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I Am Not Pleased By This Sunday
Aug. 21st, 2022 11:38 pmNot a particularly good day off for me:
First, I woke up both too early AND too late -- I was up at 7:22 AM because I needed the bathroom, and then after using it and going back to bed, I ended up not waking up properly until 10:18 AM, which was later than I wanted to wake up (I went to bed around 2 AM, so I was aiming for around 10 itself).
Second, last night my Corpse Bride "A Grave Proposal" poster with Victor ended up falling off the wall (the metal loop that it was hanging from just straight-up ripped off the back -- it was already taped on from an earlier mishap a few years ago, but I must have loosened it while dusting) last night before I went to bed, so I had to tell my parents about that when I got up, especially since the frame broke when it hit the floor. So we had to look for a new frame this morning (which took up a good half-hour after I woke up, because frames can be EXPENSIVE if you look in the wrong place) and then my parents had to go pick it up this afternoon so we could put the poster back up. A process that involved having to move my desk around a bit.
Third, because of this whole thing with having to move my desk around, I had to take a bunch of things off it -- including my skeleton hand necklace holder thing I got as a gift either for Christmas or my birthday a couple of years ago. I tried putting it on my bed while Mom and I tried to scoot the desk out from the wall a bit more --
Cue it falling off onto the carpet and breaking. Not smashed into a million smithereens, at least -- just the base broke off the hand, and a couple of fingers snapped off. My mom was able to glue it back together later. We did have to sort through all my necklaces and such to keep them from getting fully tangled on the carpet, but to my shock only ONE broke, and in a way that was easily repairable -- the stone just popped out of its plastic casing on the necklace my aunt gave me with the holder. I thought for SURE one of the others would have ended up busted. . .maybe because they fell on carpet instead of the hardwood floor. At any rate, as stated, Mom was able to glue the stand and that one necklace back together, and its now anchored to my desk with Command sticky strips to help keep it from going anywhere. Still, not fun at all, and meant I had to revacuum my rug to make sure there were no bits of plastic caught in it later.
*sigh* And it also means I didn't do great on my to-do list, because obviously all this shit ate up a lot of time --
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – as per my playsession today (detailed below), Victor, Piper, and Alice managed to clear the Ironworks of the Forged (with the temporary help of a hacked Protectron); talk some sense into Jake Finch before he killed an innocent man for Slag (well, sort of – Victor tried appealing to the kid’s sense of duty to his family, but it was Alice’s sarcastic comment that seemed to really knock Jake out of it); kill Slag and the rest of his cronies; get Abraham’s grandfather’s sword; and (after sleeping atop the roof for the night) head back to Finch Farm and reunite Jake with his family. Things aren’t perfect (Daniel in particular says the family will never forget what he did), but it’s a better outcome than it could have been! And that’s THAT quest done, yay (well, apart from talking to Preston, but I can’t do THAT anytime soon, so. . .)!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Episode 3 of Fallout: The Board Game in the WL, and "Legendary Roulette": Half check – between all the nonsense today meaning I finished up my double summation of what happened for me in Fallout 4 today (once for this to-do list, once for the more fanficcy Playthrough Progression), I ended up skipping my Subs entirely and focusing solely on Jon today for a pure Fallout Sunday. (He did have the longer videos I wanted to watch, after all. . .) Hopefully I can catch up on Gray and Kevin tomorrow, but in the meantime –
A) Started with Episode 3 of Fallout: The Board Game after finishing my tumblr drafts – aka the episode where everything started falling apart because Jon and Claire have a lot to keep track of and they keep forgetting to move things, take damage, or take experience – hell, they straight-up skipped an “enemy move” phase near the end and didn’t realize until Jon had already taken his turn. XD Complicated game is complicated, yo! Not to mention it looks like Jon took more loot cards than he should have at one point. . .at any rate, though, things are not looking good for the Capital Wasteland at this point. Jon camped out in Vault 84 for a little while, regaining health and discovering the existence of Vault 109 and its Fat Man while Claire fought her way through Megaton, clearing out the monsters at LAST, rescuing a cat, talking down a woman with a bomb, and telling the girl from the photograph they found earlier, Margaret, about the fate of her brother, before finally getting a chance to sell a few things in the market there. Then Jon showed up after everything was cleared out and bought some combat armor and a hazmat suit, so now he has decent armor and protection against rads. XD Jon also went to the Brotherhood and threw down his old tire iron to make them think that he was calling for peace (because he sure as hell wasn’t giving up his sniper rifle) and then handed over his robot companion because they’re in the Capital looking for robots and none have ever spawned as an enemy type, before going down toward Project Purity and declaring loyalty to the Enclave, preparing to help them with their plans there. XD Claire, meanwhile, ALSO handed over her robot companion to the Brotherhood (perhaps as a “sorry for stealing your power armor?”) before taking the news about Vault 109 and making her way into the danger zone (as it is now an irradiated wreck) – and finding the Fat Man still locked in a display case. Which she didn’t even need to make a check to open, apparently. XD So now she’s got good power armor AND a Fat Man (but a lot of rads), while Jon’s got decent armor, rad protection, and the Enclave on his side. All this while Moira’s going around looking for help with her Wasteland Survival Guide. XD Really, the Capital is in trouble – and the fact that the last part is only about a half-hour and is called “The Nuclear Option” doesn’t give me much hope for it going forward. . .
B) And ended this evening with the next episode of “Legendary Roulette!” Jon cheerfully started the episode showing off his new Instigating Pipe Bolt-Action Sniper – not the BEST weapon for the late game, but against the raiders, it works a treat. :p But his focus today was actually on “Insitute Missions/Mission Endings You Might Not Know About,” aka stuff you might not see if you don’t do specific missions in specific ways. The three he focused on were:
I. “Mankind Redefined” – this is the “mission” where you send your character to the Directorate Meeting at the Institute so Shaun can drop the bombshell about his cancer and name you as his successor. It’s literally just sitting down and getting a bunch of XP for listening to NPCs argue. However, it is possible to miss this meeting, and Jon wanted to show that off for us today! He initially tried to do it by genuinely missing the meeting by doing other missions – namely going to clear out Starlight Drive-In for the Minutemen (which got him a level-up, which he spent on Rifleman for his Instigating Sniper), clearing out College Square for the Brotherhood (which yielded a Never-Ending Double-Barrel shotgun – Jon said that with his current loadout, this really isn’t anything, but if you get it on a normal run, it’s great because, naturally, it never needs to be reloaded and thus increases the utility a dozenfold), and visiting Vault 81 just because (though he didn’t actually go in – just mentioned that there’s a bunch of mini-missions you can do in there to kill time). This did not actually result in the meeting already being over when he next visited the Institute, however – he admitted that this quest might be a bit bugged and so it’s tough to make it so you actually MISS the meeting – so instead he did the only thing available to him.
Sat down to attend the meeting, then immediately stood back up again and ran out the door, causing an annoyed Shaun to adjourn the whole thing. XD He then returned to get lectured by Shaun, who CLAIMED that he’d talked about the power situation and his own deterioating physical condition (he did not, the meeting ended too early), and that he’d WANTED to name The Legend of Boston his successor, but obviously couldn’t since she wasn’t there (true, but the game will pretend from this moment on that he made the announcement anyway). XD Good stuff, and perfect for trolly Jon.
II. “Plugging A Leak” – this is the mission that he was talking about at the end of last episode, the one that most people will never see, because the game is very weird about how it triggers. Normally, if you’re playing the game bouncing between all three factions, you would do the early Railroad mission “Tradecraft” to become a proper member of the Railroad, then do “Underground Undercover” while infiltrating the Institute and discover that their inside man, Patriot, is Liam Binet, son of Alan Binet, leader of Robotics and synth production. “Plugging A Leak” is the flip side of “Underground Undercover” in a way, in that it involves Justin Ayo – head of the Synth Retention Bureau, the division that hunts down rogue synths and trains coursers – discovering someone messing with his aboveground work orders to get synths who are high flight risks sent above so they can escape, and asking the Sole Survivor to ferret out the culprit (he thinks it’s Alan, but in the course of your investigation you can discover it’s Liam). HOWEVER – in order to actually play through “Plugging A Leak,” you have to FAIL “Tradecraft” – the mission simply WILL NOT START if you’re friendly with the Railroad and spying for them. Which is particularly weird, because – as Jon showed – one of the endings you can get for the quest actually helps the Railroad! If you go down the quest in the correct way (carefully questioning Ayo and Liam before following a trail of deleted records through a series of different terminals), you’ll find that Eve has been helping Liam cover his tracks, catching her in the act on a maintenance terminal in one of the storage rooms. She will pull a gun on you, but if you have high enough Charisma (or enough Charisma-boosting drugs), she can be talked down. Go confront Liam and tell him she threatened you, and he’ll be shocked and want to make it right – and he’ll suggest helping him frame Justin Ayo, thus removing him from the SRB and the Institute entirely. Go along with this, and all you have to do is disable Ayo’s security on his personal terminal, and Liam will plant the evidence, tell his father (with the justification that Ayo’s freeing synths so his coursers can later track them down and prove how necessary the SRB is), and get the guy banished, replaced by a woman named Alana. And if you ask Liam for a reward, you get his spare glasses, which give you +2 Int (and -1 Charisma). This means the Railroad’s internal agent is safe, and one of their biggest enemies exiled to the surface, so it’s REALLY WEIRD that you can’t do this in TANDEM with “Underground Undercover.” *shakes head* Oh Bethesda. (Incidentally, you can just turn Liam in to Ayo, but that only gets you 1,000 caps, and as Jon says, there are better ways to get money in this game. Oh, also, you can actually flirt with Eve when you first talk to her, which Jon found hilarious as she’s living as Alan Binet’s WIFE. And he did it right in front of LIAM too.)
III. “House Divided” – and this is the mission where the two heads of Bioscience, and the ones with all the food, lock down their division and cut the rest of the Institute off from the food supplies because they disapprove of you being named as future Director. Jon noted (probably correctly) that most players will probably succumb to the urge to set the synth gorillas they’ve made on these two, but he wanted to show there’s a different, slightly more peaceful ending you can get if you resist this urge. Just disable their security, unlock the doors, and kill their synth guards WITHOUT killing them – then, when you talk to one of them, the other will break and open up the doors again so the Institute can access its food stores (angrily lecturing his partner on how it’s over and to stand down already). Afterward, the scientist who told you of the problem will ask you what disciplinary measures you would like to enact. You have the option of not punishing them at all, putting them on probation, exiling them to the surface (with supplies), or just straight-up executing them (which requires a speech check because, well, it’s execution). Jon went for exiling, because he didn’t feel like braving the speech check and wanted to keep the banishment train going. XD (He also noted that doing this, “Plugging a Leak,” and getting Madison Li to defect back to the Brotherhood means you can get rid of three department heads in the Institute! You can’t replace Alan Binet in Robotics, but then again, Alan’s a good sort and believes in synth personhood, so. . .)
And then, with all that sorted, it was time for Jon to get back to main plot stuff and go do the Mass Fusion quest to get the Beryllium Agitator for the Institute’s reactor, officially becoming an enemy of the Brotherhood. After taking out the Brotherhood on the roof (not QUITE able to get the kill with his Instigating Sniper on the first Knight, but still), he took a moment to show how you don’t need to use the elevator the game wants you to use to get down to the bottom floors at all if you have the right kit to survive a drop to the ground – like, say, a pair of Acrobat’s leg armor to completely negate all falling damage. Do that, and you just have to fight a couple of Knights on the bottom floor before heading straight into the actual agitator room.
But Jon didn’t pick up all these awesome guns for nothing, so he reloaded and took the elevator ride down. Where he proceeded to hide from the attacking Brotherhood with a stealth boy and the cover from the elevator and pick them off with the Instigating Sniper. XD After thoroughly wiping them out with his various legendary weapons, he then proceeded into the main room, where he praised the fact that this area was actually a bit RPGy, in that if you spent the time leveling up the hacking perk, you can just crack all the security terminals, turn off all the robots and turrets, and just waltz in and waltz out. He did not have that perk, so he had to deal with the robots –
AND the rads, as he forgot to bring a hazmat suit to the HEAVILY IRRADIATED REACTOR ROOM. Fortunately he was able to spam enough Radaway and Rad-X to survive, and the room DOES have nice decontamination arches to clean you off afterward, so it wasn’t too bad. And Jon was able to take out the robots afterward without much fuss. He even remembered that they exploded upon dying a couple of times! XD Ahh, good stuff.
And that is where he left it, having gotten the Institute’s power situation sorted and preparing to sort out “Pinned.” We’re coming to the end game here – I suspect next week will be all about destroying the other factions, if not the end of the series itself. Hey, it’s been a fun ride! And hopefully we’ve got a little bit more to go yet before Jon, by his own admission, starts looking at other Fallout games. . .
3. Play Fallout 4 and finish up wiping out the Forged: Check, despite all the nonsense. Caught up with Victor and Piper by the Protectron I’d parked them by, and had Victor hack the terminal to release it under the “Subway Steward” personality matrix. It promptly wandered off toward the upper catwalks, through a trap that didn’t affect it and over to the highest levels of the factory, taking the makeshift bridge over to the other side and attracting the attention of all the Forged below. It took out most of them (weathering a few hits with a molotov) while Victor and Piper helped out where they could with their laser weapons – then noticed Victor and Piper and asked for their subway tokens. Now, Victor had seven on him, but he was also crouched to sneak at the time, so I’m guessing that made the Protectron think he was a delinquent or just prevented him from handing over a token – either way, it quickly turned hostile, and Victor and Piper were forced to take it down to save their own lives. Ah well.
With their temporary robot friend dead, Victor and Piper took a moment to explore the other side of the factory, looting corpses, taking out the one remaining turret, picking up bits and sundries, checking out the workbenches, and taking a look at the “Failed The Forged” terminal (the one which lists all the members that wiped out, from those who cried out while having a wound treated, to those who fell asleep on watch, to those who gave meds to the enemy, to one guy who WOULDN’T CHANGE HIS NAME TO SOMETHING COOLER). Once that was sorted and Victor had done some more inventory management, he and Piper found their way around the catwalks and to the little area right in front of the blast Furnace doors and the Slag boss fight. Knowing what was coming, I decided to switch to the Alien Blaster for a little fun shooty-shoot, and glug some “grape” juice (modded drink, made with hubflowers) for extra Charisma to talk to Jake, figuring Piper would appreciate me trying to talk him around rather than just going with the sarcastic option that I knew worked. Here’s how that went:
Attempt #1 – entered the room, let the “cutscene” of Slag killing a prisoner with the Shishkebab (Abraham’s heirloom sword – it’s flaming!) and telling Jake to do the same or he’d be killed himself play, and then had Victor tell Jake to think about his family. Jake asked if Abraham had sent Victor to get him – Victor lied and said yes, but Jake wasn’t fooled, killed the prisoner, and suddenly everyone, including Jake, was hostile. Welp, that’s no good.
Attempt #2 – redid prep, entered the room, and this time when the prompts came up, had Victor inquire a little more as to what happened – apparently Jake never felt like he could live up to his father’s wishes for him. Again, attempted to tell him Abraham had sent Victor to get him, but Jake still wasn’t buying it. Damn.
Attempt #3 – after a quicksave at the actual dialogue prompts, I decided “screw it, go with what I know works” and hit the sarcastic option, which makes Jake freeze up and eventually decide he can’t do it. Victor attempted to get in an early shot on Slag with the blaster, which did work, but then – well, chaos as all the other Forged ran in to join the fight and Slag started slinging molotovs. That combined with the fact that Victor was tired and thus down some action points meant that he ended up dying in short order.
Attempt #4 – redid the sarcastic dialogue, let the Forged become hostile more naturally, drank a Nuka-Cola to refresh the old energy, then once again tried to kill everyone with the blaster – this time arguably went WORSE, though I blame that at least half on my inability to remember which button is “power attack” and which button is VATS in a really tough fight. But yeah, once again, hail of Molotovs and flame, and Victor ended up very very dead.
Attempt #5 – Okay, the blaster isn’t working – let’s try the Two-Shot Combat Rifle and some Nuka, and remind myself which button is VATS again. THIS time, everything went – well, not exactly “according to plan,” but well enough. Victor did have to stimpack himself thanks to the flamers and molotovs breaking his leg at one point, but the Two-Shot did the job and took down Slag and his buddies, with Piper and Jake’s help. Victor went and found Jake at the bottom of the room, where he admitted he’d really fucked up and asked Victor to accompany him when he went to rejoin his family, then looted the Shishkebab off Slag’s corpse (along with all the other goodies that weren’t broken bits of power armor). He also took a moment to loot everything else useful and crack into Slag’s terminal – interestingly, turns out the reason the Gunners and the Forged are on such poor terms is that Slag just straight up lured some Gunner recruits into his gang. Apparently there were some negotiations going on, but considering there’s a guy on the overpass with a Fat Man who isn’t afraid of using it on their enemies, I’m guessing those broke down. It also mentioned something else – namely, that he’d had to send Bedlam over to Dunwich Borers to whip the people there into shape after material stopped coming from the quarry. Which means Dunwich Borers is now marked on my map. :D Handy! Victor can’t stop by there yet, of course, but knowing where it is will make it more convenient later. . .
Anyway – with that all sorted, Victor and Piper exited onto the roof (into a thunderstorm, which are surprisingly frequent around here), where Victor successfully disarmed one laser tripwire trap into a little computer control area, but set off a mine next to another. That plus getting the “tired” message again made me decide it was time to set up camp, and he and Piper bunked down for the night at 1:11 AM on 12/11/2287. The pair were up by 9 AM, where Victor used the toilet and explored the roof a bit more – NEARLY upset the Gunners nearby, but fortunately backed off before they could get a bead on him, and found a “staircase” of sorts up to another giant molten metal crucible – it looked like you could jump over it and continue climbing, but after two attempts where Victor just landed in the crucible, I decided it wasn’t worth it and instead just had Victor look for a way down. After going down some stairs and making a few controlled drops, he and Piper headed to the overpass where Jake was waiting, and walked with him back to the farm. And once he got unstuck from the junk pile around the back (Bethesda glitchiness, but considering the family complains about Abraham’s hoarding ways, it feels very appropriate), he went and apologized to his father and the rest of his family. Abraham was ready to just send him away again, but Abigail refused to let them keep fighting and told Abraham to stop treating Jake like a child, and Jake to understand his parents just want him to be safe and smart. That cleared the air enough for Abraham to accept Jake back into the family, and he gave Victor almost 350 caps for a job well done, told him he could keep the sword, and joined the Minutemen. :) Though all’s not exactly well with the family, as Daniel was not so eager to just let bygones be bygones – he demanded Jake explain himself (Jake saying simply that he was angry at Dad and wanted to be more than just some farmer barely getting by, and he was wrong to take it out on them and turn his back on the family), and warned him that he wasn’t going to forget this and he was never going to see him the same way again. Jake accepted this but said he would do whatever he could to win back their trust. Awww. Left it with Victor and Piper hanging out at the settlement – next time should be cleaning up the place a bit more, adding some proper defenses and some shower/toilet facilities, and generally making it look a bit nicer! Then it’s off to Fanueil Hall to take care of the stuff for the County Crossing settlers. . .
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – while I skipped the usual “dash and tags catch-up” on Victor Luvs Alice in the morning (mostly because of having to look up picture frames for my poster with Mom, then just catching up with other stuff over my smoothie), I did manage to get the first post of my next Chill Save update (with Victor, Alice, and Smiler moving into their new home in Henford-On-Bagley) done right before lunch, then the remaining three after. So that’s all set for Wednesday. And this evening, I had one thread reply and one ask reply for the Valice Multiverse queue – pretty standard night.
5. Get in a workout: No check – I fully intended to go down there, but then the Vortex nonsense happened on top of all the OTHER nonsense, and – just never happened. I’ll pick it back up tomorrow with the first half of “Sail Of The Century!”
EDIT: Occurs to me I forgot to explain the "Vortex nonsense," mostly because I ran out of time yesterday -- basically, right after I played Fallout 4, Vortex insisted on doing an update, which required an update to something ELSE right afterward, then resetting a certain parameter, and then me worrying that I'd somehow lost my F4SE launcher (which I NEED to use to launch the game so all the mods properly function) until I realized I was clicking in the wrong space. Finding all that out took about a half-hour, so no workout.
At least I got all the longest and most important stuff done. . .but I'm running pretty late tonight (story of my life these days), so I'm gonna have to leave it here. We'll see how the upcoming week goes with THIS as a start. . .night all!
First, I woke up both too early AND too late -- I was up at 7:22 AM because I needed the bathroom, and then after using it and going back to bed, I ended up not waking up properly until 10:18 AM, which was later than I wanted to wake up (I went to bed around 2 AM, so I was aiming for around 10 itself).
Second, last night my Corpse Bride "A Grave Proposal" poster with Victor ended up falling off the wall (the metal loop that it was hanging from just straight-up ripped off the back -- it was already taped on from an earlier mishap a few years ago, but I must have loosened it while dusting) last night before I went to bed, so I had to tell my parents about that when I got up, especially since the frame broke when it hit the floor. So we had to look for a new frame this morning (which took up a good half-hour after I woke up, because frames can be EXPENSIVE if you look in the wrong place) and then my parents had to go pick it up this afternoon so we could put the poster back up. A process that involved having to move my desk around a bit.
Third, because of this whole thing with having to move my desk around, I had to take a bunch of things off it -- including my skeleton hand necklace holder thing I got as a gift either for Christmas or my birthday a couple of years ago. I tried putting it on my bed while Mom and I tried to scoot the desk out from the wall a bit more --
Cue it falling off onto the carpet and breaking. Not smashed into a million smithereens, at least -- just the base broke off the hand, and a couple of fingers snapped off. My mom was able to glue it back together later. We did have to sort through all my necklaces and such to keep them from getting fully tangled on the carpet, but to my shock only ONE broke, and in a way that was easily repairable -- the stone just popped out of its plastic casing on the necklace my aunt gave me with the holder. I thought for SURE one of the others would have ended up busted. . .maybe because they fell on carpet instead of the hardwood floor. At any rate, as stated, Mom was able to glue the stand and that one necklace back together, and its now anchored to my desk with Command sticky strips to help keep it from going anywhere. Still, not fun at all, and meant I had to revacuum my rug to make sure there were no bits of plastic caught in it later.
*sigh* And it also means I didn't do great on my to-do list, because obviously all this shit ate up a lot of time --
1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – as per my playsession today (detailed below), Victor, Piper, and Alice managed to clear the Ironworks of the Forged (with the temporary help of a hacked Protectron); talk some sense into Jake Finch before he killed an innocent man for Slag (well, sort of – Victor tried appealing to the kid’s sense of duty to his family, but it was Alice’s sarcastic comment that seemed to really knock Jake out of it); kill Slag and the rest of his cronies; get Abraham’s grandfather’s sword; and (after sleeping atop the roof for the night) head back to Finch Farm and reunite Jake with his family. Things aren’t perfect (Daniel in particular says the family will never forget what he did), but it’s a better outcome than it could have been! And that’s THAT quest done, yay (well, apart from talking to Preston, but I can’t do THAT anytime soon, so. . .)!
2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Episode 3 of Fallout: The Board Game in the WL, and "Legendary Roulette": Half check – between all the nonsense today meaning I finished up my double summation of what happened for me in Fallout 4 today (once for this to-do list, once for the more fanficcy Playthrough Progression), I ended up skipping my Subs entirely and focusing solely on Jon today for a pure Fallout Sunday. (He did have the longer videos I wanted to watch, after all. . .) Hopefully I can catch up on Gray and Kevin tomorrow, but in the meantime –
A) Started with Episode 3 of Fallout: The Board Game after finishing my tumblr drafts – aka the episode where everything started falling apart because Jon and Claire have a lot to keep track of and they keep forgetting to move things, take damage, or take experience – hell, they straight-up skipped an “enemy move” phase near the end and didn’t realize until Jon had already taken his turn. XD Complicated game is complicated, yo! Not to mention it looks like Jon took more loot cards than he should have at one point. . .at any rate, though, things are not looking good for the Capital Wasteland at this point. Jon camped out in Vault 84 for a little while, regaining health and discovering the existence of Vault 109 and its Fat Man while Claire fought her way through Megaton, clearing out the monsters at LAST, rescuing a cat, talking down a woman with a bomb, and telling the girl from the photograph they found earlier, Margaret, about the fate of her brother, before finally getting a chance to sell a few things in the market there. Then Jon showed up after everything was cleared out and bought some combat armor and a hazmat suit, so now he has decent armor and protection against rads. XD Jon also went to the Brotherhood and threw down his old tire iron to make them think that he was calling for peace (because he sure as hell wasn’t giving up his sniper rifle) and then handed over his robot companion because they’re in the Capital looking for robots and none have ever spawned as an enemy type, before going down toward Project Purity and declaring loyalty to the Enclave, preparing to help them with their plans there. XD Claire, meanwhile, ALSO handed over her robot companion to the Brotherhood (perhaps as a “sorry for stealing your power armor?”) before taking the news about Vault 109 and making her way into the danger zone (as it is now an irradiated wreck) – and finding the Fat Man still locked in a display case. Which she didn’t even need to make a check to open, apparently. XD So now she’s got good power armor AND a Fat Man (but a lot of rads), while Jon’s got decent armor, rad protection, and the Enclave on his side. All this while Moira’s going around looking for help with her Wasteland Survival Guide. XD Really, the Capital is in trouble – and the fact that the last part is only about a half-hour and is called “The Nuclear Option” doesn’t give me much hope for it going forward. . .
B) And ended this evening with the next episode of “Legendary Roulette!” Jon cheerfully started the episode showing off his new Instigating Pipe Bolt-Action Sniper – not the BEST weapon for the late game, but against the raiders, it works a treat. :p But his focus today was actually on “Insitute Missions/Mission Endings You Might Not Know About,” aka stuff you might not see if you don’t do specific missions in specific ways. The three he focused on were:
I. “Mankind Redefined” – this is the “mission” where you send your character to the Directorate Meeting at the Institute so Shaun can drop the bombshell about his cancer and name you as his successor. It’s literally just sitting down and getting a bunch of XP for listening to NPCs argue. However, it is possible to miss this meeting, and Jon wanted to show that off for us today! He initially tried to do it by genuinely missing the meeting by doing other missions – namely going to clear out Starlight Drive-In for the Minutemen (which got him a level-up, which he spent on Rifleman for his Instigating Sniper), clearing out College Square for the Brotherhood (which yielded a Never-Ending Double-Barrel shotgun – Jon said that with his current loadout, this really isn’t anything, but if you get it on a normal run, it’s great because, naturally, it never needs to be reloaded and thus increases the utility a dozenfold), and visiting Vault 81 just because (though he didn’t actually go in – just mentioned that there’s a bunch of mini-missions you can do in there to kill time). This did not actually result in the meeting already being over when he next visited the Institute, however – he admitted that this quest might be a bit bugged and so it’s tough to make it so you actually MISS the meeting – so instead he did the only thing available to him.
Sat down to attend the meeting, then immediately stood back up again and ran out the door, causing an annoyed Shaun to adjourn the whole thing. XD He then returned to get lectured by Shaun, who CLAIMED that he’d talked about the power situation and his own deterioating physical condition (he did not, the meeting ended too early), and that he’d WANTED to name The Legend of Boston his successor, but obviously couldn’t since she wasn’t there (true, but the game will pretend from this moment on that he made the announcement anyway). XD Good stuff, and perfect for trolly Jon.
II. “Plugging A Leak” – this is the mission that he was talking about at the end of last episode, the one that most people will never see, because the game is very weird about how it triggers. Normally, if you’re playing the game bouncing between all three factions, you would do the early Railroad mission “Tradecraft” to become a proper member of the Railroad, then do “Underground Undercover” while infiltrating the Institute and discover that their inside man, Patriot, is Liam Binet, son of Alan Binet, leader of Robotics and synth production. “Plugging A Leak” is the flip side of “Underground Undercover” in a way, in that it involves Justin Ayo – head of the Synth Retention Bureau, the division that hunts down rogue synths and trains coursers – discovering someone messing with his aboveground work orders to get synths who are high flight risks sent above so they can escape, and asking the Sole Survivor to ferret out the culprit (he thinks it’s Alan, but in the course of your investigation you can discover it’s Liam). HOWEVER – in order to actually play through “Plugging A Leak,” you have to FAIL “Tradecraft” – the mission simply WILL NOT START if you’re friendly with the Railroad and spying for them. Which is particularly weird, because – as Jon showed – one of the endings you can get for the quest actually helps the Railroad! If you go down the quest in the correct way (carefully questioning Ayo and Liam before following a trail of deleted records through a series of different terminals), you’ll find that Eve has been helping Liam cover his tracks, catching her in the act on a maintenance terminal in one of the storage rooms. She will pull a gun on you, but if you have high enough Charisma (or enough Charisma-boosting drugs), she can be talked down. Go confront Liam and tell him she threatened you, and he’ll be shocked and want to make it right – and he’ll suggest helping him frame Justin Ayo, thus removing him from the SRB and the Institute entirely. Go along with this, and all you have to do is disable Ayo’s security on his personal terminal, and Liam will plant the evidence, tell his father (with the justification that Ayo’s freeing synths so his coursers can later track them down and prove how necessary the SRB is), and get the guy banished, replaced by a woman named Alana. And if you ask Liam for a reward, you get his spare glasses, which give you +2 Int (and -1 Charisma). This means the Railroad’s internal agent is safe, and one of their biggest enemies exiled to the surface, so it’s REALLY WEIRD that you can’t do this in TANDEM with “Underground Undercover.” *shakes head* Oh Bethesda. (Incidentally, you can just turn Liam in to Ayo, but that only gets you 1,000 caps, and as Jon says, there are better ways to get money in this game. Oh, also, you can actually flirt with Eve when you first talk to her, which Jon found hilarious as she’s living as Alan Binet’s WIFE. And he did it right in front of LIAM too.)
III. “House Divided” – and this is the mission where the two heads of Bioscience, and the ones with all the food, lock down their division and cut the rest of the Institute off from the food supplies because they disapprove of you being named as future Director. Jon noted (probably correctly) that most players will probably succumb to the urge to set the synth gorillas they’ve made on these two, but he wanted to show there’s a different, slightly more peaceful ending you can get if you resist this urge. Just disable their security, unlock the doors, and kill their synth guards WITHOUT killing them – then, when you talk to one of them, the other will break and open up the doors again so the Institute can access its food stores (angrily lecturing his partner on how it’s over and to stand down already). Afterward, the scientist who told you of the problem will ask you what disciplinary measures you would like to enact. You have the option of not punishing them at all, putting them on probation, exiling them to the surface (with supplies), or just straight-up executing them (which requires a speech check because, well, it’s execution). Jon went for exiling, because he didn’t feel like braving the speech check and wanted to keep the banishment train going. XD (He also noted that doing this, “Plugging a Leak,” and getting Madison Li to defect back to the Brotherhood means you can get rid of three department heads in the Institute! You can’t replace Alan Binet in Robotics, but then again, Alan’s a good sort and believes in synth personhood, so. . .)
And then, with all that sorted, it was time for Jon to get back to main plot stuff and go do the Mass Fusion quest to get the Beryllium Agitator for the Institute’s reactor, officially becoming an enemy of the Brotherhood. After taking out the Brotherhood on the roof (not QUITE able to get the kill with his Instigating Sniper on the first Knight, but still), he took a moment to show how you don’t need to use the elevator the game wants you to use to get down to the bottom floors at all if you have the right kit to survive a drop to the ground – like, say, a pair of Acrobat’s leg armor to completely negate all falling damage. Do that, and you just have to fight a couple of Knights on the bottom floor before heading straight into the actual agitator room.
But Jon didn’t pick up all these awesome guns for nothing, so he reloaded and took the elevator ride down. Where he proceeded to hide from the attacking Brotherhood with a stealth boy and the cover from the elevator and pick them off with the Instigating Sniper. XD After thoroughly wiping them out with his various legendary weapons, he then proceeded into the main room, where he praised the fact that this area was actually a bit RPGy, in that if you spent the time leveling up the hacking perk, you can just crack all the security terminals, turn off all the robots and turrets, and just waltz in and waltz out. He did not have that perk, so he had to deal with the robots –
AND the rads, as he forgot to bring a hazmat suit to the HEAVILY IRRADIATED REACTOR ROOM. Fortunately he was able to spam enough Radaway and Rad-X to survive, and the room DOES have nice decontamination arches to clean you off afterward, so it wasn’t too bad. And Jon was able to take out the robots afterward without much fuss. He even remembered that they exploded upon dying a couple of times! XD Ahh, good stuff.
And that is where he left it, having gotten the Institute’s power situation sorted and preparing to sort out “Pinned.” We’re coming to the end game here – I suspect next week will be all about destroying the other factions, if not the end of the series itself. Hey, it’s been a fun ride! And hopefully we’ve got a little bit more to go yet before Jon, by his own admission, starts looking at other Fallout games. . .
3. Play Fallout 4 and finish up wiping out the Forged: Check, despite all the nonsense. Caught up with Victor and Piper by the Protectron I’d parked them by, and had Victor hack the terminal to release it under the “Subway Steward” personality matrix. It promptly wandered off toward the upper catwalks, through a trap that didn’t affect it and over to the highest levels of the factory, taking the makeshift bridge over to the other side and attracting the attention of all the Forged below. It took out most of them (weathering a few hits with a molotov) while Victor and Piper helped out where they could with their laser weapons – then noticed Victor and Piper and asked for their subway tokens. Now, Victor had seven on him, but he was also crouched to sneak at the time, so I’m guessing that made the Protectron think he was a delinquent or just prevented him from handing over a token – either way, it quickly turned hostile, and Victor and Piper were forced to take it down to save their own lives. Ah well.
With their temporary robot friend dead, Victor and Piper took a moment to explore the other side of the factory, looting corpses, taking out the one remaining turret, picking up bits and sundries, checking out the workbenches, and taking a look at the “Failed The Forged” terminal (the one which lists all the members that wiped out, from those who cried out while having a wound treated, to those who fell asleep on watch, to those who gave meds to the enemy, to one guy who WOULDN’T CHANGE HIS NAME TO SOMETHING COOLER). Once that was sorted and Victor had done some more inventory management, he and Piper found their way around the catwalks and to the little area right in front of the blast Furnace doors and the Slag boss fight. Knowing what was coming, I decided to switch to the Alien Blaster for a little fun shooty-shoot, and glug some “grape” juice (modded drink, made with hubflowers) for extra Charisma to talk to Jake, figuring Piper would appreciate me trying to talk him around rather than just going with the sarcastic option that I knew worked. Here’s how that went:
Attempt #1 – entered the room, let the “cutscene” of Slag killing a prisoner with the Shishkebab (Abraham’s heirloom sword – it’s flaming!) and telling Jake to do the same or he’d be killed himself play, and then had Victor tell Jake to think about his family. Jake asked if Abraham had sent Victor to get him – Victor lied and said yes, but Jake wasn’t fooled, killed the prisoner, and suddenly everyone, including Jake, was hostile. Welp, that’s no good.
Attempt #2 – redid prep, entered the room, and this time when the prompts came up, had Victor inquire a little more as to what happened – apparently Jake never felt like he could live up to his father’s wishes for him. Again, attempted to tell him Abraham had sent Victor to get him, but Jake still wasn’t buying it. Damn.
Attempt #3 – after a quicksave at the actual dialogue prompts, I decided “screw it, go with what I know works” and hit the sarcastic option, which makes Jake freeze up and eventually decide he can’t do it. Victor attempted to get in an early shot on Slag with the blaster, which did work, but then – well, chaos as all the other Forged ran in to join the fight and Slag started slinging molotovs. That combined with the fact that Victor was tired and thus down some action points meant that he ended up dying in short order.
Attempt #4 – redid the sarcastic dialogue, let the Forged become hostile more naturally, drank a Nuka-Cola to refresh the old energy, then once again tried to kill everyone with the blaster – this time arguably went WORSE, though I blame that at least half on my inability to remember which button is “power attack” and which button is VATS in a really tough fight. But yeah, once again, hail of Molotovs and flame, and Victor ended up very very dead.
Attempt #5 – Okay, the blaster isn’t working – let’s try the Two-Shot Combat Rifle and some Nuka, and remind myself which button is VATS again. THIS time, everything went – well, not exactly “according to plan,” but well enough. Victor did have to stimpack himself thanks to the flamers and molotovs breaking his leg at one point, but the Two-Shot did the job and took down Slag and his buddies, with Piper and Jake’s help. Victor went and found Jake at the bottom of the room, where he admitted he’d really fucked up and asked Victor to accompany him when he went to rejoin his family, then looted the Shishkebab off Slag’s corpse (along with all the other goodies that weren’t broken bits of power armor). He also took a moment to loot everything else useful and crack into Slag’s terminal – interestingly, turns out the reason the Gunners and the Forged are on such poor terms is that Slag just straight up lured some Gunner recruits into his gang. Apparently there were some negotiations going on, but considering there’s a guy on the overpass with a Fat Man who isn’t afraid of using it on their enemies, I’m guessing those broke down. It also mentioned something else – namely, that he’d had to send Bedlam over to Dunwich Borers to whip the people there into shape after material stopped coming from the quarry. Which means Dunwich Borers is now marked on my map. :D Handy! Victor can’t stop by there yet, of course, but knowing where it is will make it more convenient later. . .
Anyway – with that all sorted, Victor and Piper exited onto the roof (into a thunderstorm, which are surprisingly frequent around here), where Victor successfully disarmed one laser tripwire trap into a little computer control area, but set off a mine next to another. That plus getting the “tired” message again made me decide it was time to set up camp, and he and Piper bunked down for the night at 1:11 AM on 12/11/2287. The pair were up by 9 AM, where Victor used the toilet and explored the roof a bit more – NEARLY upset the Gunners nearby, but fortunately backed off before they could get a bead on him, and found a “staircase” of sorts up to another giant molten metal crucible – it looked like you could jump over it and continue climbing, but after two attempts where Victor just landed in the crucible, I decided it wasn’t worth it and instead just had Victor look for a way down. After going down some stairs and making a few controlled drops, he and Piper headed to the overpass where Jake was waiting, and walked with him back to the farm. And once he got unstuck from the junk pile around the back (Bethesda glitchiness, but considering the family complains about Abraham’s hoarding ways, it feels very appropriate), he went and apologized to his father and the rest of his family. Abraham was ready to just send him away again, but Abigail refused to let them keep fighting and told Abraham to stop treating Jake like a child, and Jake to understand his parents just want him to be safe and smart. That cleared the air enough for Abraham to accept Jake back into the family, and he gave Victor almost 350 caps for a job well done, told him he could keep the sword, and joined the Minutemen. :) Though all’s not exactly well with the family, as Daniel was not so eager to just let bygones be bygones – he demanded Jake explain himself (Jake saying simply that he was angry at Dad and wanted to be more than just some farmer barely getting by, and he was wrong to take it out on them and turn his back on the family), and warned him that he wasn’t going to forget this and he was never going to see him the same way again. Jake accepted this but said he would do whatever he could to win back their trust. Awww. Left it with Victor and Piper hanging out at the settlement – next time should be cleaning up the place a bit more, adding some proper defenses and some shower/toilet facilities, and generally making it look a bit nicer! Then it’s off to Fanueil Hall to take care of the stuff for the County Crossing settlers. . .
4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check – while I skipped the usual “dash and tags catch-up” on Victor Luvs Alice in the morning (mostly because of having to look up picture frames for my poster with Mom, then just catching up with other stuff over my smoothie), I did manage to get the first post of my next Chill Save update (with Victor, Alice, and Smiler moving into their new home in Henford-On-Bagley) done right before lunch, then the remaining three after. So that’s all set for Wednesday. And this evening, I had one thread reply and one ask reply for the Valice Multiverse queue – pretty standard night.
5. Get in a workout: No check – I fully intended to go down there, but then the Vortex nonsense happened on top of all the OTHER nonsense, and – just never happened. I’ll pick it back up tomorrow with the first half of “Sail Of The Century!”
EDIT: Occurs to me I forgot to explain the "Vortex nonsense," mostly because I ran out of time yesterday -- basically, right after I played Fallout 4, Vortex insisted on doing an update, which required an update to something ELSE right afterward, then resetting a certain parameter, and then me worrying that I'd somehow lost my F4SE launcher (which I NEED to use to launch the game so all the mods properly function) until I realized I was clicking in the wrong space. Finding all that out took about a half-hour, so no workout.
At least I got all the longest and most important stuff done. . .but I'm running pretty late tonight (story of my life these days), so I'm gonna have to leave it here. We'll see how the upcoming week goes with THIS as a start. . .night all!
