Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

welcome, no worries, I thought as much

[T.V.]

Yeah that's right about the vault equipment boosts. But I think I recall there being a time limit though? Maybe not. Probably in the wiki.

There may not be a time limit. I've had a Strength boost active for three game days now, it doesn't appear to be going away. Unless the time limit is longer than that. I'll keep tabs on it.

I can verify that there is no time limit, it is active until You use another one of those equipments.

Thanks Art. Must be the heat here...

I really hope You won't get directly affected by the heat / fire-storms that are terrorizing Your part of Australia at the moment, and that the situation will be resolved as soon as possible! 

[fragger]

Thank you for your kind thoughts, buddy A couple of months ago the fires came close enough to where I live to cause us to evacuate for a few days, fortunately my little seaside town was spared.

Doesn't seem to be an end in sight at this point. The country needs rain more than anything else, and lots of it. Trouble is, the ground gets so hard from such a prolonged drought that if it rains too much too soon, the ground's diminished ability to absorb it quickly gets overwhelmed and flooding occurs.

Wouldn't be the first time we've gone from one extreme to the other.

[fragger]

I've come to the conclusion that the "Pain Train" is one of the glitchiest of all the Perks. Which is unfortunate, because when used at the right place and time, it can be bags of fun.

With this Perk ranked up (max 3) and while wearing Power Armor, you can sprint into enemies and send them flying, as well as hugely injuring them. It can even kill low-level enemies like vanilla Raiders outright. It will also knock them stupid if you land near them from a good height, especially if your PA legs have the "Explosive Vents" modification.

But even if running lickety-split into an enemy doesn't kill them, it will decisively incapacitate them. They will not only get hurled through the air like Evel Knievel after a buggered-up stunt, but they'll end up in a sluggish heap on the ground which takes them a moment to get up from, allowing you to freely pepper them while they're sprawled on the deck. Get enough good, quick hits in and they won't even get a chance to stand back up.

It's quite an entertaining way to dispatch baddies - when it works. However, it has a wicked habit of simply ceasing to function when you least expect it, making you feel like a right wally when you go bolting into an enemy only to stop dead as soon as you hit them, leaving you face-to-face with a perfectly he@lthy and distinctly unknocked-over opponent who will immediately take the opportunity to plug you at point-blank range or bean you with whatever weapon they're wielding.

Should the Perk stop working, it can be reactivated with the following console commands:

player.removeperk 65e3d;player.removeperk 65e3c;player.removeperk 4d89b <enter>
player.addperk 4d89b;player.addperk 65e3c;player.addperk 65e3d <enter>

This will restore the Perk and rank it up to three. You can then go skittling enemies again with gay abandon - for a while anyway, until it stops working again, leaving you with egg and powder burns on your face

I think there is a mod to permanently fix it, if you're so inclined.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Interesting, that's a perk I never used because I almost never used power armor. Figures it only works sometimes and it takes the console or a mod to fix it.

[Art Blade]

I read about it being buggy long before deciding whether or not to unlock it, so I never unlocked it.

However. Entertaining post, fragger

[fragger]

Cheers

Playing on "Very Hard" difficulty was indeed very hard for quite a while into the game. Until I could get perked up and get hold of good weapons and armour, I had to be very careful about what fights I picked, and with whom. I'm not ashamed to say that I did a fair amount of running away But now I'm on Level 187 and have conquered my fear I have ranked up all the weapons and fighting-related Perks, I can "pacify" many animals and make them do my bidding, and I can get healed and rendered radiation-free by sunlight, largely eliminating the need to carry Stimpaks and Radaway. Most enemy ammo just bounces off me now. .38-based "pipe" weapons don't even raise a bruise, whereas in the early game they could make me dead pretty quickly.

I can also now resume one of my favourite pastimes in FO4 - handing out knuckle sandwiches to Feral Ghouls. If I have a Yao Guai Roast and spice it up with some Psycho and Bufftats, and with the "Iron Fist" Perk fully ranked up, I can punch ferals into the middle of next week.

I STILL haven't triggered "Act II" of the game yet by doing Valentine's mission to find Kellogg and in turn bringing the Brotherhood of Steel into the game in force, so the only BoS presence in the game is still Danse and his two underlings in Cambridge. I'd like to hold out until I get to Level 200 before I take the story to the next level. It means a lot more slogging around, finding fights and doing lots of radiant quests, but I want to see if I can get there.

As of tomorrow, I will have been on this one playthrough for a year. An actual year that is, not a game year. Holey moley. I must really like it or something I think it's the game that I always hoped someone would one day make.

[Art Blade]

I'm happy to hear that, fragger Keep going, mate

[Dweller_Benthos]

Getting to level 200 will be quite the feat, the amount of XP needed for each subsequent level keeps increasing, like in most games with an XP system. I know when I did Nuka World at about level 160 everything was pretty easy, as I think it was meant to be done around level 60 or 70 or so.

[T.V.]

But now I'm on Level 187 and have conquered my fear

Heh, heh, a strange coincident, I'm also at level 187... 
Started with "pussy" difficulty, but changed to Very hard after reaching level 30 or something.
I've played the main missions up to the point where You have to choose side(s).
So I'm still "friend" to all of the fractions. 

[fragger]

@T.V., that is a coincidence indeed! Although I just hit Level 188 last night.

Persevering with this approach (getting to Level 200 before doing Nick's mission to kick the story along) is a bit of a slog. I wouldn't do it a second time As D_B said, each level requires more XPs than the last to achieve. I have to continually make the rounds of the map to find fights at those places where bad guys regularly spawn and keep doing radiant quests like Hayden's, Rhys' and Isabel's. There are also quite a few interior locations where bad guys respawn, but they require you to stay out of the area (at least a cell or two away) anywhere from a few game days to a few game weeks, depending in which locations they are. They seem to vary. The interior of the Corvega car plant seems to repopulate in just a few days, whereas some places need a couple of weeks or more.

I have also stationed romanceable (is that a word?) companions at various settlements around the map to take advantage of the XP-boosting "Lover's Embrace" Perk as often as possible, i.e. once every eight game hours.

I read where you need to reach Level 275 to get all Perks, and all of them fully ranked up. It has taken me a year to get this far. Allowing for the ever-lengthening XPs required for levels, do I want to spend possibly another year to see if I can get them all? Maybe I don't appear to be getting sick of the game to any noticeable degree yet.

[mandru]

I think I'm currently somewhere around level 178 with 8 perk points available but I've avoided Pain Train because I'm concerned about sprinting in PA within a settlement during an attack and running into one of the settlers.

If the settler takes that perk's damage it would set the entire settlement against me.

I've damaged a settler while in build mode by falling off a high structure wearing PA with damage boosting landings and had to use a previous save point.  I lost a lot of build effort to calm that settlement down again. 

[fragger]

I got Pain Train mainly just to try it out. I don't use PA hugely often and if I go to a settlement wearing it, I tend to get out of it while I potter around or build. But it does come in handy while working on tall structures, especially if you want to jet around, get down quickly, or misstep and fall off I think the cons with it outweigh the pros, though - like when, as you said mandru, you drop and accidentally stagger or kill a settler, or when the perk itself simply stops working...

I've built my own dedicated "w0#k centres" in just about every settlement, each of which contain all workbenches plus a resident suit of PA. I hit upon a layout that will allow me to comfortably fit all Workbenches into a 4-floortile footprint (2x2), including both a PA display cabinet and service rack. The only settlement without one of these w0#k centres is Covenant, which not only has very little free real estate but a really low building ceiling. It won't even let me build a two-story structure there.

Most of the workbenches will probably go unused, but there are times when they have come in very handy. You never know when you might want to cook some animal or mod up a newly-acquired Legendary item on the go. They also give the settlers some extra things to play with in the mornings before they start w0#k.

I've noticed a glitch of sorts if you put workbenches too close together or too close to some other piece of furniture. When you try to interact with such a workbench, it goes into 3rd-person view but doesn't bring up the w0#k interface - instead, it just sort of pauses for a moment then spits you back out, but you'll then be stuck in 3rd-person mode until such times as you make more room around the bench and interact with it again. Then it goes back to normal.

In other news, I scored a Legendary Submachine Gun which fires explosive rounds. So now I effectively have two "Spray and Prays" - the original short-ranged suppressed, and a longer-ranged loud

[Dweller_Benthos]

Nice, too bad you can't dual-wield them, talk about a competitor to the explosive mini gun!

[mandru]

Nice find fragger with that explosive submachine gun. 

I know the legendary Acrobatic legs (right and left) each reduce fall damage 50% for a total of 100% when both are worn and that would eliminate the damage to settlers that the PA deals out.  Even though I have 3 full sets of the acrobatic legs I'm afraid I'm lazy and tend to live inside my PA unless there's going to be some swimming involved. 


I overheard a hilarious exchange between Nick Valentine and one of the Vault 81 dwellers.

Vault dweller: What the hell is that thing doing here?

Nick: Is that what your parents used to say to you?

(you read that in Nick's voice didn't you?  )