Fallout 4

[Dweller_Benthos]

Yeah plus you can get a bunch at once. Like those "5,000 yao gui vs Liberty Prime" videos.

[Art Blade]

hehe, I unleashed 30 Raiders in Sanctuary (26 settlers) and with all the building details, my frame rate dropped significantly. In the arena, I had no problems with about 30 spawned enemies (10 per team) so.. yes, in the arena it's possible.

I might move a few people over to the arena, those who are immortal (set Marcy essential) so they can fight forever 

[Art Blade]

In the meantime I changed Sanctuary a little (made an exclusive dormitory for the inhabitants, made of Vault-Tec compontents) and the room where they used to sleep is now my power armour storage. I ripped out a few ground floor wall segments of the concrete building so people could pass through -- the AI liked that better. I mentioned 26 people living in Sanctuary. The latest newcomer is an actual doctor whom I met in the wastelands and asked her to w0#k for me. That was the reason I had to rearrange a lot.. a new "clinic" (a desk for the doc) and a new bed for her which wouldn't fit into the large bedroom anymore. I had already two beds in a separate room.. time to get all 26 in one dormitory. And now the Vault-Tec experience paid off

Then it was time for some action, I had enough of the settlement-building. I decided to take on those two most difficult companions MacCready and Cait -- they like what I despise and vice versa. So I used the console in order to get my affinity to a maximum without having to murder and steal and bully, that sort of thing they prefer, and with a start-off like that, I was able to play their respective personal side quests which were cool.

[mandru]

The Doctor you mentioned Art when invited to join you and once she's properly established reportedly runs a level 4 medic service for the settlement.  There are also a couple other similar random event characters you can meet who if hired will bring their own version of a level 4 shop.

I have the weapons dealer and the armorer settled into Sanctuary.  However I must be doing something wrong.  They don't appear to be level 4 shops and are selling the same old random junk I can get anywhere else.  I see no sign of the higher level goods they are supposed to provide. 


There's a random encounter who's a child merchant with a small assortment of junk named Kat.  She's accompanied by a sentry bot named Gus.  Don't kill Gus.  He's Kat's only friend.

As to killing Gus or not either way Kat's not a character that can be invited to join a settlement.  Which is too bad as I would have liked to park her in a settlement with Synth-Shaun.  I think they would have gotten along famously since Shaun would have had something in common with both Kat and Gus. 

[Art Blade]

interesting I haven't met Kat & Gus yet. I don't know for certain about the other people you mentioned. What I've got is this, and I hope that I can help you with how to tell a "level 4" from lower level merchants and what to do before you can.

See, I ran into the Vault-Rep guy, the ghoul who sold me the tickets to vault 111 before he was a ghoul, before the blast. I convinced him to move to Sanctuary. I assigned him to a shabby tier1 general store and wasn't impressed. Then I assigned him to a vacant tier4 arms dealer shop, still nothing special. Then I read up on all that and assigned him to a tier4 general store. That's when for the first time he had something in is assorted goods that was legendary.

So, essentially, those high-level people need high-level tier4 shops (all the way to the right in the construction trade/shops menu) which for instance means you need to assign a "clinic" to the Doc.

I have got another random "ordered-to-be-a-doc" settler operating a tier4 clinic so I can compare. The real Doc sells rare goods such as addictol and has always got that stuff stocked. You hardly ever find addictol in any assortment of lower level docs. So yes, they do sell the same random junk as everyone else but additionally, they have got either a few legendary items or rare items among their merchandise.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I never saw Kat and Gus either. I saw a few of the random encounters, but as I understand it, Automotron messed things up with the random encounters and instead of the RNG picking from the normal encounter pool, all it picks from is rust devils or robots.

I only recruited the Vault Tec guy as a merchant, but I don't recall seeing anything special from him, though mostly I used him as a caps dump for cold beer from Buddy. I never had much use for the other merchants like the Doctor or that chick who does clothes.

[Art Blade]

I don't use merchants, either. Not anymore. At the beginning it's useful to get you geared up a bit but later, all I do with them is sell them my junk and other stuff I picked up along the way. But I like having them around all in one place, Sanctuary

Today I found a solution to what I had in mind regarding settlers in settlements and how to get rid of them without turning into a murderous monster It's actually simple. Place an arena team base in your settlement and keep assigning the settlers one by one. You can then kill them yourself without affecting your companion's affinity level and without anyone turning hostile. It doesn't count as murder, either. I had sent a whole bunch of settlers from one settlement to Covenant where I killed them all.

Killing Settlers
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And I had this crazy moment when one sneak attack sent a deathclaw flying and he mutated in mid-air. Pride goes before a fall.. his pride died along with him on impact -- face plant deluxe

funny moments 01
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[Art Blade]

Here some news from Sanctuary

my new "office"
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new dormitory
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dormitory in use
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new armoury
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[Dweller_Benthos]

Pretty nice. Isn't it weird how all the lights in the game give off this feeble glow, not lighting up any significant area, except for the bare bulb one that hangs from a wire? I ended up hiding those behind and inside other lights just so it the room would be actually lit up. Don't know why most of the lights look like they have a 10watt bulb in them.

[Art Blade]

thanks

Yes, hehe, 10 Watt bulbs.. I noticed that, too. And some lights magically illuminate the next room, straight through a concrete or metal wall..

I'm currently back in Far Harbor and doing the DiMA and Child of Atom stuff there. Currently retrieving DiMA's memory data that involves a settlement build menu with a few elements, you have to build program blocks and defence systems and so on and little bugs fetch the data for you while you need to pave the way for them and defend them. Funny stuff, entertaining, and it doesn't last forever. Good idea, that.

[Art Blade]

I've hit level 100.

Doing some Child of Atom quests alongside those Synth quests. Funny stuff and regarding DiMA, damn, that's deep.

Also, I've decided to give my companions a Gauss rifle because it's my favourite weapon, too. They don't always hit but IF they do, it's devastating. I saw Nick take out a legendary raider with one shot. Nice 

And I'm performing a lot of melee take-downs with a disciple knife which is far more devastating than the one legendary thing I had to go back to recover it, that ritual knife.. which may be impressive regarding bleeding and poisoning but the raw power of the knife I've got is supreme when used with a 10x stealth attack and blitz and all that.

[Art Blade]

I have to say, the Far Harbour DLC is about as good as a game on its own. It is enormous. At first, I thought it would be just another little excursion with a few missions to be dealt with in what feels like a couple of minutes. Little did I know.

I had that little opening in the main game, Diamond City, in Nick's detective bureau, when I just so happened to come across a missing person contract. Find some girl who left their parents without leaving a note or anything. Detective story, alright.

Arrived in Far Harbor, met some people, received some side missions of the "help them" flavour. Or so I thought. After a while of taking a stab or three in the dark, or more like in the fog, I had acquired three settlements, done a ton of side quests and then came the big juicy main story my way. Unavoidably but just as well unexpectedly.

Generally speaking, there are three factions plus the obligatory "creatures faction" who all want to rule the island Far Harbor is located on. There are the townspeople of Far Harbour gravitating towards Avery, then a group of fugitive synths towards DiMA and a religious community (Children of Atom) towards Tektus. And all three of them want the respectively other two gone, preferably killed.

Then you dig deep into the history of each group and unravel the mysteries of their relations. Basically it all depends on the Synth leader DiMA and, of course, your actions and decisions. You can play it really nasty and mean but that's not my style. I try to get around the mean stuff and try to solve things diplomatically. If possible by keeping my good character reputation intact.

Without going too much into detail, each faction offers a fair amount of side quests and they're a little demanding at times but usually entertaining which is nice. It is probably the best experience for the player if they keep Nick Valentine's company because he is quite involved and has got a lot of unique dialogue opportunities.

So far, it has been a blast -- with reference to the atomic background of the whole package 

[Art Blade]

I am through, finished, done with Far Harbor. It was great and now it's been enough, too. 

I had most fun knowing there was a savegame to revert to when I decided to turn the nuke key and initiated a nuclear missile launch. I had a 60 seconds window to get out of the sub and the dry dock, just enough to turn around to watch the whole thing blow up with a tremendous bang on leaving the compound.

Then I reloaded and stayed aboard the sub to watch those Children of Atom fanatics blow up -- the screen went white and I had to reload. Then I wiped out Far Harbour by turning off the fog condensers -- all creatures came running and had an extensive dinner in town.

I reloaded again and played the only option I saw fit, ensuring peace between those three factions and taking the girl back home.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Wow, you are about the only person I've heard say they liked the minigame of getting the memories from Dima's old backup drive. I didn't mind them too much, but I would have liked them better if I had realized you can store the memory blocks in the "workshop" to place them later. I did the first 3-1/2 puzzles by manually carrying the blocks one at a time from where they were to where I needed them. Took a bit longer that way. But the vocal majority, at least on Reddit, doesn't like the memory puzzles.

I also did the same with the endings, settling on the peaceful solution for all three, and sending the girl home, even though she still thinks she's a synth even though she's probably not.

[Art Blade]

hehe, I instantly noticed the "tab > store" option to stash away those blocks and I even used that option I found those mini-games interesting and it took some thinking. Unfortunately, the last and most difficult one seemed to have bugged out on me. I don't know why and what happened exactly, but I remember standing in front of the last red grid together with the little bugs, blocked by the red barrier, and tried to find out where the beam needed to be directed to when all of a sudden that barrier was gone. I never hit it with the beam. The bugs seemed to have stopped working at 80% but eventually I got the message that 100% was retrieved. Weird. Anyway, I did not reload a savegame (which might have been around the middle of the first riddle, ever since I went through without stopping and there is no way of saving within the mini-game, only on exit which I never exited) so I didn't mind the game bugging out like that For some reason, the whole episode reminded me of TRON and the MCP which might have been the source of inspiration for the devs.

mini-game
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Meanwhile, I acquired the ability to set up a trade post for moving traders to stop by which I did in Sanctuary and now another Doc has arrived apparently to stay there and he seems to like it. Doc Weathers hasn't moved again yet.

After all I went through with the different companions (I modded Strong's affinity to maximum, too) the only one (apart from Piper) who hasn't got on my nerves after an extended period of time has been Nick. He's calm, cool, and the comments are of the dry humour kind which I like a lot. I have kept him ever since I started the Far Harbor stuff I might have to give Codsworth and the robot that I built ("BinnZatron II") a go but haven't got around to doing so yet and I know both robots talk a lot and are a little annoying, like ALL other companions, when I get close to any of them, because essentially they all keep asking the same question: "can you please, please take ME with you?" However, Nick has been just the coolest of them all.

When we returned from Far Harbor, we had to visit DC and Nick's agency. On our way, a DC guard kind of stopped me to let me know a certain Vadim wanted to see me. It was the random event that started the quest with the radio DJ of DC. The part with the staged bar fight was funny because Nick decided to shoot the two attackers with his huge Gauss rifle. I had to reload a savegame and tell Nick and Dogmeat to stay put before I went in again

Nick has been really funny and entertaining. So I kept Nick and we went to the glowing sea and there we paid that Super Mutant Virgil a visit to get the institute quest started. When I looked at the quest marker, it was just so far away from the cave that I found very early during my explorations that I have no idea how I was supposed to find the cave if I hadn't already. Maybe I would have had to walk around just the way I did when I actually found it, maybe I'd have had some new dialogue options to ask the way.. "Hey, deathclaw, excuse me, stop attacking for a moment please, I need to know how to find a certain Virgil. You don't happen to know where he is?"

Well. It was funny when I met that guy because I had so many answers to all the questions he had prepared for me that it was really funny to see and hear his reactions. Basically he didn't know how I could know all that but it changed the conversation in a funny way After he sent me to find and kill a Courser, I decided to pay the Children of Atom a visit as their crater was nearby. Considering that I'm now on a main game quest that is not DLC, it is remarkable that the dialogue options referenced my trip to Far Harbor. I was able to say "help a fellow believer" or some such and one of her (that female leader) replies was that not many knew about the island and the fog and all that. Cool. Although the help I asked ended nowhere (probably it would have been "help me find the Super Mutant") I suspect it was because I asked her after I had already found him That option shouldn't have been available, then

I tracked down and killed the Courser. Pretty good show, lots of raiders and the Courser used a stealthboy which made him invisible and by that, VATS couldn't track him. I saw that happen before on the island when there was some robot turning invisible, that I couldn't use VATS on it. However, actually Nick killed the Courser

And there was a girl asking for help, it was likely the synth the Courser was sent to kill. Since she was locked up in a room and couldn't go anywhere anyway, I decided to help her after checking out the rest of the hall. There was that door upstairs that I unlocked with a terminal and I was too quick opening it because too late to stop it, I realised it led outside rather than into a room. On the roof, I found 20 fusion cells and a great view down at the whole city and river. I took some potshots down at raiders and ghouls, pretty cool sight actually, and went in again. The girl was now dead. WHAT? How? There was no one left but her? Did she kill herself?

Didn't make sense but hell.. I reloaded a savegame and let her out before I went on the roof again for those 20 fusion cells and potshots. The young synth lady I rescued, I wanted to know whether or not I would have missed out on something later on if I hadn't reloaded a savegame and rescued her, so I read up on the mission. There I found out a few things: She dies if you don't rescue her and no, she won't be seen later anymore. If any raiders were left alive (as opposed to getting killed by the Courser) they would ask me not to be killed. Also, I only found out because I was reading up on the girl, that I could have talked to the Courser (really? ) and used a reset code Mama Murphy had given me -- oh.. long, long ago, yes, she did.. it was when D_B told me it might be useful later in the game if I allowed Mama Murphy to have visions but prevent her from dying. So, now it would have been the time and I would have missed it. Crazy. OK, yet another reload of a savegame.. Had to go through the entire building again because in between I had only used the quicksave option, overriding itself every time.. Well, I managed. I had to really run through the building to get there in time. No stealthboy this time and the kill-switch worked. Kinda funny

the Courser
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I rescued the girl again and this time, as a side effect of being so quick, some raiders from getting killed by the Courser. So I killed them myself, then After that, I went mopping up from top to bottom this time, now that I had time to check out everything that I hadn't had time to loot and check when I was running all the way up to the top floor in order to kill that Courser with Mama Murphy's reset code. Well, good thing I took the time to go through the entire building again, slowly this time around, because I found a magazine I would have missed out on otherwise. Cool.

Now I will do some Railroad and Brotherhood of Steel missions, preparing everything if possible in a way that I can keep all factions at peace. I haven't forgot about the video and the "ending guide" which I posted long ago so I don't want to rush things. Nice and slow.