm at last and discovered that they’re being menaced by the Forged (a new raider group), who have set up headquarters in the nearby Ironworks; been asked by the patriarch of the family to get back his grandfather’s sword from his idiot son who ran off to join the raider group in an attempt to help his family, and been asked by the matriarch to please get back the son as well; and started their assault on the Ironworks, having taken out the guards outside and working their way through the interior. Victor has now decided this whole trip has been worth it just from the amount of glue he’s picked up for his crafting. XD Plot is slowly but surely progressing!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, second episode of Jon's Fallout: The Board Game miniseries, and the latest "Legendary Roulette" video: Check – took a good chunk of my day, as you might expect, but I did get through it all (helped by the fact that my Subs today was one video) –
A) Started this afternoon after lunch with Episode Two of “Jon and Claire play Fallout: The Board Game!” This was the longest episode, and quite a bit happened, as you might expect! I’ll try to keep it short and sweet – Jon’s Wastelander did get successfully abducted by aliens, and a lucky roll meant that he was able to take over the ship and crash it to escape, though now he’s basically haunted by coming across radioactive chunks of the ship in the Capital Wasteland that he can’t explore because he’ll take too much rad damage. He also summoned a Brotherhood airship to the Wasteland with his alien shenanigans to scan for robots; found enough scrap to trade for a Sniper Rifle (finally getting a weapon where he can properly reroll his damage); killed a bunch of guys; picked up an eyebot companion with secret hand attachments; found the Enclave cache for the people on the crashed vertibrd (storing away a bunch later for himself), confirmed they’re scientists not TOTALLY on board with the Enclave’s “Make The Capital Wasteland Great Again” mission, and is now deciding whether he tells the Enclave over at Project Purity for a medvac for them or the Brotherhood for other interests; and learned of a nearby vault after killing a raider with a prisoner with a Pip-Boy, and is now preparing to explore that. Claire’s Brotherhood Outcast, meanwhile, opened up more of the map; picked up a robot companion in some ruins to help carry her stuff; struggled her way to Megaton to do some shopping (picking up Curie in the process, who could help her later with healing); attracted ALL of the high-level monsters on the board to her current location; failed to kill the Glowing One who invaded Megaton (to be fair, it requires headshots, and she was going at it with a KNIFE); failed to DIE to the Glowing One who invaded Megaton (allowing herself to respawn at the starting hexagon); finally died when a nearby Super Mutant shot at her; then slipped onto the Brotherhood airship and “acquired” some better power armor with more defense and no movement penalties, enraging the BOS and putting the entire Capital Wasteland under martial law. And she refuses to lay down her arms and surrender her knife in peace. XD Things have gotten pretty damn weird in the Wasteland! I think the Capital is missing its Lone Wanderer.
B) Then this evening, we hit the Subs for GrayStillPlays and Money Maker Run – now you’re not just collecting money, you’re literally making it! As in you collect blobs of metal to be hammered down, cut into circles, stamped, dipped in precious metals, edged, and valued before being deposited in a piggy bank, then you smash that bank to see how many real versus fake coins you have to get your score! Hey, at least it’s a nice twist on the regular concept. . .anyway, Gray wavered between wanting to make the most bank (seems like the upper limit of the final score you can get is roughly $600) and have the longest line (because the line of coins, blanks, and blobs can get so absurdly long it just runs into every hazard because you can’t steer it properly anymore XD), and he got pretty close to both goals. I dunno what it is about these stupid mobile games, but when Gray’s playing them and talking about how his thing is the longest it’s ever been, they’re just so much more fun. XD
C) And then finally, we circled back around to Jon and the latest episode of “Legendary Roulette!” And, as usual, everything was total chaos. Let me give you the highlights, as per usual –
I. First things first, Jon took some advice from the comments on the last video and changed the Wounding Automatic Laser Rifle of doom into a laser PISTOL to save weight and thus get off more shots in VATS, as demonstrated by accidentally shooting Mama Murphy in the back. XD Note to self, remember a lighter weapon means more VATS shots!
II. With his newly-upgraded weapon in hand, Jon started toward his first mission – getting Gabriel from Libertalia with X6-88! This actually took him to the part of the world I’m currently in in MY save, with him coming across a bunch of Rust Devils as he passed by County Crossing. His gun isn’t GREAT in open spaces, so he ran to the settlement to get some cover, but when he actually started shooting – oh yeah, this pistol DOES THE JOB. It can even hit multiple enemies at once if they’re close enough together thanks to the beam splitter spread! Lovely~
III. Having noticed that the Legendary Sentry that was with the Devils hadn’t actually come over to join the fight, Jon ran over and decided to shoot it in the face a few times. This killed the sentry really quick, but meant that he took a LOAD of rads from its double explosion. Going over to the National Guard Training Yard to clear it out and attempt to cheese the Sentry Bot there by waking it up and shooting it through the wall with his explosive weapons – only to relearn painfully that the game respawns it with full health OUTSIDE of its little cubby once you properly wake it up – proved that the gun had both an amazing perk and a terrible weakness. The amazing perk is that, in close quarters, it just MOWS down enemies with all the bleeding damage it does on its split-beam shots. The ghouls in the Training Yard died in MOMENTS. But the terrible weakness is that, because it’s best in close-quarters VATS combat, it’s terrible against robots because robots explode in a hail of rads, and Jon will never know if he’ll be able to get away in time. Hmmm. Well, this is why Jon is carrying around like ten million different legendary weapons here. Something for every occasion! XD
IV. Well, having leveled up from all this nonsense, Jon decided that it made sense to take the Commando perk (he’s using a lot of automatic weapons, after all, and Commando boosts that), then move over to Revere Satellite Array to fight the super mutants there. Where he discovered that a Quickdraw critical nuke to the face couldn’t kill that one Super Mutant Butcher up top that has a missile launcher. XD Fortunately he just got tagged with a broken leg when the bastard fired, and he got some help from the passing Brotherhood to take out the rest of them. Though when the fight ended and he took a look at the BOS Knight’s inventory. . .well, he was less interested in the super mutants and more interested in the Instigating Lever Action Rifle the Knight was carrying! Now, Jon wasn’t going to kill the Knight himself, but he was only too happy to lead some passing legendary robots and raiders over so THEY could finish the job! The Knight put up a good fight, but a raider in power armor (which Jon had a surprisingly hard time hitting) put him down, and then Jon put the raider down and claimed his prize! Nice.
V. Back on the road to the wharf, Jon took a moment to lure an Assaultron Invader out of some shipping containers to murderlate it (though once again, he took a load of rads from the resultant explosion), then found the BOS fighting some MORE robots and some legendary raiders. Cue a lot of explosions as Jon killed a Mr. Gutsy right before the vertibird blew up nearby. And then Jon got caught in the middle of those legendary raiders versus the robots at the Nahant’s Sheriff’s Offce, and while his gun was doing the job, he couldn’t keep track of everyone well enough to avoid, well, dying. (Not helped by him having to do a reload in VATS that kept him from having enough action points to pull off a final Hail Mary shot!)
VI. Take two of getting to the wharf, and instead of raiders, the Brotherhood was now obsessed with shooting down, of course, X6-88, Jon’s contact in the area. And X6-88 was obsessed with shooting THEM down, meaning Jon couldn’t actually start the quest. So he instead kept himself busy by looking for enemies to kill around the Croup Manor area, and taking on a Mirelurk Queen near the local church and just ANNIHILATING her with the Wounding Automatic Laser ShotPistol. XD Damn, I SO want a Wounding gun of some description in my game now.
VII. After waiting for daybreak for a better shot at Libertalia, Jon found X6-88 involved AGAIN in trying to shoot down a Brotherhood vertibird – fortunately, he was taken down long enough for the vertibird to drop off a couple of Knights, who then charged into Libertalia to start taking on the raiders and give Jon a bit of fire support. XD It was pretty freaking chaotic, with the vertibird exploding thanks to the raiders; the Knights doing good until they accidentally stepped into the water and just sank straight to the bottom; Jon nuking a raider on the off chance that they had a missile launcher or a Fat Man of their own; Jon getting caught in a crush of raiders as he came over to the main boat on the little tram thing; Jon realizing near the end that he never actually talked to X6-88 about starting the mission and having to go back and track him down, finding his courser contact on a random boat for some reason; and Jon using the recall code on Gabriel before taking down his friends and finding an Instigating Pipe Bolt-Action Pistol on one of them! Which he said wasn’t going to do him much good. . .
VIII. At least until he got both it and the Instigating Lever Action Rifle back to base at Sanctuary and realized that he had no ammo for the rifle, didn’t know if he ever would have ammo for it (it’s a DLC weapon and thus the ammo might not even spawn in the Commonwealth itself), and even if he did, it would take him until Gun Nut Rank 4 to get the damage up to the maximum of 109 base. The Pipe-Bolt action, by contrast, only required Gun Nut Rank 2 to get its best damage, and with the right combination of stocks and whatnot. . .well. Seems like it’s the winner when it comes to creating a new sniping weapon (Instigating does double damage if your target is at full health)!
IX. And finally, with Libertalia settled and his new gun in hand, Jon moved straight on into the REAL chaos of the episode – the Battle of Bunker Hill! Where everyone EXCEPT the Railroad seemed to be Legendary, curiously. None of the Heavies I saw there were anything special. Jon did very little actual fighting himself, preferring to just run around watching all the various fights and looting the corpses for fun gamma guns and such. XD The Brotherhood had the edge outside, using Gatling lasers and miniguns (perfectly ordinary ones too – as Jon checked their inventories, he found things like Sharp armor and Freezing Lead Pipes) – inside, they ALMOST had the edge, but the Institute got ahead of them just by virtue of that one temporary courser companion you have for the mission who can’t be killed by anyone but you, and thus was able to kill a couple of Knights on their last legs by virtue of not being able to die. XD Eventually Jon got through the nonsense and recalled the synths there, and ended the episode with a nice chat with Father (talking about how this the best, least-bloody opportunity to get yourself banished from the Institute if you’re going that route, but he is not so he is getting a happy Father and money).
So yeah – LOT going on, and most of it was explosions. XD But hey, it was all a lot of fun as well. And next week, Jon’s talking about doing a rather obscure quest that apparently only triggers if all the right conditions are in play, so I’m looking forward to that. :) Hooray for Fallout Sunday!
3. Play Fallout 4 and start the Finch Farm quest in earnest: Check! Loaded up the game with Victor and Piper on the roof of the National Guard Training Yard – and after descending to ground level (just as another storm started, great), I decided – you know what, County Crossing is right there, I may as well tag it and see what quest I need to do to bring it into the Minuteman fold (I’m trying NOT to discover a couple of key settlements, for the simple reason of I want to do the “relocate the Institute scientists” mini-quest at the very end of my playthrough, and apparently you need to have one of a few specific settlements “free” to do that; County Crossing I believe is one, but it’s SO close to Finch Farm I feel like it’s gonna get discovered no matter what). Turned out to be a very good idea – as Victor and Piper got closer, I realized a trader was there – and that trader was Doc Weathers! Victor didn’t really need any medical services, but he did have some chems to sell, so I had him offload those onto Doc W in exchange for a couple extra cans of purified water and some ammo. :) Victor also talked to the local settlers, and discovered that their particular “recruitment” quest consisted of tracking down some super mutants! I was hoping that it would be the ones I’d just killed at the Revere Relay, but nope – these “greenskins” were apparently coming from Fanueil Hall, just outside Goodneighbor. Hmm. Well, maybe I can go across to there, check out Pickman’s Gallery while I’m at it, report to Hancock, then report back to these settlers to get them onside.
Anyway, with that sorted, it was over to Finch Farm! Victor took a bit of a circuitous route – going up to a pond straight across from County Crossing with a single Softshell Mirelurk and its nest (Victor and Piper easily took it out) and an old garage on the other side of the water with a power armor station and some more goodies, including more adhesive (yay), then looped back around to the road, back into Revere Satellite Relay, around the little sewer outlet into the sea, over to where another Softshell Mirelurk was hanging around and killed that, and finally around and over to Finch Farm! Abraham ran out to greet Victor and Piper and told them about his problem with the Forged – the new raider gang with an obsession with fire and metal – now holed up in the Saugus Ironworks next door, and how his no-good son Jake ran off with his grandfather’s sword to join up with them. He asked Victor get the sword back; Victor was like, “Uh, what about your kid?” and Abraham essentially replied “screw him.” XD As I hadn’t the last time I played this quest (back when I was going vanilla), I had Victor talk to Abraham’s wife Abigail and his other son Daniel about the situation – Abigail was like “you bring my boy back home and I’ll settle this between him and my husband,” while Daniel filled in a few of the other details – namely, that Jake and Abraham have been fighting for a while now, and Jake wanting to join up with the Forged to try and help his parents by giving them his spoils was the last straw. Interesting.
But yes, the quest was clear – get Abraham’s sword back from the Forged! And Jake too, if you can. :p Victor and Piper proceeded over to the Ironworks around 11:30 AM in-game time – fortunately, the nearby Gunner camp on the highway was quiet, and they were able to get up to the actual Ironworks without issue. Victor carefully set off that one trap in the side room by the back entrance (a flame trap that you can actually dodge pretty easily so long as you open the door and IMMEDIATELY step back), then raided the room when the flames died down – more Wonderglue! :D So much adhesive this playsession. . .and then he and Piper tried to sneak into the camp and start killing Forged –
And cue everything going just a bit to hell. XD Victor and Piper did their best, and actually SUCCEEDED – Victor didn’t die once – but it was rough going! The Forged, as you might expect, have a fair number of people with flamethrowers, along with folks with sledgehammers and baseball bats and laser weapons. Oh, and LOADS of molotovs. Poor Victor and Piper were on fire SO MUCH. Good thing Victor has a lot of good food and water and stimpacks to keep himself going! And that he was able to get away from the nearby truck in time before it exploded right in his face. At least all the fighting actually got him a level up! He’s now level 23 – I eventually picked Rifleman Level 3 for his perk, as he has been favoring those types of guns.
Anyway, after killing everyone immediately visible outside, Victor and Piper did a bit of exploring (raiding the little camper “mess hall” to the side of the main parking lot and using the terminal just in front of the front doors to disable the remaining spotlight), then headed inside! Where more Forged with flamers awaited – Victor and Piper managed to kill the lot, though Victor needed the world’s most awkward poop break midway through. XD But they got them all, looted the bodies for all good stuff, and then slowly worked their way up to the next levels. Victor hacked open the doors into the next room, then continued exploring the main corridor he was already in, finding more goodies, including SO MUCH GLUE. Like, there’s just so much Wonderglue. I love it. :D I left him and Piper parked next to the Protectron you can find on this level, since that seemed like a safe place to leave it. Next time, we should be able to finish off the Ironworks and rescue Jake and the sword!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – after answering some messages on Dreamwidth this morning, went over to tumblr to catch up on the dash and tags for Victor Luvs Alice, then did this week’s Sims 4 update (showing off my build for Sunny Brews to keep a small buffer on my Chill Save updates – also because I like my build for Sunny Brews) and revised part of an upcoming post on how my version of Piper in the “Fallout of Darkness” verse starts helping synths with her paper once she learns that not all of the Gen3s are Institute spies! Then, this evening, before YouTube, I took a moment to pop over to Valice Multiverse and do my thread reply there and slap it in the queue. Keepin’ on keepin’ on!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with the second episode of James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches! This episode could basically be summed up as “Reginald Bigwallet’s Life Sucks.” XD He’s constantly late for work because James can never figure out where the despawn point in any particular neighborhood is (though he did actually get a promotion despite this – perhaps his boss feels sorry for him, juggling a job, school, and cheer all on his own?); he’s constantly exhausted because he has no bed of his own and needs to sleep on park benches either in the town square or on the pier (he actually just straight up passed out in one of his classes this time around); he’s constantly tense because he has so few ways to get decent fun; and he’s still having no luck in making friends – every positive interaction is promptly canceled out by a negative one. Also he’s not doing too great on the Cheer team, having shirked his practice in favor of watching some teammates fight, and thus screwing up royally via pop-up when his team made it to the finals. Also also he finally had enough money to design an outfit to sell on Trendi, but nobody’s biting, meaning that’s wasted money he could have spent on his own bed. About the only things he has going for him are the facts that a) buying ice cream on the pier does actually fill up his hunger need decently; b) nobody minds if he comes to school early to use the showers and get breakfast from the lunch lady; and c) he is doing okay in his job and thus has SOME source of income. But yeah, life is pretty rough for Reginald right now. AND he’s got his first prom to worry about too! Well, next episode is gonna start with him at least getting a chance to chill out at the football festival at the school – maybe after that he can get himself his own bed. :p
Additionally:
-->A little hotter and more humid today, but not by too much, so we did get out to play some more beanbags! I had a great first three games, then choked on the last two, but Mom had a much more middling day over all – final scores were me W-2-W-3-3; Dad 2-W-3-W-W; Mom 3-3-2-2-2. Ah well – better luck tomorrow, Mom!
-->And I got some new pajamas today -- a two-set with shorts and a tanktop for hotter weather and longer pants and a t-shirt for cooler weather. I'm wearing the hot-weather set tonight and feeling pretty good. :)
So yeah -- busy, Fallouty Sunday. :p And now I have to wrap up everything here so I can get to bed and start my first full week of work back, meeh. At least I still have half-day Fridays for three more weeks! Night all!
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – as per my playthrough below, Victor, Piper, and Alice have discovered the little settlement of County Crossing and agreed to help with their “greenskin” problem (turns out those super mutants across the way in the Revere Satellite Relay were a scouting party from a larger group in Fanueil Hall); encountered traveling merchant Doc Weathers and traded with him; found Finch Farm at last and discovered that they’re being menaced by the Forged (a new raider group), who have set up headquarters in the nearby Ironworks; been asked by the patriarch of the family to get back his grandfather’s sword from his idiot son who ran off to join the raider group in an attempt to help his family, and been asked by the matriarch to please get back the son as well; and started their assault on the Ironworks, having taken out the guards outside and working their way through the interior. Victor has now decided this whole trip has been worth it just from the amount of glue he’s picked up for his crafting. XD Plot is slowly but surely progressing!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, second episode of Jon's Fallout: The Board Game miniseries, and the latest "Legendary Roulette" video: Check – took a good chunk of my day, as you might expect, but I did get through it all (helped by the fact that my Subs today was one video) –
A) Started this afternoon after lunch with Episode Two of “Jon and Claire play Fallout: The Board Game!” This was the longest episode, and quite a bit happened, as you might expect! I’ll try to keep it short and sweet – Jon’s Wastelander did get successfully abducted by aliens, and a lucky roll meant that he was able to take over the ship and crash it to escape, though now he’s basically haunted by coming across radioactive chunks of the ship in the Capital Wasteland that he can’t explore because he’ll take too much rad damage. He also summoned a Brotherhood airship to the Wasteland with his alien shenanigans to scan for robots; found enough scrap to trade for a Sniper Rifle (finally getting a weapon where he can properly reroll his damage); killed a bunch of guys; picked up an eyebot companion with secret hand attachments; found the Enclave cache for the people on the crashed vertibrd (storing away a bunch later for himself), confirmed they’re scientists not TOTALLY on board with the Enclave’s “Make The Capital Wasteland Great Again” mission, and is now deciding whether he tells the Enclave over at Project Purity for a medvac for them or the Brotherhood for other interests; and learned of a nearby vault after killing a raider with a prisoner with a Pip-Boy, and is now preparing to explore that. Claire’s Brotherhood Outcast, meanwhile, opened up more of the map; picked up a robot companion in some ruins to help carry her stuff; struggled her way to Megaton to do some shopping (picking up Curie in the process, who could help her later with healing); attracted ALL of the high-level monsters on the board to her current location; failed to kill the Glowing One who invaded Megaton (to be fair, it requires headshots, and she was going at it with a KNIFE); failed to DIE to the Glowing One who invaded Megaton (allowing herself to respawn at the starting hexagon); finally died when a nearby Super Mutant shot at her; then slipped onto the Brotherhood airship and “acquired” some better power armor with more defense and no movement penalties, enraging the BOS and putting the entire Capital Wasteland under martial law. And she refuses to lay down her arms and surrender her knife in peace. XD Things have gotten pretty damn weird in the Wasteland! I think the Capital is missing its Lone Wanderer.
B) Then this evening, we hit the Subs for GrayStillPlays and Money Maker Run – now you’re not just collecting money, you’re literally making it! As in you collect blobs of metal to be hammered down, cut into circles, stamped, dipped in precious metals, edged, and valued before being deposited in a piggy bank, then you smash that bank to see how many real versus fake coins you have to get your score! Hey, at least it’s a nice twist on the regular concept. . .anyway, Gray wavered between wanting to make the most bank (seems like the upper limit of the final score you can get is roughly $600) and have the longest line (because the line of coins, blanks, and blobs can get so absurdly long it just runs into every hazard because you can’t steer it properly anymore XD), and he got pretty close to both goals. I dunno what it is about these stupid mobile games, but when Gray’s playing them and talking about how his thing is the longest it’s ever been, they’re just so much more fun. XD
C) And then finally, we circled back around to Jon and the latest episode of “Legendary Roulette!” And, as usual, everything was total chaos. Let me give you the highlights, as per usual –
I. First things first, Jon took some advice from the comments on the last video and changed the Wounding Automatic Laser Rifle of doom into a laser PISTOL to save weight and thus get off more shots in VATS, as demonstrated by accidentally shooting Mama Murphy in the back. XD Note to self, remember a lighter weapon means more VATS shots!
II. With his newly-upgraded weapon in hand, Jon started toward his first mission – getting Gabriel from Libertalia with X6-88! This actually took him to the part of the world I’m currently in in MY save, with him coming across a bunch of Rust Devils as he passed by County Crossing. His gun isn’t GREAT in open spaces, so he ran to the settlement to get some cover, but when he actually started shooting – oh yeah, this pistol DOES THE JOB. It can even hit multiple enemies at once if they’re close enough together thanks to the beam splitter spread! Lovely~
III. Having noticed that the Legendary Sentry that was with the Devils hadn’t actually come over to join the fight, Jon ran over and decided to shoot it in the face a few times. This killed the sentry really quick, but meant that he took a LOAD of rads from its double explosion. Going over to the National Guard Training Yard to clear it out and attempt to cheese the Sentry Bot there by waking it up and shooting it through the wall with his explosive weapons – only to relearn painfully that the game respawns it with full health OUTSIDE of its little cubby once you properly wake it up – proved that the gun had both an amazing perk and a terrible weakness. The amazing perk is that, in close quarters, it just MOWS down enemies with all the bleeding damage it does on its split-beam shots. The ghouls in the Training Yard died in MOMENTS. But the terrible weakness is that, because it’s best in close-quarters VATS combat, it’s terrible against robots because robots explode in a hail of rads, and Jon will never know if he’ll be able to get away in time. Hmmm. Well, this is why Jon is carrying around like ten million different legendary weapons here. Something for every occasion! XD
IV. Well, having leveled up from all this nonsense, Jon decided that it made sense to take the Commando perk (he’s using a lot of automatic weapons, after all, and Commando boosts that), then move over to Revere Satellite Array to fight the super mutants there. Where he discovered that a Quickdraw critical nuke to the face couldn’t kill that one Super Mutant Butcher up top that has a missile launcher. XD Fortunately he just got tagged with a broken leg when the bastard fired, and he got some help from the passing Brotherhood to take out the rest of them. Though when the fight ended and he took a look at the BOS Knight’s inventory. . .well, he was less interested in the super mutants and more interested in the Instigating Lever Action Rifle the Knight was carrying! Now, Jon wasn’t going to kill the Knight himself, but he was only too happy to lead some passing legendary robots and raiders over so THEY could finish the job! The Knight put up a good fight, but a raider in power armor (which Jon had a surprisingly hard time hitting) put him down, and then Jon put the raider down and claimed his prize! Nice.
V. Back on the road to the wharf, Jon took a moment to lure an Assaultron Invader out of some shipping containers to murderlate it (though once again, he took a load of rads from the resultant explosion), then found the BOS fighting some MORE robots and some legendary raiders. Cue a lot of explosions as Jon killed a Mr. Gutsy right before the vertibird blew up nearby. And then Jon got caught in the middle of those legendary raiders versus the robots at the Nahant’s Sheriff’s Offce, and while his gun was doing the job, he couldn’t keep track of everyone well enough to avoid, well, dying. (Not helped by him having to do a reload in VATS that kept him from having enough action points to pull off a final Hail Mary shot!)
VI. Take two of getting to the wharf, and instead of raiders, the Brotherhood was now obsessed with shooting down, of course, X6-88, Jon’s contact in the area. And X6-88 was obsessed with shooting THEM down, meaning Jon couldn’t actually start the quest. So he instead kept himself busy by looking for enemies to kill around the Croup Manor area, and taking on a Mirelurk Queen near the local church and just ANNIHILATING her with the Wounding Automatic Laser ShotPistol. XD Damn, I SO want a Wounding gun of some description in my game now.
VII. After waiting for daybreak for a better shot at Libertalia, Jon found X6-88 involved AGAIN in trying to shoot down a Brotherhood vertibird – fortunately, he was taken down long enough for the vertibird to drop off a couple of Knights, who then charged into Libertalia to start taking on the raiders and give Jon a bit of fire support. XD It was pretty freaking chaotic, with the vertibird exploding thanks to the raiders; the Knights doing good until they accidentally stepped into the water and just sank straight to the bottom; Jon nuking a raider on the off chance that they had a missile launcher or a Fat Man of their own; Jon getting caught in a crush of raiders as he came over to the main boat on the little tram thing; Jon realizing near the end that he never actually talked to X6-88 about starting the mission and having to go back and track him down, finding his courser contact on a random boat for some reason; and Jon using the recall code on Gabriel before taking down his friends and finding an Instigating Pipe Bolt-Action Pistol on one of them! Which he said wasn’t going to do him much good. . .
VIII. At least until he got both it and the Instigating Lever Action Rifle back to base at Sanctuary and realized that he had no ammo for the rifle, didn’t know if he ever would have ammo for it (it’s a DLC weapon and thus the ammo might not even spawn in the Commonwealth itself), and even if he did, it would take him until Gun Nut Rank 4 to get the damage up to the maximum of 109 base. The Pipe-Bolt action, by contrast, only required Gun Nut Rank 2 to get its best damage, and with the right combination of stocks and whatnot. . .well. Seems like it’s the winner when it comes to creating a new sniping weapon (Instigating does double damage if your target is at full health)!
IX. And finally, with Libertalia settled and his new gun in hand, Jon moved straight on into the REAL chaos of the episode – the Battle of Bunker Hill! Where everyone EXCEPT the Railroad seemed to be Legendary, curiously. None of the Heavies I saw there were anything special. Jon did very little actual fighting himself, preferring to just run around watching all the various fights and looting the corpses for fun gamma guns and such. XD The Brotherhood had the edge outside, using Gatling lasers and miniguns (perfectly ordinary ones too – as Jon checked their inventories, he found things like Sharp armor and Freezing Lead Pipes) – inside, they ALMOST had the edge, but the Institute got ahead of them just by virtue of that one temporary courser companion you have for the mission who can’t be killed by anyone but you, and thus was able to kill a couple of Knights on their last legs by virtue of not being able to die. XD Eventually Jon got through the nonsense and recalled the synths there, and ended the episode with a nice chat with Father (talking about how this the best, least-bloody opportunity to get yourself banished from the Institute if you’re going that route, but he is not so he is getting a happy Father and money).
So yeah – LOT going on, and most of it was explosions. XD But hey, it was all a lot of fun as well. And next week, Jon’s talking about doing a rather obscure quest that apparently only triggers if all the right conditions are in play, so I’m looking forward to that. :) Hooray for Fallout Sunday!
3. Play Fallout 4 and start the Finch Farm quest in earnest: Check! Loaded up the game with Victor and Piper on the roof of the National Guard Training Yard – and after descending to ground level (just as another storm started, great), I decided – you know what, County Crossing is right there, I may as well tag it and see what quest I need to do to bring it into the Minuteman fold (I’m trying NOT to discover a couple of key settlements, for the simple reason of I want to do the “relocate the Institute scientists” mini-quest at the very end of my playthrough, and apparently you need to have one of a few specific settlements “free” to do that; County Crossing I believe is one, but it’s SO close to Finch Farm I feel like it’s gonna get discovered no matter what). Turned out to be a very good idea – as Victor and Piper got closer, I realized a trader was there – and that trader was Doc Weathers! Victor didn’t really need any medical services, but he did have some chems to sell, so I had him offload those onto Doc W in exchange for a couple extra cans of purified water and some ammo. :) Victor also talked to the local settlers, and discovered that their particular “recruitment” quest consisted of tracking down some super mutants! I was hoping that it would be the ones I’d just killed at the Revere Relay, but nope – these “greenskins” were apparently coming from Fanueil Hall, just outside Goodneighbor. Hmm. Well, maybe I can go across to there, check out Pickman’s Gallery while I’m at it, report to Hancock, then report back to these settlers to get them onside.
Anyway, with that sorted, it was over to Finch Farm! Victor took a bit of a circuitous route – going up to a pond straight across from County Crossing with a single Softshell Mirelurk and its nest (Victor and Piper easily took it out) and an old garage on the other side of the water with a power armor station and some more goodies, including more adhesive (yay), then looped back around to the road, back into Revere Satellite Relay, around the little sewer outlet into the sea, over to where another Softshell Mirelurk was hanging around and killed that, and finally around and over to Finch Farm! Abraham ran out to greet Victor and Piper and told them about his problem with the Forged – the new raider gang with an obsession with fire and metal – now holed up in the Saugus Ironworks next door, and how his no-good son Jake ran off with his grandfather’s sword to join up with them. He asked Victor get the sword back; Victor was like, “Uh, what about your kid?” and Abraham essentially replied “screw him.” XD As I hadn’t the last time I played this quest (back when I was going vanilla), I had Victor talk to Abraham’s wife Abigail and his other son Daniel about the situation – Abigail was like “you bring my boy back home and I’ll settle this between him and my husband,” while Daniel filled in a few of the other details – namely, that Jake and Abraham have been fighting for a while now, and Jake wanting to join up with the Forged to try and help his parents by giving them his spoils was the last straw. Interesting.
But yes, the quest was clear – get Abraham’s sword back from the Forged! And Jake too, if you can. :p Victor and Piper proceeded over to the Ironworks around 11:30 AM in-game time – fortunately, the nearby Gunner camp on the highway was quiet, and they were able to get up to the actual Ironworks without issue. Victor carefully set off that one trap in the side room by the back entrance (a flame trap that you can actually dodge pretty easily so long as you open the door and IMMEDIATELY step back), then raided the room when the flames died down – more Wonderglue! :D So much adhesive this playsession. . .and then he and Piper tried to sneak into the camp and start killing Forged –
And cue everything going just a bit to hell. XD Victor and Piper did their best, and actually SUCCEEDED – Victor didn’t die once – but it was rough going! The Forged, as you might expect, have a fair number of people with flamethrowers, along with folks with sledgehammers and baseball bats and laser weapons. Oh, and LOADS of molotovs. Poor Victor and Piper were on fire SO MUCH. Good thing Victor has a lot of good food and water and stimpacks to keep himself going! And that he was able to get away from the nearby truck in time before it exploded right in his face. At least all the fighting actually got him a level up! He’s now level 23 – I eventually picked Rifleman Level 3 for his perk, as he has been favoring those types of guns.
Anyway, after killing everyone immediately visible outside, Victor and Piper did a bit of exploring (raiding the little camper “mess hall” to the side of the main parking lot and using the terminal just in front of the front doors to disable the remaining spotlight), then headed inside! Where more Forged with flamers awaited – Victor and Piper managed to kill the lot, though Victor needed the world’s most awkward poop break midway through. XD But they got them all, looted the bodies for all good stuff, and then slowly worked their way up to the next levels. Victor hacked open the doors into the next room, then continued exploring the main corridor he was already in, finding more goodies, including SO MUCH GLUE. Like, there’s just so much Wonderglue. I love it. :D I left him and Piper parked next to the Protectron you can find on this level, since that seemed like a safe place to leave it. Next time, we should be able to finish off the Ironworks and rescue Jake and the sword!
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – after answering some messages on Dreamwidth this morning, went over to tumblr to catch up on the dash and tags for Victor Luvs Alice, then did this week’s Sims 4 update (showing off my build for Sunny Brews to keep a small buffer on my Chill Save updates – also because I like my build for Sunny Brews) and revised part of an upcoming post on how my version of Piper in the “Fallout of Darkness” verse starts helping synths with her paper once she learns that not all of the Gen3s are Institute spies! Then, this evening, before YouTube, I took a moment to pop over to Valice Multiverse and do my thread reply there and slap it in the queue. Keepin’ on keepin’ on!
5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and back with the second episode of James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches! This episode could basically be summed up as “Reginald Bigwallet’s Life Sucks.” XD He’s constantly late for work because James can never figure out where the despawn point in any particular neighborhood is (though he did actually get a promotion despite this – perhaps his boss feels sorry for him, juggling a job, school, and cheer all on his own?); he’s constantly exhausted because he has no bed of his own and needs to sleep on park benches either in the town square or on the pier (he actually just straight up passed out in one of his classes this time around); he’s constantly tense because he has so few ways to get decent fun; and he’s still having no luck in making friends – every positive interaction is promptly canceled out by a negative one. Also he’s not doing too great on the Cheer team, having shirked his practice in favor of watching some teammates fight, and thus screwing up royally via pop-up when his team made it to the finals. Also also he finally had enough money to design an outfit to sell on Trendi, but nobody’s biting, meaning that’s wasted money he could have spent on his own bed. About the only things he has going for him are the facts that a) buying ice cream on the pier does actually fill up his hunger need decently; b) nobody minds if he comes to school early to use the showers and get breakfast from the lunch lady; and c) he is doing okay in his job and thus has SOME source of income. But yeah, life is pretty rough for Reginald right now. AND he’s got his first prom to worry about too! Well, next episode is gonna start with him at least getting a chance to chill out at the football festival at the school – maybe after that he can get himself his own bed. :p
Additionally:
-->A little hotter and more humid today, but not by too much, so we did get out to play some more beanbags! I had a great first three games, then choked on the last two, but Mom had a much more middling day over all – final scores were me W-2-W-3-3; Dad 2-W-3-W-W; Mom 3-3-2-2-2. Ah well – better luck tomorrow, Mom!
-->And I got some new pajamas today -- a two-set with shorts and a tanktop for hotter weather and longer pants and a t-shirt for cooler weather. I'm wearing the hot-weather set tonight and feeling pretty good. :)
So yeah -- busy, Fallouty Sunday. :p And now I have to wrap up everything here so I can get to bed and start my first full week of work back, meeh. At least I still have half-day Fridays for three more weeks! Night all!
