4399

Ouch. I might have to try that after I get through Far Harbor :)

4400

Very nice, thanks for following up with that. Super helpful. That sounds totally compatible with my current RP choices and the outcome is acceptable and realistic. Should be venturing back into NW next.

Really appreciating the new companion and crafting options I just got from the Automatron DLC. And a certain racetrack bit that I assume came with that DLC…well, it’s hilarious.

4401

Nope the race track was vanilla.

4402

A pox on the house of the designer who came up with the NIMA puzzles. That’s 3 hours of my life I won’t get back.

4403

Lots of folks griped about how “short” the Mechanist quest was. Having finished it last night, I’m pretty sure those yots didn’t play it on survival. That last Mechanist encounter was just lollerific – definitely an end-game type of fight. Enjoyed myself the whole way, too.

4404

I meant to write about this. I “finished” the Nuka-World main quest. It’s the same setup as before. Three factions that hate each other, make you their “leader” (why not, right?) and task you with divvying up the map for their use. This involves traveling to the theme park areas, clearing them out, and doing a fetch quest in each. Some of the areas are quite combat heavy. Galactic Zone, in particular, is a bitch if you’re not kitted out correctly.

The twist is that once you clear out the areas, you can raid your own settlements in the main Fallout 4 map. This is not as great as it sounds. It’s cathartic to run into your own colonies and kill people that annoyed the heck out of you previously, but after the first couple, it’s just another flavorless shootout. Still, it’s cool to destroy a colony you worked on before.

I’m curious to try a fresh Fallout 4 run and start off as a bad guy with this DLC instead of doing anything with Preston and his jokers. Like the settlements in the base game, it doesn’t really matter how many raider settlements you set up. The game is oblivious to your progress.

I enjoyed the voice work in it quite a bit. The public address system in the park areas, some of the boss enemies’ lines, and even the Nuka-World radio station DJ is pretty good.

The new mutated animals/insects kind of suck. Really, any of the burrowing animals in Fallout 4 are a PITA, and this DLC goes whole hog for them. The only new beastie that I sort of liked is the rad rat, although it’s appearance here makes me wonder why we don’t see them throughout the Commonwealth.

4405

Agreed. NW has a lot of nostalgia and social commentary, I really enjoyed my time in it so far. If you haven’t done the Huboligostvstuff in NW don’t miss it, kooky fun.

4406

So, doing a little ‘research’, seems like there is a way to get a ‘good guy’ ending out of all this. You lose some potential rewards, I guess, but it’s doable. It’s how I’ll go through that content when I get there.

Not going to spoil it. Just search ‘Nuka world good guy’ and you’ll find the answer.

4407

That’s what I did ChiTown, except I did the bad guy ending first. It’s possible to do both, See my spoilers above.

4408

Eh, I don’t want to do both. I just can’t bring myself to be a full-on bad guy and kill settlers that I helped, well, settle.

I’m OK missing out some rewards and just ridding the post-apocalyptic world of Raiders. They all suck.

4409

I didn’t kill anyone! I got them all to walk away! The quest gives you the plans for making charisma bombs that get them to leave with a voice check

4410

OK finished FH too now. Time to try a different build, and am thinking about Survival mode. Is the idea to turn that on only after you reach sanctuary?

4411

Can only be used with a new game, I believe.

First thing I do out of the vault is make a bee-line for the bomb shelter behind the house in Sanctuary :)

Second thing I do is download a mod that enables quick saves. My willpower has increased to the point where I’ll only use it at “appropriate” situations, like after a long journey, completing a quest, etc.

4412

Heh, confession time. My first try at survival mode was, well, disastrous. I think I modded myself into a corner. I loaded a mode that strengthens raiders and supermutants, plus a mod that adds more deadly spawns into the game. At lower levels, it was just a bit too much, LOL. I think those mods were more appropriate to a non-survival run since they were developed before survival mode was a thing. I got to rethink this before I proceed further.

Even without those, I need to do as you are doing, use a mod that allows some sort of additional saving. In the end, it just wasn’t fun. I like the whole food/water/disease dynamic, and I like the additional damage,and I like the lack of enemy on the radar HUD - I just don’t like trying to clear the interior of the Corvega factory 5 times (yes, I suck), once because my game got bugged and when I fired my gun, it did no damage (and this was after I fought all the way to the raider leader!) And killing the raider leader in the satellite array early on, well that took 4 times - that mini-gun is murder now. As much as I like the mechanics, the save thing was just too hard core and in the end frustrating to me.

Just a general complaint too here - I hate the NPC grenade spam. I died twice (not included in the deaths noted above inside) outside of Corvega while I was sniping the guys outside the facility. I got up on the elevated freeway to snipe away. That’s got to be at least, what, 50 yard away? Yet the AI can hit me with a molotov at that range with unerring accuracy. No one can do that, not even a top NFL quarterback. At least there was a bed up there :) Too bad there’s not one in Corvega until you get to the boss - where do all those guys sleep? That might have made the inside more tolerable.

Anyway, time to rethink what I can do to make this just more fun. Because right now for me, it isn’t. I’m not complaining about the mode, it is what it is and clearly many people enjoy. It’s just not fun for me replaying large sections over and over. And of course this may be due to my incompetence rather than survival mode per se.

4413

For me, survival mode boils down to one big thing:

No fast travel. Until (unless) you whore yourself out to the BoS for a little vertibird action, you hoof it everywhere. Enjoy that walk to the Far Harbor quest location!

With that comes the realization that, even if you’re like me, and beat the game like [n] times already, you missed lots of stuff by not taking shank’s pony. Many, one-off events out in the middle of nowhere.

The food/water/sleep/illness stuff I can give or take. Except that I’ll eat radiated food now because I have to. And I will question the necessity of a stimpack because I’m low on purified water. So yeah, decision making there.

The no-save, on the other hand… well, I get what Bethsoft tried to do here – eliminate save-scumming. But they were too draconian. I think that autosaves should occur on every transition and every 15 minutes or so. The game is simply too wonky and prone to just not working out of nowhere. And some of the missions (see particularly the Mechanist battle mentioned above) are clearly not designed for survival.

My suggestions:
Kill everything but the bugfix mod.
Then grab a quick-save mod. Train yourself not to spam it constantly – i.e. ask yourself “would I really be super, super pissed if the game crashed now?”. Yes=save, no=eh, I’ll save later and risk the last twenty minutes or so.

4414

I’ve been playing on Very Hard, but not putting perks into damage or health. I put one into each at first just because Corvega was a bitch of a starter quest, but none since, and at level 27, it still feels like a significant challenge over the previous Fallouts at that point.

I’m also using a multiple companions mod, which initially was purely for pack-mule purposes, but I find having 3 or 4 around - weakly armed - really livens up some of the battles. They seem to make the enemy spread out* and nullify my snipe-and-hide strategies. I’ve tested a few quests by replaying them with and without companions, and it’s definitely much harder with them around.

*I’m also using a mod that makes companions not follow so closely. Keeps them from getting in the way all the time, and also makes a firefight feel a bit more dynamic.

4415

So anybody waiting for FO4 mods to eventually come to the PS4. Don’t hold your breath…

4416

I kind of started over and just chalked up the first try as a learning experience. The game gives you the tools, you just have to use them. Example, I picked up a Fatman and nuke at the Robot Disposal Grounds. Then I promptly nuked Ack-Ack when I lured her into the central area of her base. Quick, efficient and simple ::) Then I simply shot from above any of her minions that made a try for her mini-gun. Now that was satisfying. Now on to Corvega to try a different approach there also :)

4417

Finally off to Nuka-World. As soon as I locate an elusive Hazmat suit – one of the NW parks is pretty toxic to say the least.

I got sidetracked when I decided to change part of Vault 88 last week and predictably slid down a slippery slope that resulted in an awesome new vault layout that I’m super happy with. Form and function in balance now.

I think I kind of overdo screenshots, so:

  • Starts with an atrium, entrances leading off to all the vital rooms/facilities.
  • Adjacent atrium workshop/armory area (minus the atrium end pieces) with plenty of room after installing crafting benches and 14 power armor suits.
  • Long hallways leading first to quarters areas (3x3 rooms, 24 beds total) and continuing on to terminate at the big water pump. (The pump access isn’t new but the quarters areas are.)
  • Farm is still very crude and when I continue construction after Nuka-World, I’ll move it to a new level above the workshop atrium if I can figure out where the farming plot or whatever is.

The only thing missing is a personal living space. And restrooms, but the settlers don’t seem to mind. (They do sometimes comment on being crammed into rooms together.)

A lot of time wasted on trial and error as I figured out my way through all the vault building quirks, but I think it was worth it.

4418

I don’t care who you are, you will absolutely die to a swarm of bloat flies in survival mode. They jitter around too much to target them FPS, and there are too many to take out with VATS (only exception a VATS specialist with the Deliverer). Other than that, you are dead. I know, believe me :)