Hot But Pretty Productive Sunday
May. 17th, 2026 11:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crossover_chickYeah, the temperature soared into "middle of summer" temps today -- our little temperature reader thing claimed it was in the 90s at one point, and I totally believed it! Fortunately, it was a pretty dry heat, which made it much more bearable. It's always the humidity that REALLY gets you, people! *nods* However, despite nearly melting, I ended up having quite a solid day on the old computer...
Tumblr: Ended up having a pretty damn productive day on the old tumbls, getting stuff done on both of my blogs –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I spent the time before lunch going through my tracked tags (and, in one case, a variant of said tracked tag in a desperate attempt to find something I wanted to reblog – thank you, “#the corpse bride”) and putting a bunch of posts into my drafts for later queuing! Specifically:
A) Two posts by vesperthebagel featuring “blinkie” banners –
I. One featuring banners for a bunch of Alton Towers rides, including The Smiler, Oblivion, Th13teen, Rita, Spinball Whizzer, Toxicator, Wicker Man, Galactica, and Nemesis Reborn (all very nicely done, though hilariously The Smiler’s blinking border looks almost static compared to the others because it has the least contrast)
II. And one featuring a banner for Taskmaster (apparently a redo of an older, less high-resolution one – as a Taskmaster fan I had to grab that one as well)
B) A post by sleepygummy featuring four variants on a The Smiler moodboard they made with various filters (I liked the one on the bottom left the most, as the colors popped the best and you could easily see what all of the various images were)
C) A post by twisted-cat2476 featuring her take on a Smiler OC – a Black man with a pleasantly-creepy smiling white mask, spiral eyes (of course), black hair with lots of yellow streaks, a pale yellow shirt and black-white-and-yellow-striped tie under a black-and-white jacket, and cool black gloves with yellow glowing tubes leading down to metal fingertips (it was a really nicely done bit of art, and I love those gloves)
D) A post by mewpidtown featuring HIS take on a Smiler OC – a humanoid black-skinned creature with long black hair, the Smiler logo for a face, golden goggles, a black tailed waistcoat with yellow detailing, a pair of black bellbottom pants with yellow and white slash designs on the bells, and a walking cane with a syringe on the end (some more nicely-done art – I really loved the outfit and the cane)
E) A post by wisteriasorrows featuring some fanart of A:MR Alice floating in a pool full of lily pads in her Siren dress from the Deluded Depths level (the whole picture just had a gorgeously magical feel to it – and I loved that wisteria put skulls in the lily pad flowers XD)
F) A post by villainii featuring a gifset of Billingsgate from A:MR, with pictures of the rain pouring down on the docks and ships on the river Thames tinted in purple and pictures of the entrance to the Mangled Mermaid tinted in green (just really nicely done, and I liked how the purple pictures made the rain seem even more gloomy while the green ones made the Mermaid pop)
G) A post by lornmaunder featuring some fanart of the Mad Hatter from AMA and A:MR – specifically his head with his iconic tall checkerboard hat (another one that was just really nicely done – and I appreciated that lorn made sure to put the various symbols on Hatter’s hat, as those often get left off)
H) A post by bunnymartyr featuring some fanart of Alice from AMA and A:MR looking back at the viewer over her shoulder with an intense gaze (it just appealed to me)
I) A post by movieposters1 featuring the poster for Corpse Bride (which I swear was tinted a darker blue than it usually is...but I rather liked it, so into the drafts it went)
J) A post by fan-collector-geek featuring a set of photos of some of the CB puppets on display in the Land of the Living church interior set at San Diego Comic Con 2005, with Barkis fighting Victor on the steps while various Land of the Dead characters and Victoria watch (this is the one I found in “#the corpse bride” and I really liked the diorama...and the slightly-goofy expression on Emily’s face in it, suggesting she was more consternated that this was interrupting her wedding than anything XD)
K) And a post by rickmakessomeart featuring some art of a pair of stern-looking Dimmer Sisters from Blades In The Dark, wearing dark purple late Victorian bustle dresses and hats with skulls upon them, with spooky spirits in the background (it was just a very solid bit of art for one of my favorite TTRPGs)
Whew! Yeah, got a lot of stuff to fill out my drafts on that tag trawl. Though, again, rather lacking in Corpse Bride stuff...at least I found a few posts I wanted to throw into future queues! Hopefully the next look through that tag will be more fruitful.
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I chucked another anon ask into my queue this eve (right before posting this entry, in fact), featuring Light Yagami from Death Note trying to off Bugs Bunny with the Note...only for Bugs to confuse him by constantly pretending he was spelling Bugs’s name wrong, then startle him into tossing the notebook and pen so Bugs could grab them and draw an unflattering picture of Light in the Note’s pages. XD I turned the scene in the ask into something Inevitable High School!Smiler was watching on their phone, and had them respond to it by laughing and noting that Bugs was not going to give Light the easy way out by putting his name in the Note – no, he was just going to make Light WISH he was dead –
Then had Alice, also watching the fan animation, wonder if Bugs had actually condemned Light to death, because, well, he’d drawn the guy’s image in the Death Note. Smiler said that they were pretty sure you had to write the person’s name and a cause of death in there – but then admitted that this cartoon could go in any direction, and that they should continue watching to find out. XD Fun little ask – I like goofy stuff like this. Much nicer to answer than some of the heavier stuff the anons throw at me sometimes!
Fallout: New Vegas: I really wanted to play F:NV this weekend, so – despite being a touch worried about how long this subsequent write-up would take – I went ahead and fired up the game this afternoon after lunch! Ended up playing for just under an hour, with Courier Victor learning more about the Vikki & Vance Casino and its namesake crime duo; discovering the sheriff’s office outside – and the corpses within; doing a bit of inventory management and discovering the corpse of a fellow courier; and sneaking into the Bison Steve and doing a bit of computer hacking! And if you would like a more detailed version with screenshots:
A) I picked up where I left off last time, with Victor hanging out in the Vikki & Vance Casino with the rest of Primm’s surviving residents, having just learned that his best bet to figure out where the hell the people who shot him went would be to rescue the town’s deputy, Beagle, from the Bison Steve Hotel across the way. Before he got going on that, though, he decided to take a moment to talk to the protectron with a cowboy hat that he’d seen wandering around the casino, because – well, why wouldn’t you? XD Besides, I think Victor had been wondering who that particular cowboy robot was from the moment he learned that it wasn’t the one who hired him (as a refresher, that was Victor the Securitron, aka Victortron). The Protectron welcomed him with a warm “Howdy pardner! Welcome to the Vikki and Vance Casino and Museum,” and when asked who he was, replied, “Primm Slim at your service! Authentic cowpoke and official spokesbot of the Vikki and Vance Casino and Museum! Yeehaw!” Victor, amused and intrigued, asked who Vikki and Vance even were – a surprised Primm Slim inquired as to if he’d been living under a rock, and informed him that they were “this nation's fourth or maybe fifth most infamous celebrity outlaw couple ever, that's who they was!” He offered to tell Victor their story if the courier had a minute – Victor most certainly did, and an excited Primm Slim told him the whole tale – starting with how they were not Bonnie and Clyde copycats, thank you very much: “Fact is, they begun their crime spree two days before Bonnie and Clyde robbed their first bank – so who was copying who?” He then went on to admit that “Vikki and Vance didn't exactly cut a wide swath of murder and bank robbery across the central U.S., like Bonnie and Clyde did. It was more like a narrow swath of shoplifting, check-cashing fraud, and gas pump driveoffs – but crime is crime! They drove reckless, too,” before launching into the thrilling end of their spree: “Having lived by the gun – well, Vance owned one, anyway – it was only fitting that the duo of desperados would die by the gun. Perhaps it was fate itself that accidentally drove them into a crossfire between police and a gang of bank robbers in Plano, Texas. Or maybe they just didn't notice until it was too late. It's been said that Vikki would have tried to cash a bad check in that bank, had she lived. We'll never know for sure. All we know is that the crossfire tore the car and both occupants to pieces, and the police issued an official apology.” He finished up by telling Victor that he could see their death car nearby, along with Vance’s machine gun in the case next to it, and giving him a brochure talking about how the gun was one of the highlights of the museum. XD A most engaging yarn! You gotta love Fallout’s sense of humor.
B) Victor, quite thoroughly amused now, continued his conversation with Primm Slim by asking what he had to say about Primm itself. Primm Slim cheerfully informed him that “Primm is a thriving resort community located in Clark County, Nevada, right along Interstate 15. Whether you can't wait 'til Vegas to try your luck, or want to hit one last jackpot before you leave Nevada, Primm's your place!” before adding cheekily that “The town's Primm-eer attraction is the world-famous Vikki and Vance Casino and Museum, so you came to the right place, pardner!” XD Victor, charmed by the pun, then asked about the Bison Steve Hotel across the way –
Which caused Primm Slim to suddenly become a lot less jovial, saying quite seriously, “The Bison Steve is one of Primm's less-impressive casino hotels. I'd steer clear of that place, pardner, if I were you. Rumor is the dealers over there cheat, and that rickety roller-coaster's liable to fall down any day 'cause it wasn't built to code.” Well, we know now Primm Slim was not built to advertise the whole town, that’s for damn sure. XD Victor quietly noted to himself he kind of hoped the coaster fell to take care of that convict he saw climbing around on it, then decided that was enough tourist info from Primm Slim and said his goodbyes, getting a “Happy trails” in return. However, having heard the whole Vikki & Vance story now, he couldn’t resist taking another look at the display in the middle of the room before he set out. The death car was as impressive as Primm Slim had hinted it would be, riddled with bullet holes from the duo’s unfortunate demise:
But the rest of the display was rather lacking – as in, it was lacking the items that it was supposed to have. The mannequins on either side that were supposed to be dressed in replicas of the outfits found in the trunk of the car – traditional gangster-esque clothes for Vance, and the most up-to-date fashions for Vikki (the explanatory plaque even suggested that the duo turned to crime because of her love of expensive clothes) – had been stripped naked, and Vance’s famous machine gun (which the plaque declared to be in mint condition, as Vance had never fired it – he’d just kept it in a paper-wrapped box in the trunk of the car, under some suitcases; “experts speculate that Vance might have killed as many as fifty people had he ever fired the gun – so long as his aim was exact and he was starting off with a full clip – or even more if he had additional ammo clips and remembered to reload!”) was missing from its case, which looked like it had been smashed open. Victor, certain this wasn’t right, went back to Primm Slim and asked “Did you know that Vance's gun is missing?” –
Only to get “Just mosey on over to the display case and you'll see it plain as day. Quite a piece, that gun. Mint condition. Never fired,” in return. Baffled, Victor insisted the display case was empty and that the gun was nowhere to be found – Primm Slim, equally baffled, inquired “Have you gone loco, pardner? I can see the gun with my own three photo sensors from where I'm standing right now” –
And started making some weird whirring noises. Which the narration hinted sounded kind of like the protectron was trying to read a corrupted file, but that only someone with high science could be sure. And, sadly, Victor’s Science skill wasn’t quite up to snuff – in order to pass the check to make Primm Slim realize he’s been hacked, you need 50 Science, and he currently only has 40. Dang. We’ll have to come back and resolve this later!
C) Deciding that he wasn’t going to argue with Primm Slim about whether or not Vance’s gun was there just now, Victor instead said his goodbyes to the robot and – after checking the time on his Pip-Boy (3 AM on 10/27/2281) and his vital stats (FOD and SLP meters middling, H20 meter looking not-great) – headed back outside to see if there were any more convicts lurking about outside and if he could find anything useful to scavenge on the street. Fortunately, he did not see any criminals roaming around as he ventured out into the dark –
And even better, when he checked the garbage can right by the entrance to the casino, he found a still-full Sunset Sarsaparilla! (Along with a clipboard, but he wasn’t interested in THAT.) He promptly drank it down to relieve some of his thirst, then continued left along the side of the casino, checking the other garbage can and the dumpster around the side along the way. The second garbage can had a carton of cigarettes and a cup, which was not useful; the dumpster, however, had a bobby pin, which was. And while Victor was retrieving that bobby pin, he noticed right across the road a little shack with a couple of lights on in front of it. He promptly decided to investigate, 9mm at the ready just in case he ran into trouble –
And found himself inside the Primm Sheriff’s Office! The main room consisted of two desks on either side of the room, facing each other – the one on the left holding a terminal, the one on the right sporting a camera. Along the right side of the wall was a reloading bench and a few filing cabinets, while in the back was a long counter with a few odds and ends, including a hammer and a fan, some shelves with various boxes, and a radio. There was also a doorway at the back, to the left, leading into the sheriff’s personal quarters –
Where Victor found Sheriff and Mrs. McBain. Dead in their bed:
And you should be very grateful that I took the photo from THIS angle, because – as I found out shortly thereafter while exploring the place – their cause of death was “heads blown clean off.” *grimacing* Anyway, Victor was appropriately stunned by this sight –
And, moments later, sick with Minor Dehydration on top of it, because his H20 meter had finally ticked over 400. Damn. Fortunately, I discovered immediately thereafter that the McBains had kindly installed a sink in their room (to go with the oven and refrigerator tucked in the corner), and while the water was unfortunately slightly irradiated, it was better than nothing. One slurp, and Victor was cured of his dehydration! And, given that even Minor Dehydration knocks -1 off your Endurance stat, and therefore a few ticks off your HP bar, that was very important!
D) Having kept himself from drying out in the desert heat, Victor investigated the room to see if there was anything worth taking (because, well, while he might feel a little bad about it, the McBains were dead, and he did plan to avenge them by taking out as many convicts as he could rescuing Beagle). There was no food in the oven or the fridge, and the tipped bookcase by the bed only held burnt books instead of any skill-boosting tomes –
But, at the foot of the bed, Victor found a few outfits – the sheriff’s duster and hat, and a brahmin-skin outfit that presumably belonged to Mrs. McBain. Curious, Victor picked up the duster and checked its stats in his Pip-Boy –
And discovered the thing gave him 6 DT (one more than the Merc Veteran outfit was giving him), +1 Charisma, and +5 to his guns skill. The hat, meanwhile, was a pretty standard +1 Perception hat. Victor thus happily stripped off the outfit he’d yoinked from one of the convicts he killed earlier and put on the sheriff’s clothes instead. Given he’s planning on going out and kicking some criminal butt, it felt appropriate! (And also I wanted him out of that stupid-looking hockey mask already.) He also found a cowboy repeater rifle under the bed, but that thing was kind of heavy, and I suspected Victor didn’t have the Strength to wield it properly (a suspicion vindicated by the Wiki, which tells me you need a minimum of Strength 4 for that gun – the F:NV world is not built for weedy people like Victor!), so under the bed it stayed. Maybe we’ll collect it later to sell to Nash once the law and order crisis is over, we’ll see. *shrug* Here’s Victor sporting his new fit back in the main office:
...okay, yes, it’s a little dark in there – you’ll see the outfit in the daylight in just a moment. XD
E) Having gotten himself a proper law enforcement outfit, confirmed he couldn’t really do anything with the reloader bench, and collected the caps in the two desks in the main office (7 caps from the desk in front of the reloader bench, and 4 from the terminal desk), Victor crept back out onto the now-daylight-lit streets, sneaking back the way he’d come while keeping an eye out for trouble. My eye, meanwhile, fell on the posters outside the Vikki & Vance, and I had Victor stop for a moment so I could take a picture:
NOW you can see his duster properly! And yes, those are three different magicians being advertised there – Ali-Din, Wilfred the Wizard, and Maxis, America’s Master Magicianand Life Simulation Games Producer. Once I’d gotten my shot, Victor kept going, coming across another dead Primm resident on the road between the V&V and Bison Steve. A look at her inventory proved she didn’t actually have anything Victor wanted – just a simple shotgun and the ammo for it –
But it did make me think about the fact that Victor was currently at the limit of his carry capacity, meaning if he did find something he wanted to pick up, he wouldn’t be able to. So, after a scroll through all the shit he was carrying on his Pip-Boy (which led to me noting he did have a couple of Programmer’s Digests on him, which would boost his Science skill by +10 – good to know for talking to Primm Slim again later), I had him mosey his way across to the ruined building right next to the Mojave Express and drop the hockey mask, the Merc Veteran outfit, the nearly-busted leather armor, and the Powder Ganger guard armor inside what remained of the front room to free up some space. Clothes be HEAVY in this game, y’all. O.o Again, we’ll collect them later to sell to Nash once his store opens up (well, probably not the Powder Ganger armor, we might need that for disguise purposes, but the other stuff). Thus down to a healthy 104 lbs of shit carried, crept back out and headed for the Bison Steve –
Only to stop in surprise as he encountered a corpse in front of the Mojave Express office – one he hadn’t noticed last night thanks to it being dark as balls:
This proved to be the unfortunate remains of one Daniel Wyand, a fellow Mojave Express courier who’d apparently been on his way to speak with Nash himself about his latest delivery before falling victim to the convicts roaming the town. Searching the body, Victor found a delivery order –
And discovered that Danny had been carrying one of the other packages Victortron had ordered delivered to the New Vegas north gate in Freeside! His had contained a pair of fuzzy dice, presumably the kind you hang from car rear view mirrors. Though, despite Nash insisting that all the other packages had made it to their destination, and the delivery order stating that the courier was to take the payment for the package back to Johnson Nash, Danny wasn’t actually carrying any caps on him. Wonder if he unwisely chose to gamble it away in Vegas… Guess we’ll never know! (Also, the wiki indicates that the Courier actually knew Danny (as per the Fallout: New Vegas Official Game Guide), so I might be adding that they were friendly acquaintances to my master doc…)
F) Having added another name to the list of people he needed to avenge, Victor decided it was about time he entered the Bison Steve and saw what was what. He thus snuck over there and – after a quick check of the garbage cans outside (nothing good, just an earnings clipboard and more cigs) – slipped in the front doors. He immediately found himself staring at an escaped convict in a hockey mask in the doorway on the other side of the lobby –
But, fortunately, it was dark in the hotel, and Victor is the sneaky sort, so the escaped convict didn’t see him, and wandered back off into the hotel proper. Victor promptly crept right and ducked behind the long counter of the check-in desk for a little extra cover. There, he found a very firmly locked door beyond his ability to pick (I gotta put some points into the lockpick skill next time he levels up) –
And a terminal that was very much within his ability to hack! :D And thus I got to do my first-ever hacking minigame in F:NV! After reading through the tutorial pop-up, I waited for the computer to complete its boot-up sequence (which, while slowing things down, WAS a nice little touch), picked my first attempt at the password – STATING – and then began looking through the garbage code all around it for those nice little bracketed bits that, when selected, removed duds and restored tries.
...and didn’t find any. O.O Uh-oh – I’d grown kind of used to using those to beat every hacking minigame in Fallout 4 without needing to actually guess the password! However, I wasn’t about to back out just because I didn’t have any nice cheaty bits of code, so instead I set about trying to figure out the password legit. The game informed me that STATING had exactly one letter correct out of seven – and I knew from the tutorial pop-up that that letter was in the correct position. I thus was able to eliminate any word that shared more than one letter in common with STATING, as that would also be incorrect. After going through my options, I decided to try REQUIRE, as that word had an I in the same position as STATING while sharing no other letters –
And got told that that one had two letters correct out of seven. Progress! I looked through the words again and eliminated anything that had more than two letters in the same position in common with REQUIRE, then – left with only a couple of words that could fit the requirements – picked VEGGIES for my next guess –
And got it! :D Which, honestly, was quite satisfying. Maybe I should try to actually guess the password more often in the hacking minigame. (Though I will still be using any “dud removal” or “tries reset” code I find, because you do only get four tries before being locked out. And unlike in FO4, once you are locked out, you HAVE to find the password – no more further attempts!)
G) So – what was on the terminal that Victor had just hacked? Well, it wasn’t anything too exciting – just a single “Disengage lock” option. Selecting it made the door next to him click, and when he got out of the terminal, he discovered that it was now open. He thus pulled it open –
And accidentally trapped himself against the front counter because I’d put him a LIIIITTLE too close to the door. XD He thus closed the door and repositioned himself, then opened it again to find –
What looked like the employee break room! Complete with a falling-apart skeleton of a former employee on the floor. :( You really think somebody would have started burying some of these unfortunate victims of the War at some point… Anyway, a quick look around the room revealed the following:
I. A shelf next to the door full of rusted tin cans, empty soda bottles scattered around its feet – there was also an iconic Vault-Tec lunchbox sitting there, though I didn’t pick it up as I wasn’t sure what its deal was
II. A table in the middle of the room with an ashtray, some cups, the unfortunate pre-War employee’s arm, and a key to the Maintenance Area of the hotel – also left that there as I want to see how hard the lock is to pick before I grab the key (Victor needs XP after all)
III. Some lockers on the right side wall, most of which were empty – however, the one closest to the fridge contained four bottle caps, a spare 9mm pistol, three syringes of Med-X, and a bottle of Rad-X on the top shelf, all of which Victor happily collected (dunno if he’ll USE the Med-X at any point or just sell it, but still)
IV. A fridge next to the lockers containing an Atomic Cocktail, two barrel cactus fruits, and a bowl of squirrel stew, which Victor also happily collected (food, glorious food – and the Atomic Cocktail is a VERY useful drink, as Jon’s F:NV YOLO Remastered run proved)
V. An average-locked safe on the back wall, by the fridge, which a quick check proved Victor was not getting into anytime soon because it required a Lockpick skill of 50 and he had a mere 24 (ah well)
VI. And another set of shelves at the back by the safe, which had a package of mentats and a first-aid box containing some dirty water and two empty syringes – Victor collected the lot and drank the dirty water to keep himself hydrated, as the H20 meter was getting dangerously high again
Not a bad haul, overall! Though I do wish I could get into the safe...definitely have to invest some points into the Lockpick skill when Victor hits Level 3!
And so my playsession ended with Victor hanging out in the break room, getting ready to push deeper into the Bison Steve and find that missing deputy. Next time, we’ll see how far he gets and if he can successfully rescue Beagle! Should be fun. :D
Workout/YouTube: Well, I did have to watch something else first – the music video for OK Go’s “The Writing’s On The Wall” (a sad song about having a final good night with a partner before breaking up, with the music video featuring loads of cool optical illusions) – but Jon did upload the first episode of his newest series in time for me to watch the first twenty-nine minutes with my workout and the final eighteen after supper. And what was said first episode of said new series, you may ask?
“Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer!” AKA the return of none other than Useless Steve! :D Useless Steve, if you need a refresher, was the star of Jon’s “Fallout New Vegas: The Worst Courier” series (and its follow-up “Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues – The Level 1 Naked Useless Survival Run”) and was the most useless character in the Mojave Wasteland due to starting out with all of his SPECIAL stats at 1, all of his skills at 5, and with no helpful traits whatsoever. He ended up managing to become at least somewhat useful by the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, helping win it, and the game overall, for the NCR, then repeated the trick when Jon bumped him back down to his terrible starting stats before throwing him into Big MT with nothing but his underwear to his name – but it was always an uphill fight to figure out how to get him to do anything competently. But Jon loved the battle, and had decided it was finally time for Useless Steve to come back in a new adventure in the Capital Wasteland! And this version of Steve has it even harder than his Mojave counterpart thanks to Jon adding an additional rule to the challenge –
Namely, this Useless Steve can never level up. Thanks to the power of console commands, not only are Useless Steve’s stats stuck at 1, his level is as well. So now he has to complete the game relying solely on apparel, drugs, bobbleheads, and skill books (which add +1) to get him through all the challenges. :D How did things go for him in this opening episode? Well:
A) After his slightly-traumatic birth (Jon still thinks it’s amazing FO3 starts with you being born in FIRST PERSON), his childhood in Vault 101 went quite well – Jon glossed over most of his time in the vault before the big escape sequence, as basically nothing Steve did in any of the little tutorial/character creation vignettes would have any impact on the challenge, but he did make it clear that Useless Steve peaked as a one-year-old (as he HAD to give the guy proper SPECIAL stats when first selecting them from the baby book – he wasn’t allowed to bump them down to the canonical “1 in everything” until Steve’s 10th birthday party, when he received his Pip-Boy), and that Steve definitely skipped his GOAT, (using more console commands to remove the game’s attempt to force him to tag some skills), noting that was probably where the trouble started for Steve and warning any kids watching to stay in school. :p
B) The actual escape from the vault (after his father snuck off to finally start working on Project Purity again, and the Overseer decided to make that Steve’s fault) also went mostly well, probably because it’s designed for a level 1 character, even one as bad as Useless Steve (you could HEAR the relief in Jon’s voice when the one locked door and one locked terminal in his way both turned out to be Very Easy). Notable moments included –
I. Steve convincing Amata to keep the gun she offered him at the very beginning, because she might need it more – which paid off in Steve not having to rescue Amata from the guard interrogating her, as she was able to shoot them herself (proving that she was very much NOT useless)
II. Steve making nice with his former bully Butch Deloria and saving his mother from the radroaches that had invaded the vault – granted, his attempt to help DID see him hit Ellen Deloria by accident and cripple her head, but he managed to kill the roaches and keep her alive, thus scoring him Butch’s Tunnel Snakes jacket (which gives +5 to the Melee Weapons skill, meaning it was VERY useful to poor Steve at this point in time)
III. Steve managing to make his way into the medical lab and grab the Medicine Bobblehead (which is actually animated with a subtle bobbling motion! Cool!), which immediately boosted his Medicine skill by 10 – given how often he’s probably going to need to use healing items in this run, that is a GOOD thing
IV. Steve getting into a baton-vs-bat battle with Security Chief Hannon as he continued fleeing, which saw Steve come out on top mostly because a couple of radroaches scurried into the room and took out Hannon for him. XD Granted, Steve DID put in the work with his baseball bat, but the roaches most definitely got the kill
V. Steve looting a lot of Vault 101 Security Armor off dead guards...and Jon suddenly realizing that the armor was giving +5 to the Small Guns skill when he was pretty sure it WASN’T supposed to do that in FO3 – apparently some stuff from his “Tale Of Two Wastelands Except I’m Really Only Doing Fallout 3” series has not been properly removed! Jon complained about Useless Steve managing to break the universe and promised he’d scrub the game files before Episode 2. XD
VI. Steve managing to pass his first Lockpick skill check to get into the Overseer’s office, and bypass his first Science skill check by finding the password to the computer he needed in a nearby file cabinet (along with some mentats, which will be VERY important to his journey) – don’t need the XP from hacking when you’re never going to level up, after all!
VII. And Steve meeting up with Amata by the freshly-opened vault door and saying his goodbyes...and not getting the gun from her as a goodbye present, contrary to Jon’s expectations. Instead, he was chased out of the vault by a bunch of guards running in and shooting at him because he didn’t kill them all on his way out. He managed to escape, but poor Amata was NOT so lucky, as per the pop-ups that appeared in the corner when the vault door closed – apparently they managed to render her unconscious. Jon decided then it was time to go before the poor girl got stuck in a loop of waking up and getting knocked back down by the guards. XD
C) His trip to Megaton went fine – there were no enemies on the road; his trip through the ruins of Springvale scored him three frag grenades (which were very important, because not only does Steve do shit damage with his regular weapons, thanks to how the Repair skill works in FO3, he also cannot effectively maintain his weapons, meaning he’s going to do even LESS damage thanks to them being in poor condition – explosives, being one-time-use things, however, don’t have the condition problem, meaning he’s probably going to rely on them a LOT), some Jet, some Psycho, and an Unarmed skill book (which Jon wasn’t thrilled by because Unarmed is NOT a super-mega-ultra ridiculous skill in FO3 like it is in F:NV, but an extra skill point is an extra skill point); and he was able to hook up with Crazy Wolfgang the trader when he reached the town’s front gate, selling him all the Vault 101 Security Armor and some other odds and ends he secured during his escape and buying the Wasteland Wanderer Armor in return (+1 Agility, +1 Endurance – VERY useful to Steve). About as easy peasy lemon squeezy as one could imagine!
D) And then Steve actually entered Megaton and things started getting more – interesting. Mostly because for a normal player, Megaton is a nice starting area full of little side quests and tasks to do to earn things like XP and money and other such goodies –
But for Steve, it was mostly just a place that was there because, well, he couldn’t do most of the standard side quests around the shop because he straight up didn’t have the skills. For example, he picked up “Power of the Atom,” the quest to defuse the still-active bomb sitting in the middle of town, by talking to Lucas Simms the sheriff about it when he came to introduce himself to the newbie – but not only could he not actually complete the quest because he didn’t have the necessary Explosives skill, he couldn’t even try to negotiate a better reward because he had a 2% chance of passing Baby’s First Speech Check (Jon found this VERY funny and decided not to embarrass himself or Steve by trying to pass it). And honestly, as Jon noted, there was no point in Steve pursuing the quest for the XP reward because it would be useless to him – he was never going to level up, after all! So instead he had to figure out what quests he could do that offered him good rewards that weren’t XP, and figure out how to get the stuff he wanted that was normally locked behind the quests he couldn’t do. Accordingly, his time in Megaton was spent –
I. Ignoring “Power of the Atom” and instead dragging/kicking a barrel up a slope over to the side of Simms’s house, where he used it as a ladder of sorts to get onto the roof and access the house through the secret trap door up there! Reason? Simms was the proud owner of the Strength Bobblehead, and Steve wanted it for the +1 to Strength it would grant him (for the additional carry capacity if nothing else). And without doing the quest, the only way to get it was to break into the house using ridiculous random item staircase bullshit. Jon hinted that this would be FAR from the only time he’d be abusing that. XD
II. Heading over to Craterside Supply to meet Moira Brown and start helping her with her Wasteland Survival Guide, because that was the kind of quest that you could get perks from! And Steve needed every perk he could get that didn’t require him to level up. He started things off by agreeing to help her with the foreword in exchange for the Armored 101 Vault Suit behind her counter (which was apparently left behind by another vault straggler who disappeared before Moira could give it to her – Moira is pretty sure she died in the wastes, and cited her as the inspiration for the book) – then, after complaining about the lack of food dispensers out here in the Capital Wasteland (prompting a giggle and a “getting food is a little harder out here” from Moira), agreed to assist with the first chapter on day-to-day dangers as well –
By going and getting heavily irradiated so she could examine him! Happily, this proved to be a pretty easy thing for him to do – he just stepped outside, went down to where the bomb was sitting in a little pool of water, then began slurping up said water as it gave him 20 rads with every slurp (along with healing 4 HP – yes, his health actually went UP as he irradiated himself). He finally stumbled back into her shop critically irradiated (with 600 rads on the meter), and politely asked her to examine him and then cure him. She did so, and managed to clear all his rads with her homemade concoction (which apparently includes brahmin milk, magnets, and some happy thoughts) –
But not before he picked up a little, um, mutation. Fortunately, it was a very useful mutation that got him the Rad Regeneration perk (where, whenever he gets advanced radiation poisoning, any crippled limbs automatically regenerate), AND a RadAway and three Rad-Xs from the apologetic Moira. Not a bad haul – though Jon admitted that, before he could do any of the OTHER Wasteland Survival Guide missions, he was going to have to find a way to manipulate Steve’s stats so he could use special speech checks to give specific answers to Moira’s questions about how each mission affected him. Reason being, those checks often affected what kind of perk you got for completing them, and Jon wanted some very specific perks. Not having anything special to say about the radiation mission wasn’t a big deal, but the others would have be handled much more carefully!
III. Asking Moira if she’d seen his dad pass through town to get directed to Colin Moriarty’s bar so he could do a little mission for the proprietor because he needed to pick up some caps to eventually buy the schematics for the junk-shooting Rock-It Launcher she was selling! Reason being, Jon was pretty sure stuff like the Rock-It Launcher, the Missile Launcher, and the Fat Man were going to be Steve’s best choices for weapons because they were the kind of weapons where it didn’t matter if you had a lot of points in the relevant skill (Big Guns, by the way) – so long as you had them pointed in vaguely the right direction, they were going to do a buttload of damage to whatever was in their way. :P Anyway, once pointed in the right direction by his new buddy, he went over and met Colin Moriarty outside his bar, who greeted him warmly and told him that sure, he knew where his father was –
But that Steve would need to pay him 100 caps to learn that information, as it was an important commodity. Steve was immediately like “I don’t have that kind of money” (even though he totally did), prompting Moriarty to offer him an alternate deal – go deal with a junkie named Silver in Springvale, who apparently “borrowed” a bunch of caps from him with the promise that she’d start funneling Jet and Psycho his way, only to run off with the money without upholding her end of the bargain. If Steve got the caps back from her for him, he’d tell Steve what he needed to know. Steve agreed and headed over to Springvale, managing to successfully sneak over to Silver’s house without attracting the attention of any of the nearby raiders –
Only for Silver, upon seeing him and learning he was from Moriarty, to tell him that Moriarty was a liar and that she’d earned those damn caps fair and square. Steve agreed to hear her side of the story, and she revealed that she’d worked for Moriarty as a hooker, but eventually tired of the life and told him she wanted her share of the money so she could leave. She slept with him to try and convince him, but in the morning he insisted she couldn’t go, so she grabbed her caps and just ran. Prompting Moriarty to paint her as a junkie and send his cronies after her to get the money back. Steve, feeling bad (and with only a 4% chance to convince her to hand over ALL the money), told her to give him some of the caps, and he’d tell Colin she was gone – Silver happily agreed to this deal and gave him 300 caps. He then briefly considered murdering her to get the rest of the cash (as Jon knew she still had 100 caps on her), but decided against it and instead just stole a bunch of stuff from her house that should be worth 100 caps. XD As Jon put it, she was still alive, so that made it okay! Steve then headed back to Megaton with his bounty –
And did not give it to Moriarty. Because, you see, he didn’t actually need to pay him for the information all. All he needed was to slip into the back of the saloon by breaking open the Very Easy locked door; get briefly detected by a guy hanging out back there (Jon said it was Moriarty, but it SOUNDED like a ghoul) who fortunately didn’t care that he was in there; break open the Very Easy locked cabinet by the door to get Moriarty’s terminal password, then log into said terminal (mounted on the wall nearby) to find Moriarty’s notes on the latest visitors to his bar and learn that his father was in fact directed to Galaxy News Radio by Moriarty himself (as he’d asked where was a good place for a guy like him to learn the lay of the land after so long in a vault). So yeah – all that was just so he could get the money off Silver and keep it for himself, leaving the mission permanently undone. I get the feeling that this is not the only quest that is going to end like this. XD
And so the episode ended with Steve hanging out in Megaton, wondering where to go next because there wasn’t much left for him to do here (and Jon worrying about the fact that he had a BB Gun and three frag grenades to keep Steve alive out in the wasteland). Next week, Steve picks a direction and we see where he goes to get the tools he needs to actually complete the damn game as a Level 1 ultra-scrub. XD Should be loads of fun – I quite enjoyed “The Worst Courier,” and I’m already headcanoning this as the “prequel” to this series (with Steve having FINALLY gained the ability to level up from Doc Mitchell patching him up post-bullets to the head). I am looking forward to seeing where young Steve goes next, and what shenanigans will follow!
Not bad at all -- I am VERY happy that I was actually able to get that write-up for my Fallout: New Vegas session done BEFORE my workout. :D I think starting the game right at 2 PM really did make the difference there -- have to remember that for future. For now, though, I do need to get to bed, as I do have work tomorrow. At least my window fan is keeping my room reasonably cool...night all!
Tumblr: Ended up having a pretty damn productive day on the old tumbls, getting stuff done on both of my blogs –
Victor Luvs Alice (N Smiler) – Over here, I spent the time before lunch going through my tracked tags (and, in one case, a variant of said tracked tag in a desperate attempt to find something I wanted to reblog – thank you, “#the corpse bride”) and putting a bunch of posts into my drafts for later queuing! Specifically:
A) Two posts by vesperthebagel featuring “blinkie” banners –
I. One featuring banners for a bunch of Alton Towers rides, including The Smiler, Oblivion, Th13teen, Rita, Spinball Whizzer, Toxicator, Wicker Man, Galactica, and Nemesis Reborn (all very nicely done, though hilariously The Smiler’s blinking border looks almost static compared to the others because it has the least contrast)
II. And one featuring a banner for Taskmaster (apparently a redo of an older, less high-resolution one – as a Taskmaster fan I had to grab that one as well)
B) A post by sleepygummy featuring four variants on a The Smiler moodboard they made with various filters (I liked the one on the bottom left the most, as the colors popped the best and you could easily see what all of the various images were)
C) A post by twisted-cat2476 featuring her take on a Smiler OC – a Black man with a pleasantly-creepy smiling white mask, spiral eyes (of course), black hair with lots of yellow streaks, a pale yellow shirt and black-white-and-yellow-striped tie under a black-and-white jacket, and cool black gloves with yellow glowing tubes leading down to metal fingertips (it was a really nicely done bit of art, and I love those gloves)
D) A post by mewpidtown featuring HIS take on a Smiler OC – a humanoid black-skinned creature with long black hair, the Smiler logo for a face, golden goggles, a black tailed waistcoat with yellow detailing, a pair of black bellbottom pants with yellow and white slash designs on the bells, and a walking cane with a syringe on the end (some more nicely-done art – I really loved the outfit and the cane)
E) A post by wisteriasorrows featuring some fanart of A:MR Alice floating in a pool full of lily pads in her Siren dress from the Deluded Depths level (the whole picture just had a gorgeously magical feel to it – and I loved that wisteria put skulls in the lily pad flowers XD)
F) A post by villainii featuring a gifset of Billingsgate from A:MR, with pictures of the rain pouring down on the docks and ships on the river Thames tinted in purple and pictures of the entrance to the Mangled Mermaid tinted in green (just really nicely done, and I liked how the purple pictures made the rain seem even more gloomy while the green ones made the Mermaid pop)
G) A post by lornmaunder featuring some fanart of the Mad Hatter from AMA and A:MR – specifically his head with his iconic tall checkerboard hat (another one that was just really nicely done – and I appreciated that lorn made sure to put the various symbols on Hatter’s hat, as those often get left off)
H) A post by bunnymartyr featuring some fanart of Alice from AMA and A:MR looking back at the viewer over her shoulder with an intense gaze (it just appealed to me)
I) A post by movieposters1 featuring the poster for Corpse Bride (which I swear was tinted a darker blue than it usually is...but I rather liked it, so into the drafts it went)
J) A post by fan-collector-geek featuring a set of photos of some of the CB puppets on display in the Land of the Living church interior set at San Diego Comic Con 2005, with Barkis fighting Victor on the steps while various Land of the Dead characters and Victoria watch (this is the one I found in “#the corpse bride” and I really liked the diorama...and the slightly-goofy expression on Emily’s face in it, suggesting she was more consternated that this was interrupting her wedding than anything XD)
K) And a post by rickmakessomeart featuring some art of a pair of stern-looking Dimmer Sisters from Blades In The Dark, wearing dark purple late Victorian bustle dresses and hats with skulls upon them, with spooky spirits in the background (it was just a very solid bit of art for one of my favorite TTRPGs)
Whew! Yeah, got a lot of stuff to fill out my drafts on that tag trawl. Though, again, rather lacking in Corpse Bride stuff...at least I found a few posts I wanted to throw into future queues! Hopefully the next look through that tag will be more fruitful.
Valice Multiverse – And over here, I chucked another anon ask into my queue this eve (right before posting this entry, in fact), featuring Light Yagami from Death Note trying to off Bugs Bunny with the Note...only for Bugs to confuse him by constantly pretending he was spelling Bugs’s name wrong, then startle him into tossing the notebook and pen so Bugs could grab them and draw an unflattering picture of Light in the Note’s pages. XD I turned the scene in the ask into something Inevitable High School!Smiler was watching on their phone, and had them respond to it by laughing and noting that Bugs was not going to give Light the easy way out by putting his name in the Note – no, he was just going to make Light WISH he was dead –
Then had Alice, also watching the fan animation, wonder if Bugs had actually condemned Light to death, because, well, he’d drawn the guy’s image in the Death Note. Smiler said that they were pretty sure you had to write the person’s name and a cause of death in there – but then admitted that this cartoon could go in any direction, and that they should continue watching to find out. XD Fun little ask – I like goofy stuff like this. Much nicer to answer than some of the heavier stuff the anons throw at me sometimes!
Fallout: New Vegas: I really wanted to play F:NV this weekend, so – despite being a touch worried about how long this subsequent write-up would take – I went ahead and fired up the game this afternoon after lunch! Ended up playing for just under an hour, with Courier Victor learning more about the Vikki & Vance Casino and its namesake crime duo; discovering the sheriff’s office outside – and the corpses within; doing a bit of inventory management and discovering the corpse of a fellow courier; and sneaking into the Bison Steve and doing a bit of computer hacking! And if you would like a more detailed version with screenshots:
A) I picked up where I left off last time, with Victor hanging out in the Vikki & Vance Casino with the rest of Primm’s surviving residents, having just learned that his best bet to figure out where the hell the people who shot him went would be to rescue the town’s deputy, Beagle, from the Bison Steve Hotel across the way. Before he got going on that, though, he decided to take a moment to talk to the protectron with a cowboy hat that he’d seen wandering around the casino, because – well, why wouldn’t you? XD Besides, I think Victor had been wondering who that particular cowboy robot was from the moment he learned that it wasn’t the one who hired him (as a refresher, that was Victor the Securitron, aka Victortron). The Protectron welcomed him with a warm “Howdy pardner! Welcome to the Vikki and Vance Casino and Museum,” and when asked who he was, replied, “Primm Slim at your service! Authentic cowpoke and official spokesbot of the Vikki and Vance Casino and Museum! Yeehaw!” Victor, amused and intrigued, asked who Vikki and Vance even were – a surprised Primm Slim inquired as to if he’d been living under a rock, and informed him that they were “this nation's fourth or maybe fifth most infamous celebrity outlaw couple ever, that's who they was!” He offered to tell Victor their story if the courier had a minute – Victor most certainly did, and an excited Primm Slim told him the whole tale – starting with how they were not Bonnie and Clyde copycats, thank you very much: “Fact is, they begun their crime spree two days before Bonnie and Clyde robbed their first bank – so who was copying who?” He then went on to admit that “Vikki and Vance didn't exactly cut a wide swath of murder and bank robbery across the central U.S., like Bonnie and Clyde did. It was more like a narrow swath of shoplifting, check-cashing fraud, and gas pump driveoffs – but crime is crime! They drove reckless, too,” before launching into the thrilling end of their spree: “Having lived by the gun – well, Vance owned one, anyway – it was only fitting that the duo of desperados would die by the gun. Perhaps it was fate itself that accidentally drove them into a crossfire between police and a gang of bank robbers in Plano, Texas. Or maybe they just didn't notice until it was too late. It's been said that Vikki would have tried to cash a bad check in that bank, had she lived. We'll never know for sure. All we know is that the crossfire tore the car and both occupants to pieces, and the police issued an official apology.” He finished up by telling Victor that he could see their death car nearby, along with Vance’s machine gun in the case next to it, and giving him a brochure talking about how the gun was one of the highlights of the museum. XD A most engaging yarn! You gotta love Fallout’s sense of humor.
B) Victor, quite thoroughly amused now, continued his conversation with Primm Slim by asking what he had to say about Primm itself. Primm Slim cheerfully informed him that “Primm is a thriving resort community located in Clark County, Nevada, right along Interstate 15. Whether you can't wait 'til Vegas to try your luck, or want to hit one last jackpot before you leave Nevada, Primm's your place!” before adding cheekily that “The town's Primm-eer attraction is the world-famous Vikki and Vance Casino and Museum, so you came to the right place, pardner!” XD Victor, charmed by the pun, then asked about the Bison Steve Hotel across the way –
Which caused Primm Slim to suddenly become a lot less jovial, saying quite seriously, “The Bison Steve is one of Primm's less-impressive casino hotels. I'd steer clear of that place, pardner, if I were you. Rumor is the dealers over there cheat, and that rickety roller-coaster's liable to fall down any day 'cause it wasn't built to code.” Well, we know now Primm Slim was not built to advertise the whole town, that’s for damn sure. XD Victor quietly noted to himself he kind of hoped the coaster fell to take care of that convict he saw climbing around on it, then decided that was enough tourist info from Primm Slim and said his goodbyes, getting a “Happy trails” in return. However, having heard the whole Vikki & Vance story now, he couldn’t resist taking another look at the display in the middle of the room before he set out. The death car was as impressive as Primm Slim had hinted it would be, riddled with bullet holes from the duo’s unfortunate demise:
But the rest of the display was rather lacking – as in, it was lacking the items that it was supposed to have. The mannequins on either side that were supposed to be dressed in replicas of the outfits found in the trunk of the car – traditional gangster-esque clothes for Vance, and the most up-to-date fashions for Vikki (the explanatory plaque even suggested that the duo turned to crime because of her love of expensive clothes) – had been stripped naked, and Vance’s famous machine gun (which the plaque declared to be in mint condition, as Vance had never fired it – he’d just kept it in a paper-wrapped box in the trunk of the car, under some suitcases; “experts speculate that Vance might have killed as many as fifty people had he ever fired the gun – so long as his aim was exact and he was starting off with a full clip – or even more if he had additional ammo clips and remembered to reload!”) was missing from its case, which looked like it had been smashed open. Victor, certain this wasn’t right, went back to Primm Slim and asked “Did you know that Vance's gun is missing?” –
Only to get “Just mosey on over to the display case and you'll see it plain as day. Quite a piece, that gun. Mint condition. Never fired,” in return. Baffled, Victor insisted the display case was empty and that the gun was nowhere to be found – Primm Slim, equally baffled, inquired “Have you gone loco, pardner? I can see the gun with my own three photo sensors from where I'm standing right now” –
And started making some weird whirring noises. Which the narration hinted sounded kind of like the protectron was trying to read a corrupted file, but that only someone with high science could be sure. And, sadly, Victor’s Science skill wasn’t quite up to snuff – in order to pass the check to make Primm Slim realize he’s been hacked, you need 50 Science, and he currently only has 40. Dang. We’ll have to come back and resolve this later!
C) Deciding that he wasn’t going to argue with Primm Slim about whether or not Vance’s gun was there just now, Victor instead said his goodbyes to the robot and – after checking the time on his Pip-Boy (3 AM on 10/27/2281) and his vital stats (FOD and SLP meters middling, H20 meter looking not-great) – headed back outside to see if there were any more convicts lurking about outside and if he could find anything useful to scavenge on the street. Fortunately, he did not see any criminals roaming around as he ventured out into the dark –
And even better, when he checked the garbage can right by the entrance to the casino, he found a still-full Sunset Sarsaparilla! (Along with a clipboard, but he wasn’t interested in THAT.) He promptly drank it down to relieve some of his thirst, then continued left along the side of the casino, checking the other garbage can and the dumpster around the side along the way. The second garbage can had a carton of cigarettes and a cup, which was not useful; the dumpster, however, had a bobby pin, which was. And while Victor was retrieving that bobby pin, he noticed right across the road a little shack with a couple of lights on in front of it. He promptly decided to investigate, 9mm at the ready just in case he ran into trouble –
And found himself inside the Primm Sheriff’s Office! The main room consisted of two desks on either side of the room, facing each other – the one on the left holding a terminal, the one on the right sporting a camera. Along the right side of the wall was a reloading bench and a few filing cabinets, while in the back was a long counter with a few odds and ends, including a hammer and a fan, some shelves with various boxes, and a radio. There was also a doorway at the back, to the left, leading into the sheriff’s personal quarters –
Where Victor found Sheriff and Mrs. McBain. Dead in their bed:
And you should be very grateful that I took the photo from THIS angle, because – as I found out shortly thereafter while exploring the place – their cause of death was “heads blown clean off.” *grimacing* Anyway, Victor was appropriately stunned by this sight –
And, moments later, sick with Minor Dehydration on top of it, because his H20 meter had finally ticked over 400. Damn. Fortunately, I discovered immediately thereafter that the McBains had kindly installed a sink in their room (to go with the oven and refrigerator tucked in the corner), and while the water was unfortunately slightly irradiated, it was better than nothing. One slurp, and Victor was cured of his dehydration! And, given that even Minor Dehydration knocks -1 off your Endurance stat, and therefore a few ticks off your HP bar, that was very important!
D) Having kept himself from drying out in the desert heat, Victor investigated the room to see if there was anything worth taking (because, well, while he might feel a little bad about it, the McBains were dead, and he did plan to avenge them by taking out as many convicts as he could rescuing Beagle). There was no food in the oven or the fridge, and the tipped bookcase by the bed only held burnt books instead of any skill-boosting tomes –
But, at the foot of the bed, Victor found a few outfits – the sheriff’s duster and hat, and a brahmin-skin outfit that presumably belonged to Mrs. McBain. Curious, Victor picked up the duster and checked its stats in his Pip-Boy –
And discovered the thing gave him 6 DT (one more than the Merc Veteran outfit was giving him), +1 Charisma, and +5 to his guns skill. The hat, meanwhile, was a pretty standard +1 Perception hat. Victor thus happily stripped off the outfit he’d yoinked from one of the convicts he killed earlier and put on the sheriff’s clothes instead. Given he’s planning on going out and kicking some criminal butt, it felt appropriate! (And also I wanted him out of that stupid-looking hockey mask already.) He also found a cowboy repeater rifle under the bed, but that thing was kind of heavy, and I suspected Victor didn’t have the Strength to wield it properly (a suspicion vindicated by the Wiki, which tells me you need a minimum of Strength 4 for that gun – the F:NV world is not built for weedy people like Victor!), so under the bed it stayed. Maybe we’ll collect it later to sell to Nash once the law and order crisis is over, we’ll see. *shrug* Here’s Victor sporting his new fit back in the main office:
...okay, yes, it’s a little dark in there – you’ll see the outfit in the daylight in just a moment. XD
E) Having gotten himself a proper law enforcement outfit, confirmed he couldn’t really do anything with the reloader bench, and collected the caps in the two desks in the main office (7 caps from the desk in front of the reloader bench, and 4 from the terminal desk), Victor crept back out onto the now-daylight-lit streets, sneaking back the way he’d come while keeping an eye out for trouble. My eye, meanwhile, fell on the posters outside the Vikki & Vance, and I had Victor stop for a moment so I could take a picture:
NOW you can see his duster properly! And yes, those are three different magicians being advertised there – Ali-Din, Wilfred the Wizard, and Maxis, America’s Master Magician
But it did make me think about the fact that Victor was currently at the limit of his carry capacity, meaning if he did find something he wanted to pick up, he wouldn’t be able to. So, after a scroll through all the shit he was carrying on his Pip-Boy (which led to me noting he did have a couple of Programmer’s Digests on him, which would boost his Science skill by +10 – good to know for talking to Primm Slim again later), I had him mosey his way across to the ruined building right next to the Mojave Express and drop the hockey mask, the Merc Veteran outfit, the nearly-busted leather armor, and the Powder Ganger guard armor inside what remained of the front room to free up some space. Clothes be HEAVY in this game, y’all. O.o Again, we’ll collect them later to sell to Nash once his store opens up (well, probably not the Powder Ganger armor, we might need that for disguise purposes, but the other stuff). Thus down to a healthy 104 lbs of shit carried, crept back out and headed for the Bison Steve –
Only to stop in surprise as he encountered a corpse in front of the Mojave Express office – one he hadn’t noticed last night thanks to it being dark as balls:
This proved to be the unfortunate remains of one Daniel Wyand, a fellow Mojave Express courier who’d apparently been on his way to speak with Nash himself about his latest delivery before falling victim to the convicts roaming the town. Searching the body, Victor found a delivery order –
And discovered that Danny had been carrying one of the other packages Victortron had ordered delivered to the New Vegas north gate in Freeside! His had contained a pair of fuzzy dice, presumably the kind you hang from car rear view mirrors. Though, despite Nash insisting that all the other packages had made it to their destination, and the delivery order stating that the courier was to take the payment for the package back to Johnson Nash, Danny wasn’t actually carrying any caps on him. Wonder if he unwisely chose to gamble it away in Vegas… Guess we’ll never know! (Also, the wiki indicates that the Courier actually knew Danny (as per the Fallout: New Vegas Official Game Guide), so I might be adding that they were friendly acquaintances to my master doc…)
F) Having added another name to the list of people he needed to avenge, Victor decided it was about time he entered the Bison Steve and saw what was what. He thus snuck over there and – after a quick check of the garbage cans outside (nothing good, just an earnings clipboard and more cigs) – slipped in the front doors. He immediately found himself staring at an escaped convict in a hockey mask in the doorway on the other side of the lobby –
But, fortunately, it was dark in the hotel, and Victor is the sneaky sort, so the escaped convict didn’t see him, and wandered back off into the hotel proper. Victor promptly crept right and ducked behind the long counter of the check-in desk for a little extra cover. There, he found a very firmly locked door beyond his ability to pick (I gotta put some points into the lockpick skill next time he levels up) –
And a terminal that was very much within his ability to hack! :D And thus I got to do my first-ever hacking minigame in F:NV! After reading through the tutorial pop-up, I waited for the computer to complete its boot-up sequence (which, while slowing things down, WAS a nice little touch), picked my first attempt at the password – STATING – and then began looking through the garbage code all around it for those nice little bracketed bits that, when selected, removed duds and restored tries.
...and didn’t find any. O.O Uh-oh – I’d grown kind of used to using those to beat every hacking minigame in Fallout 4 without needing to actually guess the password! However, I wasn’t about to back out just because I didn’t have any nice cheaty bits of code, so instead I set about trying to figure out the password legit. The game informed me that STATING had exactly one letter correct out of seven – and I knew from the tutorial pop-up that that letter was in the correct position. I thus was able to eliminate any word that shared more than one letter in common with STATING, as that would also be incorrect. After going through my options, I decided to try REQUIRE, as that word had an I in the same position as STATING while sharing no other letters –
And got told that that one had two letters correct out of seven. Progress! I looked through the words again and eliminated anything that had more than two letters in the same position in common with REQUIRE, then – left with only a couple of words that could fit the requirements – picked VEGGIES for my next guess –
And got it! :D Which, honestly, was quite satisfying. Maybe I should try to actually guess the password more often in the hacking minigame. (Though I will still be using any “dud removal” or “tries reset” code I find, because you do only get four tries before being locked out. And unlike in FO4, once you are locked out, you HAVE to find the password – no more further attempts!)
G) So – what was on the terminal that Victor had just hacked? Well, it wasn’t anything too exciting – just a single “Disengage lock” option. Selecting it made the door next to him click, and when he got out of the terminal, he discovered that it was now open. He thus pulled it open –
And accidentally trapped himself against the front counter because I’d put him a LIIIITTLE too close to the door. XD He thus closed the door and repositioned himself, then opened it again to find –
What looked like the employee break room! Complete with a falling-apart skeleton of a former employee on the floor. :( You really think somebody would have started burying some of these unfortunate victims of the War at some point… Anyway, a quick look around the room revealed the following:
I. A shelf next to the door full of rusted tin cans, empty soda bottles scattered around its feet – there was also an iconic Vault-Tec lunchbox sitting there, though I didn’t pick it up as I wasn’t sure what its deal was
II. A table in the middle of the room with an ashtray, some cups, the unfortunate pre-War employee’s arm, and a key to the Maintenance Area of the hotel – also left that there as I want to see how hard the lock is to pick before I grab the key (Victor needs XP after all)
III. Some lockers on the right side wall, most of which were empty – however, the one closest to the fridge contained four bottle caps, a spare 9mm pistol, three syringes of Med-X, and a bottle of Rad-X on the top shelf, all of which Victor happily collected (dunno if he’ll USE the Med-X at any point or just sell it, but still)
IV. A fridge next to the lockers containing an Atomic Cocktail, two barrel cactus fruits, and a bowl of squirrel stew, which Victor also happily collected (food, glorious food – and the Atomic Cocktail is a VERY useful drink, as Jon’s F:NV YOLO Remastered run proved)
V. An average-locked safe on the back wall, by the fridge, which a quick check proved Victor was not getting into anytime soon because it required a Lockpick skill of 50 and he had a mere 24 (ah well)
VI. And another set of shelves at the back by the safe, which had a package of mentats and a first-aid box containing some dirty water and two empty syringes – Victor collected the lot and drank the dirty water to keep himself hydrated, as the H20 meter was getting dangerously high again
Not a bad haul, overall! Though I do wish I could get into the safe...definitely have to invest some points into the Lockpick skill when Victor hits Level 3!
And so my playsession ended with Victor hanging out in the break room, getting ready to push deeper into the Bison Steve and find that missing deputy. Next time, we’ll see how far he gets and if he can successfully rescue Beagle! Should be fun. :D
Workout/YouTube: Well, I did have to watch something else first – the music video for OK Go’s “The Writing’s On The Wall” (a sad song about having a final good night with a partner before breaking up, with the music video featuring loads of cool optical illusions) – but Jon did upload the first episode of his newest series in time for me to watch the first twenty-nine minutes with my workout and the final eighteen after supper. And what was said first episode of said new series, you may ask?
“Fallout 3: The Worst Wanderer!” AKA the return of none other than Useless Steve! :D Useless Steve, if you need a refresher, was the star of Jon’s “Fallout New Vegas: The Worst Courier” series (and its follow-up “Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues – The Level 1 Naked Useless Survival Run”) and was the most useless character in the Mojave Wasteland due to starting out with all of his SPECIAL stats at 1, all of his skills at 5, and with no helpful traits whatsoever. He ended up managing to become at least somewhat useful by the Second Battle of Hoover Dam, helping win it, and the game overall, for the NCR, then repeated the trick when Jon bumped him back down to his terrible starting stats before throwing him into Big MT with nothing but his underwear to his name – but it was always an uphill fight to figure out how to get him to do anything competently. But Jon loved the battle, and had decided it was finally time for Useless Steve to come back in a new adventure in the Capital Wasteland! And this version of Steve has it even harder than his Mojave counterpart thanks to Jon adding an additional rule to the challenge –
Namely, this Useless Steve can never level up. Thanks to the power of console commands, not only are Useless Steve’s stats stuck at 1, his level is as well. So now he has to complete the game relying solely on apparel, drugs, bobbleheads, and skill books (which add +1) to get him through all the challenges. :D How did things go for him in this opening episode? Well:
A) After his slightly-traumatic birth (Jon still thinks it’s amazing FO3 starts with you being born in FIRST PERSON), his childhood in Vault 101 went quite well – Jon glossed over most of his time in the vault before the big escape sequence, as basically nothing Steve did in any of the little tutorial/character creation vignettes would have any impact on the challenge, but he did make it clear that Useless Steve peaked as a one-year-old (as he HAD to give the guy proper SPECIAL stats when first selecting them from the baby book – he wasn’t allowed to bump them down to the canonical “1 in everything” until Steve’s 10th birthday party, when he received his Pip-Boy), and that Steve definitely skipped his GOAT, (using more console commands to remove the game’s attempt to force him to tag some skills), noting that was probably where the trouble started for Steve and warning any kids watching to stay in school. :p
B) The actual escape from the vault (after his father snuck off to finally start working on Project Purity again, and the Overseer decided to make that Steve’s fault) also went mostly well, probably because it’s designed for a level 1 character, even one as bad as Useless Steve (you could HEAR the relief in Jon’s voice when the one locked door and one locked terminal in his way both turned out to be Very Easy). Notable moments included –
I. Steve convincing Amata to keep the gun she offered him at the very beginning, because she might need it more – which paid off in Steve not having to rescue Amata from the guard interrogating her, as she was able to shoot them herself (proving that she was very much NOT useless)
II. Steve making nice with his former bully Butch Deloria and saving his mother from the radroaches that had invaded the vault – granted, his attempt to help DID see him hit Ellen Deloria by accident and cripple her head, but he managed to kill the roaches and keep her alive, thus scoring him Butch’s Tunnel Snakes jacket (which gives +5 to the Melee Weapons skill, meaning it was VERY useful to poor Steve at this point in time)
III. Steve managing to make his way into the medical lab and grab the Medicine Bobblehead (which is actually animated with a subtle bobbling motion! Cool!), which immediately boosted his Medicine skill by 10 – given how often he’s probably going to need to use healing items in this run, that is a GOOD thing
IV. Steve getting into a baton-vs-bat battle with Security Chief Hannon as he continued fleeing, which saw Steve come out on top mostly because a couple of radroaches scurried into the room and took out Hannon for him. XD Granted, Steve DID put in the work with his baseball bat, but the roaches most definitely got the kill
V. Steve looting a lot of Vault 101 Security Armor off dead guards...and Jon suddenly realizing that the armor was giving +5 to the Small Guns skill when he was pretty sure it WASN’T supposed to do that in FO3 – apparently some stuff from his “Tale Of Two Wastelands Except I’m Really Only Doing Fallout 3” series has not been properly removed! Jon complained about Useless Steve managing to break the universe and promised he’d scrub the game files before Episode 2. XD
VI. Steve managing to pass his first Lockpick skill check to get into the Overseer’s office, and bypass his first Science skill check by finding the password to the computer he needed in a nearby file cabinet (along with some mentats, which will be VERY important to his journey) – don’t need the XP from hacking when you’re never going to level up, after all!
VII. And Steve meeting up with Amata by the freshly-opened vault door and saying his goodbyes...and not getting the gun from her as a goodbye present, contrary to Jon’s expectations. Instead, he was chased out of the vault by a bunch of guards running in and shooting at him because he didn’t kill them all on his way out. He managed to escape, but poor Amata was NOT so lucky, as per the pop-ups that appeared in the corner when the vault door closed – apparently they managed to render her unconscious. Jon decided then it was time to go before the poor girl got stuck in a loop of waking up and getting knocked back down by the guards. XD
C) His trip to Megaton went fine – there were no enemies on the road; his trip through the ruins of Springvale scored him three frag grenades (which were very important, because not only does Steve do shit damage with his regular weapons, thanks to how the Repair skill works in FO3, he also cannot effectively maintain his weapons, meaning he’s going to do even LESS damage thanks to them being in poor condition – explosives, being one-time-use things, however, don’t have the condition problem, meaning he’s probably going to rely on them a LOT), some Jet, some Psycho, and an Unarmed skill book (which Jon wasn’t thrilled by because Unarmed is NOT a super-mega-ultra ridiculous skill in FO3 like it is in F:NV, but an extra skill point is an extra skill point); and he was able to hook up with Crazy Wolfgang the trader when he reached the town’s front gate, selling him all the Vault 101 Security Armor and some other odds and ends he secured during his escape and buying the Wasteland Wanderer Armor in return (+1 Agility, +1 Endurance – VERY useful to Steve). About as easy peasy lemon squeezy as one could imagine!
D) And then Steve actually entered Megaton and things started getting more – interesting. Mostly because for a normal player, Megaton is a nice starting area full of little side quests and tasks to do to earn things like XP and money and other such goodies –
But for Steve, it was mostly just a place that was there because, well, he couldn’t do most of the standard side quests around the shop because he straight up didn’t have the skills. For example, he picked up “Power of the Atom,” the quest to defuse the still-active bomb sitting in the middle of town, by talking to Lucas Simms the sheriff about it when he came to introduce himself to the newbie – but not only could he not actually complete the quest because he didn’t have the necessary Explosives skill, he couldn’t even try to negotiate a better reward because he had a 2% chance of passing Baby’s First Speech Check (Jon found this VERY funny and decided not to embarrass himself or Steve by trying to pass it). And honestly, as Jon noted, there was no point in Steve pursuing the quest for the XP reward because it would be useless to him – he was never going to level up, after all! So instead he had to figure out what quests he could do that offered him good rewards that weren’t XP, and figure out how to get the stuff he wanted that was normally locked behind the quests he couldn’t do. Accordingly, his time in Megaton was spent –
I. Ignoring “Power of the Atom” and instead dragging/kicking a barrel up a slope over to the side of Simms’s house, where he used it as a ladder of sorts to get onto the roof and access the house through the secret trap door up there! Reason? Simms was the proud owner of the Strength Bobblehead, and Steve wanted it for the +1 to Strength it would grant him (for the additional carry capacity if nothing else). And without doing the quest, the only way to get it was to break into the house using ridiculous random item staircase bullshit. Jon hinted that this would be FAR from the only time he’d be abusing that. XD
II. Heading over to Craterside Supply to meet Moira Brown and start helping her with her Wasteland Survival Guide, because that was the kind of quest that you could get perks from! And Steve needed every perk he could get that didn’t require him to level up. He started things off by agreeing to help her with the foreword in exchange for the Armored 101 Vault Suit behind her counter (which was apparently left behind by another vault straggler who disappeared before Moira could give it to her – Moira is pretty sure she died in the wastes, and cited her as the inspiration for the book) – then, after complaining about the lack of food dispensers out here in the Capital Wasteland (prompting a giggle and a “getting food is a little harder out here” from Moira), agreed to assist with the first chapter on day-to-day dangers as well –
By going and getting heavily irradiated so she could examine him! Happily, this proved to be a pretty easy thing for him to do – he just stepped outside, went down to where the bomb was sitting in a little pool of water, then began slurping up said water as it gave him 20 rads with every slurp (along with healing 4 HP – yes, his health actually went UP as he irradiated himself). He finally stumbled back into her shop critically irradiated (with 600 rads on the meter), and politely asked her to examine him and then cure him. She did so, and managed to clear all his rads with her homemade concoction (which apparently includes brahmin milk, magnets, and some happy thoughts) –
But not before he picked up a little, um, mutation. Fortunately, it was a very useful mutation that got him the Rad Regeneration perk (where, whenever he gets advanced radiation poisoning, any crippled limbs automatically regenerate), AND a RadAway and three Rad-Xs from the apologetic Moira. Not a bad haul – though Jon admitted that, before he could do any of the OTHER Wasteland Survival Guide missions, he was going to have to find a way to manipulate Steve’s stats so he could use special speech checks to give specific answers to Moira’s questions about how each mission affected him. Reason being, those checks often affected what kind of perk you got for completing them, and Jon wanted some very specific perks. Not having anything special to say about the radiation mission wasn’t a big deal, but the others would have be handled much more carefully!
III. Asking Moira if she’d seen his dad pass through town to get directed to Colin Moriarty’s bar so he could do a little mission for the proprietor because he needed to pick up some caps to eventually buy the schematics for the junk-shooting Rock-It Launcher she was selling! Reason being, Jon was pretty sure stuff like the Rock-It Launcher, the Missile Launcher, and the Fat Man were going to be Steve’s best choices for weapons because they were the kind of weapons where it didn’t matter if you had a lot of points in the relevant skill (Big Guns, by the way) – so long as you had them pointed in vaguely the right direction, they were going to do a buttload of damage to whatever was in their way. :P Anyway, once pointed in the right direction by his new buddy, he went over and met Colin Moriarty outside his bar, who greeted him warmly and told him that sure, he knew where his father was –
But that Steve would need to pay him 100 caps to learn that information, as it was an important commodity. Steve was immediately like “I don’t have that kind of money” (even though he totally did), prompting Moriarty to offer him an alternate deal – go deal with a junkie named Silver in Springvale, who apparently “borrowed” a bunch of caps from him with the promise that she’d start funneling Jet and Psycho his way, only to run off with the money without upholding her end of the bargain. If Steve got the caps back from her for him, he’d tell Steve what he needed to know. Steve agreed and headed over to Springvale, managing to successfully sneak over to Silver’s house without attracting the attention of any of the nearby raiders –
Only for Silver, upon seeing him and learning he was from Moriarty, to tell him that Moriarty was a liar and that she’d earned those damn caps fair and square. Steve agreed to hear her side of the story, and she revealed that she’d worked for Moriarty as a hooker, but eventually tired of the life and told him she wanted her share of the money so she could leave. She slept with him to try and convince him, but in the morning he insisted she couldn’t go, so she grabbed her caps and just ran. Prompting Moriarty to paint her as a junkie and send his cronies after her to get the money back. Steve, feeling bad (and with only a 4% chance to convince her to hand over ALL the money), told her to give him some of the caps, and he’d tell Colin she was gone – Silver happily agreed to this deal and gave him 300 caps. He then briefly considered murdering her to get the rest of the cash (as Jon knew she still had 100 caps on her), but decided against it and instead just stole a bunch of stuff from her house that should be worth 100 caps. XD As Jon put it, she was still alive, so that made it okay! Steve then headed back to Megaton with his bounty –
And did not give it to Moriarty. Because, you see, he didn’t actually need to pay him for the information all. All he needed was to slip into the back of the saloon by breaking open the Very Easy locked door; get briefly detected by a guy hanging out back there (Jon said it was Moriarty, but it SOUNDED like a ghoul) who fortunately didn’t care that he was in there; break open the Very Easy locked cabinet by the door to get Moriarty’s terminal password, then log into said terminal (mounted on the wall nearby) to find Moriarty’s notes on the latest visitors to his bar and learn that his father was in fact directed to Galaxy News Radio by Moriarty himself (as he’d asked where was a good place for a guy like him to learn the lay of the land after so long in a vault). So yeah – all that was just so he could get the money off Silver and keep it for himself, leaving the mission permanently undone. I get the feeling that this is not the only quest that is going to end like this. XD
And so the episode ended with Steve hanging out in Megaton, wondering where to go next because there wasn’t much left for him to do here (and Jon worrying about the fact that he had a BB Gun and three frag grenades to keep Steve alive out in the wasteland). Next week, Steve picks a direction and we see where he goes to get the tools he needs to actually complete the damn game as a Level 1 ultra-scrub. XD Should be loads of fun – I quite enjoyed “The Worst Courier,” and I’m already headcanoning this as the “prequel” to this series (with Steve having FINALLY gained the ability to level up from Doc Mitchell patching him up post-bullets to the head). I am looking forward to seeing where young Steve goes next, and what shenanigans will follow!
Not bad at all -- I am VERY happy that I was actually able to get that write-up for my Fallout: New Vegas session done BEFORE my workout. :D I think starting the game right at 2 PM really did make the difference there -- have to remember that for future. For now, though, I do need to get to bed, as I do have work tomorrow. At least my window fan is keeping my room reasonably cool...night all!
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Date: 2026-05-18 02:34 pm (UTC)https://www.cmalongi.com/newest
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Date: 2026-05-19 03:46 am (UTC)