Upgrading ED-E and my Xbox 360 in time for Fallout 4

It’s crazy to write this, but Fallout 4 comes out this week. I’m under no embargo, so I can totally say that out loud without fear of retribution. In fact, on Wednesday, I’ll be joining the next generation of gamers–a.k.a. the current gen–with an Xbox One and a retail copy of Bethesda’s post-apocalyptic take on Boston. Yeah, I know the game releases to the public a day prior, but my bundle won’t arrive until Hump Day. That all said, I’m totes excited.

I fired up Fallout: New Vegas over the weekend because the reality is this: once I can deep-dive into Fallout 4, it’s going to be hard to return to any of the prior games. That’s fine when it comes to Fallout 3 because I saw and did nearly everything possible, but there’s still a handful of things to do and Achievements to pop left in Fallout: New Vegas, and it seems like I haven’t touched my console copy of the game in about three years. A couple of them still seem too much for my waning heart, like completing an entire run on the “hardcore” difficulty or getting banned from all the strip’s casinos. However, I noticed that there were two left unpopped from the Deathclaw- and radiation-heavy DLC Lonesome Road. Hmm. Off to the Divide!

My first focus was on upgrading everyone’s favorite floating eye-bot equipped with battle theme music ED-E with all five performance enhancements. I guess I missed one or two the only other time I played the DLC, which meant I opted to have a guide open next to me as I both meandered through the irradiated land and listened to Dave Lang coin future Giant Bomb phrases like “get monked” during his Extra Life 2015 stream. I was able to get four of the five upgrades for ED-E, which do stick in the robot permanently when you return to the Mojave Desert, but one required a Science skill level of 75 or up to hack a terminal and open a locked door. I’m guessing I didn’t have the skill high enough before. Well, as luck has it, I did not have a great Science skill with this character either, so I grinded out some XP and used a magazine to hit 75 on the dot. Check it out:

ED-Ecated (20G): Find all of ED-E’s upgrades in the Divide.

The other Achievement that I was juggling progress towards as I outfitted ED-E for the future is Warhead Hunter, which tasks the Courier with detonating all of the warheads in the Divide. There are thirty in total, and by the time I had spoken Ulysses down from unnecessary violence–thank you, 100 Speech skill level–I had twenty-four taken care of. Then I hit up the Courier’s Mile for two more, which is a really tough section full of radiation and Deathclaws; I kind of zipped in, used the laser detonator, and got out faster than you can say wasteland omelet. That means I have four left, and I’m not sure exactly where they are, nor do I feel like retracing every step I took to unearth them. Kind of a bummer, but my fault for not following a step-by-step guide.

If anything, this brief return to Fallout: New Vegas has reminded me of what I’d like to see greatly improved in Fallout 4. Combat can still be chaotic and clunky, and sometimes you can mash on the Pip-Boy button only for your character to never bring it up, leaving you open to the deadly swipe of a Deathclaw. The menus themselves continue to be a struggle to get through. That standard Bethesda jank will never go away, seeing as I had enemies doing cartwheels through walls during slow-mo V.A.T.S. moments, but I’d like to see less of it on an enhanced engine.

Considering my Xbox One bundle comes with a digital version of a backwards compatible version of Fallout 3, there’s hope down the road of Fallout: New Vegas also getting the same treatment. If so, cool. Perhaps by then I might be in the mood to return to Brown Town and finish up the remaining six Achievements. Until then, I have Fallout 4‘s ruined Boston to explore, which is doubly interesting to me seeing as I visited the real-life city back in August and expect to recognize several locations. Hopefully one of them is the fake Cheers bar. It’s gonna be wicked.

Recruiting all companions in Fallout: New Vegas only took three playthroughs

Man, I have to imagine that if you’re not a fan of Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas and that you’re still following my blog day in, day out, you must be sick of me blathering about these games by now. I know I am. No, not really. Never ever evah. They are great for musing. There’s way too much to this franchise to explore–both good and bad–and considering I still have at least two more playthroughs left (for a sickening lump sum of five playthroughs) before Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim takes over…well, expect more Fallout-based posts. Sorry, haters. Congrats, lovers.

But yeah, check this baby out:

The Whole Gang’s Here (25G): Recruited all companions.

Got it last night. Only took three playthroughs, and I’ll explain why, as it’s actually a simple Achievement to get, but requires the Courier to do things in a certain order or to grow a cold shoulder. There are eight companions to recruit during one’s time in the Mojave Wasteland, and they are are: Arcade Gannon, Craig Boone, ED-E, Lily Bowen, Raul Alfonso Tejada, Rex, Rose of Sharon Cassidy, and Veronica Santangelo.

During my first playthrough, I collected all of them, but I only managed to pick up Veronica after a certain incident, the kind of happening that’s unforgivable, the kind that involved me wiping out everything she ever knew. Once she was “recruited” she quickly realized who I was and what I had done, and that was it. She left, never to join my forces again. I’m guessing the game didn’t consider that one to two minutes she was on Team Jareth enough for this Achievement. Oh well.

During my second playthrough, the same thing happened without me realizing. I murdered all her BoS friends before recruiting her and didn’t even bother attempting to track her down. Besides, my second playthrough character was Samantha, a fiery redhead, and there wasn’t room for competition.

Now, my third and most recent Courier, that creepy Kapture, he went after Veronica as soon as he could. Well, right after getting Boone and ED-E, of course, but long before the main quest got in the way. And then he still murdered all of her friends. Only this time, we kept our distance. Sent her off to Lucky 38, never spoke to her again. Harsh, right? Nah. Saved her a lot of pain and trouble, I suspect. After that, it was just a matter of time and getting a high enough Speech skill for Arcade, after which…ping. Achievement unlocked!

This Achievement is notorious for being buggy. Glad to know that during playthrough #4 or #5, I won’t have to worry about getting everyone and keeping all neat and happy. Also, no more Lily. She freaks me out. It’s mainly always going to be ED-E and either Boone or Rose.

So yeah, three playthroughs and nearly a year later. Closing in all finishing up all the Achievements for Fallout: New Vegas, but I know a few more come out tomorrow with the next DLC, Gun Runners’ Arsenal. Mmm…guns.

Achievements of the Week – The Welcome Home Edition

Oh look, another week at Grinding Down coming to a close. These things just sort of creep on me. Like creepy creepers. Like your hairy uncle that drinks too much at family gatherings. Um…

Right, moving on. Did I play more Deus Ex: Human Revolution and scour China for all of its secrets? Nope. Did I continue on with Mafia II to sneak into some government building and steal gas stamps? Nope. Did I get back into Bastion after going silent on the game for many, many weeks? Nope. Did I play the latest DLC for Fallout: New Vegas? You bet your sweet buttocks I did. And that’s basically all I played. Still dealing with a lot of stress and lack of time/energy. Hopefully, after the next few weeks, that will all be in the past. Hopefully.

From Fallout: New Vegas…

Condemned to Repeat It (20G): Decided the fate of all the Divide Dwellers

Hometown Hero (30G): Completed Lonesome Road.

So far, until more FAQs come out and the wikia is expanded, there are two ways that I know of for dealing with Ulysses, the final boss of Lonesome Road. And they are…

::SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS::

You can talk your way through it, first needing a speech skill check of 90, and then who knows what else after that. Or you can kill him. But to do so, you must first deal with a swarm of medical eyebots that are constantly healing him and constantly respawning, as well as a seemingly endlessly attack from marked men. Chances are you have ED-E with you, but he goes down very fast. Trying to take on Ulysess, two to three eyebots, and at least two marked men at once eats up a lot of stimpaks. There are machines that will stop the eyebots from spawning, but you need a 100 in either Repair or Science to do so. Guess which three skills my character Kapture neglected to focus on during this playthrough? Speech, Science, and Repair.

Basically, I was screwed, and this became even more evident after failing the fight over ten times and trying every tactic in the book. Actually, there was one final tactic left: I changed the difficulty from Normal to Very Easy. Sigh. Not ideal, but it worked; I used Pew Pew to weaken Ulysses farther than ever before and then turned him to ash with a well-timed V.A.T.S. headshot.

After that, there’s some choices involving a nuke, which, even though I clearly labeled this section as spoilery, I will not go into. Maybe another post. They’re pretty interesting, and from what I can tell, actually have a lasting effect when returning to the Mojave Wasteland.

But yeah, between Ulysses and Deus Ex: Human Revolution‘s Barrett, I’m not having a great time with boss battles lately. Why can’t we all just eat cake and talk about how great The Beatles are and then end the night with songs around the campfire? I mean, really.

—

That’s it from me. How did y’all do this week? I’m guessing many of y’all played Gears of War 3 since that was the big name to drop recently. Let everyone know what Achievements you unlocked in the comments below!

The best road to progress is the Lonesome Road in Fallout: New Vegas

It was with great excitement and muted sadness that I purchased Lonesome Road last night, downloaded it, and then loaded up my character Kapture, a creepy man sitting pretty at level 34 that loves his Energy weapons. This hardened weirdo has conquered the Mojave, visited a grand casino, met the Burned Man, and obliterated a bunch of crazy brain-obsessed robots. And now, he has one more adventure, a road, dangerous and unpredictable, riddled with bombs and monsters, and he must walk it alone to find the answers of his past.

I played for about two hours or so last night, and it was a good time. Fun new weapons and the wonderful gift of a newish companion. A little scary, a little too much talking, and a little tough in certain parts. And yes, I also died probably nine or ten times, but that’s not my fault. Nobody told me there would be Deathclaws. Anyways, you get a Pip-Boy message, alerting you that a man named Ulysses is looking for you. Supposedly, this is the courier that was originally meant to deliver the Platinum Chip. Seek him out and discover his reasonings for turning the job down. Once in the Divide, you’ll follow a fairly linear path, all while Ulysses talks to you. And he talks a lot. Unfortunately, while the subject is interesting, listening to him is not; he has this slow, odd way of speaking, drawing every word and phrase out longer than it needs to be. There was a ton of chatter in Old World Blues, but the writing was much more surprising there; here, a lot of Ulysses’ thoughts are easy to guess before even picking the dialogue option, and then waiting for him to finish up his dramatic drawl about homes and roads and Old World blah blah blah is like torture.

But yeah, new locales, new weapons, new perks, new items, new recipes, an increase of +5 to the level cap (now sitting mighty at 50), and new enemy types. It’s what one now expects from a DLC pack for the Fallout franchise, and I’m enjoying it so far. I don’t want to rush through it too fast, seeing as it is the final hurrah until Fallout 4 or Fallout: New Jersey. Granted, I still need to do a Hardcore playthrough…

I didn’t realize I was doing this, just finishing the quest The Launch, but here ya go, the first Achievement unlocked in the Lonesome Road DLC:

Condemned to Repeat It (20G): Decided the fate of all the Divide Dwellers

I also learned from our last story-driven DLC that I was pronouncing ED-E wrong in my head. For some reason, I was calling our little trumpeting eyebot eee-dee-eee, not ed-dee. Like Eddie. Turns out, the dude who made him, well…calls him Eddie. I get that now. However, my brain still refuses to get it right. Oh wells.

And now, some random gameplay tips:

• Make sure your lockpicking skill is decent, at least 50+ with some skill magazines to help from time to time. There’s a lot of lockpicking so far.
• Watch out for glitches where Deathclaws randomly appear inside a ruined trailer and smack the skin off your character. It happened to me, and Tara is a witness. She thought it was a dinosaur at first. I then came up with a new song, which I sang all the way through that Deathclaws-infested stretch of road.
• Pack a lot of Rad-X and/or RadAway. Heck, bring along a Radiation Suit just to be safe. The Divide is not a place one wants to take a deep breath and smell the roses.
• Auto-Inject stimpaks are brilliant; pick up every one you can.
• Don’t stand directly in front of a not-yet-detonated nuke and shoot it. DON’T DO IT.

Good luck, fellow Couriers!

Humor is not the weapon of unarmed people

I’m pretty sure I’ve mused before about all the things I’ve never done in the Fallout universe, such as keeping a good distance from using big guns to actually not seeking out Dogmeat as a companion. Another tactic I’ve never tried in my 300+ hours logged over Fallout 3 and Fallout: New Vegas is that of fighting unarmed. Now, to clarify, unarmed doesn’t necessarily mean totally unarmed; some weapons like spiked knuckles, a bladed gauntlet, and the zap glove count, as does using just your bare fists. Regardless, one will have to get pretty dang close to their opponents to do some heavy unarmed damage, and I generally like to keep my distance, imitating a ninja or dustwheel as best as possible. This sort of guerilla style gameplay took a while to get used to, but I did eventually, and soon found myself charging fists-first into battle, ready to uppercut NCR troopers to their new home above the clouds.

And so I’m pretty proud to see this baby pop late last night after I gave a large fire gecko a swift smack to the back of its head:

Old-Tyme Brawler (15G): Caused 10,000 damage with Unarmed weapons.

Zelda, the fiend of the Mojave Wasteland, is around level 17 currently, with an unarmed skill of 55 points. Not bad, and it will surely grow as she’s already rocking a 100 cap in melee weapons. She also has a wonderful perk, which will sometimes knock an opponent to the ground from an unarmed attack, allowing for more free punches and kicks. Teamed with ED-E for support from afar, she’s a decent warrior (except against Deathclaws). And this weapon helps a lot:

What a beauty! That’s a power fist for the uninformed. It’s an armored gauntlet that uses a pneumatic ram to really send the message home. There really is something special about watching Zelda, a thin, redhead dressed as homely as possible, wielding this fist of death and knocking the heads off enemies with ease. I really have to make a conscious effort to make my evil characters appear more evil.

Anyways, I can’t believe I went this long without trying out an unarmed character; it does have its downsides, as big groups of enemies can basically surround Zelda and riddle her with bullets, but otherwise it’s been a lot of fun. And once she hits around level 25 or so, I think I’ll give Dead Money another try, now that I’ve got a character built specifically to handle all their melee and unarmed weapons, as well as a high survival skill for turning junk food into the most delicious thing ever.

Don’t forget to ::make beeping noise::, ED-E

It is with great frustration and disappointment that I make this announcement: I’ve dropped ED-E as a companion in Fallout: New Vegas. Not that I wanted to; the blasted thing worked hard as heck to make me hate it, and hate it in a way not like the opposite of love it, because I do love it, especially the sounds it oozes during battle, but it has to stay with me long enough to find battle, and that became a frequent problem after awhile. I hate ED-E because it is constantly getting “lost.” What does that mean? Well…

When you take on a companion in Fallout: New Vegas, you gain a special perk. ED-E’s gives you a longer range for spotting enemies, as well as targeting Nightkin in V.A.T.S. It’s a good one, especially when tag-teamed with a sniper like Boone. Anyways, ED-E likes to trail behind and alert me to dangers, but sometimes–and by sometimes I mean nine times out of ten–ED-E gets stuck on a piece of landscape or ends up unmovable. I’ve tried to talk to it, get it motivated, but alas…nothing. And then I’ll fast travel, and only Boone will come along. Yet ED-E’s perk is still activated. It’s frustraging, especially during the last few quests in which I was relying on it to help kill a hive of cazadors. Finding ED-E again is a guessing game; I’ve found it inside Lucky 38’s casino once, another time I had to go back to Primm, and another it just randomly came back to the party after several fast travels.

So, the little flying bot that couldn’t…is gone. And Rex, the cyber-dog, is in. Not a huge fan of the dog (as it’s not a huge fan of Jareth and his hat collection), but we’ll see how him and Boone work together as I close in on the…whatever the end battle thing is gonna be.

Hopefully, all above problems (and more) will be fixed with the upcoming patch, which has hopes of doing a number of good things. Such as:

• Companions now show up as waypoints on the map
• Companions will always fast travel with you, unless told to wait or sent away
• Fix: DLC error/save corruption
• Fix: Entering the strip after Debt Collector causes crash and autosave corruption
• Fix: Using Mojave Express dropbox can cause DLC warnings
• Crafting menu now filters valid (bright) recipes to the top of the list
• Weathered pistol no longer glitches when applying mods

Map waypoints for companions is going to be super sweet. So long as it works, naturally.