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Completed Let's ironman Fallout 2!

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
Joined
Mar 1, 2012
Messages
2,052
For all its derpy glory, boundless anger and misleaded edginess, the Codex lacks one quintessential thing for a forum like that - an ironman LP of fallout 2. There is a couple of failed attempts, but that's it. Unacceptable!

To absolve this shameful sin of Codexia, I start this LP. Unlike with my other one, there won't be any LARPing, but I guess I'll compensate for that with a good dose of a gameplay & inner mechanics analysis, the same way I did it with Might & Magics.

Another thing to notice is that I will be using restoration project patch with the companion control option enabled (because the game is much more fun that way), but I'll try not to abuse it too much. I also won't be using the latest version - couldn't have been bothered to reinstall my Fallout 2 for the sake of upgrade, besides, it's not like it adds anything truly significant.

KK, let's go.

Part I: how to have some real fun with fallout 2



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This build will require some explanation, I think. And I bet that's not something you have expected to see.

First, traits. Gifted - yeah, munchkin, overpowered, cheese, popamole, broken, unfair, whatever. But see, I play F2 only in ironman mode and my last successful runs were spent without it, so I took it for a change of pace, just to remember how cool can it be. Besides, I think I've balanced it out with other rather questionable decisions.

Fast shot - well, at this point I'm kinda tired from all the aiming, also, my favorite weapons in the game work better with fast shot. This is my last run of fallout 2 (I hope), so I'm doing it with all the stuff I love it for (another reason for gifted, btw).

Second, stats.

S 5 is a point of convenience. Just 3 is enough for all my needs, but I had 2 extra points to put somewhere and I chose strength - less hassle with dragging all the fat loot around and our early game shooting suffers no penalties.

P 9 - would've put 10 if there were no modules and drugs in this game. Perception 9 makes us extremely good at shooting, but the most important part of it is combat sequence. Having a high combat priority is one of the best escape mechanisms in Fallout and, well, I don't want to die to some random robbers on my road to Vault City.

E 2 sounds stupid, right? I mean, it's an ironman game, you have to be survivable! That's absolutely true, but survivability gain from endurance just isn't enough to compensate for the dearth of investment. Let's say we allocate 4 more points here - 4 freaking points! By the level 10, it'll give us what, ~25 extra hp? And that's what, 2 more hits from a hunting rifle? Or half of an average critical hit? Yeah, that's a freaking lot of survivability. In this game, you just don't die from average incoming fire (unless you're not cautious or you're fucked up by a bad random encounter), you die from humongous, devastating crits (or, at the very least, lucky burst shots). And no amount of health will protect you from those - one of my previous popes had 400+ hps at level 40, and everything was majestic until a 700 hp enclave turret crit. That wasn't fun, but the lesson is simple - you don't survive by enduring hits, you survive by not letting them happen. And while a hundred or two of hp bloat will never hurt, there are better ways of getting them than EN.

C 2 - because 1 follower is all we need. Ah, poor, poor charisma, no one likes you. Actually, in RP and with manually controlled followers charisma is quite useful and you can justify taking 6 or even 8, but, to be honest, that makes the game too easy. And, if we're unlucky, we risk running out of good companions - that's commonplace in ironman runs, actually.

I 10 - predictable. Skill points are awesome and nothing can change that. We'll need lots of them and fast to survive through the early game.

A 9 - actually, buffout is really good so that "A 10 for everyone" notion is a bit of overstatement. You can do well with 8 or even 6, just hoard those magical green pills for important fights. And, since it's the restoration project, we can subtract and additional point here.

L 10 - that's for our hopeful late game, where we will snipe the living (and, in some cases, mechanized) crap out of everyone.

The way we could've done it without gifted, fyi: S 3 (5 is just for convenience), P 7 (kamikaze trait will compensate for the loss of sequence and accuracy is compensated by all those extra skill points), E 2 (2 is enough) C 1 (screw that second point - sunglasses or mentat will save us), I 10 (can't be the other way), A 7 (I'll repeat, buffout is awesome, steroid abuse is just what you need to complement your post-nuclear experience), L 8 (let's go risky with the hubbologist zeta-scan). Actually, that even leaves us 2 extra points to distribute - either no buffout abuse or no zeta-scan, whichever you prefer.

Third, skills.

Yeah, no combat tags in this one. Why? Well, since we don't need to perform aimed eye shots, we don't need our combat skills to be extraordinarily high, just a hundred or so will suffice in the beginning. And level is easily reached via books and teachers - no big skill investment needed. Late game, yeah, we'll need to sink some points in them, but that's when skill points become plentiful, if not outright useless, so we won't mind it then.

Therefore, we'll invest all our tags into XP-netting skills. As you can see, our build is absolutely greedy - we'll be devastating past level 20, but extremely squishy and meek until we reach that point. And, well, increased xp gain allows us to get there much faster. Speech is obvious - it allows us to finish lots of quests and that's your main source of experience in early game. Doctor & Lockpicking also shouldn't be hard to grasp - doctors adds 150 xp reward to almost each battle we participate in. And that sums up fast - we're gonna be taking hundreds of battles, after all. Lockpick adds ~1k-1.5 xp reward to each city we'll visit - yeah, I'm totally gonna lock all those open doors. Bad for our game enjoyment, but good for our survivability.

Yeah, that was a long intro.

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Temple of trials. Game difficulty is hard, btw - maximum glory for codexia.

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I'd love to skip it - I'm sure we all are tired of it beyond any measure. But I need those 25 ant xps, so it is unavoidable.

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At least neither ants nor scorpions have a chance to kill us, but we're not against them hitting them once or twice so we put those healing skills to use.

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Then it's the trapped room. Disarm skill 8 means 8% to disarm any particular trap here - 12.5 attempts per trap on the average.

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Boy, that's gonna be fun.

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For you, it's just another screenshot, but for me... It was almost a martyrdom. At least this crap is over.

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And we're rewarded with quick level 2 which was the point of our suffering.

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We invest into lockpicking first as, once we'll visit Klamath and Den, it will pay for itself rather quickly.

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It would've been hilarious if it exploded in our hands, erasing our many efforts, but no, we're not that unlucky.

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We kick all the remaining pests...

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And finish the whole ordeal diplomatically - thankfully, just tagging your speech is enough to do so.

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The vault suit is ours. It's only beginning, however.

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Performing errands for village idiots is hardly our idea of decent pastime, but what can we do?

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No chatting with you, missy - I've heard your blabber way too many times to enjoy it.

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I'll open up your chest, though - yay, the lockpick investment begins to pay up! Not really, lol.

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I try ripping the plants from the ground, but it goes awfully.

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Won't mind against having some help in that department.

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We're almost dead after killing the first one, but at least we've managed to do it. And it gives us plenty of room to use the healing skills.

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Patching ourselves up, we engage into another long, tedious and painful combat. We even have to take a break from it...

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But, eventually, the victory is ours.

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More pointless tasks for brainless kids.

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Those geckos are great xp fodder, though.

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We need to kite them for a lo-o-ong time, however.

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Yet, they can't ever reach us so it's zero problem. We can even afford to receive a bite or two - performing a healing self-experiments is key to enlightenment, it seems.

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End the combat and we're level 3. Yeah, level 3 in Arroyo - the joys of grinding. And we have a perk to gain. Valid choices here are:

Awareness - cute, but I've played the game too much so I know pretty much everything.

Cautious Nature - well, pretty much, not everything. Theoretically, cautious nature is cool for the ironman builds - it raises up your perception to determine your random encounter placement and, apparently, it can take perception above 10. Sole problem is, who the hell knows exactly how does that work? If I knew it'd guarantee extra 3 hex away from the enemies, that'd be an awesome, awesome perk. But I don't and I'm too lazy to perform an extensive testing, so we'll let that remain a mystery.

Earlier Sequence - late-game aimed. Yeah, we have better sequence than all of the early game enemies, but late game even 10 PE won't be enough, so having one of these isn't a bad idea.

Here and Now - kinda waste, but if we hold until level 5 and take it, it's 5k bonus XP. That's a lot for an ironman char.

Quick Pockets - with fast shot we're gonna use often reloaded weapons, so this lil' puppy will save us lots of AP in the late game.

Thief - that's, like, 25 extra skillpoints for us (because lockpick is tagged and thievery is useless in ironman). Almost an extra level - not bad.

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I go with the thief 'cause, well, late game rewards are awesome, but we've already had our share of greed, and now we need some guarantees of said stage ever coming. Skillpoints go into speech - I'll need it high pretty soon.

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We whack the remaining geckos...

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And guide the dumb dog to its similarly mentally gifted owner.

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One last thing to do here - let's secure ourselves a sharpened spear.

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Can't be bothered to do her chores so I just steal it - random chance is on our side.

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Klamath. No troubles while getting here.

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First and foremost, we initiate the total lockdown of this place, picking on every door possible. Trap in Vic's house hurts, but let's look at it positively - it's hundred extra xp from doctor usage.

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In midst of it, we gather some quest clues...

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And loot all the junk that's available in this city (including contents of Duntons' shelves).

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Now that everything is locked up (yeah, we fix the doors in the open position) and cleaned of valuables, we move on to the questing part.

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We learn about one local problem...

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And recruit ourselves...

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One crazy tribesman. Welcome aboard, Sulik. You're better than ever when manual control option is enabled.

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Let's make a quick test drive of him in this easy quest.

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One benefit of restoration project control option is that it allows you to see full stats of your party. As you can see, Sulik has some crazy stuff - inject him with psycho and he's maxed up, basically. One downside of the system, however, is that your tags and perks transfer to your party, making them "slightly" better than they're supposed to be. So if, for example, we'd tagged unarmed, this would've propelled Sulik's already formidable 90% into the bonkers ~150 territory. That's the other reason why I have avoided combat tags - so I won't feel dirty when using NPCs.

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First scorpion is easily dispatched, but hey! I could've done it myself.

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After gathering additional evidence...

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We move to the real targets here - Duntons. We learn all we need about their cattle rustling...

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Then we proceed to kill them.

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Well, we - Sulik proceeds while Pope runs around like crazy. Those two hits hurt, but they're the reason we've initiated the fight - we could've resolved this thing peacefully, but we wouldn't get spiked brass knuckles that way.

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Then Sulik mops up scorpions while Pope cheers him up from the safe distance. Ah, the heroics of adventuring...

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Well, the bonehead needs to earn his pay, after all.

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Back to city. We learn of another quest available...

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And, thanks to the patch, we resolve the cattle rustling situation.

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300 extra xps won't hurt. Also, this brought us quite a discount in this shop so we can trade lots of junk for a nifty leather armor. I'm not getting near to any kind of serious combat, but at least weak mobs won't do 20 dmg in one round to us. I hope.

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I also read guns & bullets - considering our low combat skills, reading enough of these is imperative.

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Usually, I don't like to take Sullivan's training this early...

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But lack of aimed shots makes really high unarmed combat pointless for us and we gain a level out of it.

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Soon we'll travel to Den and speech is kinda needed there.

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Let's finish some local business before that.

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With his stunted movement, this mr. Handy is as easy an opponent as he ever was.

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We also get ourselves some rubber boots...

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And hunt some rats. An entire building of them, actually.

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We kill more rats in the basement, however, we don't delve deep into it - it's less about danger and more about sharpened spear not being fast enough to kill those rats efficiently. And Pope can't hit shit, obviously. At least he stepped into rat shit quite a lot of times, I figure - maybe that'll compensate for it? Doubtful.

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On our journey to Den, we encounter Kaga. What an annoying bastard...

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At least in this first encounter, he's a pushover. Later on, he's a threat, actually, and a serious one, so we'll try to finish it here and now.

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We repeat the same strategy - Pope runs around like mad while Sulik picks them one by one.

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Once Kaga remains alone, we try to crit him into head, knock him out and then finish him. He has hundreds of HPs, though, so it's not easy.

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Besides, we're not lucky on crits, so once we do some damage to him, he runs away. There he is - in the leftmost part of the screen, slightly above the center, behind the trees. Better luck next time. And we'll need it.

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Den. And, since the word "den" contains the same letters that the word "end", that's where the first part ends. Yeah, I plan to do these in somewhat smaller (but, hopefully, more frequent) chunks than my M&M LPs.
 
Last edited:

Nevill

Arcane
Joined
Jun 6, 2009
Messages
11,211
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Ironman is the only way I can enjoy Fallout 2 now. You can do pull off some crazy things when you think your character is not going to live for long anyway. Like soloing the Wanamingo mine with nothing but a rusty knife at lvl3 (instant 5 levels!), or soloing both Dragon and Lo Pan by level 5 (and then the character gets killed by wolves on the way back from San-Francisco, because their bite goes even through the Power Armor), or meleeing the whole Bishop family to death in nothing more than a Leather Jacket. After 30 or so failed attempts I managed to finish the game as a melee Jinxed characted with 1 Luck, who had delivered the finishing blow to Frank Horrigan by an Impulse Rifle exploding in his hands, I kid you not. It makes for some crazy situations you usually do not get into during the regular game.

I commend your efforts, good sir. May the burst weapons always miss you. :)
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
1,935
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
Full companions control? FULL? I mean, you can use them in battle as your own character? I must download new version of RP NOW!

And great LP. As allways :salute: .
 

Zboj Lamignat

Arcane
Joined
Feb 15, 2012
Messages
5,505
I'd still leave LK at 6 and put these points into EN. EN is actually not that useless and with 6 (8) luck + sniper you'll be murdering the shit out of everyone anyway.
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
Joined
Mar 1, 2012
Messages
2,052
It makes for some crazy situations you usually do not get into during the regular game.

Absolutely. My personal two favourites from the past were killing an entire cave of random encounter SMG robbers with nothing but spear and escaping Bishop's casino after unintentionally angering him with a non-combat char.

However, I won't be as crazy in this one as I'm seriously trying to finish it.

I must download new version of RP NOW!

Actually, it has been there for ages - it's just not enabled by default, you have to activate it manually. But yeah, it incredibly revitalizes the game and it makes you reconsider the worth of Charisma and many previously useless companions. Like Lenny - yeah, he's still inept at combat, only now he can patch you up with stimpacks and super-stimpacks (and fittingly so). And that's just one example.

I'd still leave LK at 6 and put these points into EN. EN is actually not that useless and with 6 (8) luck + sniper you'll be murdering the shit out of everyone anyway.

But that would require us to take NCR zeta-scan, which isn't a guarantee. More like a coin flip. Besides, I perceive EN 2 as an additional challenge here.

KK, Part II: so you want to be a hero



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As we have conveniently arrived at night, we can initiate the ghost quest immediately.

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Then we head down to the RP area - den residential.

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After picking all locks here, we begin the orphanage quest line - yeah, I'm getting rid of those bloody thieving kids before exploring the Den fully. No chances for them to snipe my stuff. As for the quest itself - it's, uhhh... Nice concept, really, but horrible implementation - that basically sums up all of the new RP content. Still, it's not bad if you avoid reading quest texts, lol.

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East side of Den is our next destination.

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We bullshit our way into the church without even knowing why are we doing that - 200 more xps gained that way. Illogical, but pleasant.

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Reward for inspecting the crates remains the same, though.

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Then we have a long chat with Mom, discussing a fitting house for orphanage...

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Thief of ghost's locket...

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And errands we can perform here.

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Before we deliver Smitty's meal, we pick one more door...

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And it's level 5 for us. I ramp up doctor this time - now I'll have to use much less attempts to perform successful healing (and gain those 50 xps).

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The road to Smitty is long - we buy back the pendant on our way (while acting rather polite - no need to provoke thugs at this point)...

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We return it to the ghost, exorcising it...

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We visit some squatters, convincing them to help the Mom with an orphanage - a rather questionable idea, tbh, like, yeah, let's allow a bunch of drunkards and jet addicts to take care of the children, what can go wrong? Should've probably killed them all, but then, it's never too late...

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Dawn breaks and, finally, Smitty receives his supper.

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Erm, breakfast. Good that they don't have that "delivery in under 30 minutes or it's free" rule here. Still, he enjoys it so all is good, right?

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We put the bones of Anna to rest...

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And defile the rest of the graveyard. It's a post-nuclear world - quality goods are too rare and precious here to let them rot in the ground. Our main target here was this combat knife for Sulik - that's a great upgrade for him. Much better than his current sharpened spear.

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Then we resolve orphanage quest.

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Both parts of it, actually - you gain xp for setting it up and for telling this kid good news. The only thing is, it'll take a couple of days to clear the streets from those little thieves, so I decide to spend them...

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By going to Redding. Lockpicking rewards exploring new cities, obviously, so it's quite beneficial to cover as much ground in as little time as possible. On our way there we encounter a band of slavers, trying to capture some people.

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We're eager to help, but slavers are relatively well armed so it's only after they empty their ammo that we charge into fray. And by then all of the adult victims are dead.

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Well, kids, at least your parents are avenged and hey, we've just opened a brand new orphanage in den! What a lucky coincidence, eh? Cheer up - you'll have some nice company (of drunkards and addicts) there! Yeah, some heroes we are.

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We continue our epic streak with two quick escapes - avoiding a pack of rabid dogs...

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And a horde of golden geckos. At least we killed one of them before retreating.

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We take a short break to patch ourselves up, then we arrive to redding.

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One of the main local attractions in this pawn shop - it always has lots of cash in reserve and, while barter goods are always plentiful, actual cash is kinda sparse in fallout 2.

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Then we explore the city in our already usual manner - locking everything while loading ourselves with ill-gotten gains.

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After failing to save those parents & running away from trivial encounters, we reignite our fighting spirit by doing one of the most heroic things possible - killing rats in the basement.

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All for the greater good of us, so we can rob the mayor's office. It's good to be a Chosen One.

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Messing around some molerat cages, we gain a sudden level-up. Both Pope and Sulik.

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For Pope, it's level 6 and a rather simple perk choice. Whereas at lvl 3 there was a lot of options, I fail to understand how you could take anything but bonus move here. This perk is tremendously good for any kind of character - turn-based combat is almost always about movement (unless we're talking blobbers), and the better your mobility is, the easier it becomes to win fights via tactical approach. Bonus move helps us to kite, to dive into cover and, when we're unlucky, to escape unwanted encounters (of third kind, no less!) It's totally monumental and is my favorite perk in the game.

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Skill points are directed into stealth - since we've begun active travels, we'll need to escape lots of unwanted combats and that's where stealth shines. Besides, with our miserable EN we'd rather keep our distance during the fights and that can also be achieved through that skill.

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Finishing level-up business, we discover that, by some lucky chance, our arrival to the city coincided with one of the caravans preparations to head out.

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Caravaning job is a great chance to earn some easy money and, most importantly, xps, and while we're not very adept at combat (and thus, guarding them), let's just hope nothing serious happens.

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At first, everything goes well - we're finding ourselves in the midst of large gecko hunt.

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Oh, I've almost forgot - here are Sulik's upgraded stats. Nice gain in all departments, with an especially huge boost to his critical chance. Couple of level-ups more and he'll be perma-critting without any need for the slayer - and I'm not even overstating, that's how it'll be.

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Because of small misunderstanding (caused by us), caravan guards mistake trappers for enemies and kill them alongside with geckos. Sad, but it is the cruel reality of postapoc world.

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And just you look at what they were equipped with! Freaking power fists in hand of dirty trappers - how is this possible? Two of them ,to be exact. Now that's a great encounter for us.

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We take care of our fellow caravaneers (y'know, just so they don't think we're useless) and move on.

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Not too far, however, as second encounter is less pleasant for us. Claim jumpers, armed to the teeth - laser rifles and light support weapons. Our leather armours don't stand a chance against them, in fact, their first burst almost kills us, so...

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See ya later, guys! Was a real fun to travel with ya!

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We watch the resulting carnage from an extremely safe distance, perhaps hoping that, by some miracle, caravaneers will overcome our foes, but no. Their big guns eventually run out of ammo, but there's enough energy in their lasers to seal the deal.

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Our feelings of impotence are accentuated by the following scene - that first Horrigan meeting where we're forced to watch another slaughter of innocents. Being weak sucks. The whole scene is stupid, of course, because it's completely out of character for Frankie to shoo away Chosen One (instead of just ordering another burst), but that's ok, it's not like I love fallout 2 for its writing.

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Another retreat, this time from yakuza...

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And we're in the city of lights. Yeah, see, the caravan breakdown left us in the vicinity of Reno and, well, if we're near it, why won't we visit it?

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After performing our usual routine, we start Reno by milking information out of Jules.

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Well, it's he who milks us for cash, but at least we'll gain xps and precious items from his tips.

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Then we buy a knife-fighting lesson from lil' Jesus - yeah, one of the lesser known opportunities from the game. Just approach him with the knife in your hand and, for a negligible sum, he'll give you +5% melee damage. Female characters can get +10, but, iirc, they need to have Cha 6 and to pay a rather predictable price for it.

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From bishop's casino, we snitch a magical 8-ball.

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As we are a rather lucky fellow...

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There's no reason not to abuse this luck here. Yeah, it's rewards are minor, but it's more about the joy of gaining something that you'd otherwise missed.

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Speaking of easy to miss things, let's chase another one of Fallout 2's rarities.

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We'll have to help mrs. Wright with her still problems to do that.

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We also don't mind helping her husband with his son's murder investigation.

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Lots of xps for doing that - what's not to like?

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It seems that even the smallest member of this family can be of use for us -

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Though wright's smallest kids, we get a chance to witness a rather peculiar exchange.

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At this moment, Pope hasn't got a slightest idea why this is important, but 1k xp is 1k xp.

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Back in the city, we endure endless complaints and general rambling of mrs. Wright - now matter how annoying she is, we're interested in staying in her graces.

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We don't rush to destroy the stills - let's do that after we explore the basement of a local guns shop.

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What interests us most is this electronic lockpick - quite a rarity at this stage of the game. Impulse grenades are also dandy as we have a certain use for them in our mind.

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Lots of stuff hidden here - even an occasional easter egg.

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Right here.

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Of course, we also abuse the Cleveland Mark Blakemore of fallout 2, who was CMB before CMB was CMB, if you get what I'm saying. We upgrade our power fists into mega power fists (groovy) and we turn a hunting rifle that was laying here into a scoped rifle.

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Afterwards we learn about one of RP's new location from father Tully - we'll get there once we'll be near the Vault City.

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Sneaking into Wright's still, we try to destroy their stills. Y'know, one of the thing that annoys me about Wrights is that, theoretically, they're the good familiy (as good as it gets), but once you compare the structure of their stills with Mordinos jet stables, you'll see a disturbing similarity. Same usage of slaves for production and testing, it's just that Mordinos have greater scope. And mind you, Wrights only become truly evil if they ever gain unrestricted access to SAD, before that, they're supposed to be decent...

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Well, screw them. At first, we pay, but there isn't a problem that can't be solved by the proper tool usage. It also levels us up.

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Sneak is great, let's focus on it.

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On our road to the place of meeting with now happy mrs. Wright, we squeeze additional xps from her son's quest...

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And then we gain an ultimate reward - louisville slugger!

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Now that's a stylish way to mug some enemies. Oh, and we've equipped ourselves with leather armour mk 2 that we also found in Algernon's dwelling, but, truth to be told, we won't need it for much longer.

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Still, Wrights are weak (especially without their still (sic)), so let's find ourselves a more perspective employers - how about the most tech-advanced family, the Salvatores?

End of part 2.
 

Thor Kaufman

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
May 14, 2007
Messages
13,953
Location
ඞ Rape for Justice! 卐
doctors adds 150 xp reward to almost each battle we participate in. And that sums up fast - we're gonna be taking hundreds of battles, after all. Lockpick adds ~1k-1.5 xp reward to each city we'll visit - yeah, I'm totally gonna lock all those open doors. Bad for our game enjoyment, but good for our survivability.
Damn, dude, that's some sick dedication. And I thought my OCD/powergaming was bad. Do you also enjoy MMOs or are you just a masochist?
 

Cassidy

Arcane
Joined
Sep 9, 2007
Messages
7,922
Location
Vault City
As I mentioned before, there is a very special place at EPA you definitively should get your character into.

:codexisforindividualswithgenderidentityissues:
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
1,935
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
Actually, it has been there for ages - it's just not enabled by default, you have to activate it manually
I couldn't find this option, even in some config files :/ . Where is it? (2.2 RP version). Or maybe it's turned on - I didn't get to Sulik yet.
 

Thor Kaufman

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
May 14, 2007
Messages
13,953
Location
ඞ Rape for Justice! 卐
Actually, it has been there for ages - it's just not enabled by default, you have to activate it manually
I couldn't find this option, even in some config files :/ . Where is it? (2.2 RP version). Or maybe it's turned on - I didn't get to Sulik yet.
ddraw.ini
;Set to one to directly control party members in combat
ControlPartyMembers=1
 
Joined
Sep 4, 2008
Messages
770
Location
Shit Island
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Actually, it has been there for ages - it's just not enabled by default, you have to activate it manually
I couldn't find this option, even in some config files :/ . Where is it? (2.2 RP version). Or maybe it's turned on - I didn't get to Sulik yet.
ddraw.ini
;Set to one to directly control party members in combat
ControlPartyMembers=1

I'm pretty slow, but do I need to do anything else in order for this to work? I've changed the line in ddraw.ini, but nothing really happens. The onyl thing working in the game is the party orders thing, which is okay, but still kinda useless.
 

Thor Kaufman

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
May 14, 2007
Messages
13,953
Location
ඞ Rape for Justice! 卐
what do you mean?
Iirc that should be enough to control your party members individually, what more do you want?

Another cool/op thing is that your party members get your perks and specializations, so if you were to specialize in laser weapons or small arms, Vic et al would become completely unstoppable.
 
Joined
Sep 4, 2008
Messages
770
Location
Shit Island
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
what do you mean?
Iirc that should be enough to control your party members individually, what more do you want?

Another cool/op thing is that your party members get your perks and specializations, so if you were to specialize in laser weapons or small arms, Vic et al would become completely unstoppable.

Well, the party orders mod only gives hotkey options like "heal yourself" and "regroup", which, while useful, are not what I had hoped. Rather I had hoped that I would actually control NPCs completely.

Likewise, I cannot for the life of me find a way to display Sulik's stats as the Pope did above.
 

Thor Kaufman

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
May 14, 2007
Messages
13,953
Location
ඞ Rape for Justice! 卐
No idea, maybe ask in their forums, then?
In my game I can control them individually, you can see their stats just like you would for your own avatar when it's their turn, i.e. use "C" for character screen and also the inventory screen for the armor stats.
 

anus_pounder

Arcane
Joined
Mar 20, 2010
Messages
5,972
Location
Yiffing in Hell
what do you mean?
Iirc that should be enough to control your party members individually, what more do you want?

Another cool/op thing is that your party members get your perks and specializations, so if you were to specialize in laser weapons or small arms, Vic et al would become completely unstoppable.

How do level ups work for them? Do they still level up after you get a couple of levels yourself and get their own set skill increases or do you get to allocate points for them?
 

Krivol

Magister
Joined
Apr 21, 2012
Messages
1,935
Location
Potatoland aka Prussia
I have some problems on my Winshit 8 - keyboard is not responding after using 2-3 keys in the game so I'm playing with only a mouse. It's doable but annoying. Will tell you if I can cotroll any of my followers. Later.
 

Thor Kaufman

Arcane
Zionist Agent
Joined
May 14, 2007
Messages
13,953
Location
ඞ Rape for Justice! 卐
what do you mean?
Iirc that should be enough to control your party members individually, what more do you want?

Another cool/op thing is that your party members get your perks and specializations, so if you were to specialize in laser weapons or small arms, Vic et al would become completely unstoppable.

How do level ups work for them? Do they still level up after you get a couple of levels yourself and get their own set skill increases or do you get to allocate points for them?
Ya levelup still works like in regular fallout2 (every three levels) but there's an option so that it's not random whether they get their levelup.
You can use your own points to spend points on them. Unless you munchkin you won't be able to use them for yourself, though, obviously.

One possibility would be if you have Gifted or less IN than a follower. Say you have 10IN and Gifted you'd get 20points/levelup. An NPC with 9IN would get 23points/levelup. So you could save up to 79points, then at the next levelup, you'd have 99points and your npc 102 meaning 3 free points to spend on your NPC. In the end it's not really applicable, though because everything over 101/102points costs more than one point to spend unless you like using weak NPCs like Myron or Lenny.
Also I'm not sure how that affects future levelups/point distribution of the NPC. You could check for yourself, wait just before an NPC would get a levelup, spend some points and see how that affects the NPC.
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
Joined
Mar 1, 2012
Messages
2,052
Damn, dude, that's some sick dedication. And I thought my OCD/powergaming was bad. Do you also enjoy MMOs or are you just a masochist?

Neither. I utterly loathe grind and any sort of mechanic that's based on it, but see, this "codexian ironman lp" it pretty much a one shot affair - none of the previous attemptees have recovered from their character's death and I doubt I will, especially as this LP will go further and further (hopefully). It's too much work to start everything anew. So I'm just doing what's necessary to minimize the chances of Pope's gruesome demise. And, thankfully, this lockpicking/healing bullshit doesn't take too long - it'll add, like, one or two hours to the total time of my playthrough, I think. That's bad, but not as bad as it could've been.


Also I'm not sure how that affects future levelups/point distribution of the NPC. You could check for yourself, wait just before an NPC would get a levelup, spend some points and see how that affects the NPC.

Actually, if you spend your points on NPC and it levels up, its profile gets replaced by a standard one, appropriate for that new level, so your points become wasted. Therefore, you must upgrade your NPCs only after they've attained their final form. But yeah, it's a good move if you want to have something good like alien blaster-toting Cassidy in your party.


Part 3: popping moles



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So, we're doing fedexing for Salvatore family. First task is to catch that sleazy rat Lloyd.

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One option that was added by the RP here is to learn his location from casino dealer Nikki, Lloyd's accomplice. Lloyd promised her a cut from his winnings, but, well, it may be unwise to hold swindler's promises in high or even medium regard. Now she can totally snitch on him if you compensate her her losses - 500 hundred chips. TBH, this option is really stupid - bitch stole Salvatore's money and you know how that ends, but no, the only choice here is to either pay her the money and leave her alone. Yuck. Still, we're not roleplaying and 250 xp are 250 xp, they're harder to get by than 500 gold.

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While we're at desperado, we also pocket that lucky 8-ball grenade cash - 1 grenade of each kind.

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In basement, we kill all the rats and lock all the doors. We also get the poisoned gas tank from the lowest room.

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Then it's turn of the biggest rat hiding here - hello, Lloyd.

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We choose our dialogue options carefully, never giving him a chance to escape and, well...

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Goodbye, Lloyd.

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Nah, good Pope, our work here only begins.

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Since we're already at the Golgotha, it would be unwise to leave without plundering the riches of local dead. They all were villains and scum in their life so they totally deserve it, I think. I rationalize, at least. We start from another of lucky 8-ball caches - ~250 chips under this cross. Chump change, but hey, at least it's free!

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Then we dig up Wright's kid's remains, but I messed up here - to double up the xps for discovering his poisoning, you need to uncover his grave first and talk with Jagged Jimmy second.

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And, of course, there's lots of relatively valuable stuff in the graves here - even semi-unique, like these cool shades.

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Finding an early metal armour is also cool - that's why I didn't need that leather armour mk 2. Sure, it has higher armour rating, but see - it's the hard combat difficulty, enemies have an excellent chance to hit so it's not like that armour does much for you. Damage threshold and resistance are much more important.

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So the Lloyd situation is resolved, milking Renesco is our next task.

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And that's what we do, but, while we're at it, we also squeeze out the poisoning confession out of him - I'm trying to optimize this playthrough so there's less unnecessary footslogging.

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After performing tasks of so crucial importance, we gain enough credence to learn the family's dark secret and even become entrusted with a laser pistol!

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Yeah, right. Reno hides quite a number of interesting exploration points (like, y'know, the 8-ball, the lousville slugger, lil' Jesus knife lesson, Algernon's basement - the stuff I've already shown you), but the mafia questlines are a big, fat joke. Meh, whatever.

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Been there, done that, lol.

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'Cause Lee Van Cleef is awesome.

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Since our charisma is abysmal, we get the worst reward possible here - no Mk II metal armour for us.

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Without a doubt, the biggest benefit of being a made man is having access to Eldridge's special stash.

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Remember those mega-power fists that we've recently upgraded? Well, who needs them and their battery draining when we can have a weapon that works indefinitely? Yeah, that'll pop some moles, that'll pop them good.

Now that we have a dynamic duo of slugger & super-sledge, I feel like we can return to the Den & Klamath area and clear up those early quests with impunity.

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And, as if by some divine providence, we almost immediately have a mole encounter.

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Finally we can have a true popamole experience! It's so good that we gain a level from it.

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Still working on our skulking capabilities - lots of dangerous traveling ahead. It won't be all moles.

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Geckos aren't that different, though. Not as cool because they're tougher to kill and provide less xps (nice balance there), but at least they're not dangerous.

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Next encounter is a huge band of slaver and slaves vs golden gecko swarm.

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This one we approach carefully because slaver bitches have SMGs and you never underestimate a burst weapon in Fallout 2 - they're perfectly capable of giving a ~150 hp crit.

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So we wait while the bitches will spend their magazines on dumb lizards, then we strike. The most interesting part of this battle is that in the middle of combat slaves turned on their masters - that was because one of him got hit by the burst, obviously, but that was really flavorful.

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With our help, slaves prevail. One gecko tries to hide in the exit grid, thus becoming protected from meelee attacks, but to no avail - that's why we're carrying a scoped rifle with us.

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Popamole...

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Popamole never changes... Yeah, that's mole rats outside the cave + pig rats inside of it. Somewhat tedious, but huge influx of xps.

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And it keeps flowing and flowing - a trapper vs bandit encounters. Trappers tank bandits' shots for us while we kill them one by one.

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Unfortunately, trappers killsteal a couple of our victims so we don't gain that much from this fight. But we're not done here - the caves are once again inhabited.

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Giant scorpions. Y'know, the giant giant ones. Yay, more popamole!

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Whatever you think of it, it's super effective in netting us new levels. 9 already.

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And the sweet time of choosing a new perk. Almost all other kind of characters would want to get a better criticals here - best of the level 9 perks and absolutely crucial for any build that relies on aimed shots, i.e., most of them. But as we're fast shot user, we can afford to take the second level of bonus move here. Two levels of bonus move are exponentially better than one - 4 movement points give us an incredible tactical edge. We become almost unchaseable, we can kite lots of otherwise unkiteable stuff, we're even better protected from random encounters and we can use the old, good cover shooter tactic. Meaning step out of cover - shoot - step back in, becoming immune to return fire. Ah, the joys of modern gaming, they absolutely revitalize an antiquated game like Fallout 2. Now if there was a way to get a regenerating health...

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We distribute our skill points across the sneak, doctor and stealth skills, becoming quite proficient at each one of them.

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Next level Sulik - with each gained upgrade, he becomes more and more of a beast.

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As we're intent on popping moles in this update, let's do one of the biggest of them. But, on our way, let's take an outdoors lesson from one of the local trappers - 20% bonus is nothing to scoff at. Random encounters are dangerous, so having good survival skills is important - heck, there's even a rather valid option of not getting greedy with those books and, after getting lesson from slim, invest your two first level ups into survival. That's somewhere around 80 outdoorsman from the start of the game and believe me, it'll do wonders for your continued existence.

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TBH, it wasn't my plan to come here so much overleveled, but it just happened that way - I planned to do a quick trip to Redding and then return back, but that caravan opportunity has arised and, after that, I found myself near Reno, and all that brought me ton of xps.

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Well, this area is not that challenging even for non-combat characters, so not much of value is lost.

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We pop the stupid cartoon reference (the fact of reference is stupid - I liked the cartoon as a kid, though I haven't seen much of it)...

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Gather various hidden junk...

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Then pop more moles...

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And we're done here. OUr lockpicking skills even allow us to open that door naturally, without expending explosives. Not that the game has much uses for them (without save-scumming & stealing), but hey, who knows?

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Of course, we get the cart part.

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Then we take a trip back to Arroyo. On our way there, we stumble upon some spore plants. Weeding them out is easy. After that, Pope takes a quadruple dose of buffout, becoming disgustingly addicted to the stuff. Why?

Greenshot_011700.jpg


So we can get Cameron's training! Yeah, the hardest to get one - it's only available when you have no weapon skill tags and have the agility score of 6 or less (and that's where buffout addiction plays its part). The training itself is nothing extraordinary - +10% to both unarmed and melee...

Greenshot_011701.jpg


But then we get another of Arroyo's trainings, and together they sum up quite nicely - 73% melee weapons without investing a single skill point. Doesn't make Pope a good fighter, but at least he can slug the crap out of rats, plants and geckos.

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Returning to Klamath, we kill a couple of cannibals - no challenge at all.

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In town, we perform another unfinished quest - refueling the still.

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Ez work.

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Ez geckos.

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Den. Now that the pesky kids are all in the orphanage, we can finally explore the place - swipe some loot, get a quest or two, listen to some sob stories...

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So let's do all the local stuff - tell Lara what we already know...

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Lend Fred some money for his inevitably successful master plan...

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Give Becky the book that we've dragged through half of the wasteland - found it on our first trip here, by the way...

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We'll not miss the most interesting quest in Den, of course...

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And the slavers guild business. Well, mind my word - slavers guild won't stay for long in the business, but first, let's learn a couple of things from them.

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Strange, my memory totally told me that I would get some xps for bringing the radio to Vic, but no, all you gain is an opportunity to buy him out. Eh, one of those moments.

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Then it's the talk with the big man himself. We arrange fight for Lara...

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We don't see much point in giving money to the dead man...

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And we extract the location of a secondary slave camp from him. Another one of RP locations.

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At Becky's, we wait until the door guard is distracted by pretty dealer girl...

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Unlocking the door, we sneak downstairs, finding a hidden still. Per Frankie's request, we destroy it.

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And here's where we fuck up. See, it's possible to both destroy the stills and convince Frankie to buy booze from Becky once she rebuilds them...

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But you need 100 speech to do that and I have just 93. Didn't expect check that high in Den. Unpleasant, but, as we're already bloated with all that mole xp, not that critical.

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Tyler gang fight. With good weapons and sturdy armour, this one is a breeze. In RP, it's divided in two parts - y'know, to reflect the whole "Tyler is partying mad" affair.

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We slaughter the significantly smaller garrison of the church...

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Then it's turn for Tyler and his really unlucky lucky friend.

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This fight can be unpleasant because, unlike in vanilla, Tyler is armed with desert eagle instead of weakass 10mm pistol (and so are his friends)...

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But super-sledge & slugger combo kinda pwn that. Level 10 for us.

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And I'll end this update with a big reveal (sic) - big guns will be our weapon of choice. Once we'll find the appropriate big gun, of course.
 

Pope Amole II

Nerd Commando Game Studios
Developer
Joined
Mar 1, 2012
Messages
2,052
You know, I'm not promising anything, but I'll try to marathon this LP (or keep it as close to marathon as possible), meaning I'll try to update it on a daily basis. Once again, don't hold these words in high regard as we're entering kinda busy stage of our indie project, but maybe I'll squeeze enough time for frequent updatan.

Part 4:

(just the first track here, Repair, lol - couldn't find the standalone version of it on youtube; the whole album is good, but y'know, not many enjoy music like that - I dunno even why I'm doing these, mostly to show that Mark Morgan is a good guy, but not that special, I guess)

Greenshot_011726.jpg


As I've said, slavers guild won't remain long in its business. There are many interesting ways of winning this fight, but as we've been lockpicking our way through this LP, let's stick to that. Besides, our overleveledness won't glare as much that way.

Greenshot_011727.jpg


The whole concept is easy - you just lock both inner and outer doors of the guilds. Slavers foolishly don't mind against it.

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Then you have to kill four guards around the guild - not a hard task even on low levels. You just need to kill the guard on either side, sneak & run, then repeat it with the guard from the other site, then dispatch two guys from the front.

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With leather armor, Sulik and SMG (all easily accessible even at lvl 3-4), it's not a problem.

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As we have leveled Sulik with super-sledge, we don't even need to go through the motions - just popamole them in one go.

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Almost - we use this combat as a testing stage for our strategy here. Scoped rifle (coupled with high PE) is awesome - without investing a single point into small guns, we have nigh perfect accuracy at rather big distance.

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We're also lucky, dropping this guy in one round. Well, that happens.

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One of the slavers inside injects himself with psycho, so we wait it out. You see, fallout engine is bugged in this department - whenever one enemy uses a chem, it's applied to all enemies of that kind. So now the entire slavers guild is high on the drugs, and that's just not a winning proposition.

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Once it wears off, we kill the last guy on the sidelines...

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And then it's literallly like shooting fish in the barrel.

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Cover shooting at its finest - step behind one of the windows, get a straight shooting line towards one of the slavers, pump him with lead, step out, he can do nothing in return.

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Proceed ad nauseam.

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It may be hard to kill all of the slavers that way, there are some unreachable positions, after all, but it's enough to make the resulting fight trivial.

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We save Metzger for Sulik. Fuck him harder than he fucked your sister, bro.

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Hope you enjoyed it.

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And just so you understand the ridiculousness of scoped rifle - look at our small guns skill. 48% and we're playing on hard. Despite that, we're hitting the slavers like it's no problem.

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We rescue Vic and, via combination of cool shades & mentats, recruit him.

Greenshot_011743.jpg


Vic is a horrible wuss. Not as inept as Myron/Lenny/Myria, but not that far away from there, at least on the early levels. He becomes somewhat serviceable with time, but even then, he's never good. Well, I'm simply taking him for the Vault City quests, without any aggressive intentions.

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Let's not forget to free the slaves. We get the xp reward for it, however, since we've destroyed her still, we'll get no money from Becky - she's too angry to talk with us.

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Hmmm, if I remember this correctly, couple a months ago Buckner-senior asked us to rescue the trapper Smiley from quite a pinch - hope the old codger still holds. As if unwilling to part with their pray, some golden geckos intercept our journey to toxic caverns.

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Well, if they had some miniguns, they would've had a chance.

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As we're late to the party, there's not much to showcase here.

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Our biggest concern here is to avoid that pesky rubber boot meltdown.

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Even then it's not lethal - just hugely annoying.

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We get to the Smiley, but there's another thing to do here before we save his sorry lame-legged ass. Vic shows that he's not entirely worthless by repairing that generator and Pope opens the elevator door thanks to that electronic lockpick we've filched in new reno.

Greenshot_011751.jpg


In the level below, we perform the maneuver that we've already used in our other LP - by holding "A" as we descend to this area, we enter it in combat mode. Sulik is equipped with some nifty EMP grenades.

Greenshot_011752.jpg


Down here, Pope rushes to relative safety (no point for him to risk his life) as Sulik lobs those grenades at the terminator bot. The fucking toaster gets so lucky that it survives the first round and gets some retaliatory shooting at Sulik - it knocks our bonehead on the ground, but doesn't deal enough damage to snuff him. Good.

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Enraged, Sulik scraps this piece of junk on his next turn.

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For all our hard preparatory work (getting lockpick & grenades from reno and freeing VIc from the slavers), we're getting rewarded beyond any expectations - bozar and combat armour mk II after finishing Den, that's awesome. Well, mostly the armour - however good the bozar is, we've only began training our big guns skill and it's not like we have enough ammo to use it often. Early plasma pistol is also useless - who's gonna shoot it, VIc with his glorious 12% in skill?

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Not that I complain, though - this armor increases our chances tenfold. I dunno if it's not an overabundance of cheese - like, you know, playing safe to the point of boringness, but if my experience with F2 taught me anything, it's that you can never feel safe. It's just that we'll be risking our life in some interesting place like Navarro or Military Base or SAD, not while fighting against some randomly spawned raiders.

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Ok, now you can go with us.

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Thankfully, all of our boots are intact so we get out of the caves without much troubles. Now let's save Sulik's sister.

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On our trip there, we stop to sniff some flowers. The only memorable thing here is that we get our level 11 and Vic gets his first upgrade.

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We go big.

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Vic's stat growth is quite impressive, but as his starting level is so low, it'll take too long for him to become not as cringeworthy.

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We also whack the cows. Yeah, at these random maps, there's no point not to whack the cows. DU approves, I hope.

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Then it's the giant talking head.

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Whatever.

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Some unlucky robbers - you're not overwhelming us with knives and spears, fellows.

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We save a hermit from radscorpion infestation...

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Pop some easy moles...

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Finally, we're at the slavers camp, an RP location. It can be dangerous if you take it head on, so we use "divide and conquer here".

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First we murder the lone guard patrolling around the eastern building. His dog bites the bullet too.

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Then we sneak to the western part of the map.

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Two guards there are quickly murdered. Now it's all about the main slaver force residing in the main building.

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We don't plan to combat them fairly - instead, we engage into the ranged kiting mode, main benefit of double bonus move perk.

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It's the same as the melee kiting - you shoot your rifle, then you run 9 hexes away. Since your enemies chance of hitting you with their shots becomes abysmal, they can't do anything but chase after you.

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The only difference is that you have to have some good starting distance between you (like we did here) and that it won't work against super-precise enemies like enclave soldiers.

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It's super-effective against these slavers, however.

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Entering the main building, we discover that one of them refused to join the chase with her buddies and is still alive. That is rectified with utmost speed.

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Probably the biggest treasure of their camp is this motion detector - in ironman games, you really want to get this item ASAP. 25% to outdoorsman is huge.

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We free some random nameless slave - the reward is not nearly high as for doing the same thing in the Den...

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Then it's time for happy family reunion. Actually, you can save Kurisu without killing all slavers in the camp, just by sneaking/lockpicking skills, but why let those fuckers live? Their deaths are our xps.

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Saving her, we're automatically teleported to another RP location - primitive tribe, Sulik's fatherland.

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While I do appreciate the opportunity to save big man's sister, in terms of writing, this area is the derpiest bottom of restoration project. It's beyond atrocious and I won't even waste the time on showcasing that - not worth it. It's not luzly, just bad.

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Doesn't mean that I'm skipping any quest xps here, though. However horrible their sources may be, we need them for our continued survival.

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It starts from a meeting with some snake oil salesman, trying to peddle some fake stimpacks to the tribesmen.

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We blow up his ruse, but let him go as it nets us more xps than simply killing him.

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One fuck up here is that, upon entering the village, Sulik leaves your party to chat with his friends and neighbours. Dude was homesick, I guess. The only problem is, we don't have any mentats to rehire him without abandoning Vic. Well, I guess old swindler has enough experience with the tribesmen so he'll manage.

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Then there's a stupidly edgy quest where we repair the local well (again).

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Below the village, there's another area filled with scorpions and rats - stage for the couple of quests here.

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Like, you can gather enough firewood for a village's cook there.

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Or you can find the body of a young girl whose spirit is haunting the village's shaman.

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Who is afraid of ghosts, ha-ha-ha. It all ends with the exorcism.

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After that, a warrior gets trapped in the cavern and we must rescue him.

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We have to kill this gecko faster than it kills the guy - yeah, right, we've just slaughtered a camp full of slavers, one gecko will definitely pose challenge to us.

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That was hard.

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Finally, we're asked to bring some healing herbs to tend the warrior's wounds and we're done here. Couldn't have been sooner.

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We decide to visit Redding once again. Obviously, our trip there is rather eventful.

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Killing some crazy tribesmen...

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We hit the xp jackpot in the cave they were guarding, finding a large molerat infestation. Popamole time! Also a level up.

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A perky one. Our perk choices continue to lack, well, any semblance of choices - with our 2 EN, we're absolutely forced to pick up lifegiver here. With the help of buffout, obviously.

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Let's stop being a sickly loser and get big. Really, really big.

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Sulik also level ups and, while it's not his final form, he's already insane. Just so you understand - an aimed hit to the eye has a basic crit chance of either 60 or 65 percent (exact number is unclear). Your character's critical chance is added to that, so atm sulik has 82-87% of performing a crit when hitting eyes. Slayer - lol, who needs it? And his melee weapons becomes actually decent enough to go for those aimed shots.

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After the cave is cleared, it's boring cannibals...

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Boring small scorpions...

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More canniballs....

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More popamole bullshit...

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It gets interesting as we get closer to redding - you know, meeting actual foes and stuff.

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Well, relatively interesting - ranged kiting is tech. Sulik gets a modicum of damage, but that's more about me getting impatient. Or wishing to abuse the doctor skill? Both, I guess.

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Next is prospectors vs claim jumpers. Luckily, this variety of jumpers is somewhat different and is not armed with ridiculous weapons.

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Even so, we allow them to waste most of their ammo on each other before killing them all.

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Because see, by some miracle they're all armed with combat shotguns and fucking pancor jackhammers and I'm not getting under a burst from that.

On this spectacular find for us, I'm finishing part IV.
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,725
I've tried. Two times after Restoration Project 2.2 appear and once after earlier version were updated. Didn't finished.

I got tough problem with multi playthroughs recently...
 

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