Sanctuary ended up being my main settlement because I devoted so much time to it early on. I didn't put much effort towards other settlements beyond basic necessities and didn't actively recruit for them. I generally hate the settlement interface. I've grown somewhat accustomed to it, but I really hope some talented modder is able to completely revamp it into something much more user friendly.
The drive in is a good location. It's closer to everything else, isn't as spread out as Sanctuary, and doesn't have the horrible-looking unscrappable houses everywhere. It has a nice, flat, clear, centralized building area.
I tried two radically different builds, but it took a while before they were noticeably different. My main play through I focused on rifleman. I used a wide variety of weapons at first and it took some time before I was using non-automatic rifles exclusively.
I started with a stealth/melee/blitz character, with completely different starting SPECIAL and none of the same perks (so far). I know some people really enjoy that build, but found it kinda boring. It felt very passive. It's just VATS->select->kill, over and over again. With my ranged character, I didn't use VATS very often and aimed manually most of the time. I don't think I'm going to continue with the character, at least perhaps not until the DLC comes out.
If you really want to take your pack muling to a new level:
Strong Back 3 allows you to use action points to move normally when overencumbered. This apparently counts as "sprinting" to the game engine.
Thus, you can pair it with Moving Target 3, which halves the AP cost of sprinting.
With these two, you can go quite a distance at a normal speed before running out of AP, even carrying ridiculous amounts of junk.
Strong Back 4 will allow you to fast travel with all your stuff and Action Boy/Girl 1/2 will replenish your AP quicker.
This doesn't work too well with power armor, however, as it depletes cores.
There's no set level cap and from what I understand some quest givers will give out random quests indefinitely.
I went kinda nuts after I found out that the amount of XP you receive was determined by your intelligence. I started with Intelligence at 10, and with gear, bobblehead, and 2nd rank Night Person, I'm usually sitting at 17. Due to Night Person, I generally do most of my adventuring at night, so I sleep a lot and usually also have Well Rested or Lover's Embrace.
It's too bad, however, that you can't exclude their equipped weapons from the "take all" function. If I load them up with all my extra junk, I have to take everything, then re-initiate a conversation and select trade and give them back the weapon and equip it. Either that or have to take dozens of items one at a time.
Outfits are excluded from this. They are worn and become invisible from the inventory. Armor works like weapons.
I hit level 51 last night. If I replay FO4, there's two actions I will do differently (mid-game spoilers):
1. I will completely avoid the Travis quest. I greatly preferred when the radio host was fumbling and nervous. It was too late to revert to a previous save by the time I decided I didn't like his new personality as much.
2. I will delay triggering the arrival of the BoS. They have a tendency to get into fights at the place I'm going to and steal my kills. Not to mention the vertibirds constantly falling out of the sky. OTOH, I was able to pick up a full set of power armor from one of their corpses. I have a nice collection of unused power armor sitting in Sanctuary.
It's easy not to use VATS on PC. I get better accuracy with a mouse than VATS. I generally only use VATS when something's breathing down my neck and I want to be sure I shoot it in the face.
In previous Fallouts, I didn't use chems (drugs are bad, m'kay?), and I was fully expecting to continue the trend with this game...until I came upon a particularly difficult encounter (on Survival difficulty). After several failed attempts that weren't even close to successful, I basically took one of everything in my inventory, and it was surprisingly effective. I'm now a Jet (and more recently PsychoJet) convert.
I did that with the previous two Fallout games. I bought Skyrim on launch (or soon after). I later picked up the DLC on sale, but haven't been able to bring myself to play them. I guess I'm just too burned out on Skyrim. I worry that will be the case with FO4 as well.
I started, played several hours, then restarted. When I created my first character, I assumed intelligence wouldn’t be very important (except when choosing perks), since there are no more skill points, and that hp gained from endurance would not be retroactive, which is the way it worked in past Fallout games. Both of these assumption turned out to be false.
Turns out there is no level cap and INT boosts the xp gained, so a higher INT should allow you to reach a higher level for the same work. So for my second character, I maxed INT and it has made a noticeable difference. I haven’t done the same number of quests or exploring, but I’ve already matched the level of my previous character.
I may try a melee character in the future, keeping INT at 1 and using Idiot Savant to gain xp.
My gripes so far:
1. Resolution. How does a AAA game developer have such horrible resolution support? I have a 3440x1440 monitor. When I select Fullscreen, I lose any option for selecting a resolution and it runs at some very low res. I can run windowed, at 2560x1440, with the desktop showing behind the game.
2. Songs. They apparently had a bajillion in sales by the first day. Could they not have licensed more than a dozen really old songs? I know they had more songs back then. I’ve seen some on Spotify. GTA 5 apparently has 240 songs.
3. Graphics. I was pleasantly surprised with the graphics. They were better than I had anticipated. I feared it would look too much like FO3 and NV, but they have noticeably improved. That said, they’re certainly not pushing any limits or breaking new ground. And the world is very still. It feels very odd, especially coming from Witcher 3, where there is a ton of movement in the environment.
4. Interface. This wouldn’t be complete without complaining about Bethesda’s interface on PC. While they did finally add hotkeys for things like the map and inventory (yay!), something I have been wishing for since I first started playing FO3, the workshop interface is horrible. Like most of the complaints since Oblivion, it’s due to the fact that it was clearly designed for consoles. Not only is it a chore to navigate, it’s not intuitive and I keep hitting the wrong key trying to back out of selections. I cannot wait for the inevitably mod to fix the interface.
I played with some of the mods for FO3 for a while. One (or more) of them allowed you to craft and/or repair using some previously useless junk. I ended up afraid to get rid of most of it for fear it would be useful later and had lockers full of crap at my house in Megaton.
I've been waffling on whether or not to buy FO4 for the launch. On one hand, Bethesda has a bit of a reputation for bugs, and the game will likely be more stable in a couple months and after a few patches. On the other hand, I'm off Wednesday, and my wife and kid are out of the house. Decisions, decisions...
I'm approaching 100 hours in Witcher 3. The scripted quests are well done and non-repetitive and I'm enjoying them very much. I am, however, getting tired of the inventory management aspect of most modern RPGs. Younger me would probably be horrified hearing me say that. That and the whole 'take everything that isn't nailed down' mentality. Yes, it's not an absolutely requirement and I could bypass it, but then I risk missing out on gear or, in W3, missing out on the singular copy of a particular alchemic formula that exists in this region, that is located in a nondescript supply crate in an abandon sewer. Of course.
FO4 will likely only make this worse, as they aim to make loot junk actually useful. We'll see how successful they are.
[S4] When discussing altering Hitler's life trajectory, people seem to fail to realize that it would mean erasing billions of people from existence. Sure, a different set of people would be around instead (assuming mankind didn't obliterate itself in the new timeline), but since I wouldn't be one of them, I would appreciate it if people would just leave baby Hitler alone.
I'm certain there are probably many ways to game the system. Most stores usually have a person stationed near the checkout lanes, presumably to watch out for any tricks (and sometimes even help clear errors on the machines). I suspect their mere presence probably discourages a lot of intentional bad behavior.
Non-organic bananas are 4011. Come on, let's keep it moving!
I greatly dislike the self-checkout lanes that have the full-sized bagging area with 5 foot conveyor belt. If the customer is by themselves, they either can't start bagging until they've finished paying, or have to interrupt the scanning and paying to bag. The ones with the bagging area right next to the scanner are much better.
I tried to get my daughter to watch Star Wars when she was about 6. The movie starts much slower than I remember. I gave up only partway into it as she clearly had no interest.
I usually see it paired with the idea that Democrats are encouraging ineligible people to vote and underscores their call for voter ID laws. Somehow presenting ID before casting a ballot is suppose to prevent fraudulent registrations or something.
There's been a lack of acknowledgement by the police of that distrust, especially in the face of the Black Live Matter movement. They seem to largely have been viewing it as an attack and circling the wagons instead of recognizing the need and oppurtunity to build trust, even if they believe the police haven't done anything wrong or improper.
I wonder how much of the issue is related to how large cities and their related suburbs and exurbs spills out across many municipalities, which often have competing interests. The DC metro area, for example, is a mess. Two states and the district, numerous counties and subdivisions within those. A nice community with mostly single family homes inside the beltway may not want anything that would increase density, so development is pushed farther and farther out. I don't see how it would work in practice, but at times I wish there was some regional governing body looking out for the interest of the entire area instead of just within a narrow political boundary.
On “Saturday!”
Sanctuary ended up being my main settlement because I devoted so much time to it early on. I didn't put much effort towards other settlements beyond basic necessities and didn't actively recruit for them. I generally hate the settlement interface. I've grown somewhat accustomed to it, but I really hope some talented modder is able to completely revamp it into something much more user friendly.
The drive in is a good location. It's closer to everything else, isn't as spread out as Sanctuary, and doesn't have the horrible-looking unscrappable houses everywhere. It has a nice, flat, clear, centralized building area.
"
I tried two radically different builds, but it took a while before they were noticeably different. My main play through I focused on rifleman. I used a wide variety of weapons at first and it took some time before I was using non-automatic rifles exclusively.
I started with a stealth/melee/blitz character, with completely different starting SPECIAL and none of the same perks (so far). I know some people really enjoy that build, but found it kinda boring. It felt very passive. It's just VATS->select->kill, over and over again. With my ranged character, I didn't use VATS very often and aimed manually most of the time. I don't think I'm going to continue with the character, at least perhaps not until the DLC comes out.
On “Saturday!”
If you really want to take your pack muling to a new level:
Strong Back 3 allows you to use action points to move normally when overencumbered. This apparently counts as "sprinting" to the game engine.
Thus, you can pair it with Moving Target 3, which halves the AP cost of sprinting.
With these two, you can go quite a distance at a normal speed before running out of AP, even carrying ridiculous amounts of junk.
Strong Back 4 will allow you to fast travel with all your stuff and Action Boy/Girl 1/2 will replenish your AP quicker.
This doesn't work too well with power armor, however, as it depletes cores.
On “Saturday!”
There's no set level cap and from what I understand some quest givers will give out random quests indefinitely.
I went kinda nuts after I found out that the amount of XP you receive was determined by your intelligence. I started with Intelligence at 10, and with gear, bobblehead, and 2nd rank Night Person, I'm usually sitting at 17. Due to Night Person, I generally do most of my adventuring at night, so I sleep a lot and usually also have Well Rested or Lover's Embrace.
"
It's too bad, however, that you can't exclude their equipped weapons from the "take all" function. If I load them up with all my extra junk, I have to take everything, then re-initiate a conversation and select trade and give them back the weapon and equip it. Either that or have to take dozens of items one at a time.
Outfits are excluded from this. They are worn and become invisible from the inventory. Armor works like weapons.
I'm hoping a mod will come out to fix this.
"
I hit level 51 last night. If I replay FO4, there's two actions I will do differently (mid-game spoilers):
1. I will completely avoid the Travis quest. I greatly preferred when the radio host was fumbling and nervous. It was too late to revert to a previous save by the time I decided I didn't like his new personality as much.
2. I will delay triggering the arrival of the BoS. They have a tendency to get into fights at the place I'm going to and steal my kills. Not to mention the vertibirds constantly falling out of the sky. OTOH, I was able to pick up a full set of power armor from one of their corpses. I have a nice collection of unused power armor sitting in Sanctuary.
On “Weekend!”
It's easy not to use VATS on PC. I get better accuracy with a mouse than VATS. I generally only use VATS when something's breathing down my neck and I want to be sure I shoot it in the face.
On “Saturday!”
In previous Fallouts, I didn't use chems (drugs are bad, m'kay?), and I was fully expecting to continue the trend with this game...until I came upon a particularly difficult encounter (on Survival difficulty). After several failed attempts that weren't even close to successful, I basically took one of everything in my inventory, and it was surprisingly effective. I'm now a Jet (and more recently PsychoJet) convert.
On “Saturday!”
I did that with the previous two Fallout games. I bought Skyrim on launch (or soon after). I later picked up the DLC on sale, but haven't been able to bring myself to play them. I guess I'm just too burned out on Skyrim. I worry that will be the case with FO4 as well.
"
I started, played several hours, then restarted. When I created my first character, I assumed intelligence wouldn’t be very important (except when choosing perks), since there are no more skill points, and that hp gained from endurance would not be retroactive, which is the way it worked in past Fallout games. Both of these assumption turned out to be false.
Turns out there is no level cap and INT boosts the xp gained, so a higher INT should allow you to reach a higher level for the same work. So for my second character, I maxed INT and it has made a noticeable difference. I haven’t done the same number of quests or exploring, but I’ve already matched the level of my previous character.
I may try a melee character in the future, keeping INT at 1 and using Idiot Savant to gain xp.
My gripes so far:
1. Resolution. How does a AAA game developer have such horrible resolution support? I have a 3440x1440 monitor. When I select Fullscreen, I lose any option for selecting a resolution and it runs at some very low res. I can run windowed, at 2560x1440, with the desktop showing behind the game.
2. Songs. They apparently had a bajillion in sales by the first day. Could they not have licensed more than a dozen really old songs? I know they had more songs back then. I’ve seen some on Spotify. GTA 5 apparently has 240 songs.
3. Graphics. I was pleasantly surprised with the graphics. They were better than I had anticipated. I feared it would look too much like FO3 and NV, but they have noticeably improved. That said, they’re certainly not pushing any limits or breaking new ground. And the world is very still. It feels very odd, especially coming from Witcher 3, where there is a ton of movement in the environment.
4. Interface. This wouldn’t be complete without complaining about Bethesda’s interface on PC. While they did finally add hotkeys for things like the map and inventory (yay!), something I have been wishing for since I first started playing FO3, the workshop interface is horrible. Like most of the complaints since Oblivion, it’s due to the fact that it was clearly designed for consoles. Not only is it a chore to navigate, it’s not intuitive and I keep hitting the wrong key trying to back out of selections. I cannot wait for the inevitably mod to fix the interface.
On “Saturday!”
I played with some of the mods for FO3 for a while. One (or more) of them allowed you to craft and/or repair using some previously useless junk. I ended up afraid to get rid of most of it for fear it would be useful later and had lockers full of crap at my house in Megaton.
"
I've been waffling on whether or not to buy FO4 for the launch. On one hand, Bethesda has a bit of a reputation for bugs, and the game will likely be more stable in a couple months and after a few patches. On the other hand, I'm off Wednesday, and my wife and kid are out of the house. Decisions, decisions...
I'm approaching 100 hours in Witcher 3. The scripted quests are well done and non-repetitive and I'm enjoying them very much. I am, however, getting tired of the inventory management aspect of most modern RPGs. Younger me would probably be horrified hearing me say that. That and the whole 'take everything that isn't nailed down' mentality. Yes, it's not an absolutely requirement and I could bypass it, but then I risk missing out on gear or, in W3, missing out on the singular copy of a particular alchemic formula that exists in this region, that is located in a nondescript supply crate in an abandon sewer. Of course.
FO4 will likely only make this worse, as they aim to make loot junk actually useful. We'll see how successful they are.
On “Linky Friday #139: Humans, Robots, & Onions”
[S4] When discussing altering Hitler's life trajectory, people seem to fail to realize that it would mean erasing billions of people from existence. Sure, a different set of people would be around instead (assuming mankind didn't obliterate itself in the new timeline), but since I wouldn't be one of them, I would appreciate it if people would just leave baby Hitler alone.
"
I'm certain there are probably many ways to game the system. Most stores usually have a person stationed near the checkout lanes, presumably to watch out for any tricks (and sometimes even help clear errors on the machines). I suspect their mere presence probably discourages a lot of intentional bad behavior.
"
Non-organic bananas are 4011. Come on, let's keep it moving!
I greatly dislike the self-checkout lanes that have the full-sized bagging area with 5 foot conveyor belt. If the customer is by themselves, they either can't start bagging until they've finished paying, or have to interrupt the scanning and paying to bag. The ones with the bagging area right next to the scanner are much better.
On “In Which Saul Does Not Get Nostalgia, Take 500”
I tried to get my daughter to watch Star Wars when she was about 6. The movie starts much slower than I remember. I gave up only partway into it as she clearly had no interest.
On “Ann Coulter: Donald Trump’s Brain?”
I usually see it paired with the idea that Democrats are encouraging ineligible people to vote and underscores their call for voter ID laws. Somehow presenting ID before casting a ballot is suppose to prevent fraudulent registrations or something.
On “In Which Saul Does Not Get Nostalgia, Take 500”
I wonder how much of this was fueled by all the fake "today is BTTF day" posts and photoshops that have been floating around since at least 2010.
On “Linky Friday #135: Katy & Lamar”
There's been a lack of acknowledgement by the police of that distrust, especially in the face of the Black Live Matter movement. They seem to largely have been viewing it as an attack and circling the wagons instead of recognizing the need and oppurtunity to build trust, even if they believe the police haven't done anything wrong or improper.
"
He wasn't fired.
He was in the process of being fired, but quit first.
"
Special prosecutors are sooo 90s. They should really be asking for a House Select Committee.
On “3elieve”
Alice in Chains - Nutshell, I Stay Away, No Excuses
Michael Jackson - Thriller, Beat It, Billie Jean
Faith No More - Land of Sunshine, Caffeine, Midlife Crisis
King's X - Over My Head, Summerland, Everybody Knows a Little Bit of Something
The Gathering - In Between, Alone, Waking Hour
On “Linky Friday #133: Body, Mind, & Spirit”
Conservatives do keep saying they see right through her...
On “Americans, Big Homes, Long Commutes, Health and Hazards”
I wonder how much of the issue is related to how large cities and their related suburbs and exurbs spills out across many municipalities, which often have competing interests. The DC metro area, for example, is a mess. Two states and the district, numerous counties and subdivisions within those. A nice community with mostly single family homes inside the beltway may not want anything that would increase density, so development is pushed farther and farther out. I don't see how it would work in practice, but at times I wish there was some regional governing body looking out for the interest of the entire area instead of just within a narrow political boundary.
On “What is Carly Fiorina up to?”
My momma always told me not to base my understanding of healthcare policy on a 5 second soundbite.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.