Fallout 4

[mandru]

 

[mandru]

I experienced a couple odd occurrences this evening that I've not encountered before in FO4.

The first was I've been busy setting up Covenant as a new settlement.  A notice came in that the nearby settlement Taffington was under attack so I sprinted over and helped fight of a group of Gunners though there was nothing weird about that.  I returned to Covenant and remembered that I had a surplus of Marine Armor Sets back at Taffy stored in the workshop that I needed to bring over to Covenant to equip new arrivals.  So I hoofed it back to taffy and picked up the armor.

As I was leaving I noticed and became curious about one of Taffy settlers who was walking determinedly out of the settlement following the road South from Taffington.  I tried talking to her but being outside of a settlement's boundaries she only offered bland stock responses.

So I tailed her offering no further interference.  She eventually followed the loop of road around to Covenant and popped the front gate open and entered.  I engaged build mode and saw that the population of Covenant had risen by 1 and checking her she was registering as Non-Assigned to any task.  Giving her a job tending mutefruits and a bed she settled in and has stayed in the settlement.


I'd never witnessed a settler moving themselves between locations before but even odder than that was as the settler in this narrative was approaching Covenant ahead of us I saw a random scavenger open the front gate and enter Covenant.

This scavenger went directly to the bar, mounted a stool and apparently grabbed a meal.  Then she settled into shifting back and forth between working out on the pommel horse and hopping between various slot machines.

I've never had a Scavenger come into an established settlement before.  Since her arrival there has not been a night cycle fall yet.  So I'm curious to see if this interloper helps herself to one of several available vacant beds. 

[Art Blade]

that's like studying wild life Nice story, too

[mandru]

Update on the scavenger in Covenant.

Series of screenies made while settlers were starting to bed down at night.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2009370707
Deciding what to do next.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2009369865
Maybe a nice spot of tea?  (sleeping bag not dropped on ground behind her yet)

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2009367699
Upgrading her armor?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2009368478
Adding buffs to her weapons?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2009372850
Maybe the first peaceful sleep in her life.


Considering Covenant's history I may need to make a save and kill this scavenger to see if she is an Institute Synth but I haven't had the heart to do so yet. 

[Art Blade]

all the things she does makes me believe it's a bugged settler who kind of missed out on getting named "settler" and that may be due to a bug that she didn't register as a settler when she moved in. Still, cool

[mandru]

I consider the settlement hopping Settler to be a bugged settler but you may be right Art. 

I was surprised that the scavenger resisted using one of the many open beds but grabbed that sleeping bag on open ground within 30 seconds after I placed it near her.

On further thought the settlement hopping Settler and the Scavenger both arriving in Covenant at the same time are very similar in appearance other than their clothing which makes me wonder if the game glitched and spawned a Tame -vs- Wild versions of the same character.  I wish I'd payed closer attention to that detail at the time but I was rushing to keep track of both and to get the settlement hopper assigned before she wandered off again.

Now that the settler has blended in to the rest of the group it will be tough to re-isolate her and perform a character ID # comparison in the console exam to see if that split person theory might be correct. 

Out of curiosity I'll need to see if this intruder decides to hang around.

[Art Blade]

whatever it is, it is a funny situation and I think very unique. Pity we can't name settlers.. I'd love to be able to name individual settlers. Especially in your case it would be useful and probably spark funny ideas as to what to call those.

[fragger]

That's certainly a unique FO4 experience, mandru. I can't say I've ever encountered a self-relocating settler I have occasionally found a settler miles away from their settlement (?), usually in relation to some kind of random side quest, but later they'll be home again (I can tell that they're one of my settlers because I always give every settler an employment "uniform" to identify who does what outside w0#k hours - crop workers get Road Leathers, a Bartender gets a Tuxedo, a general Trader gets a Tan Suit, etc).  If you can re-identify the itinerant settler, maybe you could equip her with a unique outfit, or even just a stand-out hat, to make her easier to identify and track, should she go a-wandering again.

Nice screenies, btw

Once I spotted three Super Mutants marching along with a human captive in tow and after eliminating the SMs, the human turned out to be one of my own Settlers. She thanked me for saving her, then she either stayed put or wandered off, I can't remember which. In any case, I later found her back at w0#k in her Settlement.

As for the Scavenger, I have encountered one inside a Settlement on a couple of occasions, but each time they have apparently been just passing through. I've never seen them use gym equipment or any other facilities, and I've certainly never seen one sleep over. That's different...

On the subject of wayward settlers, I have several unique characters working as vendors in settlements. In Sanctuary I have Mr. Vault-Tec and Rylee as general Traders, and Sheffield from Diamond City as a Barman. At Starlight I have The Scribe and Smiling Larry as Armor and Weapon vendors respectively. Of the last two, I occasionally find them away from the settlement, sometimes quite a long way away, doing their things - The Scribe will be just wandering along by himself, but Smiling Larry will actually be trudging along with a Brahmin, as he does before you recruit him (if you do). In both cases I can still trade with them when they're out and about. The next time I visit Starlight however, the two of them will be back at w0#k manning their counters.

I built a Trade Caravan Post in Sanctuary and on occasion I'll find a wandering Vendor there who will normally never go near that part of the map. It seems to be a rare occurrence, but a couple of times I've found Cricket and her entourage there. When I approach her, she says something like, "There's nothing but farmers here!" I've also found Lucas and Doc Withers watering their Brahmins at the Post. Interestingly, Carla never uses the Post when she comes to Sanctuary. She apparently prefers her spot in the middle of the road near the yellow Workshop house.

I found that if you put some chairs out near the spot in a Settlement where visiting Traders hang out (or near a Caravan Post), they will make use of them. I haven't tried putting gym equipment or anything else that Settlers generally make use of there. I might try it and see if the Caravaners use them.

[Art Blade]

I also had "commuting" settlers. I remember settlers from Sanctuary and the nearby Rocket settlement would occasionally visit each other. And I kept finding that synth guy (what was his name, ZX81? ) wandering around miles away from Starlight where he was stationed. I watched him several times taking on BoS and other stuff with his Gatling laser I had given him and then he'd eventually be back in Starlight.

[fragger]

I can't say I've ever had that happen. But knowing the curious synchronicity that seems to occur whenever I read about anything in FO4 that I haven't seen, I can probably expect to see it any day now

I came across this little tableau in a ruined, half-submerged house on Far Harbor Island:

Guests are not allowed to view images in posts, please Register or Login

[Art Blade]

cute.

[mandru]

@ Captain Bear 

fragger your experience with the Super Mutants holding a settler hostage is one of the random settlement side quests quite possibly an "I've got one more thing for you" initiated by Preston Garvey.  When you get to the settlement a settler will tell you someone's been kidnapped and if you can't save them it will be horrible.  For me it was Mrs. Abernathy who'd been grabbed.


After about three hours of puttering around Covenant while keeping a half an eye in the scavenger I realized there's just not that much to do in Covenant.  I wanted to bump my population there up from 8 to 11 to round out the shops and tasks so I set out on a couple Mechanist radiant quests to gain an additional 3 settlers.

Sadly when I returned the scavenger had moved on leaving a lot of unresolved questions but freeing me up from having to keep tabs on her actions.  I was glad I'd earlier made a save and killed her to verify that she was not carrying a Synth Component but beyond that her behavior will remain an enigma.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2009797513
Visitors at Covenant now know what they are getting into.

[Art Blade]

LOL @ "welcome" sign!

[fragger]

mandru, that sign outside Covenant gave me a good belly-laugh You've got some heavy-duty defenses there... Looking at all the turrets and the sign, the saying "don't go away mad, just go away" springs to mind

Pity that Scavver moved on, it would have been interesting to see what else she might have gotten up to if she'd stuck around. At least you know she wasn't a synth.

Covenant is an odd settlement site. There's not much available real estate inside the walls and the build area ends right outside those walls. Nor is there much space that isn't taken up by the existing houses. It also has a very low building ceiling, so you can't go erecting multi-storey structures, and there are pieces of junk and furniture which can't be scrapped (nor even consoled away. There's a small wooden box outside the house with the double bed in it that I can neither scrap, console out, or even pick up or push around. At least it's not in the way of anything). I currently have 6 people at Covenant and have capped it at that. On the plus side, the settlers are pretty happy in there, at 97% Happiness.

Your mention of a Rogue Robot quest reminded me of an incident. I did one of those Mechanist radiants to knock off a couple of bad robots who were hassling three settlers in the street near Hangman's Alley (the one with the diner on the corner). After junking the bots, all three settlers had survived. I approached one, who asked me if I knew if there were any places she could go to live (or words to that effect). Since I wanted to up the population at Zimonja Outpost by one, I sent her there. I didn't bother talking to the other two settlers.

So after a day or so I went to Zimonja, only to find that all three settlers had turned up there and the listed population had gone up by 3. I didn't have the facilites, nor the space, to absorb all the newbies without it entailing a major rebuild of the settlement, so I sent two of them on to other settlements.

It seems that if there is more than one settler being harassed by robots, and if you rescue and rehome one of them, you get all of them.

[Art Blade]

that might actually help explain how it came to Out of Africa I