Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

alright I hope you're having fun with your personal assistant Gage I liked to run around with him in the Commonwealth, there his comments are funny as they're not NW-themed. In NW, he has a lot to say about the story there, so that's just story talk, but outside of the story, he's fun

Leave Curie be, it's very tricky, apparently, to really make changes. You'd need to duplicate her, make changes, and disable the dupe and so on.. way too dangerous, it might really screw up the game.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Strange you got that close to the girl ghost in the mystery mansion, Fragger. I only saw her for a brief time as she ran for the door, which you then open to find it's just a brick wall behind it.

Oh, and Fallout just updated, and I don't think F4SE is updated yet, so unplug your network cable to keep Steam from auto-updating until you can change the setting to not update until F4SE gets an update. I haven't looked, but it's probably more creation club stuff. Could also be that you don't need to update F4SE but I doubt it, seems any FO4 update requires it.

[Art Blade]

I came close to that girl, too, as I ran after it and she'd stop eventually in the basement.

Yep, I see the update "looming" and haven't started it yet. FO4 has been running since before the update popped up, so I haven't yet started the update process. Maybe I can disable the auto-update function and then close steam so it won't auto-update it.

The last update didn't require a new F4SE version but you'll never know what comes next, as in, this update.

[Art Blade]

Erm.. I didn't know there wasn't an option to prevent updates, what the.. it's either "keep game up to date" or "update when I launch" or "High Priority, update before everything else." 

[Dweller_Benthos]

I think "update when launch" gives you a dialog and you can say no? Or like I said, unplug the network cable.

I just checked and F4SE needs an update to w0#k with the new version.

[Art Blade]

thanks for the F4SE info. And I'll try, changing setting to "when I launch," we'll see what happens. As far as I can tell, only the "allow achievements" mod requires F4SE, so I might be able to run it anyway. The few missing achievements won't happen just now, anyway.

[Art Blade]

I finally had to send Preston home, which is Sanctuary by default now. Just by the way, I never took Dogmeat with me, this time I just greeted him and told him to stay where he was. In the end he really got on my nerves with "Dogmeat found something." Always barking, running off before I knew where he went to, had to look for him and then all he found usually was some chems or a pack of ammo. But all the ruckus for that, geez Particularly when I wanted to play stealthily. Impossible with that dog

It's time for the mechanist and all that, so now Ada is with me. At least she won't embarrass me with random unexpected weird strip-tease numbers.

I'm kind of struggling with my self-imposed restriction not to cheat all those perks from the perk chart (however, I did cheat some of those SPECIAL perks, which I maxed out except intelligence and endurance) so now I can't really upgrade Ada much. I can't pick locks nor can I hack terminals, unless they're labelled "novice." I much rather focus on stealth and weapons. Oh, the low intelligence is for a high yield of XP from the Idiot Savant perk which I love. It sounds a lot better with a male player character because when it kicks in, the laughing reminds me of Goofy. In my opinion, the sound effects of that perk were "meh" for the female character, by comparison. And, well, I did cheat those companion perks and NW-faction perks that suit me the most. Just for a little extra fun. But I try to "earn" my perks from the perk chart and only pick them according to my level when I level up. That's at least a bit more of a challenge but still fun because it's a change to what I did during previous playthroughs which were so loaded with perks that I was afraid the game might break eventually

I just reached level 30 and pop, the Nuka World "invitation" presented itself on my screen -- this time it will have to wait until I'm done with the main quests.

[fragger]

Yeah, I read about that "dupe" method for changing Curie's appearance, and I agree, it's not something I'm inclined to mess with. Using the console was as far as I'd want to push things in that regard.

I'm not too keen on changing companions' appearances either. Hair is basically a superficial prop, as it were, so I didn't think that would cause any probs. But altering a character's face means changing that character's 3D mesh, which might be asking for trouble. I just wanted to get rid of Gage's mohawk. Given his drawl and general demeanor, I though he would have been more suited to looking like the outlaw biker type (his voice reminded me of Sam Elliott's biker character in the movie Roadhouse. Terrible film though...)

And naturally, I had to make my character look like his moll

I tried putting him in a Western outfit that I got from Dry Rock Gulch, but he looked too much like the Marlboro Man

Gage is fun to travel with, he's a funny character

[Art Blade]

hehe, I'm glad that you're enjoying his company. Funny that you compare "your" Gage to a movie character. Although it's a different one, I too did that. I can see that you're looking like a biker a bit now, probably even feeling a little like a biker, too (hey, FO4 is an RPG, among other things) and your Biker Gage with his outfit and hair probably keeps encouraging that Great, whatever suits you, literally

I have to say, I never liked Mohawks (haircut), either, with one exception: The character Travis Bickle played by Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver. And Gage so much reminded me of him that I found it even funny. Although when I put him in a tuxedo and put a black hat on his head, he also fitted in nicely, could have been one of Al Capone's goons. He's versatile, really, and it's somehow making me feel relaxed when he keeps calling me "boss" all the time. With most of the other companions, I ended up preventing those flirt attempts and gee, I really could have done without. Gage never does that, which is great, because it's simple and simply fun with him around. He's believably a helping hand and he really cares about your well-being.

[Art Blade]

It was for the first time that I came across a random settler in the Commonwealth who wanted to live in one of my settlements. At least I don't remember that it had ever happened before. I knew "they" were out there, but who knows where I had been all the time to keep missing them.

It just so happened that I had to find a piece of equipment for Ada when, just by random chance, a settler was in trouble because of those robots I had to find (and kill) so I was a bit surprised. I sent her to Vault88 because I need a few more people there to man a barber chair for free hair-does and that surgical chair for erm, a free face-lifting.. and such. And I'll need another farmer to bring food on the table for those new peeps. I had one spare bed (mine) so it was the best solution to send her to the vault. The robot workbench is basically part of that whole pub thingy, downstairs. Everything is now there, like a locker for those very few things I want to keep without carrying them around.

And because I didn't want her to sleep a mile away from the rest, on top it was my bed, I had to go there myself, scrap the bed, set up a new one next to the other beds, and run back to slap down a bed for me again. Well, while I was on it, I started to play around in the pub. Now my pub has been renovated quite a bit.

Ada inspecting the pub.
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different angle. Those pics are great for atmosphere.
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I just had to find a way to park that massive espresso machine properly
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[fragger]

Excellent, the pub looks terrific I wouldn't want to leave there to face all the strife outside

I really like those illuminated "posters", and they look really cool in your joint

Where did you get the pot-plants? Are they from a mod or something?

I finally decided what to do with all the unique outfits I've accumulated along the way - I mannekined them all up in my "Home Plate" at DC. I wasn't using that space for anything much anyway.

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(Looking at the screenie, I just noticed there's one figure left of centre that's out of whack. Figures - it's wearing the Child Of Atom outfit. Those people are ALL out of whack Gonna have to fix that... Me and my OCD )

These are mainly the one-offs - I've still got a wardrobe full of other "common" clothes back at Sanctuary. They're all stuffed in a suitcase under the bed. It's amazing how much one suitcase can hold

[fragger]

Man, I only just figured out how those distress signals w0#k that you sometimes pick up (when a text message appears, like "Distress signal [such and such] found". If I tuned in to one on the Pip Boy, all I would hear would be static with a barely audible voice all but lost in it, and I didn't know what it meant. I only just discovered that the closer you get to the source, the clearer the signal becomes, and once you're right on the spot, often above a cunningly concealed trapdoor of some sort, there will be no static and the voice becomes crystal clear. Entering the location, you find a ham radio with the message coming out of it, and a cache of goodies of some sort.

I'd come across ham radios hissing static before and wondered what they were all about, but never made the connection (pardon the pun). You have to have that particular radio's signal selected on the Pip Boy to hear the message coming from the radio, otherwise it just hisses.

I also discovered what those relay towers do. You interact with the terminal initially to extend the dishes, then on the terminal it will give you the distance to the various radio signal sources nearby. Doesn't give you a direction though, you have to figure that out yourself by keeping the signal selected on the Pip Boy and walking around until the static begins to decrease and the voice becomes more audible.

The discoveries never seem to end in this game

[Art Blade]

thanks, fragger No mods, so I suppose the plant pots came with finding a specific magazine.

During my first playthrough I collected virtually everything. With Damascene, I collected virtually nothing. Now, I only keep one or two items in a locker, that I know I'll need later, for instance eight Hallucigen canisters. You've got a nice collection, it's a cool thing to look at, those mannequins. Good idea to use the home plate for it

I think the game tells you the first time around or it might be even in the description of a radio station on your pip-boy, that you need to home in onto the signal in order to find whatever's at its source. I would like to switch off some of those signals, like those military checkpoints. I never made the connection to those ham radios. Maybe that's where one can switch off those beacons/radio signals.

[Art Blade]

F4SE has been updated.

And steam updated as soon as I quit the game, despite all efforts. Doesn't matter, I had the game paused in the background -- it's one of those applications that actually don't run at max capacity so it slows down to almost nothing when alt-tabbed out of it. As opposed to some other companies like, of all things, MS and for instance Forza Horizon, which kept running at full power, Bethesda cares. No using resources if not needed is a good policy for applications.

[fragger]

I've gotten to the point in Nuka-World where I can start claiming Commonwealth settlements for the Raiders (I went with the Operators). I have to say, I'm not keen at all to turn some of my settlements over to Raiders. I did a save right before I got to that point, so in this game, I might go back and choose the Open Season option - wipe out all the gangs - and maybe save the settlement-capturing thing for another time, or another game. To me, it sounds like it might actually be more hassle than fun.

I know going with Open Season will mean losing Gage as an ally and turning Nuka-World into a boring Trader town, but I've maxed out Gage's affinity so I won't miss out on his perk.

I like the layout of the Nuka-World map and the opportunity for the extra exploration it offers, but I don't think I like the invasion of the Commonwealth part. The idea of that is kind of rubbing me the wrong way.