Fallout 4

[fragger]

I don't mean this to sound cheeky, but why concern yourself with top-of-the-line armour and protection when you're playing in god mode? I mean, you could run around in the Glowing Sea in nothing but your jocks fighting Death Claws with your bare fists and not have to worry

[Art Blade]

haha, you're almost right

There are two reasons. One, regarding power armour: I just so happened to come across a ton of different sets of PA and paint jobs for them and modded my PA sets every way possible and eventually I happened to learn that PA inhibits any bonus that comes from any apparel.

The second reason is that non-PA stuff often comes with perks, particularly legendary armour, that are useful for me, like enhanced perception and strength but also those Action Points which make sense when using VATS. The more AP, the more single targets (or multiple times the same body part) I can target and unleash one large attack. Perception and other perks that I cannot accumulate in any other way in such amounts than with gear I'm wearing. Alright, plus chems if needed.

So essentially I don't need the armour aspect but the perks that come with those armour parts.

And because I know that guys like you don't use cheats, I prefer to learn about all that stuff (imagining I'd have to play without cheats) and then share my knowledge so guys like you may benefit from it, even if I myself don't make much use of it

[fragger]

Fair enough And thanks!

Blimey, I've already put over 300 hours into this game And no sign of getting sick of it anytime soon. Which is good, because no end to the story or quests is anywhere in sight yet I've still got a lengthy list of tasks and missions racked up awaiting my attention.

I'm on the island with Far Harbor on it now and have gotten involved in the doings of Acadia and the Children Of Atom This is a toxic place, makes the Commonwealth look like a tropical paradise. After doing a few things there, I went back to Sanctuary, grabbed my lead-lined power armour and my Hazmat suit, and loaded up on RadX, Radaway and every rad-combating piece of food I'd cooked up. I'm also starting to raise my levels in the Perks that deal with radiation resistance, which I haven't focussed on very much yet. Too many other Perks I wanted to level up first.

It's especially raddy down in the lower parts of the old submarine that the Children Of Atom live in... It's like hanging out in the reactor room at Chernobyl

[Art Blade]

hehe And welcome

Aw, 300 hours.. you'll see, getting to over a thousand really isn't a problem. I've put in 1191 hours right now.


FH is crazy and very extensive, both map- and story-wise. Have fun with the rads, the three factions living there, and the various challenges, including new mutants..

[Art Blade]

Starlight, home to people who despise of the Brotherhood of Steel. I went there to grab a PA Curie was using for a little bit, and I didn't realise the helmet was missing. I reckon she's still got it in her inventory.

It's one thing to pass the "cuckoo's nest"
at a rather close distance
in a BoS vertibird..
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..and another one entirely to get away from there in one,
and in one piece, too.

This is me performing a short-distance face-plant.
I'm falling out of a vertibird right after getting in,
as it got shot up before we could even lift off.
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[Art Blade]

Wow. Only just now I unlocked the Jamaica Plains settlement.

I had cleared out that part long ago but never knew it was a settlement. I learned about it when watching a vid but it wasn't about that settlement. It just happened that the guy came across JP and I thought, "hey, that I did long ago," and then he found that w0#k bench.

So I was looking for it today and also for the first time came across University Credit Union with tons of safes and down there was a (bank) vault with a secret room and there I found a legendary weapon called "Prototype UP77 'Limitless Potential'" -- this game is so loaded with details, even more than a thousand hours into it, I still keep finding new stuff.

[fragger]

I established a settlement at Jamaica Plains quite a while ago and found the University Credit Union with that Legendary weapon in it. That seems to be the nature of this game - one player will find all sorts of stuff that another hasn't, and vice-versa.

Art, I know there is tons of stuff that you've discovered which I haven't, or am yet to, but the fact that you've put in about 4 times more hours than I have and yet there are still things that we have each discovered that the other hasn't is testament to the extent of the game's depth

I also like all the little stories and tableaus one comes across in places like the UCU, revealed by reading emails on terminals and finding holotapes and written accounts. Stories that have no bearing on main events as such but add richness to the game world by revealing what isolated individuals and pockets of survivors experienced in the days, and sometimes years, after the war. Some of it is funny, yet some of it is quite poignant.

I found Sandy Coves Convalescent Home at Salem with a couple of robot staff still on duty. There is a room with residents' safes inside, and the safes can't be opened until you find the keys for them, about half a dozen in total. So you have to go through the home visiting each of the residents' rooms to find the keys (there is a staff terminal which tells staff members where each resident likes to hide their key, should the staff need them). This means that you get to see what kind of person each resident was by the contents of their rooms, what their interests were, and what sort of life they led. Some of the rooms still contain the skeletal remains of the resident, preserved doing whatever they were doing when the bomb fell. I found it one of the poignant moments in the game, especially since each resident had a name and wasn't just an anonymous collection of bones.

[Art Blade]

yep, that place was creepy. And I was attacked by a group of synths when I had a go at the safes

One example of poignant, even disturbing but still somehow funny, in my book is this

random Terminal entry, at a military checkpoint
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Indeed, the game world is huge and so is the amount of details.

By the way, I found my PA helmet in Curie's inventory as I had suspected.

fragger, you found that freedom trail (starting at Swan's Pond) and wanted to follow it on your own some time ago. Any results?

[Art Blade]

D_B, I kept thinking about what you said regarding the stuff that went missing from my desk, to look around if it had fallen down or something. Today I decided to drop a quicksave and scrap the foundation of the room and indeed, the money, plate, wine and other stuff had dropped through the floor under the house.

[mandru]

With the fresh restart that I'm playing I've found that even if you have the perks to crack open safes and computer terminals there are rewards that are not available if your Level is too low.

Your Level highly influences what the game will allow you to acquire.  Even when I had the ID for a specific high power weapon (in one case where I was trying to outfit my settlers with Experimental 18-A Plasma Rifles) and try to use the player.additem Console code you receive a greatly neutered version of your request to add. 

Crack open a treasure trove to soon and you get cans of pork and beans or Cram instead of that Legendary weapon you've heard or remember being available at that location.


I found the whole story behind the "Separated Family" radio signal particularly sad.

[mandru]

On further thought the perks that you have unlocked may also limit not only the items found in safes and treasure troves but also the gear found when looting the bodies you make or encounter. 

[Art Blade]

I believe it is not so much related to perks but to your current level. I hadn't had access to certain gear (I think the Gauss rifle was one of those items) before I reached higher levels. Let's put it this way: you don't start off with top of the line gear. I remember at the beginning I only had access to pipe guns. I didn't even expect anything better because there was nothing else and I didn't know of better weapons at that time. Well, there was the 10mm pistol which was just great but the rest was pipe, pipe, pipe It obviously got better, though.

[fragger]

Now that you guys mention it, I'm seeing very little in the way of pipe weapons on dead guys and in crates and such these days. I actually still have one on me, a pipe rifle that I modded up to take .45 ammo and pack as much punch as possible. I like to have it handy for dealing with low-level enemies and critters so I can save ammo for my harder hitting weapons. It's not much use in Far Harbor though - there are very few low-level enemies in that place I've chewed through a good dollop of energy weapon ammo there so far.

As to Far Harbor, I just got finished playing Hercule Poirot at the Cliff's Edge Hotel That was quite a fun little diversion. And again, a cool little backstory as revealed by the Overseer's terminal.

Art, I haven't gotten back to the Freedom Trail yet. Keep getting sidetracked with settlements, quests and my own self-imposed little projects. I will at some point though, so please don't spill any beans

My collection of power armour is growing. I've got 4/6 of a powerful suit of PA, the X-01 model. I'm still missing a left arm and a left leg for it. I've had it for some time now, long enough to forget where I found it As much as I want to find the missing bits (assuming they're out there somewhere), I'm resisting the urge to cheat them up. So far I have two complete T-45s (one fully upgraded to the "F" model and lead-lined - that's my Far Harbor rig - the other is a w0#k-in-progress), two complete T-51s (one partially upgraded), an almost complete T-60 (missing a right arm but was obtained with three Tesla components already on it), a complete Raider II suit and the aforementioned partially-complete X-01. Plus four unadorned blank frames.

I'm going to have to build a new place to store them, I'm running out of room for them in my workshop.

[Art Blade]

alright, old bean. Not going to spoil you.

PA to be found on enemies or at select few armour shops/vendors is another example of character level. At first you find T-45 and nothing better. Later you keep finding T-60 and will have a hard time finding any T-45 anywhere. The X-01 is quite rare and I believe never to be found on enemies. I think there are no more than 5 sets of X-01 in the game, DLC included.

Fragger, I'm pretty sure you acquired those PA with your friend Ada at Fort Hagen Hangar to be found West, middle part of the map, close to the border, but it sounds as if you already picked the place clean.

By the way, I killed the gorilla in Sanctuary. He was too noisy in general and when he got stuck, he'd produce a sound similar to that of a machine gun turret when firing. I couldn't stand it anymore.

[fragger]

Yeah, that could have been where I found the X-01 parts, sounds familiar.

I've now maxed out Old Longfellow's affinity. I still haven't done Strong or Codsworth yet (if you can build affinity with Codsworth). I've been reluctant to travel with Strong, or rather, I've been reluctant to have him accompany me into settlements. I don't know how settlers would take to having that great green ogre hanging around them. I guess I could leave him outside.

There are some tough critters in Far Harbor... I thought the Fog Crawlers were the worst, but then I disturbed a giant Hermit Crab that was wearing the back half of a truck for a shell Holy moley, that thing was tough to bring down. I think that was the worst thing I've had to deal with so far. Even my quad-rocket Missile Launcher was barely chipping away at it, and that weapon will usually bring down a Mirelurk Queen with one salvo. I had to hole up in a house where it couldn't get to me, but then it kept shooting its bloody offspring in through the windows. One or two shotgun blasts were enough to deal with them, but they kept me from having a go at Big Mama outside. I brought it down eventually, but it took a lot of ammo.

I've blown through a lot of energy weapon ammo on this island, going to have to do the rounds of all the vendors to get more. Fortunately I've earned heaps of caps to spend. The Ammo Plant machine won't make energy weapon ammo, only bullets and shells, so I'll have to buy what I need.