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Happy-ish Fourth Of July
Jul. 4th, 2024 11:48 pmI had a reasonably decent day, though I did NOT enjoy the evening very much, simply because we had a lot of idiots on our street letting off very loud fireworks for a good portion of the night. *grumbles* But I did pretty much hit everything I wanted to hit on my to-do lists --
Tumblr: Decently productive day on here, though I was perhaps a little less awake for it than I might have wanted (I went to bed around 2 AM, but woke up around 8:30ish, I think) – while nothing happened on Valice Multiverse, I was able to spend the time before lunch (rather groggily) catching up on my Victor Luvs Alice dash and getting my “Valicer Three-Player AMA AU” explanatory post sorted (though I did have to quickly finish up the tags after we’d eaten) so I can add it to my queue for next week. Because it occurred to me that an AU where a lot of the trouble comes from three little kids having a pretend wedding that two sets of parents strenuously object to for the stupidest reasons is a good thing to post after the Valicer Wedding Anniversary. :p So that’s all good!
Fallout 4: Victor and Ada ended up having a very shooty-bang-bang day in the Commonwealth this Fallout Fourth (yes, I had to do it XD), which isn’t particularly surprising given what the Commonwealth is like, but still warrants mention –
A) Started with the pair on the edge of Lake Cochituate, exploring the ruined houses along the shore (which had a nice little walking path once, shame) and trying to avoid the notice of a group of Rust Devils up on a nearby hill, by the elevated highway. Having just cleared the raiders out of one house, Victor moved onto the next one – unfortunately, that one was nothing more than a bunch of rubble with one coffee pot in it. The next location in the line looked more interesting, though – a ramshackle post-War camp with old Christmas lights strung up around it –
And a glowing mirelurk chilling out over a dead brahmin in it. Unable to get a proper bead on it with the Two-Shot combat rifle, I had Victor swap over to his Mighty Sniper and try to snipe it down – the first two VATS shots were misses, annoyingly, but he got it on the third hit! I had him start moving forward to claim the camp, scanning for enemies all the while –
B) Aaand discovered there was a Legendary Mirelurk Killclaw hiding in the mud nearby. *grimace* Well. Couldn’t have THAT fucker trying to make Victor’s life harder, could we? I thus had Victor pull out the old frag grenades and toss one in its general direction – the explosion didn’t do any damage, I don’t think, but it DID get the mirelurk up and interested in Victor and Ada – and attracted the attention of a Mirelurk Razorclaw to the side I hadn’t seen before, who now also wanted in on the action. *sigh* Fortunately, both of them were only too happy to focus their efforts on Ada, who whacked them with laser fire while Victor took potshots with his Mighty Sniper (which was having a LOT of trouble hitting in VATS today, let me tell you). They eventually took both out –
C) But, unfortunately, all this fighting (and the fact that my Mighty Sniper is VERY LOUD due to the fact that I’m extremely reluctant to put a silencer on it because that’ll kill the range) got the attention of the nearby Rust Devils, and they came charging down with their own Legendary member to start trying to wreck Victor and Ada’s shit. Fortunately, the pair put paid to them without that much trouble (though, again, Victor was having real trouble with his VATS shots thanks to bad angles), and soon enough all nearby enemies were dead and Victor could mop up the spoils. Including the two bits of Legendary gear – a Poisoner’s Leather Chest Piece on the Rust Devil, and a Rad-Powered Combat Armor Chest Piece on the mirelurk. *frowns* The latter is better than the former (gives you more Strength the more rads you have), but neither are something I’m interested in for Victor – so another couple of items for the sell pile!
D) Anyway – with that all done (and all the good ammo and caps and such hoovered up from the bodies), Victor and Ada entered the little camp to explore it. They found a bunch of dead settlers (and their equally-dead brahmin – free meat I guess) around the spit in the central courtyard; some nice lakefront views in the shacks, including a little pier that ran down to the water with a bathtub at the end of it (I guess this is where the settlers bathed – nice if you can get it); a makeshift upper level with a room with ALL the beer bottles on one side, and a room with a steamer trunk (with some good ammo anyway) and a robot model kit on the other (Victor built the kit because why not, though I wasn’t able to see if it was a Mr. Handy or a Mr. Gutsy model – it didn’t say when Victor completed it and picked it up). Oh, and a couple more mirelurks hanging around the other side of the camp, one out in the open, the other hidden in the dirt (Victor AGAIN struggling to properly VATS the one wandering around through a window in the camp, though he very successfully grenaded-and-sniped the one that was hiding). I guess we know very well now how these poor settlers died! *shakehead* Anyway, Victor gathered up all the goodies (with Ada encouraging him to grab all the mirelurk meat because it was super nutritious despite the slimy texture – I’m sure Victor wanted to respond “do you know how much of that shit was carrying around before?!”), then hit the spit in the middle of the camp to do some cooking as it started pouring down –
And cooked his way to Level 45! :D Once I was done having him make ambrosia salads and stingwing-wrapped melon, I had him hit up the Perk Chart – and after strongly considering the next ranks of “Strong Back” (so much carry capacity) and “Gunslinger” (Deliverer would be even more awesome), I ended up going with “Awareness” Rank 2, just because it adds 5% hit chance AND 5% damage dealt to VATS targets, and I use VATS a LOT. (Even when it’s failing me, as you can see above.) Might as well make it even better, right?
E) With level-up in hand (and game saved), I decided it was time for Victor and Ada to head out – however, as I was rather sick of going the same way through Fort Hagen all of the time, I instead decided to have them head up toward the Red Rocket and the robot bench there in a straighter line, exploring the nearby countryside a bit. After all, there was a location to be discovered underneath the big broken-down “cloverleaf” of elevated highways just next to them! So I had the pair head for it –
Only to have to pause when I spotted something roaming around nearby. Turns out it was a sentry bot (I THOUGHT I saw a red glow up on the hill earlier), but fortunately it was NOT facing Victor or Ada. Victor promptly put his new increased VATS hit chance and damage dealing to work and sniped it in three shots from the Mighty Sniper before it could do a damn thing. :D I then had him do another VATS sweep of the surrounding area –
F) And discovered that the area that they were trying to investigate was in fact a Gunner camp, with one guard facing their way. Uh-oh. Fortunately, the guard hadn’t noticed them, so after looting the sentry bot’s burning shell (and drinking a Nuka-Cola, because Victor was finally tired again at 8:43 in the morning game-time), I had Victor sneak up to the guard, kill him with a manually-aimed headshot, then back off and dance around in the underbrush a bit until the guards up top on the highway itself (the Mass Pike Interchange, the game told me) lost interest. He and Ada then proceeded into the lower portion of the camp –
Aaand got spotted by a spotlight, leading all the guards on the bottom level to spot them despite my best attempts to get Victor and Ada away from it. *sigh* Fortunately none of the guards were particularly tough, and Victor and Ada took them out with minimal issues (one particular guard on the farthest guard post in fact got flung away in a most amusing manner when Victor shot him in the knee XD). And while all the Gunners up top were aware of what was going on below, it appeared that none of them could actually get a bead on Victor and Ada – especially when Victor ducked into the little guard shack near the elevator to keep out of sight. :p Victor was thus free to raid the shack (and do a little inventory management with Ada), take out the spotlight that gave them so much trouble, then raid all the bodies for any useful ammo and junk. And their laser rifles and pistols, as I’m hoping to break those down later for fiber optics and the like so Victor can improve his Tesla rifle into a proper shotgun and have some fun with it. XD I then figured “might as well clear out the upper level while I’m here” and had him call down the elevator (having a snack of Nuka-Cram while he waited because he’d gotten tired and hungry at the same time – turns out that helps the latter, but not the former), hop on, and head up to the interchange –
Only to be immediately blasted by the Assaultron waiting up there. Whoops.
G) “Okay – let’s NOT go up on the highway this time,” I decided upon reloading, and instead turned my pair back toward the Red Rocket so we can finish Automatron sometime this century. :p Once Victor was properly fed (he got some Rad-Away and a pear jubilee as his lunch this time – and then had to follow it up with a mushroom medley when it transpired that the fancy modded desserts I got from the Apple Tree Bakery mod don’t actually count as “food” to the game; maybe they’re too full of sugar and fat :p), he and Ada headed north, over hill and dale, slaughtering some squirrels that tried to give them grief with Victor’s Two-Shot (two regular ones and a glowing one, with the later being a pretty nasty little fucker) before ending up on a wrecked street right near Forest Marsh Grove. As Victor was still feeling tired, I figured “okay, this seems a safe enough place to stop – at the very least, the only enemies about seem to be the squirrels, and most of them don’t seem interested in attacking” and had him set up his tent between two ruined buildings before heading in for a five-hour midday nap to get his energy back and help reset his sleep schedule a bit. He awoke around 4:30 PM, packed everything up again, then headed up the road back toward the elevated highway, as following that would take him and Ada in roughly the right direction they needed to go for a while. They followed that for a couple of minutes, around the side of Forest Grove –
And then I ended the playsession with them having climbed up a busted on-ramp near the marsh, looking out over the landscape before them as gunfire rang out somewhere nearby. XD Dunno who was fighting who, but I suspect I’ll probably find out next time! (And there’s a trailer icon nearby I’m interested in checking out as well…gotta discover all the locations!)
Writing: Have to update the old FO4 Playthrough Progression every time I play Fallout 4 – and as you might imagine, this update was pretty much identical to what I wrote above, with just a few small tweaks –
A) I had Alice take out the Rust Devil I saw over near the road the last time I played in the fanfic universe, so I edited that slightly to have her come back saying that was an “advance scout” for the bigger group of them I discovered later on the hill. And when Victor and Ada inevitably got their attention fighting the mirelurks with Victor’s very loud Mighty Sniper, Alice helped take them down by draining one dry as a snack. Because, as a reminder, the fanfic verse is “Fallout of Darkness” and Alice is her Malkavian self here. :p
B) While investigating the camp, Victor took the robot model kit as something to do later, instead of building it right that second like the game forces you to do; he also declined to gather all of the mirelurk meat when Ada suggested it because, well, he has bad memories of lugging around TONS of the stuff from earlier fights (seriously, Victor has killed SO MANY MIRELURKS). XD
C) The trio actually tried to SNEAK through the Gunner camp first (with Alice of course using her favorite discipline to go completely invisible), instead of having Victor just murder the first guard – but Victor got caught by the spotlight, and so each of them had to murder a guard instead (Victor headshotting his guy; Ada lasering hers; and Alice sending hers flying with a “this attack broke Obfuscate so it hits extra hard” swipe of her sword). Because, again, killing potential hostiles is okay in a video game, but I prefer that the fanfic versions of the characters act in self defense more often than not!
D) Victor naturally never took the elevator up to the Gunner camp on the actual elevated highway to get temporarily murdered – Alice warned him off it by saying Wonderland was warning her about a “laser-eyed lady” (the Assaultron) up there. He also waited to eat his mushroom medley and pear jubilee (in that order, this time) until they made it to that safe spot near Forest Grove, before taking his five-hour nap, because that felt more logical to me than him scarfing it down just before they left the raided lower camp.
But yeah, other than that (and skipping Victor getting the Legendary gear, since it wasn’t very good), pretty much freaking identical to the actual play session. Meaning Victor is currently getting the lay of the land atop a broken on-ramp onto an elevated highway. We’ll see where he and his companions end up next time, and if it’s anywhere different than the game puts Victor and Ada! (Spoilers: probably not, at least not at this point in time.)
YouTube: No Josh Way tonight, and the GrayStillPlays upload was another compilation (just over two hours of Happy Wheels! :D), so I spent my evening clearing out the OXBoxtra list videos from my Watch Later (which took longer than necessary because of all the assholes setting off extremely loud fireworks down the street) –
A) “7 Suspiciously Easy Ways You Got Good Karma” – Jane and Ellen talking about weirdly-easy ways to balance the evil shit you do in video games! From politely greeting people while on the road in Red Dead Redemption II, to donating your personal funds to your own royal treasury once you become ruler in Fable 3, to just straight up dancing in the club (for a minute in real time) in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, sometimes karma is almost disturbingly easy to balance in games. Who knew that waggling your arms around in the world’s goofiest dancing animation could make up for draining people dry in a back alley? :p In the real world, of course, you must play the Ukulele of Penance to make up for your evil deeds – or, at least, that’s what you do if you’re Ellen and the video needs an outro. XD
B) “7 Worst Guns You Don't Want in Your Armory” – Andy, Jane, and Mike going through some truly awful guns in games (including two entries from Borderlands 3 because it has so many guns those guns have more chances to be absolutely awful). From the Zippy 3000 from Cruelty Squad (a gun you can only get from a slot machine – and then, when you get it, only has a one-in-three chance of firing CORRECTLY), to the Kolibri from Battlefield 1 (the world’s tiniest gun which you fire very inaccurately from between your thumb and forefinger), to the Slaught-O-Matic from Cyberpunk 2077 (a vending machine gun made of cheap plastic with terrible stats and only 36 shots in it before your character automatically tosses it), these guns are just NOT WORTH IT. Please excuse me while I go hug Victor’s Two-Shot Combat Rifle, Mighty Sniper Rifle, and Deliverer in Fallout 4 for being amazing.
C) “7 Great Games You’ll Never Get to Play” – Mike, Jane, and Andy talking about those awesome-sounding games that, thanks to the evils of capitalism, we will never get to play. Fancy trying out Life By You, the simulation game that was going to go up against The Sims franchise? Too bad, it was canceled last month by Paradox Interactive for not being good enough (for shareholders). Want to play Spider-Man: The Great Web, a cooperative multiplayer featuring five versions of Spidey from across the Spider-Verse (including Spider-Gwen, Scarlet Spider, and Spider-Man 2099)? Too bad, it was canceled before we ever heard of it, and we only know it once had a chance to exist because ransomware hackers found it stealing employee data (and also because the company that was going to make it apparently hates money – seriously, don’t people LOVE those movies?). Looking forward to either Hi-Fi Rush 2 or The Evil Within 3? Too bad, the company that made both, Tango, got closed by Microsoft for nebulous “cost-cutting reasons” (because nothing matters more than that in game development). It’s enough to make you want to punch a game company CEO. Repeatedly. Holding a copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with “I fixed my mistake in the Every Occult Challenge! - Part 7” by James Turner! Having given Lou his own personal doghouse/secret sewer tunnels home on the lot in yesterday’s chunklet, James proceeded to get through the following in today’s chunklet –
A) Setting up the “Semajers” club so most of the occults are members (Servo is currently being left out, sadly, as their slot isn’t unlocked yet) and making it so they’d all do their occult things for points (demonstrated by a brief gathering at the library, where Bailey was casting loads of spells and Vlad was pestering people for plasma). I suspect if we have any other gatherings before the end of the series, things will be chaotic. XD
B) Managing to FINALLY get a forbidden fruit from the special tree portal! Mostly by sending Bailey in to investigate instead of Semaj the next time he got the portal open (turns out that you can get it open up multiple times per day by traveling away from your lot and back), and then yeeting the fruit into Semaj’s inventory so he could eat it as soon as possible. So now Semaj is a PlantSim for the next few days in-game, complete with leafy hair and a green beard. James was very pleased. XD
C) Sending Semaj to do his scientist thing so he could unlock the “ghost” Sim (the last one he needs to get in his family) by killing coworker Cletus via indoor fireworks – which proved much harder than anticipated, as Semaj couldn’t effectively trap him at first, and then when he DID trap him (by locking an upstairs office for all Sims except the Semajers), he nearly killed off most of his household because they kept rushing in there to panic over the fire and being set alight. XD And then when he managed to lock them out of there by putting Cletus in his “Fishing For A Cause” club and locking the door for THOSE members only, Cletus just sat in a chair and refused to properly burn – meaning Semaj both had to avoid getting set alight himself AND stop the fire from getting too close to the poor broken Servo in the other room. XD James thought for a bit that maybe Cletus simply couldn’t die while he was at work, but EVENTUALLY he managed to set him alight with a firework, stayed late at the lab until the dude finally perished, then collected his tombstone and added it to Vlad’s little graveyard. :D Now, it’s currently looking unlikely that Cletus will actually join the family as a ghost (James has already stated he plans to bring Cletus back once Bailey actually learns the right Untamed spells, and his goal is to track down that one Night Wraith who won the lottery (whose last name is, hilariously, Eastwood – James deleted all of the other Night Wraiths in the world to make it easier to find them) and get THEM to move in instead), but we’ll see what happens in the final episode!
D) Making all of the family best buddies through the use of the Forced Friendship potion, as he did want them all to like each other! Vlad is already screwing himself over in that regard by doing things like chomping on Bailey without her permission and hissing wildly in front of everyone, but hey, James tried. XD
E) Replacing the Moonwood Mill library with a spa built on the same lot (using his build as a base) so he could finally do the whole “give a spa massage” mini-task he spun up LAST episode when he unlocked an occult (the one he spun up after killing Cletus was “find treasure,” which – I imagine just digging up something fun in Moonwood Mill should count, right?). Though he can’t do that without Level 2 Wellness skill, so when I left it off, he was having as many members of the family take a yoga class as possible (Bailey was in the onsen practicing her Untamed magic, and Lou and Nalani were just hanging around watching the others practice). XD We’ll see how that goes, and how this whole thing wraps up, tomorrow!
*nods* Not too shabby, I think -- at the very least, I'm happy with what I accomplished. :) And now it is time to wrap up so I have a better chance at getting to bed earlier. :p Tomorrow is Dad's birthday, but I'm not sure if he actually wants to go anywhere or do anything, given it's still a holiday weekend, so -- plans include working on more tumblr drafts on Victor Luvs Alice; playing Sims 4 and finishing up the upgrades to the Valicer farmhouse and barn basement; working on "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of;" getting a couple of Sims-related videos out of my Watch Later along with keeping up with my YouTube Subs; and getting in a workout. *nods* Again, I feel like these are all achievable things! We will see on the morrow, though -- night all!
Tumblr: Decently productive day on here, though I was perhaps a little less awake for it than I might have wanted (I went to bed around 2 AM, but woke up around 8:30ish, I think) – while nothing happened on Valice Multiverse, I was able to spend the time before lunch (rather groggily) catching up on my Victor Luvs Alice dash and getting my “Valicer Three-Player AMA AU” explanatory post sorted (though I did have to quickly finish up the tags after we’d eaten) so I can add it to my queue for next week. Because it occurred to me that an AU where a lot of the trouble comes from three little kids having a pretend wedding that two sets of parents strenuously object to for the stupidest reasons is a good thing to post after the Valicer Wedding Anniversary. :p So that’s all good!
Fallout 4: Victor and Ada ended up having a very shooty-bang-bang day in the Commonwealth this Fallout Fourth (yes, I had to do it XD), which isn’t particularly surprising given what the Commonwealth is like, but still warrants mention –
A) Started with the pair on the edge of Lake Cochituate, exploring the ruined houses along the shore (which had a nice little walking path once, shame) and trying to avoid the notice of a group of Rust Devils up on a nearby hill, by the elevated highway. Having just cleared the raiders out of one house, Victor moved onto the next one – unfortunately, that one was nothing more than a bunch of rubble with one coffee pot in it. The next location in the line looked more interesting, though – a ramshackle post-War camp with old Christmas lights strung up around it –
And a glowing mirelurk chilling out over a dead brahmin in it. Unable to get a proper bead on it with the Two-Shot combat rifle, I had Victor swap over to his Mighty Sniper and try to snipe it down – the first two VATS shots were misses, annoyingly, but he got it on the third hit! I had him start moving forward to claim the camp, scanning for enemies all the while –
B) Aaand discovered there was a Legendary Mirelurk Killclaw hiding in the mud nearby. *grimace* Well. Couldn’t have THAT fucker trying to make Victor’s life harder, could we? I thus had Victor pull out the old frag grenades and toss one in its general direction – the explosion didn’t do any damage, I don’t think, but it DID get the mirelurk up and interested in Victor and Ada – and attracted the attention of a Mirelurk Razorclaw to the side I hadn’t seen before, who now also wanted in on the action. *sigh* Fortunately, both of them were only too happy to focus their efforts on Ada, who whacked them with laser fire while Victor took potshots with his Mighty Sniper (which was having a LOT of trouble hitting in VATS today, let me tell you). They eventually took both out –
C) But, unfortunately, all this fighting (and the fact that my Mighty Sniper is VERY LOUD due to the fact that I’m extremely reluctant to put a silencer on it because that’ll kill the range) got the attention of the nearby Rust Devils, and they came charging down with their own Legendary member to start trying to wreck Victor and Ada’s shit. Fortunately, the pair put paid to them without that much trouble (though, again, Victor was having real trouble with his VATS shots thanks to bad angles), and soon enough all nearby enemies were dead and Victor could mop up the spoils. Including the two bits of Legendary gear – a Poisoner’s Leather Chest Piece on the Rust Devil, and a Rad-Powered Combat Armor Chest Piece on the mirelurk. *frowns* The latter is better than the former (gives you more Strength the more rads you have), but neither are something I’m interested in for Victor – so another couple of items for the sell pile!
D) Anyway – with that all done (and all the good ammo and caps and such hoovered up from the bodies), Victor and Ada entered the little camp to explore it. They found a bunch of dead settlers (and their equally-dead brahmin – free meat I guess) around the spit in the central courtyard; some nice lakefront views in the shacks, including a little pier that ran down to the water with a bathtub at the end of it (I guess this is where the settlers bathed – nice if you can get it); a makeshift upper level with a room with ALL the beer bottles on one side, and a room with a steamer trunk (with some good ammo anyway) and a robot model kit on the other (Victor built the kit because why not, though I wasn’t able to see if it was a Mr. Handy or a Mr. Gutsy model – it didn’t say when Victor completed it and picked it up). Oh, and a couple more mirelurks hanging around the other side of the camp, one out in the open, the other hidden in the dirt (Victor AGAIN struggling to properly VATS the one wandering around through a window in the camp, though he very successfully grenaded-and-sniped the one that was hiding). I guess we know very well now how these poor settlers died! *shakehead* Anyway, Victor gathered up all the goodies (with Ada encouraging him to grab all the mirelurk meat because it was super nutritious despite the slimy texture – I’m sure Victor wanted to respond “do you know how much of that shit was carrying around before?!”), then hit the spit in the middle of the camp to do some cooking as it started pouring down –
And cooked his way to Level 45! :D Once I was done having him make ambrosia salads and stingwing-wrapped melon, I had him hit up the Perk Chart – and after strongly considering the next ranks of “Strong Back” (so much carry capacity) and “Gunslinger” (Deliverer would be even more awesome), I ended up going with “Awareness” Rank 2, just because it adds 5% hit chance AND 5% damage dealt to VATS targets, and I use VATS a LOT. (Even when it’s failing me, as you can see above.) Might as well make it even better, right?
E) With level-up in hand (and game saved), I decided it was time for Victor and Ada to head out – however, as I was rather sick of going the same way through Fort Hagen all of the time, I instead decided to have them head up toward the Red Rocket and the robot bench there in a straighter line, exploring the nearby countryside a bit. After all, there was a location to be discovered underneath the big broken-down “cloverleaf” of elevated highways just next to them! So I had the pair head for it –
Only to have to pause when I spotted something roaming around nearby. Turns out it was a sentry bot (I THOUGHT I saw a red glow up on the hill earlier), but fortunately it was NOT facing Victor or Ada. Victor promptly put his new increased VATS hit chance and damage dealing to work and sniped it in three shots from the Mighty Sniper before it could do a damn thing. :D I then had him do another VATS sweep of the surrounding area –
F) And discovered that the area that they were trying to investigate was in fact a Gunner camp, with one guard facing their way. Uh-oh. Fortunately, the guard hadn’t noticed them, so after looting the sentry bot’s burning shell (and drinking a Nuka-Cola, because Victor was finally tired again at 8:43 in the morning game-time), I had Victor sneak up to the guard, kill him with a manually-aimed headshot, then back off and dance around in the underbrush a bit until the guards up top on the highway itself (the Mass Pike Interchange, the game told me) lost interest. He and Ada then proceeded into the lower portion of the camp –
Aaand got spotted by a spotlight, leading all the guards on the bottom level to spot them despite my best attempts to get Victor and Ada away from it. *sigh* Fortunately none of the guards were particularly tough, and Victor and Ada took them out with minimal issues (one particular guard on the farthest guard post in fact got flung away in a most amusing manner when Victor shot him in the knee XD). And while all the Gunners up top were aware of what was going on below, it appeared that none of them could actually get a bead on Victor and Ada – especially when Victor ducked into the little guard shack near the elevator to keep out of sight. :p Victor was thus free to raid the shack (and do a little inventory management with Ada), take out the spotlight that gave them so much trouble, then raid all the bodies for any useful ammo and junk. And their laser rifles and pistols, as I’m hoping to break those down later for fiber optics and the like so Victor can improve his Tesla rifle into a proper shotgun and have some fun with it. XD I then figured “might as well clear out the upper level while I’m here” and had him call down the elevator (having a snack of Nuka-Cram while he waited because he’d gotten tired and hungry at the same time – turns out that helps the latter, but not the former), hop on, and head up to the interchange –
Only to be immediately blasted by the Assaultron waiting up there. Whoops.
G) “Okay – let’s NOT go up on the highway this time,” I decided upon reloading, and instead turned my pair back toward the Red Rocket so we can finish Automatron sometime this century. :p Once Victor was properly fed (he got some Rad-Away and a pear jubilee as his lunch this time – and then had to follow it up with a mushroom medley when it transpired that the fancy modded desserts I got from the Apple Tree Bakery mod don’t actually count as “food” to the game; maybe they’re too full of sugar and fat :p), he and Ada headed north, over hill and dale, slaughtering some squirrels that tried to give them grief with Victor’s Two-Shot (two regular ones and a glowing one, with the later being a pretty nasty little fucker) before ending up on a wrecked street right near Forest Marsh Grove. As Victor was still feeling tired, I figured “okay, this seems a safe enough place to stop – at the very least, the only enemies about seem to be the squirrels, and most of them don’t seem interested in attacking” and had him set up his tent between two ruined buildings before heading in for a five-hour midday nap to get his energy back and help reset his sleep schedule a bit. He awoke around 4:30 PM, packed everything up again, then headed up the road back toward the elevated highway, as following that would take him and Ada in roughly the right direction they needed to go for a while. They followed that for a couple of minutes, around the side of Forest Grove –
And then I ended the playsession with them having climbed up a busted on-ramp near the marsh, looking out over the landscape before them as gunfire rang out somewhere nearby. XD Dunno who was fighting who, but I suspect I’ll probably find out next time! (And there’s a trailer icon nearby I’m interested in checking out as well…gotta discover all the locations!)
Writing: Have to update the old FO4 Playthrough Progression every time I play Fallout 4 – and as you might imagine, this update was pretty much identical to what I wrote above, with just a few small tweaks –
A) I had Alice take out the Rust Devil I saw over near the road the last time I played in the fanfic universe, so I edited that slightly to have her come back saying that was an “advance scout” for the bigger group of them I discovered later on the hill. And when Victor and Ada inevitably got their attention fighting the mirelurks with Victor’s very loud Mighty Sniper, Alice helped take them down by draining one dry as a snack. Because, as a reminder, the fanfic verse is “Fallout of Darkness” and Alice is her Malkavian self here. :p
B) While investigating the camp, Victor took the robot model kit as something to do later, instead of building it right that second like the game forces you to do; he also declined to gather all of the mirelurk meat when Ada suggested it because, well, he has bad memories of lugging around TONS of the stuff from earlier fights (seriously, Victor has killed SO MANY MIRELURKS). XD
C) The trio actually tried to SNEAK through the Gunner camp first (with Alice of course using her favorite discipline to go completely invisible), instead of having Victor just murder the first guard – but Victor got caught by the spotlight, and so each of them had to murder a guard instead (Victor headshotting his guy; Ada lasering hers; and Alice sending hers flying with a “this attack broke Obfuscate so it hits extra hard” swipe of her sword). Because, again, killing potential hostiles is okay in a video game, but I prefer that the fanfic versions of the characters act in self defense more often than not!
D) Victor naturally never took the elevator up to the Gunner camp on the actual elevated highway to get temporarily murdered – Alice warned him off it by saying Wonderland was warning her about a “laser-eyed lady” (the Assaultron) up there. He also waited to eat his mushroom medley and pear jubilee (in that order, this time) until they made it to that safe spot near Forest Grove, before taking his five-hour nap, because that felt more logical to me than him scarfing it down just before they left the raided lower camp.
But yeah, other than that (and skipping Victor getting the Legendary gear, since it wasn’t very good), pretty much freaking identical to the actual play session. Meaning Victor is currently getting the lay of the land atop a broken on-ramp onto an elevated highway. We’ll see where he and his companions end up next time, and if it’s anywhere different than the game puts Victor and Ada! (Spoilers: probably not, at least not at this point in time.)
YouTube: No Josh Way tonight, and the GrayStillPlays upload was another compilation (just over two hours of Happy Wheels! :D), so I spent my evening clearing out the OXBoxtra list videos from my Watch Later (which took longer than necessary because of all the assholes setting off extremely loud fireworks down the street) –
A) “7 Suspiciously Easy Ways You Got Good Karma” – Jane and Ellen talking about weirdly-easy ways to balance the evil shit you do in video games! From politely greeting people while on the road in Red Dead Redemption II, to donating your personal funds to your own royal treasury once you become ruler in Fable 3, to just straight up dancing in the club (for a minute in real time) in Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines, sometimes karma is almost disturbingly easy to balance in games. Who knew that waggling your arms around in the world’s goofiest dancing animation could make up for draining people dry in a back alley? :p In the real world, of course, you must play the Ukulele of Penance to make up for your evil deeds – or, at least, that’s what you do if you’re Ellen and the video needs an outro. XD
B) “7 Worst Guns You Don't Want in Your Armory” – Andy, Jane, and Mike going through some truly awful guns in games (including two entries from Borderlands 3 because it has so many guns those guns have more chances to be absolutely awful). From the Zippy 3000 from Cruelty Squad (a gun you can only get from a slot machine – and then, when you get it, only has a one-in-three chance of firing CORRECTLY), to the Kolibri from Battlefield 1 (the world’s tiniest gun which you fire very inaccurately from between your thumb and forefinger), to the Slaught-O-Matic from Cyberpunk 2077 (a vending machine gun made of cheap plastic with terrible stats and only 36 shots in it before your character automatically tosses it), these guns are just NOT WORTH IT. Please excuse me while I go hug Victor’s Two-Shot Combat Rifle, Mighty Sniper Rifle, and Deliverer in Fallout 4 for being amazing.
C) “7 Great Games You’ll Never Get to Play” – Mike, Jane, and Andy talking about those awesome-sounding games that, thanks to the evils of capitalism, we will never get to play. Fancy trying out Life By You, the simulation game that was going to go up against The Sims franchise? Too bad, it was canceled last month by Paradox Interactive for not being good enough (for shareholders). Want to play Spider-Man: The Great Web, a cooperative multiplayer featuring five versions of Spidey from across the Spider-Verse (including Spider-Gwen, Scarlet Spider, and Spider-Man 2099)? Too bad, it was canceled before we ever heard of it, and we only know it once had a chance to exist because ransomware hackers found it stealing employee data (and also because the company that was going to make it apparently hates money – seriously, don’t people LOVE those movies?). Looking forward to either Hi-Fi Rush 2 or The Evil Within 3? Too bad, the company that made both, Tango, got closed by Microsoft for nebulous “cost-cutting reasons” (because nothing matters more than that in game development). It’s enough to make you want to punch a game company CEO. Repeatedly. Holding a copy of Duke Nukem Forever.
Workout: Another night on the bike, another night with “I fixed my mistake in the Every Occult Challenge! - Part 7” by James Turner! Having given Lou his own personal doghouse/secret sewer tunnels home on the lot in yesterday’s chunklet, James proceeded to get through the following in today’s chunklet –
A) Setting up the “Semajers” club so most of the occults are members (Servo is currently being left out, sadly, as their slot isn’t unlocked yet) and making it so they’d all do their occult things for points (demonstrated by a brief gathering at the library, where Bailey was casting loads of spells and Vlad was pestering people for plasma). I suspect if we have any other gatherings before the end of the series, things will be chaotic. XD
B) Managing to FINALLY get a forbidden fruit from the special tree portal! Mostly by sending Bailey in to investigate instead of Semaj the next time he got the portal open (turns out that you can get it open up multiple times per day by traveling away from your lot and back), and then yeeting the fruit into Semaj’s inventory so he could eat it as soon as possible. So now Semaj is a PlantSim for the next few days in-game, complete with leafy hair and a green beard. James was very pleased. XD
C) Sending Semaj to do his scientist thing so he could unlock the “ghost” Sim (the last one he needs to get in his family) by killing coworker Cletus via indoor fireworks – which proved much harder than anticipated, as Semaj couldn’t effectively trap him at first, and then when he DID trap him (by locking an upstairs office for all Sims except the Semajers), he nearly killed off most of his household because they kept rushing in there to panic over the fire and being set alight. XD And then when he managed to lock them out of there by putting Cletus in his “Fishing For A Cause” club and locking the door for THOSE members only, Cletus just sat in a chair and refused to properly burn – meaning Semaj both had to avoid getting set alight himself AND stop the fire from getting too close to the poor broken Servo in the other room. XD James thought for a bit that maybe Cletus simply couldn’t die while he was at work, but EVENTUALLY he managed to set him alight with a firework, stayed late at the lab until the dude finally perished, then collected his tombstone and added it to Vlad’s little graveyard. :D Now, it’s currently looking unlikely that Cletus will actually join the family as a ghost (James has already stated he plans to bring Cletus back once Bailey actually learns the right Untamed spells, and his goal is to track down that one Night Wraith who won the lottery (whose last name is, hilariously, Eastwood – James deleted all of the other Night Wraiths in the world to make it easier to find them) and get THEM to move in instead), but we’ll see what happens in the final episode!
D) Making all of the family best buddies through the use of the Forced Friendship potion, as he did want them all to like each other! Vlad is already screwing himself over in that regard by doing things like chomping on Bailey without her permission and hissing wildly in front of everyone, but hey, James tried. XD
E) Replacing the Moonwood Mill library with a spa built on the same lot (using his build as a base) so he could finally do the whole “give a spa massage” mini-task he spun up LAST episode when he unlocked an occult (the one he spun up after killing Cletus was “find treasure,” which – I imagine just digging up something fun in Moonwood Mill should count, right?). Though he can’t do that without Level 2 Wellness skill, so when I left it off, he was having as many members of the family take a yoga class as possible (Bailey was in the onsen practicing her Untamed magic, and Lou and Nalani were just hanging around watching the others practice). XD We’ll see how that goes, and how this whole thing wraps up, tomorrow!
*nods* Not too shabby, I think -- at the very least, I'm happy with what I accomplished. :) And now it is time to wrap up so I have a better chance at getting to bed earlier. :p Tomorrow is Dad's birthday, but I'm not sure if he actually wants to go anywhere or do anything, given it's still a holiday weekend, so -- plans include working on more tumblr drafts on Victor Luvs Alice; playing Sims 4 and finishing up the upgrades to the Valicer farmhouse and barn basement; working on "Start At The Beginning...Sort Of;" getting a couple of Sims-related videos out of my Watch Later along with keeping up with my YouTube Subs; and getting in a workout. *nods* Again, I feel like these are all achievable things! We will see on the morrow, though -- night all!
