Fallout 4, Initial Thoughts

And when I say “initial” I mean like 30 hours of game play. I don’t really review video games on my blog. But I can’t talk about politics right now because everything is too incredibly stupid, and I’ve banned myself from social media for a few days. So video games it is.

Before I start, I’m a console guy. Yes, PC Master Race, spare me from your recruiting drives. To me, being on a computer feels like work. Computers are for typing bestselling novels and insulting people on the internet. Consoles are dumb and easy. (hell, half the time I play while riding the exercise bike) And besides, I know enough of you in real life, and all I ever hear is you bitching about how you need to buy a new graphics card every other week. So inferior console peasantry it is!

Okay, I like Fallout 4. I’m having a lot of fun with it. That said, it has some really wonky stupid crap in it, so when I point these things out it is in hope of a patch, and not out of spite. Overall I love you Fallout, but sometimes you make this relationship more difficult than it needs to be.

The wandering around, shooting super mutants in the face part? Great.

I’ve played a ton of missions, and I probably haven’t even scratched the surface. I’m level 25 and have like 20 missions pending. This is a big game.

The shooting (actual aimed fire, not VATS) is way better than Fallout 3. I can actually kill things that way now.

The atmosphere is great. Unlike many post apocalyptic things, Fallout doesn’t take itself too seriously. So everything has that retro cool, 50s but blown up vibe.

It gets really buggy at times, but better than the last one. This engine is dated, and it shows. Sometimes you kill stuff and it flies up into the air and spins around for a while. Other times a body will get stuck in the wall and vibrate forever. I’ve had a few crashes, freezes, and once I had to unplug and replug in the Xbox to get it to launch. But still better than the last one, and less buggy than Skyrim.

I had to turn on subtitles, because the music has a tendency to get annoyingly loud when people are trying to tell you important things. Then I learned that the subtitles only show up about half the time. So I turned the music way down and the voice volume way up, and even then I miss lots of things my companions are telling me. Damn it, Piper. Speak up. My character has been in like 400 gun fights without hearing protection, so maybe this is just added realism. 🙂

The Silver Shroud missions are great. They’re better if you stay in ridiculous Shroud character the whole time too.

Was it necessary for me to shoot Kellog with a Fat Boy? No. Not at all. But did it make me smile? Yes. And that’s where Bethesda games shine.

I’ve heard people talk about lack of choices in the dialog options, but it hasn’t bugged me. But then again, I’m a shooter, not a talker. My charisma was two until I realized I needed that Local Leader perk, so I could share my stupid workshop stuff between settlements rather than carrying 500 gears everywhere.

They added an extensive crafting and settlement building bit. Since I’ve been playing a ton of Minuteman missions, I’ve been doing a lot of that. I’m enjoying it, because there’s this Minecraft element of gathering materials and making things. But it is also a source of petty annoyances.

Okay, you gather junk, and then you can break the junk down into parts, which you can then use to craft other helpful things. Great. Except as far as I can tell, there is no way to break the stuff down inside a menu. You can break down weapons and armor inside an armor or weapon station menu, but not junk at the workshop. So instead go into the workshop, and pick up all the stuff. Then I drop–one by one because there isn’t a drop all option–all the crap on the ground. Then I go into the workshop crafting mode. Then I break down each individual item (after I find the tiny thing on the ground). Then I can build stuff.

EDIT: Just learned in the comments that if you store Junk in the workshop, it will automatically break it down if you try to build something that needs those specific components. Awesome. Thanks, guys! I should have posted this a couple of days ago and it would have saved me some time.

Not that I can ever build the super mandatory things I absolutely need, because apparently there is no oil anywhere. Damn it. Every settlement needs turrets. Turrets need 2 oil. Crystal is the other annoying thing that I never have because you need it to build radio towers to attract settlers.

Settlers are great, except they’re idiots. So I build them a house. Build them a bed. Put automated robot turrets on top to protect them. And then even plant crops for them. Is that enough? Oh no… These settlers are as helpless as a Mizzou college student. You have to hold their hand, and tell them to pick crops. Patriarchy!

Okay, I know that this is 2015 on the fancy new advanced gaming console, but I seem to recall playing building games in the mid 1990s where settlers would automatically go, oh look, there is food, perhaps I should gather it. Not these dopes. They’re all like, I have moved into this nice settlement you built for me and then do nothing but sit on the couch until otherwise directed. Because you’re busy fighting giant scorpions, so surely you know that there is a new arrival just sort of hanging out at your 15th settlement you have no reason to visit.

And it is fun when you get a warning message that Settlement X is UNDER ATTACK! and you rush there. To find them being menaced by a two rad roaches. You’ve got to understand. In this world, rad roaches are food. Bang. Bang. I fast traveled across all of Massachusetts for this? You ungrateful bastards.

But at another time you arrive to find one of your farmers being dog piled by ten ghouls, and you save their life, and then you feel all awesome and it is worth it.

Luckily it looks like if you aren’t into the building game stuff, you can just skip over the creating settlement missions and stick to shooting super mutants in the face. I kind of like that grindy buildy stuff, so I seek those out. Wow… Putting one type of game play as an option rather than absolutely mandatory for the main plot line? Well game companies sure could learn something from that BATMAN ARKHAM KNIGHT. That’s right, Batman, I’m looking at you, and your super amazing game that I gave up on and rage quit because of your stupid mandatory Batmobile levels.

Up next, my son is bugging me to download Star Wars Battlefront. I think I’m going to get that.

I used to buy every single new Call of Duty as soon as it came out. But that last one sucked so much, with its stupid bouncy bouncy jump jet turbo leg bullshit that rendered all multiplayer into one giant twitch reaction jerk-fest that I think I’m done with them. Unless I hear it is amazing, I’m not going to bother.

And Bioware? I’m sorry. You are dead to me. I got bored and didn’t finish Mass Effect 3. I thought Dragon Age 2 was one of the stupidest games I’ve ever played. And Dragon Age 3 held my attention for about 30 hours, and then I wandered off and never bothered to come back.

Rockstar? Love them. They are a bunch of irreverent bastards, and I can just imagine that they sit around trying to think of new ways to offend people. I played the hell out of all the GTA games. My biggest hindrance there is that I can’t play them in front of my kids.

But the game that I’ve been playing nonstop for two years now? Good old, free to play World of Tanks. 😀 That is the one that I just keep coming back to. I don’t know what it is about WoT, but it just never gets old.

For your Christmas Shopping on Amazon, think of it as a Tip Jar
Thoughts on Paris

179 thoughts on “Fallout 4, Initial Thoughts”

  1. If you transfer all your junk to the workshop, it’ll automatically break things down when you want to build something.

      1. It does, but if you have, say, a gold-plated flip lighter, you don’t get the gold from it when you break down the lighter using that method, just the oil (not quite as valuable as adhesive before you get a farm running, but…). So, depending on what you want, it’s still sometimes preferable to break them down rather than letting the workshop auto-scavenge.

        1. Good to know. I’ve been building scavenging stations at all my better settlements in the hope of having more good junk in the workshop when I check in.

          I’ve got a couple more levels to go before I can get Local Leader too. I’d been playing for a long time, and had used Charisma as a dump stat, before I realized what that did. So it is taking me awhile to get my charisma high enough to get it.

        2. You can also take a perk to always get the extra special components when you break things down automatically.

      2. Can confirm. Came here to tell you that. From any crafting station (I know you spend a lot of time in your weapon station) instead of going to craft, you should have a button to ‘Transfer all Junk’ Also, is your Combat Shotgun named ‘Abomination’? I know mine is.

          1. I found an Instigating Combat Shotgun on a legendary ghoul. Double damage on an attack against someone at full health. Between that and other perks, I decided to name it Abomination and felt that my war cry should be “Surprise, assholes!”

            They typically don’t get to hear it, though. 🙁

          2. Pop a Psycho prior to shooting it off. It won’t be “Suprise, assholes!” but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed either.

          3. I travel with 4 weapons as a standard arsenal while exploring. Since I’ve been upping my Rifleman perk I’ve been sticking to semi-auto.

            Silenced .308 Sniper rifle – long range
            Recoil dampened .45 battle rifle – mid range
            Recoil dampened Shotgun with drum magazine. – my ghoul to gun
            Electrified, serrated Chinese sword – when limbs need to fly…

            I’m sure there are folks that travel along with nothing but Fatman bombs and missile launchers though.

  2. Last Voyage of the USS Constitution became one of my all time favorite Fallout quests. Just finished it yesterday and it left me with a huge grin on my face.

  3. PENCILS. Chalk. Cigarettes. I hate accidentally picking those up and then having to play hide and seek when I drop them to break them down again. :\ Even on PC, they occasionally fall “under” the tileset where you drop them. You can still highlight them, but you can’t be sure where to look.

  4. You don’t have to break the “junk” down manually, just transfer it to the workbench and it’ll automatically get broken down when you need whatever it’s made of.

    1. That’s two people who said this now, so it must be true.

      Darn it. I should have posted this blog post a couple of days go. It would have saved me some time! 😀

      1. NOT true…it breaks down only partway when you craft after dumping it into the workstation. To get every component you must drop and scrap. Perhaps if your scrounging/scrapper levels are way up, not sure, but for now all the gaming sites say you lose components letting it autoscrap.

        1. I was watching someone’s play through video’s and he started to scrap every thing manually in order not to lose any thing, and a few episodes later he stopped saying he found out that while the game game UI makes it looks like you will lose the unused parts when it is breaking it down automatically, It does actually keep them in your inventory. I don’t have Fallout 4 yet to confirm myself, but that should be easy enough to test.

          1. … while the game game UI makes it looks like you will lose the unused parts when it is breaking it down automatically, It does actually keep them in your inventory.

            I had two thoughts:

            1) If true, that’s terrible UI design, and offends me professionally. (I’m a programmer).

            2) Bethesda has a history of terrible UI design (look at Oblivion and Skyrim, where the first mod most PC users install is a mod to fix the broken UI), so it’s very likely to be true.

        2. This is not true. I’ve tested it. I’ve heard of a console-only UI bug that makes it look like you’re losing parts, but you do not actually lose, say, the gold from a gold-plated lighter when you let the workbench scrap it for oil.

          1. I can confirm, I hadn’t heard the rumors about losing parts so I stopped by the movie theater, pulled out all the junk, dropped it all off, and then brought a few fans, lighters, telephones and so forth. I built a Mk1 machine gun turret, the extra parts were automatically stored in the station.

    2. See my reply below, you lose part when you let the workbench break stuff down. Not sure if it’s a bug or intended, but last I checked it was working that way.

  5. As far as I can tell, junk breaks down automatically whether in your inventory or in the station – if I’m doing weapon/armor mods, it tells me what it’s stripping (“No, not my Giddyup Buttercup parts!”), but I don’t remember a detailed breakdown display when crafting settlement stuff – just “oh hey, I has a turret.”

    I’m farting around North End and Back Bay right now, myself. HELLO ALPHA DEATHCLAW!

    1. I keep thinking that somewhere down the road, there will be some sort of Easter Egg quest to assemble a fully-functional Giddyup Buttercup, and I’m going to be sorry I scavenged those parts. 😀

    2. Ah Deathclaws. Because there is nothing quite as fun as walking around the corner, saying oooh, a gas can, let me pick that up, and then you look back up just in time to get your head torn clean off. 🙂

      1. Well from watching other people play all I can say is…this is why the gods of the fallout universe made Fatman’s the ultimate in Deathclaw Killin Efficiency. Using it when they’re right on top of you though is probably baaaaaad

        1. Did that once in Fall out 3, turned a corner …deathclaw! forgot I had just equipped a fatman to see what it looked like…

    3. Weird. There were no replies showing when I typed this, and it’s rather obvious that I was beaten like a rented Mr. Handy by quite a few posters.

      I’ll have to try hand-scrapping, I guess. Might just built a scavenging station to try out, once I get back to Diamond City or something. Heading down the riverside from Pickman’s Gallery to drugco and the Silver Shroud location, randomly looting/clearing buildings along the way.

      There *is* an ammo mod on Fallout Nexus already, but it’s not as useful as the New Vegas way. I *really* want to scrap .38 and build more 10mm, because I’m playing Sneaky McHeadshot and his Instigating maxed-out and suppressed pistol.

  6. Larry, on breaking stiff down, it’s automatic. Go to any settlement, go to a crafting station, and hit the transfer button. Then there is a button to site all junk. If you do that, you can build anything that uses the junk from any station in the settlement, and it will be automatically scrapped for you. If you assign settlers to trade routes, you can use it at any connected settlement.

    1. I swear, those other comments weren’t there when I said this. But trade routes weren’t mentioned by them and they’re less intuitive. Just go into build mode, walk to a settler, and one of the options at the bottom will be to assign them to a route. I recommend making a big circle with each town only connected to the next in line. Then they can all share resources without you having to be a pack mule. After all, you have minions for that!

        1. And I just learned about the leadership perks’ advantage… To help you out, drink from the hand operated wells at colonies. That’ll heal you for free without touching your inventory. Hope that helps you.

        2. I rather like the new settlement scenario. It’s a little bit of deviation from Bethesda’s usual “Kill people and take their stuff” theme. You feel a little bit more like a builder than just a plunderer.

  7. I was going to mention you didn’t have to break it down individually, but looks like I for beat to the punch. I will have to double check on the getting more out of it if you do, though.

    1. It’s just on the items that have weird components you don’t typically use. A regular flip-lighter is steel and oil, which you generally need together, so nothing’s lost. Gold-plated, though, gives you three components, with gold not being commonly used, so that just gets lost when you use the steel and oil from the lighter. Not a huge deal, but something to think about for special component items (Blast Radius boardgames, gold-plated flip-lighters, etc).

  8. My wife is officially angry with you for spreading the word about World of Tanks. My tanking is seriously cutting into her WoW time.

    1. WoT is like that perfect combination of action, strategy, and fun. (and occasionally rage quitting when you die stupidly!) 🙂

      1. Please tell me you’ve tried out Borderlands 2. I was playing Fallout 3 New Vegas pretty heavy when it was recommended to me. I think I’m about 500 hours deep and 8-10 play throughs on 5 different characters now.

        Fantastic story, hilarious and awesome annnnnd about 5 zillion weapons. Seriously there are a ton of combinations. No its not like Fallout, doesn’t try to be, its a great FPS with awesome story. Highly recommended!

        1. My husband is using the origional to teach me how to play FPS so he can have someone to play with who won’t get him killed in Halo. 😉

        2. I loved Borderlands 2. It had a great sense of humor. I played through a couple of times, and my favorite was as Zero, only speaking in haiku.

      2. If I rage quit after getting my tank blowed up by doing something stupid, I’d never get more than one game in per play session lol.

        It is a hella fun game.

    1. See, and I *loved* ME3 (except for, y’know, the very very end–but I’m on PC, so there’s a mod for that! I have hopes)

      1. Yeah, I’ve been playing SWTOR a bit more, but was thinking of getting the so-called “Happy Ending Mod” (well, Shepard survives and the Reapers are dead w/o killing EDI or the Geth so I guess it’s happy) at some point.

        Actually, I was thinking of having one Shep pick the Control ending, and pretend she’s going to be like Petey from Schlock Mercenary after he took over the zero-point generator at the galactic core.

        “By your own actions, you seem to believe might makes right.” “I don’t like where this is going.” “Oh good, I was hoping you wouldn’t.”

        1. The Happy Ending mod didn’t entirely appeal to me (largely because they didn’t take into account the actually-not-bad epilogues that came with the Extended Cut), so I’m giving JohnP’s Alternate Happy Ending Mod a go–it supposedly works a bit better within the overall story framework, including the EC (and you aren’t guaranteed a happy end if you don’t want one). I’m almost to the end of my most recent ME3 playthrough, with that mod installed.

          I got the most recent expansion for SWTOR, but haven’t tried it yet.

          1. as far as I remember playing through it – they did take them into account. they just changed them a bit, so that they fit into the ending more. like… if you made peace between quarians and the geth – you get the slide where they are working together (and I believe, they edited out the green circuitry of synthesis) they also incorporated a bad ending into it (which was originally the ending you get if you shot the starchild asshole)

        2. There are times when I wonder if the “Kill the geth and EDI” issues in the “Kill the Reapers!” ending were only included because otherwise 99.99% of the players would automatically pick it without a moment’s hesitation.

  9. This was timely. I just loaded up Fallout 4 (on the PC!) and, boy howdy, that intro got me hooked. I left the vault on a mission to find (well I won’t ruin it for anyone)….and for the last couple of hours I’ve been playing bob the builder! I did at least mod my 10mm right off the bat with every mod I had available to me.

  10. All my Facebook friends vanished the day F4 came out and haven’t heard from them since, so either I’ve come up with serious digital BO, or F4 is living up to the hype. I rented BO3 to see if it was worth plunking green on, been gunshy about COD since Ghosts’ massive suckitude. Meh. A lot of the annoyances from previous versions, not a lot of new to make up for them, not impressed. Better than Ghosts, though. I’ll probably get it, zombies is hard to screw up, the kids like it, and I’ll need something to kick the shit out of snotty punks around the globe to vent my frustrations on when they ultimately quit serving BO1 multiplayer.

  11. Be glad you didn’t finish Mass Efffect 3. Years later, I’m still so pissed off about the ending(s) that I can’t even stand to play the earlier, good Mass Effect games.

    Star Wars: Battlefront is awesome. So is Rise of the Tomb Raider.

    1. There are several mods for the ME3 ending (at least for PC) I’m about to try one that advertises as not auto-breaking things in favor of puppies-and-rainbows, but still delivers a better ending than the original (or extended, which was somewhat better, but still made me angry).

      1. The story reached its natural conclusion with Shepard and Anderson sitting on the Citadel, bleeding out, and watching the world burn. It was beautiful, poignant, fit perfectly with everything that had gone before, and brought catharsis by the truckload.

        Then there was some sort of strange hallucination tacked on the end, presumably after the corporate officers realized that the writers were going to kill off a valuable piece of IP.

        1. What’s really weird is that there’s a bit of conversation included with the game (though it might not be possible to get it to actually play within the game) during that final conversation between Shepard and Anderson in which Anderson tells Shepard that he (or she) should have kids because he’d be an awesome parent. And then after spending some time talking about Shepard having kids… the game kills him (mostly). There are rumors that the ending was rewritten at the last instant for some reason, and things like that conversation make me suspect that’s true.

          It still drives me nuts whenever I see someone start to rabidly insist that the ME3 ending is an amazing thing that h8ers just don’t appreciate because it’s not a happy fluffy bunny ending.

  12. Go back to dumping your stuff and recycling it by hand!
    Why?
    Because apparently when the crafting bench breaks a part down that has multiply components (like a desk fan) it takes all of the one component you need, and throws the rest away!
    My only real complaint is that they optimized the controls of the PC version for console play, instead of making separate versions. So the ‘E’ key does quadruple duty.

    1. You can get a USB Xbox 360 controller that plugs into your PC. It just works. You have to enable it in the settings, but after that it’s seamless. (And no batteries!)

  13. You can buy “shipments” of X item from some merchants. in Sanctuary you can buy a shipment of oil from “Trashcan Carla” (sp). put the shipment note in the workshop junk inventory and it turns into a bunch of oil. Diamond city has a bunch of vendors with shipments as well.

  14. I’m playing on PC, got that same wierd looting bug where things hover, so it’s NOT the platform. The Season Pass for more content next year looks interesting.

    I’m using my usual “Jake the Janitor” technique of grabbing everything, then caching it near a landmark, and multiple Fast Travels back to my base and back, to bring it all to the bench.

    4 sets of Power Armor so far, 3 T–45s and a T-51, not all are complete. . ..

  15. Vegetable Starch breaks down into Adhesive, which you will need tons of, and if you are short on Oil you can craft cutting fluid at a chem station. Now if I can find a good source of aluminum. I’m always out of aluminum.

  16. Neeeeeeeerds!

    *Goes back to sulking because A) cut rate laptop won’t support Fallout 4 and B) Windows was lost in a freak Linux accident so it wouldn’t be supported anyway. Please ignore the green tint of this comment*

  17. The one problem with the auto-breakdown of junk for crafting materials is that it picks what gets broken down for you. Most of the time, that’s convenient, but there are some junk items I’d rather sell than scrap.

    Specifically, I’m thinking of Pre-War Cash, which has a fairly high cap value when sold to a merchant (and helpfully has 0 weight), and only gives you cloth if you break it down. Cloth isn’t exactly a rare earth mineral in Fallout 4.

    1. Anything you don’t want it to break down automatically can be stored in the cabinet next to your power armor station in Sanctuary.

    1. Just give in already, if shooting super mutants in the face is not enough appeal, there’s always putting live grenades in raiders pockets. Always a good time.

      1. Agree! Get Fallout 4 you won’t regret it, I have a daughter now so family member 2.0 who is all of 7 weeks and haven’t had much time to play, and it is freak’n awesome!

        It says I’ve played 40 hours… yeah no, thats because I’m on the pip boy for 5 hours at a time etc etc.

        I’ve just barely hit level 13, so much game left to explore.

        1. I’m hoping to hold out at least until the big Steam Thanksgiving/Christmas sale, see if it goes on sale then. (It probably won’t.) But yes, I imagine I’ll give in soon…

          1. Probably just as well. The game is out close enough to the upcoming holiday sale that it might not be included.

            I’m safe, but only because my processor can’t run the game. I’ve really got to get that updated.

            😛

  18. I’m mostly loving Fallout 4, but there are a couple things that piss me off.

    1) Ammo crafting is gone.

    2) A new *receiver* to use armor-piercing rounds? Actually the real complaint is the lack of separate ammo types. We had that in New Vegas, why couldn’t we keep it?

    3) The armor plating system works well, but visually looks stupid. What good are these armor plates? They barely cover anything important. Some idiot with a knife could easily gut me without my armor getting in the way at all. Previous Fallout games had much more useful-looking armor.

    4) The T-51b and X-01 Power Armor suits require Fusion Cores. That’s really, really stupid, and it goes against the lore. The whole reason why the US military kept West-Tek on Power Armor development after the successful fielding of the T-45d was because of the power issue; the T-51b was supposed to be able to carry enough fuel to last a century. What happened there?

    1. I’ve collected several power armor frames. Afraid they all require fusion cores. I think that gives a bit of balance to the game, otherwise people would constantly be in the suits. This way you might be a little more open to pop your armor and sneak into a building.

      1. The correct solution would have been to copy Fallout 3 and just have 1 suit of T-51b armor available. Or at least give us a lore-friendly reason why the built-in power plants were removed. Maybe they all ran dry, and there weren’t any deuterium stockpiles left to refuel them? I understood why the T-60 needed Fusion Cores; they were Brotherhood-made, and the BoS would likely not have had many power plants available for the installation. But the T-51 needing it really pisses me off.

        Also, how in hell did the BoS manage to build the Prydwind? Apparently they stole the reactor from an aircraft carrier to power it, but how did they *build* it? It’s not a converted vehicle, it’s purpose-built, and clearly Post-War production. Where could they possibly have gotten the materials or manpower necessary to build and run it?

        And *why*? That’s the kind of thing you’d need for major expeditions, but even given the potential threat of the Institute, it’s a huge investment for an organization that was teetering at the end of Fallout 3.

        1. Apparently they used materials gathered from the assault on the Enclave. The Prydwind was built at Adam’s Air Force Base. Took them four years after the conclusion of F3. 2 years to gather materials, and the other 2 for construction. (This is what my character was told by Elder Maxson in game)

          1. Yeah, I got the same speech. But I don’t buy it; it breaks my suspension of disbelief, hard. Construction on that scale, with the resources the BoS would have actually had (especially in terms of manpower), would mean they basically chucked everything else aside in order to build the damn thing.
            Obviously we don’t know what else transpired in the Capitol Wasteland, but I don’t believe that they actually had so few obligations after the defeat of the Enclave that they could do something like that in only 4 years.

    2. The actual lore would have the X-01 being the only full-assist power armor in the game. The catch being that it would use small energy cells as it’s power source and go through them like a deathclaw through raiders.

      1. The X-01 is the Enclave power armor, as I recall. The Advanced Mark 1. I’m pretty sure it has the same power plant as the T-51, or else the Enclave wouldn’t have put soldiers in the field with it.

    3. Well, a good solution to that would be a mod that adds a new customization category to the torso piece.

      All power armors would start at Standard, which would be the game normal behavior. With Armorer X and Science X, where X is a number between 1 and 3, you’d get options to make the Fusion Cores last longer, similar and in addition to some of the perks. The X-01 armor gets an additional option to eat Small Energy Cells instead of Fusion Cores. At Armorer 4 and Science 4 and a lot of crafting components, the Fusion Core is only used to jump start the built in fusion power system, and no longer drains (and also so you can pull the Fusion Core to keep your Power Armor from walking off with a raider), and any perks you had that used to give you increased Fusion Core duration instead give you Carrying Capacity increases from the extra power.

      Either that, or change the power armor frame to have an additional power system module that does something like what I’ve described. The reason I’d do that is so if the torso component gets shot off, you don’t lose your power system behavior. That’d also give us the option to add in other power based module options…

      …and mini-quests to find R&D schematics for R&D level stuff WestTek was working on… and then alpha and beta test them into working mods…

      OK, I’ve never written a mod before, but now I want to. Also another mod to allow each power armor piece to have multiples of the existing mod components…

    4. Let’s not forget, the Bethesda Fallout games DO take place more than 200 years after the bombs fell. It makes sense that even the T-51b would be starting to run low on power, by that point.

      The power armor needing a new power source is fine. No, the only part of the whole thing that ruins *MY* suspension of disbelief is the fact that the world still looks, and people still act, like the apocalypse happened about 50 years ago.

      (New Vegas manages to mostly avoid this trap, but then, New Vegas was also made by most of the same people who made the first two, so it stands to reason the lore makes more sense.)

  19. You should check out the Saints Row games. Talk about irreverent fun. =) You definitely can’t play them in front of your kids tho.

  20. Happy to hear that you’re enjoying some gaming time.
    But very sad to hear that you’ve limited yourself to WoT on the console.
    …there really is a night/day difference between the PC and console versions.
    21k matches and we’ve worn out 3 keyboards. 😀

    1. LC’s resistance to trying WoT on PC is layered with impenetronium. Plus he is deeply invested in the console version now. nbd.

  21. I’ve been watching a guy that does this on you tube for fun and profit. he gets paid to play, but he’s a blast to watch. His episodes run anywhere from 20mins to an hour. he did the first hour and a half of game play in one go on video. LOL my biggest gripe with him right now was he was talking about wanting to upgrade the dog.[you can actually upgrade the dog in the perks menu] I haven’t played myself. Don’t have a console and my pc isn’t up for it. That being said. watching him flying around the perks menu like a hyper active flea I finally told him one day ‘you’ve been wanting to upgrade the damn dog…so UPGRADE HIM!” He said “How?” *facepalm* ‘stop flitting around the perks menu like a flea on meth and actually look at all the perks slowly. 5th row down, middle of the row. there’s one to upgrade the dog.” Has he done it? Nope. LOL But then he’s been upping his charisma and strength like a mad man to help successfully complete missions and loot like a boss. He’s actually working for all 3 major factions[minutemen, brotherhood and institute] at this point and has actually been inside the institute

    1. … flitting around the perks menu like a flea on meth …

      Wonderful phrase. Can I steal it?

      Also, I’ve seen multiple Youtubers do that. I sometimes get the impression that their viewing audience has the attention span of said flea on meth, and so to please their audience, they never slow down — because if they slowed down to actually read the on-screen text, they’d lose half their viewers. And to a Youtube professional, viewers = money.

      BUT… I’ve also seen professional Youtubers actually read the entire text of a quest OUT LOUD, slowly. Drives me nuts: I want to yell at them “Stop taking a minute to read what I can read in ten seconds!”

      So there are people doing it both ways, and my theory about their viewing audience’s attention span is likely wrong.

      1. They are reading it for people who use them only as background for some housework and such. I do that with some. If they are entertaining enough.

      2. LOL yes you may steal it. and he still hasn’t upgraded the mutt. OTOH I slung him a link from youtube for some of the ultimate armor pieces stashed in various places on the map.

  22. If you haven’t looted the Cambridge Polymer building just across the river from wrecked Navy tugboat then you can go there for a bunch of copper and crystal. Scads of beaker stands and telephones for the Cu and half a dozen microscopes for crystal.

    Also, waiting for the inevitable explanation at F770 that LC and his fans are a bunch of 1950 throwbacks that live to shoot stuff.

    1. Well, that’s a given. When I’m straight forward about something those morons think I’m joking, and when I’m being sarcastic they think I’m dead serious. So obviously, I’m racist against Super Mutants, and am an advocate of looting native peoples of their crystal and oil.

      1. Why do you hate Super Mutants so much? You hating hatey ILoH you. Oh yeah I guess that “Hate” part is right in the title ain’t it. Hmm.

        Everyone should love Super Mutants! They just want want “To Serve Man”

  23. You can also make oil at the chemistry stations. After you start linking settlements it’s pretty easy to pump out vegetable starch/cooking oil. (Extra food gets dumped into the workstation). Any more I dump any food items in there after a trip. You can access the meat/vegetables at the cooking fire when you’re out of food items.

    I really miss the armor piercing/hollow point/standard ammo from previous versions. Now that I’m running into more robots I’m thinking about carrying either an assault rifle or 10 mm pistol with the AP receiver. Also miss being able to craft ammo. I’ve got 1200 rounds of .38 that is mostly useless since it takes 10 shots to kill even a base ghoul.

    1. I have basically the same complaints. With all the crafting stuff we got, what was so hard about a reloading bench? *Someone’s* making ammo, there’s no way there were this many stockpiles in Massachusetts before the war.

      1. Took the scavenger perk last night out of desperation. .45 has been the best ‘oh crap’ round so far (level 35) and I tend to burn through a lot when I run into large concentrations of super mutants or higher level raiders. (Or the ‘oh I’m so freaking toast’ legendary assaultron)

        Caps in this game seem harder to come by. Probably since I’m scavenging for parts to build settlements instead of selling everything.

        Give it a few weeks and check Nexus mods 🙂 I’m sure they’ll have an ammo mod out that restores that functionality soon.

      2. I predict that, within a few months, someone on the Fallout Nexus will have made a mod that lets you craft ammo…

          1. I’m not sure how you would make that work. Maybe plug them into the Prydwin reactor? Do something complicated with one of your settlement water purifiers to extract the deuterium?

  24. I’m very sad that WoT PC and XBox can’t play together. It would be an honor to be shot in the face by the ILoH.

    1. That reminds me of a story. Last year I see a Facebook post that’s all like “Hey, I think Larry Correia just kicked my ass at Call of Duty!” Only I hadn’t been playing. My ten year old son was using my login. So he’d been defeated by the Prince of Hate. 🙂

  25. Black Ops 3 is great. They’ve abandoned the nonsense of the last two games and largely gone back to the formula that worked.

  26. Hey I want abe to read all the comments but you can make oil and adhesive at the food crafting and Chem crafting stations they are vegetable starch and cutting oil, hope that helps

  27. Have you given Diablo III a try? I’m currently addicted to that game and am either going through the campaign for achievements or rifting/running bounties like mad.

    — G.K.

  28. Maybe it’s just me, but the thing I hate most about FO4 is the damn dog. I swear the next time he gets up and runs after an enemy or spawns somewhere far away and pulls 10 of them back to me, I’m makin me a bathmat…

  29. Damn that review is good. I’m dreaming of you doing all my game reviews from now on. Way to show the industry how to write a bloody games review. It’s downright humbling…

    Btw., just finished SotBS, I loved it and the fact that its scope goes way beyond anything else you’ve written so far is really working for me. The fact that I’m going to have to wait a year for the next instalment is anything… Although I’d take the next Dead Six, MiH or just about anything else from you in the mean time.

  30. I was so pumped to see you posting about Fallout 4. I’ve read all the comments so I won’t repost answers to your problems but instead mention some really neat shit to try. Did you know that you could steal Fusion cores from enemy power armors? By doing that it will forcibly eject the enemy so you can easily kill them and then steal yourself a new suit. Also if your running out of fusion cores every time that trader comes to sanctuary she always seems to have one for sale. I have like 30 saved up. I don’t know why but I don’t see you going all rogue Larry. So instead of you shoot out the Fusion Core on enemy armors you will eject them and you can take the damaged power armor. I can definitely see you sniping Power Cores off enemy armors.

  31. Larry, know we are not on a first name basis but yeah, I’m not big on the misters and such, also I don’t know how to say your name, in any event. If you like WOT, but want the option t blow up more tanks or have less people to yell at you and largely I think much better balance you might want to try Armored Warfare is has a very simliar control scheme with much better balance IMO.

    No Hezter’s getting stuck fighting KV-2s who can do like 3-4x your max health in one hit if they MISS BY 10 FEET.

    It’s only modern stuff though, well starting at 50’s ish stuff like the M113 T-54 M41 walker bulldog and going all the way up to Bradly’s and Abrams and such.

    Also you have to think more about what you shoot. If you shoot sabot through a armored fighting vehicle with like 10 mm of armor it doesn’t do full damage(but it still does some) if you shoot HEAT into explosive reactive armor bricks it doesn’t do anything, unless you shoot the same spot again.

    Artillery gives you a warning you are about to get hit, reloads faster but doesn’t do more damage than anything else- AND you can actually hit things with it if you are playing it….. the only issue is the angle isn’t quite steep enough to hit much on some maps.

    Also it has PVEs so you and like 3-4 other guys can fight against more weaker AI tanks with missions to do, granted it’s kind of limited a bit in pve right now.

    It is on free(I believe) open beta right now so things are a wee bit buggy, but I tried wot two times and just couldn’t get into it due to the balance and the shitty community.

    The community might not be 100% better but at least the game gives you an in game option to turn chat the crap off.

    Amazingly enough seeing as OBSIDIAN is making AW it has much less bugs than one would think from one of their games but maybe that’s because it’s not an open world rpg.

    1. That KV-2 has gun stolen from a warship.

      That much HE is gonna hurt anything near impact. I love my KV-2, it makes top tier über tanks back away quickly in cities. It’s more fun running that derp cannon than my tier ten stuff …

    2. I’m console only, so not really an option.

      I don’t mind the WoT community, because I mute everyone automatically, and then play as a lone wolf. I’ve got great stats, and I’m sure I would do better if I actually talked to other people, but since most people on the internet are blithering idiots it just isn’t worth it.

      1. Ah. when you said console only I figured that was more of a general preference than a “Regardless of the specs, or whether or not it’s only on pc but I would like it- only console games”

        Oh well guess I learned.

        If I ever get back around to playing it I set up a party in wasteland 2 with pitt, julie, trip, and milo.

        Trip is running demo which is more a lee thing I think but lee is not really a field agent as I understand anymore, and I needed someone with demo skills and milo is obviously my gunsmith. Pitt is my shoty leader with smartass, and Julie is obviously my sniper.

        Milo is also my medic because I need someone to pull the duty, to help rose if nothing else. Trip is on the demo and smgs, and milo has the auto rifles(I forget what he used in the books besides his weirder stuff)

  32. console peasant! 😛 no seriously as much as I enjoy my PS4, PC is just… better on so many levels. if you build a decent one it lasts as long as the console, but then you get mods. and Bethesda games are quite literally made to be modded. (plus keyboard and mouse <3) plus you can always just stream to your TV (or in my case, shlep the laptop to the TV screen and plug it in) and use xbox controller, so you get both of both worlds. ok maybe its becasue I've been playing on PC for decades and only got playstation for Uncharted and the last of us, so its what I'm more comfortable with.

    but I digress 😛

    I was going to tell you about losing out scrap if you break down junk automatically, but you have already been told that.

    the fact that you gave up on BIoware makes me so sad 🙁 DA2 is HIGHLY underappreciated game IMO. and DAI? you have GOT to get out of Hinterlands. they really messed up by making their biggest most sprawling zone – the first one, but seriously.. once you get out of hinterlands, its a lot more fun. IMO.

    that said. been hearing VERY mixed reviews about Battlefront. bear in mind – its multiplayer only. and apparently, glitchy and unbalanced.

    last but not least.

    given your love for GTA, you might want to try Saint's Row games. especially 3 and 4. just saying 😛

    1. As a writer, DA2 physically hurt me. 🙂

      DA3 was better, but I just got really bored after a while. I wanted to drown most of my companions in a river. I played for a couple of weeks, and then just felt zero compulsion to continue.

      1. DA2 was hit or miss. Either you liked it despite it’s faults, or you hated it. There doesn’t seem to have been much in-between.

        Kinda like the ME3 ending, now that I think about it…

        The best of the GTA-style games, imo, is Sleeping Dogs. Your character is an undercover cop in Hong Kong. And because of the strict gun laws in HK, the game has a much heavier focus on martial arts combat. Think GTA with combat mechanics similar to the Arkham games. Guns are still around, but uncommon (usually).

  33. PC is better for Fallout games because of the eventual mods that come out. They almost always make significant long term play differences.

    Unfortunately, some PC users are also having crashes. My PC itself has not crashed, but I’ve had to reboot the game due to graphics insanity.

    My wife says that you “Should be able to pet Dogmeat! Dogmeat is a good, useful dog and you can’t pet him? What is wrong with those designers anyway?”

    1. There’ll be a mod for that. The animation’s already in the game, after all: you pet him in the scene where you first meet him. So it should be easy for some mod to re-use that animation sequence on demand, allowing you to actually pet your faithful dog.

      1. Dogmeat is awesome and sometimes silly. I was scavving in *location redacted* with a building full of super mutants and Dogmeat wanders off…

        A little bit later, as i am grabbing stuff from random containers, i hear a super mutant go “RAAAAAGGGHHHHH!!!!” and starts spraying fire from a machine gun and Dogmeat comes tearing down the stairs and runs around behind me.

  34. Cutting fluid and veggie starch are must make, as noted by others for crafting. There is a hard object limit in the settlements. This means, for Sanctuary especially, that you will want to go through and scrap every single piece of unwanted detritus withing the zone. On the plus side you’ll never want for steel or wood in any of your settlements again after just clearing out Sanctuary.

    The most useful perks so far have been aquaboy, armorer, local leader, gun nut, scrounger, scrapper, science, and stealth. Combining shadowed muffled armor with the stealth perk means never getting into combat until you absolutely want to.

    Of course, as a min-maxxer with my 11 int(Yes you can get greater than 10 in stats) maxing out damage resistance, chemist, and nerd rage means that nothing ever hurts me and every fight occurs in ultrabright technicolor.

    1. Veggie Starch lets you make 5 adhesive per craft and it is all vegetables you grow yourself. No need to do exotic stuff to make it work.

  35. So I just emptied a work station at a non connected settlement. I then brought a few items to craft a turret with. I built the turret and all the left over scavenged items are now in the work shop. So you’ll that say you are loosing scavenged parts are either mistaken or are having a bug/glitch. I’m on the Xbox one.

  36. I know a lot of folks like to hate on arty in WoT, but once, on a whim, I started down the Soviet Arty tree, and really, people should be clamoring for me to join their platoon or something, because in my stupid little SU-18, I have a 58% win ratio. If you know how to work with arty, they can really help you out. If you ignore them, run willy-nilly all over the map looking for kills instead of strategy, you lose.

    How to know in the first minute if you’re going to lose. Players start shooting up the landscape just as the countdown finishes. Players shout “Go hill!” Already dead players map-spam the heck out of a spot on the opposite side of the map from the objective in Encounter maps – and they go there.

    1. Yeah, at this point I can usually just look at my map screen in the first minute and tell if my team is going to lose. Oh, look, they’re expecting a Tier 4 scout tank to hold the entire left flank by himself in this Tier 7 game, while 14 other dudes crash into each other at a narrow choke point. This will go well. 🙂

      1. The guys who get all pissy in chat because you’re not following their strategy, when they’re already dead….

        Just had the funniest death. My SU-18 got rammed by a BT-7 art. But we BOTH blew up (my charred tank frozen in space, tilted halfway up on one track). But the hilarious bit is is *I* got the credit for killing him, and since he was a tier higher, I got both Kamikaze and Eye for an Eye – in a slow as a riding mower arty.

      2. My 8 year old son can look at the map in the beginning and tell if my team is going to lose. So why can’t the clowns actually playing the game do that? You’ve been playing long enough to have a tier X tank, and you left one flank wide open so you can follow the lemming train to the right? Really?

        1. I was playing Laketown the other day. For those not in the know, on the west, a tiny, narrow choke point through the mountains, best used by tanks with really heavy frontal armor, because a handful of powerful guns can lock that right down. Through the middle, a narrow mountain road that can be fired upon from everywhere. To the East, a big sprawling neighborhood with lots of streets, and room to move. If you’ve played this map a few times you know that the west will more than likely turn into a grind, because that pass will be held by a few big guns. The middle is for good camo, and small tanks who can hide behind rocks, and brave TDs with good view range who are tough enough to hang out and snipe. 95% of the time the majority of people head into town where there is room to fight.

          So in the first minute of this Tier 10 game, I realize that the entire eastern edge of the map, holding this town is me (in an E-75) and a AMX scout tank. Not a single tank in the middle. None. A couple arty staying in base. But over on the choke point? That only fits three tanks side by side, at most? A dozen tanks.

          Sigh. Yep. At that point you know exactly how this game is going to unfold. 🙂

    2. Soviet arty is horrible. German arty is OK until tier 8/9/10. British, US, and French arty is awesome.

      One good way to “not work with your arty” — let some ($@!&*^% light tank run through friendly lines and kill you in the first minute of the game (or spot you so the enemy arty can kill you).

    3. Playing arty tends to drive me nuts. Long reload times, and the shots I fire invariably land next to the tanks I’m shooting at, instead of on top of them. Doesn’t matter how long I let the reticule shrink. I can still guarantee that I’m going to miss the tank I’m shooting at.

      1. When it works, though, with a powerful tier 8/9/10 arty, it is a thing of beauty to ruin someone’s day. I especially like when you track them and you can see them squirming as they wait for the hammer to drop again.

        I get more hate mail from playing arty than anything else.

        1. That’s why I like the SU-18. It’s Tier 2, and it’s still about the same thing (as the tiers go up the stats all inflate, but the ratios seem to be about the same). And you can really discipline people for playing poorly and going to the usual places. Everyone goes to the hill in Mines. I go to the west, and when they’re stalemated there, I start picking them off. I got 7 kills once that way.

          A lot of folks don’t know that in the arcade view, arty can still lock a target, which has saved my bacon a few times when they get close.

  37. How do you know you’re not killing real mutants somewhere?

    #NotAllMutants #MutantsLivesMatter #CisPortuguesePrivilege

    1. I am ever so triggered. Bethesda must remove all #SoleSurvivorSplainin from Fallout 4. I shall retire to my fainting couch.

  38. FO4 settlement question: Once you have linked your settlements with supply routes, how do you trade surplus food and water to settlements that have no way to pump water or grow crops? Is it supposed to be automatic? I linked Hangman’s Alley to three places that have a food surplus and I am waiting for the big trade benefit, but so far nada.

    1. No idea. I just got Local Leader last night and spent hours building and linking suppply chains, so I’d love to hear it.

      1. So far the principal benefit has been to be able to access all the accumulated crafting materials from any linked (with a supply route) work bench.

        Also, I totally called it WRT the F770 bit. Apparently, one mustn’t call the privileged cry-bullies who are enraged about potentially make believe poop swastikas, and totally fabricated hit and runs + KKK drive bys at MIZZOU helpless, or you are a jerk.

        You jerk, you.

        1. Those doofi at F770 link to every single blog post I make now, so they can pour over everything I write looking for evidence of badthink.

          Well, if they are still reading this, the Mizzou students can bite my ass. Most sane people are going to look at a swastika of poop and their first thought is going to be “What kind of sick weirdo smears his own poop around?” and then they are going to move on with life. But oh no… Not SJWs! OUTRAGE! Protest! Oh wait! Here is a probably imaginary thing that might have happened to my best friend’s cousin’s boyfriend’s roommate! OUTRAGE! RACIST!

          Because back on planet Earth, regular people go to college so we can get a degree, so we can get a non-shitty job, so we can GET PAID. Sort of like these idiot cry baby students’ parents have done. If some random dipshit yells a slur, we tell them to fuck off, and we continue whatever it was we were doing, because they’re assholes, and nobody cares.

      2. re sharing food and water between settlements: I have seen it alleged that at the end of every diurnal cycle, the food and water that is excess to needs is available via shared workbenches to linked settlements which need it.

        I am skeptical, so I am running an experiment. I just took the Citadel, moved some people there, but am growing zero food and pumping just enough water. I want to see if the food transfers and if it changed the status bar for the settlement in my Data tab. I’ll report back SEPCOR.

        1. I am running the Castle with supply lines to the Finch Farm and Greentops Farm – the former is over producing water and the later food. No pumps or crops at Castle and it is supporting 6 ppl without the little exclamation sign…

          1. BTW, the reddit board (r/fo4) has some crazy creations in the crafting department. I saw a really neat fort built at the drive in – they pour a foundation across the entire parking lot and put a massive water purifier in the radioactive sump hole in the middle and made a fort.

            I am considering trying to model an early Roman fort, about the size you would have would have for a quarter vexillario.

          2. A lot of people are griping over that radioactive water hole. I just realized last night you can scrap all of the toxic waste barrels and it’s no longer putting out rads to knock down your settlers…. who woulda thunk?

          3. Whoa, really? Time to Rad-X up and scrap them, thanks! I built a huge fence all around it to keep my dummies from having a kaffeeklatsch adjacent and then passing out.

          4. That totally worked, thanks for the tip. The drive in is becoming one of my top three bases. I built an elevated platform all around the sump, dropped an industrial filter and a nuke generator in there to power it and now I am exporting water and crops to a lot of other settlements.

            Also, LC, the deal is what we surmised earlier. Settlements that are linked by a trade route within one degree of separation and which have a positive balance of resources may share them at the end of every day. What doesn’t get eaten get stored in the workbench, which contents are accessible from any linked settlement, regardless of the number of degrees of separation.

  39. The biggest issue I’ve had thus far is just weird game bugs, which was totally expected. The worst was retaking the Castle with the Minutemen. Those Minutemen kept teleporting away from where I was supposed to meet them as soon as I got near it. Then after killing the mirelurk queen they all teleported away except for one and started teleporting all over the map when I’d get close. Eventually they teleported back to the courtyard but it was a total pain in the ass. But otherwise I’m loving the game. I’m also finding that shooting outside of VATS is totally essential for some enemies. Also sniping outside of VATS works a lot better now and is very effective.

  40. I didn’t see this in the comments. But your settlers ARE supposed to automatically tend crops. If they aren’t assigning themselves to crops when they are available (takes about 10 to 30 seconds after planting.) there is probably a problem with the AI at the settlement. I had something like 19 settlements where I didn’t have to worry about crop assignments then I show up at Croup Manor and there is 2 food and something like 20 plants with no one tending them. Not sure what causes that though.

    1. For whatever reason, it is Tatos. My people won’t pick tatos unless I order them to. Even though I’ve got tons planted. I go into the workshop and I’ll have 100+ corn, carrots, and Mutfruit, but 4 tatos.

      1. I have the same issue. Plus Razorgrain. I guess my settlers like their spaghetti and nothing else because I’ve got plenty of all the other produce. I have to walk over and pick some directly if I want to make starch.

  41. I’ve been wandering. And finding the oddest Easter Eggs. So far I’ve run across two pieces of gear for Troubleshooters – aka Paranoia RPG, Poe References, and a sentry bot named for a Raymond Burr character.

  42. Some information for you, Correia:

    If you’re running low on oil, collect bones. Anywhere with super mutants will have bloody ribcages, skulls, and long bones scattered all around. You can combine bones with acid, steel, and water at the chemistry station to create cutting oil. (acid comes from batteries, antifreeze, fertilizer, and bug guts)

    You can “favorite” components you need more of. this will put a little magnifying glass icon next to any item that has them. With level 2 scrapper perk, any item with a component you want, or any container that contains such an item, will glow green. Makes it easier to notice all the gas cans, lighters, and oil cans out in the world.

    You can make adhesive at the cooking station out of mutfruit, tatos, corn, and water. Adhesives are used in damn near every weapon and armor mod, so you’ll need hundreds of them.

    Finally, as you get to crafting higher level shit, you’ll start to run low on aluminum. Northwest of the castle is a fish packing plant with dozens of aluminum trays scattered all over. Those trays respawn when the location resets.

    Have fun.

  43. I am only four hours into FO4 – combination of R/L and the DLC for FO:NV – but I am liking it. So I approached this post with a little trepidation, but glad to find no real spoilers and some handy hints for later on.

    My two pennyworth?

    Not sure about the new speech options, some of the older style options were a hoot/great pre-ass kicking one-liners, but OTOH you do get to see more of your character.

    And I’m still having problems with muscle memory, RB doesn’t mean VATS anymore -grrr – OTOH it is nice to be able to use your gun as a bludgeon.

    But see how it all turns out, and one thing I do like is the soundtrack. And it might just be me, but when I tuned into the radio for the first time the first track I heard was ‘Butcher Pete.’ That really made me smile. 🙂

  44. Found the first real negative about FO4, about 50 hours in. There is a hard limit on the number of polygons that the engine can manage in any given settlement. The capacities of settlements differ. Not all player generated objects have the same number of polygons, so there is no hard number to plan against. I am maxed out in Starlight Drive In after building a wall around the place and a large building in the center. Pity.

    Also, you have to keep a close eye on shared resource consumption – Abernathy dang near died out – a couple new arrivals at Sanctuary drove up water consumption there, and lower water availability at Abernathy, which somehow led to a generator failure which dropped defense which led to catastrophe.

    Reddit’s r/fo4 has lots of goodies to plan around these kinds of things and be able to avoid plot spoilers, one of which as led to me shooting manikins indiscriminately.

    No, you don’t want to know.

    1. You can lower the the size limit in a settlement by dropping and picking up weapons. I expect there will be a mod to remove it entirely because it kinda harshes the creative folk.

      Also the glitch of dropping resources, (water and food going to zero) is resolved if you do NOT fast travel out of a settlement. Probably will be in the first patch as well.

  45. If you want a game that is “Dragon Age” type without the “Oh will you please take me now warrior man” Try Lord of the Rings The War in the North. It’s short and doesn’t have any DLC but I think it is the best of those type of games.

  46. World of Tanks eh? Been playing it since a few weeks after it went live!

    Lots of changes over the years and plenty of new modes. Currently taking a burn out break and only playing wasted from the bars… Try out Armored Warfare if you just need a palate cleanser then come back to WoT.

    Keep up with the good posts and happy tanking!

  47. So does anyone know the secret to getting new settlers? I have an excess of security, food, and water, with a radio tower but can’t seem to get new setters. Meh.

  48. Just started this too. Metal Gear 5 is distracting me though, because I’m stealing like a million resources a week from people, so I can build out my base. I’m not even sure why, honestly.

    DA:I was only playable if you figured out how to harvest mass Amulets of Power and give yourself every power. Otherwise it was sort of boring and “who cares” and “I can’t believe someone bothered to write all this crap.”

  49. Larry,

    Apparently you can play through Fallout 4 and finish the game and still keep 3 of the 4 factions happy with you. It also makes for a shorter gameplay, perfect for a second playthrough if you’re up for it.

    (SPOILERS BELOW)

    You have been warned.

    The process goes like this:

    Step 1: Before completing “Reunions,” complete all main and both side quests (once each) for the Brotherhood of Steel recon team. Talk Brandis down from being crazy.

    Step 2: Complete “Reunions” and “Dangerous Minds.” (For proper completion, keep Preston at the Castle.)

    Step 3:
    (a) You will have received “Tradecraft” and “Shadow of Steel.” DO NOT advance in either of these quests.
    (b) Focus on the Minutemen as you continue down the main quest line. Use the Minutemen to gain access to the Institute.
    (c) Get yourself banished from the Institute. You can play along and poke around for a bit first if you like, but if you do, you’ll have to murder someone to get banished. You may safely complete “Institutionalized,” but do not progress any farther before getting yourself kicked out. Don’t even speak to Father again after completing “Institutionalized.” DO NOT complete “Synth Retention.” (Give holotape to Sturges.)

    Step 4:
    (a) You will have received “Form Ranks” for the Minutemen. DO NOT advance this quest.
    (b) DO NOT start “Defend the Castle.” Don’t even go to the Castle.
    (c) Complete all quests for the Brotherhood from “Shadow of Steel” to “Show No Mercy.” DO NOT complete “Show No Mercy.” Don’t even get on the Vertibird. Grab ALL side quests from the Brotherhood and keep them open.

    Step 5: Complete “Form Ranks” and “Defend the Castle.” Start “The Nuclear Option” for the Minutemen but DO NOT complete it.

    Step 6: Complete all Railroad quests from “Tradecraft” to “Randolph Safehouse 6.”

    Step 7: Complete “The Nuclear Option.”

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