Completed Let's ironman Fallout 2!

[Baron Dupek]

Oh yes, EPA at night is really beaty. I was surprised during my first arrive here at night.

Such a pleasure to read and watching enemies burn.
Well, this world is infested with them so I can easily say - [put on glasses] you make the world burn.

 

[ALchymist]

toaster repair, eh?

And Talkie Toaster too,http://reddwarf.wikia.com/wiki/Talkie_Toaster. Wasteland and Red Dwarf in one neat package.

 

[Pope Amole II]

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

The funniest thing is that I'm playing with fixed ammo patch that came with the RP (but was optional) - dunno, I installed it without thinking much. And see, flamer is hugely nerfed there - in the vanilla it was much stronger, not to mention that bullet burst weapons were slightly bugged (they hit corpses, losing the part of the burst that way), and flamer was obviously free of this problem. So if you want to experience them in their full glory, avoid said ammo patch.

Part XI: make the world a brighter place

Spoiler

As you may recall, last time we've been to NCR, we got ourself a nice contract on a certain person's head. Now we're here to collect.

Of course, that random bloated thug wasn't that man - it's just that our mark is predictably well-guarded and we'll have to tear through the half of Reno to get a shot at him.

Unfortunately, Marcus isn't accustomed to the verbal subtleties, so he takes that "half of Reno" part quite literally, beginning to liquefy random pimps left and right. Well, it's no big loss for humanity (probably a net gain), so we let him be.

While he's busy with that, Pope crashes through the casino's entrance, totally wanting to ignite some party. Angry mafiosos try to troll our hero, but hey, it's their butts that are burning (along with the rest of their bodies, I guess).

Marcus is extremely enthusiastic about turning some random whores into puddles of grime - don't ask me, I have no idea what's wrong with the guy.

And Pope just baptizes everyone in fire - perhaps he thinks there's still a chance to redeem these lost souls, however short that redemption may be.

Or maybe he wants to help them cosplay the Human Torch?

In that case, I doubt it's that fantastic for the cosplayers.

Maybe he just wants to give other people the humane warmth they've always longed for?

Whatever his reason is, at least it's not as enigmatic as Marcus's.

He melted the whole street just because. Well, at least he spared the singers.

At least they're already cremated so burying them will be no hassle.

Going upstairs, we proceed in the same fashion.

Guard after guard is set ablaze as... Marcus, wait, where's Marcus? Marcus, what are you doing there?

Oh... Well... At least she won't have to struggle with her addiction problems anymore - isn't that great?

We also combust her daughter immediately - it would've been sad for her to mourn the death of her both parents. This way, she's spared the grief.

The last combatant here bites the dust, so we can move to the next floor.

Hey, mr. Bishop, how do you plan to rule the wasteland from shadows when you can't even take a burst of flame to the face? Post-nuclear world is not for the wimps who think they're cunning.

I bet his bodyguards cursed the day when they've decided to tie up their life with him - as his string was cut, so were theirs. And not in a pleasant manner.

Bishop's safe. We disarm the trap (after a several attempts)...

And loot the contents. Hmm, it seems that fucker had a personal army attacking Vault City - as its dutiful citizen, we can't simply ignore that fact. Hmm, by the way, that magazine reminds me of something...

Yeah, we've got exactly ten - let's head to the Cat's paw (purely on business).

On his way, Pope roasts Jules - we know you'd kill Cody, bastard, we know you'd totally would. And that's not forgivable, you child-killing prick. Not in this life, not in the next one.

We sell the journals to miss Kitty (why miss? I'd totally hit on that!), gaining a small boost to energy weapons in the process. Why not? Well, I kinda acted stupid here by using it myself - in the aftermath I understand that I should've waited until the Marcus's final upgrade and gave it to him, for him that +10% energy would've been significant. Eh. Well, better luck next time!

SAD. Wait, I'm not sad, are you? Maybe you are, but there's no need for that -

Let me cheer you up with some fireworks! Yeah, those stupid turrets are capable of humongous crits so I'm absolutely blasting them while keeping out of their range.

It'll cost us some precious rockets, but extra rockets can be found while extra lives...

Well, they also can, but not in this game.

After dealing with turrets, we get another precious occasion to put the traps skill to use.

With power armour, we could've just stepped on those mines without much possible harm for us, but hey, why risk?

So we take a howitzer shell stored here (also a rocket, yay!)

And blast ourself...

A new entrance to the base. That's convenient.

Inside, we easily hack through the first line of security...

But ghosting through this place is not our goal. Quite the contrary. Seeing a retina scanner, we wink at it with our clearly improper eye...

And who would've guessed - robotic defenders pour out from walls.

Excellent! Let's smelt this scrapheap!

Should've sent thrice the numbers if they seriously hoped to stop us. Guess their budget wasn't that big.

Another strange module... That's great, but when will we gain an opportunity to put them to use?

And a set of combat armor - good, still need to work on stuffing Pope's body with as much implants as possible.

We terminate the alarm on level one - not that there's anyone left to hunt us here, but just in case.

Then we descent down using the side elevator - this path seems less risky.

Entering this room was real scary - during the first entrance, we couldn't do anything but wait for the dozens of rockets and minigun bursts to rip us apart. It is then that we've understood that the bots here are disarmed and inactive, therefore, posing no threat. Doesn't spare them from our anger, however.

Terminators try to respond to our hostility, but all they can do is pound us with their emptied guns - a clearly inefficient strategy.

Our anti-crowd affinity, on the other hand...

Despite being laughably easy, this whole crashdown is extremely enlightening.

Loot is similarly good - another set of future implants and some rockets.

Rest of the bots on this level aren't that hapless.

Aren't that strong, either - Pope uses the main elevator to divide their numbers in two, then brings down each half quickly, taking light incoming fire. Marcus watches over his back heroically.

Another level is the reward. No perk here and we hoard the skillpoints.

We also hack into all computers...

That are within our reach - gotta practice those skills or they get rusty, aye?

Same goes for disarming lots of booby traps - who knows, maybe we'll want to use this place as our base of operations someday.

Next level - same story. Burn all we can burn.

The only thing here is that we get a funny request from the mainframe of this place - those wacky AIs and their oddities...

Sure, why not. On lowest level, it's same old clashes with terminators for us.

Then, as we once again intentionally trigger security, it's even more terminators after our souls - heck, let's just blow them to smithereens.

Now, if you were a proper terminator and were made of liquid metal or, at the very least, had a teenage sidekick, you'd stood a chance. Otherwise, not even close.

At the bottom of this place, we stumble upon a vast storage of biological material. Out of morbid curiosity, we unfreeze one of the specimens...

But this doesn't work out well for him.

OK, let's stop goofing around and just take what we came for - a proper cyberbrain. With our superior scientific skills, it's inevitable that we get the one of the highest quality.

We upload the AI into robotic body we've assembled for it, then leave quickly - it was a nice experience and stuff, but let's not test its sanity personally (larping aside - I'm out of mentats and, while best skynet is a decent companion, he's incredibly slow and, therefore, annoying).

Back in New Reno, we enter the ranks of family Wright, but it's not like this family is for long in the world.

There are too many kids around here to bust this place personally - collateral damage is inevitable that way, especially with Marcus acting weirdly as of late. Let's act with guile, for a change.

I wonder, what harm could this little gift bring?

All that is needed. Elder Wright dies and all the secrets of SAD go with him. Yeah, you think I'd just give away a precious military base to you, you dumb fucker? Rot in hell. And, larping mode off, I've got no idea why are we losing karma here - he exploit slaves as well as the rest of the gangs and he mercilessly killed Sam Pritchard, the only survivor of ill-fated previous SAD expedition. Cut up his throat so he won't talk - some fucking good guy mr. Wright was.

We grill some geckos afterwards...

And arrive to redding, wishing to convert our armours into implants.

We're tough as nails, now quite literally so.

Going to San Fran, more geckos to cook.

These ones are quite resistant to fire, but sniper ignores those resistances most of the time so it's no biggie.

Hubbologists vs bandits shootout. Both are outright evil, so we cause a little massacre here...

Marcus is seriously wounded once again, but it's ok, that's how he rolls. Perhaps that's the reason for his psychical abnormalities - if you'd suffer through what he goes on almost daily basis, you'd develop a nasty PTSD too.

San Fran. See this bishop holodisk on the ground? See no car around? What's the deal with it - I've been sorting out my inventory and, trying to read the holodisk, I've managed to drop it on the ground. Obviously, as I was standing behind the car, so the disk was totally unpickable. Great. I've had to park the car at military base and return here on foot to pick it up.

Another training session with Dragon...

And it's a long slog to get our car back, interrupted by another Morton gang. Second one is the weakest of them all...

So he disappears like the morning mist, just with more muffled screams and afterwards stinking.

We also encounter an unwashed villagers vs spammer battle. Well, let's see how they fare in combat against a real threat.

Sure, they got a nice critical chances with those pistols of theirs...

But their defenses could've used some improvement.

Still, they're meaty, I'll give them that, so it takes lots of time to kill them all.

We finish it up by cutting the spammer in half.

Despite the difficulty of combat, xp reward barely reflects that - I guess the devs really didn't want them to get killed.

So we get to the car, return to SF, train with the Dragon for the last time, then invest some of our hard-earned points into unarmed - got two quests ahead of us. Not sure that it's a sane thing to do as their completion is absolutely dependent on aimed hits (which we obviously lack), but it's a completionist lp so what can we do? No escape here.

Let's wait a wee bit more before trying to die in them. We smolder an evil, drug-stocked caravan - sure, it's a karma loss for one, but it's a gain for the rest of humanity.

Then we encounter some raiders. Quite appropriate, considering our destination. We decide to fool around and spend a rocket on them.

Not worth it, but absolutely gratifying. Hey, occasionally, you've got to make small presents to yourself!

Raider lair. Killing random packs of them in the wilderness is fine, but let's get to the root of the problem.

End of part XI.

 

[Baron Dupek]

How many combat armors you can use to make implants? I though 2 was maximum. Or max. 2 on DAM resistance and 1-2 for Energy res?
Good luck in punch-punch fest, I've made it once and it was lucky attempt.

 

[t]

There are two degrees of both implants. So 4 in total.

Wonder what this Marcus larp thing will lead to.

Btw. -16% barter has to be the lowest you can get, right?

 

[Desmodus Rotundus]

Despite us doing a great favor to him, boss Salvatore is absolutely cold with us.

That was Big Cheesehaus Mordino not Salvatore

Also, holy crap I've missed a lot of stuff in the vanilla game. I've completed it at least 5-6 times but I find that I tend to fall into a pattern of doing stuff I remember and not seeking new paths. Definitely don't bother pixelhunting the whole map for stuff like you have. Tried RP once got to that tribe on the coast and gave up, guess I have a lot lower tolerance for crappy content than you

 

[Pope Amole II]

Part XII: Fire Walk With Me

Spoiler

Raider hideout is probably the most unfortunate or, if you wish, misplaced area in the whole RP patch. It's biggest problems is that, flavor-wise, it's supposed to be an extremely dangerous place, but in all my playthroughs I've yet to come here at the point where those raiders actually pose some challenge. And, as RP makes it impossible to find this place casually (unless you go for the outdoorsman 100% kind of way - like, if you have that much skill and exit the vault city around midnight, you have a chance to follow them into their lair; never done this personally, just read about, so not sure if it's true), you're almost bound to come here really, really late. So it's a dangerous place, only it's a popamole place.

RP also added a peaceful way of solving the whole situation - talk their guide out of helping them and the raiders stop, erm, raiding. But I mess up my dialogue choices, thus missing this option.

Well, I was going to kill everyone here anyway. Pope charges in, smokes one of the raiders to get their attention...

Then falls back, punishing the guide for his lack of cooperativeness in the process.

Afterwards, it's our usual choke point exploitation - they rush into narrow tunnels, we fill those tunnels with fire.

It's an effective tactic.

We don't conserve much, allowing ourselves to have some fun by blowing our enemies into the showers of intermixed chunks.

That's pretty laughable amount of xps for what's basically is a private army. Supposed to be, at least - dunno how this gang of suckers managed to terrorise Vault City, considering its laser turrets and combat armour-clad troops.

Cease and repent.

The trap skill pretends to be useful once more - yeah, we've gained 50 xp and avoided the really, really scary blast that would've done, like, 25 damage to us. Yikes!

At least lockpicking has paid for itself earlier.

The contents of safe are ours, but we're not done here yet. Let's explore this place fully.

This tunnel is incredibly trapped - we don't particularly care, but for lightly shielded character without traps skill (because honestly, who pumps it on early levels, if at all?) this can be certain death. ON the other hand, I've yet to play a character who would've arrived to the raiders via the other exit, meaning that he actually has to go through here. Anyhow, they really could've made xp reward bigger here - 25 xps were awesome in the temple of trials, but we're kinda past that point already.

We proceed to the lowest level that is choke-full of scorpions, and not of your average ones - local variety are much tougher than your random encounter one.

Not tough enough to stand the flamer critical, of course.

Yeah, for killing a side-dish scorpions we're getting almost as much xp as for doing the raiders themselves - some major threat they are!

We level up and it's a huge one for us - second action boy means third burst from the flamer per turn and that's a 50% damage increase. Or it is two rockets per turn instead of just one - percentage-wise, that's even better. Right now, our chances to finish this run are pretty huge.

And here's the next tier of Marcus - he's a fine shot but, as you've probably noticed, we're so afraid of his frailty that we barely use him during even the moderate fights. You push him a bit too far - he's dead. But I dunno, who could've been a better option? Sulik is somewhat tiresome, as well as any other melee specialist. Cassidy is too simple. Rest of the shooting npcs are, like... I guess I could've tried Lenny if only for the change of pace - never used him too much and, with RP control patch, he can become decent enough. Put him in power armour, inject both buffout & psycho to boost his AP up to 10, then, after he gains his final level up, waste some of your skillpoints to give him a high energy weapon skill and let him alien blaster everything into oblivion. What makes it worth the effort is his 206 HPs in his final form. 206! Guy is a walking tank. Well, shambling tank. But it's too late to level him up (without grinding) so we stick with the big guy.

Wake up, Marcus, we're already done here - there's nothing to look at anymore.

Fedex time. The only downside of solving the raiders problem is that it incurs significant fedex time.

We try to alleviate that by mixing several deliveries into one...

But we still are forced to run some errands through half of the California.

And it won't be a pleasant journey, obviously. Pope encounters another one of those rocket-wielding mutants, but now he has a launcher of his own to make a preemptive strike.

BTW, I've left Marcus in the Vault city - I'll pick him up later, it's just that I'll be exiting/entering VC and, since getting him out of the party each time is a bother, I gave him some leave time.

Once the rocket guy is dead, rest burns like timber.

NCR. Once again, we're merging two quest deliveries into one, so it's a little bit early for the farewells, mister.

Now it's kthxbye.

On our way back, we have a large trashmob encounter. We make the dogs crispy...

But flamer ammo is not infinite, so we have to kick whatever it is from plants. All that martial training totally pays off.

Torch a small band of gangsters...

And we're finally done here. At this moment, this LP grew kinda stall & safe, I'm afraid, so let's risk our lives for no reason other than to spice the things up.

Some minor preparation required - we make a short trip to SAD, punching some training bags. Yeah, I guess you get where we're getting after that.

Bishop's casino. Well, now it's probably ex-bishop's ex-casino. Here I'm showing you that special ability that talky toaster have taught us - emptying any one-armed bandit at will.

Down in the basement, we get ourselves a pair of, dare I say, slightly customized boxing gloves. No reason to play fair here.

Also, ignoring the hulking, mindless brute in the cage, we have some training time with his punching bag.

Now we're prepared.

One thing I'll have to excuse myself for is that I've totally failed taking screenshots of these battles. So it won't be that informative.

Here are our stats - minuscule melee damage and, thankfully, some natural resistances from all the implants. I should've taken toughness at lvl 3, though. Our biggest danger here is that we can't make aimed shots, therefore, we have to manually punch out all the hps from other boxers, round after round. We have a chance of killing them with a crit, but it's small - 95% to hit, 10% to crit, 20% to roll an insta-death, that means 52 hits on the average to kill a boxer. That's 13 turns for us, but that's on the average. Never trust on the average.

Sure, we have a huge HP bloat and great pool of action points, so first boxer is a breeze - we just hit & run and he can't ever chase us.

Second one isn't much different.

The problems start with the third one - his resistances are so huge that our puny attacks are totally ineffective, we just can't deal any damage to him, it's crit only. However, he still can't chase us efficiently so it's ok.

We roll that crit without losing much HP, as you see.

Things start to go rotten during the final fight with the Masticator. BTW, if "game saved" in the menu seems somehow strange to you, this being an ironman LP and whatnot, then let me tell you - save as often as possible, especially in an ironman. Despite all the patches, Fallout 2 is still prone to crashes (especially as the game goes late) and, well, even a forced by technicality reload still feels icky when you go hardcore. If you'll look at the text version of my posts, you'll see that there are places where image numeration jumps for a couple of screens - those are the crashed moments. Nothing serious happened in them so I think this LP is still pure, but still, that was annoying.

Just like us, Masticator has humongous HP pool, excellent resistances, meaning we don't deal damage to him outside of crit zone, and loads of AP, meaning that outrunning him isn't an option.

By the end of round 1, we lose 34 hp without doing anything to him - if this goes that way, we're dead before round 12. Besides, who knows what's his critical chance - it may be much higher than ours and, unlike us, he can actually aim for head.

Before round 12, lol - at the end of round 2, getting into double digits seems like a distant possibility.

Our HPs go lower and lower, and this fucking brickwall stands as if we're tickling it with goose feather - we do some criticals, sure, but not the ones that we need. Dammit, dying here would be the worst end to this LP possible!

But have no fear - our lives went pretty low, but finally we've stroke that precious fatal blow.

Kiss the floor, bastard!

At least it was worth it - reward here is pretty cool - 5% physical res is pretty cool, especially as we move into the 50+ percent zone.

Next we're ambushed by the last (and the strongest) Morton gang. Nine men with burst & heavy weapons and they totally surround us.

Could've been a cliffhanger if only we weren't so awesome (and they weren't clad in black leather - nice fetish, but isn't that combat proven).

All frogs go to hell. Toads/lizards/newts too.

Gecko power plant, we're having ourself a nice videochat with an enclave soldier.

Yeah, you thought we lived on the edge with that boxing affair? Let's raise the bets.

Bring lots of friends, hon.

Lookie, you totally did! 8 soldiers of Enclave, heavily armed, out for our blood, and our tactical position is as unfavorable as it gets - we're exposed to heavy enemy fire with no cover available. Hell yeah, let's rock! Or better, let's rocket on!

Just look how far our puppy have thrown that fucker. Next one fares even better, shredding a mechanized soldier into bits.

Marcus also is not slacking - yeah, forgot to tell you, I bought him a new toy, gatling laser. Truth to be hold, it's pretty horrible and even a basic plasma rifle is better than it (somehow), but I positively love those "sliced into halves" animation so that's how we'll go. And dude, calling that a "gut-wound) is somewhat an understatement. Not that you care for semantics anymore.

Due to the sneak, return fire is surprisingly light so we continue our barrage.

One thing we adjust is putting our spare points into the big guns skill - yeah, against APA troops, at distance and during the night you have to have it quite high.

First rocket caused nothing but commotion, second one was majestic, however, covering surviving soldiers in the innards of their ex-buddy. Too bad this game doesn't have a moral system.

On the contrary, they're quite enraged - in one turn, they blast half of Pope's hps. Charring the nearest soldier, he tries to disengage...

But, even despite the sneak, those fuckers won't let him go!

25 hps, fuck. A crit here and we'd be dead meat. If anyone thinks I'm playing it too safe - well, in the RP and with fixed ammo mode, that's where bravado gets ya. F2 isn't a forgiving game.

Neither are we a forgiving person. Couple of stims through our veins and we're battle ready again - eat some nuke, you retard!

In our establishment, refills are for fucking free!

Last one is executed in style - we lose lots of hps by doing so, but the pleasure of boiling this prick inside his armoured shell was totally worth it. However, this battle is only a shadow of what's to come - guess where we go next?

Not here - it's just some raiders, getting cooked together with their dogs.

After we're done, you can't really distinct one from another.

Some aliens stand on our way, but not for long.

We narrowly avoid a whale crashing down - jeez, weather nowadays! And obviously there was no sign of this on weather broadcast!

Forth and conclusive implant gets installed.

Knights of the Arthur are met - well, even if we do find the Holy Grenade, it's not like we'll be able to do anything with it.

Quick trip to Arroyo - you all know how it goes here.

Navarro. Let's get some more hot, steamy power armour on power armour action.

After ridding the world of this little liar, obviously.

We enter the base through the locked door inside his house - seems like the safest rout of insertion. I'm not storming this shit from the front gates.

Guards aren't as heavily equipped here...

Besides, narrow corridors provide plenty of cover and are the place where flamethrower shines the most.

Burst after burst...

We quell the resistance without taking a scratch.

Main benefit of going this route is that we get to wear APA before we'll clash with Navarro's main force, not afterwards.

However sweet this present may be, I'll open it before christmas comes. And yeah, this thing is so much better than your average PA that it's no wonder that BoS are screwed.

Before we proceed, let's scorch some defenseless scientists - yeah, fucker, you've been totally infiltrated, but there's no one to be alert here, just you, me and my flamer.

Despite being a genius, you're kinda slow, aren't you? What a dumbfuck choice of final words.

Let's not forget to grab FEV.

Yet another boon of underground infiltration is that we start our main fight inside on of the buildings, i.e., not exposed to all those plasma rifles and turrets.

Once they begin shooting, you quickly understand that 263 hp are not as ridiculously overleveled as they seem to be - they're fine.

Trying to stick to the cover as best as possible - the door is quite wide so we still take some hits - we conflagrate enemy soldiers relentlessly.

Once there's too much of them inside our shack, we try rocketing them out of it with moderate success. We're also unlucky with crits - few insta-deaths for our foes.

As soon as we burn through one row of opposition, the next one arrives.

It's good that this game doesn't feature weapon overheating, or our gun would've melted long time ago.

In the end, most of the walking combatants is reduced to ashes so we can deal with the stationary ones. Bumrushing them seems like a bad plan, so, for a change, we use the rocket launcher for its actual purpose.

It outranges the turrets so we can take them out with all impunity in the world.

Here's our xp reward for battling through half of this place.

Regrettably, we're low on rockets, so, in the less open areas, we're forced to rely on flamer to kindle the turrets.

We can bring them down in one round so it's no biggie, we just have to stay outside of their crossfire.

It's quite a long run to the next one, so we play safe.

I mean, you want to know what happens when you get all heroic with them?

That's what. Never let your guard down when fighting the Enclave troops, just never.

We try to kill the next one securely, but, unfortunately, one rocket is not enough and we need our last ones for a different target.

Of course, APA soldiers are not as dangerous as turrets are, but how do you propose we approach them? Fuckers have an excellent position and we have to respect that.

We're excruciatingly respectful towards them. But those were our last rockets - it's flamer's time to shine.

We manage to sneak up on that turret - first we cover in sarge's office, then into room near the holding pen...

Then we rush to the turret and finish it with one burst.

We wander around the base, hunting the stragglers.

You're a bad guy, you're a good guy, I don't give a fuck - no one walks alive out of here.

But don't you think that I've pussied out of melting remaining turrets - anything but that.

Blaze of glo-o-ory!!!

Thankfully, remaining ones were not as killy as the one in the eastern corner. Good for us, though it's still an ordeal.

Failed to capture his "no one messes with Raul" quote (or something like that). Big words - big guns are better.

Last remnants of Navarro are grouped around some generator. I dunno, there's no official or unofficial info on it, but it always felt like there should've been some quest related to it. Y'know, blasting it would be a logical choice of dealing with those pain-in-the-ass-and-everywhere-else turrets.

That talky scientists proves to be incredibly resilient, surviving through a couple of flamer bursts, holding on longer than his power armoured comrade. Admirable, but not enough.

Heck, just torching this place down was fulfilling, but it's not like we're here solely for that - we have a higher goal to achieve. Though what can be hire than setting fire to an entire military base?

We were like a fucking Prometheus, bringing the spark to the people! And we've even leveled up for our efforts.

When I said no one walks out of here, I was purely dramatic - there are two innocent (probably) captives here, so we let him go. Xarn the deathclaw warrior...

And the K-9. KK, K-9, let's get out of here.

Following the secret tunnel, we exit into complete darkness of wilderness, and only glints of the distant flames, eating at what was the Navarro base, light our path.

End of part XII.

 

[anus_pounder]

Not gonna lie, I was immersed as fuck while reading this update. More tension and fear in an LP of a 15 year old than in modern horror games.

 

[CappenVarra]

Well done, Prometheus

 

[Baron Dupek]

Assault the Navaro Base, are you nuts.
Always forget about implants in my playthrough, no idea why.

I've completed it at least 5-6 times but I find that I tend to fall into a pattern of doing stuff

Yeah, talkative sniper and whatever. Same to me.

 

[Shadenuat]

Playing with last RP now and don't have trouble with aiming in melee with Fast Shot trait. Can't use ranged aimed attacks only.
They did nice job with EPA, but the outside lags as hell, and experimental serum can be used indefinitely, lol.
New characters are great for powergaming - I got Kitsune, she gave +10% to all thieving skills and then I drove lady to a bar and left there.
Fucking Lenny fails morale check every combat and runs away screaming, worse than Myron.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Part XIII: afterburners

Spoiler

As you remember, we took K-9 from Navarro - here are its stats. Actually, it's quite a cool NPC (with party control mode) - it has an in-built power armour, pretty much, a boatload of APs (19 when fully upgraded - that's the highest amount of them across NPCs in this game, iirc), nice hp bloat, insane starting crit chance and decent damage (if you go for the eyes, which you should). I guess its unarmed starts a bit low (100 is like nothing vs late game enemies - you need 150+ to hit alien's eyes properly, for example) and, what totally breaks the deal, in a proper ironman run you won't be getting it early. Unless you rush Navarro, but that kinda spoils the game. And not getting it early means not leveling it up, meaning that basic Sulik will be much better than it. Of course, if you've run out of combat-worthy NPCs (which is one of the ironman's dangers - we're really lucky with them in this one), then it's an option.

Yeah, this puppy is basically wearing a power armour that, in some departments, is even better than APA (cool energy resistances, I mean).

On our road to San Fran, we mince ourselves some deathclaw babymeat - gotta feed that dog with something!

Just kidding, I don't - I'm kinda limiting myself to the 1 NPC during this LP. So I set it free on the streets and report to the BoS.

Well, report - I was doing their work before even being asked for, so it can hardly be called so, but let's just say that I'm a really polite kind of guy.

Inside their bunker, we find some technological riches - for someone, that is. I pick up a YK, but I think Marcus will prioritize gatling over it, if only because I want to test said weapon.

And, as you've probably guessed from all the modules in my inventory, it's time for some serious hardware upgrading.

An extra point of perception will allow us to go on par with the best of the enclave soldiers, extra strength will be nifty 'cause soon we'll want to drag lots of ammo around and extra charisma is as usual, i.e. worthless.

We have a message for hubbologist's leader, let's deliver it.

The guy is a total dick, but we let him be. This time.

This simple delivery propels us one level further, and we have to choose a perk. Now it's a really difficult choice because we've took all of the useful ones and now only shoddy remains. After some contemplation, I'm taking living anatomy here. At this stage of the game, 5 damage per hit (unmodified by anything - neither crit nor armor) is not that big, but flamer produces tons of hits per turn. For example, we're making three burst, each hitting three enemies - that's extra 45 damage spread around. Considering those enemies have around 200 hp each, we're killing an extra 0.25 foe per turn. That's a bit of a wishful thinking, of course, as we won't get that many hits and sometimes that extra damage will get wasted by the insta-death critical proc, but hey, what else there is to get? Besides, there's one other reason that I'll explain just a wee bit further.

Marcus is getting his fifth level up (out of six). The most important change here is a small (but, nevertheless, significant) increase in his armour stats .

Too bad his energy weapon progression is so slow - one of the reasons I'm running him with the gating laser is that Marcus has to snipe from afar and gatling has a nice inner accuracy bonus (20%, iirc).

Now, another reason to pick living anatomy was this. Yeah, despite coming close to defeat in New Reno's boxing, we're here to prove our unarmed superiority once again. Since we're going to basically popamole our enemies to death, punching them four times per turn, those 20 extra damage will be quite significant.

What makes this fight much easier is that we don't have to wear stupid gloves - we can use the "haymaker" attack. And it's main advantage is that it adds 15% to getting a critical, meaning that we'll crit once in a four hits. So it's, like, 21 attacks to get to that insta-death hit - a little more than five turns on the average. With almost 300 hps, we must do fine here. As you can see, our first foe is already down - swift proc.

Second one begins to pummel us quite enthusiastically...

But it is he who falls under the rain of our blows - no crit here, just a boatload of living anatomy attacks dealing quite reasonable damage.

One annoying thing about high-tier fighters here is that they begin to mop the whole area with you, throwing and throwing and throwing you across it. Sure, I have plenty hps to tank, but this being an ironman lp, you always get nervous when you see your char flying across the screen.

We don't fly for long, however - the guy is insta-killed in the next round.

Another thing about high-tier fighters is that they dish out tons of damage with their plenty attacks - that's freaking 40 damage in one turn! 7 turns of such treatment and we're dead.

However, we're absolutely lucky with criticals, killing both this combatant and the next one almost instantly.

Yeah, somehow, I'm not very good at taking these "fallout arena style" screenshots.

And of course I won't kill Dragon for Lo Pan - I want to have some extra fighting.

First of the dragon's boys is knocked out in a second - since they are the good guys, I don't finish them.

Second one has to be beat down into submission - we almost kill him and only then he yields.

Same goes for the third one.

Fourth one... Well, it's fighting, sometimes accidents happen. Besides, it's not like he'd spare us if we were almost dead, so yeah, mortal combat can be mortal.

Then it's time to fly away! That's literally more than half of the arena, and the floor is concrete, ouch... Thank God they have invented stimpacks here.

But, in the end, it's this flashy guy who runs tail down. We had to hit him a lot until he learned his lesson.

Final opponent is another unfortunate accident - we manage to punch our way through the guy, somehow. Remember, kids: martial arts can be bad for your health!

Then it's a Lo Pan fight - yeah, we're killing him. It's not much of a fight, though...

As he fell in two rounds, taking but 36 hps from us. Yeah, I'm totally bad with capturing these fights, sorry.

Here's his corpse rotting inside of the arena - some weird local customs they have here. Anyhow, this whole affair was much easier that I though - compared to the Masticator, these guys are nothing.

Questing time. We take Chip's lost spleen quest, but as the guy can hold for a couple of days more...

We descend onto a ship's lower deck, magnificently infested with all sorts of scary mutated crap.

Abundant melee enemies trying to swarm us - that's the way I like it. Burn, creeps.

Yeah, after Navarro, this fight looks unbearably trivial.

Well, we still have one real challenge ahead of us, so let's just grind through this whole business as quickly as possible.

This place contains tons of xp, so it's not surprising that we level up from it. Saving skill points once again.

I'm also using FEV here and now so I won't have another "bishop's holodisk" incident.

We rescue the girl and we're done here.

RP content - San Fran is guarded by the nuclear submarine (the same that these people arrived on) and you have to disarm its missiles or the tanker will get shot.

Of course, since it's a quality content, you can't just do that quest - no, first you have to run to one of the gun shops in chinatown and learn about the sub, then you'll have an option to get inside. Ah, what can feel better than a little side-trip?

At least we can do that spleen quest while we're at it - let's combine two chores into one.

We're back and we finally can persuade the guard to let us in.

There are other options of doing it, though, but when did you played F2 without having a tagged 100+ speech? Only in idiot playthrough, maybe.

Nice boat.

Yeah, as with other RP content, this place looks really nice, but content-wise it's atrocious.

Basically, all you have to do here is pass one check (out of few logical options - repair, science, etc) and you're done.

Even the doors are not pickable so we're not getting those 25 xps, dammit!

Off we go. That was interesting. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the efforts of the RP guys and all the job they've done (for free) and I absolutely don't want to flak them, but they really, really could've found better quest-writers.

Next on our menu is joining the hubbologists - I really don't care for these guys and I don't even need zeta scan bonuses, I just want to show you something.

And not these dumbfuck mass culture references.

Zeta-scan goes fine for us, btw - we're lucky so no stat decreases.

Y'know, San Fran is often maligned as the worst area in Fallout 2, being called nonsensical and out of touch with the setting, etc., etc. Whether or not that is true (my opinion is that the whole F2 is nonsensical and out of touch with the setting, but that's a topic for another discussion), one thing I want to praise it for (because no one commends it for this) is its quests. They are the best quests in the whole game.

I'm not even talking about flavor or quirkiness - you don't have tricky to find stuff like becky's still or lousville slugger here, sure. But, in my opinion, extremely hard to find stuff is not good design. It may work, but it's not brilliant. What I like much more is this - so we're asked by hubbologist's scientist to get some fuel for their sorry shuttle. And in a previous conversation, we were asked to kill Badger.

What do we do? Since poor guy owes us one, we're extracting this doubt in a peculiar manner - by making him hack Shi's mainframe, transferring fuel to the tanker.

Oh, we also finish or business with Chip in the meantime, but that's not the quest to praise, just your average fedex.

So Badger got the fuel for us, good.

Then he goes on an errand...

But he's intercepted by two mean-looking Shi thugs.

We know what Badger wants already, but what do they want?

His life. Sorry, bro, but life is a shitter.

But does that count as a hubbologist's quest solution? Of course it fucking does! It's the best evil quest that I've ever seen in the world of RPGs, where you're allowed to be manipulative and cunning, not a dull "I'll fucking kill you for change in your pockets" thug. Sure, it's just one quest solution, but that doesn't matter - it's the whole idea of interlocking quests (that, unfortunately, went unnoticed and unpraised by both gamers & designers) that counts. But that's not all - another thing you can do here (which I've kinda failed as my memory is leaky, it requires precise plan and I didn't bother to consult the walkthrough) is to go full Yojimbo/A fistful of dollars here.

Basically, you can do favors to one side (either Shi or Hubs), then undo those favors get on a good side of their opponents. Gave plans to Hubs - steal them for the Shi. You can gain quite a lot of xp that way, it's just that you need to plan this carefully. I really appreciate playing manipulative bastards in RPG (but that's an absolute rarity), so options like these are godsend.

I also hack into the Emperor - with the ridiculously high science skill, you can do this unnoticed and gain a lot of xps in the process.

I do the same with our dear crazed cultists, though everything that's related to them is shitty so there's no xp reward for that. At least in RP we can actually learn the exact location of the hubbologist stash, which we will visit later.

At this moment, we have a more important issue at hand - purging the heretics!

On the corpse of technician, I find a weird item I haven't seen before. Probably a RP addition, but what it's used for? Or is it flavor only?

Down we go. This whole fight is rather long...

But effortless. Should've totally done it before Navarro, I guess.

The only real effort here is disabling those forcefields constantly - which is what I'm doing here, I dunno why the camera is looking somewhere else, lol.

Y'know, one huge advantage of those robes is that they probably get soaked with gasoline and make the phrase "human torch" even more literal.

I doubt that our foes get the beauty of it, however.

Ah, the only thing that matters is that they get the punishment they deserve.

And really, by this point, I'm almost out of the "burning" quips. Good thing that I'm also almost out of enemies to burn.

This AHS-9 is a tough schmo, surviving a 150 damage crit just like that. You think you know the pain, motherfucker?

Now you're the enlightened one, shithead.

Despite the length of the combat, xp here is kinda mediocre - not really low, but not great either.

There's also a new side-quest for the Shi here - recovering their stolen biology specimen...

But it pays a "generous" amount of 800 xp or so.

And we're at the stash, willing to wipe the hubs out completely. You can talk your way through this place...

But why bother? Burn the impurities away.

So there's a small amount of stuff in the building itself (including a troll bike that doesn't work)

Pretty much nothing at the first underground level - just another speech check if you're sneaking in.

And tons of riches at the lowest level, guarded by two average hubbologist combat armour dudes.

There's a lot of random stuff here, but really, this place misses some kind of unique reward.

Yeah, there are some jewels here, but they're just bartering objects, at this stage of the game, stuff for sale is overabundant.

There's also a broken geck here and, while it's a nice touch, it doesn't do anything.

On our way back to San Fran (yeah, the stash is located outside of the city), I encounter another Morton brother. Wait, I've thought I killed them all! Or is it my memory playing another trick on me? Well, whatever.

It's just five guys in the crappy armour, so what do they expect to accomplish here?

Whatever their ambitions were, they're dust now.

Vault 13. I hadn't planned it specially, but it's nice that V13 is in the thirteenth update.

Apart from the long conversations, not much to do here. So we hear their problems...

We find the GECK (not that we've been really looking for it).

We level up from it and, to our much pleasure, Marcus reaches his final tier.

For Pope it's perk time so I pick pyromaniac - the hell not? It's not that strong, but, coupled with living anatomy, it's 10 extra damage per hit (maybe more - I dunno if pyromaniac's dmg bonus is modified by crits or not; if it is, then it's even better - 25-35 in total). And it's totally fitting, after all.

We also get computer parts for the tanker.

As we're the good guy, we fix the Vault's mainframe - let there be food and water for all!

We can also read the logs of an ex-overseer. But, tbh, it promotes the very same bothersome idea of "vaults as a social experiment", so screw it.

We just read it to get the xps.

Oh, the final Marcus stats - he's still a meh shot, so I'm sticking him into gatling duty. At least its bursts are semi-effective without the need to be aimed at eyes.

Don't worry, dude, I've helped myself already.

Back to the tanker - we repair the navigation computer...

And we get insanely loaded up on fuel and rockets - thank God for the Marcus's str 10, allowing him to carry tons of this stuff. I really hope it'll last.

Some fumbling with the controls and we're off.

Welcome to the Enclave. And yeah, we'll totally kick their asses, Marcus, just in the next (and, anyways, final) update.

End of part XIII.

 

[Insane Psychic]

A thousand brofists to you, mighty Pope, for showing new and inventive ways to screw around in Fallout 2. Can't wait for the final update.

 

[Thor Kaufman]

Wow

You could have used Psycho for the boxing fights or kicked the Masticator to get disqualified if things went tough but I guess that would have been against your code?

 

[Baron Dupek]

Well, good luck, you gonna need it/

Are you going to take on the Enclave head-on?

Should've brought reinforcements.
Anyway, one thing I like about end-game Fallout 2 is that the designers realized that by then the player must be a total combat beast, so they simply shrugged their shoulders, said "screw it" and filled it with APA goons totting turbo plasma rifles, gauss guns, rocket launchers, super sledges and every other high-powered weapon in the game. Fighting Navarro in a Ironman run is very bold.

Yeah, tried to assault Enclave two times but no success... those procks with gauss and super hammers poped me like a mole.

Also, difference between how the Enclave is presented here and FO3 is big. In Fallout 2 they're this shadowy, ominous force of Ultimate DOOM that overshadows every other faction in the series so far (and even later on, nobody ever reached the level of power and technology the Enclave had), with their superior weapons, superior, sinister armor, sinister aircraft and their capability to effortlessely kidnap villages and even a whole vault, create intelligent deathclaws, etc. If you don't like diplomacy or stealth you have to fight your way through a epic gunfight in a base and then across a oil rig full of soldiers, which is impossible if you don't grind like hell and get tons of super-perks and HP. In FO3, pffffffffffff.

Sounds like X Files' shadow govmnt, with Smoker Man and else.

 

[Desmodus Rotundus]

Assault the Navaro Base, are you nuts.
Always forget about implants in my playthrough, no idea why.

I've completed it at least 5-6 times but I find that I tend to fall into a pattern of doing stuff

Yeah, talkative sniper and whatever. Same to me.

I do play different builds combat wise, although I never tend to go without gifted. What I meant was that I go to a location and do the stuff I remember being there, solve quests in a way I remember them being solvable talk to people I remember being useful etc. I sure as hell don't check the map thoroughly, to see if something else is interactable with, or if someone else might have something to say. That's why I miss a lot of stuff and I definitely did more of that when I played the game first few times. For instance I always remember there being that electronic lockpick in the Algernons basement but in recent years I don't remember ever finding it, just checking the tables in the middle of the room and not finding it thinking, that my memory was wrong.

Same as you with the implants though, and I sometimes remembered that they were in the game, but I for some reason affiliated them with the medical computer in brotherhood base and I don't think I remembered the combat armor component either.

 

[Pope Amole II]

Part XIV: enter the dragon.

Spoiler

(fyi, it's from an album called "Language of Flames and Sound")

Entering Enclave, we find ourselves surrounded by turrets. Luckily, they're inactive at the moments or we'd been torn to shreds instantly. Anyhow, we're not letting them stay here - hacking them to win the final confrontation would've been to easy and letting them stay during that would've been suicide. We decide to take care of them from the very beginning, destroying them one by one in stealth mode so we won't attract significant return fire.

Killing the first one, Pope moves on to the second, but Marcus, deciding to show his initiative once again, wants to deal with another one.

Two quick bursts and the giant falls to the ground without even finishing his sentence. Fuck, Marcus, fuck! In the end, it wasn't a good idea to bring old fellow to the Enclave - his armour is just too shit to survive through it. I'm not even sure those were the critical hits, to be honest.

At least you've done your part by bringing all this ammo for us - that's already half of the victory. And, as you can see, I spent five minutes picking up said ammo from the Marcus's corpse and dropping it on the ground. Wait for a couple of images and you'll see why that was extremely important. Also, I don't mess around with the rest of the turrets, insta-destroying them from a safe distance.

This one cannot be approach that way, so I take caution and enter the area in the combat mode, rushing and killing it ASAP. The failure to do so already cost me one rather glorious ironman run (with kinda similar build, only skilled instead of gifted and tons of larping, you can see the, erm, fallout of that in my underrail alpha lp) - 700 hp crits are no fucking joke.

Then it's all about choosing the good fighting position. This small, isolated room will do perfectly.

First we must clean it from its personnel - one APA soldier falls fast, other one stands, and those huge robots near the wall shower us with their rockets. Fortunately, their rockets are not as majestic as ours so our own APA holds them fine.

Second soldier is quickly sent to join his buddy in hell (with a little bit of living inferno as well)...

Then it's turn to overheat some unruly robotic conduits. Despite their intimidating look, sentry bots are much weaker than live enclave soldiers so they're deep down on our priority killing list. It goes like turrets > soldiers > bots > civilians.

Quite logically, all those explosions have attracted quite a bit of attention so now this level is like a disturbed wasp nest, rushing on us in its entirety. That's, like, scary, but tactically unwise - we immolate them as they rush through the narrow doorway.

Even the puny scientists go at us kamikaze-style - I understand their desperation as, probably having heard what happened to Navarro, they know what we're capable of, but I really wish some modder would've written a script to organize some defenses instead of bumrushing. Breaking through those defenses with rocket launcher would be so sweet...

This battle goes long - Pope is not really able to kill of all enemies as they arrive...

But that's the beauty of a flamer - the more the merrier!

For a change of pace, we decide to launch a point blank range rocket at them (well, almost - Pope is out of the blast range, obviously), but it's not that much better than flamer - we really shouldn't waste our ammo here.

Despite the relentless onslaught, we fare quite well, losing only one third of our hps so far.

We roast another citizen...

Then we nuke a full hoard of them, with some soldiers in the mix - once again, waste of ammo, but that was too sweet of an opportunity to miss. Just look at all those fleshy parts scattering in all directions!

Another blast, for good measure, but dammit, I really should've started conserving rockets - that bastard totally survived a second blast. But that's kinda predictable - see, not only those bastards are equipped with some high-tech stuff, they also have impossible stats. Your APA guard has a Special stats of 10 ST, 8 PE, 8 EN, 5 CH, 7 IN, 9 AG, 8 LK if male or 10 ST, 9 PE, 8 EN, 5 CH, 6 IN, 10 AG, 8 LK if female. They also have 130-160% in their weapon skills and two hundred hps. For some reason, PA troops are even better in some departments - they have 10 in all relevant stats, 150 hps (well, that's their only flaw) and at least 150% in each of the weapon skills.

Basically, that's why bringing companions into Enclave is semi-pointless - even the good ones like Sulik or Cassidy pretty much equal just one Enclave grunt. And we're fighting them in large packs.

Then it's our first crit there - it's more or less safe one, taking just half of our remaining hps. Barely a scratch.

We retaliate tenfold, of course.

It's hard to believe, but this skirmish is done. There's still plenty of enemies on this level, but they're too smart to follow their mates into the grave.

Gaining a tiny bit of xp as a reward, we level up. I polish my big guns skill a bit so we can launch rockets from safe distance.

Then I return to the entrance to restock. And look - Marcus's corpse has miraculously vanished! Amongst with his weapons, batteries and other small stuff I hadn't bothered to loot out. Now just imagine what would've happened if I left all that ammo on him. Phew.

Back into fray. In one round, I boil this enclave trooper, staying too close to the entrance...

Then I retreat into the corridor, wishing to take my stand there.

With our short range and their crit potential, it just wouldn't be smart to rush across the room to get them.

Charring that batch without much problems, we move on. One of the soldiers here wields a vindicator minigun and, well, there is one marquee on our priority list that is higher than turrets - vindicator soldiers. We shred the guy away with our first rocket.

Yeah, whenever I use the rocket launcher, I tend to carry away, blasting the stuff on left and right. Hope that won't bite me in the ass.

Another enclave soldier picked up the gun of his fallen buddy, but, luckily, we're out of his firing line at the point. We get rid of a smaller nuisance...

Then we turn the smart guy into a fucking LEGO set.

Good news for us - in this armoury, we find a couple of rockets. Even minor refreshment is welcomed.

We also find some grenades and, hey, EMP ones are rather good against those bots.

For the sake of conservation (and since we have to put those skillpoints somewhere), let's try them.

We're forced to waste another rocket here and it doesn't even kill the guy, but how else we initiate the combat here? I guess I could've picked vindicator from one of the corpses, but that wouldn't be stylish.

Pulse grenades are superb, however, and, due to the fast shot, cost only 3 AP to throw. Should've brought a lot more of them, I guess.

Short-circuiting the bots, I flame the rest of this guy's life away.

And I spend my last pulse grenade on the turret - it's also cool against them, unsurprisingly so. Damn, I definitely should've brought more of them.

One of the bots gets that corpse overlay bug, so I can loot it - they're armed with avengers, it seems.

Guess what> That was just the first level. Well, not even the first one - the side one. Certainly doesn't feel that way.

Another turret is melted down in a second.

Thankfully, one guard is keeping near entrance so we can get their attention simply with flamer.

But then they group a lot and it would've been foolish not to launch a missile there - you never know when one of their miniguns could crit. And avenger crit is probably more than enough for us.

Half of them is gone, time to pacify the other one.

The remnants don't look that challenging so I'm torching them down.

An unlucky launch for me - I really hoped that those scientists are in the blast area, yet somehow they weren't.

Time to fall back and rely on our trustier weapon.

It's a holocaust in the very literal meaning of it.

Bodies lit up one after another...

Until this room is filled with nothing but smell of ashes, napalm and death.

One of the corpses shared our weapon choice - good, we'll need that ammo. With ammo fix mod, Mk I is much worse than Mk II (surprisingly, in the vanilla Mk I is much stronger and Mk II shouldn't be even considered), but it'll have to do.

Tons of turrets on this level means bad news for our rocket supply.

Terrible, horrible, atrocious and hideous news.

Better safe, but sorry.

At least we're not taking a single hit in the process.

Small chat with our village elder - dammit, I totally hoped they've whacked the old hag so I could lead my tribe as totally befits to the person of my greatness.

Still, such insult to our folk has to be avenged in only way possible.

You thought experimenting on people is fun, fucker? Well, let's test your flame tolerance, shithead.

Second level, the labyrinth. No hard fights here, just a puzzle of sorts.

Also a hidden stash in one of pcs which gives you reward depending on your tagged skill. You have to repair one of the terminals (selected at random) then, if you have a certain skill tagged, you're getting reward. Well, we've got the reward for our doctor skill and it's nothing important - just medical supplies.

Browsing the labyrinth, we stumble on the room full of enclave soldiers, but, to our relief, they're completely armless - we must've caught them during the combat preparations or whatever. Good for us.

Bad and insufferably painful for them.

Yeah, you go on trying to crush through my APA with your fists, dumbasses. Sure, you're in the motorized armour, but even it is not that strong.

But I must excuse myself for badmouthing them - the guys are polite enough to group for some rather efficient toasting so I'd rather thank them for it.

Last one goes down with a funny dance...

And it's a huge reward for barely any work done.

I browse the labyrinth once again. As actually solving it is kinda tedious, I just lockpick my way through it - it's pretty painful, but nothing that wouldn't get cured by a dosen or so stimpacks.

So there's a symmetrical room here, also foll of hapless soldiers. And once again I go trigger-happy, wasting rockets needlessly.

They're unarmed, just kindling them kindly is ok.

The carnage brings us one level up.

But there's something better here - a mk II APA!!!

You'd thought that MK I was already beastly enough, but no, MK II racks it up to insanity. As we're ourselves are mad for storming the Enclave, this suits us just fine.

We're through the labyrinth.

Down to level 3, giving some guards a warm greeting.

Before killing the second one, I run out of potential shooting lane of that turret - just for a good measure.

Then I viciously blow it up.

As usual, another soldier rushes to her death, but there's no huge inflow of soon-to-be corpses - not much soldiers stationed here, I guess? Whatever, I'd rather worry about that minigun toting soldier - doesn't look like I'll be rocketing him.

Sneak works fine, however - I crawl upon him, then rush forward and seal his fate with in two bursts.

More guards incoming.

For a change of pace (and out of ammo conservation), I try lobbing plasma grenades at them, but it's hopeless - doesn't do jack. I guess they can be used against those unarmored civilians, but no more than that.

The vice-president himself tries to knock us out - won't he break his tender bureaucratic hands on our hardened shell?

Since it's THE vice-president, we must honour him with a missile to his face - regrettable, but necessary.

Simpler folks are combusted...

As usual.

It's another prolonged struggle here. Well, struggle is an overstatement, merely massacre.

In all the commotion, the presidents joins the chaos and, to my shame, I incinerate him before even noticing it. Sorry, but my etiquette sense is really poor.

I take his card, just in case. 37 units of fuel and 20 rockets remaining.

Then it's time for the greatest dialogue in the game. Hey, dude, have you considered that you're, like, totally evil?

"Really, mr. Pope? Let me consider that... Oh, gee golly molly, that's true, I'm evil!"

"Now I must totally kill myself and everyone I've known and loved!"

Eh, ok. I move up to clean up a cowardly soldier that tried to wait through the slaughter here, then it seems like the doc had another change of heart - the retard attacks us!

He would've died from toxins anyway, so let's consider it mercy killing.

Level 4. All non-armoured guys here are already dead - saves us lots of ammo.

Now to take care of the armoured ones - rush and burn, rush and burn.

They respond with some plasma grenades and, well, it tickles. A bit.

Our attacks are not nearly as friendly.

Nah, sure, they took 50 hps from us in that round and that's something, but they have to work harder to ever threaten us.

Ahh, to walk on dust of your enemies...

We take a well-hidden turrent with rocket shot...

Then we drop down the last enclave soldier surviving.

No longer surviving. We switch attention to their last scientist and he doesn't fare better.

I blow the reactor PC with some explosives I've snatched from their armoury - very poetic, I think.

Who would've guessed, but blowing stuff up can teach you something. Browsing though the perk choices, I find nothing better but this one - extra level means extra 11 hp and I'd rather have them soon.

Since we've already slaughtered everything here, escaping to the exit is effortless - just a matter of running fast.

Along the road, we check up our supplies - 21 rocket (yeah, I probably worried too much about wasting them), 13 fuel units + 5 in the flamer. Kinda low, but that has to be it.

Entrance area. I spend all of my skill points - no sense in holding them up and I don't want to fail a particular skill check.

In the hallway, I meet a team of enclave commandos. Since I'm rather fond of commandos, I decide to give them an opportunity of their lifetime:

So, dudes, either you fuck with the guy who just brought an entire military base down...

Or you help me and walk out of here, alive and intact. Besides, I can always use some amoral ex-military henchmen. Now choose - is it a fuck or walk?

Good puppies.

So it's Frank Dontgiveafuckwhomheis.

I'm not here for talking.

He goes first, but his plasma gun merely stings us...

Or so I would've loved to say.

Dammit, one sixth of our hps in one go. Seems like he's not the guy to joke about. And rocket terribly fails against him - sure, it brings him to his knees, but 38 damage out of 999?

We inject ourselves with a super-stim and launch another one - wasn't a big success either.

Next round is a similar exchange of plasma bolts and rockets, only this time Frankie stays on his legs.

Our newly gained allies finally get on the move, so I reposition myself to the side, getting out of their firing lines.

Nah, we shouldn't have bothered to spare rockets - they're basically worthless against him. Well, our build is not as good against him - we're focused on fighting large hordes of enemies, not on mano a mano affairs. Not that I'm complaining.

Flamer is also not quite lethal against him, but at least it does greater damage and it's 3 five bursts in two turns.

Dat end boss plasma gun, however...

The only good news is that out of ammo. Otherwise, it's 160 hp in one round. You've gotta be kidding me.

And that doesn't stop our problems - with couple of savage blows, he throws us into the corner.

We get up and, with couple of bursts, bring him on his knees once again. Suck on that, bitch! And those slow motherfuckers are totally worthless - they're just fucking around, not doing a shit. Should've killed them. Kids, remember: never trust a traitor!

Next round was like fucking hell - Frankie goes berserk and leaves us at unbelievable low of 25 hps. Fuck! That's all I can say as you can only imagine my facial expression as I've watched those HP numbers move down.

We patch ourselves up, but that's not needed, actually - another burst and that's it. Feeling high and mighy now, you cocksucker, feeling high and mighty?

Frank is too busy with spewing his innards out to give us a concise and well-articulated reply.

After a while, he manages to mutter something, but we don't bother to hear it out. Let his last words go to waste.

His body lays there in two huge pieces and we're out of here in one.

And what of the Enclave?

it's in the same state that everything else that dared to oppose us - in ashes.

The end.

 

[anus_pounder]

Really, there isn't much more to say. Excellent LP, bro.

 

[CappenVarra]

flamin'

 

[Azira]

I don't think I've ever used the flamer in my Fallout 2 playthroughs.. I always go for the gauss rifle and aimed shots at the eyes.

 

[t]

But what about the post-enclave stuff?

 

[Shadenuat]

I tried flamer in RP, it's not that good. I was surprised Pope didn't bring Bozar at least for Horrigan fight. Flamer and it's fuel are heavy, you have to use Algernon to get enough, and it's damage is not stellar. "Yet another ammo mod" makes flamer weaker imo, while actualy making .223 even more powerful! Regular rifles and .223 pistol go even through power armor with ease, while Bozar just rips anything apart. Sure, with fast shot, sniper and 12 action points flamer works, but in that sort of build other weapons would probably work even better.
Also for me, for some reason, shooting flamer at multiple enemies like centaurs crashes the game.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Modders, modders never change...

 

[Pope Amole II]

But what about the post-enclave stuff?

Eh, I don't think there's much point to it, especially since this LP was mostly focused on surviving/abusing and not larping/story. I think it's better to end this with the fall of Enclave.

"Yet another ammo mod" makes flamer weaker imo

It does, but, to be honest, that mod is crap and should be avoided like plague. I've installed it without any kind of foreknowledge and I deeply regret that.

And yeah, people, you really should try something other than gauss/sniper. There are lots of workable options there:

1. Energo sniper - well, basically the same as your average sniper, but with energo weapons. Now, in some aspects, this build is weaker than gauss - it has a rougher start (unless you waste a tag on small guns) and YK is not great of a weapon as gauss rifle. However, you have more weapon choices to play with - whereas gauss dude is pretty much stuck to his rifle (everything else in his arsenal doesn't quite cut it), energo one has access to alien blaster (insane for the short-range combat - strongest weapon of the game, in my opinion) and gatling laser (good for extra-long range shots and against enemies who don't give much crap about eye criticals - deathclaws, for example). Playing with 3 guns is more fun than playing with 1.

2. Energo cowboy. Same as before, just with fast shot instead of sniping. Here you can't really use YK efficiently, but the duo of gatling/alien is quite workable.

3. Big cowboy - bozar or avenger (vindicator is kinda pipe-dream) and fast shot, pretty easy one.

4. Rocket/flamer AoE - you've just seen it.

5. Melee/unarmed guy - main advantage here is that you need 4 less points of luck and up to 4 less points of perception, meaning that you can have either high EN or CHA. Melee weapons have an easier start (lots of easily accessible powerful ones), but unarmed is better overall - mega-fist deals more damage than super-sledge (and isn't half as tedious), there's tons of free tutoring (you can easily get your skill up to 150 without investing much - good for the retards) and there's a hth evasion option available (it's not that good, though, not on the hard difficulty).

6. Amazing flarethrower - yeah, this build (from my other F2 lp) seems like the dumbest thing ever, but it works, you can go through the enclave with it (if you powergame). The only thing it needs is 2-3 companions so you can kill those disabled enemies much quicker.

7. Party guy - basically, it's any of this tactics, just used alongside 5-man party. It won't be as strong because you have to invest in CHA, but you'll have tons of good henchmen. Or, maybe, not very good - for the fun factor, I'd advise to go for the clumsier ones here.

 

[Thor Kaufman]

Is the Gauss Rifle really superior to the YK42B Pulse Rifle? Is that because of ammo modifiers (never understood those) and generally slightly higher laser/electric DR?
In any case I think the Gauss Pistol is even better than the Gauss Rifle, with aimed shot and 12APs you can get off three aimed or 6 unaimed (if fast shot) while with the rifle you are stuck with 2, respectably 4.
3*27=81 or 6*27=162
2*37=74 or 4*37=148
Kinda negligible and less work because less shooting is nice too (plus lots of instakills) but might as well sperg all the way.