Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

crazy

I think I'll stick to what I've got for now. I don't have any mods installed but the one re-enabling achievements. I'm doing fine with what the game has to offer, so far.

[PZ]

Sounds like Bean was just angry that you survived the blast 

[Art Blade]

hehe, that might have been the case.

I suppose it was in a way it would have played out in a real-life event. Imagine a suicide bomber blew himself up next to you and you realised you hadn't died, and that the sick *bleep* hadn't died, either.. wouldn't you do him the favour and finish that part of the job for him that involved him dying?

[PZ]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

I see you answered most of your questions, Art, I was offline for the weekend as usual. I did see you in game when I was updating steam but didn't want to disturb you....

The "Art vs. Art" scene is one you'll see now and then called a random encounter. I've seen it several times, so they reincarnate somehow. Usually I just let them fight it out as after a while the loot they have isn't worth it.

There are plenty of other random encounters, but from what I read they can be a bit buggy and people say they've seen the Art^2 one many times and some of the other ones never. I know there are ones I've never seen, and a couple only once, but the Art^2 I've seen many many times. Not sure if there's a mod that fixes that, I never came across one. Other people say it's a result of the Automotron DLC where a lot fo the random encounters get replaced by Rust Devil encounters so you never see the other randoms. Rust Devils are the gang added by that DLC and usually have a few robots with them, good loot and armor, but at a low player level, not something you want to come across, they can be tough especially if they have an assaultron or sentry bot with them.

I had a pretty decent lock picking and computer hacking skill at the start, so I only had to leave a few things unlocked until I got higher. I did load a lock picking mod at the beginning just because I didn't "get" how the lock picking worked. It would show you exactly where the lock could be opened and I used that until I had the idea down of how to do it. Once you get the highest level and don't have to worry about breaking pins, then you can just whack at it until it opens. Same for the computers, though I had an idea of how it worked, sometimes the logic eluded me, so I brute-forced them most of the time, picking passwords until I had one guess left and then looking for the bracket sets to eliminate bad ones and maybe resetting the guess limit. Once hacking is at top level, usually there's only a few guesses anyway. At least it's not like in Fallout 3 where if you use all your guesses and fail, the terminal is locked permanently and you can't get back into it until you get the high level perk to allow that.

I would say ignore the main quest for now, or for quite a while and just explore around the area, sweeping out in arcs further from home base until you get far enough that the enemies are too tough then head back. I did that for about 30 or 40 levels before I did anything more with the main quest, then did more exploring. By the time I finished the main quest, I was a super buff killing machine with ~1400 health points and buff-producing armor and super weapons. I never loaded a weapon mod because the ones in the game were already cool enough. Early on I was lucky enough to get a wounding 10mm pistol which means each bullet does extra damage over time, so with lower level enemies you could shoot them once and then watch the health meter drop until they die from the wounding effect. I carried that gun through the rest of the game, as 10mm ammo was all over the place. I collected decent armor that had effects like letting you move faster and I always added the deep pocketed to let you carry more stuff. I rarely used power armor as it was too clunky and made you move too slow.

I know I played the game for the good part of a year, with breaks to play a couple other things, and have 649 hours in it, so it was worth the money I paid.

Oh, and like the General Atomic Galleria, there are interconnected locations. In that one, if you've been..... somewhere (I forget) you can find the body of the original person who was supposed to be the manager there and take his ID card and use it to take over the place and turn it on, then the robots are (mostly) friendly and you can trade with them. I think at the time I just had the speech perk high enough to lie about it. Though in the boxing match, the robot you're supposed to box with was already smashed and I could never do that part. But there are interconnected things like that all over in the game and finding the right thing ahead of time to complete a random side quest (though it's not really a quest) would be pretty rare. That's where a guide or the wiki comes in. If you don't care about getting it "right" the first time, then no need to worry about it.

[Art Blade]

thanks for that post, nice read

Alright, 40 or so levels.. sounds good, I was already afraid of levelling up too quickly and hit some level cap before finishing the game but then again.. I think I'll cope with it one way or another.

Yesterday I made it to Diamond City and today I'm going to enter it. I killed a couple of super mutants on my way through the first couple of streets where some DC guards were fighting them. Turns out that the Cryonator or what it's called apparently is a legendary weapon. I had upgraded it a bit already and it now shoots erm, ice cubes. They're hard-hitting and I can take out gun turrets and super mutants with just a few shots of that gun. Nice. And I too like the weapons I came across which aren't many, but I got quite a diverse arsenal out of different modding ideas of the same base weapons. A pipe gun turned into an automatic weapon that fires armour-piercing rounds without a scope (so I can see what's around me) has proved very useful against most enemies so far. And I got a pipe bolt-action sniper that packs quite a punch (60+ damage) at 215m range is what I like to use for ranged targets. I'm doing quite OK and I am enjoying the game

[Dweller_Benthos]

Nice to hear you're having fun, Art!

Yeah the cryolator is a dandy weapon, but I think ammo is scarce. I got it by bringing dogmeat into the vault, and standing by the case and telling him to find a weapon for me, he magically grabs it out of the locked case and gives it to me. That might have been patched later though.

A good settlement to grab is just outside Diamond City, closer to the bridge, called Hangmans' Alley, a nice place to set up shop inside the city. Gets attacked now and then, though.

Another thing to do early is to get Piper up to maximum affinity and romance her, and bring her along, so anytime you sleep you get the lover's embrace perk which is a 15% bonus to any XP you earn for the next 8 hours or so in game, and you can get it anywhere you sleep, unlike well rested which you only get in a claimed settlement. She also has a perk that gives you more XP for finding new locations, so getting her early is a nice XP boost for the rest of the game.

[Art Blade]

ah, that's a valuable tip, thank you +1

[Art Blade]

Hmm, I might want to check out that mod which allows you to keep Dogmeat along with any companion so I can have both Piper and Dogmeat trudge along.

FO4 Dogmeat and Piper

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[Art Blade]

I'm editing this: read the post after this one before you touch any mods.

Everyone's Best Friend (dogmeat + any companion)
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/13459/?

[Art Blade]

So, regarding mods.

I downloaded it, read the readme

With NMM: Download with Manager and activate.
Without NMM: Download the file.  Then use your favorite .7z, .zip, .rar program to extract the contents to your game \Data folder.  The mod requires 2 files: EveryonesBestFriend.esp and EveryonesBestFriend - Main.ba2.
     ie: C:\Program Files (x86)\steam\steamapps\common\fallout 4\Data.
Then activate the .esp the same as you normally activate .esps.

and all that and went for a manual installation.

What I didn't like was the comment "Then activate the .esp the same as you normally activate .esps."

I could kill people for lines like those in that context (how to install) because I don't normally activate any .esps.  So how the flipping heck do I activate them? Research time. Great.

Long story short, you DON'T do it the way you "normally" do it. Normal apparently is something that USED to be normal. I considered something was wrong because on making Piper my companion, Dogmeat had to be sent away.

You DON'T edit those Fallout4Custom.ini and Fallout4Prefs.ini

Instead, you fire up your game, and where it says "continue" there is also a button "MODS" which, when you click it, looks as if you were forced to sign up to Bethesda's Mod Central or some such, which put me off the first time I saw it before I even considered modding. Now I checked it out again.

YOU DON'T HAVE TO SIGN UP or log in there. Instead, you'll find "load order" as an option at the bottom of the menu.

This mod is actually showing up there (my only mod) and I clicked on it -- all of a sudden it was ticked off. A check box that you don't even see unless you click on the mod.

Aha. So I unchecked the mod again and quit the game, reverted the changes previously made to those ini files (had backups of the original) and fired up the game again. Then I checked the mod to activate it and the game responded to that, it was very briefly, maybe it was setting up the game accordingly. Then I had the normal start screen and menu again and I chose the savegame before making Piper my companion. And THIS TIME it worked. 

I now have both Piper and Dogmeat trudging along with me. 

[Art Blade]

I hope that now I don't have Dogmeat to go to bed with us for a threesome.

[Art Blade]

Alright, it is fun to explore with both companions on my side. I really would have missed the "where is Dogmeat?" and then tripping over him, every two minutes

[Art Blade]

quick info: I added a link in the first post that leads to the old OWG archive's FO4 board (read only)



Piper is weird.

I outfitted her with some normal and some legendary gear I was carrying around (see pic a few posts above) and gave her a few weapons, too. I was able to do that as she was already available for trading and in the trading menu you can make her equip stuff from her inventory, the stuff I gave her. That was even before she became my additional companion.

As a companion and potential lover, she likes and dislikes stuff that I do (and perhaps don't do) and that includes me lock-picking. She disliked it when I unlocked an expert lock on a door to an outdoor raider encampment in DC. I had to reload a quicksave to undo the expert lock-picking just so I didn't have to make good for stuff like that too often in order to get even.

I don't know whether she doesn't like the fact that I can pick expert locks (must look like an experienced criminal to her) or that she dislikes it because from her point of view I didn't have to do it. I tried to trick her by ordering her to stay some place out of sight and perhaps 20m away from a door I wanted to pick but of course she noticed what I was doing. I immediately got the dislike message popping up. Alright, reloading quicksave.. However, when we entered a hostile indoor location (Layton Towers) she suddenly liked it when I picked some novice locks on med crates and luggage.

Also, she doesn't use my weapons. I remember in FO2, companions would use the weapons that I gave them. Hmmmmm.  She prefers to produce a silly little pistol much rather than wielding one of those proper guns that I gave her. I'd like to tell her, "look honey. You don't scare that Super Mutant with that toy pistol of yours. He doesn't even notice when you hit him. Why don't you use a proper gun like one of those that I gave you?" Thank goodness I can't tell her that. I can already virtually see the epic argument that would ensue because I criticised her choice of merchandise. It wouldn't have mattered that I was right. All that would have mattered would have been that I had criticised her.

Well.. Piper is a proper woman, alright. And she's already very convincing at being one She told me I'd have to show her that I wanted to do right by the people there. Yeah, right, I'm your hero knight in shiny armour and ostrich feathers sprouting out of my arse. I should treat her accordingly, like a real woman. To do so, I'd have to throw my shirt at her and yell, "iron that!"

I can already predict whom I'm going to ditch next time I have to choose. Dogmeat is tanking all my stimpacks but at least he's fun and doesn't argue when you tell him how stupid he is at times

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah, when mods first appeared (about 2 minutes after the game released) you used to have to jump through hoops to get them to w0#k. You have no idea how much w0#k I put into getting my keybinds to w0#k the way I wanted with F4SE. I had to edit the flash files or whatever they are to get the onscreen prompts working. Had to download a separate program to do that, and place the edited files correctly, and edit those INI files to get the game to read them. When they added mods officially they made it a bit easier to install them, but a  lot of mod authors never bothered to change their instructions, not to mention they assume you know how to do it already, because of course, you've played Fallout 3, New Vegas and Skyrim and modded all those, right? Of course you did, don't be silly. I just use the nexus manager and it does most of the w0#k.

When you give a companion a weapon (any companion, not just Piper), you have to give them ammo for it too or they can't use it. They will use up the ammo eventually and then use the weapon that is the default one for them, that doesn't require ammo. Once you give the weapon to them, click on it in their inventory so it's selected as their current weapon. And be ready to constantly supply them ammo, they aren't picky about how much they use. Don't ever give them molotovs, grenades, missile launchers or mini-nukes, they have no concept of what an enclosed space is and will shoot off a mini-nuke at a ghoul in a closed in subway tunnel and roast all of you. When you give a settler a weapon, you just need to give them one unit of ammo for it and they will use that infinitely.

I never had Piper dislike picking any kind of lock, unless it's marked as red, as in you're breaking and entering somewhere you're not supposed to be. Otherwise Piper loves lock picking, there's an old bank around the corner from Diamond City where you have to hack the terminal to get the bank vault open then there's about a dozen safe deposit boxes and other things to pick and she just loves that, and you get gold and pre-war money and other treasure from it, so it's a good place to take her and get that affinity increased. Generally she likes when you're the "good guy" and be nice to people, complete quests and don't steal or kill innocent people. The affinity decrease isn't much for each minor offense, but a few can stack up. I found the XP bonus from having her along more useful than any annoyance she caused, which wasn't much anyway, as that was how I was playing the game. If you're playing a character who's a murdering jerk, then yeah, she's probably not a good fit, and maybe Strong the super mutant would be a better companion. Get the cannibal perk and eat all the corpses and he loves that. But I don't think he can be romanced so the lover's embrace perk won't kick in for him, but most of the other companions can. Oh and they are all bi-sexual so it doesn't matter the gender of your character, they will all roll into bed with you. But having that perk to increase XP to get the more powerful perks was a strategy I used early on, though I ran with dogmeat for a long time before I knew it was a thing. Dogmeat really is a good companion and you can get the lone wanderer perk with him to be able to carry more stuff. At least I think that's still a thing, they might have patched that. But he can get in the way sometimes and has the habit of running ahead and getting into trouble when you really don't want him to. But he will stay close and be quiet when you're sneaking, usually.