Second FNV playthrough complete, for NCR. I burned through a LOT of Karma wiping out the Mojave Brotherhood of Steel by doing it "fairly" - methodically shooting everyone in the bunker - rather than sneaking in and setting it to self-destruct, which is just a single -100 hit. Ironic.
So my cowgirl sharpshooter ends up just slightly on the positive side of neutral (+40), and her ending slide says that her agenda was a mystery... yeah, honestly, that fits. We're talking about someone who's besties with Boone, Cass and Rex (not to mention Joshua Graham), and whose history and inclination as a "peacemaker" is more along the lines of Samuel Colt than smooth talkin' Bart. She also wiped out the White Legs, the Khans, the Fiends, the Powder Gangers, and took a pretty good chunk out of the Legion; she razed the Fort and Cottonwood Cove, assassinated Caesar (and his whole inner circle) in his tent, and did much the same to Mr. House. And then she shot Lanius in the face - several times - before he could even open his stupid yap. Didn't stop him from getting in melee range (very briefly), but she didn't just let him, and I don't think he got more than one swing at her with that big fuckoff sword, maybe not even that.
I haven't really touched Fallout 4 much since launch -- I didn't dislike it or anything, just got distracted by other stuff and only put about 40 hours into it, which is quite a bit lower than every other Bethesda game for me. I had a lot of fun with Starfield, but all of the discussion of outposts and how it compares to other Bethesda games had me eyeing up Sim Settlements, as it's always seemed like a cool idea and didn't exist at all when I was playing last.
The creation kit wasn't out at all, so hey why not just go all in. I installed the Life in the Ruins wabbajack pack, which is abouut 900 mods (a bulk of them being tons of compatibility patches which I appreciate!) and is a survival-ey no fast travel encouraged pack. That can all be tweaked, but I'm mostly rolling with it with some minor custom changes.
It's been really cool so far. It uses "A Forest", which alone is an incredible improvement on my end. Forested commonwealth is great! It's still a hellhole with post apocalyptic stuff, but having lush greenery around just makes exploration even better. The pack nerfs the economy quite a bit which makes sense -- I took some of the edge off with some custom changes, but so far everything has felt like it works well and in concert with the other mods. There's danger around every corner but not just constant damage sponge death everywhere, and I've been able to progress at a good pace so far. The modlist curator also has several major custom mods for the pack to improve survival mode that aren't just "make it harder" which is cool -- Stimpacked in particular is a neat change that gives you 100 extra health to start, but divides your healthbar into 4 segments and requires a stimpack to heal through each breakpoint. It's made to make combat more of a marathon than an instagib quickload fest, so you have incentive to manage your stimpacks as a resource instead of just having to reload because every bullet knocks out 3/4 of your health.
I'm excited to get into the Sim Settlements stuff! I'm progressing the main story a bit as it's recommended to build up a settlement more towards the center of the map due to the fast travel restrictions, but I'm getting close to unlocking the ones I want so wooh.
I don’t usually use modlists because I’m too OCD and I’d rather hammer things out in xedit, but WTF knows his stuff and that’s a really solid list, or at least it was a couple of years ago last time I was paying attention to FO4.
The Forest is nice, especially if you have a good video card. Its a different flavor to default, I have played through both ways and enjoyed both.
I don’t usually use modlists because I’m too OCD and I’d rather hammer things out in xedit, but WTF knows his stuff and that’s a really solid list, or at least it was a couple of years ago last time I was paying attention to FO4.
The Forest is nice, especially if you have a good video card. Its a different flavor to default, I have played through both ways and enjoyed both.
Good to know! Yeah he seems pretty active on the discord and it's still being actively updated, which is cool. Version 5.0 just came out about a week ago to include Sim Settlements Chapter 3 and a few other things.
As far as Sim Settlements 2 goes, you may or may not be able to dodge out of fast travel limits by the time you learn how to set up caravans. Once the plot hits level 2 if you speak to the caravaneer during operating hours you'll be able to hitch a ride to any other settlement in the caravan network.
It's not a super big deal but I think the perk overhaul might be messing with kind of a neat thing SS2 does - perk dialogue. As long as you're still using the vanilla dialogue wheel instead of using like XDI to auto-replace dialogue with the subtitles you'll say, you'll occasionally see things like [AWARENESS] YOU'RE SURROUNDED or [LOCAL LEADER] GIVE AND TAKE or [PICKPOCKET] WHAT'S THAT? or [INTIMIDATION] SURRENDER, which is an alternate dialogue path that only shows up if you've taken a rank in that perk.
(If you take Idiot Savant it adds the occasional dumb joke options to the dialogue wheel.)
Not all perks get lines, but a decent number of them do, which might well lead to a thing that's never happened before in human history, taking Toughness for roleplay reasons.
As far as Sim Settlements 2 goes, you may or may not be able to dodge out of fast travel limits by the time you learn how to set up caravans. Once the plot hits level 2 if you speak to the caravaneer during operating hours you'll be able to hitch a ride to any other settlement in the caravan network.
It's not a super big deal but I think the perk overhaul might be messing with kind of a neat thing SS2 does - perk dialogue. As long as you're still using the vanilla dialogue wheel instead of using like XDI to auto-replace dialogue with the subtitles you'll say, you'll occasionally see things like [AWARENESS] YOU'RE SURROUNDED or [LOCAL LEADER] GIVE AND TAKE or [PICKPOCKET] WHAT'S THAT? or [INTIMIDATION] SURRENDER, which is an alternate dialogue path that only shows up if you've taken a rank in that perk.
(If you take Idiot Savant it adds the occasional dumb joke options to the dialogue wheel.)
Not all perks get lines, but a decent number of them do, which might well lead to a thing that's never happened before in human history, taking Toughness for roleplay reasons.
I haven't tested it myself since I haven't gotten into Sim Settlements yet, buuut given the absurd amount of compatibility patches in the mod list, and particularly for the perk overhaul, my guess is the perk option stuff will still work. The options you listed are mostly/all still in the perk mod too. But we'll see! The fast travel stuff is ultimately a toggle -- I like the vibes of going it slow so far, but the pack includes MCM options to toggle every survival mode thing. I think you're right that the caravans will work either way though.
I am using a mod to mute the protagonist and I think XDI though (whatever one keeps the base 4 options thing and is supposed to be generally compatible but does list out the full response), because I'm not a huge fan of the voiced protagonist and think Starfield going back to silent was an amazing change. But that was a custom change outside of the modpack. I get the feeling he may not be muted for Sim Settlements since he's spoken in some of the custom companion stuff, but eh I'll deal with it as I go along.
Edit: It looks like the silent protagonist thing supports at least up to Chapter 2 of sim settlements, wooh.
Double edit: Aaand I checked and am using Full Dialogue interface, not XDI which yeah I've heard messes with a lot of mod stuff. Hopefully it goes smoothly!
Am now contemplating an Asian male (probably named Lee; "there's a million Lees") in addition to the blonde Caucasian guy I was already gonna make, and the one thing I wasn't going to do, a Legion run (mostly for the achievements, but also the content I guess). But which for which?
... it has to be Independent Lee, doesn't it. (also Educated Lee, Intelligent Lee, Scientific Lee, and (eventual lee) Big MT Lee...)
Well I spent 15 minutes installing a bunch of patches to make my protagonist shutup in modded content and the game didn't crash, so hooray.
Mostly spent the night hunting down Kellogg, in my push towards the Castle to unlock some more settlement locations. That fight is a lot harder with the modpack! I was only level 15 and prooobably would have been better suited to doing it later with the mod setup, but I blew through a bunch of ammo taking out the hardier than vanilla synths and made it through. Kellogg himself is tough as nails now and I just wound up nuking him, always good to have that option.
Didn't really get into any specifically modded stuff aside from that, but the storms and fog are definitely pretty with True Storms! I also lost Dogmeat somehow after he tracked down Kellogg (I have the mod that enables him in addition to a companion), but hopefully he'll come back after some nap time in Diamond City.
Well I spent 15 minutes installing a bunch of patches to make my protagonist shutup in modded content and the game didn't crash, so hooray.
Mostly spent the night hunting down Kellogg, in my push towards the Castle to unlock some more settlement locations. That fight is a lot harder with the modpack! I was only level 15 and prooobably would have been better suited to doing it later with the mod setup, but I blew through a bunch of ammo taking out the hardier than vanilla synths and made it through. Kellogg himself is tough as nails now and I just wound up nuking him, always good to have that option.
Didn't really get into any specifically modded stuff aside from that, but the storms and fog are definitely pretty with True Storms! I also lost Dogmeat somehow after he tracked down Kellogg (I have the mod that enables him in addition to a companion), but hopefully he'll come back after some nap time in Diamond City.
Ah yeah, that's the one point where the game will take Dogmeat away from you as a companion - once you arrive at Fort Hagen and "have to choose" between taking your companion or Dogmeat inside. You have to explicitly talk to him and get him back; he may have wandered all the way back to Sanctuary at this point.
Thaaat makes sense! I've lost him once or twice before, temporarily, so assumed he would just show up again. But yeah given he's apart of that quest and you can't normally take him and a companion, I can see why the game does that. Heh for me he just ran off chasing some machine gun turret and I lost him in the chaos of entering Fort Hagen and pressed on, but that's definitely exactly when it happened. I need to run over to Sanctuary at some point soon anyways so hopefully he's hanging out there.
Yeah it's incredibly worth the $5 to save all of the clicking. Aaand I've used Nexus mods over the years enough that it feels fair.
I'm having a blast! I didn't get as much time to play this weekend as I wanted, but the time I did get was really good!
There's so much stuff cool stuff going on with the modpack. It manages to not feel overcrowded, but man there are encounters crammed in everywhere it makes sense for there to be and it feels really good.
I went to downtown Boston, and there's some nasty stuff around as expected. Stuff I'm definitely not equipped enough to kill yet, but I still managed to have a blast with it.
I found a legendary raider with pink power armor who was way out of my league (power armor is buffed significantly in the mod pack, and used a bit more often by hostile NPCs). But hey look at that, there happened to be some ridiculous named super mutant behemoth not tooo far away with a crew of super mutants in there too. Lots of named uniques, all of whom could wreck my shit.
But I lead them to the raiders, and it was awesome. I love when different factions start fighting like that in the wild, and it was fun watching them go at eachother. I wound up just running the hell away after the Super Mutants won, as the named uniques were still hanging around and kicking my ass. I made it to The Castle for the main story, and yeah that mirelurk queen is tough as nails now. But oh hey again, I found a wandering Brotherhood of Steel patrol, and used them to help me take her down. Sadly she didn't quite kill the guy in power armor for me to loot, but eh at least they were useful.
I loaded it up but I don’t know whats wrong but it is really slow and jerky on my computer. Like really bad even turning the ENB preset off.
I may play around with vanilla and try to get some settings that give a decent framerate and nonglitchy gameplay there, then go back and try it again. The 4080 mobile card seems really finicky on settings and some things it just doesn’t like.
Part of me says just tear enb out entirely, because I never really had much luck with it on my old computer setup either. Always seemed to have a lot less headaches not using it.
theres always an explosives run too, because nothing is more dangerous than yourself!
"Dynamite Dan" - armed with the above, grenades, and a ballistic fist - is fun to think about, but I'm not that crazy.
Turns out I am, in fact, that crazy.
Finished my third playthrough today, for the Legion; it wasn't part of my original plan, but I decided to throw it in, mostly for the achievements but also trying something Different (also 'cause I figured it would go pretty quick, and it did - I was a mere level 15 at the end). Dan came out a bit older than the others (thirties, I'd guess) with ash-blonde hair in a wild Waster style (a bad case of hat hair, when he takes off his cattleman's straw) and full beard, and bloodshot blue Raider eyes. Also answers to "Nasty Dan" and other, less flattering epithets all down the Evil Karma column. High STR and END, good PER, CHR 1 (did I mention this was a no-companion run? Dan wouldn't put up with anyone else, or vice versa), and 5s for the rest. Picked up Thump-Thump at Nellis, and bought a power fist and a ripper from the Gun Runners, all of which served me well through the end of the game. For my NCR disguise, I got lucky and scored the trooper armor variant that includes a facemask; add a standard helmet and he was completely anonymous.
I didn't completely avoid the usual towns, but I didn't linger. Cobb didn't survive the Goodsprings massacre (oh well); in fact, both sides wiped each other out, leaving Dan the only survivor (again, that wasn't the plan, but it worked out great). Primm never got a new sheriff after I threw a grenade into the room where Beagle was, and while I passed through Novac several times, I never so much as rented a room there. (One time I brushed past Boone in the gift shop - that was a little creepy.)
I blew off House's invitation when I arrived in Vegas, and didn't stop by on my way out after Benny played me for a sucker (I got the last laugh when he wound up on a cross), so the first time I spoke to him was in the Fort's "basement"; tempting as it was to just blurt out why I was there, I said something vague and let him see the results on his board. (That also meant the bots on the Strip never got upgraded, which might have been useful for Dot, but she wanted to complete her contract.) Wandering into H&H Tools was at least semi-organic - looking for more explosives and other salvage - so I had the VIP keycard handy when Caesar sent me after him. Did the actual deed with a Legion? machete, which earned me a point toward the Castlevania achievement. Once House was out of the way, Dan took great pleasure in having the 38 all to himself; he also passed a lot of Legion money at Gomorrah and later the Ultra-Luxe, using them to launder his silver into caps.
He got along great with the Boomers, as you'd expect; he punched out all the ants, snuck into Helios One to get solar panel parts, and brought Jack lots of scrap metal so he didn't have to deal with the mushy stuff. He swam to the bomber from the Fisherman's Pride shack, so he also didn't have to deal with cazadores (not that time, anyway), just some very persistent lakelurks (who also got punched).
There was no way a CHR 1 misanthrope like Dan was going to pass any Speech challenges, so I went with the Pheeble Will bonus combo for Beyond the Beef, framing Gunderson the elder for his boy's tasty tasty murder. Elder McNamara scolded me for not even trying to talk to Ranger Dobson and called me a brute, so I showed him I could be sneaky and cunning, pickpocketing all three keycards under cover of Stealth Boy (and resisting the temptation to leave a live grenade in their place) and hurrying out of the bunker before it went up in a very satisfying boom.
Took the "bomb helmet" option for Arizona Killer, pulling the trigger on the detonator just as the President pinned the medal on the private, and took the Dam with a combo of long-range grenades and close-up punching (and letting the Legionaries charge in and soak up fire). For the final assault, I took out the floor traps from a distance (grenades work real well for that too), and then saturation-bombed the top floor with the General and his heavy troopers. Couldn't avoid some backblast during that last part; would have been nice to have Hit the Deck, but I had other priorities (including all three levels of Demolition Expert) and didn't want to drag things out, so I managed with lots of stims and Hydra and a few doctor bags.
Update a bit - apparently all my problems disappeard after finishing the intro, seems fine now.
Not sure what the deal was but running 1920 on default setting just fine.
Nice! The pack is definitely on the more demanding side, but yeah you should be able to run it with that videocard! There are some performance tweaks you can do related to the ENB (it's included in the setup instructions), but it sounds like you're good to go either way.
Update a bit - apparently all my problems disappeard after finishing the intro, seems fine now.
Not sure what the deal was but running 1920 on default setting just fine.
Nice! The pack is definitely on the more demanding side, but yeah you should be able to run it with that videocard! There are some performance tweaks you can do related to the ENB (it's included in the setup instructions), but it sounds like you're good to go either way.
Yeah I think it was just choking because of the scripts all starting, by the time I got out to the vault it settled down and hasn’t had any problems.
I like it so far. Emptied the whole minigun on the deathclaw and had to beat it to death with a security baton, and got surprised a bit by the power armor after that.
Other than that only thing I have done is take down ack-ack, abused explosives a bit for that part (2 frag grenades thrown quickly from stealth will clear the room out before anyone has a chance to react.)
The difficulty healing is taking a bit to get used to, stimpacks are so rare and doctors don’t show up for a while…. Not being able to rest to heal is a big thing.
Explored a bit with tgm on… Love the forest theme, and the glowing sea is really nice with the lava and mushrooms.
One thing I have noticed… they use other breeds of dogs for the raider attack dogs and sometimes that makes me sad. Especially the laboradors. Ran up on a golden lab that was so cute - then he went for my face and dogmeat jumped him.
Eventually I will find an rpg that I love as much if not more than new Vegas . But for now another play through of shotguns and massive aoe explosives because precision is for losers . Explosives in new Vegas with all its perks is still my favorite weapon skill in the series .
I threw out that post (on the last page) about an explosives run as a hypothetical, an example of something I wouldn't be doing. Like a Legion/evil run, it wasn't part of the plan. And then, well...
(But now, having done so, this video makes me grin like a fool every time I watch it.)
So after finishing up NV, I decided to go back and look at my F3 savegames and screenshots.
I had forgotten how green this game is. (And I'm not talking about the UI or the trees and foliage I modded in during my original playthroughs, back in '08-09.) Even with Fellout clearing it up a little, there's just this omnipresent murk.
Add to that all the "missing" features like no proper iron sights, and the appeal of TTW (et al) is suddenly very apparent. I dunno if I'll actually follow through on that, but it's been enlightening.
EDIT - ha, my mistake: seems I wasn't actually using Fellout but another mod from back in the day, Clear Skies. I've swapped the latter out for the latest version of the former, and it actually clears things up nicely.
Commander Zoom on
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
Fallout 3 unmodded gives me a straight-up headache after a while, something about the nasty filter they put on everything and the shitty textures. Just makes my eyes start hurting after about half an hour.
Huh . So despite all my thousands of hours in new Vegas I’ve realized I haven’t done a very hard hardcore run . In fact I only did hardcore once to finish up the achievements. As a quick aside looking at achievements nine years have passed from when I got my first (2010) till I got 100% (2019) . Really only took that long cause I don’t like the legion and caravan was nonsense .
So for a VH/HC run:
Problem:
Explosives are unfortunately out of the question, way to fucking heavy and crippled limbs a bigger issue .
Solution
Go for a common , redundant ammo type . I’m thinking getting cowboy perk and using hand loaded .44 in the carbine and .44 special as a back up for the .44 handgun. Thought briefly about the brush gun but .47 70 is heavy , rare and expensive. Also turns out a real bullet , I had no idea.
Problem:
Dead money
Solution:
Cry.
Everything else can be solved by just walking past it until I’m ready for it . Drop by lonesome road to buy riot gear as soon as I have money and boom I should be good . Will probably have Boone with me for most of the run , I love you cass but you do tend to die more than I would like.
doing a replay myself and I do not want to go through Dead Money again... like, nice characters and missions and all but holy hell the combat is tedious slog.
doing a replay myself and I do not want to go through Dead Money again... like, nice characters and missions and all but holy hell the combat is tedious slog.
It’s the fact that I will be doing it on hardcore that scares me . It’s actually quite easy to brute force normally. That said it really feels that you need to have melee or unarmed maxed out before you go to the sierra madre. The ghost people are way too resilient to firearms for the BAR or police pistol do anything and there really aren’t enough explosives to deal with them . Add to the fact that their perception is bugged ( according to the wiki it’s set at 0 but since a character can’t have 0 perception the game maxes it out instead ) and ghost people end up being terrifying .
It’s still my favorite setting of the dlcs and all the characters add to it and feel vital and important . As opposed to the others that feel like they have one character that “carries” the show ( Joshua , think tank , Ulysses) and everyone else is just kind of there .
Add to the fact that their perception is bugged ( according to the wiki it’s set at 0 but since a character can’t have 0 perception the game maxes it out instead ) and ghost people end up being terrifying .
Apparently it's several bugs and issues - their perception is wrong, the lighting is all coded too bright, and they level with the player (who is usually pretty high-level when they start that DLC) - which combine in a perfect storm. Despite what your human eyes tell you, from a code/AI perspective, you're walking around under the midday sun, with the result that they all instantly see you and aggro from maximum range. It's total bullshit.
Add to the fact that their perception is bugged ( according to the wiki it’s set at 0 but since a character can’t have 0 perception the game maxes it out instead ) and ghost people end up being terrifying .
Apparently it's several bugs and issues - their perception is wrong, the lighting is all coded too bright, and they level with the player (who is usually pretty high-level when they start that DLC) - which combine in a perfect storm. Despite what your human eyes tell you, from a code/AI perspective, you're walking around under the midday sun, with the result that they all instantly see you and aggro from maximum range. It's total bullshit.
New Vegas is the greatest mess of all time . It truly is the best and worst of obsidian at the same time oscillating violently.
So I just finished my dead money on Vh/hardcore for the first time . Some observations
Despite people urging you to avoid contact it seems the ghost people only respawn in response to story progress , so it ends up being beneficial to abandon stealth and just kill everyone in groups of one or two . This lets you explore and deal with the traps at your leisure .
While it’s a very small amount of damage the persistent poison effect adds up and will be a constant drain on your stim packs and health . Only areas exempt are the police station/ clinic/ casino . So get used to being at half health or less until you make it to the second act .
Ghost people are insanely durable . Melee or unarmed focus is a must. My mines deal almost 300 dmg each and they would walk over groups of 3/4 of them like nothing
This character isn’t a scientist and as such lost access to the .357 ammo vendor unlock ( stuck behind a hard terminal in the police station)
The BAR is worthless
After you trigger the gala event just run to the casino . Everything outside Puesta del sol should still be dead but things in puesta will immediately respawn in numbers and in bad moods .
The ghost people only spawn in the lobby after you complete an objective in the casino and return to the lobby hub to go a different area . It’s not too bad except the last one which ends up you fighting 5 at the same time.
God/dog , Dean deserve to die , on this my mind is set . Christine isn’t on the level either but she isn’t as openly hostile as the other two .
There is a shotgun ! I always wondered why there was so much ammo when I couldn’t find one . It’s in the armory just before Christine and the entrance of the vault . So it’s absolutely worthless .
Never leave the madre without the unlocks for stim packs , weapon repair kits and the mods for the weapons . Since you get free chips every few days every unlock top you get becomes infinite and free
I left the gold , I like dead moneys message of letting go so I try to play my character like that .
Posts
So my cowgirl sharpshooter ends up just slightly on the positive side of neutral (+40), and her ending slide says that her agenda was a mystery... yeah, honestly, that fits. We're talking about someone who's besties with Boone, Cass and Rex (not to mention Joshua Graham), and whose history and inclination as a "peacemaker" is more along the lines of Samuel Colt than smooth talkin' Bart. She also wiped out the White Legs, the Khans, the Fiends, the Powder Gangers, and took a pretty good chunk out of the Legion; she razed the Fort and Cottonwood Cove, assassinated Caesar (and his whole inner circle) in his tent, and did much the same to Mr. House. And then she shot Lanius in the face - several times - before he could even open his stupid yap. Didn't stop him from getting in melee range (very briefly), but she didn't just let him, and I don't think he got more than one swing at her with that big fuckoff sword, maybe not even that.
The creation kit wasn't out at all, so hey why not just go all in. I installed the Life in the Ruins wabbajack pack, which is abouut 900 mods (a bulk of them being tons of compatibility patches which I appreciate!) and is a survival-ey no fast travel encouraged pack. That can all be tweaked, but I'm mostly rolling with it with some minor custom changes.
It's been really cool so far. It uses "A Forest", which alone is an incredible improvement on my end. Forested commonwealth is great! It's still a hellhole with post apocalyptic stuff, but having lush greenery around just makes exploration even better. The pack nerfs the economy quite a bit which makes sense -- I took some of the edge off with some custom changes, but so far everything has felt like it works well and in concert with the other mods. There's danger around every corner but not just constant damage sponge death everywhere, and I've been able to progress at a good pace so far. The modlist curator also has several major custom mods for the pack to improve survival mode that aren't just "make it harder" which is cool -- Stimpacked in particular is a neat change that gives you 100 extra health to start, but divides your healthbar into 4 segments and requires a stimpack to heal through each breakpoint. It's made to make combat more of a marathon than an instagib quickload fest, so you have incentive to manage your stimpacks as a resource instead of just having to reload because every bullet knocks out 3/4 of your health.
I'm excited to get into the Sim Settlements stuff! I'm progressing the main story a bit as it's recommended to build up a settlement more towards the center of the map due to the fast travel restrictions, but I'm getting close to unlocking the ones I want so wooh.
The Forest is nice, especially if you have a good video card. Its a different flavor to default, I have played through both ways and enjoyed both.
Good to know! Yeah he seems pretty active on the discord and it's still being actively updated, which is cool. Version 5.0 just came out about a week ago to include Sim Settlements Chapter 3 and a few other things.
It's not a super big deal but I think the perk overhaul might be messing with kind of a neat thing SS2 does - perk dialogue. As long as you're still using the vanilla dialogue wheel instead of using like XDI to auto-replace dialogue with the subtitles you'll say, you'll occasionally see things like [AWARENESS] YOU'RE SURROUNDED or [LOCAL LEADER] GIVE AND TAKE or [PICKPOCKET] WHAT'S THAT? or [INTIMIDATION] SURRENDER, which is an alternate dialogue path that only shows up if you've taken a rank in that perk.
(If you take Idiot Savant it adds the occasional dumb joke options to the dialogue wheel.)
Not all perks get lines, but a decent number of them do, which might well lead to a thing that's never happened before in human history, taking Toughness for roleplay reasons.
I haven't tested it myself since I haven't gotten into Sim Settlements yet, buuut given the absurd amount of compatibility patches in the mod list, and particularly for the perk overhaul, my guess is the perk option stuff will still work. The options you listed are mostly/all still in the perk mod too. But we'll see! The fast travel stuff is ultimately a toggle -- I like the vibes of going it slow so far, but the pack includes MCM options to toggle every survival mode thing. I think you're right that the caravans will work either way though.
I am using a mod to mute the protagonist and I think XDI though (whatever one keeps the base 4 options thing and is supposed to be generally compatible but does list out the full response), because I'm not a huge fan of the voiced protagonist and think Starfield going back to silent was an amazing change. But that was a custom change outside of the modpack. I get the feeling he may not be muted for Sim Settlements since he's spoken in some of the custom companion stuff, but eh I'll deal with it as I go along.
Edit: It looks like the silent protagonist thing supports at least up to Chapter 2 of sim settlements, wooh.
Double edit: Aaand I checked and am using Full Dialogue interface, not XDI which yeah I've heard messes with a lot of mod stuff. Hopefully it goes smoothly!
... it has to be Independent Lee, doesn't it. (also Educated Lee, Intelligent Lee, Scientific Lee, and (eventual lee) Big MT Lee...)
Mostly spent the night hunting down Kellogg, in my push towards the Castle to unlock some more settlement locations. That fight is a lot harder with the modpack! I was only level 15 and prooobably would have been better suited to doing it later with the mod setup, but I blew through a bunch of ammo taking out the hardier than vanilla synths and made it through. Kellogg himself is tough as nails now and I just wound up nuking him, always good to have that option.
Didn't really get into any specifically modded stuff aside from that, but the storms and fog are definitely pretty with True Storms! I also lost Dogmeat somehow after he tracked down Kellogg (I have the mod that enables him in addition to a companion), but hopefully he'll come back after some nap time in Diamond City.
Ah yeah, that's the one point where the game will take Dogmeat away from you as a companion - once you arrive at Fort Hagen and "have to choose" between taking your companion or Dogmeat inside. You have to explicitly talk to him and get him back; he may have wandered all the way back to Sanctuary at this point.
Yeah, unless you want to click 10,000 times...
Now to wait while all this downloads.
I'm having a blast! I didn't get as much time to play this weekend as I wanted, but the time I did get was really good!
There's so much stuff cool stuff going on with the modpack. It manages to not feel overcrowded, but man there are encounters crammed in everywhere it makes sense for there to be and it feels really good.
I went to downtown Boston, and there's some nasty stuff around as expected. Stuff I'm definitely not equipped enough to kill yet, but I still managed to have a blast with it.
I found a legendary raider with pink power armor who was way out of my league (power armor is buffed significantly in the mod pack, and used a bit more often by hostile NPCs). But hey look at that, there happened to be some ridiculous named super mutant behemoth not tooo far away with a crew of super mutants in there too. Lots of named uniques, all of whom could wreck my shit.
But I lead them to the raiders, and it was awesome. I love when different factions start fighting like that in the wild, and it was fun watching them go at eachother. I wound up just running the hell away after the Super Mutants won, as the named uniques were still hanging around and kicking my ass. I made it to The Castle for the main story, and yeah that mirelurk queen is tough as nails now. But oh hey again, I found a wandering Brotherhood of Steel patrol, and used them to help me take her down. Sadly she didn't quite kill the guy in power armor for me to loot, but eh at least they were useful.
I may play around with vanilla and try to get some settings that give a decent framerate and nonglitchy gameplay there, then go back and try it again. The 4080 mobile card seems really finicky on settings and some things it just doesn’t like.
Part of me says just tear enb out entirely, because I never really had much luck with it on my old computer setup either. Always seemed to have a lot less headaches not using it.
Not sure what the deal was but running 1920 on default setting just fine.
Turns out I am, in fact, that crazy.
Finished my third playthrough today, for the Legion; it wasn't part of my original plan, but I decided to throw it in, mostly for the achievements but also trying something Different (also 'cause I figured it would go pretty quick, and it did - I was a mere level 15 at the end). Dan came out a bit older than the others (thirties, I'd guess) with ash-blonde hair in a wild Waster style (a bad case of hat hair, when he takes off his cattleman's straw) and full beard, and bloodshot blue Raider eyes. Also answers to "Nasty Dan" and other, less flattering epithets all down the Evil Karma column. High STR and END, good PER, CHR 1 (did I mention this was a no-companion run? Dan wouldn't put up with anyone else, or vice versa), and 5s for the rest. Picked up Thump-Thump at Nellis, and bought a power fist and a ripper from the Gun Runners, all of which served me well through the end of the game. For my NCR disguise, I got lucky and scored the trooper armor variant that includes a facemask; add a standard helmet and he was completely anonymous.
I didn't completely avoid the usual towns, but I didn't linger. Cobb didn't survive the Goodsprings massacre (oh well); in fact, both sides wiped each other out, leaving Dan the only survivor (again, that wasn't the plan, but it worked out great). Primm never got a new sheriff after I threw a grenade into the room where Beagle was, and while I passed through Novac several times, I never so much as rented a room there. (One time I brushed past Boone in the gift shop - that was a little creepy.)
I blew off House's invitation when I arrived in Vegas, and didn't stop by on my way out after Benny played me for a sucker (I got the last laugh when he wound up on a cross), so the first time I spoke to him was in the Fort's "basement"; tempting as it was to just blurt out why I was there, I said something vague and let him see the results on his board. (That also meant the bots on the Strip never got upgraded, which might have been useful for Dot, but she wanted to complete her contract.) Wandering into H&H Tools was at least semi-organic - looking for more explosives and other salvage - so I had the VIP keycard handy when Caesar sent me after him. Did the actual deed with a Legion? machete, which earned me a point toward the Castlevania achievement. Once House was out of the way, Dan took great pleasure in having the 38 all to himself; he also passed a lot of Legion money at Gomorrah and later the Ultra-Luxe, using them to launder his silver into caps.
He got along great with the Boomers, as you'd expect; he punched out all the ants, snuck into Helios One to get solar panel parts, and brought Jack lots of scrap metal so he didn't have to deal with the mushy stuff. He swam to the bomber from the Fisherman's Pride shack, so he also didn't have to deal with cazadores (not that time, anyway), just some very persistent lakelurks (who also got punched).
There was no way a CHR 1 misanthrope like Dan was going to pass any Speech challenges, so I went with the Pheeble Will bonus combo for Beyond the Beef, framing Gunderson the elder for his boy's tasty tasty murder. Elder McNamara scolded me for not even trying to talk to Ranger Dobson and called me a brute, so I showed him I could be sneaky and cunning, pickpocketing all three keycards under cover of Stealth Boy (and resisting the temptation to leave a live grenade in their place) and hurrying out of the bunker before it went up in a very satisfying boom.
Took the "bomb helmet" option for Arizona Killer, pulling the trigger on the detonator just as the President pinned the medal on the private, and took the Dam with a combo of long-range grenades and close-up punching (and letting the Legionaries charge in and soak up fire). For the final assault, I took out the floor traps from a distance (grenades work real well for that too), and then saturation-bombed the top floor with the General and his heavy troopers. Couldn't avoid some backblast during that last part; would have been nice to have Hit the Deck, but I had other priorities (including all three levels of Demolition Expert) and didn't want to drag things out, so I managed with lots of stims and Hydra and a few doctor bags.
Nice! The pack is definitely on the more demanding side, but yeah you should be able to run it with that videocard! There are some performance tweaks you can do related to the ENB (it's included in the setup instructions), but it sounds like you're good to go either way.
Yeah I think it was just choking because of the scripts all starting, by the time I got out to the vault it settled down and hasn’t had any problems.
I like it so far. Emptied the whole minigun on the deathclaw and had to beat it to death with a security baton, and got surprised a bit by the power armor after that.
Other than that only thing I have done is take down ack-ack, abused explosives a bit for that part (2 frag grenades thrown quickly from stealth will clear the room out before anyone has a chance to react.)
The difficulty healing is taking a bit to get used to, stimpacks are so rare and doctors don’t show up for a while…. Not being able to rest to heal is a big thing.
Explored a bit with tgm on… Love the forest theme, and the glowing sea is really nice with the lava and mushrooms.
One thing I have noticed… they use other breeds of dogs for the raider attack dogs and sometimes that makes me sad. Especially the laboradors. Ran up on a golden lab that was so cute - then he went for my face and dogmeat jumped him.
Here's a link to his character portrait, and the rest:
Bart, the Charming Gambler (House)
Dot (aka Dorothy), the Sharpshooter (NCR)
"Nasty" Dan, the Lone Demoman (Legion) and his NCR disguise
(But now, having done so, this video makes me grin like a fool every time I watch it.)
you're a monster
I had forgotten how green this game is. (And I'm not talking about the UI or the trees and foliage I modded in during my original playthroughs, back in '08-09.) Even with Fellout clearing it up a little, there's just this omnipresent murk.
Add to that all the "missing" features like no proper iron sights, and the appeal of TTW (et al) is suddenly very apparent. I dunno if I'll actually follow through on that, but it's been enlightening.
EDIT - ha, my mistake: seems I wasn't actually using Fellout but another mod from back in the day, Clear Skies. I've swapped the latter out for the latest version of the former, and it actually clears things up nicely.
So for a VH/HC run:
Problem:
Explosives are unfortunately out of the question, way to fucking heavy and crippled limbs a bigger issue .
Solution
Go for a common , redundant ammo type . I’m thinking getting cowboy perk and using hand loaded .44 in the carbine and .44 special as a back up for the .44 handgun. Thought briefly about the brush gun but .47 70 is heavy , rare and expensive. Also turns out a real bullet , I had no idea.
Problem:
Dead money
Solution:
Cry.
Everything else can be solved by just walking past it until I’m ready for it . Drop by lonesome road to buy riot gear as soon as I have money and boom I should be good . Will probably have Boone with me for most of the run , I love you cass but you do tend to die more than I would like.
It’s the fact that I will be doing it on hardcore that scares me . It’s actually quite easy to brute force normally. That said it really feels that you need to have melee or unarmed maxed out before you go to the sierra madre. The ghost people are way too resilient to firearms for the BAR or police pistol do anything and there really aren’t enough explosives to deal with them . Add to the fact that their perception is bugged ( according to the wiki it’s set at 0 but since a character can’t have 0 perception the game maxes it out instead ) and ghost people end up being terrifying .
It’s still my favorite setting of the dlcs and all the characters add to it and feel vital and important . As opposed to the others that feel like they have one character that “carries” the show ( Joshua , think tank , Ulysses) and everyone else is just kind of there .
Ron, the Daddy's Boy
Ranger, Honorary Member of Lyons' Pride, Savior of the Wasteland
Jessie, the Lawbringer
Regulator, Vampire Killer, Ambassador of Peace Justice
Mr. Carver, the Very Bad Man Contract Killer (that's Jericho in the armor)
Slaver, Mr. Sandman, Harbinger of War
Ox, the Child at Heart (not shown: big gun, simple soul)
Protector of Big Town, Animal Friend, Punga Powered
I still remember the robot that thought he was Captain America. The redneck farmer super mutant, etc. Gotta love mods.
Apparently it's several bugs and issues - their perception is wrong, the lighting is all coded too bright, and they level with the player (who is usually pretty high-level when they start that DLC) - which combine in a perfect storm. Despite what your human eyes tell you, from a code/AI perspective, you're walking around under the midday sun, with the result that they all instantly see you and aggro from maximum range. It's total bullshit.
New Vegas is the greatest mess of all time . It truly is the best and worst of obsidian at the same time oscillating violently.
https://www.nexusmods.com/newvegas/mods/73803?tab=description
I played a few months ago and felt like the balance was a lot better.
I left the gold , I like dead moneys message of letting go so I try to play my character like that .