*skids in and crashes into the wall*

Well, this one's RIGHT up against the wire, isn't it? But then again, I just finished one entry on my to-do list. . .and I am pleased to say I got the ENTIRE to-do list sorted, despite a very slow start to my morning (I HAVE to stop staying up past 2 AM on weekends):

1. Keep up with the FO4 Playthrough Progression: Check – did that right after my playsession, below. Pretty simple, really – Victor helped Finch Farm set up some better defenses (with Jake volunteering to be a guard) and got Abraham to agree to scrap some of his junk in exchange for building a shower, outhouse, and sink on his beach (though he insisted on keeping one car, which is fair). Then he, Alice, and Piper set off again, only to end up spending ANOTHER night at the National Guard Training Yard after being menaced by a legendary bloatfly and a radscorpion. XD And THEN the next morning they set out to find Fanueil Hall and take care of the super mutants there, only for Victor to accidentally take the wrong bridge and start heading toward the airport instead. Fortunately he realized his mistake quickly, and even more fortunately the detour yielded more good adhesive and junk. The gang are now on the RIGHT bridge, but there’s another distraction to their mission sitting right in front of them. . .

2. Keep up with YouTube Subs, Jon's Fallout: The Board Game final episode, and "Legendary Roulette": Check – it took a while, especially since I added in a couple of videos to the list, but I cleared them all in the end –

A) First up, a short video from Petey Plays It that popped into my Recommended that I wanted to check out: “What Happens When A Vampire Drinks From Every Type Of Sim In The Sims 4?” I was pretty sure I knew the answer, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to see if Petey had discovered something I hadn’t. However, turns out Petey just confirmed what I knew – vampires only have special moodlets/effects pop up when they drink from werewolves and possessed Sims, and whoever the game randomly decides is a “Divine Drink.” There’s no special effects from aliens, mermaids, spellcasters, or even plantsims. Meeeh. I know there are mods out there to rectify this injustice (plus to adjust how vampires feel when drinking from a friend werewolf), but still – just highlights how against pack cross-compatibility The Sims 4 is!

B) Then, after that, it was over to my Watch Later for a video my friend Squid recommended to me: “My Son DESTROYED 43,786 Hours of Work in Cities Skylines...” by Biffa Plays Indie Games. YouTuber Biffa, who apparently has spent quite a lot of time designing the city Blightea on Wold in Cities Skylines, allowed his son to go ham on it with the disaster menu in this video (after, of course, making a save beforehand – though he didn’t tell the kid that until AFTER all the chaos had fired). They went through a tornado, an earthquake and sinkhole, a massive thunderstorm, a targeted high-rise collapse, a targeted fire, and then slammed the city with multiple meteors before sitting through the world’s slowest tsunami (as the game was really CHUGGING by that point trying to keep up with all the damage). It was very fun and cute, though my favorite bit was the very beginning with the tornado, just because of them laughing over the flying cars and sheep. :P

C) Then this evening, it was time to try and catch up on GrayStillPlays:

I. “When you evolve your pet duck into a god” – aka, Gray plays Duck Life 2, the sequel to the “make the ultimate duck racer” game he played a few days ago! Same basic concept, except now there’s a climbing skill to train and the races have gone international – you start in Scotland, and work your way through England, Egypt, and the USA (specifically Hawaii), before ending in Japan for the finals. And each time you finish a country, you unlock its paint for your duck! Gray, of course, was determined to make his duck the best via any means possible and thus spent a ton of money upping each skill’s maximum level, training every skill TO that maximum level (even the ones he hated, like the Flappy Bird-style flying, and buying strange pink seed to stuff down its gullet, before making sure it had an excellent paint job and excellent hair style and sending it to defeat the other ducks. It took a little while – every time he thought he had a skill licked, turns out at least one other duck would have him beat – but in the end, he easily beat the previous champion and became the World’s Best Duck. :) And apparently there’s TWO MORE sequels to this game, as per the comments! Well, perhaps we shall be fortunate enough to see Gray play them. :)

II. “I Survived 200 Dares in GTA 5” – back to taking on challenges from the comments in GTA V with Alex and Danny! Today was centered around various dares people have left in the comments on previous videos, and let me tell you – Gray’s commenters can be VICIOUS. I mean, you had some relatively simple ones – use the super jump mod to land on top of a lamppost, or leap to each letter individually in the VINEWOOD sign without falling off – but then you had stuff like “fly a plane through the D in Vinewood and all the supporting beams and survive” (took a few tries and many explosions); “fly a jet through a gap in this particular trio of buildings and survive” (Gray cracked this by looping around and coming through the other side so the buildings funneled him through the gap with their weird triangular shapes); “hit a guy with a rocket launcher while SPINNING” (this was the FIRST DARE, with poor Gray pinned to a rotating target and playing rocket chicken with a hovering ped); “take on a TANK in the military complex with the knock-off DeLorean and non-homing missiles” (this one took a lot of practice and a trick shot Gray didn’t think would work); “skydive through ten planes that are pink and anime” (and Alex added a thumbnail hole for Gray to get through as well, because of course he did); and finally “fly a jet through downtown before ejecting and skydiving through the church’s cupola there” (the fancy bit on top; Gray got run over by his own plane once before he managed it). There was a lot of angry Gray and a lot of deliriously excited Gray in this one, as you might expect. :D Very satisfied.

D) And then it was time for the double-dose of Jon:

I. “Fallout: The Board Game - Grand Finale - The Nuclear Option” – last episode of the board game miniseries that they did some years ago! Wrapping up with Claire NOT coming to grips with her Fat Man and Jon killing super mutants for the Enclave! XD Basically what happened is that Claire attempted to kill a deathclaw in Vault 109 and lost; attempted to kill the glowing one ghoul just outside the vault and lost; and then tried ANOTHER deathclaw outside THAT and lost. Then a bunch of monsters moved into her area – fortuntely the dice were kind THEN and she was able to blow most of them up without too much issue (including the glowing one that had given her trouble before) – and then the dice got mean again as she found and explored RobCo (FINALLY putting a robot enemy on the board, btw), and she was unable to convince the Brotherhood to leave the Wasteland, instead getting told to run along back toward the vault. Meanwhile, after a couple of missteps where he had to dance around the presidential mall to effectively snipe super mutants, Jon was able to destroy the last of the ones threatening the Enclave’s version of Project Purity, end the game, and claim all the influence. XD Enclave win, Claire remains a definite Brotherhood Outcast, Wasteland loses because the assholes basing their philosophy on species purity and pre-War ideals are in charge. Fun little game, even if Jon was relentlessly making fun of Claire for her poor dice rolls throughout. XD (And yes, part of me DOES wonder what playing it in person would be like. . .and then I look at the BTTF game in this vein that Mom and I attempted and I go “I think I’ll leave this to the professionals.” XD)

II. “Fallout 4: Legendary Roulette - Part 11 - The Promise” – and back to the current day, we have the next episode of “Legendary Roulette,” which had Jon fulfilling a promise he made during one of his earlier playthroughs – namely, completing Finch Farm’s recruitment quest via rescuing Jake Finch! Well, considering I recently just did that, that feels very appropriate. :p In fact, he ended up doing TWO Minutemen quests today, along with one that SHOULD have involved the Minutemen but did not –

Jake From Finch Farm: Okay, first up, Jon – as per commenter request – fulfilling his promise to actually DO the mission for Finch Farm, and do so in a way that fulfills the optional “bring Jake home alive” objective. Jon was understandably worried about this, because – well, because Jake coming home is an OPTIONAL objective, Jake can very much die in the firefight between you and the Forged. And that’s WITHOUT a bunch of them being legendary assholes. Things did not look particularly good either when Jon tried his initial assault on the Ironworks – while he got off a few good shots with his sniper, he was discovered much more quickly than he wanted to be, and fell to someone’s irradiated weapon and the fact that the Forged toss around molotovs like no one’s business (also he tried to hide in the room with the flamethrower trap that you can’t disarm despite it OBVIOUSLY BEING ON FIRE). Take two had him resorting to just NUKING the outside and running around to try and avoid being set on fire too much, taking a moment to exult over the appearance of a harpoon gun and wishing it had spawned with a better effect than “Junkie’s.” Then he headed inside –

And while the molotovs kept coming in hot (heh), Jon found that the raiders INSIDE the Ironworks had surprisingly low health pools. His sniper, combined with his ranks in Rifleman and a new rank in Ninja from a level-up, was just murdering them outright. (He admitted he really needed to apologize to the damn gun – he’d thought a pipe bolt-action rifle was going to be largely useless in the late game, but thanks to the Instigating effect, it just does the job.) He (with a little help from the Utility Protectron friend there) easily cleared the place out and reached Slag, where he discovered two things: 1. Asking Jake to think of his family doesn’t really work to stop him killing the settler to join the Forged officially, especially if you admit his father only wanted the sword back.

2. If you just go in with your OWN explosive guns blazing and kill all the other Forged in the room? Jake, who will turn hostile once you start shooting, IMMEDIATELY goes back to friendly, even (if the settler is still alive) going over and freeing his prisoner (continuously, in a loop) and allowing you to initiate the conversation to send him home.

Interesting! And the best way to solve this particular conundrum for Jon, it seems – though I was sure to drop the “you can also just go sarcastic and Jake will be friendly to you once the Forged go hostile after that” hint I picked up in the comments for anyone who wanted it. He talked Jake into going home, took a moment to pick up the Explosives Bobblehead (note to self, go back and get that, it’ll help with the Mirelurk Queen at the Castle), then – out of sheer cruel curiosity – did a quick save and tried a timeline where he just shot Jake and dragged the corpse to Finch Farm to wave in Abraham’s face while he did the final conversation, with Abraham not acknowledging it at all. XD Oh Bethesda. But Jon wasn’t mean enough to make this the final timeline, and reloaded to send Jake home alive and do the proper ending conversation and whatnot. Past Jon’s promise to bring Jake home alive and safe fulfilled, yay!

Taking Explosive Independence: With that sorted, Jon went to report to Preston Garvey, and since that was enough settlements, decided to go ahead and start “Taking Independence,” the quest where you reclaim the Castle! So, after a brief pause where he was forced to use one of his bleeding weapons to take out a furious Paladin Danse at Sanctuary (which – I don’t know WHY Danse was at Sanctuary? I actually don’t recall if The Legend of Boston actually picked him up as a companion or not? Must have if he was there), Jon followed Preston over to the Castle, where he made a shocking announcement:

He was NOT going to cheese this by laying a bunch of explosives down where the Mirelurk Queen that inevitably spawns comes into the Castle.

Instead, he showed how easy it was to cheese it with his legendary guns! XD Basically, the moment you’ve got Bleeding on a gun, shooting a mirelurk in the shell becomes completely viable because of the extra over-time damage you get – a lot of the legendary ones in the very first wave went down without even mutating because the bleeding damage took them out too early. Then explosive was good for clearing out the nests (though Jon quickly learned not to stand too close if he didn’t want his OWN limbs busted) –

And for wrecking the Queen BEFORE SHE EVEN FINISHED FULLY EMERGING FROM THE WATER. He just busted up ALL of her limbs with his nice explodey pipe gun – though he wasn’t able to cripple her spouts, meaning he did take one acid shower. But that just meant he got to finish her off in awesome Legendary Slow Time. :D Chopped her up into steaks, powered up Radio Freedom, and that quest was done, w00! But Jon omniously said that Preston probably WASN’T going to be happy with him for long, because “Pinned” – that quest where you have to talk down or attack the Minutemen to recruit a scientist for the Institute – was next on the list. . .

Pinned But All Wrong: And then Jon got there and found there were GUNNERS guarding Mr. T. S. Wallace, not Minutemen! Apparently the way he did the quests confused the game a little bit – “Pinned” has two potential states for who is guarding Wallace depending on how far along you are in the Minutemen quests. If you haven’t completed “Taking Independence,” then Wallace has hired some Gunners to protect him. If you have, Wallace calls on the Minutemen. However, the way JON did it, he had “Pinned” in his quest log when he did “Taking Independence,” but didn’t actually do the very first part – speak to Shaun – until after he’d completed taking the Castle. So I’m thinking what happened is that, since he HADN’T done “Taking Independence” when “Pinned” first started, the game auto-spawned in a trio of Gunners – but since he HAD done it by the time he actually spoke to Shaun to properly start it, Shaun used his “call off your Minutemen” dialogue. A fun little bit of game confusion that quite tickled Jon!

Anyway, since it was Gunners and not Minutemen that he might have to play nice with, Jon just nuked the guys and followed up with Bleeding on the survivors. XD And THEN he decided, just for funsies, to show how you can’t actually FAIL “Pinned” (well, once you get to actually talking to Wallace – “Pinned” is your absolute LAST chance to leave the Institute if it’s done with the Minutemen guarding Wallace, and obviously you can fail it if you side with them instead of talking them down or attacking them) by using all the absolute worst dialogue options to freak Wallace out even more. Turns out if you can’t persuade him to open the door, the Institute worker already there gets them to relay in a synth that just knocks him out so he can be kidnapped there. And you still get a load of XP anyway (and even more when Idiot Savant kicks in, meaning Jon was able to level up his Ninja perk to the second rank right away). The future Director of the Institute, everyone!

And so the episode ended with Jon, pleased with all this successful questing, using his new explosive powers (boosted by Demolition Expert and the Explosive bobblehead) to take down a Brotherhood Vertibird. He broke both arms in the process and was immediately attacked by a whole pack of vicious mongrels as he stood among the flaming wreckage, but he was happy nonetheless. XD Next time – either the Grand Finale or part one of it, as it’s time to start cleaning house and taking out the other factions! Should be interesting – especially as I’m not sure I’ve seen a single Railroad Legendary all throughout this entire series. . .

3. Play Fallout 4 and get Finch Farm to my liking before heading toward Fanueil Hall: Check! Picked up with Victor and Piper at the Finch Farm, where I had Victor check the recipe for vegetable starch (3 corn, 3 mutfruit, 3 tatos, 1 purified water), then plant some tatos along the edge of the Finch’s already very well-kept farming plot so they’d have all the ingredients for that and I could stop by their place if necessary to resupply (not that I really NEED adhesive just at the moment. . .) After that, Victor built them some defenses (ended up being a trio of turrets – two heavy, one regular – around the perimeter of the farm, plus one guard tower right in front that he assigned Jake to – was going to give him a nicer gun too, but couldn’t trade with him); cleaned up Abraham’s junk piles and wrecked autos (I left him one nice pink car); and built a shower station, an outhouse, and a sink over on the little patch of beach they have in their building area (flattest area to set them down in, plus it makes sense logically to have it where waste can easily be washed away). He also TRIED to spare his port-a-potty from being consumed for any of these projects, only for the darn thing to go missing when someone kicked it over, I had Victor put it in the workshop, and then I couldn’t find it in the “transfer” menu. Ended up building him a fresh one as I had the materials. (Though, thinking about it NOW, it was probably in the menu as a stored item, wasn’t it? So did I build him a new one or just place down the old one? Eh, he still HAS one, and that’s what matters.)

With Finch Farm more or less to my liking (the family already has a pretty nice set-up), I had Victor and Piper head out at 10:30 PM to start figuring out how to get to Fanueil Hall to kill the super mutants that have County Crossing so worried. Naturally, this started with backtracking our way to the National Guard Training Yard. I was just having Victor consult his Pip-Boy map about which way to go – when the game warned me about a nearby enemy. Curious, I had him enter VATS and – oh, look at that, a Legendary Festering Bloatfly bopping about nearby! Just as Victor was starting to get tired too. . . I had Victor get out his Mighty sniper and get a good position – first shot didn’t do anything, but the second basically exploded it. Flush with victory, I had Victor hurry over for a better look at his prize (which was a Chameleon Metal Right Arm – nice, but I prefer the better protection the combat armor right arm he has on currently gives him) –

And then Piper started yelling and shooting something while the sneaking brackets warned me of danger. Baffled, I had Victor start spinning around, trying to figure out what was going on –

And then, just a few feet away, a damn Radscorpion popped out of the ground and promptly died. Piper having murdered it with her stolen laser weapons.

Yeah, at that point I decided it was time for bed over at the Training Yard again. XD Victor and Piper pitched their tent right outside and went to bed at 12 AM 12/12/2287. Woke up at 8 AM to a massive thunderstorm, because it is ALWAYS raining in my game now that I have more complex weather. *shakehead* But they didn’t let that deter them, following the road down past County Crossing, past the Radioactive Spheres (I don’t know if the location has a proper name), and down the nearby bridge. Weather fortunately cleared up as Victor investigated the other side – a broken-down bus (nothing good in there), the outbuilding of a locked garage (plenty of goodies in there, including more adhesive and some workbenches – and a STEALTH BOY in a toolbox, nice; my hopes of upgrading my gear are still locked behind Gun Nut 3, though), and an abandoned Drumlin Diner (some goodies, including some dinner plates for fancy meals). Satisfied with his looting, I had him check his map to see where he was in relation to Fanueil Hall –

On the wrong side of the bay! I’d taken the bridge that leads toward Boston Airport, instead of the one that lead back down towards Goodneighbor. Fortunately the backtracking to fix this error was minimal – Victor and Piper just went back over the bridge and walked along the shore on the other side until they came to the RIGHT bridge. Had to kill some bloodbug hatchlings on the way over, but they were really no big. After investigating some weird slidey radstags in a nearby wrecked house, Victor and Piper proceeded over the bridge –

And that’s when I saw her. Directly ahead, resting on a ruined building. My beloved, my treasure, my pride and joy –

The USS Constitution.

I left it with Victor and Piper parked on the end of the bridge, but there is a non-zero chance next time that Victor’s gonna be helping some awesome naval robots with their scavenger problem. XD

4. Work on tumblr drafts: Check, though this was the thing that got most pushed to the side today – my dash-and-tags catch-up on Victor Luvs Alice ended up being a little later than normal thanks to me dicking around on the internet a bit more during my breakfast, and then I got caught up on that tumblr with the BTTF stuff again (knickynoo.tumblr.com Moose!). . . However, I did get the pictures done for the next Chill Save update this Wednesday on Victor Luvs Alice (Victor, Alice, and Smiler celebrating Egg Day at the new place) and put them up in the drafts with a tiny bit of starter text (just NOW, in fact, which is why this entry is so late), and stuck one ask reply in the queue for Valice Multiverse. So yes, check at the very last second, yay.

5. Get in a workout: Check – back on the bike, and to the next episode of James Turner’s High School Years LP! This episode featured Reginald’s first prom of his high school years, and it was pretty good! He only got a bronze on the actual event score – dancing both with Sidney and alone, getting in a couple of photo booth photos, gossiping – BUT, hilariously enough, he was also voted Prom Royalty! James was absolutely baffled as to how that happened, as Reginald has exactly ONE friend, and it was his prom platonic-date. I guess Sidney was the only one who actually voted. XD

But yes, prom went well enough, and Reginald and Sidney were invited to an afterparty over at Plumbite Pier, where James sent them off on the Love Boat ride and – thanks to a timely pop-up – a little romance started! Flirting afterward was a bit awkward (because Reginald IS socially awkward), but Sidney IS both single and at least a little interested (he’s openly exploring his romantic and sexual orientation), and there’s a tiny bit of pink in their relationship bar. :) Small steps!

After that, though, it was back to the grind of life – poor Reginald picking up a fear of unfulfilled dreams to complement his fear of being stuck in a dead-end job and dealing with acne and uncontrolled body hair growth. On the plus side though, his needs are actually doing all right for a change – having his own bed is really making all the difference! Yes, he still needs to go to the school on off hours to shower, and hunger does tend to be an issue, but he’s getting his performance up in all his classes (when not pulling pranks on the whiteboard, anyway), keeping up with Social Bunny, fulfilling his aspiration (finally! That homework one was weirdly hard to complete for poor James), doing decently well as a Cheerleader (he’s even gotten promoted from rookie to full-fledged member) and even selling a few outfits on Trendi! Helped that James finally found where it was on the phone and figured out how to check what looks were in right now. XD Also attempted to participate in the ThrifTea fashion show with his latest look (“Y2K,” a preppy sweater/pants/boat shoes combo), but James couldn’t figure out where the actual show was or how to do it. (Pretty sure it’s upstairs, James, but as the stairs aren’t INSIDE. . .) Things aren’t perfect, but they’re better than they were in the last few episodes, at least! We’ll see if things continue on that trend in Episode 5 later!

Additionally:

-->Decently nice day means another round of beanbags – kind of slow, nobody’s-throwing-that-great games, but we all won once again, so I am content. Final scores were me 2-W-3-2-3; Dad W-2-W-3-2; Mom 3-3-2-W-W. We will see how things go tomorrow!

Whew! Despite a lazy start, it turned out to be a pretty busy day! What I get for loading up my evening with all the stuff I planned to do earlier. . .but at least I can start fresh tomorrow! Night all!