Completed Let's ironman Fallout 2!

[Pope Amole II]

Part V: you fedex with me - you fedex with the best

Spoiler

As it is implied by the title, this update is gonna be extremely interesting. It begins with our arrival to Redding - we're going to dry all of remaining non-combat xp here.

Wish it was a long-winded affair, but no. We pay for the widow Rooney as the sum is negligible and it nets us the best xps...

We solve the bar brawl by talking out both miners out of it -

not that it matters, but just to showcase that this option is available in the RP...

That brings us our thirteenth level - our skill priorities hadn't changed yet.

We jail the obvious Unforgiven reference - I would've killed the fucker, but without a shithouse to do that it's just not stylish enough...

And we promise to kill Frog Morton, but we'll do that much later. Frog himself is not that rad, but his brothers are the real deal, especially against non-powered armor characters. And even against the best defense possible they still aren't exactly harmless as they sport tons of burst weapons - one crit and you're done.

That was modoc for ya. I guess I could've killed all the wanamingos, they're pushovers (Sulik would crit their eyes like no problem) and I'm strong enough to do that, but see, that's another thing that I wanted to do with style. A bit later, perhaps. Now is the popamole time!

Not for long, however - our journey to modoc is long, but uneventful. We've avoided some encounters, but they weren't the combat ones - just useless stuff like merchant caravans.

Well, here's to grinding this place.

We lockpick everything that's lockpickable and pick everything that's pickable, and in the same time we learn about Johnny's disappearance...

We get hired to guard some cattle...

Which, with our scoped rifle and fast shot trait, is easiest money in our (well, Pope's) life - from a huge distance, we draw the dog's aggression onto ourselves, then Sulik cracks their little skulls open.

Flawless victory.

We promise some old man to repair his relationships with his ex-best friend (because we're the chosen one - we can do anything)

And, in the meantime, kill some pesky pests in his garden.

I've always hated this quest because it's more annoyance than anything, but whatever - at least we're done with it quickly.

Opening the door of this suspiciously walled building, we ran away - no need to draw the watchdogs' attention.

We get our hint to golden watch's location (not that we need to find it)...

Being a hero is a dirty work.

Shit.

At least the explosion goes fine - worst ending of my ironman F2 attempt ever was actually dying knee deep in shit. Like, I've set up the explosives and ran to the stairs, but, with a critical failure, they've detonated before that, delivering about 6k damage to my char (or my faulty memory is lying to me and it was "only" six hundreds or so). What a crappy death that was.

Now that the watchdogs are gone, we can have more fun with the dynamite.

At least it doesn't explode in our hands.

Taking out our trusty bozar, we bust Rose's eggs source with the extreme prejudice. Sorry, but your omelets are just not worth 1k experience (or so).

Back to the old shit. Popamoling the undoubtedly smelly rat...

We find the watch here. Boy, I imagine how strongly it stinks. Or, rather, I'm not imagining this shit - I'm actively trying not to.

Well, if I was given a shitty watch, I also would show little gratitude.

We heal Bess. I guess I could've sold her to slaughterhause, but I'm too lazy to wait until she crawls there so I let her live. For now.

Ghost farm. Gee, these corpses are as phoney as the whole idea of this place. I mean, it's a fucking post-nuclear game - ghosts can't exist here! Oh, wait...

Ok, so I step on a hidden hole and I fall down. But I'm kinda slow on my print screen action so Instead of that floor I catch only darkness. Well, it happens.

It sure did, buddy.

However, no pain - no gain. The fall allows us to doctor ourselves, getting a hundred of extra xps.

No profit in committing a massacre here - we come in peace!

So yeah, deliver the slags message, bla-bla-bla...

Yet, before we leave this content-deprived pit...

Johnny. Unfortunately, I'm out of candy so I'm talking serious business with him.

Less action, more talking!

And the affairs here are resolved.

Yeah, Modoc is probably my least favourite town in F2, so it shows. Well, at least the xp is decent.

Pretty decent - lvl 14. We hit the 100% mark with our big guns and then we spend a couple of points here and there, just in case.

On our road to VC (which totally lacked any semblance of yellow bricks, well, unless the bricks of old mole shit count), we meet a tin woodsman.

Eh, we'll get the car soon so I don't mind against having those batteries.

The cheerful outskirts of Vault City - nothing but happy faces and warm greetings here.

Another opportunity to use our magnificient doctor skill...

And exchange a rad-away pack for some xps - that's fine, it's not like we're going to get seriously irradiated (unless we're terribly unlucky with random encounters - that gecko "acid everywhere" random encounter can be a deathtrap for an ironman character, one of my runs ended that way, thousands of rads and not enough meds to get them out in time).

One disadvantage of F2 is that, with the new "press shift to highlight items on the ground" option, quests like this one become needless. But then, it's not like I don't know where everything lies in this game, so what's the difference?

Helping everyone we can.

Also doing what we can with the water flask. Too bad that its questline ends here and, even if you go to the places he mentions, you can't even ask about it. So much for continuity.

Why am I even asking stuff I already know?

Fed up with fedex, but what else there's to do?

Mind you, I'm not saying the game or the areas are bad - it quickly redeems itself by this ability to fuck up a corrupted customs officer royally. It's just that it's not 100% good and that, despite all our love for this game, we must still perceive it objectively.

The biggest flaw of all the different ways of getting into Vault City is that one of the ways (well, this one) is too easy. So there's rarely a reason to search for more complex ones.

We rush straight into city council.

Learning about the city's reactor troubles, we're offered an easy way into the citizenship...

But hey, it's not like we don't qualify for the hard one!

We totally do - one of the boons of this build.

We celebrate it by drinking lots of alcohol-Z shots - hundreds of them, actually, for almost two days straight. Can't be good for our health...

Nah, in fallout 2, it totally can.

Picking some books on our way out, we set course for Gecko. Oh, and about picking - one of the annoying things about fallout 2 is that not all doors actually reward you for locking them. All of the doors in the inner VC lack appropriate scripts and so we're not milking them for xps. Bogus.

Rats.

Gecko. Of non-walking variety. We're not here for long - just to take quest from the Harold...

Reap some fresh doors and trade with the Percy. While we're at it, we also take his quest.

Before we go back, we scout the area around Gecko - more of the quest stuff. We have but one encounter - this poorly armoured band of raiders. No indication of how well they are armed...

But we don't take chances so we snipe them from afar, as usual.

They proved to be weak, but hey, what's the point of risking here? If I'm going to take chances, at least those will be some pretty chances. Something more or less epic, not this.

Back to VC errands. We smuggle some alcohol we've conveniently gathered in Klamath & Den...

We bring much needed tools to Vic's daughter...

We free a man from a life of sheltered slavery...

And we report our scouting job to local military.

Now we can just ask for the part...

Grab it from the wonderful amenities store (where we're buying science & repair books on a regular basis, btw) and head back to Gecko.

There, we learn that greed is good - heck, as if our LP doesn't showcase it enough. Anyhow, in RP we can actually show Gordon's tape to the councilor without ghouls getting slaughtered afterwards. But even if they did, we'd still show it - couple of lives thrown away is nothing if the alternative is xps missed.

Inside of the power plant, we do some keycard hunting...

And hard persuasion to make some lazy son of a bitch to do his job. Sheesh, those overprivileged white cismales, always feeling superior... Well, it's hard to tell if he's white or if he's cis, but with such arrogance and sloth, how can it be any other way?

Of course, he asks for additional help. And we can't refuse - not that we care, but we must grind those levels. For some reason. We totally must.

We also must keep our stock of .223 bullets high - almost 900 hundreds may feel like a lot, but with bozar it actually isn't.

Yeah, we're back to VC, taking care of more and more quest business. At least this one bit will bring us closer to having our own car.

At this point, I've kinda ran out of different comments about the importance and awesomeness of xps.

KK, let's interrupt our frantic errand running with some easy loot.

Thankfully, Vault 8 is full of it. Right from the start we bust up an 8-ball cache - just 1 super-stim and two usual ones, but it's more about finding secrets that anything else.

Then it's a chat with a pretty nurse Phyllis. We theorize a bit about Vault City's problems, then we ask her out, but she considers us too ugly to date...

Well, fuck her! I mean, that's what we don't actually need - we can do it ourselves and better! Hail masculine independency!

Besides, bitch has some serious mental problems - let's let some other guy sort her shit out, she's not worth it.

Who needs chicks when you can spend some quality time with a computer? We hoped to find some breast implant examples, but by mistake we've stumbled on the combat ones - still a useful info.

Useful enough to level us up. A double lifegiver here - in ironman game, it's a must. 10 levels more and we won't even notice that we have 2 EN.

And skillpoints distribution is quite predictable.

Sulik also got an upgrade - his second to last one. Well, IIRC, in vanilla it would've been his last one (I'm not sure), but here it is not. Damn he's good.

Let's visit the good doctor - we help him with his drug problems (hey, don't be so shameful, doc - we've all been there)

And learn a couple of medical tricks from him.

Then it's the looting part - batteries in the vent...

Goods behind the locked doors...

And the stuck doors - usually, you need 8 strength to unstuck them, but if you use a crowbar on them, just 7 will suffice. Which is absolutely reachable via one dose of buffout - that's what we do. We could've done even easier, however - enter the combat mode and have Sulik open them, that's possible with the companion control (and absolutely justifiable).

Of course, as we're already in combat armor mk 2, there's nothing awesome about finding mk I metal here, but at least red module will be extremely useful later on.

We also find some explosive ammo here. And lots of lesser stuff. Groovy.

Xpice must flow.

And that is enhanced by another RP addition - the ability to learn about true purpose of vaults from V8's main computer. We also do all the usual stuff here -optimizing the holodisc and our pip-boy.

Back in Gecko. Before making another trip to the plant, we exchange instruments for the car parts and get the desirable part quest.

So the holodisk goes into plant's main computer...

And said part goes into our pocket.

The running is over. At least for today.

End of part V.

 

[Azira]

A machine you are, yeees. :yoda:

 

[CappenVarra]

xpice must flow

 

[Baron Dupek]

So that's how you solve Primitive Tribe.... I've went there without Sulik, do nothing obviously.
Only good thing of PrimTribe is music. Thick, atmosphear... I really liked it. For me - the best track from Fo2 sountrack, maybe after Khans of New California.
Pity that it was just bunch of fedex quests...

Can't wait for more RP, hope they will be better.

BTW. bare feets of armored Sulik is nice detail. Glad they don't just make "copy pasta" of ordinary armored body to our teammates.

Also - another reason why F1 is better than F2 - quests. So... much..fedex...

 

[sepulki]

Re: controlling party members
It should probably work fine in RP 2.1.1, but it won't work in RP 2.2. It's a sfall feature, somehow tied to its multiplayer support. The multiplayer thingy, however it was supposed to work, got discontinued around sfall 3.0 and party control died with it. They just kind of forgot to remove the line from .ini file.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Part VI: let's heat the things up

Spoiler

Our last update went seriously stall and, as if admitting its fault, the game tries to redeem itself by offering us an actually challenging fight - bridgekeeper. Sure, we're not forced to fight him, but it's an ironman xp grinding LP - what other choice can we make?

We take a rather straightforward approach - bozar him 'til he dies. I hope for a huge critical to end it swiftly, but all I get is a hundred or so damage and a knock out.

At least that gives Sulik plenty opportunities to what at the keeper's eyes.

However, one knock out is not nearly enough - we get him down to almost dead condition, but he wakes up and once again we have to deal with the exploding cows. Ah, it's no biggie - we just shoot through them.

Eventually, I get tired of wasting ammo (I've spent roughly half of the nine hundred .223 bullets I had) and let Sulik finish the job. For a long time, our bonehead is absolutely unlucky with getting a proper critical...

But, finally, he lands a nice one and ends the ordeal.

Pope still has to get rid of remaining cows, but as we have a "let's hate on the multi-headed cows" month on the Codex, he's glad to do that with the extreme prejudice.

7.5k for one prolonged battle - totally worth it.

And an awesome, awesome armour upgrade for the Sulik.

That's what I call a good encounter.

Not our last one, of course - we're quickly intercepted by a gang of robbers. At this point, you know our combat protocols - sneak away from the fight...

Assume the advantageous tactical position...

Hunt them down without giving much opportunities to retaliate. Even though our armour is good - fuck that. In this game, you can be denied your armour protection anytime, so in on ironman game you never rely on it. You start relying on your pimped-up shell - you're dead.

We encounter bigger and bigger groups of bandits, so we go mad at them. Ripping through the hordes of enemies in F2 is awesome - one of the lost benefits of isometric view, actually. I mean, if it was in a 3d close up, then it'd either looked stupid (as it does in F3) or too realistically icky to enjoy. The scale and the scope of F1-2's cam is perfect for this sort of thing.

So we've done the bandits...

Time to do the pigs.

Leveled up in the midst of it - same course as previously.

After breaking some giant scorpions into tiny bits...

We meet yet another gang - is there an end to them?

Give us enough time and there'll be. I decide to go tactical at them - after mowing a couple of them with our initial burst, Sulik and Pope hide in the magically bulletproof tent.

Poor criminals got no choice but to go there and die one by one.

They're not even worth wasting more ammo - it's hammertime for the Sulik.

Before we manage to stumble onto another group of men of low moral fiber, it's Den. We get ourself a car and, most importantly...

We get ourself a car trunk. Slow travel can be tolerated, but leaving some loot to rot in the desert - no. Just no.

There's couple of minor tasks to perform here - ending Carl's nightmares...

And freeing a ghoul from an arduous task of being a mummy.

Then we hit the road again. Well, we don't hit the road as much as we hit the whole diversity of critters that stalk it.

But I don't skip the encounters.

If you go popamole - popamole to the fullest, I say.

Like here. Yeah, that's a big fucking encounter - robbers vs bandits. Not sure who's who. Ah, let's just...

Kill them all and let God sort them out. That was the sweetest bozar burst in my life.

Not content with Pope getting all the fun, Sulik makes an attempt of beating the world record in the "farthest hammered human being" category. He probably failed, still, let's commend him trying!

The second burst there is not as spectacular as the first one, but that's the nature of life.

That's a good bodycount.

But the slaughter goes on - there's also a cave full of tasty little deathclaws.

Ultimate carnage!

They're not as harmless - right here they've managed to lock us down and even land a critical hit or two. Good thing that we have Sulik to bail us out of shit like that. Getting ganged up by melee creeps is actually dangerous in F2 - one lucky crit to bring you down and then they go for the vulnerable spots, landing more and more crits in succession. IF you're knocked out, even hundreds of HPs may not help. One of my good chars died that way, to the fucking cavern geckos.

Patching our wounds up, we level up. Yeah, with the amount of stuff we kill, we're moving through levels at warp nine.

Vault city. Nothing important here - now that we have a trunk, we can loot the vault completely...

And there's also a quest that we've skipped before.

Gecko - we just get our reward from Percy.

Another new RP area - the Abbey. Well, "new" is a bit of overstatement - it's a strongly modified THE Abbey for the fallout 1, just without any supermutants and with "a canticle for Leibowitz" tint.

I'm not sure whether it's bad writing or just setting rejection that makes this place dull (and yeah, it is dull). But, well, at least it's more xps. First, we talk with the old buddy of father Tully - Samuel the gravekeeper.

Unsurprisingly, he has a quest for us - someone is robbing the graves. How dare they! All your graves are belong to us!

There's also a water pump that needs repairing.

We inspect it with our mighty mechanical skills (as I've said, I've been buying all the manuals available in the vault city) and it's another fedex to VC. Duh.

Yeah, the basement here is not as creepy as in THE Abbey - just a bunch of monks brewing some liquor and printing some books.

We exchange a strategically kept lighter for a bottle of that liquor.

Then we go to the upper floors of the abbey to get another fedex quest...

But it's a small ones - it just requires us to return to the basement.

And yeah, these monks do print books and it shows - tons of useful manuals here. Free skillpoints, here I come!

The basement is also infested. At first, it looks like a minor problem - just some rats...

Or some giant scorpions - nothing that can't be dealt with.

Then, suddenly, it's a deathclaw. And it's a deathly deathclaw, not the "250 xp" cavern one.

Take a good doze of nigh-molten metal, you fucking walking turd!

And you can do the same, little turdite! Yeah, big guns are fun.

At the top of the monastery, we report our combat prowess...

And we get extra two hundreds experience via a dialogue option.

Outside, there's a restless monk who's addicted to tragic: the gathering.

We can (and do) escort him to Gecko for a stealth boy reward. Nice reward, but at this point we don't really need it - our stealth is high as it is.

Then it's short walk to VC - we need to buy a new engine for that water pump.

The only disadvantage is that we have to slog back to Gecko - at least it's not that far.

So we kill some crazies and geckos...

And more crazies afterwards.

At the abbey, we fix up that pump...

And catch the grave-robber red-handed.

I mess up somewhat - you can do a kinder solution to this quest, giving him a shelter and a job at the abbey, but I've chosen the slightly wrong options so I just scare him away, losing 500 xps. That's a shame.

Quick and uneventful drive to Reno - we just tell Tulley that his friend Samuel is ok and give him the famous abbey's booze.

Then we drive out and encounter yakuza immediately - I decide not to overconserve my ammo and give them a couple of decent bursts.

In their typical fashion, they try to run away from us, but you don't outrun a character with double bonus move perk.

After killing them good (just you look at those legs at the left upper screen), I remember that I've forgot to check something at Reno.

Eldridge's special assortment. He has exactly what this LP needs - yeah, perhaps I've made an impression that I'm going to bozar the living crap out of F2 here, but that was but a temporary measure. My actual favorite fallout weapon is the flamer. That's why 5 STR - so we can carry more fuel.

Down in the basement, we have Algernon performing the miracle of splitting the fuel

we give him half-empty cans of mk I fuel and he returns us full cans of mk II.

That's kinda abusive, but it's a necessary measure as, otherwise, there's just not enough flamer fuel in the game to use it as often as I would like (i.e. almost always).

And that's why I've waited with killing the redding's wanamingos - so we can reenact the Alien flamer scene.

With better outcome for us, obviously.

Of course, we start with the smaller caverns, where there's just a couple of them and they can't swarm us.

Besides, it allows us to hit level 18...

And double our bursts per turn. Hell yeah!

Due to it's close combat nature, flamer doesn't need a skill that high (another reason for no combat tag), still, we invest more points there just for the good measure.

And Sulik hits his final upgrade - 12 ap (14 with psycho), 32% crit chance (72-77% when going for head, 92-97 when aiming at eyes), 150 melee weapons (so he actually hits armoured enemies), 13 melee damage (considering crits ignore armour and multiply damage, it's not that small of a bonus). Now he's officially an engine of destruction.

Yeah, we even brought motion tracker for Pope's larping efforts.

Aliens don't play they part well, however.

They melt too quickly.

And while there are lots of them, they're spread too thin to swarm us effectively.

I dunno, this place is designed to look tough, but actually it's rather mellow. Not something for a non-optimized level 5 char, sure, but it's definitely overhyped.

At last, the water chip is ours! Oh, wait, that's another part of the game...

The alien queen looks already charred, but we give her some extra grilling.

Second level of the mine - things are pretty much the same here. Should've come here earlier, I guess, but then, I already killed them with rocks in my other lp (non-ironman, but it took zero reloads) and, well, you can't go lower than that.

So we bust their balls and that's it.

Ascorti gets his deed back (2k chips for a fucking goldmine, really? ah, well, there's no rpgs with believable economy so whatever)

And we side with the NCR mine - but it's too early for them to rejoice. I kinda hate NCR, but anything is better than Reno. Well, it's the wastes, so almost anything.

Dunno about the gold, but we sure excavated tons of xps out of that mine - lvl 19. We put big guns on hiatus and invest into traps - it's needed for but a couple of places, but hey, what else are we gonna do with those skillpoints?

That's it for part VI.

 

[t]

What's with the 10 AG, 5 EN, 7 ST in the latest level up? Don't do drugs, kids.

Btw. playing with Sulik in Bridgekeeper's robes looks very much like the crash site with Virgil

 

[CappenVarra]

It's just my OCD speaking, but you could perhaps "waste" some of those SP on bringing your tagged skills up to 100/101%? I hate seeing tags go to waste, it's... inelegant. And who wants that? Besides, when you increase CHA etc., you'll get a free increase over the point of maximum SP investment efficiency, which is another way of making the game shiver helplessly before you...

 

[Baron Dupek]

Sup Torr.

I remember that my first and last visit here, crashing every time when you try to fix the pump or even touch it.
Still in the library. Wat.
Never saw that bug? with enchanced fuel for flamer. So much underestimated weapon...

 

[Pope Amole II]

Part VII: purge the unclean

Spoiler

One of the greatest advantages of the flamer (as I've mentioned before, it's not as crappy as it's considered to be - maybe it's not the most powerful weapon in the game, but it's certainly tier-2, if not 1.5) is its usefulness against "melee horde" kind of encounter. And there's a lot of different types of that, from rats to deathclaws and floaters. All of them tend to swarm you, that's their main strat, and big fiery template is exactly what you need to counter that. Oh, sure, burst weapons can also dish out area of effect damage, but see, they're totally unreliable on that part - sure, they can hit tons of creeps, but they can also hit but one creep in an absolutely overkill manner. Whereas with flamer you always know that fire will spread out evenly. That's convenient.

And you certainly can't deny how gratifying it is to see those fuckers dance. Dance, baby, dance!

Sure, dogs & leather armoured bandits are not the best showcases of a weapon's utility, but trust me, I'll use flamer 'til the bitter (or not so bitter) end so you'll have plenty of opportunities to confirm my words.

Scorching this gang nets us a quite useful reward - a .223 pistol. It's one of the best guns that Sulik can use and with his final 105% small guns and 7 PE he's not a horrible shot. Sure, no aimed eye shots for him, but in certain situations having a ranged side-arm can be vital - like, if there's a mini-gun mutant ahead whom you really don't want to approach. Or even during the grindy situations - he's a melee beast, sure, but after a certain point it gets really tiresome to watch him fling a rat or a dog across the screen for a thousandth time. It's awesome when you see it for the first time, but this schtick grows old quickly.

Reno. For us to get more jobs here, we need to severe our ties with family Salvatore first.

Or should I say burn the bridges? Yeah, that's better.

Burning is always better. And, no matter how big of a price they've shelled for those laser pistols, they didn't do much for Salvatores - they may work against the unwashed armourless peons, but against combat mk II and a mystical robe? They're nothing.

Mind you, we don't kill them all - we save the upper floor for the dessert and go visit Mordinos.

Unfazed by our treacherous behaviour, they have some work for us.

First is a boring fedex quest...

Where the only interesting part is destination of said fedex. Stables is one of the biggest missed opportunities of F2 - this shit could've (and should've) been as creepy (if not creepier) than Abbey vault in F1, instead, it's a fucking lulzfest with jethead guards, bald female scientists and Myron, baby, Myron! Fuck.

We milk all the xps we can here, but, to avoid the anger of Mordinos, we don't explore the basement level. Not that we care about their anger - they are some sick, sick puppies in dire need of warm, warm balm to cure their sickness, but first, we'll take what we can from them.

Using our magnificent doctor skill, we pull some batteries out of a brahmin's ass. Literally. Yeah, totally worthy successor to F1's Abbey.

Since we've already made enemies of Salvatores, we can freely snitch on them to mr. Wright.

We also take the SAD quest. Now, in RP we don't really need to - there are couple of other ways to learn their location, but, as I've said, I'm milking all these fucking families for what I can.

And so our message was a double entendre. Eh, it's just a retarded morally corrupt guard, who gives a fuck? If anything, this makes the job totally worth it.

Then it's squeezing some money from degenerate porn directors - oh, fuck them sideways.

Finally it gets interesting - we're asked to pay a visit to our beloved godfather. Ex-godfather.

Hi, Mason. I'm sure there's a joke that connects you being a smartass with your ass literally burning right now, but I'm lazy so I'll skip it.

And for our dear mr. Salvatore we have a rather special kind of treatment...

Lord has mercy.

Yeah, you absolutely don't need to be subtle to gain the assassination bonus xps here. But then, I'm not sure whether it's a bug or a feature. Sure, doing this stealthy has this "agent 47" feeling about it, on the other hand, plugging the poision tank directly (you can make steal attempts until you succeed - boss Salvatore won't resist much) is totally in "humiliating gruesome mafia execution" style.

Despite us doing a great favor to him, boss Salvatore is absolutely cold with us. At first, I want to respond his coldness with some genuine warmness (just like the Jesus taught)

But then I decide to go for poetic justice and overdose the fucker on jet. With this pig's heart problems, it doesn't take much for him. As a great humanist said once, eat shit and die. Considering jet is the shit both metaphorically and literally, this phrase acquires some beautiful overtones here.

I'm not sure where to go next, so I go where I haven't been yet - NCR.

On our road, we stumble on a nest of radscorpions and, as I've said, flamer is invaluable in such situations.

In NCR, first thing we do is getting a car upgrade from the shady looking bum person.

Next is some work for a mildly mad scientist - this is an offer I can't refuse...

And some quality trolling of local deluded cattle. Despite that, we offer to deliver her message - who knows, maybe that'll help us to investigate this cult from the inside and, afterwards, to destroy it.

Local anti-slaver organization commends our efforts at the Metzger's camp - yeah, if you still hadn't wiped it out by this point, they can give you an according quest. As we've been there, done that, it's just your ordinary "raze the slavers outside" task.

Don't have to ask me twice.

We lure the slavers outside one by one and burn them. Sure, flaming them all at once would've been more effective, but once, my 160 hp character died in this battle via of unbelievable series of chained crits, and this makes me wary.

Let's play it safe. I'm talking about the game, of course, not fire - remember, kids, playing with fire is never safe!

Another healthy dose of napalm dished out...

And NCR slavers guild lies in ashes.

Ok, now it does.

I guess I could've used a passage like "I was setting the slavers on fire - now I'm setting the slaves free" here, but really, english is not our native language so let's skip the fancy talk and just do business.

We're done with that, now let's learn ourselves some real xps.

It's such a stupid quest, honestly. Right answers are checkered here, so just pick higher after lower after higher and you'll mindlessly succeed. Some persuasion it is. I really love the Arcanum's way, where not only you need to have the skill, you also need to pick the correct option. Yeah, save/load kinda pwns the system, but hey, at least you feel great when you guess from the first try!

Unsurprisingly, it's a level up here. We invest in traps once again. And don't worry, CappenVarra - we'll totally hundred those tag skills, just a bit later, once the skillpoints will become truly useless.

The mad scientist asked us to test his serum on some mutant and, as we're too lazy to scourge the wasteland for them...

We arrange ourselves a convenient meeting with one of the local exemplars. He expected to beat us into bloody pulp with his powerfist, but we stick a needle into him before he makes a single move. BTW, I totally love when you can intertwine two different quests so they both solve each other - it's not a commonly used (if even understood) design technique, yet it's one of the most powerful ones in the craft. If I'm ever making an RPG, I'm definitely using it as the core of the quest system.

So Lenny dies a gruesome death. Or, rather, not gruesome because winning this fight that way is somewhat bugged and can lead to your game freezing if, after "melting him, you won't end the combat immediately, but who cares - we did him.

And we do the next quest instantly - Merc asks us for doctor's papers which we already had.

Ok, through all this short quests, I've found what to do next - let's not be a pussy and finish our business with the Mordino family (along with said family, sic).

Couple of simple random encounters before that, obv.

I try to lay a careful siege on Mordino's casino - burn a couple of guards, then hide beneath some cover and scorch them as they go.

However, hiding beneath cover proves to be a challenge due to the quirky lines of sight here, so, due to a series of rather weird maneuvers, I find myself in a rather peculiar tactical position. So Pope is chased by some SMG tag to the right corner here - I've hoped to find some cover here, but there are none. Well, not in the traditional meaning of said word - there's plenty of worthless whores and addicts here so we bring some rather short meaning to their life by using them as meatshields.

And Sulik stays on the other side of the street, waiting to ambush some burst-weapon wielding mafiosos.

Understanding that he won't find any cover here (of the lasting variety, at least), Pope goes on the counter-offensive. Unfortunately, he'll have to take some smg bursts here.

Thank God there are some whores here to cover us up! What would've we done without them! It's the same moral as with the Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, you see - never kill a human being because who knows when you'll need to use it as a living shield?

For Sulik it's much easier as he has some actual walls to exploit.

Then we're faced with some tough choice - we have an excellent firing line to some bandits, but, as usually, civilians are in the way. What do we do, what do we do, what's the moral choice here? Lol, yeah, who cares - fire away!

This turns this battle into a steamy threesome with everyone messing with everyone. Reno is special that way.

Soon we get totally swarmed by angry and jet high whores - see, as I've told before, if one drug gets applied to single enemy, it gets applied to all enemies of that kind. And, as the whores here inhale a lot of jet at the beginning of any combat, they all get inhumane amounts of APs, resulting in supersonic movement and multiple attacks per round. And, while those are done with the laughable shiv, if they get you down, they can easily crit you to death. Therefore, I move Sulik closer so he can bail us out in case of knock-out (which, with EN 2, is absolutely possible).

However, that doesn't happen so it's a simple matter of burst to the left...

Burst to the right!

Flamer cleans up the street quickly, so by the time that eventual crit comes, there aren't much fighters left to exploit it.

That mound of charred corpses, just you look at that thing! Also, Sulik got critted hard by this pimp, but he gets his revenge quickly enough.

Ok, now that we've burned through the most of Mordino's men, we can reenact our careful siege plan.

Some of our enemies try to hole up in the casino, so we smoke them out.

Second floor. It can be a crowded, rather dangerous fight...

But we decide to sit it out in a shitter. Yeah, the only way to improve the cover shooter significantly is to make said cover a shitter - now that would be some next-level game design.

Afterwards, it's effortless - thug runs in, we make him extra crispy, next one follows, we do the same. All until the victorious end.

We have to hunt some stragglers afterwards, but it's not equal to taking that huge gang face on. My chars never died in this fight, but lots of mine companions did.

Unfortunately, glorious combat is not infinite in this game, so we're back to fedexing like no tomorrow. Broken hills that starts with broken ribs (sic). At least they're not ours.

But no, for us, Broken Hills starts with some fresh (and all - all kinds of it, basically) crap and fittingly so, because that's what this area is. Yeah, I don't like BH too much.

At least shoveling dung gives us a bonus to our speech skill. Which is an even dumber pun than mine are, but at least it show that I'm not alone in the sport (actually, there's to many people in this sport to the point where making the bad puns becomes double unfun - they're not fun because they're not fun and because it's not fun that they're not fun).

Then we pretend to be a mutant hater before some local whackjobs - of course, in reality, we hate everyone equally, no bigotry here.

At least it'll put our sneaking and lockpicking skills to use.

Always a good thing.

Of course I won't do it, idiot - fixing the mine and ratting you out will bring me more xps, so why would I bother?

Well, I'll rat them out a bit later, now it is time to take a wonderful new quest from the Marcus.

We can investigate some corruption in the upper ranks of Broken Hills' caravaneers, and how do we do that?

Through the fedexing and inane conversations, obviously.

As we're in downtown already, we get other local quests - finding the missing wife...

And bringing some fun into Typhon's rotten life.

Now we report that one.

For some reason, we're asked to come along and help with Chad's arrest, but, obviously, nothing happens, so, well, what's the point? He's just a guy in a leather jacket, surely a minigun-toting super-fucking-mutant can do it himself. Another downside of this quest (apart from it being awful) is that it actually disables Broken Hills' caravans. Perhaps I should've taken one or two before doing this crap.

That bumps us up, finally posing a hard perk choice - do we make ourselves even faster...

Or make our level 24 reward even greater? I choose the latter - it's not like this action boy will give us an extra shot per turn (not yet, at the very least), whereas better crits will give us an insane damage boost once we'll take that sniper perk.

Skillpoints still in the "it's a trap!" mode.

Wait, whaaat? Another upgrade for Sulik? BUt I've thought that was it for him, lemme check... Oh, it's one of the RP changes that I somehow missed - extra upgrade for Sulik. Not that I mind, but that may be too much - 15 potential AP, 42% crit, 160 melee weapons, are you fucking kidding me?

Ok, now let's turn those nutjobs to authorities...

And one small RP option (that doesn't do much - just flavor) is to tell him that mad NCR scientist is out there for the blood.

And let's not forget to take the last one of Marcus's quests.

Then we convince a technician to route more power to some poor ghoul's house - actually, I should've waited until my science level hits 120+ and done this thing myself, just for the chance to optimize BH's power grid. Lost some xps that way, eh. Fallout 2 is a damn big game so it's hard to remember everything.

More fedex quests...

More deliveries.

The journey to Reno is dull...

Our return trip is somewhat more enjoyable - let's say hello to the yakuza vs mafiosos encounter!

But then, yakuzas spoil all the fun. They absolutely love to flee from combat in this game...

And while setting people on fire is kinda fun...

Chasing them to do that really spoils the mood. Can't they, I dunno, just politely regroup in an orderly row and just fucking die? Maybe not each time, but just once, for a change of pace, eh? No.

Back in BH, we replant the Seymour...

And we give the final item to the Typhon.

Let's run some tests against the clever radscorpion. Hands - check.

Eyes - check.

They're both so much check that even without much thieving skills we easily snipe the glasses from the scorpion.

Brains - checkmate. Not without the help of a plant, surely, but hey, making connections is a smart thing to do!

I don't kill the scorpion, though - I dunno why we're supposed to want that. Actually, I like the little bugger so I quietly sneak away from his rage.

End of part VII.

 

[Cassidy]

Now that you have done so much, you might as well go for the EXTERMINATUS ending of New Reno.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Man, that was awesome battle.
[She smell like mother] Wat (it was in the entrance of Desperado casino).
Why did I never though about using flamer against melee hordes?
Propably because "sniper with Speech is bread&butter" or something like that.
Can't play F2 now but got Blood (One Unit One Blood) and there's also nice dancing animations, if you know what I mean...

Batteries in brahmins WHAT? I don't get it. Some game secret? Well, seems it [put glasses] well hidden.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Now that you have done so much, you might as well go for the EXTERMINATUS ending of New Reno.

That was my plan from the very beginning.

[She smell like mother].

That's a description of one of the whores. Don't ask me - I don't even want to think how does a man writes a line like that.

Batteries in brahmins WHAT? I don't get it. Some game secret? Well, seems it [put glasses] well hidden.

In stables, if you inspect brahmins carefully (which no one ever does), you'll see that one of them isn't well. Then if you use your doctor on it, you'll pull a micro-fusion battery (of the common variety, just more fuel for your car or energy rifle) out of it.

Part VIII: a new challenger arrives

Spoiler

Caverns under Broken Hills, probably my least favourite area of F2. No matter the course of your playthrough, you come here too late to see ants anything but annoyance and, since there's a fucking lot of them here, the annoyance is as giant as they are.

But, given the nature of this LP, we can't help but to what them all with our trusty bat, and only after this place is thoroughly disinsected we find what remains of missing people.

As this whole quest offer us no speech choices, we're forced to walk through it like a drooling moron.

Screw it, let's just get done with this scrappy place ASAP.

Breathing in this place isn't an easy task, but that's where those two lifegiver perks come in - we should have more than enough in us to survive this place's hostile atmosphere.

And that's exactly what happens. We kill a couple of extra pesky ants...

And the mine is in the working condition once again. Now we can clean it up.

There isn't a single damn reason why this place should be filled with hostile critters - surely they couldn't have stayed here while the mine was operational (it's run by freaking supermutants - not some puny humans), and to get here after it's closure they would've had to get through the whole city, which also doesn't seem to be likely. This place is a mess, but then, same can be said for the whole city.

Let's not forget about the hidden cave with some uranium ore...

And mr. Stodgers in it.

We're almost done here. Let's report our quest findings...

Indulge ourselves in high-grade retardation - yeah, I totally believe he'll make up for it somehow, fucking 100% sure.

Lie Marcus about this whole fucking mess - why would I lie? What do I care about this shantytown?

Refine some ore...

And then donate it for the xps - with 40k in our pockets, xps definitely trump money. Heh, even without them they'd totally do.

We also recruit Marcus, but simply for the sake of gaining a level that way.

More attention to our disarming skill.

We leave the Marcus to chill out in broken hills, recruit Sulik back and travel to Reno - Renesco needs new glasses, I think.

And we need to get sufficiently rewarded for the good did, whether he wills it or not.

I pretty much bully him into giving us this magnificent trinket.

We plug it into our pip-boy and voila! 10% doctor for free. Even less failures for us.

Not sure where to go next, so I take a quick ride to NCR, reporting my victory over slavers to rangers and actually joining their ranks.

As I move out, I stumble on some remnants of Master's army - considering it's been 80 years, these are some hardcore remnants. The last of us, basically. Now, I'm forced to adulter on my beloved flamer - however excellent it is...

It's not something that I would use to deal with rocket-wielding mutant. At least before I'm clad in the power armour. That's a nice rocket hit, btw.

But even that is not potent enough to deal with the brokenness of sneak skill - let's just fall back, patch up...

Then try this one more time, with passion!

I'd love to say that this was the only serious threat to us here, but look at those laser bolts digging into Pope's flesh! 1/3 hp in one round.

That calls for some serious repercussions.

Don't lose your head over you success, mr. mutant!

And the beasties are trivial. We could've flamed them, but I was too lazy to switch the gun in the middle of fight.

Best part of this encounter is the loot - sure, flamer is my favorite weapon in F2, but my second most favorite? Rocket launcher. Basically, it has pretty much the same effect and function, it's just that it trades rate of fire for a huge range and a couple of neat quirks. And it's biggest problem is ammo being exceptionally scarce - no fuel exploits for this one.

On our way to new reno...

We quickly incinerate some trash...

Pop some moles...

Btw, we were visited by a sudden idea. You may have not noticed it in the previous screenshot, but I've returned to the broken hills and recruited Marcus once again, leaving Sulik on the bench. The reasons are simple - first, Sulik is already maxed out whereas we have plenty of levels to gain, so let's not waste potential NPC upgrades. Second, however beastly high-level Sulik is, we're having lots of trashmobs encounters and he makes them more tedious - we need to maneuver him so he gets his attacks and those sledgehammer homeruns have already became unbearable. Third, I've played a lot with Sulik, him being the first NPC to encounter, but I haven't had much experience with Marcus.

Finishing that cave, we drive to the Abbey as there's an important upgrade for Marcus there.

Mutant metal armour!

It's not that huge an upgrade for him - without it, his DTs would be 3 and his resistances would be ~30, but hey, every little bit counts. We'll have to be extra careful with the big guy, though.

Reno time. The worst that happens with us on the road there is having to beat up some carnivorous plants.

In the city, I allow my car to get stolen - previously, I've parked in the safe places, now it's the time to finish that quest (and get an upgrade).

Unlike in vanilla, you can actually solve it diplomatically - previously, it was bugged beyond recognition.

Huge advantage is that you don't need to pay a cent to this fucker.

As a matter of fact, you'll force him to throw in some batteries as a bonus. It's certainly pleasant to humiliate this annoying bastard.

Stables. Time to clean up this dirty stain on the face of the Earth. As usual, we take a careful approach here - we go through this usually unused door...

And begin our attack without any risk of getting retaliation smg burst.

Oh, and I've armed Marcus with laser rifle that was gathering dust in my car trunk - yeah, no big guns for him. I was afraid it'd make combats too easy, besides, it's a matter of convenience - big guns are ammo hungry so I'd have to manage that too and, truth to be told, I've got my hands already full with that flamethrower full trick.

Another advantage of that is our ability to cut people (and things) in half - isn't that great?

We bring a fiery wake of justice to this place, scorching both guards and scientists.

Of course, we can't kill all of the guards from safe positions, but that's where our 4 aps of free movement come in - we can make really, really long charges, and this thugs rarely survive one burst of flame.

Purging the western building, we move to the east, slaughtering foes inside...

And outside of the compound.

Then it's the underground's turn. We use a very simple principle of "open the door - quickly enter the combat mode - burst" here, setting the guards ablaze before they understand what's going on.

Anyone tries to bother us from afar - Marcus tells them to cut it down.

The two toughest defenders of this place offer as little resistance...

As everyone else.

Now, how will we deal with the primadonna of this little hellhole?

We cough lots of information regarding jet out of him...

Because someone has to do something about that shit degrading people into fucking animals, you see.

Then we give Myron a false hope of our companionship...

Only to squeeze up more secrets. Now that he has exhausted his usefulness....

Sentence: death.

Our just efforts brought us a level - the atmosphere of this place is just fine to learn some new scientific stuff.

One last task remains - as these brahmins are, basically, the source of the jet...

They also need thorough destruction.

Leaving the stable, we're ambushed by Kaga and his goons.

Here's a lesson to you, kids:

You don't bumrush the guy with the flamer.

Now the hard part - Kaga himself with this ungodly hp. Marcus tries to gunfight him and is seriously wounded in the process.

Timeout!

I don't have much rockets, but I think we have to use them here - no lucky crit for us...

But he's wounded enough to start fleeing. That's where we chase him -

See, he runs away from us, and he tries to rush for the "out of screen" unaccessible zone. However, since we have much more AP than him, all we have to do is reach the point before him and he starts to run in the other direction, away from the unreachable zone. Which, in turn, gives us enough time to grind his hp bloat.

I guess I could've let him go, opting to kill him in another, more challenging form, but, truth to be told, these encounters are bugged (especially the last one - my game always crashes on me during it) and I don't want risking that.

Returning to VC, I give the sergeant the scouted data from NCR...

And get another one of brilliant RP quests.

Before we proceed, let's receive the jet cure from the good doctor - yeah, we've figured how to do it ourselves, but we're too late to exploit our ideas (and get the xps for them).

I'll spare you the tedium...

And just tell you that the "village molerats" quest is really dumb...

And involves lots, lots of fedexing (it's nothing but fedexing). Sometimes, doing a completionist LP is not fun.

KK, let's take a break from that by doing some minor tasks - checking out on Fred's wellbeing (and, most importantly, our investment)...

Performing a comic skit at Bishop's casino -

RP-material, gives us a little bit of xp when you perform for the first time...

Get Bishop's quest for assassination of mr. Westin - not like we're going to follow it through.

And we deliver a jet cure to Redding, securing it for the Vault City. Can't say I'm a big fan of theirs, but at least it's not as annoying as an NCR. And who cares about the aftermath of our actions? Certainly not me.

Random encounter with floaters & centaurs.

Half of them Pope burns himself.

Rest is left to Marcus.

It's not generosity or cowardice or team spirit - ammo conservation.

And we're at our destination - EPA.

End of part VIII.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Fucking amazing.

 

[CappenVarra]

flamin'

 

[Baron Dupek]

That sneaking nearby Remnants of Master's army was strange. And funny in the same place.
Can't wait for tomorrow update. EPA was the last place before I left the game.

 

[Jim the Dinosaur]

Popa, how does that sneaking exploit work exactly?

 

[Shadenuat]

How do you check companion stats? What mods are you using? Is it just Killap's RP?

 

[Thor Kaufman]

Never really understood that dialogue option. What's that supposed to mean?

 

[t]

Update, please?

 

[Pope Amole II]

Popa, how does that sneaking exploit work exactly?

That's not an exploit (I think), that's how sneak always worked in these games - in combat mode, if you're sneaking and you're far enough from your opponents (exact distance depends on your skill, I think), you can end the combat mode at will, even if enemies are still alive.

How do you check companion stats? What mods are you using? Is it just Killap's RP?

Just Killap's RP, version 2.1.2b. To check their stats, enter the combat mode, wait for the npc's turn then enter your character sheet.

Never really understood that dialogue option. What's that supposed to mean?

Karl is senile and repeating a certain pattern of words triggers a peculiar reaction from him - blabbering about random stuff. How is that supposed to work, I don't know.

Part IX: better living through technology

Spoiler

Without a doubt, EPA is the best that RP has to offer (after manually controlled companions, obviously). The writing is still atrocious and atmosphere is hugely off (but then, that's true for the whole fallout 2), but it's a huge place with lots of stuff to explore. We begin from a rather large courtyard infested with lots and lots of spore plants.

Not the best choice of enemies, to be honest, as they're rather easy to kill, but it is somewhat tedious to do so. Also, plants here have a huge player detection range, so, until they're all dead, we won't be able to exit the combat mode (without using sneak, but we've got no silent running so we move too slowly while sneaking).

There's not much to do on the ground level here (apart from killing the plants), but this place is really pretty, especially at night. Dammit, I should've waited until the nightfall. But then, at least this way I leave you some room for fresh impressions.

The last spore plant dies and we can finally exit the combat mode and begin exploration.

Inside, EPA is quite derelict. There were a couple of rats lurking around, but nothing bigger than that. Here is where I discover I've made a dumb mistake - I've forgot to bring rope here. And those elevators are rope only, unfortunately.

Unsurprisingly, we just can't have a safe trip to civilization (well, whatever counts for it these days). For the starters, some fire geckos try to gnaw Marcus's balls away...

But they've been long replaced by ones from titanium so they just break their teeth. And we break the rest of their anatomy. Marcus got pretty low, but that's an average state for him.

Then it's a deathclaw cavern - too tasty to pass by.

Claim jumpers - not willing to figure what kind of claim jumpers these are, we let Marcus snipe them from afar. Yeah, the only benefit of laser rifle is that it has long range and decent accuracy.

Against lightly armoured opponents, that's all it takes.

Bandits. Do you prefer the stir-fried variety...

Or freshly sliced one?

So, after a stupid side-trip, we're back at EPA. Kids, remember, no good adventurer leaves his home without some rope.

We're surrounded by robots, but they're here just for the show - won't attack us and, even if we hit them, they won't give us much resistance and, what's worse, any xps. Real enemies on this level are scorpions, rats and mantises - trashmobs, basically.

To get to the lower levels, we'll have to squeeze though this vent. More importantly, Marcus will have to do that too (and he'll succeed - what a slippery guy he is!)

Before that, we harvest all xps we can from this level.

Then we block the blade with a metal rod that we've secured on the ground level...

And down we go.

This is a mostly "crossroad" area - not much to do here. All the scary terminator units you see here don't have any ammo and aren't worth full xps.

Orange level - ok, now that's a level where we can actually do something.

Some AIs that govern this place (well, that are supposed to do it) are located here. However, they've got bugged into some kind of eternal loop, making them unable to do anything.

Reading all those Dean's electronics finally pays off - we fix them easily.

Now we can do some quests. Military program wants us to reactivate one particular console so it can gain control of the robots here. That sounds scary and potentially dangerous (as the program is rather hostile towards you), but there are no consequences here.

Director of public relationships can help us to get though some locked doors here (which are unopenable otherwise), but to gain her favour we must restore the lighting in this place. Hey, I'm all for it myself - this place is too dark for my tastes.

And chief gardener (or whatever) asks us to do something we've already accomplished - to get rid of those pesky plants.

Yellow level. Well, basically, yellow and violet (yeah, it's totally rainbow coded) are two sections of the same level, divided by a huge room full of contaminated air. There's something interesting to do in that room, but it's best approached from the violet side. And in this yellow part, there's a scientist program that you can understand with science skill of 100 (or so).

As everything else here, it's broken. Once again, our repairman skills shine.

One quick reboot afterwards...

We're able to communicate with this guy, erm, program and take a quest of his - test the solar scorcher.

The scorcher is right here in the safe, but it won't unlock without the quest. And it's as easy as it says - just get out of the EPA and kill something with the scorcher.

And we've gained a rather special level. Skill points go mostly to science...

While perk should be painfully predictable - sniper. Can't go wrong with that.

Marcus also gains a much needed power up, as his previous accuracy was relatively shaky.

The only other thing in yellow level is the security terminal that military program has asked us to repair - we gladly oblige.

To restore the lighting here, we backtrack a bit and repair the generator in the machine room. Y'know, the biggest flaw of EPA is its scripted nature - even if you have all it takes, you can't do it until you're told to. Oldschool, huh.

As we're backtracking anyways, we return to the surface and scorch some rats we've set away for this special occasion.

Now that's a bright picture! Also, I decide to crush all these bots that stand around here, doing nothing. And hey, it turns out my memory was faulty on this particular encounter - these flying robots pay full xps...

This terminators don't, however.

Well, 1.4k is still decent, considering there was barely any effort involved.

One oddity of the orange level is this room full of toxins and wasps. Yeah, new kind of enemy. Still, if we enter there, we'll be hit by the harsh atmosphere and wasps themselves are weak and don't pay much xps (iirc), so there's not much point in going there.

We get our rewards from the military hologram...

And the scientist one.

Indigo level. Not much to do here - we leech some minor side-quest info...

And some extra xp from the computer in operations room. We also can change our haircut here and even our gender, but I don't think my traps skill is high enough to survive through that. Sorry, Cassidy, but I'll pass, it's too risky.

We also can repair a talking toaster here.

Uhh, ok.

Red level. Predictably, things went bad for another hologram.

We're already used to fixing them, however.

This one is important as it opens up access to the blue level where the fattest loot lies.

Red level is not without some goodies, though - some rockets (never can't have enough of them), combat armour mk I (mk II is better, but you can't make implants out of it)...

Electronic lockpick mk II. Oh, and we've picked up some cannabis on our road here - it's not very flavorful, but it's a potent drug for recruitment as one dose gives you +2 CHA. And it stacks with mentats. Meaning that you can easily have a party of five with either cha 6 or cha 4 + magnetic personality.

If you want more of it, you'll have to go to indigo level.

No, Marcus, it's just biotoxic waste slowly killins us. Well, you - Pope has a fancy gas mask to protect him. And it's not needed for long - we clear up those stuck vents and soon the air is refreshed. So, the point of this room is that huge computer - mr. Chemmie. It's able to create quite a number of drugs and consumables. Some standard (like stimpacks or buffouts), some unique (like cannabis or heart pills for Cassidy). It does it for free, but it has a limited number of chemicals so there's, like, six or seven dozes of pot available. More than enough to finish the game.

Green level. The derpiest area of EPA. It contains some samples of flora and fauna...

And, well, some mutated feral people (that's what those are - not tribesmen) surviving in a small room for, like, a century when rest of this place is in disrepair... Let's just skip it and move on.

Also some alien eggs here - like, the huge flavor reveal is that the aliens are actually biological weapon developed by government fo... Blah-blah-blah. Or, actually, derp-derp-derp. Some authors just fail to understand the importance of mystery and/or ambiguity and the wonders that they can do for the setting. I mean, like in Morrowind - whatever you think of it, just tell me, who fucking killed the Nerevarine?

We download some botany info from the pc here - we also can get some seeds here and even plant them to hold off our village's eventual starvation, but I've never managed to make that option work (bugs), so screw it.

Blue level - we find ourselves surrounded by a huge pack of aliens (totally foreshadowed on green level).

We're protected by this flimsy fence (somehow), so it's not that dangerous - they have to walk quite a long road to attack us.

Well, our ranged potential is not huge (I'm now wasting rokkits here), so it doesn't matter as much - Marcus manages to what one alien on the move. Our crowd killing potential is rather substantial, however, so we actually rush to that choke point, ready to burn everything.

The whole thing goes uneventful - just lots of melting alien flesh. Here we are burning their queen...

Then it's only silence and acrid smell of ashes and gasoline.

Our way there is blocked by a forcefield that requires absolutely unreasonable amount of repair skill to be opened - screw that.

Inside, the most prominent feature is three anabiosis banks with people inside - potential companions. We're not going to recruit them (unless we run out of other options), so here is the quickrundown: first is Kitsune, the only combat-worthy female companion. Even so, she's not all that great - she specializes in unarmed, but her stats are so-so so she's like poor man's Sulik. Second is Cat Jules and he's quite decent - he's like a better Marcus, actually. Worse stats, but Cat is able to wear power armour and that's the definite edge. Well, I feel like I don't need that. Third is Dexter and I've never tried him, but he looks like another poor man's Sulik, only for evil characters. Oh, they're all also capable of raising some of your skills - kitsune gives +10% to unarmed and thieving skills (iirc), Cat Jules pumps up big guns and energy weapons, Dexter upgrades your speech.

The biggest reward of EPA, however, is this unimposing locker with a strange-liquid filled syringe inside.

We inject it into ourselves (because that's what you do with weird liquids you find at derelict research complexes), thus gaining a permanent +1 bonus to our agility. Yeah, that's why 9 agi in the initial build - no reason to choose otherwise.

That's it, almost - after completing EPA, you have some loose ends to tie up. Before that, a moderately tough random encounter.

Being able to fire twice and then reload is so sweet - I've totally missed that. Finally maxing up your AGI feels really good.

And perma-critting these creeps also feels nice. Even Marcus's shoddy laser rifle deals tons of damage - yeah, as I've said, almost all of your perks affect your npcs, sniper included. That's why I'm extremely careful with my selection of npcs - take too many and the game quickly becomes as interesting as going through Arcanum with charisma 20 char.

The sole problem of these high-level desert encounters is that they completely invalidate majority of the quests - I mean, why bother with running around and solving anything when you can learn twice or thrice more xps in half that time? That's a rhetorical question - the answer is "because doing quests is fun", but is it really? Unfortunately, not always.

Post-EPA stuff is mostly fedex - so we've found an epilepsy cure there and there's a barking man in New Reno whom we can cure that way.

The combat armour we've found got under our skin - quite literally. We visit painless Doc Johnson as he's the cheapest option available...

And we gain our first tiny toughness bonus.

We also test another one of EPA's boons in local casino - remember that talking toaster we've repaired? As a reward, he taught us a trick that allows us to empty any slot machine that we'll encounter. That would've been awesome if only we had a real need for money.

On our road to Abbey, we meet more crazies. We perform an already usual procedure of burning...

Slicing...

And there's one menace less in this world.

The world rewards us accordingly - our scientific understanding of it becomes superb.

Rats, lol. Now that's a challenge.

In Abbey, we can upload those botany files we've found at EPA to the monastery mainframe. We've got much more xps from random encounters on the road here, but, well, at least it allows us to larp a good guy.

More meat for the slaughter - additional crazies...

A great lot of them, actually. Y'know, I really missed them in F2 - in Fallout 1, what totally made the Necropolis' atmosphere was the total insanity and hostility of its inhabitants. That made the place feel cold and dangerous. In F2, however, it's all about ghouls being lulzy and friendly losers, with zero traces of previous behavior remaining. I understand that these are the ex-underground dwelling ghouls, but weren't those, like, a total minority? Whatever.

A vault city patrol vs slavers encounter - VC military is absolutely trigger happy so we wait it out in the cool shade of a tent. Let's not give them the opportunity to put a burst in our back.

An extra serving of aliens...

And we're at our next destination - military base. We've got our tenth action point - time to put it to good use.

Not by killing dogs here, obviously - they're just a nuisance.

Blowing up the door...

We get thoroughly prepared - here is the good place to use all the rockets we've hoarded...

And Marcus gets his trusty minigun from the car trunk - laser rifle is cute and fun, but we might need some killing power here.

End of part IX.

 

[CappenVarra]

toaster repair, eh?

 

[Pope Amole II]

part X: powerplay

Spoiler

Military base, level 1.

Signs of recent gruesome battle, but no dangerous enemies in sight. We proceed with utter caution.

Finding a broken generator, we repair it - to be honest, we don't even know whether we need it working or not (with our short range, cover of darkness actually favors us, besides, flamer looks badass in the dark). But if a woodchuck could chuck the wood...

First sight of the problem here - mutants. Well, it is that military base, after all... Though, after going through a huge blast, it shouldn't be in any condition to get excavated, but it's ok, miracles happen.

The mutant is unarmed so he gets charred without much resistance.

Level 2. Anticipating the danger, Marcus and Pope inject a good dose of psycho. Remember, kids: hyperadrenaline stimulators are good for your health!

In the eastern part of this level, we find two isolated mutants - we roast them as soon as the door gets open, giving them zero reaction time.

Their scream a lot in their agony, and that loudly echoes through the base's desolated hallways. We get a feeling that somebody have definitely heard that, so we prepare for defense.

Sure enough, a huge stream of mutants incoming. However, mutation did lots for their muscle, but little for their brain, not to mention that these were some mere miners, totally lacking any military training. They rush into the choke point, so, under the cover of doors, we shower them with laser bolts...

And highly explosive rockets - they're super effective..

Those few that manage to reach us are incinerated quite mercilessly.

Soon, chunks of torn mutant flesh and piles of ashes litter the corridor's floor.

That's not all - part of them remained to guard their barracks. We sneak up onto one of them, roasting him from behind.

Others rush to avenge their fallen, but they suffer the same fate.

Loud thumping of huge feet alerts us that we're getting flanked from the left.

Not that it helps them - these mutants are mindlessly reckless so they just willingly step into our torrents of destruction.

In few moments, we are the only living beings on this level.

The spoils of our victory are beyond any measure - for Marcus, we take a working plasma rifle from one of the corpses.

While lacking the range of a laser rifle, it compensates for its lack of range with much greater killing power.

For us, we, to our great surprise, find a fully working set of powered armour. it takes some time, Marcus's help and lots of cursing to get Pope in...

But the result is splendiferous - now Pope is quite literally the engine of destruction.

Let's test our new shiny toys at level 3.

Before we proceed, we find another strange module in the side-room here - it's similar to the one we've found in Vault 8. Interestingly, what's their purpose?

Predictably, we discover that this level is as mutant-infested as the previous one. Guessing that they're probably similarly stupid, we try to repeat our successful tactics - first, Marcus attracts their attention with some laser fire...

And, as they rush into the hallway, Pope rips them apart with mighty rocket explosions.

Anything that gets too close receives a burst of blazing napalm into face.

They charge and charge and charge to the pointless deaths...

Until no lives to throw away remain.

No extraordinary riches or tech wonders here, but Pope feels rather enlightened by the whole situation. Cold, rational, scientific approach to everything has its merits.

Level 4 looked to be abandoned until we've stumbled on what seemingly was the leader of the bunch. He started the combat with seemingly silly gesture of throwing some furry creature into one of the vats...

But the joke soon was on us as, mutating beyond both reason and belief, it lunged its newly gained bulky form at us.

And it wasn't alone - as soon as we've managed to kill the first one, more have risen.

Under their fierce pressure, we were forced to retreat to the room's entrance.

All that time, big mutant was not idling - he proved to be quite a shot, throwing the Pope off balance with one of his laser bolts.

That forced us to retreat deeper into the corridor, away from his deadly fire. Luckily, his beasts was too stupid to cut chase...

So we've destroyed them as they were away from their master's support.

Those weren't the last of the pets - his arsenal of creatures seemed almost limitless...

Yet that was only visibility, and soon the giant remained on his owned. He fought back with the insane dedication, throwing the Pope on the floor once again...

But our hero has managed to somehow retaliate with the fiery gush, setting his foe stark ablaze. The victory was theirs!

And that's enough larping for today, lol. Dunno, I felt the sudden need to play make-believe a little, so why not? No we're back to our normal course. So, having looted up the military base (which is the only fulfilling way of getting a power armor in this game - fuck buying it), we move to San Fran.

Of course, we're greeted by that usual "dragon vs lo pan" matchup.

But screw that. What's most important here is that we're finally able to have all the flamer fuel that we can ever want and, well, while same can't be said for rockets, at least we're getting some "spare" ones to use on non-critical occasions.

Training with Dragon - yeah, I want to do as much quests as possible, so those free unarmed points will come handy.

And soon.

As we need to spend some time before our next training session begins, we spend it travelling. In New Reno, we upgrade our newly gained plasma rifle into a turbo-charged version - extra fun for Marcus.

Then we scorch some mafiosos (yeah, they're considered to be a good encounter, but it's not like I believe into their goodness)

And prepare a lather large batch of hotdogs.

Mmm, hotdogs...

NCR - yeah, I decide to wander around for a while, giving those weapon shops in San Fran enough time to restock.

We visit Westin here - time to use that assassination order as a leverage to squeeze a better counterproposal out of him.

Sure, sheriffs recommendation absolutely trumps our recent confession in agreeing to kill you, dude.

Anyhow, we also take the brahmin guarding quest.

I dunno, maybe I should've waited until I buy enough scouting handbooks to push our survival closer to 100 (so we can find route to V13 that way), but then, I wanna get the best ending for deathclaws (never seen it before) so I'm positively not rushing into V13.

Now that we're done with it, let's also check out this Tandi's job offer that's discussed all around the town.

Of course I'm good - don't you see that I'm the fucking protagonist here? NPCs these days, never know their place...

In the squatters settlement, we get rather cold meeting...

But it seems that dire need is excellent at warming relationships up.

Pushing away a hapless guard...

We follow the trail until we stumble on a pair of filthy rapists.

We purify them in the only manner we know.

Well, Pope purifies, while Marcus liquefies - Seems he's that kind of guy.

Picking some locks and disarming some traps (finally! we get to use those skills!)...

We set the wronged girl free.

Avenging time.

Once we're done done setting up NCR's annexation for this place. Well, I guess I've said that I hate NCR and I do, but I'm not larping here - just milking the xps. Besides, even from larping point, the wellbeing of these people is probably more important than a personal grudge.

We decide to skip subtlety here.

Just charge in, guns ablaze. Foes too.

Once again, we exploit the corner, waiting for our enemies to rush at us then bursting them down.

Level 2 goes even simpler - just charge, burn and melt...

Melt and burn.

Burning... There can't be enough burning in this game.

Too bad people here end too quickly.

Another generator for us to repair - at this point, used generator repairman seems like a nice retirement plan.

Leveling up, I take the first level of action boy - not much other choices here, besides, with short range of flamer, I want as much action points as possible. Besides, it's fun to maneuver with 15 ap per turn available.

Upgrade for Marcus - too bad his energy weapon skill doesn't progress that much, but I just don't want to use another big gun here.

We find another suit of combat armour here - good, Pope can use some additional implants.

Level 3 starts in a similar fashion - boy, you wish you'd be wearing a suit of combat armour instead of storing it.

Not that the sniper perk gives a damn about anything, but still...

We're rewarded by some computer parts that we were sent to recover

And temporary needless Vault 13 location - I'm not visiting it until I head to enclave.

There's also a matter of local boss, though I'm not sure which of those flying parts now counts as a boss.

Rest of the combatants are either burned...

Or plasma-ed.

Some interesting info on a pc here - seems like we'll be popping another mole soon.

Let's not forget to free the doc enslaved by the raiders - RP added a wee bit xp for that (I think).

Back at NCR, we get a reward for the parts...

Which we then raise by turning that clumsy clerk in. It's kinda stupid that he gets to walk away, but I doubt he'll walk far.

Back into san fran to take another martial lesson.

Up to redding, defeating some aliens first.

Flamer is so convenient to char whole batches of these beasties.

It's almost the button of awesome.

Then we can get another portion of stuffing from our good doc.

Doesn't make our DR all that high, I suppose, but at least it's better than nothing.

While we're here, let's also finish the sheriff quest line (I tried hard here to avoid the "let's croak Frog Morton" line). First, we clear the area from small rodents...

Then it's time to get rid of the bigger ones.

We go all tactical on the gang (well, we always go all tactical here), breaching their defenses from the side.

We could've done even better by emerging behind their backs via the mine elevator, but that would take too much extra running to perform.

It's not like we need any kind of tactical edge here.

Burning leather-clad guys shouldn't be even considered as work - more like a hobby of ours.

We sweep the area for the survivors and sure, we find them.

That, in turn, nets us another level. As you've seen, we don't distribute those points - we hoard them just in case.

Just three more notches on my gun - could not have put it better myself.

End of part X.

 

[anus_pounder]

Holy shit dat flamer raep. I think you've got yourself a flamer (and big guns) convert here.

 

[CappenVarra]

splendiferous