Fallout 4

[Art Blade]

I went back to Far Harbor to collect those Vim recipes. Unbelievable, I must have run right past that terminal. Well, not so unbelievable, I didn't like the environment at all, I had been there only to get the main DLC story line over with and left. Now I don't have much else to do so I went back and grabbed that green power armour and those recipes. However, I had collected all those Nuka World recipes.

Without godmode, I turned into a pill-popper by grace of chem gods I slurp and gobble every substance that enhances my abilities. Luckily, thanks to certain perks, I don't turn into a disgraced addict Hoever, some chems reduce effects of other chems which makes it a bit of a memory game (and it's not easy given the amount of different substances) so I keep checking pills and stats to see what they do or don't do. All in all, it's fun to ram a few needles up the neck, munch a few pills and then wash them down with a bottle of bleach

[fragger]

I'm not hugely crazy about Far Harbor either. It's kind of depressing, even for a post-apocalyptic game world. Everything seems kind of cold and soggy.

There is a surprising amount of locations though, more than I thought at first. And at least you can come away from it with Marine Combat Armor and a couple of cool-looking PA suits.

And a bowling ball gun. Now that weapon is a special kind of ridiculous

[Art Blade]

 

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah I set up the firework cannon at Far Harbor with the clear weather shell so I could at least have a little time without all the fog and sadness. But they really got it right, Far Harbor and Mt Desert Island are the foggiest places I've ever been, at least in the morning, once it burns off it was quite pleasant.

[Art Blade]

do you guys use chems (a lot)?

[fragger]

- Oh, you mean in the game

Just joking... I don't use them a lot, but I do from time to time. The ones I use most often are: Jet to slow down time for a base period of 10 seconds (extendable with the "Chemist" perk), Psycho for a five-minute bout of additional damage resistance and inflicting, and Grape Mentats for better buy/sell prices in trading. Also RadX for a bit of extra rad resistance in really badly irradiated places, but they don't help a great deal.

Other than drugs, there are a few cooked food items which I regularly carry around with me: Grilled Radstag for a temporary carrying boost of 25 (I think it lasts for one game hour), Radscorpion Steak (for an hour's worth of additional energy resistance), Radscorpion Omelette (to cure drug addiction) and Yao Guai Ribs (for a HP boost and dealing extra damage for one hour).

Of course, Radscorpion Omelettes and Addictol become unnecessary once you max the "Chem Resistance" perk and can no longer become addicted to chems.

There are a few other drugs (mainly the ones that are variants of those above, like Psychojet) and foods which I use, but only very rarely.


Speaking of chems and stuff, I found out something the other day. When you do that mission in Vault 81 to get the cure for Austin (and leads you to meet Curie), you have to deal with a bunch of genetically-modified Molerats lurking in the old Vault ruins along the way. If you get bitten by one - even just once - you will contract "Molerat disease" which will permanently reduce your HPs by 10%, and there is no cure for it. There will also be a permanent red capsule icon in your Pip-Boy's STATS window.

This Vault 81 mission is the only time when Molerats can give you this disease. So whenever I do this mission, I Quicksave a lot, and Quickload if I get bitten. Just one bite is enough to give you the disease.

[Art Blade]

lol, yeah, in the game

Whoa, that mole rat disease, that's a bit harsh, a disease from just one bite that lasts until you delete the career. That's really nasty. 10% is a lot, too.

Particularly for perception I use a variety of chems and cooked stuff and (depending on my gear, I'll comment on that in a bit) I can crank it up to 28

Mirelurk jerky is really good for +3 perception but you need a few anti freeze bottles plus tarberries which means The Slog is your favourite place to frequent. However, I use everything like psychobuff, jetfuel, berry mentats.. noting I wouldn't use, really  I am a textbook junky so to speak and immune to addiction. Also, the effects last a lot longer with the right perks.

Regarding gear: I thought carry weight capacity was very important so I used the workbench to change my gear from ultra-light to deep-pocketed. It became heavier and lost the "perk" from ultra-light gear, additional AP. Now I came to realise that it's a bad choice for a VATS guy like me. I need more AP. So I will now revert to ultra-light to get some extra AP so I can target more enemies or limbs, respectively. This game is really interesting regarding choices. I'll now have to stuff Dogmeat when I run low on carrying capacity

[Art Blade]

Now that I changed my armour (all AGI+PER, "cunning") and made all of them ultra-light, I got a reasonable amount of AP. Well, getting rid of deep pockets and strength attributes of my armour made my carry weight limit shrink to some 380 (from 450) which in turn meant I had to get rid of some ridiculously heavy weapons. Having said all that, I do notice a lot that I'm no longer playing on godmode but it's fun.

Regarding pill-popping and all that: complying with a strict d!et and chucking some select pills down my throat, I get up to 33 perception. Essentially, I'm an armed mobile chem lab now

Here, a common situation.

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[mandru]

I think I've used more stimpacks on companions than on myself. 

Art for the way you're buffing your character set up I think that maxing the Luck perks for tiers 6(better criticals), 8(Grim Reaper's Sprint), and 9(Four Leaf Clover) would be highly complimentary.

When I first started playing FO4 I'd read that there was a bug that was disrupting play associated with Luck's 8th tier Grim Reaper's Sprint so I completely avoided that one but in my second (never completed before my computer crashed) run through the game I found that Perk when maxed to be highly generous when it came to providing quick kill opportunities.

As the the afore mentioned bug I never encountered any problem with it what so ever.  It must have been fixed in one of the updates.


Starting a new career in FO4 is daunting. 

Knowing everything that I have to w0#k through to get to the point I have my settlements properly set up and my character build back to where I want it.  But all that aside it's good to be dug back into the Common Wealth even if I'm making some tactical mistakes.

I was too anxious to get access to the Vault 88 building materials but totally neglected (or remembered) that my Charisma was basically still flat lined.  I didn't even have lvl 1 Lady killer.  That oversight led to my being unable to convince Overseer Barstow to stay with the Vault. 

[Dweller_Benthos]

I rarely used chems mostly because I forget about them. Once in a while I would pop one for a specific thing I wanted to do, but mostly they just sit there in my inventory doing nothing. I'd carry the foods that have specific buffs like the radstag steak and such, but mostly if I needed to heal myself, I'd just hit a stimpack.

The molerat disease in vault 81is curable, but there's only the one dose, and you either keep it for yourself and make them all mad by letting the kid die, or give it to the kid and deal with it the health hit. Another thing about it, at least from what I've heard, is that if you have a companion with you in the old vault, even dogmeat or a robot, and THEY get bit by a molerat, YOU get the disease. Figure that one out.

[Art Blade]

ah, that vault kid and the cure.. I remember that one. Hehe, I'd love to see Damascene Blade bending down to the kid's face whispering, "watch this, kiddo," and then hit herself up with that cure.

mandru, either go back to a few save games and let the overseer wait until you got the required level or cheat your level for her sake. In my case, I always sent her flying regardless

[Art Blade]

With all those chems and swapping out my legendary armour so it boosts only certain stats, I suddenly had an idea when I was looking at a mannequin in Sanctuary that had my charisma gear equipped. I used it for settlements to increase the amount of settlers. Well.. now, how about.. let's equip that outfit and pop all those chems that increase charisma... and relocate the entire population of Sanctuary Except Mama Murphy who cannot be relocated. Well, right now, she's got Sanctuary all to herself.

And here the idea, made reality: Starlight Drive-In is now home of 38 settlers plus the kiddo from the Institute plus a few named dogs which I bought in Far Harbor. I can now build a nice settlement in Starlight Drive-In AND at the time, I can now completely rearrange Sanctuary without having to worry about dozens of Settlers

[fragger]

Welcome back to the Commonwealth, mandru One thing that always strikes me at the start of a new game is an almost palpable sense of loneliness. Well, not loneliness exactly, but something akin to it. During the course of a game, I get accustomed to having settlers pottering around, chatting, making sounds as they go about their jobs, radios playing, etc. When I first come into Sanctuary after emerging from Vault 111 at the beginning, it all seems so empty and quiet. First thing I do after talking to Codsworth is go to the nearby Red Rocket and befriend Dogmeat, for the company as much as anything else

Re: settlements, I generally don't go for huge ones, preferring smaller, more efficient setups. A few of them I build up, capping them at around 20 (Sanctuary, Sunshine Co-op, and The Castle), a few at around a dozen (The Slog, Warwick's and Starlight), most at 6 and a few at just 2 or 3 (Somerville Place, Outpost Zimonja and Hangman's Alley). I had 18 squeezed into Hangman's Alley in my first game, with them all living on top of each other - due to the settlement's tiny footprint, I built up, not out. Surprisingly, it all worked quite well.

This time around though I might go for a whopper, for novelty's sake Starlight is unpopulated at this point, but everything has been cleared and scrapped in readiness. That's a good site for a big settlement, with lots of relatively flat open space. Another one is NW Red Rocket, which has a comparably big and flattish build area.

[Art Blade]

yeah, I was surprised at how massive the build area was, over at Nuka World. Even if I had an active settlement going there, I wouldn't be there a lot, I think. There's nothing but Nuka World, which I made sure was essentially dead, regarding raiders, and not much else there worth mentioning. I'd miss the Commonwealth, the proximity to other locations such as Diamond City and all that. Travelling from and to Nuka World is extremely time-consuming, particularly the transition between the Commonwealth and Nuka World. If only we had a way of skipping the monorail trip.

Starlight Drive-In is probably the biggest settlement regarding its build area, except perhaps that island which I even missed out on for most of the first playthrough. However, it's an island and far from anything. Plus, you have to swim to the mainland if you want to do anything but hanging out on that island. So Starlight Drive-In is the place for me now, with all the settlers from Sanctuary and the old settlers (all Synths you can turn into inhabitants) so it's an even bigger population now than Sanctuary used to be.

And guess what? Lone Grandma is happy over at Sanctuary, the happiness is 94% and rising

[fragger]

You only need to ride the monorail once, to initially enter NW. After that, you can fast-travel in and out of NW (there's a "Commonwealth" FT icon near the monorail terminal on the NW map, which takes you back to the Commonwealth terminal. Or is that what you meant?)

Same with Spectacle Island. Once you've accessed the Workbench there, you can just FT in and out.