Typically Late-Running Sunday

Yeah, as usual, I'm running a bit late tonight with all my write-ups. . .though not NEARLY as bad as I was last Sunday, that's for sure! So yeah, give me a minute and you'll have your summary of the day --

Tumblr: Slightly-more-productive-Sunday-than-usual for tumblr –

Victor Luvs Alice – Kept up with the dash as best I could, then finished off the three remaining Chill Valicer Save posts for this week’s update with image alt text and tags before lunch! :) Would have liked to do a little bit more, but at least I am totally set for Wednesday, yay.

Valice Multiverse – Two thread replies and a Mother’s Day-themed ask from Brynlee Marie to drop into the queue over here, along to a reply to her reply to the “Haunted House” anon question from the other day (Madeline basically pulling Alice away from the anon, and Alice allowing it but continuing to glare at the anon all the while). Keeping busy over here for a change! And there may be more threads on the way, based on her messages to me earlier. . .

Fallout 4: Bit of a rough day out in the Glowing Sea for Victor and Ada today – and while they are making progress when it comes to reaching the crater where the Children of Atom lurk (so Victor can ask them where the hell Virgil is and thus make some progress toward finding his cave), finding a safe place for them to make camp has proven a lot harder. . .let me explain –

A) Picked up with the duo in Installation K-21B, with me having just spotted a terminal Victor had missed the chance to fiddle around with tucked into a corner by some other computer equipment. I thus had him vault over the edge of the stairwell he was currently on and go over to check it out. To my delight, not only was there a terminal there, but also a floor safe (which, when picked, yielded loads of ammo) AND a US Covert Ops perk magazine on the table nearby! I KNEW there was one around here! :D I had Victor grab what he wanted out of the safe, pick up the magazine, then hack the terminal. There wasn’t much on there, just a notice saying that there was a facility-wide shutdown with the mainframe in power save mode, and recommending a reboot (with a warning that it would revert everything to factory settings). I was all for a reboot, just to see what would happen –

Until I thought, “wait – that’s going to wake up the Protectrons, isn’t it? Well, forewarned is forearmed – let me prepare for that.” I thus had Victor go and grab a bottlecap mine and a pulse mine off Ada and drop them in front of each protectron charging pod respectively, figuring that’d probably do enough damage to take ‘em both out in one shot. I then let Victor have a little snack (Baked Bloatfly and Melon Juice, om nom) before having him do the reboot. Once that was done, I had him reactivate the elevators in the building, but ignored the command that would let me deactivate the protectrons – after all, I wanted that kill XP, and I’d already put mines right in front of their pods. This was going to be easy-peasy, right?

. . .Yeah, the awakened Protectrons COMPLETELY MISSED the mines I’d put in front of their pods. Or maybe I didn’t set them up right, I dunno. I don’t often use mines, honestly. At any rate, poor Victor took a bit of laser fire to the helmet before he was able to scramble away and use his Mighty Sniper to take the pair out. *grumbles* What I get for trying to set up a trap instead of relying on good old VATS. . .

B) Anyway, after looting the bodies of useful items (like circuit boards and targeting cards), dropping the portable workbench and doing a bit more cooking (dragging some stuff out of Ada’s inventory so Victor could make things like stingwing-wrapped melon, om nom), and doing a little inventory rearranging (the carry weight issues!), I had Victor and Ada hop in the elevator to head back up to the top. I THOUGHT that this would simply take them to the top floor so they wouldn’t have to climb back up all those stairs –

But instead, upon arrival, I was startled to see that Victor had found a new location, Federal Surveillance Center K-21B! This turned out to be a tiny bunker on the surface, not far from the original cabin where the secret hatch to the main installation is stored, with only the elevator inside – I guess it was the official entrance into the place back before the bombs dropped. *shrug* I was heading back outside into the Sea anyway – I’ll definitely take getting the extra location XP along the way!

Anyway – now that I was back on the surface, I had Victor swing back to the cabin to grab some ammo and the evacuation plan out of Bill’s suitcase (I am always amused by how cheerily federal agencies and Vault-Tec write the words “Total Atomic Annihilation” in their official docs XD), then check his Pip-Boy to find the best path to the Children of Atom’s crater. He and Ada thus set off going roughly southeast of the cabin and the bunker. . .

C) Toward an office building marker on his Pip-Boy, because naturally we have to discover possible safe places to camp along the way. *nods* Victor thus climbed over some rocks in the rain (fortunately avoiding the notice of a nearby radscorpion) and found the wrecked remains of Atlantic Offices – an old office building full of feral ghouls! The first few on the first couple floors weren’t an issue – Victor sniped one before it could even get up, then took out the other two on the next floor down before he was noticed. He went around and looted the corpses of bottle caps and ammo (he really doesn’t have the space for any other junk they might be carrying, unfortunately), then started poking his head in the various closed doors around the place. None of them had anything particularly interesting inside – there was a side room with a couple of desks with subway tokens in them on the upper floor (I had Victor grab one, because they’re light and you never know when it might come in handy with Subway Steward protectrons), and a computer room on the lower floor guarded by a couple of laser tripwires (which Victor easily disarmed). However, next to the computer room was a room that was just one giant hole in the floor – I had Victor go ahead and drop down it, then open the door in the side to reveal two more ghouls playing dead. I had Victor shoot them both with the Mighty Sniper before they could even get up, then had him enter the room –

And heard a “rargh” beside him. Because basically right next to him was a LEGENDARY Gangrenous Feral Ghoul. Fortunately Victor was quickly able to shoot it before it could finish its “getting up” animation. I promptly checked out what it was carrying and if it was worth taking –

VATS-ENHANCED BOXING GLOVE. XD Seriously, game? Do you think I’m JON all of a sudden? XD I left that on the corpse and just took the viable blood sample that it had on it for the Brotherhood scientist lady – THAT will actually be useful later.

D) With that taken care of, I took a look around the room – not much too it, but there was a working elevator tucked away in the corner. Knowing there was a rooftop area with a fusion generator (I’d seen it while coming up over the rocks), I had Victor hop in and take the ride up, exiting out onto the wrecked upper floors of the building in a massive rainstorm –

With a BLOATED GLOWING ONE right next to him. Which took more than one shot from the Mighty Sniper to bring down. D: Fortunately a combination of VATS and “from the hip” firing with the Sniper did kill the damn thing before it could do too much damage to Victor, and the only other ghouls I could find up there were already dead (possibly killed by that monstrosity). I had Victor gather all the ammo and caps off the corpses; go up to the roof and snag the fusion core out of the generator up there (can never have too many when you’re in power armor!); pick a safe in the corner of the room (good amount of ammo in there, but the real gain was that little bit of lockpick XP); and check out the bathrooms (one open, one locked – the locked one at least had some medical supplies in it) before heading back down the elevator into the lower levels. A hungry Victor then had a rad-reducing dinner of mutant hound chops and purified water before dropping his tent, getting out of his power armor, and preparing to sleep –

Only to be told “you can’t sleep when there are enemies nearby.” O.o This was a bit of a problem as he’d just gone from “tired” to “exhausted” and thus had like no AP. Fortunately, I’d made sure to bring a decent amount of Nuka-Cola with me, so I had him swig some to stay awake before he got back in his power armor, packed up his tent, and started looking around again for enemies. To my complete puzzlement, though, despite checking every room in the building that I could find (and jetpacking my way back to the first floor), I couldn’t locate any more ferals, or anything else that might be a danger. What the hell, game??

E) Well – if the game wouldn’t let Victor sleep in Atlantic Offices because of mysterious “enemies,” then it was obviously time to move on and find a better spot! I thus had Victor head back outside and loop around the back of the building, heading to the next location marker on his Pip-Boy – a factory of some sort! He snuck past a big old Glowing Deathclaw (maybe THAT was the enemy the game was worried about), then worked his way through some collapsed billboards to find the Capsized Factory – a location mostly buried under rubble and dirt. There was an exposed bit of wall with a hole in it, however, which Victor and Ada entered. They worked their way into the building and down a few stairs onto a catwalk overlooking a large central area. . .

Absolutely FULL of various feral ghouls. Fortunately, they were all on the lower levels, so it was pretty easy for Victor with his Mighty Sniper and Ada with her lasers to pick the lot off. Especially when a bunch of ghouls from the next room kept for some reason trying to run up the stairs backwards. XD Oh Bethesda. . . Victor sniped a few fake sleepers to finish things off, then descended to raid the corpses of any caps and ammo (and to take out one feral he and Ada had missed by virtue of the creature being hidden behind a big rolling basket). As he wandered around, though, I noticed that his [HIDDEN] brackets kept moving – and remembering what happened at Atlantic Offices, decided I had to make damn sure that all the enemies were taken care of before he tried to sleep again. I thus headed over to the door where most of the other ghouls had come out of and VATSed the area –

F) And found a Legendary Putrid Glowing One lying on the cracked ceiling just above. WELL then. I had Victor slip inside, hoping to find a good angle to one-shot the bastard –

Cue another, ordinary feral popping up from behind a desk. Cue Victor shooting and missing the feral in VATS. Cue the Legendary Glowing One dropping down to attack Victor while he was trying to get a better angle on the ordinary feral. -.- Fortunately, even with his AP cut by his growing tiredness again, Victor was able to take the Legendary down with one shot, and Ada took care of the regular feral. I had Victor check the Legendary’s gear (Ghoul Slayer’s Pack Right Bracer – yeah, no thanks), then check around the factory floor again for any more enemies. Not finding any, I had him drop his tent again for another go at sleeping –

“You cannot sleep while taking rad damage.”

. . .Fuck. Well, that’s a problem, because rad damage is kind of the Glowing Sea’s whole THING. And I don’t know how many actual rad-free interior locations are actually present in this hellhole. I’m guessing not a heck of a lot! Which means Victor, for the moment, is facing a bit of an insomnia problem. . . Again, good thing I brought all that Nuka-Cola!

And so my session ended with Victor gulping down some more soda before getting back in his power armor, grabbing all the Rad-Aways he could find in the factory (which was a fair bit!), popping open a safe he found for XP and more ammo (he can always sell what he doesn’t need), and heading back up to the catwalks to have Victor contemplate a rather large gap that he should be able to jetpack across. Might as well keep exploring if he can’t sleep, after all! We’ll see how that goes, and if he can find a safe place to bunk down before reaching the Children of Atom’s crater, next Sunday!

Writing: Another Sunday, another update to the FO4 Playthrough Progression doc! As per usual, today’s update for the Fanfic World was almost identical to what occurred in the Actual Game, with the following small tweaks –

A) Victor didn’t have to fight the protectrons in Installation K-21B when he initiated the system reboot because, unlike me, he just took the option to deactivate them when it came up on the computer. Because unlike his game self, he doesn’t need to kill things for XP. (Lucky bastard.) He also didn’t do any additional cooking to help with reducing his load (we’ll just assume he did it all in one go last time), nor did he go back into the cabin to get the evacuation plan out of Bill’s suitcase after coming up the elevator (as unlike me, he had no interest in reading it). Basically getting out of that secret government facility was a lot easier for him than it was for me!

B) The Legendary Gangrenous Feral Ghoul that Victor killed in Atlantic Offices was WEARING the VATS-Enhanced boxing glove it had in its inventory when it went to attack him, to Victor’s DEEP confusion. Same with the Legendary Putrid Glowing One, which had on the Pack Bracer it was carrying – which was even MORE confusing to Victor because, as I recall, Pack armor pieces (as in the gang from the Nuka-World DLC) all have stuffed animals stuck all over them. So – yeah. XD Look, I just thought it would be funny to stick the stuff on them and have Victor be like “????”

C) Much like in the game, Victor attempted to sleep in both Atlantic Offices and the Capsized Factory, and was foiled both times – in the Offices, he heard something that sounded like a feral, chugged a Nuka-Cola to try and find it, and ended up too wired and too nervous to want to stay in the building; in the Factory, the ticking of his Pip-Boy’s Geiger counter ended up keeping him awake. Basically Victor is not having a good time of it when it comes to getting rest. :( Ada has suggested backtracking to K-21B if necessary – Victor’s not keen on the idea, but he’s keeping it under consideration. As am I, as the poor guy cannot keep himself going on Nuka-Cola indefinitely.

So yeah – other than that, pretty much the same as above, with Victor leaving the military installation, killing a load of ghouls in the old office building, and then killing a load of ghouls in the old factory. All without being able to get any sleep. *pats him* Next time, we’ll see how his exploration of the factory goes, and if he can find ANYWHERE where he can get a few hours’ rest!

YouTube: Got in my usual Sunday Two, even if it took longer than I would have liked –

A) First up, we had GrayStillPlays and “They took terrible mobile game ads to unrealistic extremes,” aka Gray plays YEAH! YOU WANT "THOSE GAMES," RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET'S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM! Which is a parody game made up of stick-figure recreations of other mobile games you can play, all gathered together in one convenient package. It even has a “Gotcha!” wheel you can spin once you have enough cashola from completing levels and earning achievements to win various titles, like “Nerd,” “Tasty,” and “Alien.” XD Gray declared that he would play a selection of the mobile-based mini-games and see how they compared to the ads that he saw constantly for these types of games, getting through –

I. Pin-Pulling Games – Those “puzzle” games where you have to pull pins sticking through the level in the right order to guide a guy – in this case, your stick figure – past various obstacles to reach a load of treasure. Gray had no real issues with the pin-based gameplay, but disliked that instead of minotaurs and lava, he was facing off against sad stick-wolves and easily-dodged rocks (making it harder for him to kill his stick guy), so he only gave it 2/5 alligators.

II. Number Tower Games – Those math-based games where you must take your hero character and have him slay monsters in towers to collapse them, always making sure to slay a monster lower in number than his so he could add its strength to his and face monsters with bigger numbers. The stick version had the stick guy going up against dancing goblins and occasionally getting a Shiny Sword that conferred the power of multiplication on him. Gray was very disappointed that there were no giant curvy stick Medusa women as there always are in the ads, but then one level ended up having a pelvic-thrusting ogre as a boss, so he gave the whole business 4/5 alligators. XD

III. Endless Runner Games – Specifically, the kind of endless runners where you must collect cash, then use that cash to get over obstacles to your success, trying to keep enough money to end the level rich and with a fancy house and a sexy girlfriend. The stick figure version (with the stick collecting gold money and using it to get over deadly cones, lava pits, and random bottles of poison) proved extremely close to the ads Gray always saw, complete the guy slumping home alone into a shack if he ended as “Poor” and getting a townhouse with two stick women at his beck and call if he ended as a “Celebrity.” Gray awarded it 4.5/5 alligators, docking it a single half a point for no implied “undress your girlfriend if you get rich enough” scene.

IV. Parking Lot Puzzles – Okay, this kind of mobile game I was actually unfamiliar with, but Gray described it as one of those “IQ testers” where you had to figure out how to get a bunch of cars out of a parking lot without running into each other or other obstacles. The stick version was actually pretty easy, with most of the cars already facing the right way, and no penalty given for running them into each other in the parking lot (though you did get penalized for running into the toughs running around the lot with knives). Gray found it very boring and repetitive – and so gave it 5/5 levels of regret for being EXACTLY like the ads. XD I guess I am impressed with your commitment to accuracy, game with the absurdly long name I am not going to type again! XD And honestly, given your nature as a parody, you’re probably a lot more fun in the long run. We hope, anyway.

B) And second, we had the latest from Jon of Many A True Nerd – “Fallout 4: Sim Settlements 2 - Part 34 - Ain't That A Kick In The Headquarters!” After being talked into taking the leadership position of the little organization that Jake and Aiden are attempting to set up in the former Gunner Plaza (now GNN HQ), Mayor Bob spent most of this episode slowly going mad with power and trying to figure out the best way to become God-King of the Commonwealth. XD This process involved:

I. Bob going to recruit Mansfield from Vault 81 to help out with the clean-up and organization efforts at his new HQ! A process made a little more difficult by Bob being immediately attacked first by super mutants, then by Gunners, then by Children of Atom almost the moment he stepped outside. And then throwing a vertibird signal grenade at them instead of a regular grenade. And then not even being able to board his vertibird taxi because he spent too much time killing enemies and looting their corpses. XD On the plus side, he was VERY pleased with the new Sniper-perk-granted knockdown effect on his fast-firing laser rifle, and killing and looting the Children of Atom got him more precious gamma rounds for his ridiculous physics gun. So, overall, being attacked three times in quick succession turned out to be a win!

Anyway – after a quick trip to the airport to force Ingram to head to Egret Tours Marina to help him build his damn teleporter, Bob finally got to Vault 81, where he easily convinced Mansfield to come and work for him at his new HQ (Mansfield being only too happy to leave, considering the unfortunate state Vault 81 was in after the Gunner attack). Even better, he discovered upon leaving the Vault (via Jake calling him over it) that the upgrade to his Pip-Boy’s firmware that Jake did at the end of last episode (before he started arguing with Aiden about turrets) turned the Pip-Boy into a two-way radio, so now he can just call Jake (and any other people he might need to contact at HQ) whenever he has updates, instead of hoofing it over to HQ every time! Jon was very pleased with that development – gonna save him a lot of travel time!

II. Bob getting his teleporter started! Also to save himself travel time, Bob decided to advance the main plot line and get the teleporter into the Institute ready, now that Ingram was available to help out. So it was over to the Marina to get that all set up (and upgrade as many rifle-type guns with short scopes as he could, to give himself plenty of chances to knock enemies down). Unfortunately, before Bob could actually ACTIVATE the damn thing, he had to wait for Maxson to show up to give the okay. Maxson, fortunately, knew how to move on his own and showed up the next morning –

Only for Bob to go “power move” and head back to his new HQ to leave MAXSON waiting for a while. Just because he could. XD Oh Bob. . .

III. Bob going through the tutorial to set up his HQ properly! Because the game knew he needed some help, poor guy. XD Specifically, he arrived at HQ to find Jake and Aiden arguing again, this time about Aiden trying to secure doors by putting (deactivated) landmines in front of them (Jon immediately declared himself “Team Landmine” XD), then had to admit to Jake that he hadn’t actually told Mansfield exactly where it was he was supposed to go. XD Fortunately Mansfield found the place on his own; unfortunately, he was absolutely shocked at the state of the building and was like “do you have any organizational structure at all?!” To which the answer was, basically, “no.” XD Cue Mansfield being like “Fine, let me tell you everything you need to know,” and assigning a random NPC to be a janitor, before telling them that they needed official department heads to help get things done and coordinate projects. Aiden naturally called being head of Security; Jake Engineering; and Mansfield Facilities, with Bob in charge of them all. Bob promptly chose to be a Ruthless leader because it fit the best with his God-King image. XD (Though he did at least indicate that he hoped all the people helping out in HQ were being paid, because otherwise. . .yeah, bad connotations.)

Anyway – with department heads chosen, Bob went through the tutorial to learn how to start cleaning up various bits of HQ; set up Mansfield’s office, and then Jake and Aiden’s offices (well, Jake’s office and Aiden’s security checkpoint); learned about how you can start automating the process of running HQ from Mansfield by setting up people with specific responsibilities (Bob was like “maybe in the future, for now I want my fingers in every pie”) – and then discovered Lupa, Theresa (who, for reference, is someone from Stodges’s group at the Red Rocket settlement – I spent a lot of the episode trying to place her) and Mansfield arguing about how they’d already used up all their building materials on these initial projects. Mansfield was all for just taking stuff from the nearest settlement, while Theresa was like “excuse me? People work hard for their stuff on the surface, Vaultie.” Bob secretly agreed with Mansfield (“I am God-King and anyone who disagrees with me will be physics-gunned”), but I think in practice Jon chose the Local Leader “it’ll be given and take” dialogue option, as Theresa’s response to him was to suggest asking her old group for supplies. Which Bob was okay with, but noted that heading up to the Red Rocket by Sanctuary was quite the hike –

IV. Bob finishing off his teleporter! Admittedly, after the game crashed and Jon had to play through the entire tutorial again because saving is at a premium in Survival mode (this is why I play with a modded version). But yes, once he was back to where he’d left off, Bob hoofed it back to the Marina, got teleported into the Institute, dragged Father regarding how “misunderstood” the Institute was (“maybe if you didn’t kidnap people and turn them into super mutants or replace them with fleshy robots. . .”), went through the whole rigmarole with Fake Shaun, and got his courser chip, allowing him to teleport into the Institute from anywhere, then out into the CIT Ruins, a nice central point in the map. So now he has some lovely fast travel instituted, yay. :p

V. Bob finishing off the “get your HQ going” tutorial! Having gotten the teleporter sorted, Bob hoofed it up to the Red Rocket Settlement to meet with Stodges (who was only too happy to lend a hand with some supplies, given how kind Bob had been to him and his) and get the supply line set up (which was easy, as the settlement already had caravan services, yay). He then teleported back to the CIT Ruins and hoofed it down to HQ, where he found all the current department heads arguing about the lack of people available to help out in the various departments. Fortunately Theresa was already on the same page as Bob about this – recruit skilled people from the various settlements under Bob’s charge – and even offered to take care of the Personnel department herself! And so the episode ended with Bob preparing to go around his settlements (in particular, the overcrowded Marina) and get the best and the brightest to start working for him directly at his headquarters. :) You can only hire the best when you’re going to be God-King of the Commonwealth, after all! XD

Workout: Back on the bike again, and back to the GrayStillPlays compilations with “When you live a life of endless pain,” aka a Gray plays Happy Wheels compilation! :D As you might imagine, I’m quite enjoying this one. So far, we’ve see things like Gray getting “The Dorito of Pain” and “WHAT” (a bottle balanced between two little cubes) in a bottle flip board (which I think was actually new content – the board didn’t look familiar at all); Gray conquering multi-game boards (like a bottle flip, followed by a ball throw, followed by a sword throw, all with separate win conditions); Gray taking a horrible Lamborghini across a bottle run; Gray doing some rope swinging and forgetting what a conveyor belt is called; Gray murdering a guy and having to do a pogo fight about it; Gray racing other cars in a muscle car race; Gray racing another hobo in a table slide race; Gray taking his alligator Methica across Florida to check on her nest and find her a new lake to call home; and Gray revisiting some classic Dylan Snider boards, including a trip into McKaren’s, followed by a trip down a Karen’s digestive tract. All good stuff! :) Looking forward to watching more as we continue on through the week!

Other: While it wasn’t MUCH of a Mother’s Day, I did give Mom a nice card and $20 bucks to spend on patio stuff – she thanked me and got a couple of pretty ferns to hang on the outside of the little enclosure she and Dad set up. So that was good. :)

Whew! Pretty busy Sunday, as you can see -- and now I DEFINITELY have to get to bed. Night all!