Fallout 4 impressions

[Dweller_Benthos]

"blos" ???

That would be cool to have though I don't do melee unless I have to.

[mandru]

Yeah!  Blossed the snot out of it. 

Nice find.  :-X

[PZ]

  :-X

[Art Blade]

I missed my chance. Saw it but decided not to go for it because I couldn't find anything funny to connect it to. If I had known that simply quoting it would do the trick, hell, I would have. :-()

[PZ]

I missed my chance. Saw it but decided not to go for it because ...

I do that kind of thing way too often.

I think I'll adopt the term "blos" - might become the new pwned

[Art Blade]

in my book your best typo still is boar pilot.  :-D

[PZ]

  - I agree, but there are so many

[Art Blade]

we love variety. :-()

[mandru]

I'm up to level 13 and have avoided companion hookups other than dog meat until my character is a little better developed to avoid getting dragged into conflicts that are way over my head like that deathclaw that pops out in Concord while you're still level 2.

Traveling around with dog meat cautiously selecting my own skirmishes collecting bottle caps and materials I've decided that if I could change even one attribute in dog meat's behavior it would be to add a "Heel" command so that when I need it he would stay one or two steps behind me  until I order him to do otherwise.  I hate Escort Missions and having dog meat ricocheting around like a loose cannon during stormy high seas is really annoying.  I can't count how many times I've muttered under my breath "If you do that again I'll shoot you myself.

I've started using the Stay command to park dog meat just out of range of conflict.  It prevents him from charging getting himself hurt so bad I have to stimpack him and he often triggers events before I'm set and ready.  Once I've cleared a safe zone I move him forward and force him to stay as I tackle the next stage of the mission.  Having him around has its advantages but it would be a lot easier to w@&k with him if he'd just be a good dog and heel.

[PZ]

Dang dogs never listen  \:/

[Art Blade]

that dog, if he keeps disobeying, either beat him or eat him. >:D

[mandru]

 :-D

[Dweller_Benthos]

Dogmeat will come back to you and stick close if you sneak. But if sneaking isn't what the current mission needs, then the stay command is about all you can do. You don't have to stimpack him, he will sit and whimper for a while, then recover on his own. I just sent him home, after 60 levels, it's time to let someone else have fun, and my choices were Preston, Strong, Codsworth or Piper, and Piper looks cuter in that Brotherhood of Steel uniform I had laying around, so I picked her. I may pick Strong after I get tired of Piper, just because it would be funny to have a super mutant tag along on all those quests, especially while talking to the people in the Brotherhood, pompous so-and-sos that they are, it would really burn them to have a hulking mutant on their nice clean airship.

[Art Blade]

 :-D

[fragger]

Having him around has its advantages but it would be a lot easier to w@&k with him if he'd just be a good dog and heel.

Must be part Border Collie. I can attest to the fact that as obedient a dog breed as they are, they have a strong independent streak. My Maggie will do what I tell her when we're out walking, but if she gets a whiff of rabbit, I might as well try to walk a well-anchored tree stump :-\\

[Art Blade]

bind a rabbit on the dog's back. They won't run far. :-D

[PZ]

Maybe even part toy poodle.  My wife's poodle will not hesitate attacking a bear, and appears to listen about as well as dogmeat.

[mandru]

On the topic of dogs and bringing this back to FO4.  ;)

I have achieved the highest level of approval with Cait (picked up in the Combat Zone) as a partner and I'm convinced her behavior patterns are based on the characteristics of a Cocker Spaniel.  She's willful, often snotty to the point of refusing to hold cover when you are trying to sneak, and always running ahead and jumping between you and what ever target you are trying to line up a shot on.  She also hates being ordered to Stay and expresses it openly.

If there's water Cait will end up in it.  She can't swim so on various occasions I've seen a swirl of something moving below the surface of nearby water and opened a barrage of fire from what ever weapon I happen to be carrying at the time only to have Cait pop up out of the water where she had been walking on the bottom and drag herself onto shore.  The only thing missing from those moment is the furious dog's shake off to remove excess water from her (to use a simile) pelt.  On the other hand if you need to swim across a narrow body of water to reach an objective she will complain "I wasn't made for swimming".  :D

She's competent in a fight.  However be careful with what you drop into her inventory.  I'd shifted a few flamers over to her to trim my weight a bit so I could regain the ability to run and the next thing I knew she'd pocketed her signature shotgun and was gleefully playing the toast master in close quarters inside a factory.  I would never trust her (or I now suspect any of the other companions) with a Fatman  :o

There's no romance from Cait.  Genuine affection is something she's never encountered or learned to reciprocate from her upbringing or life experiences   She just wants to be your needy bossomed buddy regularly reconfirming that your friendship for her hasn't cooled off and reminding you that she's up for the next brawl.

[Dweller_Benthos]

I haven't taken on Cait yet, just left her in the combat zone, as I was still romancing Piper. Now that I have highest affinity and romance with her, and the resultant perks, I may see what Cait is like. I wonder if the perks for each stay active when they aren't your current companion. For instance, do I still get the double XP for discovering a new place that comes from Piper if I switch to Cait or someone else?

But yeah, don't give anyone a weapon and the ammo for it if you don't want it used up. Settlers will have infinite ammo for their weapon if you just give them one round of it, but companions will use up whatever you give them. I gave Piper a plasma rifle and rounds just to see how she would use it and because I never do, didn't care about the ammo, and she burned through over 900 rounds in a few game days, which is about 30 minutes real time. So she is back to her 10mm which she came with and it's infinite ammo.

And, no, I can't imagine what one of these people would do with a fat man. Considering mine is now the highest upgraded MIRV, and launches I think 12 nukes at once, that would be a (maybe funny) disaster. The one time I tried to launch it, the detonation was way too close and took out everything including myself.

[mandru]

Early on in my travels with Cait I was looting a fallen raider and she asked for a share of the ammo.  Since she was using her shotgun I gave her 100 rounds for that weapon.  I guess because it was her original (and extensively used) weapon she still has the full 100 in her inventory.

[mandru]

In my post above I had commented that Cait didn't respond favorably to the Romance option once you've achieved full affinity with her.  Boy, was I wrong on that.  I don't know if my charisma, or my character level wasn't high enough or simply my persistence in wooing her hadn't been met but because I enjoyed seeing her embarrassed reaction when dodging the romance dialog I continued to ping her with it. 

On top of my usual rampaging and blowing to bits and looting everything that moves (outside of targets that cause negative alignment), I've been spending quite a bit of time trying to make each of the many settlements happy and independently capable of defending themselves.  This involves outfitting the each of the settlers with prime armor and weapons as well as beefing up and refining the accurate positioning of their automated defenses.

Every settlement has its own weak spots and I've learned a lot from studying the reoccurring attack patterns.  Even if a settlement gets hit while I'm engaged elsewhere in Build Mode (the attack announcements fail to show on my screen in those situations) which means it's over before I know there was an attack.  I found that I could come back later and by walking the perimeter searching for and collecting the attacker's dropped weapons I can make a good guess of who they were and gather good information about which direction they'd come in from to assault my settlers.  This process has allowed me to tweak my auto defenses to the point where most attacks now are over before the settlers can look up from their assigned tasks.

But still some attackers manage to slip through.  :D

When roving I'm constantly keeping an eye open for Gene the dog breeder (who reluctantly sells junkyard dogs) so that I can get at least one dog in each inhabited settlement.  Besides the dog's happiness and defense value for a settlement it's great fun to see one of these typically easy going mutts charge in and grab an enemy so as to injure and tangle the bad guys up even as the settlers take care of mop up by shooting and or pummeling the intruders with key melee weapons.

One wispy but agile little ghoul settler with a war cry on her lips and wielding her legendary "fiery super sledge" like an angry wasp while working in unison with one of the dogs gave me a good case of the giggles.  She was one wicked little sack of bones. 



Through all the above I've managed to get my character's level up over 165 and filled in a few holes in my S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Perk options which brings me back to the subject of romance with Cait.  I'd been largely ignoring her for quite a while other than an occasional quick run by charging out of Sanctuary Hills to stomp out one brush fire or another.

Once I'd learned that the sound of generators and automated defenses on the roofs of occupied buildings can affect settler's happiness levels I've been going through and trying to revamp all of the settlements to as near to whisper quiet as I can.  Not that I've seen anything approaching favorable results from all my efforts in this endeavor.  I keep slogging along trying to make my settlers happy.

When I finally got around to fixing the noise levels in Sanctuary Hills (one of my more challenging rebuilds) it brought me back into close proximity with Cait.  I'd long ago assigned her security patrol covering a couple points along the single paved road into Sanctuary.

Having been previously rebuffed by Cait many times it surprised me when my automatic selection of the romance word track when it came up returned something other than her becoming and edging away.  She was hooked, played, and landed.

**Warning! Do not allow two lovers in the same settlement if you are going to sleep.  It can permanently glitch up the Lover's Embrace Perk**

Here's some of her amusing additional word tracks now:

* "Fishing for a snog are ya?" (or something like that)

* (Contented aimless humming while patrolling)  ???  (the disturbing thing is both Preston and MacCready are humming it too but I'm not taking that route with them)

And specifically when waking up where she's jumped into bed with me when I've slept 24 hours to accelerate the time spent in settlement trying to raise happiness

* "OW!  I think I've pulled a muscle."

* "All this rest is making me tired."  :-D


So now it's Cait including cuddles and cudgels.  ^-^

[PZ]

Excellent report, mandru  :-X

The surprises in the game appear to be endless

[Art Blade]

nice story, mandru :)

[Dweller_Benthos]

Nice update, Mandru, I just basically finished the game a few days ago. I won't go into the details of the path I took, but I did the missions in a way to keep the Brotherhood and the Railroad alive while destroying the Institute. The normal quest progression requires you to align with a single faction and destroy the other two. This way, I still have side quests I can do for both factions. As far as I can find out, there's no way to align with the Institute and keep the other two around. But you can complete quests in a certain order to keep the brotherhood and railroad around, even though it can be weird sometimes, as there's no end game options for a scenario like that, and as far as the Railroad is concerned, the brotherhood has been destroyed, when they are actually alive and well.

Anyway, I also ran through the other faction endings mostly to see how they went and to get the associated achievements. I'm now just two short of getting all the achievements, and they are settlement building types from the DLC.

If you have the Far Harbor DLC, there is a friendly super mutant you can meet who sells trained dogs. Also wolves and mutant hounds. Since he is settled in one place, he's easy to find, gets new dogs every couple of game weeks and doesn't give you hassle like Gene does. Plus, I have something like 19 days in game and have only seen that guy once. Erikson the super mutant in Far Harbor is always around his camp, so it's easy pop over and buy a dog or two from him and be on your way. The workshop DLC also has cat cages you can trap cats in and they will also increase settlement happiness.

[PZ]

Sounds like there is quite a bit of replay potential