Okay, the expansion pack has arrived.

Robots. Lots and lots of 'em. You fights 'em. You crafts 'em. Loads of fun.

For any interested, Steam just put the game on sale for 33 percent off. So the current price is $40.19.

There ya go folks! Thanks, Oldman

Okay, at that price the game is really worth it.

So, the expansions. All of a sudden my settlements are being attacked by higher level enemies, which means that some of the newer ones are in real trouble if I don't get to them in time. But never fear, I have several new companions, and they are all of the metal variety and can hold their own. And the nice thing about the crafted robots is that you can send them to settlements as protection.

So far, Fuzzface is looking after County Crossing and Lilly Laser, who is pink, looks after Finch Farm.

Sounds like fun. I took the day off today. We completed most of our fire clean up and now I'm going to start a new game of Fallout 4, now that I've got a slightly better grip on the rules and operation. Although, I'll probably spend most of the day building a settlement, you were right, it is calming.

Trail, fire cleanup sounds ominous. Did I miss something?

Be warned. Once you activate the Automatron Quest, you'd better be really good with your weapon of choice. And your settlements had better be well-protected. Otherwise...

Somehow I've managed to lose my wonderful, wonderful combat rifle with damage of 178 and now have a combat rifle that only does 154 damage. No idea where it could be. I might have sold it by mistake or even (gulp) trashed it into components. Dang. I've been meaning to rename it, and now it's too late.

Check out Trail's thread in Mixed Bag here.

Yeah, we had a very close call. Here's the thread over at mixed bag Apartment Building Fire


I'm really tempted to go for the season pass for all the DLC. Seems like they are going to have add ons a plenty. I hope they are all quality ones. This last one with the robots sound awesome. I like the '60's sci-fi ad slick for it too, looks like a number of pulp novels I've read. They've really put a lot into the art and appearance of this release. I'm in the middle of rebuilding the Red Rocket "Fortress of Solitude" so I have a good secure joint to store all my stuff. Then I'll move over to Sanctuary Hills and set them up.

Hey, speaking of ol' Mama Murphy, I had a thought about her. You know how you mentioned she ended up OD'ing on Jet? I wonder if you were to put her in Power Armor that had the Blood Cleansing enhancement if it would stop that from happening. Hmmmmm, the thought of Mama Murphy banging around in Power Armor is somewhat terrifying I know, but might be fun to try

Automatron is great. New companion and new enemies, new crafting abilities.

I've been looking at people's settlements on line, and whoa! Some of them are amazing. Mine are just little sandcastles in comparison. I think I'll select a smaller number of locations and make everyone at the rattier settlements move to the larger ones, and really build those few places to the max.

I was checking out the Nexus forums and a couple others and saw that there are now quite a few mods that have come out for settlement building. That's probably what a lot of the really deluxe settlements are using. It took me a solid three days of junk gathering to do the first iteration of the Red Rocket fortress. From the ones I've seen on line, they are either using mods or engaging "god mode" to give them an infinite supply of basic building materials.

I just finished Red Rocket on this run through and was pretty conservative with Sanctuary this go around because I used up a ton of wood and steel at the Rocket. Still working on it, need to go on some more junk runs before it's officially open.

Trail, that fire must have terrifying. Is your family okay? Your stuff? I used to manage a portfolio of rental buildings and apartment fires were the very worst emergency to deal with, not just because of expensive damage, but also because tenants were freaked and had to leave their homes and belongings for days or even weeks. It was the one emergency that would get me out bed and into my car in the middle of the night.

So, I am rebuilding Castle's ramparts. It's a pretty hokey attempt, but it will do the job and I'll keep working on it from time to time. I really do think I'll shut down some of the smaller settlements now that I know how to relocate my settlers. That way I can reclaim a lot of the building materials. I've already decided not to develop Jamaica Plain and a couple of others and have scrapped them already. I figure I'll have Sanctuary, Red Rocket, Sentinel Island, Warwick, Nordhagen, and a couple of other larger places. Tenpines is doing fine so I'll leave them be. I'm not decided on Croft Manor yet. I've built it, but meh. maybe I'll turn off the beacon and let it just be small from now on.

Yes, it was. The worst part was I had just sat down to start a new game of Fallout 4 when the knock on the door came, seriously. Thanks for asking - We are fine albeit very worn out and our stuff is OK, although quite smelly. We've been laundering and taking stuff to the dry cleaners since last Thursday. Cleaning the carpets had to wait due to the utilities being sketchy. We've basically been apartment camping for the last couple days, but I'm somewhat of a survivalist and we were fine. Actually, both the police and firemen were pretty impressed that we were the only ones who came out of the building with "go-bags." Although I sort of blew my preparedness image because I had to run back into the building because I forgot my phone Nice thing is that the power seems to be great during the evening, probably because they aren't tripping breakers while gutting the other building at that time. It gives me a chance to game out for awhile to relieve some stress.

Speaking of survival, I don't know if it's because I'm being more gusty in the foes I take on or if some update changed the difficulty levels, but my new character is getting demolished an awful lot this go round. It may be that I didn't adventure quite so far out in the early levels during my first game start. I'm staying away from Mutants for awhile, because I keep running into Legendary Mutant Suiciders, which is like trying to stop an atomic freight train armed with a BB gun. You're right about the complaining settlers, they can really get on your nerves after awhile, especially when you've spent the better part of the evening making their place about as comfy a wasteland getaway can be.

I seem to be running into high level opponents a lot, too, especially at Somerville Place, where every single Supermutant is a Brute level or higher, and they almost wiped out my fledgling community the very first time I had to defend it. Dead settlers lying around is not good for morale.

So - I've just had a head-smacking moment. As I reinforced Castle, I realized I have been going about this all wrong. I've been building in the centre of the settlements and trying to conjure up enough supplies to build junk fences around the perimeter. Duh. The buildings themselves should be the walls that keep out the enemy. It takes up a lot more wood and steel, but now I'm building around the edges and leaving the centre clear. That way, I don't need to build nearly as many armaments and can concentrate on the gate area instead. I'm also building tunnels at the gate using concrete shack foundations, so the enemies have to enter single-file, leaving them totally vulnerable.

LOL! Great minds think alike Hagatha! I had the same epiphany while rebuilding my red rocket fortress of solitude quite accidently. I decided to place the generators on the roof of the service station and build up around the perimeter, but only because I thought it would offer a more quiet place to sleep . Unfortunately, that technique doesn't seem as easy with the really small hole in the wall settlements that are situated on uneven ground. I really have to start checking on the mods that are available. It just doesn't make sense that you can't horizontally angle a wall or have half and quarter walls that are more flexible with their placement. I always end up layering items to close up holes on hill landscapes and it wastes material resources. I really like building up the settlement located at the drive-in. So much even land and that big screen makes for a great elevated security point. I have to admit, I do cheat a bit with that one. The big stinking cesspool in the middle of the parking lot gets the console Disable command to boot it on out of there and I convert it to a nice cooking/fire pit.

I use the shack foundations to build up a hill. They seem to be far more flexible in terms of placement. You can't click them together, but they still provide a less gap-prone perimeter.

Also, the shack bridges are useful for creating a high perimeter that you can place armaments on. If you place them just right, nobody can get through.

EDIT: Oh wait -- you have a command that gets rid of junk?

I used a water purifier in the pool at the Starlight. Must be one helluva purifier to get rid of the nuclear waste, but hey, it gives me those nice little cans of pure water.

I need that for my house

Only if it's a not a "non ID item" in other words something that's been rendered with the background and unfortunately that can include trees, bushes, plywood scraps and so on. Just go into the console, click on the item you want to get rid of, type the word disable and hit enter. If you disappear something you didn't mean to do (like the green border that appears when you are in Workshop mode, boy did that freak me out ) you just type enable and hit enter. SAVE BEFORE USING THAT COMMAND!!!! See, for some unknown reason, things like the glow from the light, fog, smoke, the entire north side of the landscape can sometimes have a piece if itself in front of the junk, puddle or whatever you want to go away. You won't know it until you do the above action. It's generally safe to do to items that are right out in the open, but always, always save before hand just in case.

I just discovered those shack foundations. Didn't even know how to use them at first, but because of those, Grey Gardens is an impenetrable fortress. I've used up every bit of concrete on the planet, but meh, the re-spawn time on this game seems a lot quicker than past Bethesda games. I might have to redo some of the Red Rocket fortress now. Nothing like 8 feet of concrete between you and your enemies I always say!

You know, the game is pretty buggy. One of my settlements was allegedly under attack. I ported over there, heard shooting, and ran around like a maniac looking for the Supermutants. The battle stopped before I could find a single enemy and I failed the quest. However, a search of the entire area proved that there was not one single enemy anywhere near the place. The only casualty was a settler who was apparently a synth, since she had a synth component. Now my once-happy settlement is grumpy and no amount of building and upgrading seems to help. Seems grossly unfair.

In my last game two settlements became unhappy for no apparent reason, the ingrates, and I ended up scrapping most of their stuff. I mean, seriously, I spend hours and hours running around building a safe place INSTEAD OF LOOKING FOR MY SON, and they complain? Pfft. Watch the walls come down, then, and see how you like it.

Wouldn't life be great if it were like games? Where you can delete inconvenient stuff (and, ahem, people) and reload when you've really, truly screwed up? I could have used that a few times over the last few years.

Absolutely!

Noooo, really? Sorry, couldn't resist. Yep, I was in the middle of a Minuteman quest when some settler out of nowhere stops me and asks if I can retrieve his son from Raiders. Being the do-gooder that I am, I accepted the quest and went to finish the Minuteman quest. Right as I was on my way to do the latter, I got the message, "Quest Failed." So, I went back to an earlier save, prior to starting the minuteman mission, fast traveled near the location of the settler's son and bang, "Quest Failed." No matter what, I couldn't go back to complete the quest. So, I'm just taking on the attitude of you win some, you lose some.

Speaking of saves, that's another gripe of mine. I can't figure out the save time adjustments. No matter how I change the settings it keeps saving like every 10 minutes and every time I page through the pip-boy menus. I end up deleting like 20 saves after every quest. errgh.

All that said, I've passed the 150 hour mark.

I hadn't noticed the saves, but I do see that the game seems to always have saved just before I've done something really bone-headed -- which is a good thing, since I keep forgetting that my new character is only level 30, not 70.

Also came across a glitch in Sanctuary Hills. I've been getting random warnings that they have no beds, power, water and so on. Once I fast travel to the settlement everything shows as normal. After researching, apparently it's related to saving in and fast traveling from settlements that are well built up. Possibly a loading side effect from using that settlement exploit. It won't happen if you walk a fair distance away from the settlement before saving or fast traveling. Also, discovered that you can build on part of the bridge that goes over Grey's Garden after Raiders used it to attack the settlement.

Glitches

OMG, OMG, OMG, OMG... LOL! I promise to get back on track, but WOW, one of the contractors I work with only had a six month gig here and is now returning to India. He unloaded the stuff he bought for his apartment for really cheap including a 40" 1080p LED TV...giggle...it's now my monitor, I'm giddy. My last monitor gave up the ghost and I had been using an older 720p 21" for my monitor and had planned on purchasing a better HD one, but he sold this one to me for less than I would have paid for a regular monitor. I...can't...stop...smiling.


OK, back to our regularly scheduled Fallout 4 program. I found another cool weapon, this one was loot, but I can't remember if I got it off a scavenger or a raider or gunner because I was in a huge battle and just kept shooting, looting, shooting, looting, running, crying, shooting LOL. Anyways, it's a combat Plasma shotgun, it does the usual ballistic damage plus extra energy damage AND can gooify your opponent like a Plasma Gun. I just upgraded the receiver, barrel and stock and WOW, does it do a number on bad guys. Makes bloat flies disappear. I named it, The Beast.