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After dipping my toes into Fallout 76 during the PC phase of the B.E.T.A., I splurged my birthday monies at the beginning of November on (a) a full copy of same; and (b) a pile of Creation Club content for Fallout 4.
Previously I'd logged ~1,200 hours on un-modded FO4. Did all four vanilla endings, rampaged through Nuka-World - which is a Hell of a lot of fun - and whomped robotic buttocks in Automatron. I've yet to tie off the 9 Steam achievements I'm short ... and I don't care enough to bother.
'76 has Survival mode baked into its mash-up of New Vegas and FO4. Along with CND (condition) and most of FO4's survival mechanics baked into its multiplayer-oriented PvP/PvE format, it seems likely that I'll be waiting the year-plus it will take Bethesda to (a) properly patch and update '76 into something playable; (b) let their modders loose; and (c) let me play a purely PvE experience.
In addition to FO4's Creation Club content I spent about 300 further hours tinkering around with an assortment of Bethesda.net mods for FO4 before settling on a game start tweaked to my satisfaction.
All told this run starts after 1500 hours of previous play. I'm not in this for Serious Survival Business (that'll be FO76 at some point, if it survives that long). This is for fun ... with the objective re: Commonwealth of obtaining the elusive "fifth ending" (nuke Institute, Minutemen/BoS/Railroad *not* shooting each other in the streets because reasons). This is the playthrough I'll finally head to Far Harbor.
Eventually. I plan to mop up as much of the side quests as possible prior to entering Diamond City and picking up the main story via Nick Valentine. Ideally I'll have the settlements of the Commonwealth already up and running (with the exceptions of Sanctuary and the northwestern Red Rocket) before stepping foot therein.
This means avoiding Diamond City, Red Rocket NW, Concord, Vault 88 and Automatron (by way of it's vicinity to a certain electronics store) and by extension the Creation Club Anti-Material Rifle and the Black Devil power armor suit for as long as possible. Similarly Vault 81 and the settlements themselves (at least the occupied ones) are going to be avoided like the Black Plague for as long as absolutely possible.
This will not be some absurd FO4 Survival run. This will not involve my playing fair with the NPCs and monsters because those wall-ignoring door-glitching stuff-yoinking bastiches don't return the favor. I've done all of the Companion unlocks at least once. Hit 200th+ level four times already.
Also, once you see some of the mods, you might appreciate why. The mobs will be packing some serious firepower very, very soon.
This time I'm frontloading my perks and player.modav via console to suit the concept of this Sole Survivor. ALL of the Companion perks previously earned - consoled those puppies in out of the gate. "Achievements" (magazines, most of them), non-SPECIAL bobbleheads, lots of goodies simply consoled right on in.
In return I have to suck it up and gobble up XP to acquire the levels.
Pro-tip: Do NOT begin a modded game until after you acquire the Pip-Boy and open Vault 111's exit all the way. Fire up your mods once the way is clear to leave. Otherwise there's a good chance the mods will gum up the exit gears and you're pretty pooched. If you don't want to bugger around with getting mauled half to death by radroaches, console tgm until then, then console that back off before getting down to the fun stuff.
"Nora" is but an alias along the same vein as what we would identify as Witness Protection. In her previous life the woman now identifying as Valkyrie was a genetically engineered pedigree. "The perfect human", enhanced with not only genome engineering but prototype "nano biological" engineering as part of Project Valkyrie under one of the Defense Experimental Research Project Initiative's "Black Hole Projects".
Valkyrie spent 20 years spanning 2052 through 2072 in service to Uncle Sam's less ethically constrained "HUMINT" operations before retiring, in no small part due to having acquired sufficient "politically compromising" material on a fair number of influential types an awfully long way up the food chain. She spent as much time "acquiring" TSCI [color spectrum] as she did performing copious amounts of wetwork in the process. In combination with retired combat veteran Nate's own clout on the public front the powers-that-be agreed that their service to country was concluded, pending drastic needs arising to the contrary.
Cosmetic surgery was a finely-honed art as was subliminal "training". Learning Chinese and Russian customs and languages in combination with superficial alterations of her facial structure and whatnot made her able to "Special Agent Woman" time and again. 10 different operations into Communist Russia and China. The poor bastards never saw the same agent twice.
She earned her Juris Doctor in Commonwealth law after retiring (taking her time doing so - a mere four years) before she met Nate, fell in love and slowly began to bury the remnants of her retired life. In 2076 she and Nate managed something she'd previously never thought possible: have a child of their own, a little boy named after Nate's grandfather Shaun.
Her entire body is infused at the molecular level with [insert pseudo-scientific gobbledegook here]. She's a Sixty Billion Dollar Woman. God have mercy on those who mess with her - she won't.
23 Oct 2077
8 days before Halloween and they still haven't gotten around to carving up some Jack-o-Lanterns. Then that creepy Vault-Tec rep comes around. As much to shoo him off as anything else, 'Nora' signs her family up for shelter in Vault 111 just up the hill from home should World War III go atomic. The war's been raging for years, surely no one would be mad enough to trigger the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) global doctrine that prevents total atomic annihilation?!
Breakfast, coffee with a spike of rum to warm the belly and a drag on a Grey Tortoise cigarette before small talk with Nate. Codsworth, their new Mr. Handy robot, is adapting quite well to household service.
I think he'd look pretty snazzy in a bowler hat.
The newly developed suburb of Sanctuary Hills features thirteen homes. Some with carports, some without. All feature generously sized yards fenced in still-fresh-smelling white painted picket fencing. We're far better off than most Americans. Food is expensive. Money is nearly worthless. A black market in Nuka-Cola bottlecaps has sprung up as they're real, not paper bank notes. The various flavors are coming into vogue among the teenage crowd as various denominations.
The dog's been missing for a while, stubborn beast. Cats don't do that if they like you. Maybe I should get a cat? Nate's been insisting on waiting for the pooch to return despite insisting on calling him Dogmeat.
I love my husband, but Dogmeat? Dogmeat?! That's begging the universe to eat him. It's about the same thing as naming your cat Sausage or your pygmy pig Bacon. They're going to get eaten.
Then the unthinkable happens. New York and Philadelphia - confirmed atomic detonations shatter both cities. Boston is confirmed as having inbound warheads.
We flee to Vault 111, just in the nick of time as in the distance an atomic mushroom cloud erupts from the vicinity of the Commonwealth Institute of Technology.
What we are told are 'decontamination pods' are clearly cryogenic stasis pods the moment they're activated. Vault-Tec lied through their teeth to us! When I get out of th...
Date and Time Yet to be Determined
I awaken, bones and flesh ache from the thawing. A man wearing a bizzare hodgepodge of armor and leather wields a .44 hand cannon escorting a woman clad in a medical environmental suit that reveals no features and somewhat muffles her voice. At least one other voice can be heard to my right as I stare in horror, helpless as Nate's pod is opened.
Nate has Shaun. Oh ... oh you sunsab!+#*es ...
They open Nate's cryogenic pod, demanding Shaun. Nate refuses, the balding man administers a .44 Magnum cranial evacuation to Nate. His female minion seizes squalling Shaun, commenting "At least we have the back-up", staring right at me before the cryo-stasis resumes.
23 October 2287, as it turns out.
Someone has a vicious sense of timing. Or Vault-Tec's technology finally gave up the ghost. Either way I am released from cryo-stasis, coughing and spluttering. I pop Nate's cryo-pod open. It shouldn't be real, but there he is, all husband and brains and gwilch, Shaun is gone ...
Inside my head, a cold feminine voice purrs.
"Time to get to work Valkyrie. Nate and Nora are dead. Shaun could be out there, somewhere, or be long dead himself. We have no idea how much time has passed. We. Do. Not. Have. TIME. Mourn later. Get up. Get out of this wretched vault. Get your stash out of the root cellar you helped build. Yes, that stash. Now get!"
A dozen or so dead radiation-mutated cockroaches, some the size of dogs and I'm out of Vault 111. Spend a day retrieving my stash from the root cellar two houses over. I daren't look at the shattered husk of my former home, not now. Old habits and skills return very quickly. My VALKYRIE nano-systems online in the sunlight of the shattered world above.
I scrounge up a somewhat durable outfit from the corpse of some sorry bastard that died shoving a tire iron into the chest of the furless fanged canine that tore his throat out in the process. MAD indeed.
I get the Pip-Boy 3000/N7 up and running, holster my custom .357 and count my ammunition. A few stimpaks. Some pure water. A BPD EOD pack was left by some forgetful soul in the root cellar, complete with sleeping bag.
It isn't until the N7 synchronizes with the night sky that I have an idea of when I am: 23rd October 2287, exactly 210 years after Total Atomic Annihilation fell across most of the globe.
Happy Halloween 2287 in Hangman's Alley, once the former Raider scum occupying the place are violently evicted. A scattering of fragmentation mines at either access point should deter casual intrusion.
Steam screenshots, beginning with Valkyrie's view from atop Vault 111 into Sanctuary Hills.
Creation Club content
- Power Armor combo package: the giddyup buttercup power armor is probably some silliness. OTOH, the Hellfire and Black Devil suits look sweet. The quests to get them are fun, too.
- Prototype Gauss Rifle - more or less the same weapon from FO3. Looks much better than the FO4 weapon. Acquired at Gunner Plaza.
- Solar Cannon - fun little easter egg hunt. Nasty weapon, albeit typically over-bulked as is the case with so many Fallout weapons.
- Anti-Material Rifle - haven't run it, but it's the most interesting quest chain of the weapons'.
- Player Home Bundle - adds a Nuka-Cola themed home, a general purpose multi-level home with the standard stuff and most importantly a gorgeous art deco condo in eastern Boston that has a private entrance you can fast travel to. Almost everything in here is in pristine condition and it comes with all crafting but cooking and mod-provided (no ammunition, armorsmith or weaponsmith benches here, for example). This Noir Condo is the crown jewel of all of the creation club content IMO. Eventually it'll become my home away from the Commonwealth. Spacious, luxuriously appointed, complete with a guest room, two bathrooms, a dedicated crafting room with power armor station and gobs of storage space. You can mess around with it if you want ... but I won't do too much of that. The Noir Condo is drool-inducingly good.
- various cosmetic packs - had to burn the remaining money on something. Pip-Boy skins, armor/weapon/power armor skins, mostly useless.
Now the fun stuff: the Mods (not the load order).
- Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch: THE must-have mod if you get nothing else. The fixes are subtle, but immediately noticeable for veteran players.
- Sim Settlements: Three in One.
- Sim Settlements: Mega Pack - Year One.
- Sim Settlements: City Plan Pack.
- Sim Settlements: Wasteland Venturerers 1 and 2.
- The Sim Settlements line are a godsend for those sick and frickin' tired of burning precious play time on the tedium of building 30 or so settlements. With all of the bells and whistles, you can basically clear the place of bad guys, trigger the workbench, attach one of your
minions"companions" as Manager and let them do their thing.
- Girly Animation: Cosmetic goofiness in some ways, but the stances, head movements and melee goodies are a lot of fun.
- SKK Quantum Global Workshop Storage: screw supply lines. This mod effectively hyperlinks ALL of your workbenches *and* any crafting stations you mess around with in the boonies. It can remove oddball stations, and all manner of other fun things. In this playthrough this thing is dumping everything into Hangman's Alley for the majority of the time I'll be playing. Top 5 consideration for sure.
- Ballistic Weave P10: there's some awesome in here. The vanilla five grades of ballistic weave plus another several varities, all the way up to the XXX-grade that tacks on 9000 each damage, energy and rad resistances to each layered piece. For when you absolutely, positively, have to make sure that Dogmeat doesn't yelp piteously for the elevently millionth time this week. Or yourself for that matter.
- Creative Clutter: adds 700 more goodies for decorating your wasteland homes and settlements. Rawr.
- What Should Have Been: Ever wondered what all of that Wild [crops] were good for? Now you know, along with scads of other goodies. Love this mod, consider it top 5-10.
- Cheat Terminal: The second or third most important/useful mod, ever. From personal storage spaces to All of the Console Commands, including ones I didn't know existed. Tired of burning through fusion cores like candy in your power armor? *Nope*. From gameplay cheats to simply stuffing as much as 10k of All of the Crafting Mats into your workbench(es) in a few clicks, this puppy takes your Pip-Boy to Eleventy-Seven. Also useful for 'porting your wayward companions to you and otherwise proves itself ridiculously useful without having to manually open and enter console commands the old way.
- Loot Detector: Pairs ridiculously well with the above Quantum Storage mod. This thing highlights very nearly All of the Lootz. Legendaries, bobbleheads/magazines/et al, its must useful feature I have dubbed the "craploot vacuum". It'll slurp all of the Junk and, if you tell it to, deposit it into a settlement workbench of your designation. It collects ammo, caps and stimpaks as soon as you're close enough. Open a lock, *slurp*. You still choose whether or not to pick up armor, weapons and most aid/food/drink items on your own - but it'll highlight them for you. Makes a proper sweep-n-loot much MUCH less tedious.
- Vai's Eye Texture Pack: nice set of extra goodies for your Sole Survivor's eyes.
- Ponytail Hairstyles by Azar 2.5: There's more in here than ponytails. I like ponytails on my female avatars, always have.
- TCE: The Companions Enhanced: unfuglies Cait, Curie, Hancock, Piper, Danse, McReady, Preston, Valentine and even de-zombifies poor old Mama Murphy. Other stuff comes along gratis, don't ask me what.
- Captain Cosmos Changes: fixes some of the stupid in the Captain Cosmos Creation Club add-on.
- Overboss .357 Magnum: Packle, packle mightily. Perk-dependant .357 using 10mm ammunition. It's fun and a hell of a beast in a firefight, although there are other weapons that seriously outrange it. Fortunately, most NPCs have the PER of a donut.
- USO & UCO Core Components; AKWCR; UCO Season Pass Add-On; USO AKWCR Patch: The core upgrade mods asides from the UFO4P (mentioned first) that adds a slew of goodies to stuff personal and settlement related. Ammunition, armorsmith and weaponsmith workbenches add long-absent options for making your own ammo as well as most / nearly all of the body armor and weapons in the game.
- Armorsmith Extended v3.02 Full Version: Fills in the gaps missed by UCO. Also let's you remove and insert legendary properties as you acquire them. No more running around with an Irradiated Pool Cue!
- Finch Farm and Greygarden Overpass Lifts: builds lifts for these settlements. No fuss, no muss, probably no Gunner/Raider spawns on them. Now you can simply take the lift to your crumbling freeway converted Bus-House and back. Safety not guaranteed.
- Workshop Player Bed: simple yet absolutely necessary for settlements you build yourself instead of letting Sim Settlements handle these things. The only way to guarantee none of those filthy degenerate farmers working for you sleep in YOUR bed, ruining your comfy pillows with their unwashed noggins.
- Brutal Melee Perks: kill zem, kill zem all.
- Improved Perks: self-explanatory.
- Toughness Plus: makes Toughness worth burning perk points on for a change.
- Traits and More Perks: chem-crafted Perks and add/remove New Vegas-style Traits. The crafted perks can be a chore unless you have the above-mentioned Cheat Terminal. Then it's simplest to wait until 31st level, then plug 'em all in at one go. Great stuff here.
- Pipboy Overhaul (N7 Edition): This is the kick-ass looking Pip-Boy Valkyrie is wearing.
- Fuseboxes for All: No more noxious bulky triangle-munching generators. 10 power output fuseboxes anywhere you want (vertical attachment surfaces permitting). Ideally suited for powering certain 14.5mm autocannon turrets.
- Simple Flight Ring: yeah, it's basically a flat-out cheat ... but it's a damned useful one, so nyah. No AP jet pack without the fire out your arse. Fire out your arse aka "flaming fart" is an available mod too if you like.
- Time Scale and Other Tweaks: finally, some semblance of sanity to the game's ludicrous time scale of 20:1 (20 seconds in-game per second played). At 20:1 a game year happens ridiculously fast. This drops it down to 6:1. Also, radstag does and fawns are docile instead of murderous quadrupedal edible ettins. VATS distance increased. Better settlement attack alert times. Other QOL improvements.
- Locksmith: lock your stuff up for real. Booyah!
- Brawl Bug Fix: dependency for the Loot Detector.
- Nanosuit Female Edition: oh so pretty, multiple colors, magnificently textured and fully armored. Combined with the UCO stuff and Armorsmith Extended stuff, you can wear invisible armor bits atop these awesome items - including a regular jet pack if you desire. Protection in style without tacky raggedy armor bits strapped onto this gorgeous Iron Woman suit. Wage war in the wastelands in style. Accepts ballistic weave on body and several accessories (see above) plus Legendary slots. Accept no substitutes.
- Grenade Expansion Pack 2: featuring the M-79 grenade launcher, the real gems in here are the "darts", i.e., thrown weapons, including throwing knives and sticky 'nades! The main GL is "Saint Sean's Special", with the legendary property of [bash] instead permitting swapping out what ammo you're using in it.
- The Laser Cannon: mean and nasty. Pew-pew with the big boys.
- Improved Minute Men Artillery: By God you're calling in artillery fire, let's wreck some stuff! Danger close has a whole new tier of pain now.
- True Storms: Wasteland Edition: absolutely worth it as the sole weather-based mod I'm using. Rad storms are dangerous. Rad-rain is NASTY. All of it is beautiful. Ghoul-spawning fog banks optional.
- Deployable Turret Pack 2: Is that a plasma cannon turret in your pocket, or are you just angry to see me?! Yes indeed boys and ghouls, you can carry turrets in Pokeballs and toss 'em out for far more firepower than you and any companions can hope to carry. Ammo is provided by you at the moment deployed, and they are destructible. However ... nothing says Eff Yew to the bad guys like a pocket full of cannons.
- Modular Simonov PTRS-41 Anti-Tank Rifle: These things are big, mean, nasty, hit like a maglev train and are gloriously LOUD. There's no mistaking when the bad guys have them because nothing else in the game sounds like them. They penetrate 50%-90% of the target's armor. There are turret versions for your settlements that guaran-damned-tee YOU WILL NOT MISS OUT on any attacks. Whether or not the bad guys survive more than a few shots from one of these beasts is an entirely different matter. Loot Detector mod highly recommended if you use this mod since the targets often become very small chunks of grue in short order ... I *love* these things - the fully tricked out one I put together during testing weighed in at 97.5 pounds of range 600+ silenced scoped 20mm custom-made plasma shaped charge death and destruction in a 40-shot-capacity dual-drum feed. (Normal clips hold 5-15 shots.) The weapon included a damage reduction shield and dual-integrated thermal-and-recon sensors. A sniper's very, very wet dream.
- The 80's Mix 1 and 2: in-game radio stations, ideal for pushing that brain-chilling buzzing of "mosqueetoes" out of your ears while you let VATS do the dirty work instead of panicking in a harpoon-your-organs-and-vomit-your-own-blood-in-your-face frenzy to get away from those gawdawful things.
- Legendary Mod Additions: craftable legendaries, including quite a few unique to the mod.
the Laser Cannon and Anti-Tank Rifle mods auto-populate the bad guys' level lists. You will find bad guys with them, and they hit HARD. As in, if you're running around with crappy armor, you will die in one or maybe two hits...
Honorable Mention Mods - mods I like but aren't using:
- Courser Ghost-Spectre X-92 Nanosuit - a quest finding that does not provide you a starting point (although you should find it eventually). Fairly fun, although for me the gem of the mod is the optics: night vision / thermal vision / combo-both-vision eyeglass slotted item with options for manual or automatic actions. The suit is probably statiscally nicer than the nanosuit above .... but I find the above-mentioned nano-suit far more aesthetically pleasing. Sadly, the bethesda.net version is missing the lion's share of the goodies as this mod was meant to emulate a high-end set of power armor in its capabilities without being all bulky and explody.
- Kat's Stash - amusing OP goodies, but restrained in a way. You won't go broke easily, the pistol is deliberately OP (but not quite ridiculously so) and she kindly provides a beret and fatigue set with hefty defenses. As far as OP item mods go, this is about as reasonable as one of them gets. Starting out with 300k caps is nice ... but you have to live long enough to spend 'em.
- New Vegas Uniques Mega Pack 2 and the two seperate mods that go with it: FO4-adapted versions of the unique weapons/items from New Vegas. Medicine Stick is my favorite, although the Holy Frag Grenades are there too.
- Salvage Beacons: build a comm station, staff it with someone, craft some beacons and go a lootin'. Stuff a bunch of junk into an outside container, slap a beacon on it and eventually your nameless minions will arrive to cart your junk back to their settlement for you.
- The Black Tower Project - provides FO4 versions of the Rings of Power from Lord of the Rings. The Sole Survivor can wear as many as five of them. These are where I based Valkyrie's defense and S.P.E.C.I.A.L. boosts on.
- MRE's - What Should Have Been already includes several MRE-type items. Otherwise, this simple stand-alone does a wonderful job, especially graphically.
- New & Expanded Buildable Areas and Scrapping - if you're gonna stick to building your settlements the old-fashioned way, apply this mod liberally. You can VASTLY improve your settlements with this mod. No more vines!!
- M60 Light Machine Gun - a light machine gun firing .308 ammo, conveniently providing one for you in the Root Cellar of Sanctuary. If you acquire a Neverending legendary weapon mod, slap one on this thing, craft up 5000 .308 rounds for it and LOAD UP. You will giggle gleefully as you mow down EVERYTHING.
- .45-70 Ranger Sequoia = converts any .44 Magnum you loot / buy into this awesome smokewagon. You'll probably want to ensure you have a large supply of .45-70 ammo saved up before using your gold star-engraved Dragoon.
Wow, I thought Tacticslion had some long posts! You win sir! Sounds fun!
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The "list" coding seems to have changed from its former bullet point format. I'm not sure what to do about that going forward.
Glad to see you/everyone again, Cap'n Yesterday. Your innumerable threads detailing your foolishness, mayhem and violence in New Vegas and the Commonwealth inspired this thread. :)
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31 Oct - 4 Nov 2287 is spent cleaning up Hangman's Alley and gearing up. The 10mm sidearm from Vault 111 is rebuilt for .500 Magnum rounds. 9 shots per magazine instead of 12 in trade for much greater stopping power.
My go-to longarm in the Wastelands is a .38 automatic pipe rifle. A second one is in queue chambered in 5.56mm. Either version is fitted with a 48-round drum magazine. Both are remarkably effective in the right hands.
Lastly a blackened serrated combat knife completes the primary weapon kit. Ideal for "Sandman" and kidney stabbing.
Field requisitions have provided a small stockpile of Molotov cocktails. Twenty throwing knives are sheathed ... well, everywhere. Usually I can retrieve them afterwards.
The local villains are starting to show up with 14.5mm Chinese anti-tank rifles. One charming gent was packing one during his small gang's bait-n-kill operation in a hardware store a few blocks away from the baseball stadium.
That makes six or seven of them I've recovered already. Was there a Chinese-supported Communist uprising planned in Boston before the atomic bombs dropped?
Clearing out the local riff-raff takes Valkyrie into the 5th of November. Hopefully I'll cobble together my personal response to the Chinese hardware over the next several days.
In the meanwhile Valkyrie's logic and objectives are roughly as follows:
1. Nate's killer, should he still breathe, is unlikely to be holed up somewhere "civilized". This puts the "wretched hives of scum and villainy" at the top of her hit list. The "civilized settlements" - such as they are in this post-atomic wasteland - are unlikely to appeal to such a person in the long-term.
2. Shaun is presumed dead until proven otherwise. Kidnapped as an infant with no idea as to how long ago, she mourns the loss of her baby.
3. Hangman's Alley - a moniker no doubt earned from the pair of decapitated corpses dangling from chains just outside of it's western entrance - is a defensible location just a few blocks from the baseball stadium on the western outskirts of Boston.
Valkyrie establishes basic crafting and shelter behind the two lockable doors. Defenses are represented by way of having converted four of the 'field requisitioned' 14.5mm Chinese AMR's into self-defense turrets, two overlooking each entrance.
An optimized water pump capping off a fresh well provides potable water from far enough down that any radiation will have naturally leeched out of the ground by the time the water trickles down to that depth. For now food is easily scrounged and cooked. If necessary many critters and much of the local flora is edible.
Except bugs, Valkyrie adamantly refuses to eat bugs. Mirelurks are not bugs, they are a form of seafood and thus tasty to her pre-War palate.
When the autocannon turrets pick up on intruders the thunderous fire of one, let alone two or more of these turrets can be heard for at least four blocks. Hangman's Alley will become Hamburger Alley for anyone foolish enough to attempt to breach her sanctum wastelandium. The fragmentation mines placed about either entrance add dismemberments to injuries for anyone stupid enough to approach so closely.
4. For now she plans to scour the western side of the Commonwealth out to the entrance into Nuka-World's tram south down to the edge of the Glowing Sea before returning to sweep west to east from the eastern shore of the Misty Lake until she reaches the ocean before turning back in a rough grid pattern.
Settlements of non-scumbags will be avoided. Scumbags will be eradicated. Who knows, maybe some of the 'tourist traps' that were around pre-War weren't incinerated in atomic fire.
Most likely they're infested with mutated monstrosities that need to be killed with extreme prejudice.
[/i]5th-18th November, 2287[/i]
Takes this long to work down to the edge of the Glowing Sea, "mark" the particular locations / clear them out (as applicable) before arriving at the Mayoral Shelter.
This is especially important in this playthrough due to how acquisition of the Sims Settlements materials is structured. The two primary acquisition spots for them are in the Museum in Concord ... or here at the Shelter.
Once the Shelter is cleared out there shouldn't be too much left on the western parts of the map north of the Glowing Sea. Presuming this remains true the path will lead north - avoiding Concord - until the Prototype Sentry Bot is relieved of its mini-nuke before bearing easterly.
Ordinarily claiming Sunshine Co-op and the Starlight Drive-In are no-brainers. Sunshine is out of the way. Starlight is more centrally located so it will be claimed, cleaned up and used as the initial staging point for the easterly forays away from Sanctuary Hills. It will be a very simple set-up for current needs: a safe, dry place to sleep and a water supply are all that is really required. A sprinkling of turrets should prove sufficient for the time being. Which model depends ... those lovely converted 14.5mm autocannons are absolute monsters, but they cost 1500 caps in addition to the mats for the turret itself. Each, plus you need a fusebox to power each one or the equivalent. On the upside, 40 defense apiece is NICE.
23rd October 2077
'Nora' (Valkyrie) wakes quietly from the disturbing dream. Showers, does her hair up in her preferred ponytail, a dollop of rum in the morning coffee accompanying a few Grey Tortoise cigarettes.
Deja vu ... right up to the same point that atomic weapon strikes disturb the newscaster; Nate grabs Shaun as we evacuate to Vault 111; the betrayal of cryogenic stasis; Nate's murder and Shaun's abduction; awakening who knows how much later.
23rd October 2287 ... supposedly
Hoping that "this time" is somehow less nightmarish ... that notion is put to bed swiftly. A lone green-skinned giant of a man attempts to ambush her crossing the bridge out of Sanctuary Hills.
Missile fire is unmistakable. As it turns out, a farm built into the base of a old power transmission line tower is under assault by brigands, several of whom are wearing crude jury-rigged power armor and pummeling the family with missiles and an M-79 grenade launcher. They don't slaughter the mutant cow. Their cat, Maisy, is not so lucky. Seeing them obliterate the poor cat as she crests the hill results in Valkyrie's ATS onlining: full cranial evacuations via 5.7mm armor-piercing rounds quickly annihilate the cat murdering bastards.
Valkyrie wordlessly scoops up ammunition, stimpaks and a few bits of useful armor before turning away to let them grieve their loss in peace.
Mods Used:
1 - UF04P et al.
2 - What Should Have Been
3 - Cheat Terminal
4 - Locksmith
5 - Timescale and Other Tweaks
6 - UCO/USO et al.
7 - Armorsmith Extended
8 - Fuseboxes for All
9 - True Storms: Wasteland Edition
10 N7 Pipboy
11 Sim Settlements et al (less the contest winners)
12 Ponytail Hairstyles
13 Female Nanosuit
14 Improved Perks
15 Loot Detector
16 Traits and More Perks
17 Improved Perks
18 Brutal Melee Perks
19 Toughness Plus
20 Captain Cosmos changes
21 Workshop Player Bed
22 Finch Farm + Greygarden Overpass Lifts
23 Grenade Expansion Pack 2
24 Girly Animation
25 Creative Clutter
26 Vai's Eye Texture
27 Legendary Mod Additions
28 TCE (the Companions Enhanced)
29 Simple Flight Ring
30 1st Person Animation Tweaks
31 Everyone's War: Female Combat Veteran
32 Roving War Parties, Raiding Parties {source of randomized mayhem and such - why Maisy got wasted by raider scum 15 minutes after leaving Vault 111}
33 FN Five-Seven {my new sidearm, very very nice}
34 Improved Power Switches {may or may not leave in}
#32 seems have seriously spiced things up. Instead of two bloodbugs near the radioactive APC in the river SW of Sanctuary, there was a veritable swarm of 'em. A small Raider base was set up on the hill W of the Ranger Cabin, complete with a few machine gun turrets.
I'm not regretting this decision so far. ;)
#32 correction: this mod is "Roving War Parties, Raiding Packs and Hordes".
Just up the hill from the aforementioned Raider fort is a Gunner fort, complete with a note pertaining to the Sole Survivor (you/Valkyrie). They're all packing lasers. o.O
As a side effect of #32 after my last post I followed the sound of gunfire around Misty Lake to Red Rocket. Raiders were attempting to murderize Dogmeat (he'd already killed one of the two). So now I have Dogmeat.
I hate seeing Dogmeat get hurt or "killed". It's why I don't like him as a companion: the sounds really bother me.
As a result I'm going to grab the best "Immortal God Dog" mod I can find, slap in some damage immunity-modded doggie armor and take over Red Rocket. One of the items in the UCO set is a series of 'disguises' for Dogmeat. One of them should make him an aspiring Dire Wolf or something. Tack on doggie armor bits for damage immunity and the would-be Raiders will cower or flee from him. I don't think he can wear a ring ... but if he can I'm grabbing one of those stupidly OP ring mods to give to Dogmeat so that he is the terror of Red Rocket.
Remember boys and girls, Padded chest armor mod and a Dense armor mod on the lightest non-chest piece you have = 75% reduction of explosion damage. They don't stack with themselves / more than once each, so grab 'em ASAP.
As a bit of backstory elaboration I figure Valkyrie is not the project's actual name. Rather, the subjects of same were named in alphabetical order starting with A. Valkyrie is the 22nd one. The previous 21 died for varying reasons. Wesker, the 23rd - and a blatant nod to Resident Evil for Style Reasons - was the last known project subject. Valkyrie doesn't know his fate. She does hope he was fried like a sunny-side up egg 210 years ago.
As a side note on the FN57 mod is that it adds a working replacement for the Pip-Boy light in an under-barrel mounted light (choice of regular, blue or bright). Its base magazine size of 20 doesn't hurt either.
0600 hours, 27th October 2287
After the past four days of sweep-n-clear in and around Misty Lake/Sanctuary Hills/Red Rocket it is time to move on towards the northern edge of the Commonwealth, thence east to the coast.
A behemoth with several super mutants in tow can be heard trundling down the road towards the Red Rocket having come around the Misty Lake.
The poor bastards never got to tango with the HMG turrets I have on the perimeter of the roof.
For those who are interested: Dogmeat now has 120% damage reduction against "attacks by most creatures". Failing that he has a bit over 36k damage, energy and radiation resistances. No one's killing that German Shepherd easily anytime soon!
1 Nov 2287 - supposedly
Minutes before 6 a.m. it is time to set out towards the Ranger Cabin, then Wicked Shipping, then south until the Mayoral Shelter is cracked open. I made it as far east as the irradiated lake before recurring fog and thunderstorms drove me back west.
Valkyrie's Journal, Day 8
"If my suspicions are correct, Vault-Tec may be responsible for conducting experiments upon us while in cryogenic stasis, as if everyone so entrapped is undertaking a variety of different roles in a series of training simulations across all manner of geography and various stipulated times 'after the bombs fell'.
"Far too many objects survive anywhere close to the 200+ years supposed to have passed in this simulation. Paper goods and preserved foodstuffs especially are indicative of this being a simulation while in stasis to both preserve the subject's sanity - perhaps while 'thawing' during the actual time we are awakening? - and obtain vast quantities of data for their experiments.
"Proceeding as if this remains truly life-and-death is currently the only way forward. On the other hand those who possess some fundamental ability to program are able to do so within the simulation to vastly enhance their abilities. Doing so is in our own best interest.
"Perhaps 'someday' in here I shall encounter one of my neighbor's minds - should they still be sane. I suspect that those who die in here become mental vegetables should their mental fortitude and/or dreaming capabilities prove ... insufficient."
Valkyrie's Journal, Day 13: '5 Nov 2287'
"The day lasts too long for this time of year. Sometimes the night sky is so clear you can see the moon and stars, so very many stars. It should be pitch black by 1700 hours. Instead it only hits dusk, every day, at the same exact time.
"I clear out the Mayor's doomed shelter, acquiring some sensors and software specifically engineered for resettlement of the Commonwealth. While I was in there two squads of humanoid robots with speech capability attempted to hunt me down for reasons yet unknown.
"Too bad for them they ran afoul of my habit of covering my trail with whatever mines I have available. Only one survived on my way back out - it was caught unawares and a single bullet put it down.
"They seem to have some form of communication with a master system elsewhere. One capable of penetrating deep underground into atomic-shielded structures several stories deep such as the Mayor's shelter.
"An interesting technological series of developments by parties unknown. One said something about "the finest sensors" before it too stepped on a fragmentation mine.
"In my opinion this has several applications, depending upon the radiation sensitivity of the subcomponent electronic systems. First and the most obvious is performing various labors and tasks in highly radioactive and similarly hazardous environments. Underwater, inside atomic reactors, mining et al. Proper decontamination equipment and procedures would reliably ensure little or no threat to the technicians maintaining and repairing the robots.
"The second application would be military. Instead of soldiers requiring food, rest, water and morale upkeep these robots would be optimal for utilization of surplus power armor. Specifically the older T-45 through T-51b models, reserving the T-60 units for human use while simultaneously depleting the massive stockpiles of antiquated hardware, permitting production to focus exclusively on the T-60 and any descendant units afterwards.
"The third application is the most insidious and by far the least likely if my understanding of pre-war programming is anything to go by. This 'third application' is of course the infiltration and termination of Communists. The degree of sophistication in artificial intelligence and certain hybridizations of materials sciences would rival or exceed those that produced myself and Wesker.
"If developed to its potential conclusion and unleashed into this world with the kind of amorality displayed by Vault-Tec's own example of Vault 111 the entirety of sentient life on what remains of Earth would be imperiled. Following certain types of logic will ascertain that the most efficient means of protecting people from the world presented in this scenario is extermination.
"Unless the 'machine people' themselves autonomously develop a human-compatible sense of ethics and culture, or can be guided so as to do so, the inevitable result is our own extinction."
Valkyrie's Journal
Day 20 '12 Nov 2287'
"Entered what I thought was an improvised underground shelter by way of a heavily overgrown sewer entrance in the middle of nowhere on the 12th. Turns out to have been an emergency shelter/back exit from the Defense Intelligence Agency's Commonwealth branch office. A few radscorpions had burrowed into the back exit area and laid waste to a half-dozen or so people. There were a few more 'robot people' in the DIA area proper. Of special note is a secure bank vault with a terminal that is password-exclusive.
"In the process I found some very interesting information. Including confirmation regarding Chinese stealth technology. I'd informed my previous superiors regarding the finished 'Hei Gui' stealth suits at the end of Operation Shaved Bear in 2271-2272.
"The successful deployment of Chinese cloaking to vehicles and vessels took longer than the Chinese government wanted thanks to Shaved Bear. Not long enough as it turns out."
=======================================
The weather definitely has its effects, adding some ambience and must be taken into consideration as regards one's plans for a given in-game day.
Valkyrie liberated Clint and his daughter Charlie from beneath a crumbling bridge swarming with Gunner scum.
It's been so long since I went into the Iron Works that I'd completely forgotten about the Forged and their unfortunate connection to Finch Farm. Fortunately I'd already arranged for the Finches to have installed an elevator via mod.
So I built up the Farm's ground level and overpass defenses as a consequence since, without asking, they became my first occupied settlement as a result of completing a quest chain. *le sigh*
OTOH, the other settlements (Red Rocket, Zimonja, Sunshine Tidings Co-Op, Starlight Drive-In) were liberated without issue. Some I plopped down a well and slathered on the HMG turrets (Red Rocket), some just some turrets, sleeping bag and fast travel mat (Zimonja since it has a well; Starlight out of habit); some do not/will not get anything but a travel mat and sleeping bag (Sunshine Tidings).
Eventually I'll use Sim Settlements to set up shop in almost all of the settlements. I have a Noir Condo to claim along with 2 other CC homes. There's a mod with several more player homes I've been eyeballing as they may feature complimentary placements across the Commonwealth (instead of all three being jammed into eastern Boston/Cambridge which is redundant as all get out).
I have plugged in and swapped out a few mods during the course of this game.
There are a few different "optics" mods out there. For me the best one is part of the X-92 Nanosuit mod. These puppies only count as eyeglasses, can be set to activate automatically (such as when you ready a weapon) or manually, have adjustable intensities of low-light and/or thermal vision and a few different skins. They also work with the AKWF (armor keywords framework) mod so you can modify them beyond their basic functionality, perks and materials permitting.
The latest is called Makeshift Homes. This adds 5 player homes, none with a settlement workshop but of the five I've claimed 3. 2 of the 3 have the five standard crafting stations in them, one or two sleeping spots, doors that the Locksmith mod can lock for you and oodles of both atmosphere and ammo/junk.
I claimed the Red Rocket Garage first, located between Walden Pond to the north and Arcjet Systems to the south. It's as close as can be obtained IIRC to the garage depicted in the trailer/warm-up video for the game. There is the in-world garage with a bed, power armor, weapons workstation and gobs of stuff including a wall safe and other stuff. The laser musket outside with the airplane chairs can be yoinked. The interior has the armor, chem and cooking stations, a sleeping bag and tons of goodies. There are 2 Diamond City radios to keep you up to speed.
Second one claimed is the Crypt at Wildwood Cemetery. It's small but has the essentials (excepting the cooking station I think) and comes with a coffin - with teddy bear - for you to sleep in. Locksmith will lock the mausoleum door for you to ensure ghouls or raiders do not disturb your rest.
The third one claimed is the Water Tower between Dunwich Borers to the north and Hub City Auto Wreckers to the south. It's access hatch is lockable via Locksmith, has all five crafting stations and a bed plus the usual plethora of ammo, aid items and junk. The exterior weather is reflected according to what it was when you entered. When I woke the rad storm seemed to still be ongoing, but upon emerging it had cleared, the day bright and sunny.
I've not gotten to the last two, but my understandings of them are as follows:
#4 is a Bookstore on the western edge of the map in Natick just south of the Natick PD. Very convenient for forays into the Glowing Sea when you just don't want to deal with whatever settlements you have going in that general vicinity. Or if, like me most often, you've simply gotten tired of dealing with non-automated settlements by the time you're in that general vicinity of the map.
#5 is a Diner on the east side of Boston south of the Shamrock Taphouse, east of the Harbormaster Hotel. Sadly, as a player home rather than a settlement, one cannot snag Buddy and stash him there (or in any player home) without using console commands to summon him forth ... and even then it might not work.
'What Should Have Been' includes a craftable item called a Peltier Cooler that is a bit of a pain to make. However, in turn one can be used to transform as many as 25 Nuka Cherries, Nuka-Colas or Nuka-Cola Quantums into their Ice Cold variants.
Buddy remains the premier - and so far only - refrigerator in the entire Commonwealth. I usually fast travel where I want him (after liberating him from his storage spot), then use console commands to summon him there. I think there is a mod that will make Buddy unkillable and essential - if so, measures must be taken to protect what, to most folk, is the 2nd or 3rd most valuable resource in the Commonwealth.
Ice cold beer and sodas.
My thought process at present is to pick one of the Commonwealth settlements as 'mine' primarily basing out of the soon-to-be 8 player homes not counting Home Plate (which will make it 9 total player homes). Sim Settlements will handle the rest.
Given the placement of these 8/9 player homes, I'm only really lacking a southern-zoned locale. The Red Rocket Garage mostly handles the NW area. The Bookstore handles the SW area. The Diner and 3 CC homes easily handle the eastern part of Boston. The Water Tower handles the N and NE areas. Sim Settlements I *believe* incorporates a "my bed" section in each settlement. Pretty sure I'll be generally well covered once all is said and done.
Maybe I should re-integrate the Quantum storage mod which should interlink *all* of the affiliated workbenches into a single resource pool, although that's a bit much even for me.
The salvage beacons mod is keeping in-flavor as far as hauling off large piles of junk since it summons your settlers forth to fetch the stash you attach the beacon to. Distance to settlement determines how long retrieval takes, and I'm not sure it will be so smart with the War Parties-Raider Gangs-Hordes mod.
Hangman's Alley *before* this last mod already attracts an unwholesome quantity of attention near the western entrance. I'm guessing it is simply that particular area is a natural traffic zone, moreso once you have supply lines running through.
I suggest assaultrons as ones supply line bots. They shouldn't leave their pack brahmin behind the way that sentry bots and robobrains do, and you can make them pretty tough against most of the critters in the game.
Thoughts?
Valkyrie's Journal
Day 33 | 24th November, 2287
"Happy Thanksgiving, from my water tower home. I miss you both, Nate and Shaun. I am thankful to be alive and eating well. A warm can of pork-n-beans, hot Blamco mac-n-cheese and a pair of bottles of purified water are a luxurious treat these days.
"The hunt for Nate's murderer and his lackeys continues tomorrow, weather permitting.
"The hunt for a proper refrigerator also continues, although my suspicion is that freon will be the challenge to overcome. I have some schematics describing a 'Peltier Cooler' which I'll take a look at after Thanksgiving supper. They're nothing compared to proper refrigeration. It amazes me that the post-War survivors have been able to keep nuclear reactors, energy weapons and power armor up and running, even repairing them to very nearly factor spec, yet not a soul in all of the Commonwealth has figured out refrigeration!
"Dogmeat is safe and sound at the Red Rocket Truck Stop just outside of Sanctuary Hills. Nothing has attempted to sack it since the morning of the 17th when a pack of assorted zombies - the locals call them ghouls, honoring Romero's films I suppose - shambled into firing range of the roadside turret array.
"With growing access to safe shelters the 'cleansing' continues at an increasing pace. Found an interesting oversized sacrificial knife within the bowels of a flooded mine shaft in Dunwich Borers.
"Also made my way into the heart of the Commonwealth Raiders' den, a floating compilation of trash barges and wreckage hammered together into some semblance of a multi-storied dwelling locally known as 'Libertalia'. I recovered the journal of someone who fled this 'Institute' in order to join 'the Railroad' that had stashed some prototype body armor in a safe atop a local cannery not too far from this water tower. The armor itself is pretty crap ... but the optics system, now, is a marvel. The thermal vision alone will be incredibly valuable.
"Ironically, the man who found and established this pigsty did so about 5 years ago after leaving some local group calling themselves 'the Minutemen'.
"Which explains the contraption of a laser weapon I found at the Red Rocket garage north of Arcjet. Not really to my taste since it takes unconscionably long to crank up to a combat charge. Mute testimony as to its lack of effectiveness is plainly spoken by how no one else I've encountered that wasn't already deceased uses them. I imagine that as an opening shot from a good distance a multiple-charged crank version would be acceptable, even if a bit on the heavy side for most people to carry as an additional longarm."
==================================================================
I am saving Drumlin Diner and if at all possible the return to Sanctuary Hills proper until after I complete the Main Quest. This leaves either siding with the Institute, the Brotherhood or the Railroad. I'd like to see Codsworth's supposed unique dialog if you do so before seeing him for the first time.
*OOC*
Alrighty, so some of my mods started arguing with each other resulting in repeated CTD's.
I did a complete sweep of the mods, culled out the undesirables and picked up a few new useful mods.
Along the way I came across "Fallout 4-76", which in a nutshell is a "turn this mod on in your Pipboy to make the Commonwealth an uninhabited Hell. Feral or gen 1 / gen 2 synth hordes optional".
Needless to say, this intrigued me. Since FO4 has never properly been amended beyond two functional endings (Nuke the Institute, pick 1 of 3 flavors | Take Over the Institute, almost everyone else hates you), the idea connects with some of the Sole Survivor's dialog while making their way out of Vault 111.
Specifically that the Sole Survivor is at least somewhat aware that they do not really know how long it has been since the mystery man blew away their spouse and helped kidnap their kid. For our protagonist it's only been a minute or two plus evac time. Knowing that they were in cryo stasis, however, slams home that they simply do not know what or who is outside.
Deathclaws, zombies and bugs, oh my.
Structural mods include UFO4P, UCO, USO, AWKCR and compatibility patches, Armorsmith Extended v3.02, Creative Clutter, What Should Have Been, Workshop Player Beds, Locksmith and True Storms: Wasteland Edition (along with a few minor armor/weapon mods).
Fallout 4-76 of course, along with NEBAS as the settlement 'tool of choice'. Options I chose were no vendors, ferals replacing humans and no rescued settlers.
Fixpacks for the Nuka Cafe, Horse PA, Hellfire PA and AMR CC content that I can't disable for some reason. Power Armor is going to be of far less value in this playthrough ...
Makeshift Homes, 'cause they're player homes that are reasonably distributed across the map and they're pretty cool.
Useful stuff: FN Five-Seven (pistol, defaults to 10mm ammo) and Defense Gun (longarm, uses .45 ammo after modifications). Black Proto Vault Suit is a smexy-as-Hell vault suit that Me Am Want. Wearable Holotags are cool little bits of bling. West Tek Tactical Optics for some worthwhile eyeglasses-slot gear.
Anyone Can Fill a Bottle!, Simple Camping 2.0 and The Mobile Mechanic combine such that extended field operations away from a home/settlement should be quite a bit easier.
I did piddle around yet again on Survival difficulty. Until such time as someone imports 76's implementation into FO4, I just can't deal with FO4's Survival mode.
Tell you this much about 4-76: have you ever seen Mirelurks run from a fight? They did in here, poor crab-monster was scurrying as fast as it could away from a feral ghoul horde bent on cracking it open ... The zombies can and will attempt to kill anything and everything, maybe excepting Deathclaws. Maybe.
I don't know what you do outside of here, but I love your writing! I don't know s%%@ about technology beyond basic functionality, but you make me want to learn.
I don't know what you do outside of here, but I love your writing! I don't know s#~! about technology beyond basic functionality, but you make me want to learn.
I know just enough about 'puters to get into a lot of trouble if I don't mind by P's and Q's.
*OOC continues*
I'm sticking my toes in on 4-76, just hit level 15 and Automatron triggered.
What I've been doing is steadily acquiring the vanilla settlements in the Commonwealth and building a pillbox of sorts around each workshop access point. Since I'm not running on Survival, I slap the fast travel mat inside of the pillbox.
Inside the pillbox is a "my sleeping bag", a bed for Dogmeat (sometimes), a Creative Clutter pair of compact crafting tables (compact access to armor, chemicals, cooking and weapons crafting), one water pump (for ready access to purified water to fill all of those empty bottles littering the Commonwealth), enough light to see by and generally an upper floor/roof of some sort festooned with about a half-dozen MG or HMG turrets.
Sanctuary Hills hosts Codsworth and Dogmeat.
I've acquired and pillbox'd Vault 111 (pillbox on the outside workshop), Sanctuary (pillbox enclosing the garage on the yellow house across from the Sole Survivor's), Red Rocket Truck Stop (pillbox on the garage door side w/ Locksmith applied to the adjacent door - leaves only one accessible door; intruders face an interior turret once they make it past all of the turrets on the roof) and Starlight Drive-In (pillbox squatting atop the workshop shed).
So far it's been interesting. I'm curious about the Mechanist/Automatron DLC. By all rights she should be a zombie and the robots permanently running amok. The mod author may not have gotten around to dealing with that yet. They seem to have made access to N-W and Far Harbor easy, so I'm not sure how Automatron's person-driven quests will work when the Mechanist should be deader than fried chicken.
Fingers crossed!
Edit: the portable workshop mod is a gem. Do not use it to scrap stolen items or the game will lock up like a hold monster victim.
The simple camping mod is also pretty nifty, although I've only used it once so far. It's not nearly as space-efficient as portable workshop is, but the simple camping mod provides access to a water pump and the vanilla crafting stations for virtually no weight. I prefer the feel of the portable workshop mod, but they pair well together from what I'm seeing so far.
(edit #2)
Inspiration!
1.) Combine Simple Camping with Portable Workshop. Asides from the items I want from the Armorsmithing, Weaponsmithing and Ammo Crafting workbenches [most of which I don't really need - the UCO pack on Large adds 40 carry weight!], everything one needs can be handled by the aforementioned pair of mods (except maybe on Survival mode re: bedding). Since 4-76 basically hands you Sanctuary when you do what I did (new game start) might as well run across the bridge, grab Dogmeat, bring him back, set up his puppy house next to Codsworth and leave the two of 'em to do their thing forever. Without food or water to draw in the zombie hordes, they should be safe.
2.) Automatron has me a bit concerned in 4-76 given its person-driven nature. I've not found in the mod notes where the Mechanist has been addressed at all despite that they should be deader than fried chicken.
3.) Creation Club content - specifically the "Black Devil" power armor, Solar Cannon and Anti-Material Rifle - are also person-driven. Guess there might be a few survivors in this much more dangerous post-atomic-annihilation Commonwealth after all ...
*OOC Episode 37.5*
I've settled on desired mods and have saved a "branch save" in the Sanctuary bomb shelter.
"A" for apocalypse is where I'll take Valkyrie first. Emerge, fire up the weather and the End Times and go from there.
"B" for banal is if the 4-76 mod ends up making things stupider than it should, sparing myself the doldrums of picking up where the game started. This one would be to avoid Codsworth and Dogmeat at all costs, yadda yadda yadda.
See everyone in the apocalypse!
*OOC Return of the Waffle King*
The implications of 4-76 are rather terrifying. I've been test-driving it since yesterday afternoon and I can tell that certain locations - such as most of Boston sans maybe Goodneighbor - are going to be zombie-infested Hellholes. I burned through 500 rounds of .38 ammo mowing down the waves of zombies in the mutant fern place on the western outskirts as a 9th level character.
BTW, the one thing I generally hate about leveling in FO4 is that the level scaling - to me - seems to jump the enemies up to top shelf too fast.
Such as a legendary [something] deathclaw that popped out of the Concord sewers after I mowed down the 30 or so zombies prowling the streets of Concord in a pack.
Granted, the reason I'm at single-digit levels still is deliberate: the Gifted Trait (+2 all SPECIAL; 1/2 XP gain) applied during the opening scene (the mod adds in a terminal you can use before checking on Shaun in his crib after he starts crying).
After some thought, if one is going to play 4-76 from the get go, one should see about uninstalling Automatron. The Mechanist would be a feral ghoul (zombie)/not there at all/ replaced by a gen-1 or gen-2 synth and thus unable to implement her plans. The mod's author has made it clear that they are not going to do anything about it in-mod, so if one wants a zombie-infested / synth-infested / uninhabited wasteland via 4-76, do uninstall Automatron early. Which kinda sucks in a way because robots are the primary alternative to the fragile, squishy people that the atomic zombie apocalypse gets rid of.
The one thing about Creation Club content that I detest: one cannot uninstall it as far as I can tell. Ugh.
Update: Prior to Finally Getting Valkyrie Started
The good news about Fallout 4-76 is that it does as advertised: removes virtually everything human, including non-feral ghouls, and replaces them as you see fit when setting it up. I didn't explore enough to see what it does with super-mutants, although I believe that it *might* have ripped them out too once you close within the requisite range for the mod to perform the removal.
The bad news is that it doesn't mop up non-human quest givers that depend on human targets or interaction to function, such as Whitechapel Charlie in Goodneighbor. Nor does it remove [Steal] tags from items that will no longer have an owner post-annihilation.
Which is a shame, really, as I was enjoying the post-atomic zombie apocalypse.
For Valkyrie's no-seriously-actually-playing-this-now game I am using the following mods:
I would require someone walking me through dealing with Nexus Mod Manager to grok it or I'd use them since they have some mods I would LOVE to get. Bethesda.net does the job well enough for me.
Base Game Functionality: UFO4P; USO Base Game; AWKCR; What Should Have Been; Loot Detector; Locksmith; Time Scale & Global Tweaks; USO AWKCR Patch; UCO Base Game; UCO Season Pass (Add-on); Armorsmith Extended v3.02; Improved Minutemen Artillery; Any Armor on Any Clothes; Anyone Can Fill a Bottle!; TCE (companion enhancements, previously mentioned).
Also SKK's Kill XP mod which let's you tailor your game xp awards and difficulties very tightly. I plan to use this to keep in-game xp awards to kills-only plus trivial amounts from quests, exploration and especially crafting/settlement construction.
Environmental: True Storms: Wasteland Edition; 80's Mix 1 & 2 (radio stations)
Settlement Stuff Sim Settlements 3-in-1 plus Mega Pack Year 1 plus Wasteland Ventures 1 and 2; Fuseboxes for All; Pre- and Post-War Sanctuary; Creative Clutter (for the fridges ... yeah, that's the ticket); Workshop Player Bed.
Player Homes Creation Club's Nuka Cafe w/ Fixpack: Nuka-Cola Cafe mod; Chester Condo [it's right in front of the USS Constitution]; Noir Condo.
Player Improvements & Perks Vai's Eye Texture Pack; Ponytail Hairstyles by Azar 2.5; Girly Animations; Improved Perks; Toughness Plus; Traits and More Perks; Everyone's War: Female Combat Veteran.
Gear Related: GKX Better Destruction through Science; Danse's Wearable Holotags; Black Proto Vault Suit; N7 Pipboy (matches the proto suit nicely); FN Five-Seven (replacing the chunky vanilla 10mm in Valkyrie's arsenal); West Tek Tactical Optics; Simple Camping 2.0; The Mobile Mechanic - Portable Workshop.
Creation Club-specific: AMR Buff; Fixpack: Horse PA; Fixpack: Hellfire PA.
Cheat/OP Mod recommended: Cheat Terminal. Why? It can solve many instances of the stupid on the game engine's part, such as companions getting lost and much more.
Cheat/OP Mods recommended for entertainment value: Ballistic Weave p10 (for Dogmeat, as previously explained); Brutal Melee Perks; Jet Pack/No Falling Damage Perk (it is in a Commonwealth location that is usually challenging nor is their a quest for it, so it is one of those you have to earn); Legendary Mod Additions; Nanotech Industries; Stronger Dogmeat; TS Super Soldier; Wedding Rings++; The Black Tower Project.
For the sake of one's sanity when using these cheat/OP mods I strongly recommend consoling player.modav charisma and intelligence to -## the amounts of CHA and INT that these things strap onto your CHA and INT above 10 or you'll find yourself with more settlers and XP than you want to deal with. Especially INT, as the xp multiplier without using other tools to adjust your xp gain will shoot your character levels so stratospherically high so fast that you'll be using crappy pipe weapons and running out of ammo long before you really should.
I have the SKK Fallout 4-76 mod disabled for now.
I may elect to utilize it later on for the giggles. Maybe as part of a GECK in the Commonwealth or something, if there is one. This last might pair well with the "greener Commonwealth" mod that looks pretty nifty. Thoughts?
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23 Oct 2077
"8 days before Halloween and we still haven't gotten around to carving up some Jack-o-Lanterns. The creepy Vault-Tec rep comes around after bothering the neighbors across the street. I sign our family up for shelter in Vault 111 just up the hill from home should World War III go atomic mostly to get the stubborn roach to bugger off.
"The war's been raging for years, surely no one would be mad enough to trigger the MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) global doctrine that prevents total atomic annihilation?
"Breakfast, coffee with a spike of rum to warm the belly and a drag on a Grey Tortoise cigarette before small talk with Nate. Codsworth, our new Mr. Handy robot, is adapting quite well to household service.
"I think Codsworth will look pretty snazzy in a bowler hat.
"The newly developed suburb of Sanctuary Hills features thirteen homes. Some with carports, some without. All feature generously sized yards fenced in still-fresh-smelling white painted picket fencing.
"We're far better off than most Americans. Everything is expensive. Dollars stagger under the crushing effects of steadily increasing inflation. What a hundred bucks gets you now is about what ten bucks used to get after the resource rioting was finally put down. A black market in Nuka-Cola bottlecaps has sprung up because they're real, not paper greenbacks. The various Cola flavors are coming into vogue among the teenage crowd as various denominations.
"The dog's been missing for a while the stubborn beast. Cats don't do that if they like you. Maybe I should get a cat? Nate's been insisting on waiting for the pooch to return despite insisting on calling him Dogmeat.
"I love my husband, but Dogmeat? Dogmeat?! That's begging the universe to eat him. It's about the same thing as naming your cat Sausage or your pygmy pig Bacon. They're going to get eaten.
"Then the unthinkable happens. New York and Philadelphia are the first cities publicly acknowledged as first struck by atomic weapons. Boston is confirmed as having inbound warheads within the next few minutes.
"We flee to Vault 111, just in the nick of time as in the distance an atomic mushroom cloud erupts from the vicinity of the Commonwealth Institute of Technology.
"What we are told are 'decontamination pods' are clearly cryogenic stasis pods the moment they're activated. Vault-Tec lied through their teeth to us! When I get out of th...
"I awaken, bones and flesh ache from the thawing. A man wearing a bizarre hodgepodge of armor and leather wields a .44 hand cannon escorting a woman clad in a medical environmental suit with a mirrored faceplate that somewhat muffles her voice. At least one other voice can be heard to my right as I stare in horror, helpless as they open Nate's pod.
"Nate has Shaun. Oh ... oh you sunsab+&*!es ...
"Nate refuses their demands for Shaun, so the balding man administers a .44 Magnum cranial evacuation to Nate. His female minion seizes squalling Shaun while that scarred-face balding bastard comments "At least we have the back-up" while looking into my cryopod before stasis resumes.
"Someone has a vicious sense of timing. Or Vault-Tec's technology finally gives up the ghost, releasing me coughing and spluttering onto the Vault floor. I pop Nate's cryo-pod open. It shouldn't be real, but there he is, all husband and brains and gwilch, Shaun is gone ...
"Inside my head, a cold feminine voice purrs.
"Time to get to work Valkyrie. Nate and Nora are dead. Shaun could be out there, somewhere, or be long dead himself. We have no idea how much time has passed. We. Do. Not. Have. TIME. Mourn later. Get up. Get out of this wretched vault. Get your stash out of the root cellar you helped build. Yes, that stash. Now get!"
"A dozen or so dead radiation-mutated cockroaches - some the size of dogs - get stomped, smashed and shot on my way out of Vault 111. I daren't look at the shattered husk of my former home, not now. Codsworth was probably fried by the EMP so there's no point lingering any longer than is absolutely necessary.
"Old habits and skills return very quickly. My sidearm is cleaned and serviced before checking the ammunition and topping off several magazines with the viable rounds. A Portable workbench and accessories are packed up. I use the radiation-free dirt in the shelter to blacken my face and hair, then dismantle the available fabrics into a pair of gloves and a crude 'cape' to better endure the rain and Lord knows what else.
"Internal systems diagnostics automatically run every quarter-hour. They came through the cryogenic storage just fine. Given sufficient material intake / absorbability, the theory was that I and those like me would physically survive and thrive for centuries. Our minds are another matter. We'll see I suppose.
"Am I the only one left?" "Something I said aloud inside Vault 111 comes to mind. By my count a total of three dozen distinct sets of bones and frozen cadavers are in and around the immediate vicinity of Vault 111. Someday I'll return and bury them properly.
"Until that day I have a bald scar-faced scumbag with a Magnum fetish to track down and kill. Once the necessary information is 'acquired' from him should he or his descendants still draw breath."
late Oct 2287
"When Nate and I were discussing our plans that fateful Saturday morning, his idea was to picnic up at the little park just beneath the rocks overlooking the southwestern side of Misty Lake as it became a stream bearing south. Overlooking this park is a Ranger's cabin.
"We are definitely not in Massachusetts anymore, Toto," I whisper under my breath as a pair of enormous quad-winged insects with wickedly-tipped stinging tails attack a veritable green giant and his pet green attack hound in the trees ahead of me. Wait, watch and learn, for the right moment to strike is when the enemy does not know what is about to evacuate their cranium.
"The oversized stinging dragonfly creatures are nimble, one going down with the green hound as they savage each other to death. The green giant wields an enormous piece of lumber to which a long handle has been duct-taped. The dragonfly overestimates its abilities and only scores a glancing blow along the side of the giant's head before it is pulverized into the ground. Seeing his hound slain the giant finishes off both dragonflies before turning its attention to what all of them wanted to eat: a small herd of two-headed herbivores, perhaps originally deer before the bombs fell.
"As the giant takes off running after dinner it ceases to care as I shoot it in the back of the head. I'd like to keep herbivores around my general vicinity alive, at least for a while. I'd rather not eat these disgusting giant bloatflies or dragonflies or anything else in this new world that was once a normal flying insect. These days a flyswatter involves a caliber instead of a synthetic rubber mesh at the business end of coated aluminum wire.
"A few more precious rounds dispatches several of the aforementioned disgusting bloatflies using the Park Ranger's dilapidated cabin as their lair. Inside the skeletal remains of a young woman in the tattered rags of what was once a very pretty green dress rests atop what once could only have been charitably described as a mattress on a good day.
"Next to her deathbed a yellow suitcase faded from the passage of time remains reasonably intact due to the unbreached roof of the cabin. Some sort of luminescent fungus grows on the wall above an overturned table. Inside her suitcase is a holotape, a spare dress that only somewhat smells its age and an intact package of bubblegum.
"Stashing the gum for later potential use as an adhesive I play the girl's holotape, dated 22 October 2077. The day before the bombs fell. To most listeners they'll hear the words of a teenage runaway banished from home for getting pregnant with a fella she hasn't even told yet.
"What few would recognize is the telltale hint on the holotape's casing that made me giggle inadvertently.
"Senator McCarthy V was up to his great-great-grandfather's nonsense all over again, stirring up anti-Communist paranoia against the entertainment and performing artists circles in a series of Senate committee hearings. In return the counter-protests from the younger adults and teenagers generally expressed itself in two ways.
"Coming up with their own currency via Nuka-Cola bottle caps was their first method, one that proved so effective that it, rather than dollars, survived 'total atomic annihilation' more than two centuries later.
"Almost as importantly her holotape contained over 140 studio-grade recordings of dozens of musicians across several new, and by pre-War standards lascivious genres. These groups of musicians and other performing artists grew to call themselves the Eighties to denote the decade they, perhaps naively, expected to break out into the mainstream conscious of Americans and the European Commonwealth.
"I listen to them all there in that cabin, enraptured by the daring of those determined to buck the system which for so long remained locked in an ideological global conflict that raged off and on for more than 120 years.
"One of the little details that pre-War authors often failed to mention in their fantastical post-apocalyptic soap operas and 'science fantasy' pulps is that a post-atomic age, by pre-atomic standards, is generally quiet.
We were accustomed to the constant influx of noise from all manner of sources. The distant belching and farting of factories. The bass thrum of the atomic plants in vehicles and buildings. The deep throaty buzz of the turboprop superliners as they pass overhead. The hissing-hiccuping of the Handy and Nanny robots as they flit about their duties. Stereos and televisions emitting both light and a constant susurrus of chattering babble. All of these became normal, what some used to call noise pollution.
"Here, now, that's all gone. Electrical lights are an indicator of food, shelter and probably danger. Fire and oil lights perhaps less so depending upon their source. The telltale sickening orange-green glow of still-dangerous toxic spaces can be difficult to see in sunlight, yet it is almost impossible to miss in the dark of night.
"Now, hopefully for longer than it takes me to scrounge up spare holotapes to copy these precious musical performances, a relief from that silence, even if it could be dangerous to drown it out with relatively raucous noise.
"Come and get it. I'm not giving up my music!
"A few days later I finally make my way south to Nate's 'crazy' Uncle Wayne's shack. Uncle Wayne would always dutifully attend the family gatherings at holidays. He was an excellent line order cook and soda jerk back in the day, and no one could grill up weenies and burgers better than he could. Yet he insisted on living, as he called it, "off the grid" as much as he could get away with without being arrested.
"Sure enough that power transmission tower 'crazy Uncle Wayne' was griping about at the Labor Day cookout squats *just* outside of his actual property line. Dispatching a few zombies and bloatflies I find that some enterprising souls had begun to establish a crude chemistry lab inside the place.
"Guessing they missed the ventilation system poking out of the ground in the backyard a short distance from the septic field. I find the trapdoor and clamber down into an earthen basement wherein a refrigerator, several sets of shelves, a bathtub and, surprise surprise, Uncle Wayne's workbench. A tunnel leads somewhat drunkenly further into the hillside that comprises part of the backyard. Utility lines run the length of the tunnel: clearly Uncle Wayne was able to live "off the grid" by splicing into it.
"Radiation counter hissing and sputtering I pull open that faded blue door. Ahead of me the zombified carcass of what was once 'Crazy Uncle Wayne' gnaws on some unfortunate thing that made the mistake of burrowing into this last room.
"I euthanize Crazy Uncle Wayne, quickly collect the valuable scrap in the room and, despite the radiation, read his statement of intent. Had he kept his faculties for a few more days the man would have detonated a tactical nuclear weapon barely 20 paces from his own front door."
Early November 2287
"I have inadvertently worked my way south to the northern edge of the local 'hot zone' known as the Glowing Sea wherein a zombie-infested church was as far as I made it before turning east over the past fortnight. I find myself at a terminal in the ruins of what was once Quincy.
"Creatures of note, Wile E. Coyote style:
1. 'Terribulus Mosquitoeus': the locals call them Bloodbugs. Mosquitoes so large and strong they can carry aloft livestock such as brahmin. Their proboscis is effectively a hollow harpoon, through which they are able to compress and spray their prey with blood stored in their blood sacs. Amputation of the blood sac will render this tactic ineffective. Primarily found in or close to the vicinity of bodies of irradiated water, often tepid, they have a fairly significant predation range. Recommended method of dispatching is a targeting missile launcher or other long-range explosive.
2. 'Fuglious Flyicous': the locals call them Bloatflies. Typically dog-sized flies, their primary form of attack is to expel larvae that are capable of killing unprotected targets. Typically found in small packs from 3 to 6 in number. They are distressingly nimble in flight when on the offensive, so it is best to kill them en masse from as far away as possible with incendiaries.
3. The mutated dragonflies that range in size from a large dog to as large as a destrier horse feature a venomous sting and significant aerial agility. Generally physically tougher and quite dangerous in melee combat, termination is recommended from as far a range as one can efficiently shoot them.
4. 'Two-Headicous Bovinius': mutated bovines with two heads that the locals call 'brahmin'. One of three domesticated creatures asides from cats and dogs I have encountered to date.
5. 'Self-Propelled Field Rations': mutated deer with two heads and a pair of vestigial extra forelimbs sprouting from the front of their torsos. Locally dubbed 'Radstags', although I have encountered male (antlered) stags, does and yearlings. Occasionally one of the stags contracts rabies, or has successfully adapted to a more radioactive-than-normal environment. Albino specimens have been observed. Generally docile it is recommended to avoid slaying any unless one is in dire need of food.
6. 'Uglius Puppyous': feral canines with little or no fur, these beasts are generally ravenous. Irradiated specimens have yet to be encountered, although albino specimens are often pack leaders. These are formidable should you permit one to close into melee with you.
7. 'Yao Guia': mutated bears, although so far I've only encountered what pre-War would have been ones about the size of black bears.
8. 'Jumping Kneebiters': locally, "Molerats". Disgusting creatures, they nonetheless are formidable burrowers, exceeded in this capacity only by 'radscorpions'. Molerats seem to be unable to penetrate solid rock. Tends to hunt in packs and make large mounded nests similar to beavers.
9. 'Gorram Bushwhackers': locally, "Radscorpions". These enormous mutated scorpions generally are the size of an atomic car. Phenomenally capable burrowers, I believe that they are capable of burrowing through anything short of the firmer metals.
10. The local term for these gigantic mutated lizard-chimeric creatures is "Deathclaw". They can rend most humanoids into chunky salsa in seconds, sometimes by throwing them in the air before tearing one or more limbs off, others by eating their heads. They tend to predominantly inhabit the vicinity of the Glowing Sea although younger specimens have been encountered as far north as the hippie co-op north of the rations stockpile. Have observed fights between deathclaws. Recommended method of termination is explosive dismemberment of motive appendages followed by administration of a full cranial evacuation.
11. 'Zombies', locally identified as 'feral ghouls'. Quiescent until prey is perceived, typically. Occasional packs of zombies have been observed near 'mirelurk' hatcheries patiently waiting for either hatchlings or adults to emerge.
12. Local 'Mirelurks' appear to be several different species that, if present in close enough proximity, support each other.
The common adult specimens are heavily carapaced amphibians with two pincer appendages used to bludgeon and dismember their prey. They are typically encountered in close proximity to mirelurk egg nests. They have been observed twice so far as setting up large nesting grounds inside warhouse- or boathouse structures.
A second seemingly unrelated creature - aka 'Mirelurk Hunters' - nonetheless exist in symbiosis of some from with their crab-like brethren. Faster, less armored.
A third 'Mirelurk' adult, also not easily considered related presuming that the common nesting mirelurks are the 'norm' for the species, is known as 'Mirelurk Kings'. Unique among wasteland creatures encountered thusfar is that these creatures have a sonic attack that can paralyze or stun their prey. Largest grouping encountered so far is 3.
Lastly is the infamous 'Mirelurk Queen'. An enormous creature capable of vomiting significant streams of molecular acid able to eat through most power armor plates in fairly short order.
Of the above creatures, chemical analysis indicates that domesticated animals (including radstags), bears, mirelurks and - when prepared properly - radscorpion meats are legitimately safe to eat. Eating any of the other bugs or molerats carries unconscionable risks of parasitic infestation or other viruses and diseases."
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[i]"Brigand Assessments
"The Commonwealth would seem to be overrun by humans preying on each other and anything else that attracts their interests from whatever reason. So far I have encountered 'Raiders' and 'Gunners'.
'Raiders' began some five or six years ago out of a place known as 'Libertalia'. Typically scrounge-and-jury-rigging equipped. Occasionally observed having reconstructed crudely-plated suits of power armor. Raiders are not a monolithic entity but rather a decentralized coalition of gangs. Further investigation will be required to determine how decentralized they are.
'Gunners' would be much more dangerous due to their discipline, esprit de corps and significantly improved logistics. They have a 'thing' for the pre-War U.S. Army resulting in a concerted ongoing effort on their part to, as much as possible, wear old G.I. uniforms and modern-ish combat armor to varying degrees of success. Far more technologically savvy than the Raiders due to being much more centralized.Personal observations indicate that they have access to light anti-tank rockets, Watts laser weapons and significant supplies of imported Soviet and Swedish ordnance. Strong penchant for shoring up naturally defensible terrain - such as superhighway overpasses. Symbol is a stylized white skull on an olive drab background."
Metagame blatherings:
I've used a mod to 'kill' xp gain at 25th level for reasons of 'world feel'. I did this primarily pertaining to power armor.
IMO the X-0# series should be extraordinarily rare. The T-60 and earlier series are commonly encountered, but the X-0# series become so as early as 28th level, which doesn't fit the 'lore' (to me).
The mod doesn't actually eliminate xp gain - rather I believe that it cuts it down to 1% of the awarded amount. This should suffice to keep things in terms of the 'vibe' of the game more 'grungy'.
In my opinion the game escalates everything far too quickly. Power Armor shouldn't scale nearly so fast as it does. Critters also escalate far too quickly in terms of individual capabilities. Broadly speaking, critter escalation should take three to five times as many player levels while power armor should take six or seven times as many player levels. Have the unique critters and power armors where they are and the 'fixed' critters and suits be what and where they are, but as far as randomly generated as part of an encounter/zone, those should escalate much more slowly.
By the time 28th level is acquired (625k xp, ballpark, instead of 6250 xp, if my guess on the mod's limiter is correct - increased to 1.25m xp with the effects of the Gifted trait), the game should be well on its way to concluded without having had to fight swarms of 2k hp zombies and warbands of raiders wearing full suits of X-01 power armor sporting fat boys.
Early through Mid-November 2278
"Brigand Reassessment: 'Gunners'
"There is more to them than initially assessed. I wiped out the local primary leadership in a heavily fortified GNN studio locally dubbed 'Gunner Plaza'. Primary technique was to infiltrate up the lightly guarded southwestern stairwell which completely lacked autonomous turrets and spotlights with minimal foot patrols along the roof perimeter.
"Gunners have radio communications between what they call GHQ and their assorted outposts throughout the Commonwealth. They have made substantial acquisitions of pre-Bomb armor, weaponry and other material by dedicated efforts to discover, uncover then sustain long-duration salvage operations at Army and Vault posts they believe to have worth. The fruits of these labors yield consistently wearing Army fatigues of various sorts, a mixture of Army and flight helmets and varying amounts of Army-issue combat armor of different grades and modifications. Laser weapons are almost ubiquitous. Additionally they use 10mm sidearms, longarms in a mixture of rifle calibers with occasional heavy weapons systems. GHQ's arsenal included an anti-aircraft configured man-portable missile launcher and two (2) "fat man" tactical nuclear shoulder catapults. The second-in-command fielded a prototype gauss rifle - fortunately for me, she wasn't a very good shot.
"Confirmed Vaults 75 and 95 as Gunner infested and expunged. Recurring evidence of Gunner 'tags' at several other smaller Army installations. Gunners tattoo their blood type information on their person in addition to their 'Gunner Identification'.
"Most importantly is their demonstrations of significant technical knowledge and execution. So far I have encountered two different commanders with access to field refurbished suits of T-51 series power armor. Most chillingly is their growing acumen with robotics systems, specifically the deadly assaultron series. Once they set up a sentry bot specifically to function as a form of early warning system just outside of easy firing range of the entrance into Vault 95.
"A few abandoned settlements have been claimed, although I've only set up rudimentary fabrication and repair facilities at the quiescent 'hippie commune' northeast of the tram complex leading to the Nuka-World amusement park.
"I'll have to go there someday soon, perhaps about another month or so, depending upon how long it takes to establish a series of fallback shelters throughout the Commonwealth for my use without getting killed in the process."
Day 35 - 27th November 2278
"Nate and I would probably have become as 'crazy' as Crazy Uncle Wayne if we had seen what I've seen going on in the schools of the Commonwealth. Pink paste as the only dietary option in exchange for school funding? A high school principal distributing mentats to the student body to line his pockets by way of elevating the student body's standardized test scores? Don't get me started on Vaults 75, 85 and 95.
"Vault 81 appears to have been open to the Commonwealth for some time. I've yet to go past its entryway or meet any of its inhabitants. Eavesdropping on Gunner and Raider conversations picks up the few details I do know. That they're open, that their citizens sometimes venture out into the Commonwealth, and that they do not appear to be raving nutjobs.
"Vault 88's entrance in the bowels of the Quincy Quarry has been discovered, along with two secured-from-inside exterior entry points. It will be wise to remember such entry points much like the chained-up side entrance in Hangman's Alley. Which is to say that they are best left as-is.
"I've stashed power armor frames at Sunshine Tidings and Hangman's Alley. Accidentally 'claimed' Spectacle Island when I switched on a 'sonic array' of some sort that resulted in the acquisition of vast quantities of mirelurk meat, softshell mirelurk meat, queen mirelurk meat and some other goodies. I left the generator and beacon running before swimming back across the water."
=========================================================
"Throughout my explorations there are little surviving bits, snapshots I suppose, telling tiny stories of what people were doing the day the bombs dropped or in the days, weeks or months afterwards. Telling the horrors of what most of the Vaults were truly tasked with doing on small captive populations. To what esoteric end I cannot fathom as - so far - there is little rhyme or reason as to why the vault experiments were conducted.
"Based on the bits of information that has survived these experiments often include their own 'employees'. In my opinion I think virtually all of the 'experimental vaults' indirectly includes their staff as part of that vault's experimental purpose.
"In some cases, such as my own Vault 111, it has become my belief that the inclusion of the entirety of the staff was absolutely part of the experiment. One hiding behind the overt purpose of involuntary cryogenic storage.
"What is worse in many ways has been discovering just how cruel things were before the War's End. They were not 'Raiders torturing you to death before impaling your decapitated corpse' cruel.
Rather it has been finding just how many of the people in charge valued their fellows' lives as holding little or no value. Unionising had become legally classified as sedition. Workplace protections were deteriorating in a combination of profits, resources depletion, population growth and of course World War III. By pre-Bomb apparent standards life had been deteriorating since the 2010's, although my memory of history is less than complete that far back.
"Speaking of World War III two encounters and brief assistance was provided to a new group. The first was with a Paladin Brandis, survivor and leader of a reconnaissance team that arrived in the Commonwealth about three years ago. He thinks of himself as formerly Brotherhood, unable to communicate with this group.
"The second was with the remnants of a more recent Brotherhood reconnaissance team lead by one Paladin Danse, based out of a police station in Cambridge. They've 'only' been in the Commonwealth since the beginning of the year. How the Scribe had learned of the existence of the transmitter inside of Arcjet I never uncovered, although this led to yet another violent encounter with more 'robot people'.
"Danse is an intense man driven by ideological blindness. His Scribe - a Brotherhood term for 'technician' it seems - is more cynical in her description of the Brotherhood's leadership, their methods and motives. I agree with her take on the subject.
"Danse describes what I call 'robot people' as 'synths', created by an organization dubbed 'the Institute'. These 'synths' are basically what I call them but to Danse and presumably by extension the leadership and most of the rank and file of this Brotherhood of Steel they are 'technological terrors' that, along with the Institute itself, must be extirpated.
"I could somewhat understand this if the robot people were just another type of brigand, murdering and pillaging when exercising their free will. They're robots without free will, not people, however good their programming, that can be repurposed to human benefit. What I've seen them tasked to do has not gone well for them - but it often doesn't go well for most other people of the Commonwealth be they farmer, Gunner, Raider or settler.
"Danse further expresses the Brotherhood's attitude towards ghouls - irradiated people that are for all practical purposes a second species of human as far as I can determine - and 'super mutants' (more on these large green men later) is identical: given the Brotherhood's druthers they would simply exterminate all ghouls, big green men and robot people.
"A quiet side conversation with his Scribe confirms my suspicions. The Knight is a meathead, a less capable, less intelligent and much less charismatic Danse for all practical purposes.
"Danse's offer to join his beloved Brotherhood of Steel is answered with 'I don't know'. Infiltration being my previous, previous life I dare not eliminate the prospect of gathering intelligence from within just yet.
"As far as I'm concerned the big green men locally identified as 'super mutants' are a different kind of brigand, cruel and murderous. I've liberated two women from their custody so far with both of them commenting that 'Trinity Tower' was their eventual destination. To what exact end neither of them knew ... but could guess.
"Just to listen to the big green men one wouldn't think too terribly badly of them in this environment. They have their own breed of dogs that they love. Their culture is might makes right without the cruelty one sometimes expects of it ... until you use your eyes.
"The big green men make people into bags of meat within which they store other things, including meat, bits of creatures and any shinies that capture their attention. The process required to make a single one of these bags requires two or three adult humans to make - and their lairs are often liberally festooned with these disgusting sacks. Sacks large enough and sturdy enough to double as a sea chest or very large storage trunk.
"On a side note some 'entrepreneurial' sort attempted to sell me on a credit card. Seriously, in a barter-and-bottle-cap economy he wanted to con people out of their hard-earned bottle caps for a bit of plastic that assuredly worked absolutely nowhere. I gave him his 110 caps, I got my card, then his brains exploded through the front of his head.
"Accidental firearm discharge - Note to Self: service your weapons. We can't have that happening too often in the Commonwealth."
Day 41 - 3rd December 2287
"Threat Assessment: the Children of Atom
"A religious cult based around the belief that fission is a divine act, that irradiated creatures are divine manifestations and of course complete zealotry in the forcible conversion or execution of non-believers. Up to and including feeding prisoners to irradiated pet zombies such as the zombie that previously served as the light source in the Kingsport Lighthouse.
"In other words these 'Children of Atom' are a special flavor of lunatic even by post-atomic annihilation standards. They are added to my kill on sight list alongside Gunners, Raiders, rapists, scammers, slavers and super mutants.
===================================================
"The 'robot people' so far encountered have initiated all combat encounters requiring their destruction and subsequent salvage. Their weapons are mediocre by comparison to standard military issue laser weapons while their body armor is quite good, better than combat armor of similar classification. Sadly their design aesthetics are far too distinctive for my purposes across the board.
"On the other hand they are worth quite a bit in barter as I found in the process of encounters with a trader from Vault 81 and 'Longneck' Lukowski.
"This last person exemplifies pre-War amorality as I found out the hard way his canned meats included ground up mole rat and radioactive zombie meat along with whatever else he could get his hands on. He attempted to lock me in the basement of the cannery with a bunch of zombies and radroaches. He probably would have ground me up into more canned meat if he had his druthers. A .308 aspirin took care of his headache."
====================================================
"Hester Consumer Electronics was a treasure trove of robotics. Dormant and undamaged Handy and Gutsy units, several Protectrons and an intact Sentry - along with the most valuable element of all: technical data, reams of it, including construction details that can be adapted to a post-Bomb environment. I have my Pipboy running a conversion program that should be ready in a week or so. A plan is percolating in the back of my mind."
2-1/2 minute video tour someone else did of this same player home
Days 46-48 - Wednesday 7 December - Friday 9 December 2287; 2100 hours on the 9th
"The strange radio signal I picked up upon emerging from Vault 111 eventually led me to a secure terminal in the Cambridge Law School campus. From there I followed the information to an abandoned cul-de-sac of homes. In one of these homes I found a dead 'robot person' clad in human flesh. This 'synth', for 'synth' seems appropriate to these entities, worked for the Institute as an undercover agent posing as a private detective.
"This synth, designated B-263, detailed its recent activities in the Commonwealth. Its most recent assignment led B-263's superiors to re-key their agent's home and sweep it for eavesdropping bugs.
"In the interim B-263 was expected to 'recover' or terminate, whichever it could accomplish, two 'combat specialist synths' - designated R3-11 ("Burner", a Raider affiliated with the Back Street Apparel gang) and PR-15 ("Captain Janssen", a Gunner out of Hub City Auto Wreckers). It failed to do so but its objective of terminating a Raider and a Gunner suited me just fine. Perhaps B-263's 'home' could provide further information on this Institute.
"Previously the 'robot people' used by the Institute that I've encountered were humanoid robots of human-size using human equipment.
"B-263, R3-11 and PR-15 represent my earlier theoreticals as to the potential applications for long-term infiltration of a targeted Communist community with the goal to eliminate, extract or otherwise wreak havoc among targeted enemy communications.
"The implications of these three 'synths' (synthetic people complete with distinct personalities - some would say souls) and their activities within the Commonwealth are ... severe.
"First, that the Institute uses infiltration agents like B-263 as part of this nebulous 'SRB' - 'Synth Reclamation Bureau' perhaps? - for any number of goals. From the small pieces of information I have their purpose is very similar to what I spent a career, my previous life, performing: infiltration, assassination, information warfare, electronic warfare, random acts of terror among the enemy ...
"Second it is clear from B-263's logs that there is yet another 'power group' present in the Commonwealth that the Institute very much dislikes: the 'Underground'. B-263 was tasked with locating an Underground agent dubbed "Brimstone", torturing her for all of the desired information it could extract from her, then disposing of her corpse.
"Third and most importantly is that the Institute has the capability to infiltrate and wreak havoc amongst those they 'dislike'. Which could mean anyone, everyone else, in the Commonwealth. Conducting guerilla warfare and psyops is well within these synths' capabilities. Depending on if there are better, more capable models of these things ... the Commonwealth's struggling survivors are in dire straits should the Institute decide that they need to go.
"This home is gorgeous ... my heart nearly broke after seeing such a pristine lair to claim for my own. Just upstairs from Hubris Studio, set for the Captain Cosmos project. It would have been perfect to investigate and clear out said studio and stash it right up a flight of stairs.
"I dare not do so. The Institute clearly has the ability to reclaim this location at a whim. My presumption is that they probably have audio-visual surveillance in place.
"I'll enjoy the facilities on a recreational basis, steal everything that isn't nailed down and consider other housing options instead. I have this new key now, but who knows how long it will remain truly safe for my personal use.
"Until then I'll strip it as bare as I can, booby trap it to a fare-thee-well should this 'Institute' send robots or their synth agents and visit it erratically for long, warm showers and laundry machines. It is a nightmare compared to pre-Bomb to keep clean. Just keeping the important personal bits sanitized and the stench down from burning 8 to 16 thousand calories a day takes Herculean effort out there.
"I have an important decision to make as I have four or five suits of power armor to securely store (well, will have). Here would be ideal were it not for the fact that the Institute owns this place. They let their agents use this place as they deem fit, not as their agents request. Sooner or later they'll come looking for B-263."
Days 49-63 | Saturday 10 December 2287 - Friday 23 December 2287
"More leads are pointing me towards Diamond City - what the post-Bomb survivors call Boston's 'Big Green Mile', the pre-War baseball stadium, as well as a fortified neighborhood known as 'Goodneighbor'. It is too soon to consider doing so for another six to twelve weeks. Probably another several months at a guess.
"This 'Institute' might well present the greatest threat to the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and myself. In order to defend first myself, then as many folk as possible, against their infiltration synths I need to establish a series of bases from which to operate.
"The advantage to having - by current standards - 'phenomenal' knowledge of computers and by extension robotics is that it is possible to quickly subdue hostile robots and turn them to one's service. Decryption of the command tapes at the Robotics Disposal Ground combined with the copious technical data from the hidden repository at Hester Consumer Electronics makes capture, rather than destruction, a viable modus operandi.
"Over these past couple of months a surprising number of robots in varying degrees of condition have thus become 'available' for my own ends. 9 Assaultron-class, 15 Mr. Handy-class, 10 Gutsy-class, 30 Protectron-class and 5 Sentry-class robots have joined 'Professor Goodfeels' at Sunshine Tidings Co-op. Who needs turrets when one has five Sentry bots guarding the perimeter?
"The majority of the bots will be tasked with the primary purpose of constant salvaging operations. This will result in a snowball effect as the junk and scraps that they accumulate will in turn facilitate increasingly rapid expansion of the operational bases. I am curious as to whether or not I can replicate the pre-War greenhouse project found at Greygarden. I saw it on the news shortly before the bombs fell. It seems to remain in operation to this day, which is inspiring.
"As a side note I've been accumulating, cleaning and storing the bits of combat armor the Gunners and Raiders were wearing. I'll need to fabricate quite a few pieces of limb armor, but upon completion there will be enough full sets of combat armor to equip 110 people with proper combat armor. For some reason left leg protection is especially prone to getting destroyed as I'll need to make almost twice as many sets of that as I do the arms and right legs. Perhaps people step on land mines with their left foot more often than their right foot?
"I do believe that it will also be possible to produce an equally sufficient number of fighting knives and combat rifles chambered in .308. The goal is to standardize issued body armor and weaponry for everyone when the time comes next year.
"Head protection remains the most difficult acquisition. With only 3 combat armor helmets and a half-dozen each cleaned army helmets and metal helmets the bulk of the head protection currently available is comprised of hard hats and mining helmets. The latter largely came from the Raiders that were based out of Dunwich Borers.
"At present the Co-op, Hangman's Alley, Jamaica Plain, the Zimonja listening post, the construction site at Murkwater, Croups' Manor (a bunch of pre-War upper crust socialites that became zombies and subseqently became fertilizer), a coastal cottage with a mirelurk nest, the lighthouse at Kingsport and Spectacle Island have been 'claimed'. Reconnaissance indicates that the ruins of the Starshine Drive-In and a boathouse at Taffington should be easy enough to similarly claim.
"Also acquired are the keys to enter into a total of 8 'homes' that are effectively safe-houses as there is little ability to properly defend them against intrusion, including the previous entry's 'Noir Condo' in the Hub 360 building.
"The multi-level 'condo' in Chester features roof access. It might be possible to re-secure the ground level door against casual intrusion. If so, now that the U.S.S. Constitution has relocated atop one of the downtown skyscrapers, then this singular home might be worth the effort to overhaul for my own ends.
"The combination of re-purposed robots and 'claimed settlements' should provide a series of operations bases stretching across most of the Commonwealth, supplemented by the eight safe-houses. Once the desired arsenals have been stockpiled and robotic minions have been constructed, programmed and deployed to provide both a steady supply of junk / scrap and interconnected logistics my attentions can return towards mopping up the less-populated areas around downtown Boston.
"Spectacle Island is a conundrum. The area itself is quite large and it comes with mirelurk repellent unless someone else shows up and turns it off. However, it is not easily reached without a boat, making it nearly useless in that regard. Time enough to worry about it later I suppose, as there is no current value to undertake any effort to occupying and developing that location when ten others that do not require a vessel to reach are at hand."
24th and 25th December, 2287
"My first Christmas without Nate and Shaun. After wallowing in self-pity, booze and junk food for most of Christmas Eve I wake up at 0600 Christmas morning. Old Saint Nick didn't leave anything under the lit Christmas tree I set up. If he had that would have been a surprise!
"I decide to go Christmas shopping at the Federal Ration Stockpile and the Mayoral Shelter. Not much of a surprise that another Raider gang moved into the stockpile - there's a LOT of food and non-irradiated water in there! - but the robot people crawling all over the innards of the mayor's massive shelter complex was.
"Naturally the stocking stuffer was another deathclaw. My best guess is that the beasts have a sense of smell appropriate to their size. This one must have noticed that the previous occupant had moved on (read: become luggage and meat in my larder) so it set up shop. I have more glue now, which is always in short supply.
"Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays or whatever tickles your fancy whomever is reading this. May you never run out of purified water, food and ammunition in this post-atomic Hellscape!"
Holy atomic apocalypses Batman!
I've been using Valkyrie as my Sole Survivor's name since 2015. As it turns out, today, I find a massive mod called Project Valkyrie on the Nexus.
Here is a summary of what Project Valkyrie can allow you to do.
Given the name of this hiccup-infested thread and the existence of that mod - and most importantly its ability to permit resolving the vanilla endings into something that could make a lot more sense ...
Opinions, anyone?
Lore-based Power Armor Changes (LBPAC) is the mod I've been hoping for (well, without having actually played with it).
In a nutshell, it makes unsecured power armor go away; repairs of the different grades of power armor require progressively higher ranks of Armorer; significant differences between the different models in terms of fusion core consumption, their miscellaneous 'layer'/upgrade properties and repair materials requirements.
T-45 suits, when you find them, are the most prolific besides Raider suits. T-51 suits and X-01 suits ... there are TWO of each. T-60 suits are effectively BoS exclusive. The promotional suits are either flawed in some way or, in the case of the Quantum X-01 ... it's just a power frame inside of a plastic shell. (Too funny!) This makes the power armor you do find a much more treasured resource, if one is going for a fairly standard FO4 playthrough experience.
I *love* these changes to power armor. Now I won't have to artificially cap off level advancement (read: reduce XP gain to less than 1% of normal) to avoid the stupidity of prolific military-grade power armor suits. Well, most of it, at least.
There is a modder that goes by Conquestor. Most of their stuff doesn't tickle my fancy much ... but they did make one mod that falls right into my lore-happy spot. Super mutants do not respawn, as befits the lore about them, according to the mod description. I look forward to wiping those big green bastards from the Commonwealth. Strong ... oh, buddy, the milk of human kindness is ... a bullet through the brain.
Monkeying around with Vortex/Nexus mods it took a while to hunt down a functioning water bottling mod. So far, so good with the one that seems to actually work.
"Scrap Anything" so far is proving to be a LOVELY mod that does exactly what it says. Corpses, bits of trash and papers, all or nearly all of the annoying piles of debris, leaves and trash - even rocks and similar annoyances, this'll let you rip them all out. Caveat is it can, depending on the settlement, rip out stuff you're not normally used to being able to rip out such as the silos, warehouses and cabins at Sunshine Tidings Co-op.
Finally got ahold of the lovely-looking RU-556 assault rifle mod (it was XB1-only on Bethesda.net). The sheer number of clothing, armor, weapon and holstering mods on Nexus for FO4 is enormous. Too many mods require "F4SE", an external bit of software I know nothing about, which has significantly curtained the number of mods under consideration.
I've settled on FN-57, SVT-40, AK5C and RU-556 as my weapons mods of choice. The latter 3 are probably a bit redundant with each other (especially the latter two being 5.56mm assault rifles), but I've previously used the first 3 weapons and the SVT-40 and AK5C come with some entertaining quests/discoveries as part of their unique charm. The RU-556 may or may not be as fun ... but recovering it is going to take a while.
I've also slotted in a quartet of "quest mods", three of which should feed from one to the next (ending in Project Valkyrie) plus a notoriously lethal deathtrap place that, once you figure it out and clear it, rewards a unique player home of some sort.
Still, in the end, I'm toeing the waters with somewhat fewer mods than I was running from Bethesda.net. Granted, I've yet to scoop up any of the Sim Settlements mods - which as it turns out adds a neat variety of unmarked side quests of their own, such as the brewery and its 50+ recipes of beer, or what can become the Death Ray from Orbit from Fallout: New Vegas. (Archimedes I think it is.)
Spent the past few weeks testing out an assortment of mods, mixing and matching ones from BethNet (albeit only 5 from there) with a gaggle of goodies from the Nexus.
All told I'm finally going to start a Survival run now that I found a Survival difficulty mod that permits greater fine-tuning of the stupid stuff in vanilla.
If there's any interest in screenshots and a mod list, let me know.
Game Difficulty: Survival, modified to normal damage and experience. Adrenaline counters accrued fatigue from lack of sleep instead of slathering on additional damage output.
I am using quite a few "additional filler" mods that add new collectibles, unmarked map locations and all told probably another 100 hours of playable goodies.
A particularly fun combination is a clean back pip-boy screen combined with a color satellite photo map of the Commonwealth.
26 Oct 2287 - 10:23 a.m. (1023)
"A pair of enterprising chemists by the names of Jesse and Walter had set up a drug lab in a trailer at the Wicked Shipping Fleet Lockup just southwest of the Abernathy's farm. Specifically they've been brewing a variant of Jet infused with Nuka Quantum. Two now-cleaned hazmat suits later and I have an ... interesting chem recipe.
"Based on their notes they were relying on stealth boys to enter and exit their trailer cum drug lab, relying on the few zombies scattered about the lockup yard to provide a form of security.
"The new shelter on the banks of the Misty Lake is wonderful. Someone named Carla ratted out its previous 'ghoul' tenant to a group called the 'Institute' who sent humanoid robots to waste him. The ghoul went down fighting based on the three non-functioning robots at point-blank range to his corpse.
"This place will be put to good use! It has power, running non-irradiated water, including waste disposal and sanitation facilities. A full suite of crafting stations, including a power armor station that I am rather unlikely to use other than to fix up any surviving suits I manage to get back there more-or-less intact.
"I removed the cryolator casing from Vault 111 and put it to good use here as a proper refrigerator. The cryolator itself is far too cumbersome and unwieldy to be of much use away from my new home.
"Outside is a 'wasteland paradise' comprised of a waterfall into a safe-enough pool with seating for six. Jangles the Moon Monkey floats in his place of honor whilst Teddy perpetually showers with his soap and toothbrush beneath the waterfall. There are a few chairs with the chaise occupied by Mr. Melon with his blue visor and bottlecap eyes. An oversized Giddyup Buttercup recuperates in its power armor station. Off to the side of the eastern gate is Captain Hugs, Teddy's kin with his little green-and-purple alien buddy on their swing.
"It has been more than 21 decades since the bombs fell. How likely is it that any suits of power armor survived this long? I do not know for certain, but any that are in service after so long are unlikely to be of much use against anything better than a catalog-issue pistol. Maybe a few, stashed away two centuries ago behind sealed vaults and terminals to which no one living will remember the password for.
"I did find an experimental weather control station north-northwest of the Robotics Disposal Ground. It will make an adequate bolt-hole when needed. For now I've secured the facility against casual intrusion by way of landmines inside the doors and throughout the facility outside of the main control room.
"It seems that total atomic annihilation may, I emphasize may, not have been defensive retaliation by the United States. According to the surviving data here there was more than a little bit of success in using satellites to influence weather at targeted regions across the globe, including a "test" in Communist China.
"I have to admit to looking forward to collecting further tidbits of previously TSCI (or higher) data despite the horrors of this new America I woke up in.
"With plenty of time to ponder while moving around on foot - as no vehicles have survived the combined passage of time and scavenging by survivors so far - I suspect that more than 130 years of on-again off-again "cold" and "hot" wars between the United States and the so-called 'Red Menace' was an ideological mistake that should have died off after its first fifty years.
"The remnants of humanity have been sifting through the ashen ruins resulting from ever-increasing desperation before launch codes were issued and the bombs flew thick and fast.
"Our planet will heal with or without us. I'd rather she didn't shake us off like a dog getting rid of a particularly bad case of fleas. In this case, the flea dip was atomic fire."
26 Oct 2287
"After clearing out Crazy Uncle Gorski's cabin, including himself, from immortality as part of the ravenous hordes I made my way south and west.
"At the western end of the dam leading towards what was once a self-proclaimed 'robot hippie commune' there is a medium-sized maintenance complex safely tucked into its reinforced concrete bowels.
"Turns out a Raider gang had made the place into their base of operations. The one schlub on look-out failed his task which let me catch the other four gang leaders by surprise via Pop Bomb - an explosive and viscous mixture of Nuka-Cola and an entire box of Sugar Bombs cereal barely held together in the bottle with bailing wire, duct tape and an improvised cork.
"One of them was planning to 'quit the life' with her four cats in a few days. She must have been the crazy one wearing a lightly-armored sequin dress that tried to bash my brains out with a rolling pin. The cats are amicable enough - think I'll set 'em up back home outside with Jangles, Teddy and Mr. Melon.
"The newer gangbangers returned before I was finished looting the place resulting in the 'Wessdamm Gang' suddenly finding themselves before the Pearly Gates.
"From there it was a simple matter of clearing out the radroaches, another couple of gangbangers and a handful of zombies before bunkering down for the night in one of the two cabins with an intact and lockable door and - just as importantly - four walls and a roof that doesn't leak.
"The damaged and hacked Mr. Handy "Professor Feelgood" doesn't do anything much other than putter around this co-op saying "far out" and "groooovy" over and over and over ...
"The regularity of it was a bit soothing, so I slept well once I re-built a proper bed in that particular cabin. Later, maybe, the one with the only fireplace can be properly refurbished into something closer to civilized living.
27 Oct 2287
"Just a bit further south a band of 'Gunners' - self-styled mercenaries only marginally more disciplined than Raiders that have radio communications with "HQ" elsewhere - were bored and thus attempting to alleviate that boredom by shooting at a pair of brahmin from their perch atop the crumbling super-highway that runs west-to-east along the co-op's southern flank.
As a group Gunners have a disturbing proclivity for robot hacking/reprogramming and remarkably consistent access to pre-Bomb technologies, laser weaponry and combat armor being the predominant consistencies among them so far.
"Once they were no longer harassing the pair of brahmin an uppity yao-guai had to be put down en route to a dilapidated church. Therein some medicinally useful foul-smelling fungus grew in fair abundance. Also a metal trap door let down into what turns out to have once been the Commonwealth's western rations depot. This trap door permits rapid infiltration into the rear of the complex. A few shivs and a fistful of tin can grenades wiped out the Raider scum therein. They had one of those 'fat man' tac-nuke catapults in there, along with several cases of pre-packaged food, purified water and a few precious blood packs.
"Returning to the surface via the chapel I reconnoitered the exterior of the depot and its bunkers. Two 5.56mm auto-targeting turrets, two spotlights ... and some bizarro "Raider power armor" in an open cargo container.
"Not wanting to test this thing's armor the hard way the wisest course was to infiltrate around their perimeter, shiv the inattentive slob they had on guard duty, then filch the power core from their contraption. Afterwards the dogs were the bigger annoyance.
"Making my way further northeasterly I came across a Western Cargo Line trailer and popped open the cargo door. The three most noteworthy items: a holotape containing a formal invitation from one Frederick Sinclair to one John-Caleb Bradburton. An invitation to attend the grand opening of the Sierra Madre Casino in order to "begin again". Accompanying the actual engraved invitation with the holotape is a $5 million gold coin.
"The past few days I've picked up a few postcards from all over CONUS: Albuquerque NM, Boston and New Hampshire. If nothing else the Commonwealth Wasteland is proving to be an interesting place."
28 Oct 2287: mid-morning
"A deathclaw strolls into the co-op and 86's Professor Goodfeels without so much as a how-do. I was getting used to having his perpetually stoned robot self flitting about. Time to make some new armor and matching accessories."
My beloved cat Mr. Goober broke his neck and died this morning at 11:34 a.m. my time. As far as FO4 goes, Survival difficulty can kiss my derrier: (almost) everything is gonna die. He loved watching me play this game.
FB post, an homage to Mr. Goober. May the angels give you plenty of lap-time, rubs the way you like them, perfect clarity on your favorite films/TV shows and actual Heavenly poultry and tuna. Until we reunite in the afterlife my Best Pet Friend.
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:(
Day 13: 5th Nov 2287
"Just returned from a trip into and out of the Glowing Sea. I found four Raiders in my home base grilling and eating my cats.
My Cats!!
"Three of them I administered full cranial evacuations on. The fourth did not fair nearly as well. I used the weakest weapon available to me - an unmodified 10mm sidearm, one of the ones retrieved from Vault 111 that I'd not gotten around to modifying - and quite deliberately crippled both of his legs and both of his arms.
"You have no option scumbag. You are going to die today. The only question is how fast and painless your death will be."
"Wh-what do you mean?"
"Isn't it obvious? You wastes of flesh ATE MY CATS!! I was going to live-and-let-live, wait to get shot at first and the like.
"But now, thanks to you dumbasses, every. Single. [redacted] Raider, Gunner and all the rest of the cat-murderers everywhere I go is going to die. The lucky ones will die swiftly, almost instantaneously. But you, you are one of the unlucky ones, or would be.
"See, you will answer my questions. Answer them truthfully to the best of your ability, such as that may be, and I will execute you the same as your friends."
"That's not a powerful motivator."
"Oh? Do you see that grill, the same one you cooked my cats on?"
"... yeah ..."
"You weigh, what, 150 pounds? How long do you think it'll take me to cook you alive, appendage by appendage?"
"Oh God, please no, not that."
"A bit late to plead for aid from the divine. Now tell me about every location you know of where Raiders, Gunners and anyone else that does more-or-less what you were doing for an existence before today. Do this on the up-and-up, quickly, honestly, I'll shoot you up with Med-X and a Daddy-O before your execution.
"If I even think you lied, even a slight fib, I'll slow-roast you for the next week before I crucify your cooked chunks to be on display for everyone else to see. Over there on the shore of the lake where the mole-rats spawn. If I get the impression that you're snowing me, hoping I'll get wasted by your scumbag buddies, I'll bind your wounds and crucify you over there. See that pump on the shore? Right there. I'll nail your bleeding ass up just a bit off the ground so that the mole-rats can eat you, alive, helpless and almost certainly screaming for your Mommy.
"Which way do you want this to go, scumbag?"
"Alright, alright, I'll talk."
"And talk he did, of Libertalia and Gunner Plaza, of Hangman's Alley and a dozen more places throughout the rubble that was once Boston and the surrounding Commonwealth. He did have the stones to spill the beans in the right way.
"Too bad for him he was the one working the grill. I doped him up, carried him around to that pump and tied him across the top of it after turning it off. The mole-rats will find him sooner or later. Or the mirelurks, they like fresh meat too, and they have a couple of nests of hatchlings to nurture.
"All of these sons-a-b*&*@es are going to die. ALL OF THEM. Or I'm going to die trying."
Day 18: 10 Nov 2287 | 7:03 p.m.
"Has it really only been 18 days?
"In the process of exiting Fallon's Department Store via the roof hatch after clearing it of super-mutants, a couple of their hounds and an assortment of radroaches some poor pack brahmin was being ... eaten alive by a bunch of zombies. Euthanised the brahmin from the roof, then incinerated the zombies via molotov cocktails and a few pistol rounds.
"Once I returned to ground level I found that the brahmin had a name tag: Spot. Spot's owner and guards are nowhere to be found nearby.
"Upon closer inspection of the zombies I recognize bits of jewelry and faded body art on their charred remains. This pack of zombies were my neighbors before the bombs fell and turned them into flesh-devouring pseudo-immortal horrors. I knew these people by name.
"I bury their remains in shallow graves, whisper a short prayer over each one, including Spot, and move on to Shaw High School. One wonders what pre-War horror stories wait to unfold in there."
Day 44: 6 Dec 2287 | 5:24 a.m.
"Time flies when exploring the rubble of the Commonwealth. Progressed south into the Glowing Sea before turning east to pick off the assortments of scumbags, mutated horrors and zombies across the southern stretch before turning north along the coast with detours.
"Many familiar landmarks have been overrun and transformed in the centuries since the bombs fell. People can rebuild if the horrors and might-makes-right scumbags are killed or driven off.
"Entered Wilson Atomatoys' HQ and cleared out the super-mutant infestation. In the bowels of the place was the most ... "unique" ... suit of power armor I've yet encountered. It was an obsession of a Raider cobbled together from and inspired by his love of the pre-Bomb Giddyup Buttercup toys. For power armor it is remarkably agile and this suit was in pristine condition. I got it back home and upgraded it with explosives shielding, optimized hydraulics and servos then installed a targeting system and a brighter headlamp. I doubt I'll ever use it. Power armor simply isn't my 'thing', although Nate might have gotten a chuckle out of something so ludicrous. "Any port in a storm hon," he would have said.
"Interesting encounters, where to begin? In no particular order I suppose.
"Found a protectron that was refitted into a self-contained brewery. Getting that slow beast home will be a challenge as I'll have to completely clear the southern bank of the river and probably all of Cambridge to get it back in one piece. For now "Buddy" will rest where I found him.
"Unwittingly 'rescued' a serial killer / artist that targets Raiders and other scumbags, making art from their corpses. Gruesome, but in this world Mr. Pickman serves a useful purpose. If he deliberately targets the wrong people it should be easy enough to hunt him down and execute him.
"Found two 'Institute' coursers' remains. The first was in Fairlane Estates targeting two 'synths' gone rogue and become scumbags, one a Raider the other a Gunner. They've got to die anyway given their occupation. The second was inside of a building surrounded by super-mutant corpses. From the standpoint of amateur crime scene 'analysis', he has a decent-sized escort in Hell now. This 'courser' had stashed some interesting schematics before the muties smashed his skull in.
"To my horror it seems that super-mutants throughout the continent - at least somewhere out west, south in the 'Capital Wasteland' and here in the Commonwealth - are not an accident of radiation-induced survival. Rather they are deliberately engineered, produced and released with the commonality being FEV (Forced Evolutionary Virus). According to the files I've found these monsters are the result of independent projects of nebulous purpose with no good reason that I can fathom. I take some solace in that the people that came up with FEV did not have access to my own VALKYRIE genetic engineering and cybernetics technologies. This 'Institute' is climbing higher on my kill list.
"It doesn't help them any that this 'Institute's' robot-people, so-called 'generation 1' and 'generation 2' 'synths' appear to be slaughtering people, ghouls or not, without discernible purpose. Their resources are clearly finite as they tend towards varying qualities of issued armor, weaponry and ammunition/fusion cells.
"These robot-people and their wholly sentient 'coursers' and 'generation 3 synths' could be put to much better use if deployed in a more focused manner for a more benevolent purpose. It is relatively fortuitous that whomever is calling the shots in this 'Institute' seems to be either scatterbrained or, more likely, has several power groups or agendas or whatnot making decisions.
"Rescued some dumb ghoul kid from a refrigerator in Neponset Park and escorted him home to his ghoul parents on the south side of Quincy. All of them survived the bombs, all of them became ghouls - not zombies, but ghouls - which strongly evidences that there is something genetic that indicates whether or not irradiated people become ghouls instead of degenerate zombies or - for most - dying an excruciating death as one's cellular structure slowly dissolves into ... soup. Some nimrod Gunner and his cronies wanted to enslave the lot, which went very badly for them. Those scumbags are fish-food now. The ghouls really should locate elsewhere before more scumbags move into Quincy. Not sure where they'd go as they'd probably get murdered by other scumbags before getting anywhere reasonably safe that accepts ghouls.
"Encountered a boy swearing that there was a sea monster a short swim off-shore in the harbor. Swam out to it - it's a submarine. Not an American submarine, but a Chinese submarine. Its stealth systems must have fried as a side effect of the EMPs from its launches on 23 Oct 2077. I have to process this ... and come back with significant radiation countermeasures before entering the vessel. I suspect it will be highly radioactive even with an upgraded hazmat suit, Rad-X and my own innate tolerances for radiation. Maybe the vessel can be salvaged. Maybe it's overrun by high-radiation zombies. Something or someone is operating its periscope, which makes it most likely that either a robot or perhaps one or more ghoul crew remain within.
"A radio signal broadcasting old Silver Shroud radio plays - a perennial favorite of ours before the bombs fell - was briefly picked up before I came across the Giddyup Buttercup power armor. It's giving me ideas - ones that need logistics to really flourish. Assuming I don't get eaten or worse before then."
Day 46: 8 Dec 2287
"Found keys and access data for two potential homes while massacring everything and everyone in the Boston Bugle, Mass Bay Medical, the Mass Fusion building, Vault-Tec's Commonwealth HQ, the Mass State House, the Old Granary Burial Ground, Boston Common - including an enormous super-mutant dubbed 'Swan' - the Boylston Club, Hubris Comics and a set of apartments.
"Where I'm bunking down for the night before clearing the place out is a Nuka-Cola-themed cafe just across the street from Hubris Comics. It's a charming place put together by Ellie, a Nuka-Cola enthusiast. Sadly I found her recently murdered corpse against the jukebox in the Provost Bar not too far away. She didn't get a shot off from her double-barreled shotgun and the only blood in the place was hers. Some nice junk there though.
"The second one is across the river near a sailing ship apparently "stuck" in the side of one or more buildings. Strange location, perhaps the vessel was a pre-Bomb 'living museum' of some sort? Hopefully it isn't crawling with zombies or scumbags.
"Came across some disturbing information these past two days. First, our beloved POTUS who had buttoned up the White House for several months prior to the bombs falling had evacuated himself and much of his staff to some 'Enclave' oil rig off of the west coast somewhere.
Speaking of 'the Enclave' they appear to have survived the bombs in some fashion. One of their scouts was eliminated in the aforementioned apartment building - he'd captured and had tortured-to-death a Gunner, having amputated the scumbag's right leg at mid-thigh. This was stupid of him as he'd cut right through the big arterial trunk and the man bled to death faster than he could cauterize the stump and perhaps keep his information source alive a bit longer. This 'Enclave' is considering more extensive operations here, and are apparently on the trail of a post-bomb suit of power armor dubbed 'the Black Devil'.
"The Bugle's surviving microfilm archives shed a broader picture of civilian life at home. Life had been getting uglier than we were aware of largely thanks to a 'free press' that for generations have increasingly masked the ugly truths under the guise of patriotism. The Bugle, at least, archived their stories and articles in pre-edit and post-edit formats for perpetuity. I'm glad that they did.
"The war effort was more and more all-consuming as the war ground on for more than a decade. Civil rights, medical care, economic stability, ethics, morality and towards the end even basic decency were being methodically dismantled as the 'powers-that-be' grew increasingly desperate to win at all costs. Food was increasingly rationed based on contributions to the war effort unless you happened to inhabit certain gender and societal 'configurations'.
"Pre-Bomb societal norms shattered with each mushroom cloud belching its blackened soot upon the world above ground. I've seen women perform acts just as heinous as men. Skin color is no longer a concern, although among some skin integrity will be if the conversational snippets I've overheard are any indication. Everyone contributes somehow, someway or it is as simple as not getting to eat, or worse. Everyone has to learn how to fight or the bug-monsters WILL eat you, sometimes alive, or implant their babies into you, male or female, ghoul or not. Going about unarmed is a sign of insanity.
"Obesity, even by my pre-Bomb standards, is highly suspicious as that person can be rather reasonably assumed to have eaten enough food that others starved as a consequence. The likelihood of there being sufficient surplus food to result in 'curvy', 'voluptuous' or 'beefcake' bodies is small, albeit possible. Beer bellies or keg bellies either warrant instant suspicion of being involved in nefarious activities or having so much wealth - such as it is in the Commonwealth of the late 23rd century - that one can afford to eat that much.
"I do have a few new 'toys' to upgrade and select from for each foray. A 'solar cannon' that is especially efficacious against the vermin of the Commonwealth. A new 'prototype vault suit' retrieved from Vault-Tec HQ - this will let me ditch the scrap-job assortment of clothing and armor bits for a better distributed armor set. The prototype gauss rifle recovered a month or so back from Gunner Plaza. A prototype laser weapon that is extraordinarily efficient in its depletion of its power cell, well hidden in the bowels of a bank that survived the bombs from that submarine out in the harbor. Pickman's 'gift' - a combat knife that is sharp enough to perform surgery with extraordinary precision. A four-cell MANPAD weapon with anti-aircraft targeting system that should prove equally effective against most targets - this will come in handy should I set out to deliberately confront far-too-numerous-and-ridiculously-large winged vermin.
"In this section of Boston I've only a few more landmark areas to investigate before I either (a) cross the river to the immediate north near the moored museum ship; (b) cross the river due east although with the little information at-hand this seems foolish; (c) work around the neighborhoods of 'Diamond City' and 'Goodneighbor' to mop up the southern and western areas of Boston; or (d) return to the weather control array and work east from there towards the coast. (c) is my current inclination after returning home with all of the junk and weaponry accumulated so far.
"Once there I should be able to consolidate all of the road leather, combat armor pieces and assorted items providing head protection into a more cohesive armory. I've been converting reclaimed assault rifles into a better weapon system based on the prototype weapon I recovered from a shipping container on a barge that was slowly drifting out to sea. Ideally I'll be able to 'issue' standardized body armor and longarms to people in the coming months once I decide on the logistics solutions.
"Amusingly I was able to repair and retrieve an APC from a brutal encounter with a band of Gunners not far from the Atom Cats' garage complex. They had a trio of stealth-capable assaultrons, a hacked sentry bot and several other AFVs, including two partially functional battle tanks. The APC came with an attack chihuahua that I had to smack into line. I stashed the football dog and the APC at Sunshine Tidings. I wonder if the little mutt has managed not to get itself eaten by radroaches?
"That poor bastard Rex Grossman has been languishing in the tender custody of super-mutants in Trinity Tower for, oh, four or five weeks now. Thinking on it some more I should probably waste all of those big green bastards and see if they've eaten him. Between that tower, its plaza, HalluciGen Inc, the main Boston Public Library and the amphitheatre is most everything other than Back Alley Apparel and a few miscellaneous locations of the main part of Boston proper I remember from before 23 Oct 2077."
Day 50: 12 Dec 2287
"Procurement of filtered water and food has proceeded well despite the volume of water and food my current activity levels require. By my rough estimates I'm wolfing down about 12 pounds of food and 250 fluid ounces of filtered water a day. Current stocks provide sufficient filtered water for another 58 days.
"Food is another matter, I have about 10 days' worth of packaged foodstuffs available before those are exhausted. Packaged foods that I've come across have provided the bulk of food. After extensive chemical testing there are indigenous critters, grains and fruit-vegetables that can probably be made into an assortment of edible, sustaining and occasionally tasty dishes. Soups and stews are the best overall followed by omelettes and high-protein steaks and kabobs.
"Critters to never eat: cats, mole rats, flies, skeeters and dragonflies. If some numbskull wants to chow down on the latter four they can go right ahead. The bewildering variety of parasites and viruses I've found in them defeat my current ability to detoxify their theoretically edible bits.
"The gigantic scorpions' eggs make especially savory omelettes while scorpion steaks are 'Victory Meals'.
"The mutated crustaceans and their eggs that are in such abundance provide exotic-tasting dishes of several varieties. The enormous 'Queens' are especially delectable having slain three of this enormous crustacean horrors so far. Given the observed processes by which said monstrous crustaceans are known to provide fodder for their hatchlings, eating meals made from their eggs and flesh is a bit of a victory each time.
"'Deathclaws' - the huge lizard-like semi-bipedal monsters - taste similar to pre-Bomb alligator tails. Their tails are the only edible part of their anatomy. I've yet to figure out how to fashion body armor from their hides.
"80 complete gear sets for future settlements: semi-automatic 5.56mm battle rifles with tactical sights, laser pointers and flashlights; 600 hand-loaded rounds in 30-round-capacity magazines for each and a serrated combat knife as hand-to-hand requires. I'd prefer to issue a standardized sidearm and perhaps some form of Molotov cocktail or other grenade, but so far the tactics I use in the field have consumed grenades and mines nearly as fast as they are scrounged and made.
"I've yet to commit the time to sorting out body armor sets. I'd prefer a ballistic underlayer suit similar to a vault suit or flight suit, but for now armoring of the common 'road leathers' plus combat armor and an assortment of helmets will have to suffice.
"Time to see if Mr. Grossman has been eaten or not."
Gorram Boston! Every time I get in there, sooner or later the game chokes to death, either when in the exterior cells or it chokes to death loading an interior cell.
*Reboots, rips out and reorganizes mods over the course of 18 hours, grumbles as he has to start over AGAIN.*
Spent most of my spare time yesterday and nearly all of my time today that did not involve taking care of Missus Turin or the demon-kittehs meow-meow applying another fine-toothed comb to the mods I had and considerations of long-term game strategy.
Ditched previous environmental mods, ripped out several should-have-been-awesome-but-weren't armor/weapon/gear/item mods and slotted in new stuff.
The overall game plan I have in mind is roughly as follows, given my character's (jumbled) back story and some ideas, including one percolated courtesy of DeathQuaker's Dr. Vault-Tec character on Greylurker's thread.
"Special thematic" as far as gear, cosmetics and weapons - scavenging and luck-of-the-draw permitting - goes will ideally be cryo- / cryogenic as much as possible. There's a new weapon mod that creates a cryo-gun that isn't the ridiculously bulky cryolator that is a reskin of the plasma weapons plus a replacement of one of the unique weapons. Cryo grenades plus an "exploding snowball" mod. All applied to the Silver Shroud, ideally just before 45th level to score that sweet 45th level upgrade to the Silver Shroud costume. A separate mod I've toyed with before offers an "ice ball" receiver for the Thompson (using is own special ammo) that, if my evil plan works out like I hope should result in the Silver SMG firing explosive iceballs courtesy of the receiver's cryo-bullets and transferring Spray-n-Pray's explosive legendary to the Shroud's signature weapon once Kent fiddles with it and hands it back.
The Widow Shotgun and a mod that features an "adaptive combat rifle" - unique in its own way in that it possesses a series of "unlocks" as one uses the weapon to kill more and more bad guys / critters - are my early weapons. The former is a gorgeous weapon with a tragic backstory. The latter should be waiting for me once I begin playing again.
That is to say once I find a hair mod that has the hair color I'd like to find. I think I already have the eyes covered. The fun part (not really) is going to be figuring out how to set my character with a unique appearance. I've been dreading this prospect as the preliminary investigations into the matter do not make it out to be a particularly intuitive process.
I almost went with a bundle of 34 transfer settlement blueprints until I saw that I would have to somehow get DEF_UI and their dated, not-well-supported HUD_UI to talk to each other intelligently. Which was a shame as those blueprints were just about what I was hoping to find.
Instead I've decided to use a series of player homes, Sim Settlements' Rise of the Commonwealth and ancillary add-ons to provide the lion's share of the settlement constructions for the entire game.
Only Home Plate, the CC player homes, Starlight Drive-In, Sunshine Tidings and Spectacle Island are for-sure going to be on me to deal with. The latter three is because I intend to transform them into palisade-and-sandbag fortified artillery batteries crewed by servitrons (variant assaultrons able to wear human armor and use human weapons - making them ideal robot settlers assuming I grokked them correctly). It will probably be necessary to convert the Far Harbor drive-in theater into another artillery base given the distances from Boston to the island. The Nuka-World Red Rocket will probably become a Raiders-on-crucifix "Farm" with billboards facing the Gunner spawn point along with a missile turret tower.
Super-nice useful mods for those extra touches of immersion:
Survivor's Journal. Lets you keep a journal in-game on your Pip-boy or at any terminal.
Better Homes and Bunkers, player homes accessed via ownership of the corresponding settlement's workshop - all of them have 'junk compactors' that make scrapping your mounds of junk fast and painless:
(a) Starlight Drive-In - converts the storage room on the rear of the screen into a player home. Cozy, but it's not as cramped as a trailer home is. Can house the player, a dog of choice and one companion at any given time, although I don't recommend it for long-term habitation.
(b) Eden Meadows Cinema (Far Harbor) - as with the Starlight Drive-In from what I read.
(c) Coastal Cottage - my favorite so far of all of the player homes. Accomodations for the player and up to 2 dogs and 4 companions. 3 power armor stations. A robot workbench. Barber chair in the restroom. Medical wing with autodoc and surgery chair. A small hydroponics garden with a bit of corn, mutfruit, glowing fungus and melons. A lounge and full kitchen with chilling fridge, cook station, nuka-mixer and of course fresh water. Commissary terminals (basically a 2k cap limited vendor). Shared storage amongst all 10 or 12 of the crafting stations. Elevator to the surface complete with music (it's a long ride). Fast travel to and from if desired and difficulty permits. 7 or 8 armor mannequins, a cryolator trophy case and a decent number of display racks for weapons, magazines, bobbleheads, robot models et al. This home's back story is hilarious and worth the read. So far this is by far my favorite player home in terms of usefulness, post-atomic luxuriousness and so forth. I plan to store the unique Hellfire and 'Black Devil' power armors here plus one more suit, ideally a unique suit, probably an Atom Cats Tesla T-60 of some sort. Not that I'm using them, but I'll have them all in one spot.
(d) Oberland Station - adds a railroad-themed interior cell to the previous plywood door on the control tower. Should be moderately comfortable for player plus minion plus dog. I'd be very careful using this one with any Sim Settlement City Plan or Transferred Settlement Blueprint that covers up this door.
(e) The Slog - an abandoned diner adjacent to the Slog is converted into a player home.
(f) Somerville Place - a trailer just outside of the vanilla build zone.
If my previous experiences with diner-sized player homes are any indication, (e) and (f) will feature decent comfort and storage with power armor and a dog house on the outside with interlinked storage connecting all of its workbenches to the settlements' own workbench.
In addition the same author added 8 Commonwealth Courier Express waystations in as no-frills player homes. The ones I've seen so far are tiny, functional places safe from radstorms and rampaging monsters. Most have little more than that. Each of them is unique and they're all given a nifty backstory tying them into the Commonwealth.
Quest mods - several of these are noteworthy, but the one I just wrapped up today/yesterday was "50 Ways to Die at Dr. Nick's". This mod is hilariously entertaining. Night-kin with their own soundtrack. Generally on-point voice work - I only noticed 2 or 3 glitches with splicing in the Player's voiced responses. Well done! This quest series does not pull any punches. You WILL die, probably a lot (got me 7 times in total). The enemies are superlatively nasty. Two HUGE fights - one at Libertalia, the other at Dunwich Borers, both of which feature (when you win) REALLY BIG MUSHROOM CLOUDS. I wonder what state the locations are in after having been so thoroughly nuked?
The end reward is a weapon that is apparently randomly tailored to your character: some characters get power fists, some get ranged weapons, I got a seriously upgraded syringer using unique ammunition with a steep crafting cost - and it cannot use normal syringer ammo. The effects I have yet to test out - but given that Dr. Nick states that whomever gets shot with one of these darts explodes and that it is best not to be too close to them when they do gives me a big grin.
The player home awarded at the end of the Dr. Nick series of quests is very, very nice without being pre-War. Alfred the snarky Handy Butler, your own female assaultron weapon merchant, a horny attack mutt and your very own Mr. Gutsy-voiced chef (a synth-chef with Mr Gutsy AI perhaps?) rounds out your permanent staff.
Entry is by elevators into or out of either the "clinic" or the Anti-Communist night-kin occupied tenament ... so you're probably really safe here.
The big bonuses are that the windowed roof (a) doesn't let in rain; and (b) reflects exterior weather plus all of the top-shelf amenities, including a power armor station. The big downsides are (a) that the environmental music track doesn't stop; and (b) the staff doesn't shut their pie holes. I looted the place and split, although I should go back for the cool Hugh Hefner "tactical bathrobes" before I forget about them.
The features of the home are awesome: a hot tub, showers and urinals, copious safe storage, all of the normal workstations and a way to share junk across all of your settlements instead of using SKK50's quantum storage mod. (If you're going pro-Institute I recommend this latter mod as it fits with their "teleport at-will" abilities.)
Sim Settlements JUST TODAY released Sim Settlements: Conqueror. Initial release is tied into the Raiders stuff from Nuka-World. In other words, activate as many of the settlements as you can at game launch, earn your stripes to become OverBoss ... and go Raider on the Commonwealth. Eventually they'll improve the mod so that you can have Vassal settlements producing food and water for your Outposts that have your combat power. Over time they plan to add the ability to claim these puppies for a particular faction: Minutemen, BoS, RR and several others I've forgotten.
What caught my attention, however, is that it should grant the ability to pre-determine how many of the settlements in the game are settled, which city plan they used, population and how developed they are. This is geared towards a new game start but the developers have stated that it shouldn't be too difficult mid-playthrough, especially in a game like mine where I've only grabbed a few places and not done much with them.
I'm pretty sure the quest-locked locations won't be an option (Coventry, the Castle, Home Plate and Bunker Hill at least, perhaps also excluding Sanctuary Hills) but the rest or almost all of the rest of them should be 'on the menu'.
This means I should probably disable the other bunkers with the exception of the Coastal Cottage.
Spectacle Island will become my robot-occupied-and-controlled artillery base (I'm using howitzers, not those crappy mortars) in due time. This probably/hopefully leaves 30 or so settlements that I won't have to build, only bringing them into the fold under the banner of a united Commonwealth to repel/exterminate Raiders, Gunners and hungry brigands in T-60 power armor that underestimate my artillery.
Notes to self:
1. Clean out Sunshine Tidings, and check on Hangman's Alley.
2. Build surface-level defenses at the Coastal Cottage. God knows I have enough fragmentation mines, Sneak 5, no dog and no minions, so I might as well begin with littering 60 of those puppies throughout the build zone.
3. A well-armored Silver Shroud is a breathing Silver Shroud.
3a. Pack plenty of Silver Shroud Throwing Cards.
The Silver Thompson is a custom piece by way of transferring Spray-n-Pray's legendary Explosive mod to it and fitting it with an ice-ball receiver that uses unique ammunition. i.e., it fires exploding ice balls, 100-round quick-load drums worth of them. I made 5,000 rounds and have already burned through about 800 of those.
For grenades I use Snowballs (reskinned Cryo-grenades in effects - you actually throw a snowball in-game).
I'm hoping to score a Cryogenic armor mod to swap out the Silver Shroud's Assassin's armor mod.
Reason? I'm using Creative Perks and without thinking I acquired Night Person 1 which gives a "Cold Touch" (freezing effect) to one's unarmed and gun bash attacks. I'm figuring - thanks to DeathQuaker giving me the inspiration - that my Sole Survivor acquired pseudo "ice powers" manifesting in lobbing Snowballs, Cryogenic armor on All of the Armor and two weapons that shoot icy death. The second one is a mod that reskins plasma weapons into cryo weapons, with a legendary receiver that provides it with infinite ammunition. It's in the same hidey hole as "Limitless Potential".
Before donning the mantle of the Silver Shroud I was using a mod that features the ACR Advanced Combat Rifle. This is a *highly* customizable long-arm that can be chambered in several different calibers (I used .38 and 10mm) and tracks your kills with it specifically. As you waste more bad guys and critters, 3 different beneficial add-ons and a substantial variety of paint schemes are unlocked. One of the pew-pew options was to have the weapon shoot snowballs ... so I did keeping in theme with the "cold touch" thing this poor character has going on.
I have to admit that it is tempting to see if Cryogenic armor mods (legendaries) can be applied to power armor ...
So far I've invested about 900 hours in-game plus about another 100 hours out-of-game sorting through and testing various mods with this play-through in mind. I'm almost done with this process as there are nearly 23,000 mods for FO4 in English on the Nexus although most of them are quite old. Tried and finished 3 quest mods (which don't provide any replay value to me, although both 50 Ways to Die at Dr Nick's and Tina's Cookiepocalypse were fun to play ... once).
At this point it is boiling down to QoL, aesthetics and armor / weaponry. The Commonwealth of the 23rd century shouldn't be festooned with an overabundance of high-tech weaponry - LBPAC has already addressed my concerns regarding the vanilla overabundance of power armor at an implausibly early state.
I am currently considering a series of "replacer" mods to swap out most of the high-tech weapons in the game. Of specific note is a mod that introduces the LCR-1 Laser Carbine as the Institute's weapon of choice. Other than the BoS, this makes a great deal of sense as no other group besides the Children of Atom would reasonably have access to large numbers of energy weapons.
Since FO4 is generally US-centric it is going to be interesting to cobble together replacement options for non-pipe weaponry. I'll be attempting to sort that mess out, most likely using WW2-era weaponry with an intent to focus on U.S.-sourced arms exclusively, if possible,among the available and supported weapons mods.
It will be interesting to see how this shakes out "tomorrow" (read: later today given that it is 3 a.m. my time as I type this).
Just started test-driving a Horizon-modded playthrough. So far it is quite promising.
Things change right out of the fridge: you don't get a pistol until just before getting onto the elevator to the surface ... and you've at-best acquired all of 30 rounds for it instead of the usual 100-120 rounds. Yep, you've had to smoosh every single giant radioactive cockroach with your feet and baton.
Eeewwww.