Fallout 4

[mandru]

  @ T.V.

[fragger]

Thanks for the kudo, Art

Mt. Desert Island looks to be a very picturesque place, I had a look at some photos of it using image search. Some lovely locations there.

The FO4 map isn't exactly the same as the real island, but it is close enough to see that that's where it's supposed to be. FH locations in the game like Echo Lake, Acadia National Park, the National Park Visitors Center and the lighthouse at the southern tip of the island all exist and are generally reasonable facsimiles of their real-world counterparts. I guess you could put the slightly altered coastline down to atomically-induced global warming

What led me to search for it was the sub-story as revealed by the terminals at the Vim factory, where one of the staff had come up with an advertising slogan for their new drink flavour: "The Taste of Maine". So I thought the island might have been modelled on Deer Isle and went into Google maps to compare. It was quickly apparent that it wasn't, but Mt. Desert Island is not far to the NE of Deer Isle and I recognised it almost immediately when I zoomed the map out a bit.

Thanks for the handy little tips there, guys

[Art Blade]

yep, thanks T.V.

[LowPolyOWG]

 

[Art Blade]

reading fragger's line again ("old truck-shell staggered from one blast to the next") made me laugh again

I definitely need to try something similar.

Alright. Nuka World it is right now, just reached level 8 and damn, despite giving myself roughly 100 points to spend on the perk chart, I keep limiting myself to the actual rank and progress accordingly which means I really notice how many more abilities I had at hand with my other character. It is fun though, again, like with the other character, I play on very hard difficulty. Kind of balances the cheating a bit but comes with more legendary stuff.

[fragger]

Cheers

I didn't think there were any Death Claws on FH Island, but I came across two of them fighting with each other. Haven't seen that before.

Damn, I got close... The settlement at Zimonja Outpost was hovering at 99% happiness, then it went back down to 97% again. I put in a Slot Machine and set the cage to catch another cat. I've got 9 settlers there.

I don't really have the luxury of building multiple cat cages. Each cat cage requires 2 Softshell Mirelurk meats among the building requirements. Because I'm not cheating, it means I have to get the meats by going out and hunting the things - and even then, it's a lottery because you never know which 'Lurks are going to yield softshell meat and which ones aren't. Occasionally a vendor will have one for sale, but usually not. Sometimes I get lucky and find one in a Super Mutant's meat bag. Generally speaking, they seem hard to come by.

For some reason, the Soda Fountain generates no happiness for me - at least, I don't see a smiley face when I select it to build. Out of the four Vault-Tec experimental items in my list, only the Phoropter (Eye Care) and the Slot Machine generate happiness. I though maybe it was because of whatever parameter it was I originally chose for the Soda Fountain, but according to the Wiki, any choice for the Soda Machine will generate happiness. Two of the variants can cause settler death, but because I can't remember what I went with (it was before I'd read up on it) I'm not game to build any.

I completed the Far Harbor escapade. The Mariner's mission to eliminate the Red Death gave me a good chuckle when I came face to face with the monster There was something very Monty Python about that.

Got a suit of Marine armour out of the Far Harbor adventure. Yay!
I've modded it to the Ultra-Light build, like I did with the Heavy Combat Armor, so I can carry heaps of other stuff.

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[Art Blade]

FH is quite something. I had to go back to the wastelands just to see the sun again for a bit before I felt like going back into that dark fog over there. My character is built so that night time comes with a ton of advantages compared to daylight thanks to various useful perks but that doesn't make FH look prettier. I know I could have used that weather shell mortar and I actually did once, but overall it's foggy and spooky.

Strange that your soda fountain doesn't show a smiley. You're right, any version of it is supposed to generate happiness. I used the caffeinated version so only +5 happiness but at least no one dies. And for some reason, it's a magnet to all settlers

Regarding cats, indeed Softshell Mirelurk meat is hard to come by, a random thing. Sometimes I came across Mirelurks that had both variants in them at the same time. A good hunting spot for them is near The Castle, follow the coastline which goes westwards there until you reach South Boston High School. Those ruins at the waterside always have a couple of Mirelurk "nests" with eggs and their family isn't far, either.

[fragger]

I did very well out of FH financially. I didn't spend much over there and I came out of it with over 10,000 caps and almost $2,000 of pre-war money. Came in very handy for replenishing all the ammo I blew through there

I find a good way to get extra caps is to go someplace where ghouls hang out as they often seem to have a few caps on them. A lucrative spot is the Super Duper Market in Lexington. Not only are there lots of ghouls with caps in there, but some good junk items and fusion cells respawn there. I always get the Protectron on duty, he's good for keeping some of the ghouls off my case.

It's nice to be back in a sunny, non-radioactive atmosphere again I did fast-travel back to the Commonwealth a few times during FH, but mostly I stayed there until it was all over. I still have to go back sometimes as I have three settlements over there to look after.

[Art Blade]

I see My settlements over there are not inhabited, I sent everyone over to Sanctuary and as usual, what cannot be relocated, gets annihilated. If they cannot be killed for whatever reason, I use the markfordelete and disable command, and done. So no reason for me to return, unless I want something special from there.

For a change, I have fun being a total dick over at Nuka World. They're raiders, so I don't mind.

hardcore
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[Art Blade]

My new partner looks like Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver

"You talkin' to me? You.. talkin'.. to ME?"
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[fragger]

He does

[Art Blade]

Pity we can't rename our companions (without modding) else I'd have called him Travis Bickle

Not going to spoil it for you, fragger, NW that is Just vaguely reporting what I'm doing, and more precise as long as it doesn't spoil the story for you.

Nuka World is fun now. Getting to see all the different outfits, speaking with all three gangs.. and whenever possible, I try to be the sarcastic hard-boiled tough-as-nails Overboss. It's fun for a bit to be evil but I couldn't ever enjoy to be cruel.

I managed to get two fully upgraded Gauss rifles for Travis and myself, both legendary, of course. Funny thing: you can buy Gauss rifles at NW even when under the usually required level 25 because NW requires suggests to start it at level 30+ which I am far from. I've only just levelled up to 14. The (in-game) weapon mods for the fully upgraded rifle without gun nut and so forth? I cheated those wooden crates you find in your inventory under MODS after removing/replacing parts of a weapon, those upgrades in shape of a little crate can be found in the vanilla game as well, so it was easy to cheat the correct ones and then apply them to the weapon at any random weapon w0#k bench. The legendary status, well, I cheated that as well. Now I can at least blast the living daylights out of almost any enemy that keeps popping up, they're usually mostly level 30 but there are lower level enemies as well. My companion seems to be my level because he gets knocked out easily, Dogmeat and Travis kept using up my Stimpacks until we got our Gauss rifles

[mandru]

... My companion seems to be my level because he gets knocked out easily, Dogmeat and Travis kept using up my Stimpacks until we got our Gauss rifles

There is the console cheat "mark as essential" (not sure of the exact code wording) that will make any character in the game (that should include settlers  ) immortal and take the pressure off your stimpacks.

[Art Blade]

Very nice of you, mandru, thanks I can always cheat a ton of those stimpacks so I don't mind them blowing through my stash

It's setessential <baseID> 1 but if they're already essential, it just stays that way. You can check them out with targetID.isessential which will return either 0 or 1.

All companions are essential in FO4. That's why they only get knocked out rather than snuffed out.

You're low level as well now, aren't you? As soon as you see an enemy with a skull next to their health bar, preferably something tough like a massive Deathclaw, send a companion over and let them deal with it. That's when you too are going to need stimpacks for your companion. They're just so vulnerable without the perk that makes them immune to your own actions, like exploding grenades and stuff like that, but they're also very weak when having to deal with enemies that are significantly above their level. But they'll grow tougher as you do.

With my other character, I don't even remember when I last used a stimpack on any companion.

[Art Blade]

I just came across a level 64 enemy, and one slightly below, perhaps 59 or so, I was too busy killing them to remember the last one. But gee, I'm level 15 and they were like 4x stronger

Nuka World and Minutemen/Preston

ha, I think I did something "right" without knowing it. Usually Preston won't be your companion (anymore) and won't let you play the minuteman branch (unless you played that through) if you've sided with the raiders from NW.

However, I watched a vid from Oxhorn regarding NW's evil ending (which is my intention to get, this playthrough) and unexpectedly, he said that IF you never met Preston before finishing NW, only then he'll give you a chance to consider working for the minutemen which obviously means, kill all the raiders from NW -- and that is essentially the good ending of NW, and Preston will wipe from his memory that you were a raider once.

Funny, I haven't yet met Preston so I may actually play through NW pretending to be a complete tosser and then switch sides and double-cross the NW raiders just to end up being a good hero once again.

..and then double-cross Preston, perhaps, maybe by siding with the Institute.. I don't know yet what to do but I want to have a different experience, so I'm not going to play the minutemen ending this time.