Pretty Productive Sunday

Yes, I managed to accomplish a fair bit of stuff today, which I am rather proud of --

Tumblr: Much more productive day on Victor Luvs Alice – I started catching up on my dash shortly before lunch, then finished that and looking through my tags after lunch (dumped someone’s cool scribbly Smiler logo fanart in my drafts for later and marveled over one person’s one-dressmaker crusade in Animal Crossing: New Horizons to make EVERY ALICE DRESS THEY COULD FIND in the game – not just the in-game ones from A:MR, but also the pre-order DLC ones, the ones from the Jules Verne Otherlands short, and even some concept art dresses! It was genuinely impressive). Also did the full text of two of my Chill Valicer Save update posts for this week before going on to play Fallout 4. Not bad!

As for Valice Multiverse – well, didn’t have anything going on with threads or asks, so I ended up just yeeting a fun VTMB gifset into the queue and calling it a night. XD It’s Beckett, everyone will love it. :p

Fallout 4: Had a very productive day finishing up the University Point stuff in FO4 today – here are the deets –

A) Started with Victor and Nick outside Sedgewick Hall around 1:30 PM in-game – had them pop in and immediately get low to the ground to avoid detection from any synths inside. None immediately appeared, so I had them duck into the nearby bathroom to check that out – no goodies, though Victor DID notice a tension trigger on a nearby stall in time to disarm it, then the makeshift bomb attached to the nearby sink to disarm THAT. No blowing up for Victor today!

B) Emerged from the bathroom just in time to spot a Synth Patroller on the stairs – Victor sneak-attacked it and took it out with the Two-Shot, and then continued exploring the lower floor (I noted the signage indicating that the town had started using this as their local hardware store). One side room contained a few goodies and the terminal for student records – used this to confirm L. Mathew’s first name, Leslie, for Playthrough Progression purposes (she and Curtis were both pretty good students). A master-locked door near the side room proved to be the Dean’s office, lit oddly like it was underwater (O.o – I mean, I know the building is half-sunk into the ground/ocean, but still), with his personal terminal and safe nearby. Victor opened up the terminal and read the entries – turns out the dude didn’t look too closely at the paperwork he signed allowing Professor Campbell to approve grants and do work for the Army, and that bit him in the ass when Campbell and the Army started building secret labs on his campus and telling him he didn’t have the clearance to know what was going on. Ended up in him recruiting kids on academic probation to spy on him. Sheesh.

C) With that tucked away for later, I had Victor crack open the safe manually (might as well get that unlocking XP!), grab the useful stuff within, then unlocked the door on the other side to find a flooded area with a couple of mirelurk nests – and a couple of hidden mirelurks. Fortunately, they proved easy to take out – Victor took advantage of a collapsed bit of floor forming a ramp upward to get some height, flushed the mirelurks out (and destroyed one nest) with a grenade, then used his Two-Shot to take care of the Softshell and Razorclaw that emerged from the muck. Seriously, I have Victor carry a variety of guns just because, but that Two-Shot really does do it all. :p (Also, ironically, the Softshell had no softshell meat on it. . .but the Razorclaw did.)

D) With those mirelurks taken care of, and the nests raided/destroyed, Victor climbed the ramp to the next floor and began investigating. The ramp led to a lobby area, with two synths in it – one behind the desk, the other on the balcony level above, who did a dramatic leap downward to tussle with Nick. Again, the Two-Shot made short work of them, and Victor raided their corpses and as much of the lobby area as he could – telephones and desk fans are ALWAYS useful items to have! Then it was up the stairs to the balcony level and the floor beyond, which had giant holes leading to the floor below. Victor capped another oblivious synth, then explored what remained of the room above the mirelurk nest (which seemed to have been a lecture hall of some kind, complete with a projector still in place). Nothing much of interest but a door that led back out into the Commonwealth on the roof, or at least the collapse remains of the rest of the floor. Did allow me to get a pretty shot of the sunset, though. :)

E) Back inside, Victor proceeded around to the rest of the level, which was blocked off from the front entrance with a giant barricade and had a bunch of skeletons behind it. *wince* I had Victor start raiding the file cabinets – only to be surprised by another synth! This one actually managed to get a couple of shots off before Victor and Nick took care of it, so good for him, I guess. He also had a nice sturdy synth chest piece, which I ended up taking – so far I’m having Victor keep the Destroyer Chest Piece because of its 15% reduction in damage from humans, but I’m getting tempted by some of these other pieces, I gotta say. Gotta go through how many chest pieces I’ve picked up and compare stats!

F) Anyway, with the synth taken care of, there was more exploring to be done – namely in the other side room, which proved to be Professor Campbell’s office! Which had a reward chest, a still-working terminal, a duffel bag, and a woman’s skeleton beside it. And the duffel bag had a note in it reading “Jacq’s Note.” :( I had Victor look at the terminal first, which was mostly nasty messages from Alan the dean about how he wanted answers and a few e-mails from Curtis about getting into the lab, and his research notes on reactor efficiency. . .which he’d deleted because Alan tried hacking into his terminal directly to get at them. Meaning that Jacq Spencer couldn’t have ever given the Institute what they wanted, because it didn’t exist anymore. :( And she did try, if her note in the duffel bag was any indication. Ooof. This place is sad, even if it is full of good loot. :(

G) After that bit of depression, I had Victor drop down through the hole in the floor to get to the level below – more skeletons behind the barricade. I had Victor unlock the door out into the main “lobby,” then take a peek at the room behind – another flooded classroom with seats going down –

With a Legendary Glowing Mirelurk inside. Oooh boy. I had Victor chug a Nuka-Cola to ward off fatigue, then lure it out with a grenade before hitting it with the Two-Shot. Weirdly enough, while it INITIALLY came right at Victor and Nick to try and give them a bad time, for some reason shortly after mutating it RETREATED and hid in a side room. Allowing Victor and Nick to wait out the [DANGER] status, then sneak in after it and take it out in a sneak attack once it emerged again. Victor went and raided the corpse, and got a Penetrating Automatic Plasma Pistol! Ignores 30% or so of a target’s armor and resistances, which, NICE. Gonna keep that one and see what I can do with it – perhaps it’d make even a better sniper than Righteous Authority or the Mighty Sniper! Side room also had a novice safe to crack open – few bits of ammo, and some more XP. Never say no!

H) After a quick look around the corner of the flooded area and a quick clearing of another hatching mirelurk nest (so many mirelurks), Victor led the way back up to the main floor, and back out into the main lobby, where he’d killed the original synth. Exploring up there had him discover the main actual hardware store, and a bedroom (which I presume to be Gerald’s) – with a synth literally just sitting around inside of it. Slacking on the job gets you a surprise bullet to the torso, sir! As Victor was starting to feel the fatigue, though, I had him park there for a bit, using his portable workbench to cook up a storm (it’s amazing how much you can make if you actually have razorgrain!) and take a quick look at the guns before heading downstairs to set up his tent by the front doors. Hit the sack shortly after midnight.

I) Six hours later, he was up and ready to finish exploring, starting with unlocking a bunch of various items (like an ammo box and a door in the barricade that basically just led to the mirelurk nest he and Nick had cleared out last night). I had him pop into the hardware store, pick up anything useful (lots of good tools and adhesive, yay), then crack Gerald’s terminal to read his entries. Nothing too exciting, just a diary consisting of notes to his deceased wife Josephine. Apparently Jacq and Josephine shared a love of tinkering, awww. :( And oh, Jacq couldn’t have been much older than fourteen when all this bullshit went down depending on when she got the e-mail relays working, so – yeah. :( From there it was up the nearby ladder stairs to the topmost level – another locked door on the left revealed a hidden office with some booze in it, while the other side consisted of more living quarters (including a cooking stove – as Victor was overweight again, I had him do some more cooking), and Jacq’s room and workshop, complete with a Tesla Science magazine to collect (another +5% critical damage to energy weapons).

J) And then it was finally time to wrap things up by reading Jacq’s own homemade terminal, set up by the elevator. Poor girl – she just wanted to get herself a new hard drive, found some of Campbell’s old reactor efficiency data on it, and talked to a trader to see what the whole kit-and-kaboodle could be worth if she found it. Only for the Institute to come calling and most of the town (bar a few people, like Sylvia and Bert) to turn on her and her dad. As per the holotape in the terminal, she tried to find the rest of it to give to the Institute, but – we saw how that went. :( Victor is gonna WANT to blow the Institute up after this, that’s for damn sure.

K) So that was that – all the information gathered, all the goodies collected. I had Victor do one last sweep of the place, then head back upstairs one last time to unchain the final door before exiting through the door on the third floor – this led him and Nick to the roof, where they took out one final synth. From there, they hopped down, checked the razorgrain (hadn’t respawned yet, damn it), and then headed out the “main door” and back out into the world. To my surprise, I realized we were right by one of the mini raider camps I’d cleared out on the way to the Warwick Homestead, so I decided that would be a good place to stop for the day. Right after I’d disabled the makeshift bomb and the tripwire by the entrance (how did I miss THAT before?? Must have come in a different way).

So yeah – sad day, if productive one. Oof, poor Jacq. . .she deserved better. They all did. :( I am now tempted to have Victor use Limitless Potential in the final fight against the Institute just for the “fuck you” factor. We’ll see if I remember! Next time, though, probably gonna do some more gun crafting, then continue the long-ass journey up to Nordhagen!

Writing: Updated the FO4 Playthrough Progression document with the above adventures in Sedgewick Hall to wrap up Victor, Alice, and Nick’s time in University Point, natch. It was pretty much identical to what happened above except for two key differences (you know, besides Alice being there and helping out), one major and one minor. The minor difference was, at the end of their explorations, Victor used his Pip-Boy to radio the Castle and ask that some Minutemen be sent to the settlement to give the dead there a proper burial. The major difference was – well, the Playthrough Progression is for my “Fallout of Darkness” AU, where the world is crossed over with that of the World of Darkness (specifically the kind from Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines). Where, along with vampires, ghosts exist.

Yeah, turns out Jacq Spencer’s restless spirit was still haunting Sedgewick Hall, and encountered the group as they found Campbell’s office and her body. She initially freaked out upon seeing Nick, since he’s a synth and she got killed by a synth, but Alice managed to talk her down, and the gang helped her settle her unfinished business by, unfortunately, proving she COULDN’T have saved her settlement by getting the rest of Campbell’s reactor research data – it no longer existed on his computer. (She got killed before she could even try to access it, and as a ghost she couldn’t actually manipulate the computer anymore.) She thanked them for the help and asked them to warn other settlements about this kind of thing before moving on, and Victor had a LOT of feelings and killed that glowing legendary mirelurk to try and settle them since he didn’t have any Institute targets at the moment. Yeah, he is Not Happy about what happened at University Point, especially given that Jacq was a teenager and he has a real thing about people who kill kids. . .this should make future interactions with the Institute interesting! (You really should be able to call them out for that, honestly – it’s horrific, what they did to those people.) At least next time I can help calm him down with some good old-fashioned gunsmithing. . .

YouTube: Kept it simple today with just my typical two on a Sunday –

A) First up, over in the Subs, we had GrayStillPlays and “Testing Trains VS MASSIVE SLINGSHOT,” aka Gray plays Slingshot Train! A game where you must slingshot a train onto some tracks and gather the gold along the way to fuel slingshot, engine, and money bonuses. Yeah, it’s in the same vein as all those “jump the vehicle to the target and earn money for failures” games, but it’s a bit more fun and a lot more unique – and a lot more chaotic. Gray’s little gold-hauling cars started glitching out and twitching wildly REALLY early in the game and just never stopped. Not to mention the jumps and tracks themselves just get more and more wild the further you go through the game – you start off with relatively straight jumps across small gaps, and progress to giant leaps across mountains and multiple lanes of traffic before doing essentially loop-de-loops and wall rides with your train. And it doesn’t even matter if you don’t hit the tracks head-on – so long as your train slides to the tracks before it blows up, it’ll automatically snap to them, and you’ll complete your run. Gray clearly really loved this one, sending his (of course pink) train barreling through wooden barriers, SUVs, rivers, and the occasional hot air balloon as he sought to reach the station and drop off all that sweet, sweet gold. XD It’s always nice to see him so happy with a ridiculous little game like this. Now we just have to see if Alex and his ilk take any GTA V torture board inspiration from it. . .

B) And then it was time for Jon and “Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands - Part 23 - The Clone Wars!” This episode started with the Vault-Tec computer in the Brotherhood Citadel, and was thus focused on vaults! Two vaults that we actually visited, each with their own thing going on, and one that was just a surprise to see on the terminal’s list. In order, we had –

I. Vault 76! Yes, that Vault 76. Everyone’s least-favorite multiplayer Fallout game’s vault was in lore as early as Fallout 3. Obviously, it’s not actually in the game, and some key details are either missing (it’s not actually specifically said as being in West Virginia, being as it is on a list of DC area vaults) or slightly changed (the notes indicate the vault was SUPPOSED to open in 20 years; in the actual game, opening day was 25 years after the sealing), but it’s still proof that the vault itself and its experiment (or possibly lack-of-one; it’s stated to be a control vault) was at least on Bethesda’s mind as early on as the late 2000s! (Also, fun fact, Fallout 3 was nearly set in West Virginia apparently – one of the developers mentioned that at a Fallout 76 preview event. So THAT’S been on their minds for a while too. Makes you wonder why Fallout 4 got Boston instead. . .)

II. Vault 108! This is one of the vaults that has a full write-up on the terminal (unlike a lot of the others, which have corrupted files), and the write-up is – well. The vault had a LOT going on according to the write-up. The vault was set up with an atomic energy power source that was set to fail in 240 months, or roughly 20 years; the vault was given three times the normal amount of weapons; the vault was set up with NO standard entertainment options; the vault’s Overseer, Brody Jones, was allowed to pick his own top positions instead of having them all be pre-assigned by Vault-Tec; and the Vault-Tec staffed picked an Overseer with a genetic predisposition to terminal cancer with the hopes that he’d die a couple of years in and possibly leave a power vacuum. All sorts of experiments going on with this vault – so you’d expect when you get there, that you’re gonna find a dead vault with signs of chaos all around, right?

Well, you DO, but – not the chaos indicated in the terminal. Because, you see, this vault had something else non-standard included, not mentioned in its official write-up – a cloning lab.

Okay, so, how many of you have heard of Gary? XD Yeah, that’s this vault. For those of you NOT in the know, Vault 108, despite having a super-creepy rusty aesthetic, is in fact something of a joke vault, in that it is populated entirely by clones of the same man, Gary. Who can basically only say their names and like two other words. And who all hate you on sight because, according to a partially-corrupted text log in the lab, for some reason all clones of Gary automatically hate anyone who ISN’T a clone of Gary. So you spend all your time in this vault killing various Garys who are trying to gut you with knives. Pretty much nothing from the original write-up is in the vault – Jon specifically called out the fact that the vault has no armory at all, thus explaining why all the Garys are trying to gut you with knives instead of shoot you with guns. It’s just – Jon knows he’s overthinking the weird joke area, but he finds this entire vault deeply confusing and wants to know what the hell happened with the original experiments and what the deal is with Gary. XD Come on, Bethesda, throw us a bone here! (Consensus in the comments seems to be this vault is the result of the last-minute changes and time crunches that caused some other weirdness in the game, like Rivet City’s unintuitive layout and the famous “Fuck You” door – originally Vault 108 was supposed to at least be CLOSER to its write-up, but then they ran out of time and the Gary Clone vault resulted (not in the least because it saved them having to write up a full story and record more than a handful of voice lines).) On the plus side, at least he was able to pick up the Speech Bobblehead here (though usually it’s Charisma here and Speech in Paradise Falls; this mod swaps them for some reason), allowing him to recruit companions no matter WHAT Wanda’s karma levels are – and given her karma DOES tend to fluctuate with how evil or good she’s been in her quest to remain morally neutral in the long run, this should help a lot with making friends!

III. Vault 101 – aka Wanda’s Home Vault! Yes, after killing a few Garys, Wanda trekked back to her vault of origin because her old friend Amata had sent out a distress signal asking her to come back as her father the Overseer had gone completely mad with power and they needed help. This is a quest that only kicks off after the Enclave show up (aka after your father’s died), and has a very open-ended objective – there’s multiple different ways to solve it depending on who you side with in the conflict. So, after making a stop at Megaton for supplies, running into Lucky Harith the trader and getting a very cheap (if damn near broken) anti-materiel rifle, and testing out the rifle with her only three shots on some Enclave soldiers camped near the vault, Wanda headed inside Vault 101 to meet up with the people there and get the deets on what was going on.

The deets were that, in the wake of James and Wanda leaving, the vault residents had split up into three different camps – those who want to abandon the vault entirely (as represented by Butch Deloria), those who want to at least open up the vault to communication and trade with the outside world, even if they continue living there (as represented by Amata), and those who want to lock down the vault entirely and protect the “pure” humans with (as represented by the Overseer, whom Jon was NOT shy about calling out on his bullshit, given he and his went outside during his youth AND he let in James when he came knocking with baby Wanda about twenty-odd years ago). And you can side with any of these three to solve Vault 101’s problems. If you want to side with Amata, you can remind the Overseer through a speech check that there’s not enough people here to support the Vault’s population long-term – he has to bring it outside blood just for genetics reasons – or you can go down to the security center, free your old teacher from the lock-up, and learn from him that the security team is planning something nasty and that the details are on the terminal. Said details are of a raid the team is planning where they’re going to just start killing some of the “rebels” who want to leave – who are largely the younger members of the vault. Bring these details to the Overseer, and he’ll realize he’s lost control of the security team and that kids are going to die, and he’ll back down and allow the vault to be opened. If you want to side with the Overseer, you can also use a speech check to get Amata to back down, or you can go and crack open his terminal to discover a log entry in which he details his contact with the Enclave outside, who wanted to get into the vault for whatever reason, and how he refused their offer of amnesty because he doesn’t know these people and doesn’t trust them (and despite his xenophobia, this was a good call on his part, as the Enclave are assholes). Bring the details of THAT to Amata, and she’ll realize it’s probably a good idea to stay locked inside for the moment.

However – BOTH of these resolutions would lead to Wanda being permanently kicked out of the vault, despite her helping the winner, with only a modified Vault 101 Mechanic Jumpsuit (which is of no real use to Jon, as it trades boosting lockpicking for boosting Luck, and Wanda’s Luck is already maxed) as a reward. (No, I’m not sure why AMATA exiles you for helping her, it’s weird.) As Wanda is not about that life – she chose to help Butch. Which involved going down to the reactor room, hacking the terminal down there, and sabotaging the vault’s water chip, destroying its life support systems and forcing everyone to flee (and killing Stanley the maintenance man in the process – Jon TRIED to wait for him to leave, but the dude refused to budge and thus got murdered by the initial explosions). AND, because she has such high Speech, she was able to tell the Overseer that the rebels initiated the meltdown, causing him to believe he had totally failed as Overseer and choosing to stay and take his own life in the dying vault, and Amata that the Overseer had caused the meltdown to kill everyone to keep them in the vault, making her believe her father had finally totally lost it. Fun! So what was the payoff for exiling everyone to the wastes and probably condemning them all to a terrible death (Jon even admitted there’s a random event where you find corpses of Vault 101 residents that might happen now)?

Why, tracking down Butch Deloria in Rivet City and gaining him as a companion, of course! The dude was so thrilled to be on the outside, he cheerfully bought Wanda a drink and promptly agreed to join her when she suggested they form a gang together. He even came with a cool passive perk thanks to the mod – +5% damage if you’re both using the same weapon, and +5% resistance to damage if you’re both wearing the same armor (plus another 5% if that armor is the “Tunnel Snakes” outfit XD). And he can do Wanda’s hair whenever she likes! Not to mention he’s apparently more badass than he looks, because Jon brought him over to the Enclave people he killed before to see if he could wear their Tesla power armor – and he totally can, no training at all! Explains how he somehow got to Rivet City so quickly without getting killed along the way!

So yeah, at least for a little while, Wanda is part of the power armor division of the Tunnel Snakes. XD We’ll see how long it lasts, as Jon is notoriously allergic to companions in these games (or, at least, that’s the vibe I’VE always gotten from him). Next week, though – well, the Enclave are here in the DC Ruins, so why don’t we get to know them a little better? Always best to know thine enemy, after all. . .

Workout: Back on the bike today, with the next episode of James Turner’s High School Years Rags To Riches Generational Epic – “Star-crossed friends…” This was an episode done almost entirely with Sidney and Ava’s family, to help “catch them up” to the Bigwallets and make sure their daughter Hilary and Reginald and Kevin’s son Addison were the same age. They actually also had another baby already thanks to James having had them “try for baby” at their wedding – a son named Forrest! James aged him up into a toddler and Hilary up into a kid; did makeovers for everyone (just using Styled Looks for the most part to make things easier); helped Sidney level up his Charisma and Research & Debate skills for work; got him and Ava to overcome their Fears of Unfulfilled Dreams by fulfilling a couple of simple wants and chatting with each other; attempted to have them train the pets (a difficult endeavor when the dog is both Aggressive and Stubborn and the cat just doesn’t listen); sent Hilary over to the Bigwallet household to meet Addison (though he had to switch to playing AS Addison for a brief time to actually make it so they could talk properly – as Addison’s a celebrity, Hilary’s social options from her POV were limited); then sent Hilary and Addison out on Saturday on a “play date” to the park (after adding some more proper playground equipment instead of just monkey bars) before having Hilary invite him home for some New Year’s Eve summer fun with water balloons and the new slip-n-slide! :) It was a slightly chaotic but honestly rather cute episode full of just trying to get this family to be functional and Hilary and Addison to be friends. Good times, and I’m looking forward to the next one!

Whew -- busy day! And, of course, right near the end (right before taking my shower, in fact), I got my period. >.< Like -- seriously? Right before I had to go back to work? Meeeh. . .at least tomorrow's a slightly shorter day, I guess. . .and then I just have to get through Tuesday before getting six days off. . .but still! Damn body. . .ah well, I'd better get to bed. Night all!