It can only be a Renee mod when a scribe is called Scrabble.

Scribble helped Cho break into Lyon's gold pile! Now he's richer than Croesus!

Played some again today after a few weeks not.

Ran around mid-map with Gunny who got killed twice. Thankfully I can repair him

10:24:81, 14:21: Welcome to Level 2, Karen Aboucha! She gained this level after killing three geckos in a row, using her energy pistol and cleaver. I gave her the Swift Learner perk.

She's still moseying around Goodsprings. Can't find a [censored] broc flower for Sunny anywhere , Never mind, she just found one. Phew. She's began wearing a typical wasteland settler outfit, she felt silly wearing the tutorial armor the game starts us with.

Best place for Broc flowers are on that hill, east of town with all the coyotes. Remember for your crafting purposes.

I mainly just remember to look around the old school house. But you have to look after you start the quest Sunny gives you to find them. Because they only spawn after the quest starts.

Not to mention it belonged to late Doc's wife in case you missed it.

Now that she's found a broc flower, I'll start seeing them everywhere I bet. Thanks for all advice.

I did some gaming with Cho yesterday, but wound up hitting a snag with a quest I wrote. Meanwhile, it wasn't really a snag at all, I simply forgot where I put this one door! ... Meanwhile, once I found the door I put in, I started facepalming because it was like I spoiled my own surprise. But that just goes to show ya, I must be getting good at making quests if I can't even find my own material without cheating!

Cho will make it up to Olney Paperworks one of these days.... I know it seems like it's taking forever. That's because it is taking forever.

Careful in Old Olney, I heard that dangerous creatures live there...

Well it is Friday, 10.26.81 in Karen Aboucha's gameworld, and she's currently about to sleep in Victor's Shack. In fact, she's going to start using his shack as a sort of base-of-operations, storing stuff she finds, etc., since the robot apparently never goes inside. Everything in there is tagged as player-friendly too, so no stealing can go on. Since she is supposed to be a nurse, Karen needs a place to store any ingredients she finds, and has no use for yet.

6 hours later: She's headed toward Primm now that night has fallen. She trades the Sexy Sleepwear she slept in (try saying that several times in a row quickly...) for her customary Wasteland Settlers Outfit, and decides to head toward Primm. Everyone keeps telling her to go to Primm. Karen seems to be more of a night-traveler. It's cool at night, and also easier to hide. She fines a Weapon Repair Kit and uses it to fix her badly-battered energy pistol, then she is on her way.

A smart move to use Victor's shack, several of my characters used it for early housing. And you're right, the cowboy robot never gets inside.

I'm happy you play New Vegas for the 1st time but I'm also slightly jealous because just reading about it reminds me of my first experience with the game and how just like Karen, my first character Dyvanche struggled early on, trading useless outfit for another useless outfit and keeping an ever-watchful eye on his gun's condition, hoping it doesn't break in a middle of some fight.

A lot of Khajiit’s NV characters would use the school house early on for storage.

I created Goodsprings Small Player Home for a nice little lore-friendly home in the early game. It uses one of the boarded up houses in Goodsprings and adds an interior.

Novac Player Bungalow adds a similar lore-friendly home to the motel in Novac.

SubRosa When I start playing New Vegas on PC, remind me of those two if I start asking for some early-game housing.

Now I am gaming with Cho. He is in an abandoned hospital added by Another Interior Mod, one of my favorites so far. Place is full of ferals. He leveled up to 18, and I chose the Life Giver perk for him.

I can't think of a better place than a hospital to get the Life Giver perk.

SubRosa's Novac bungalow is great, I've used it in some of my games, it's neatly furnished and looks like it could be an actual bungalow, while most other mods on the Nexus turn it into an unrealistic place with emphasis on storage and high-tech amenities.

---

As a part of the New Vegas Bounties II mod, Blondie pursued the child killer known as Uncle Chuckles that's been masquerading as a clown and kidnapping children from Fresside. The local Freeside hobo Tommy Rags directed Blondie to a ranch house north of the town and upon entering, Blondie was immediately spotted via Chuckles' camera and he started taunting her with an insane, child-imitating voice to enter the big room at the end of the house, where the big prize awaits.

Having no other choice, Blondie was carefully walking towards the last room, horrified at how the entire house was furnished with toys and clothes of the little ones. As she had stepped into the last room, noxious gas was released and she fell unconscious.

She woke up sometime later in a cell in some cave, presumably below the ranch house. She was wearing absolutely nothing, not to mention that all of her other belongings were gone as well. Uncle Chuckles greeted her via speakers and invited her to play the game in Chuckle's Labyrinth of Laughter, after his speech he remotely opened the door of her cell. The first riddle awaited Blondie in the next chamber where several items, around twenty, were placed on a table and there was a note pinned with a knife (which she took) on the table, saying "What's put on the table, cut, but never eaten?" By picking up a wrong object she'd get shocked by electricity. If anyone wants to play the game, objects on the table were

- a milk bottle and a beer bottle
- a baby rattle
- an apple
- packed food (InstaMash, Fancy Cakes)
- a dinosaur toy
- a hula girl
- a vacuum tube
- a deck of cards
- a fork, a knife and a little spoon
- a dinner plate
- a bucket
- a brick
- a leather belt
- a bag of flour
- poker chips
- pool balls.

The correct answer was:

By picking up the correct object, there was a key underneath, that unlocked the door from the chamber, leading to the second chamber, where a new riddle awaited. It was about three gnomes: - one is loyal and speaks the truth, one is a hapless knave and lies but doesn't know that he's lying, and one is a spy.

Blondie's task was to find out which one is the spy and destroy it with a shotgun that was placed next to the gnome, by shooting the wrong gnome the entire chamber would explode. Each gnome had a note on its body:

Gnome 1 said:"The third gnome is a hapless knave."
Gnome 2 said:"The first gnome is loyal and speaks the truth."
Gnome 3 said:"I am the spy."

The spy was:

By shooting the spy, Chuckles would again remotely open the door of the chamber and Blondie moved onward but she took the shotgun with her. The third chamber had three doors and there was a note, saying:"The left door leads to a swarm of cazadors, the middle one to a throng of feral ghouls and the right one to a pack of deathclaws that haven't been fed for six months. Only one door leads out, the other two lead to death."

The correct door to choose was:

The hall led to the ranch house basement where Blondie finally met the psychopath known as Uncle Chuckles, wearing a clown's mask and wielding a knife. Via speech checks it was possible to convince Chuckles to surrender peacefully but Blondie didn't want to see such a criminal to get out of this alive. So she attacked but here came troubles because though Blondie excels at melee and attacked him with a knife she had found earlier in the cave, Chuckles had insanely high damage threshold against melee attacks. So the other option was the shotgun but Blondie isn't good with guns, she relies on energy weapons. Fortunately Chuckles would run back to the basement if Blondie ran too far back in the cave so that's what she kept doing: luring him to the cave and shooting him, then retreating so he'd run back and repeating the process. By the time she spent ten precious bullets, Chuckles was almost dead and then she finished him off with a knife. Taking a key from his body she retrieved her gear, cut off Chuckles' finger as a proof of his death, then used a super sledge to turn Chuckles into a blood pile.

Children of Freeside were safe at last.

I'd guess a deck of cards for the first riddle. COOL I got that one *DING!*

Got the second one wrong. Cave would blow up.

Oh my gosh, that final battle sounds like an ordeal! I can't wait to see this Uncle Chuckles guy.

For me the 1st one was the most difficult because English isn't my main language and when I read the word "cut", I thought of a cutting process, like cutting something with a knife. I'll post some pics of Uncle Chuckles in the screenies thread later today or tomorrow.

Yes, when we cut cards, this means we "cut" them into two halves, usually before shuffling them.

So, I did some gaming with Cho's C-team last night, and my gosh what a lot of fun! I am happy to report that I had to force myself to go to bed, because I was having so much fun pwning toons. That Enclave camp located just east of Megaton for instance? They gave Cho lots of grief last time he rolled through (especially with their long-distance flamethrower) yet they lasted maybe 20 seconds once the C-team showed up.

The C-team includes a missile-launcher guy, a guy with a flamethrower (energy rifle for long-distance stuff), and a rifleman, who carries a modified assault rifle. These three wear power armor, while Cho prefers a lighter set of combat armor, mod-added, I think. I tried to take pictures (because that is what WE want) but it's really hard for me, so all I got were some lame shots with no action.

Lopov: That is a really creepy mod. But what if you are wearing a gas mask or rebreather?


Renee: U R T00 H8XX0r! pwn those toons! Have you come across any Enclave camps with tamed Deathclaws? You can free the Deathclaws by shooting out the mind control devices on their heads. Then they do what Deathclaws do best.

The event is probably scripted, the same scene plays out as in the Abandoned BoS bunker when you approach the trigger point to start Dead Money and you're knocked unconscious, regardless if you're wearing something that should protect you from gases.

Renee, is the C-Team mod added or vanilla? It's been ages since I did Broken Steel...

Lopov: Yes, the C-team are three guys I added into Cho's game, like, I made them. I didn't go to Nexus. I don't feel bad adding them because the base game does not give any help, soldier-wise, except for Star Paladin Cross. And she already fell.

Whenever we see anybody in the game though, whether it's Talon Company, Enclave, BoS soldiers, they always travel in a group. So Cho wanted one of these groups to travel with him. :gun:

Sub_Florens: No, haven't seen any Enclave or deathies (yet).

Actually, here is what Karen is up to. Quite a lot has happened, yet nothing has happened. It s Tuesday, October 30, 2281 and late afternoon. Karen is returning to Goodsprings. She did not like Primm very much. Her experience of Primm did not go too well.

She got shot at a couple times, firstly. And secondly, when she finally found the Lieutenant guy, he informed Karen that there's some sort of war going on. And so these are the guys who probably shot at Karen, from across the street.

Thing is though, before finally meeting up with the lieutenant, Karen got into a rather pissy mood, and decided to steal as many supplies as she could get her hands on, because she decided she's NEVER returning to Primm. How about that? So she grabs up all this ammo, lying around all over the place outside. But after meeting the lieutenant, she sort of felt bad about stealing a bunch of stuff from them.

But she also needs all this stuff. She finally has 50 rounds for her varmint rifle, and over 30 energy cells for her pistol. She's headed back to Goodsprings though, for now. Because she's not interested in helping the NCR of Primm. *shrugs*

But the coolest thing just happened. Karen got to using her rifle on some geckos. Managed to kill four or five of them. But just before offing the final lizard, Victor shows up! .... He followed her all across the desert, and helped her out with the final fight! Pretty cool!

I like your nonconventional approach to the game, you truly are roleplaying Karen, she's totally ignoring quests that don't seem appropriate to her, and instead of heading forward, she's now getting backward.

Oh my, attacked in a Fallout game? I don't remember any of my characters ever being shot at in the Mojave.

Yeah, that should last last for a day. Or maybe for 12 hours at least.

Does anybody repair stuff in New Vegas? I'm starting to get worried.


Don't worry, my next creation will definitely embrace some quests, hee hee hee!

They do but they're rare. The closest one to Karen is

Mariah is currently trying to escape Mothership Zeta. Good thing I have a ton of stimpaks with me. Some of these aliens don't go down easily. Unfortunately, the cowboy Paulson was turned into a pile of ash while I was trying to destroy one of the coolants. I had assumed he was an essential character. Couldn't even revive him on the console since he was disintegrated. And the samurai ran off somewhere.

I just took the lift to the second part of the ship and beamed up my comrades. And I got to see the horribly irradiated Earth. How lovely.

Yikes, I had a character die on that stupid ship. Major A. Holl. He found Mothership Zeta, but before he could investigate he got sucked into the place somehow. He wasn't really prepared for Zeta. I'll have to keep in mind the location that he was... I don't want Cho Zen Wan to get stuck in that deathtrap.

Lopov, that sucks. Seems like an oversight. Why wouldn't more NPCs be interested in repairing stuff? Hopefully she can repair her own gear, then.

I think that's the reason why there aren't many repairmen around, because taking care of your own stuff is fairly easy in New Vegas, you either need a weapon of the same type or a weapon repair kit which you can craft by yourself with high enough Repair skill.

New Vegas is definitely more lenient with repairs. In Fallout 3 your Repair skill determined the maximum amount you could repair something up to. In New Vegas you can repair anything up to 100%, no matter what your skill is. All you need is enough spare weapons to use, or weapon repair kits.

Yea but urrrrgggggg..... c'mon, nobody wants to repair stuff in Goodsprings? I mean, from an NPC's perspective, whoever chose to do this would make a killing! Well I can say for sure that's going to be one of the first things I mod into Goodsprings when I get my game on PC.

Anyway, so Karen met some guy named Barton Thorn, who tricked her into killing a bunch of geckos at the top of some ridge. Once the lizards were down, then he shows up and tries to take her down. Bad idea for him! Karen's got her new leather armor on, and she was able to take the guy down by shooting his leg with her energy pistol. Woo hoo! Barton had a lot of stuff on him too. Two 9 mm pistols, some ammo, some caps, a bottle of antivenom. Sweet!

Well, I finished it yesterday or the day before (for some reason, I can't remember). I have to be honest...I hate the Mothership Zeta DLC. Mostly for that reason we just talked about. Keep in mind my character is at max level, has a wide array of weapons, and all weapons skills and medical skill are at 100.

I went from about 110-something stimpaks down to the 40s.

Like, come on, that's just unfair. I obviously don't want it to be a breeze, but that's just ridiculous the amount of aliens you fight and how many are the tough ones. Even with how powerful my character was. Yes, I still had plenty of healing items, but there is no reason that kind of thing should happen especially when you can't leave the ship until you complete the DLC's main quest.

Another issue that fortunately turned out to be minor were a few bugs. And--although I don't know if this is a bug or just an oversight--the second-to-last or last quest progressed incorrectly and gave me a wrong marker. I couldn't turn on a teleporter that I needed to get to the final room. So I snooped around to find a couple of new areas--including the room with the death ray. Funny thing, though, is that the quest log had told me I disabled the death ray when I had done no such thing. Ugh.

I think that is enough ranting on that DLC. Shame because there were some cool things and it could have been a good DLC. But those issues just ruined it for me.
______________

Speaking of the repair skill, I think Fallout 3's equipment degradation is kind of absurd. Not nearly as obnoxious as Oblivion's but still a bit tedious. I think it was a good move for Fallout 4 to get rid of it altogether. I get why it was there previously, but having no degradation mechanic is better, IMO.

Yes that does sound like an ordeal, RaidersoftheLostArk. Well, like I said, my guy who got sucked into Zeta was not prepared, but I went with it because I didn't know any better. Zeta seemed fun at first (who doesn't want to pwn some aliens?) but Major A. Holl got his ass handed to him right quickly. I think he got as far as some little kid, who was able to sneak through parts of the ship.

And that kid is obviously a reference to Alien 2 (Aliens I think it's called) in which a little girl manages to survive in air ducts, while all these monsters roam around.

If Cho gets sucked into Zeta, even though he's much more prepared, I don't care if it's cheating, I'm re-rolling that previous save!



Nooooo!!!! I like taking care of stuff. If I played Fallout 4 I'd mod this back into the game, first thing. Everybody seems to rag on degradation. For some reason, I've always liked this feature. I modded it back into Skyrim, for instance.

I didn't have these problems with Mothership Zeta. I took starting characters there twice, and had no problems. There is plenty of healing in the arches and alien food. The hardest part is finding enough ammo if you are not using the alien's weapons.

Loviatar made the mistake of eating the woman who could repair things, so she had the hardest time. But she was an energy weapons user, so she just used up the alien guns and picked up a new one when one got worn down. Oda Hidetaka used a katana, and those never run out of ammo, so she had no problem at all.

Now, there's gotta be a life lesson in there somewhere. . . .

There it is: the Quote of the Week!

Loviatar should have saved that one for later...

Just to clarify, I am not conceptually against degradation per se. I just mean that I think it still happens too fast in Fallout 3. After a couple firefights, you can already be down to 75% quality. For some weapons that isn't too big a deal because enemies will drop plenty of them for you to fix up your own weapon (e.g. Chinese Assault Rifle). But for others not so much. I have over 200 missiles in my inventory, yet my missile launcher inexplicably breaks so quickly compared to my other weapons. I suppose that is because it can be shot easily, but it is very irritating and that doesn't happen to any of my other weapons. Even in a game where the emphasis is on scavenging and scraping by in a post-apocalyptic world, it is more tedious than interesting or fun to constantly repair things. Things breaking that quickly takes me out of the game a bit.

And I don't mean to say that Fallout 4 gets it exactly right, because it doesn't. But when it comes to which system I prefer, I'll take Fallout 4 every time. Having a well-done degradation system is the most preferable, but unfortunately, I think Fallout 3 falls well short of that. It is a similar thing with Oblivion to Skyrim (although I wish Skyrim at least had something where improvements on equipment had to be redone from time to time to keep them up or it would go back to original quality), although Oblivion's system was atrocious. None of the degradation systems (or lack thereof) are ideal, but when push comes to shove, I'd rather go with the systems that don't employ it.




Well, I don't know what exactly the difference was then. I wouldn't say it was hard but more so tedious and bothersome. The healing arches aren't helpful unless you modify them, and if you do that they break after several uses. The alien food wasn't that plentiful and didn't heal a whole lot (although to be fair, I didn't really use it, I just saw the stats). Ammo was no trouble at all because I was loaded on that, but I mostly used alien weapons so I didn't have to fuss over repairs (And why the hell was Somah charging so much for repairs? I know she has to make money, but come on, is it really that necessary in that situation to make it so pricey?)

I'll give you one thing though: my armor was often down to 0% durability. So it made me a lot more susceptible to being hit hard. But that goes back to the previous issue about durability. Armor, in particular, degrades way too fast in the game, IMO. And the armors I use are significantly less likely to be found roaming around so I can't use many sets to repair what I have. It becomes a hassle to upkeep armor.

Saturday, November 3rd, 2281, 11:47 pm: Karen Aboucha is doing some night-scavenging. 1-shotted a bloatfly with her rifle, and hooray she's level 3 now. I dumped a lot of points into Survival, so now she's got 25 in this skill. Survival is what she's pretty focused on, right now.

Those bloatflys are annoying. Not because they are tough, but because the way the bob around. I have wasted so much ammo missing them.

Still, they're less aggressive than in FO3 and attack only if you get too close, while in FO3 they start chasing you relentlessly as soon as they spot you.

The trick with bloatflies in Vegas is to sneak up on them, but then also wait for them to stay "still." Their animation includes about a 10-second window when they're not dancing around. Of course, once something surprises them, now they'll dance incessantly.

Did some gaming with Cho too. He and his C-team have discovered some power station (forgot its name) just north of Minefield. Place was full of ghoulies! Cho did my usual ReneeGade trick, which was to tell his followers to stay outside, because he was planning on sneaking in there, and followers do stupid things sometimes when discretion is advised.

Turns out, that power station is one of the few places (that I've noticed) where enemies will follow the character outside. So all Cho had to do was stealth shot a couple of them, then lure the rest of them out of there, and let the C-team handle 'em. *bam crash rawr attack!* ... and it's a good thing too, because there were a couple of glowing ones in there. Hate the things.

Tuesday, November 6, 2281, 11:00 pm: A lot has happened in Karen Aboucha's game, yet (as usual) nothing has happened.

She managed to kill a couple bark radscorpions, which don't seem so tough. But as a budding survivalist, Karen already knows about the poison glands these creatures possess. They will come in handy later, when she learns to make poison antidotes.

She also found the NCR Correctional Facility. Talked to a couple of guys there, but she doesn't like their rhetoric. At the time she was limping and hurt from a couple frag mines she stumbled upon, yet even though there was some dialog to go inside their facility, she chose not to pursue this. Karen is very picky. And she doesn't like the sound of what NCR is all about.

But she just found Goodsprings Cave. She's not just a survivalist, she's also a scavenger. And a cave-delve just seems too tempting to ignore.

There's always some good loot to be found in the Goodsprings Cave.

Guys at the NCRCF aren't actually NCR, they're convicts that took over. The "real" NCR you meet for the first time in Primm and then you keep seeing more of them as you get closer to New Vegas.

It would not quite be a Fallout game if somebody did not take something over. After the world goes to hell people love to move in and set up shop. The Legion, Khans, convicts, ghouls, etc, are all groups that take every opportunity that they can. Fallout NV is a hard game to explore if you expect it to be the same as FO3, but it is quite tasty when it comes to factions and companions.

Loviatar found it to be quite tasty...

Yes, I do remember that the Legion discovered that they were teddy-bears compared to a certain lady that had to use a tooth pick between her teeth...

In the middle of nowhere, I suddenly decided to teleport back to Megaton.


Yes. It is time. Time to prepare for the annual trip to Point Lookout!

Huh? Annual trip to Lookout? Can you tell us more about this phenomenon, crow? How long has this tradition been going on?

Last time I saw Cho, he finally did find Olney Paper Works. But he couldn't get the stupid deathclaw transmitter thingie (whatever it is) to work. And he was by himself, he decided to leave his C-team behind, so he could do some stealth-shots without them jumping all over the place.

But then, he began to run out of ammo. Nobody has 5.56 bullets up there, they're deathclaws, after all! I decided to add a vendor into one of the Minefield houses, so he doesn't have to walk all the way back to Megaton or Citadel. Minefield is already done, its houses all abandoned so it's conceivable some people could move in there.

I'll make a proper Cho update hopefully soon.

By reaching the maximum possible level in New Vegas - Level 50 - Blondie has now officially become a t00n. The last chosen park was Just lucky I'm alive. After 275 hours Blondie's most prominent stats are:

Energy Weapons, Lockpick, Melee Weapons, Speech - 100.

Survival - 99

Sneak - 90

Barter, Medicine, Repair - 80.

As of now she had killed 1339 people, 1426 creatures, picked 133 locks, took 210 stimpaks and consumed 2193 chems (cigarettes mostly). She disintegrated 2023 enemies and dismembered 1769 limbs.

Only since, oh, maybe five years now


Yes, I always go to Lookout in the fall to enjoy shooting the neckreds and whatnot. And since last year, I now have a tradition to go hunt some ghouls on the special safari offered up north-east

Wow, congratulations to Blondie! She definitely must be your longest-lasting "toon" so far. How many hours? Oh wait... 275 you say. That still doesn't touch Mirocu, or Renee Gade III or Lady Saga, but still. I guess 275 is a long time for Mister Lopov.

Thanks for explaining, crow. You really are a man of traditions and rituals, ha ha.