SallyNasty's Game Club - Fallout 4! Open format for the month of January! Game on!

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Hey gang, new game incoming - this time with some new guidelines!

But first - these are the *usual* guidelines for these playthroughs -

1. Games should be at least 1 calendar year old. That makes it easy to find games that are either a) on most people's piles or b) cheap to pick up(I am thinking 10-15 bucks max).
2. Games should be either episodic or broken up into easily agreed upon stopping points (i.e. achievement for ch.1 or reaching certain checkpoint). I would like it to be about an hour to an hour and a half for each "assigned" session, no more than 5-6 hours a week needed to participate.
3. Games shouldn't be more than 20 hours.
4. No console exclusives. Has to be on Microsoft/Playstation/PC platforms.

That said, for this month we are going to try a wide open playthrough, with no content gated or asked to be left unspoiled except the ending of the game! We will save the end-state for discussion at the end of the month and compare notes about the decisions we all made throughout the month:)

Fallout is one of those gamer darling franchises, with many of us cutting our teeth on the old Interplay games. Fallout 3 took that old recipe of top down explorefest(with a new dev on the IP) and put it into first-person to great success. Followed up by a fast sequel(New Vegas), it seemed that a lot of people were starting to get tired of the bleakness of the apocalypse. Fallout 4 looks to address that with its new locale(Boston!) and new mechanics(we get to actually rebuild!). I have had this one on my pile for a while and I am really excited to do a long concurrent community playthrough to start us off in 2017. Dust off your pip-boy and head on over to the character generator - let's rebuild together!

I truly hope you will play along this month!

In like radioactive Flynn.

Wow that's ambitious but I'm in. I have started more than 7 characters but always got distracted. Will try to finish this time.

What kind of characters are you guys going to play? I have two ideas: either quiet housewife turned brutal sniper killer after the horror of what happens in the early game, or charismatic colonial leader. May even name him Alexander.

I will probably play a science nerd with lockpick skills:) I am playing on easy so I am not worrying about min/maxing the combat stuff, ha!

I'm in. Nuka Colas are in the fridge.

I'm in.

I decided to keep a character journal in a physical notebook. I typed up the first entry here. It's long, since I didn't think of the idea until like 60 hours in.

Happy New Year! I am excited to get this one started.

Since I was looking at the pile I generated in the last two sales and trying to decide what to play next, Fallout 4 season pass content it is! (had already 1k'd the base when it came out).

First up: Automaton

Stayed up late last night to kick this off. Fired it up and proceeded to spend a good hour or so working on the look of my character before falling asleep. I vaguely remember just before nodding off I wasn't happy with how the stylings had gone, so after all that I'll probably start again.

(I had gone with vaguely modelling on my RL self... But now I think am going to go for a right scarred up, squat ugler, maybe give them a max charisma roguish charm later)

Always do this, if there's an option for in depth character creation i'll sink a load of time in before even get to the game!

I spent a healthy chunk of time in the character creator, too. I took one of the premade faces and then spent a lot of time making her look less like a model and more like someone who lives in a wasteland. I took off her makeup, added some sunburn, added some scars and warts and pimples, and gave her a more sensible haircut. It made the pre-war part of the game look a little odd, but she fits right into the Commonwealth.

I've put maybe three hours into this so far, now, and I think I'm slowly getting the hang of it. As someone who played the first two Fallout games but not any of the sequels, I found the way SPECIAL and perks are used in this game to be a little confusing. It doesn't help that the UI for the perk menu isn't too hot.

I think I'm going to need to carve this game up into more manageable pieces. I don't know if that means focusing on special quest lines or restricting myself to just a part of the map, but I've been gotten overwhelmed in the early game with all the places to go and things to do. Alternatively, I could just say screw questing and focus on something like gathering materials for weapon and armor mods.

I am about 4 hours in and am really enjoying it. They added what I have found to be missing from fallout 3 - hope. Very much enjoying then base building and community organizing. This is a perfect start to 2017.

I find it really distracting that this is all supposed to take place 200 years after the war. I doubt most of what's there would still be standing after that long.

Well they did have a couple of generations of prosperity when presumably new materials were created. Also flying robots.

Bubblefuzz wrote:

Stayed up late last night to kick this off. Fired it up and proceeded to spend a good hour or so working on the look of my character before falling asleep. I vaguely remember just before nodding off I wasn't happy with how the stylings had gone, so after all that I'll probably start again.

(I had gone with vaguely modelling on my RL self... But now I think am going to go for a right scarred up, squat ugler, maybe give them a max charisma roguish charm later)

Always do this, if there's an option for in depth character creation i'll sink a load of time in before even get to the game!

tip:

Spoiler:

Don't boost any stat higher than 9 using points. Every S.P.E.C.I.A.L stat has an associated bobblehead which gives you +1 to that stat.

Also, go back to your house when you leave the vault and search around you son's crib. there is a useful thing there.

ClockworkHouse wrote:

I think I'm going to need to carve this game up into more manageable pieces.

It turns out that there's a fairly easy way to do this. The old highway system splits the world up into eight or nine pieces. I don't know if an unmarked map of the world is a spoiler, but you can see what I'm talking about with this map here:

Spoiler:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/YVZk4jB.jpg)

The thick white lines are the highway, and they break the map up into sections. For the time being, I've been kicking around in the northwest section of the map where you start the game, and it's been helpful for me to play with a rule to not cross the highway.

Garden Ninja wrote:

tip

Thanks. Went average across the board in the end, slight emphasis on strength / endurance / intelligence.

I finally got through character creation last night! Difficult to make as gopping as I wanted, but the odd deformed ear, pitted, burned and scarred - suitably post apocalyptic. Not out of the vault just yet.

Edit: I edited on leaving the vault. Roguish charmer back on. Heavy on the charisma (8 - for now, ta GN). Into Concord.

Ooooohhhh just found this topic. I picked up FO4 during the Xbox Black Friday sale. I have played about 5 minutes of New Vegas and no other FO titles.

I had set a goal to play through the Mass Effect franchise (I have only played about half of ME1) by the end of April this year, but that may have to be shifted back so that I can participate here.

Yeah, I think I am in!

/plays Shipping Up To Boston
//stops doing that, it's annoying

ClockworkHouse wrote:
ClockworkHouse wrote:

I think I'm going to need to carve this game up into more manageable pieces.

It turns out that there's a fairly easy way to do this. The old highway system splits the world up into eight or nine pieces. I don't know if an unmarked map of the world is a spoiler, but you can see what I'm talking about with this map here:

Spoiler:

IMAGE(http://i.imgur.com/YVZk4jB.jpg)

The thick white lines are the highway, and they break the map up into sections. For the time being, I've been kicking around in the northwest section of the map where you start the game, and it's been helpful for me to play with a rule to not cross the highway.

To cross the highway, you need to hold my hand.

Do you mind? I crossed the highway once and got blown up by an RPG.

I need to find some circuits. Any tips on where to find a bunch early in game?

There's a satellite facility to the east of Sanctuary and south of the Robotics Junk Yard that has some of them inside. There's a fair number of raiders there, but it's doable early on.

Thanks!

Turret usually have a circuit board also, although they are super plentiful in the early game.

I have found one military grade circuit and that is it, grr.

Heh, as I figured... Started the game last night and played for about 2 hours or so. I have gone from house to house in Sanctuary collecting junk and some goodies. That's it.

At this rate I may get to Concord by the end of the month.

I tried to get started last night, but got sidelined with minor FOMO worries about mods. Anyone have recommendations for essential mods to enhance the experience on PC? Not looking to add a bunch of complex crafting or anything, but something like the Full Dialogue Interface seems like an obvious improvement to an in-game annoyance.

I started this up today and I'm having a beast of a time surviving Lexington. I have some extra fusion cores so I might just take my power armor through there.

I need to really do some main questing but I just can't stop exploring.

I've created two characters but am now trying to decide which one I want to play through the month. First one is based off Jessica Jones (even created a close likeness). She has super strength and fights bare fisted with heavy weapon as back up. My other character I'm calling Hamilton - high intel and charisma and decent pistol skills but crap stats otherwise. Would love some advice about which to make my main. If I go one way I'm going to be hard hitting in combat but anti social and useless for hacking or building settlements. If I go the other I will be able be a decent leader and hacker but sucky at combat. (Though hopefully my companions and killer robot will make up the difference). I bounced off Fallout before when I got bored with my "Archer" sniper so having an interesting character this time around is very important to me.

SallyNasty wrote:

I need to really do some main questing but I just can't stop exploring.

Why, when there are so many little crafting bits to find and pocket?

Last night got to start demolishing stuff and rebuilding. I may be here a while.

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