Another big one today: mostly looting *ho hum*. I begin at tenpenny (being that was the last place the game auto-saved) from there I warp to super-duper mart and cross the river, ambushed by some raiders on the opposite bank I VAT’s my way to happiness and deliver 5 fingers of hurt to each of them. Level 15 then pop’s up and greets me so I go about leveling up choosing +1 Luck via intensive training, critical effects often being what I rely on for damage from my punchy ways.

Around the corner I find three mad brahmin, and kill them each with 1 punch! (and no chem help or anything!) I dive into Farragut West metro and dispatching the occasional ghoul. As a point of interest, I’ve previously noted that  when I use VATS my character often ‘travels’ to the enemy before the attack is made. Only a short distance, but a notable effect. As such I found I could ‘teleport’ past a locked gate in order to attack some ghouls what a handy cheat!

Much wandering later and more tin-cans than is reasonable for one person to be picking up… I find myself in Chevy Chase North. I instantly war around to various places to offload my loot (Megaton, Rivet City, Tenpenny Tower) then I help the BoS kill off the mutants in the school. Don’t believe the BoS, they’re basically liars; check out the screeny…

Then after sorting out a glitch which saw my character locked into a school desk it was time to deal with *drumroll* The BEHEMOTH! Its been a long time coming and I was a little weary of this one fight, having no guns is simple when the things you’re fighting are the same size and tend not to kill you in two hits. My confidence in running toward things and hitting VATS has grown quite a bit however, so, I chem. Up with just about everything going: med-X proving essential as the big B has a hellava whack (almost a one shot deal with no med-X), psycho for the extra damage boost, jet for the action points then after a quick tussle as I kinda expected (although I was about 50/50 on the outcome) one dead behemoth! It was knocked out 4 times in the fight and I used about 9 or 10 stims (in 3 separate doses) because I touched the GNR door before the intercom, the BoS instantly thought I was a baddy (yay for super AI writing here…) and all opened fire on me, thankfully I’d F5’d just prior to the behemoth so in some odd ‘proving I can do it’ kind of way I have to kill it all over again with pretty much the same kinda outcome in terms of KO’s and stims.

7-cat, umm no, that’s not his name… uhh what is it… 5-mouse ? 318-platipus ? OOOH I remember thu-reeeeeeeeei daaawwwwwg (good lord I get fed up of hearing that) does the honorable thing and asks me to risk life and limb for a new transmitter. I take the back door out, head through Dupont Circle killing raiders as I go and having to do another warp around all my known traders to offload crap. I warp back into Dupont, finish off the remaining raiders and surprise, surprise… Level 16 I choose Action Girl opening up even more action points for my punchy punchy VAT’s fun times. Diving into the metro system again I end up at Pennsylvania Ave. heading to the Mall, many ghouls, mutants and raiders falling to my now improved VAT’s-a-thon.

Once I emerge in the Mall dripping with loots I decide to get to Underworld to sell up and end the day on. Finding my path blocked by some dozen or so mutants, Mutant Brutes and a couple of Mutant Masters… chem up! VAT’s on! some time later: dead muties… almost lost dogmeat thanks to the two minigun wielding mutants and the missile launcher mutant but I managed to save him by jabbing a stimpack into him just in time. So I sell up all I have, clean out the mess that I left all over the Mall and then warp back to megaton and save the game for the day.

And this time, the game didn’t crash!

Starting this rather mammoth session I quickly hunt down some feral ghouls on my way though to find Roy only a couple of these and I quickly get Level 13 taking Finesse. Then I wrap up some ghoul punch-bag action poor, poor Roy et al.

With that quickly seen to I spend some time getting to girdershade, in an attempt to deal with the naughty nightwear thing. Managing to ignore nuka-girl for the most part… no way I’m getting into all that nonsense. I persuade Ronald using black widow to fetch me nuka’s in exchange for a three-way. Sadly this causes him to belt off toward the nuka factory.. I decide to follow him on foot, fighting off several things en route, including going passed the Rob-co facility, which I was intending in doing soon. Sadly when I’m attacked by a pack of 5 or 6 vicious dogs I loose track of Ronald. [At several points I warp to and from girdershade hoping to run into him again, sadly… it seems it is written into the game that he dies near the entrance of the nuka-cola plant. In an attempt to bypass this I use ‘setessential’ on his ID but throughout the rest of this session see no sign of him. To further hurry along my now tainted quest log, I use ‘player.additem’ to get me the required nuka-quantums to give to Sierra].

Well annoyed by all that, as I was hoping to explore the alternate quest ‘avenues’ I did get to the nuka plant at the end of my trek, and found a deathclaw waiting for me… my 1^st to fight bare-knuckle. VATS caused a knock out and I finished it off without injury what a poor showing, a deathclaw… punched to death.

Having been playing for some considerable amount of time now I loose my concentration and start cocking about in tenpenny tower, firstly I spawn 100 behemoths… I died quickly, as did Tenpenny and Dogmeat. But it was funny. Then I spent some time adding various items that I’ve not played about with before (I did sell these items, but being that my cap’s count is like 40,000 and growing, its hardly going to have adverse affect on my games outcome) nothing realling interesting, other than 1 item ID code which spawned 50x (s) … I don’t really know what an (s) is.. I dropped it and whatever it was just wasn’t there. The best thing I found was power-suit armour, which is a suit a-la business suit. After getting bored with that I went and got a new face, spurred on by the side view of my current face, I mean… look at that chin!

So, my new face! Behold!!!

I then spent a loooo-ooo-ooong time cleaning out Rob-co getting level 14 in the process, the immense amount of loot hauling prompting me to take strong back (really actually taking the perk, not like last time when I thought I’d taken it) in between mass Rob-co looting I nip over to the cemetery to grab the LK bobblehead. Then back to Rob-co to finish up my mega-looting session.

With Rob-co all done that’s the last peg in my Wasteland Survival Guide quest, and Moira can go shove it.

Being that I’m finishing up loose ends I decide to make a conceited effort to get the game back onto the main plot quest, so over to germantown. I practice my new tactic of; dose up on psycho, med-x, jet or quantum and run at the mutants swinging blindly. Which works quite well even against the tougher mutant masters. Needless to say I wrap up the germantown / big-town thing, seemingly in record time as well… something to be said for this unarmed combat style!

Happy that I’m back on the main quest I go about making sure I have my meds stocked and loot sold and then. . .  

OH for fucks sake… BSOD … seriously this game crashed more often than wall street.

As a small point of interest, in my little write up I’d put that the game is on hard. I had reason to go into my settings at one point during this game I noticed that it had actually been set on Very Hard. Cool!

Well I was pondering if it was to be Fallout or Company of Heroes today, I decided on a little of both, so… world war II aside I loaded up FO and got about my business, after last times crash to desktop, I found that I had effectively saved the game, by taking a nap in an unused bed in one of the Reclining Groves Resort Homes. So Huzzah for that! I hopped over to the nearby scavenger in the barn and emptied off my crap. At this point I find that a certain mug lying on the ground is the cause of my previous CTD, as when I try to grab it, I get another crash to desktop! So I reload the game and start over, repeating the bits I’d done thus far.

I set about my quest for the +1 AGI bobblehead, taking a route via MDPL-13 power station (looting as I go) and fending off more Talon Co. then onward to Greener Pastures Disposal Site, ta-da! Insta-stat upgrade!

Out of pure interest I loaded up my stats screen firstly it seems I’d forgotten about my level 12 but now I have a good view of my characters stats etc, and I thought I’d share that with you;

More over, I decided to double check what perks I had, and that looked a little like this:

So, with my AGI maxed out, (excepting for the yet to come power armour negative effects) I warp back to megaton for loot offloading and med restocking my next in line task it to deliver the naughty nightwear. This requires me to cross as yet un-chartered  lands so I have no warp to points. My first foray into the wastes I decided to try and go via the Fort Independence and surrounding area’s including taking out all the raiders in the nearby town, two of which had missile launchers! But nothing to much trouble for my fists of fury. Cue classic batman style fight scene:

After that and having a chat with the outcasts I move on attempting to get to tenpenny tower my travels are quickly ended by a Yao Guai removing my head and causing a severe case of relodius del last saveium pointius In other words I found myself back at megatons gate. Grr, angry at my inept non-use of F5 key…

I took a break at this point, grabbed a coffee etc, then after a while came back and loaded the game back up. I took a similar approach as last time, but basically bypassed the outcasts fort and the raiders town, a few non committal fights with various spawns and me saving the game religiously so when Dogmeat was single swiped by a Yao Guai (it seems these damn things are proving the biggest problem for me recently) I reloaded a recent save as I like the ol’ meaty dog, but I think if he dies again, I’ll probably just let him R.I.P.

With that slight hiccup I make a beeline for tenpenny tower, knowing that I have the robots quest from Moira yet to do. So tenpenny will be a nice war point, also the extra trade outlet is useful as I’m finding my regular ‘warp in, trade, warp out’ activities has cleaned out Megaton and Rivet City.

I encountered a regular graphics glitch I get with tenpenny tower, some of the textures go a bit.. WTF... such as, how do I get in? (its not actually a solid wall just graphics texture)

With tenpenny comes great ghoul responsibilities. I plan to kill Roy & his ghoul pals due to enjoying the traders and benefits of the tower and the trade off for bad karma / GNR occasionally telling me I’ve been naughty is worth it. I wander over to Warington Tunnels (I didn’t speak with Roy, so the more direct route was blocked for me. Removing the feral ghouls at the entrance nearly caused my death, after 3 ghouls gang up on my non-Med-X’d character and those guys hurt! But pipboy a-go-go and all is well. After getting into the tunnels and killing a couple more ghouls I get a big fat BSOD. So I give up for the day, clearly the computer doesn’t want to play Fallout today!

After my BSOD last time I start this session at the entrance of the marigold station, I proceed to barge through the tunnels, and quickly see to deal with the ant issue, needless to say, looting everything as I go.

While down there in marigold station I happened across Grady's note and the associated package now I know that you good folks are just itching to see my sexy sexy female character in some 'naughty nightwear' so check it out! complete with pipboy & glove and finished off with a combat helmet and biker goggles... Ooooh yeah, sexy.

Lots of XP means yet another level gained (level 11 now), this time (and I’m sure about this! I wrote it down!) I took black widow, for even yet more damage bonus on my already silly punchy fists of doom.

With my AGI score at 9 points I thought I should take the time to try and round it up to 10 bobblehead style, which means a long trek out to the green pastures, lots of baddies found on the way, mostly Yao Guai, and a rather entertaining episode involving some hunters chasing a scavenger (with whom I’d only recently traded away all my useless loot) This chase was rather humorous as the scavenger was running away, his Brahmin following him, and behind that an angry hunter wielding a sledgehammer! I followed them all round Reclining Groves Resort Homes and then looted the scavenger of all he had. Sadly, I have to confess to one more death which occurred just prior to this benny hill-esq  chase scene, thanks for a surprise Yao Guai and without med-x standing in front of an angry bear is no way to impress people.

Annoyingly, I’m not sure I saved the game, as shortly after this, my game crashes to desktop and I have to go do other stuff.

Ol joe, signing off for now!

The red shaded ones (thanks to my 1337 picture editing skillz) are skills which I've never upgraded on this character. as you can see, this was my Level 10! sadly due to mind-blanky goodness, I cant recall what perk I took, there is a good chance it was Strong Back (an attempt to make my looting more profitable to keep me stocked with stimpacks).