Wow, finding a vault still in use sounds cool. I mean we do leave 101 in 3 but since then we don´t really find one in good shape, and I don´t count the Garys´ vault to be in good shape...

That is Awesome! Oh, that is so cool !!! Now I would love that kind of quest (and reward) - and seeing all the vault dwellers would remind me of vault 101 !!!! I love the sound of that !!!


@ Mirocu - Urk, I HATE the Gary's !!!!!! But ... Vault 101 was still a working vault after you leave it; you just weren't welcome in there anymore once you helped them, lol.

Wait... you were supposed to help them?!

Alice traveled all the way to the far south of the map today, to an area known as 'The Glowing Sea'. It's heavily irradiated, and at the centre is a crater caused by the bomb which you see at the start of the game. The crater is home to some followers of Atom, while the barren hellscape around them is home to Deathclaws and Radscorpions. It's such eerie place. I loved it.

Oh, I took some screenshots.

Number 1

Number 2

Awesome power armour shots!

SPEW!!!! Uh, did they have water issues after your visit?







These shots are spectacular! Boy did you ever capture the feel of that place! But how are your Rads staying so low there? And what is the flag? Is there a settlement there?

I'm in agreement with Mirocu, these are excellent shots of the power armor too!

Power armor gives you a big radiation defence, since the armor is sealed. Alice was also popping Rad-X like crazy

There are a few ruins out there, though everything has been pretty much flattened. The flag is on top of an old military bunker, which was pretty much unharmed since it's partially underground.

There's a suit of power armor, that I've seen on a loading screen, which I'm hunting for. It has huge shoulder plates and just looks gorgeous.


-----


Alice checked out the Museum of Witchcraft earlier. She's never been more glad to have her power armor on. The atmosphere in the building was so terrifying and exciting. I'd recommend paying it a visit. Just...bring lots of big guns.

Oh, did you get to explore the bunker? I'll have to look that up on youtube! Museum of Witchcraft - this is the first I've heard of it! Looking that up too!

I'll answer this here to avoid spoiling it for anyone else:

I just found a red bandana tonight on a raider's mongrel mutt inside a satellite array just east of Sanctuary Hills. I think they might be pretty common items, but you'll have to talk to someone who has progressed further in the game than I. To get Dogmeat to equip something just use the trade option to open his inventory and if the item is something that he can equip the option will come up. On the console it is the Y or Triangle button. Don't know the PC equivalent.

Thank you! When I saw him with the bandana, I knew I'd just have to get it!

Exciting news. Today Alice found some pieces of that nice looking power armor I mentioned. It's called the X-01. So far she has the head, arms, and chest pieces. Apparently the power armor you find in the wasteland is different depending on your level, so we should hopefully find the leg pieces soon.


Alice has also been helping the Brotherhood of Steel a bit more. They have several types of side quests available, like getting farms to supply food or finding technical documents for their scribes. Alice's favourite kind of quest is the Squire escort. Basically you get a young kid to follow you as you clear a location of enemies. Since Squires are children Alice doesn't need to worry about them in combat, and she gets paid well to do it.

Had a really great fight earlier on. We saw some BoS folks out on patrol so we followed them and helped them fight some Super Mutants. Then the vertibird that arrived to pick the squad up attracted some raiders. During the ensuing fight, the vertibird got shot down and landed in a parking lot - massive explosions everywhere, bits of raider flying around. It was so chaotic and exciting. Random encounters like this are one of my favourite things about Fallout, and it makes the world feel so alive.

The Squire seemed to have fun too.

The first car to break the sound barrier!

That is a different suit of power armor than I have seen in all the other screens. It is the FO2/Tactics armor, with the dog-face helmet. It is good that they have multiple types of power armor out there. Is the T-51 out there too?

It is indeed So far Alice has found the T-45, T-51, T-60, X-01, and Raider power armors. I think that's all of them. Each can be upgraded, modded and painted and you can mix and match different pieces.


-----

Alice unlocked some new hairstyles earlier. I'm not sure how, it might have been a magazine she found. Regardless, she finally has style options other than '40s housewife' so we're both happy.


Got some screenies of that armor. ft new hair:

Number 1

Number 2

It's painted with Vault-Tec paint which gives Alice a charisma bonus (not that she needs it) and also makes her look like an Ultramarine. *Side note* - Super Mutants are often referred to as 'Greenskins' in FO4.


Here's another screenie. I don't think this is a spoiler...it's not quest related...just an unexpected side character. If you've seen the first few minutes of the game then you'll understand. Number 3.

Holy Cow, your character is most def bigger than Squire, lol.








Wow, is that power armor ever huge compared to Alice !!!! She is beautiful, I love the first hairdo a lot!

Yeah, I saw the ghoulified Vault Tech Agent in a vid a week ago, lol. I think you can make him a follower, if you wanted to, that is

By the way, this thread is also marked for spoilers; so don't worry about that. Your spoilers are welcome here! Bring 'em on! lol.

Oh, that´s just awesome! I love when they do stuff like that!

Me too! My all time favorite was Moira,

I love the huge shoulder/neck area of that set. I think it makes it look even bigger than other suits.

Underneath that power armor she's wearing a full set of heavy combat armor, and underneath that she's wearing a skintight BoS uniform. When she takes all the armor off she looks tiny! I'll get a screenie later to compare.

Oh how cool that you can layer their clothing now and get the DR beneflt from every piece? Awesome!

Yeah the clothing system is really good. There are 8 parts of the body that can equip clothing - Head, eyes, face, left arm, right arm, left leg, right leg, torso.

Some clothing covers multiple parts of the body - for example, a dress covers the torso and legs so you can't equip anything on top of those areas, but you can still equip arm armor with it. Skintight clothes like the Vault Suit cover everything from the neck down but can still have stuff equipped on top.

The damage resistance of each piece of clothing is split into three parts - Physical damage (melee and bullets), energy damage (laser and plasma weapons), and radiation. Not all clothes protect against radiation though.

Alice currently wears combat armor, which protects against physical and energy damage equally well. She then upgraded each piece to protect against radiation, but this also made it heavier since she used lots of lead in the crafting process.

Ah! No "dumbing down" in that area then

These changes are very welcome ones, I love this!!!!

Alice joined up with the Railroad today. As factions go, this one is pretty cool. Lots of sneaking around, dead drops, secret passwords etc. You even get to pick a nickname for your character. Alice went with "Charmer", though there were some other good options.


Oh, she also went back and found out what 'Swan' was. Turns out he's a big Super Mutant Behemoth who wears/has grown around part of a swan boat. Alice has never been so glad she was wearing power armor than the moment that thing jumped out of his pond.

I love the sneaking type quests/questlines - one of the things I missed so much in the Thieves Guild in Skyrim! They really made that fun, I like that a lot!

Ooh, that Swan thing - did Alice kill it? Urk, that thing was gross! I know it was a tough fight!

It is nice to hear more about factions. That was one thing the Fallout 3 really lacked. The Brotherhood of Steel was pretty much the only one there was to join, and that was automatic with the main quest.

Got the jetpack upgrade installed on some power armor earlier. Alice is going to have a lot of fun playing with this.

Using the jetpack drains the power armor's currently equipped power core AND the player's action points, so the length of the flight can vary but it will never be more than a couple of seconds. I'd say it's more of a jump pack than a jetpack, but it looks cool.


Alice is also putting her technical expertise to use aboard the USS Constitution, helping the robot crew fix up the ship. It's really fun so far - she even got to fire the cannons!

That Constitution quest looked like fun; a bit like Buttons in FO3,


Your backpack's got jets, huh? I've been waiting 3 weeks to post this; ever since I found out you could get them in FO4:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z9XTeeA43o



BWAAHAA!


Aw, I am surprised the jet packs don't give you a lot of time flying around, darn it!

Now you are making me wish for a Mandalorian Armor mod, jetpacks and all.

Ooh I'd love a set of that gear, and Pre Vizsla's Darksaber too.

The power armor jetpack feels bigger though, more like the original Iron Man suit in the films - you know that huge grey one?

Here's a screenie.



Oh and here's one of Captain Ironsides, shortly before Alice helped him and his crew.

I love his hat, hopefully it's lootable.

That looks Awesome! I guess it is def worth being able to jet out of a fight or up onto a rooftop to loot some hidden stash only found while using a jet pack or toggling clipping - have you found anything like that?

Ah, Buttons! Captain Ironsides! I got a kick out of him, lol.







BWAAHAA!!! Already planning his death, huh?

No looting required, you get your own version from him once you finish the quest. Though siding with the robots is optional, so I suppose there might be some looting if you side against them.

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I attempted to make a video of the jetpack flight. Apologies for the quality, the Xbox --> OneDrive --> YouTube process is not kind. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m6iWR2giAWc

As you can see, the max flight time is about 1.5 seconds. If Alice had more action points it might stretch it out a bit further. She'll have to experiment with different suit upgrades to make a suit specialised for flight.

Oh wow, it barely got her a tiny bit in the air! I was picturing jetting out of reach of deathclaws; jetting to tops of buildings, etc. But ... still looked cool, lol.

When you think about how heavy the power armor must be, it's not that surprising. It'll be handy getting across rivers, since you can't swim in the armor, and it'll be helpful with climbing cliffs and whatnot.

Oh yeah, well worth it - not to mention fun and just plain cool to be able to do it!

I had a Vertibird land on me yesterday!

Damn thing got shot down by a large group of Muties down on the south part of the map. The Brotherhood thought they would fly in and lay the smackdown. The trouble was the muties were packing even more serious firepower. The Vertibird spun around in the air in loops and then crash straight into the hill where I was watching.

It landed right on top of me and I lost 85% of my health. Lol.

**

I have just started playing with the Power Armor. Beth did it really well and the whole thing feels great. Really nice to be able to mix and match the sets and put different paint jobs. Have not tried the jet packs yet, but it sounds very cool. Took a journey into the Glowing Sea and finally found Virgil.

This is fantastic! Awesome! I would love to have seen this on a vid! But what makes it even greater - you did lose health by it landing on you! In FO3, I don't remember ever losing health when hit by crashing copters, and in fact my character walked right through them as if clipping was toggled.

Getting injured feels so much more realistic!

Vertibirds are constantly getting shot down around me. They must have really low health or something because they seem to just drop out of the sky when anything so much as glances at them. It looks really cool though.

----

Alice has been adventuring with companions recently.

First was Piper, the journalist from Diamond City. She and Alice became best friends almost immediately. They both like helping people, and talking their way out of tricky situations. As a character, Piper is pretty interesting. She really is just trying to help people, and Alice was happy for her to tag along.

Then we met Cait, the cage fighter from The Combat Zone. At first Alice wasn't sure about her since Cait just likes fighting, drugs and alcohol. After a while though we learned a bit about her backstory and we started to like her more, then we did her personal quest in which she asks you to help cure her drug addictions. Long story short, Alice now gets the Lover's Embrace xp bonus whenever she sleeps in a bed with Cait nearby

I thought Piper was beautiful, if I'm thinking of the right NPC - would have liked to be able to get that face on my character, lol.

Got a bit further in the Main Quest today. Visited the Institute, decided to side with the Brotherhood, kind of regret it. The Brotherhood seemed great at first, but now they're all "you need to kill everyone else just in case they stand in our way later on.". Feels like the New Vegas MQ all over again.

And of course I forgot to save the game earlier so I can't go back. Alice is just going to power through this last bit then we'll have to start aaaaalll over again. Dear oh dear. Having to rebuild my settlement again is not going to be fun.

What level were you when you did this?

I journeyed down south with Cait but the Gunners and those droids kept kicking my butt. They have a very damaging laser blast that shoots out of their head. Lol. I was only level 13 and I think the droids were level 22 or something. I told Cait to just 'deal with it' and decided to go back to the Vault later.


Shame about the Brotherhood, Hazmick. Avoiding the quests until a bit further in has always been my plan in Beth games. I am avoiding Minuteman at the moment for the same reason. Having raiders attack my base and destroy things would drive me insane.


**

And for people new to the game there is a root cellar in the rear yard of one of the houses in Sanctuary. Perfect for a character that is going to avoid the MQ and settlement building, and play as a smuggler type. It is a really tiny home base with only a bed and some shelving. I have placed an item in the storage chest to see whether it resets.

I think I was about level 50 or 51. The only things in the game I have serious trouble with are followers of Atom and their gamma guns. +99 rads per shot, and it's an automatic weapon? nope nope nope nope get me out of here. Those Assault Droids you're on about are tough too, especially that laser beam attack they can do. Their arms are the weak points - just shoot them off and most robots set on fire.

You'll know when the time comes to make a choice. You visit Virgil for a second time and get a quest objective to build something, and optional objectives to ask for help from each faction. I should have saved the game then but I wasn't paying attention

Ah, okay, that makes sense. I plan to head back there once I level up a bit. The Mirelurk kings nail me at low level in the south part of the map so I should just relax and let the character level up.

+99 rads per shot. Wow, that sounds crazy!

I have also worked out the whole OneDrive-UpStudio thing. Thanks for that. I have just realized that I need gold to share things to OneDrive. I have let my gold slip as I mostly play Beth games and use the Live only for downloads.

You got 99 problems and the rads are all of them...

Well that, as they say, is that. 5 days, 4 hours, 56 minutes of play time and Alice has finished the main quest.

The ending was suitably exciting, with plenty of shooting and running and lasers. The Brotherhood of Steel final mission is reminiscent of Fallout 3. You rebuild Liberty Prime and take him for a walkabout through the city. It was pretty cool, with synths teleporting in and super mutants getting involved. Watching a giant robot pick up and throw a Super Mutant Behemoth like a ragdoll was fantastic. Fighting alongside the Brotherhood soldiers was great, and it really felt like a battle.

It all ends with a big nuclear explosion and a 'War, war never changes' thing. You get to continue playing afterwards though which is nice. The Brotherhood give you some new power armor, complete with jetpack, to go along with your promotion.


Now Alice is doing it all over again. We won't be touching the main quest at all this time. Just going to focus on settlement building and exploring. I have a save game 40 minutes into the game, which is just before you leave Vault 111. I tweaked Alice's SPECIAL stats and made some very minor physical appearance changes. The worst thing about starting again is that she doesn't have her nice haircut anymore, so the first order of business is to find a hairdresser.

Note: some hairstyles aren't available in the character creation but are available from hairdressers as soon as you leave the Vault.

Cool! hazmick first out to finish Fallout 4 at chorrol!!


I´m very surprised how people talk about its ending being so close to Fallout 3. To me it sounds like they should have come up with a new thing instead of using the very same formula, albeit with a little sprinkling on top.

I liked it. It was exactly what you'd expect from the Brotherhood of Steel what with their love of technology and killing stuff.

I'd like to see how the other factions do things differently, especially the Institute since they're the 'bad guys'.

Different endings then, eh?



There. That´s as much British/Canadian as I´ll ever get

Congrats on beating the game, hazmick! I assume 5 days playing wasn't just the MQ but the BoS quest line and some side quests/exploring as well? I've got 25hrs in and I've only just met Nick Valentine!

Thanks Yeah most of my time was spent exploring and settlement building. The settlement stuff is so addictive and I just get absorbed in it for hours.

Yeah, I was not happy at all with the end of the main questline in FO4. It was like the Tenpenny quest, where no decision was satisfactory and anything you did left you feeling disgusted.







Wow, how did I miss this? I really like that they have added the ability to have relationships; and you don't have to be "mourning" the wife from 200 years ago for the rest of the game! Awesome!







I saw this cellar in a vid a couple weeks ago, the guy was doing a series of "Looting" vids where he shows all the secret places - there is also a cave under Sanctuary with some mole rats in it and a fusion core (but you can't live in it, there are respawning mole rats and nuclear waste rads in there).









HOLY CRAP !!!!








I was glad to see Liberty Prime again, kind of. I mean, it felt like a gratuitous thing by Bethesda, but I'm probably just being cynical about that.










In my opinion, it wasn't close enough to the Fallout classic ending; and had no sprinklings on top either. I think it was a thoroughly diluted version of how Fallout classically ends, and the only thing they seem to have hung onto from it is the "War, War never changes" line - but they played it so many times in game that it became eye-rolling - like in the beginning when the guy is looking at himself in the facegen mirror and says "War, war never changes" as he is looking at himself in the mirror - and that is before the war!

So - truthfully, I am not a fan of the main questline in FO4; but I would like to build settlements and explore in it; and try out the new toys like jet packs/etc.