Fallout 4: Now Playing

The Game Room
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Hot plates. When crafting you can mark an ingredient as wanted and anything that contains it will have a little magnifying glass next to it when you look at it. Think v is the default key for that on PC, but I’ve remapped everything so might be wrong.

Adhesive is a real pita for me, never have enough. Trying to buff the power armor you get in Concord and customize some guns for an expedition into the Glowing Sea but everything needs tons of it. PROTIP; if you see vegetable starch, loot it ASAP as it breaks down into 5 precious, precious adhesive.

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I have the same processor, although mine is overclocked to 3.6GHz. I probably won’t fire up the game until this weekend but I can report back on it. I’m using an R9 290X so I’m at recommended spec there.

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Is there something wrong with lock picking or do you need to have points in it?

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A desperate hustle for resources, you say? I haven’t experienced that in a Fallout game in years. At this point, I use actual ammo against the rats in the starting cave in Fallout 1, because I know where I’m going to get my hands on my next load of ammo.

In Fallouts 3 and New Vegas you quickly learn that the trouble of casing joints and getting people in position for a pocket picking doesn’t pay nearly as well as just running out and killing people. It takes the fun out of being a sneak thief if it is actually slowing the rate at which you acquire your resources.

I guess I’ll try for thief again, like in the old days.

85

Decided to stop with the building and start with the shooting tonight, barely touched the game outside of sanctuary.

Also, Steamspy is saying that Day 1 sales of Fallout on PC were over 1.2 million. I’m guessing day 1 total sales probably break down to something like:

PS4: 2 mill
PC 1.2 mill
Xbone 800k

86

I got a gtx 750 with only 1gb of vram. I get mostly 50-60 fps on mostly low settings but there’s really bad frame rate stuttering in certain areas around diamond city, seems to go away if I drop the resolution down to 1600x900. I might have to get myself a 750 ti (I only have a crappy 300w psu).

Other than that I’m about 10 hours into it. Pretty good so far, much harder than FO3 or NV, even on normal difficulty I’m getting my ass handed to me. Some enemies, like deathclaws, don’t seem to be as perceptive as they once were, I can sneak by them pretty easily with only one sneak perk. It seems like essential NPCs are back, I tried to kill that Preston guy because I wanted his hat, but nope, can’t be killed.

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lockpicking is identical to F3, except with fewer levels. (only 3 perks to increase level, 4th perk makes bobbypins unbreakable, instead of 0, 25, 50, 75, 100)

Instant fails do seem somewhat more common, though.
When I did the Concord mission, fog had rolled in…that deathclaw fight is even nastier when you can’t see it more than 20 feet away. So, I cheesed the fight by standing in a doorway. :o Don’t forget to loot the key from the named raider.
Ghouls are actually giving me a tough time - they move so erratically, that I’m having trouble hitting them outside VATS. May have to start using melee against them.
Re: vegetable starch…I’m not sure, but IIRC you can craft that stuff at the cookfires.

I found a military circuitboard that breaks down into 5 or 6 circuitry…(turrets for everyone!)

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It appears that most of the perk ranks are level-bound, which I expected would turn out to be the case. But that means that at least at the beginning you can’t hope to build up to be a master at, say, sneaking for the first few levels. It will also tend to encourage being a generalist, because it will make sense to pick up the first level of many perks. No point in trying to recon a likely scheme for myself at this point, then, because I expect to discover what I need to do what I’m trying to accomplish in play.

But I’m kind of bothered about how it makes it basically impossible to define what the hell it was my character was before the bombs fell. I can’t already take any career-defining perks.

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How do VATS and manual fighting compare?

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I know I’m a lousy cheater, but I often saved before hacking or lockpicking. In Fallout 3, I was locked out for a period if I saved before hacking a computer(and failed).

Did they do this or can I return to my cheating ways and save & hack away?

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Much more FPS-like than F3. Enemies (even the lowly molerats) are quick & dodgy compared to the lumbering dolts they used to be.

So far, at least, VATS seems to be intended to be used more sparingly (but you HAVE to use it every once in a while to build up your guaranteed hit & crit meter, so that it’s full when you DO need it.) And your action points are used for multiple things beyond VATS such as sprinting, and if the trailer was to judge by, jump jets.

Stuff will change depending on character build - there are perks that improve hip fire or aimed fire or automatic accuracy, VATS accuracy, that can fill your crit meter outside VATS, that increase damage when you chain targets or focus fire in VATS, ad nauseum. The removal of the 0-100 skills was most certainly NOT a dumbing-down of character builds.
I haven’t failed a hack yet…but I’m told failing hacking just adds a cooldown, rather than a permanent lockout. You’ll save-scum containers anyway, because the contents are randomly determined.

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You can harvest any plants you place in your settlements for the components to make adhesive. They grow back every so often, and there are at least two farms where you can pick up plants. Just hold on to them until you get back to your settlement, then plant them.

93

WASD issues aside, I will say that the Pipboy app is a delightful addition to the interface. I like being able to equip stuff and fast-travel from my phone without having to pause the game, and having the map open without having to tab over to it is a major bonus (though the local map seems to be broken in the app for now).

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I’m finding VATS to be trickier, but I think that’s a mainly through panicking as time doesn’t stop, while working out the new controls. Fortunately manual fighting seems much slicker with your character moving with the agilty of an FPS.

For the record, I’m playing the game on a PS4 and it is bloody lovely, with minimal glitching and no discernible slow-down - though maybe I’m just not that fussy. The biggest problem I’ve found is that the save-game thumbnails don’t update when over-writing saves.

And a tip to someone upthread - there’s the option to dump all junk items from your inventory into the (shared) workshop inventory. Junk is then recycled automatically as you build, if my understanding’s correct.

95

You can also try either using Riva statistics server (this comes with Afterburner) to lock your frame rate.

I’ve gotten great results removing the occasional stutter in some areas by going full screen, removing v-sync (enabling it on the Nvidia panel instead), and locking my frame rate to 60.

If you’ve got $40 somewhere in couch, I’d recommend a GTX 950 over the 750ti. It should be fine with your 300 watt PSU (only 30 watt max draw higher than the 750ti), and it offers a good 25-40% performance boost over the 750ti.

96

I’m really starting to dig the weapon modding system. My character is specializing in crafting/modding as much as one can. I got my hands on a couple of laser pistols and was able to alter it until it was a scoped laser rifle. Once I get my hands on some more fiber optics it will be a laser sniper rifle. I suspect that all guns that use the same kind of ammo can be rebuilt into one another. Neat.

97

Why do I see nothing on the screen? I was expecting it to look something like FO3 but there was no lock and no screwdriver visible. That I picked opened the door in the basement of the museum is sheer luck.

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You playing on PC? Because, yeah, there should be a lock and bobby pin.

Because that sounds kind of like the “invisible avatar” bug - sometimes the game glitches and doesn’t animate the character. Sometimes fixable by entering a conversation, sometimes fixable by a quicksave/quickload.

99

The game is in. Having it on disc seems to be saving me zero time because it now requires a 2-and-a-half hour update.

Some notes on the Pip-Boy edition, for those interested.

First of all the case it comes in is neat. It’s described on Amazon as “Power Armor Collectible Metal Packaging. Exclusive to the Pip-Boy Edition, this decorated metal case is the ultimate fan collectible.” It is not metal, it is plastic. I didn’t actually expect it to be metal, but it was advertised as metal. To open it up, you simply squeeze the catches on both sides then flip the top back with your third hand. Actually, it’s not that bad once you realize that the latches stay unlatched.

The Pip-Boy itself is obscured by the actual game, which you must remove and put into your drive and then occasionally look up from checking out the Pip-Boy to see that installation has stopped again waiting for you to click on something. This is a vast improvement over the Pip-Boy I got with Fallout 3, which as I’ve mentioned on this board before came unpainted and with a cheap and battery-guzzling digital clock that loses time. This one has all the printed parts actually printed. It has actually turning dials and pressable buttons.

Whereas the Fallout 3 Pip-Boy had a fake compass with an actual (non-functional) needle on a spindle, the Fallout 4 Pip-Boy has a fake Rads meter whose needle cannot move because it’s printed on. The radio dial does have an actual needle, which moves when you turn the dial across a face that doubles as the AM and FM indicator, with no clear way to switch between these modulation modes. I guide in the booklet that comes with it indicates what the other less obvious dials and buttons are meant to represent.

My Galaxy Note 4 will not fit in this thing. I didn’t think it would, and I had the heads-up that it would be nigh impossible to actually play the game wearing the damned thing anyway, and inconvenient to have to keep mounting and unmounting my phone.

There is an honest-to-got metal clasp that holds the Pip-Boy shut, and inside a velcro strap allows you to adjust the fit. I think a lot of people probably have arms thicker than mine and really stress out the padded rubber the inside is lined with. Once you’ve unclasped the thing you can pull back the catch that holds the face plate down. Inside is the tiny space where maybe your tiny ass phone would fit. It came with an assortment of foam pads for different models. Also, under the face plate you can remove the paper blocking the watch batteries from making contact. Now you can press the power button, which causes the power button to light up. And also a light on the top that the manual says is the CRT Overbrite Mode.

The stand it comes with is much better than the one that came with the old Pip-Boy, for what it’s worth. It’s got a RobCo label that marks it as Pip-Boy 3000 mk IV.

The booklet that comes with the Pip-Boy is a pleasant surprise, because it hearkens back to the humorous manuals that the first two games came with. I’m puzzled that they felt the need to write on the inside cover “Disclaimer! For setup instructions, see pages 12-33. Pages 1-11 & 34-37 of this manual are works of fiction”. I hope some game reporter ask somebody about the meeting where it was decided to add that warning. Anyway, it’s too much to try to relate the various jokes in the manual itself. Somebody will scan it and put it up on the net. I will mention that there is a page of suggested uses of the case on a page in the back, including propping the lid open with a stick as a vermin trap.

And now my game is halfway done updating from Steam. Is Steam really that busy, or is there no real functional difference between installing from disc and downloading from Steam?

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I’ve heard the disk only has about 5gb on it, leaving approximately 20gb to download…yeah.

Re: the physical pip-boy :wink: (the 11/11 comic, if the link doesn’t stick)