Name: Slapstick83
PCN: Ken Forrester
Rule Set:
Survival
Gameplay overhaul - Arbitration (mod)
Player damage set to normal (mod)
Character Starting Stats: 4,4,9,1,7,2,1
PCLOD: Level 8

Died to the impeccable grenade aim of a Raider Scum

Yeah if you don't die, then you're not dead

I would get so sick of the beginning of the game if I did that.

I'm not sure I'll continue with it, but for now it's kinda fun. Although dying svcks (big time), I'm appreciating certain things a lot more. Like I've learned to be gratuitous with explosives, and using the power armor at the beginning, when fusion cores are still in short supply. Running away from fights, being in a mirelurk infested building and *deadly* afraid that a king or queen will shop up at the end, stuff like that. The tension is cool when you've "beaten" the game once.

I think i'm like lvl 9 now, at least a few super close calls now tho xD, legendary mongrel dog stalks me from behind out of nowhere...i think that was my closest near death...

i would've died twice now i think if not for my power armor...i use my power armor a heck of a lot more now that i'm doing DiD

had quite an interesting run-in when i first arrived at that diner with wolfgang and trudy that involved a Mr. Gutsy (red skull), two super mutants, a trader with his brahmin, wolfgang and cohort, and Trudy and son xD; i ended up running away cuz they all aggroed me, but when all was over, only ones left standing were Trudy and son, and Wolfgang (no aggro)

Ah I see, then I guess that is also a rule I am using since I am never putting anything "inside" Dogmeat since that is just silly that you can even do that.

The companion thing sounds kind of impossible to use though as far as I see it because of the horrible AI for your companions. When you play DiD you often have to flee a fight, but your companion often stays behind and continue to fight a hopless battle even when you leg it for everything you are worth to survive (and you could hope they would "get the point" and follow your lead). There is just no way to "babysit" them properly in the current system.

So far I have almost totally ignored the Power Armor, except when going into zones like the glowing sea or facing a dethclaw, maybe I should use it more, or make a character it could fit well for, could be fun. It just feels a bit strange to jump into it since you become so extremely much more powerful vs normal enemies, you almost feel invincible and start to act like you normally do non DiD, but maybe that could be a nice change of pace to feel that sometimes and not worrying every enemy can be your doom I try to have a certain playstyle for every character and what kind of skills they will use. Right now I am playing the science explosives guy, focusing heavy on using molotovs and bombs.

Btw, I can really recommend the new rule I am using of not going into the inventory screen in a firefight. Instead I need to make sure I have bound everything I need to my quickslots, so I have stimpacks, chems and bombs ready in case I need them to quickly be able to switch to. Then I have to switch and use them in realtime instead of being able to just pause the game and do everything in peace and then unpause it. It makes fight feel a bit more hectic and even more dangerous when you have to do things in realtime "on the go".

I have not tried any damage balancing mods or weight restrictions yet, but it is annoying you have to carry almost each sort of gun for each sort of ammo to make sure you have enough bullets on survival, it makes it a little bit harder to make a specific build that only focues on one type of weapon for example. I would like to have my science guy just use energy weapons for example, but there is just not enough ammo for just one type of weapon when you often needs to pump a full "clip" into an enemy to down them.

I am really going to invest in the damage perks now for every character I think for the weapons, not for character reasons, but for balancing to make fight feel less "spoongy".

About if some npc dies by an "accident" I would defenitely say to roll with it. That is one of the great things I think about playing DiD, that you don't really have to worry to much about "mistakes" or if someone dies, you will die yourself sooner or later so then you have to restart either way so that "damage" wont be permanent (like how it would be if you only played one single character and never started the game over). I think my most fun character so far actually have been where I play a real lone wolf psycho (the one in my avatar). I often first befriend or help people I come across, then I kill them all when I feel I am done with them. If I just meet a random friendly settler on the road I often just blast him with my shotgun.

doublepost

Re: companions. That depends, you have a good bit of hindsight so you know when you'll need them. For example in the character before this one I sent codsworth into the Starlight Cinema place and used him to blow up the bottlecap mine.

On the flip side

But we probably have a different strategy, I have been almost non-stop building up settlements, doing all the cooking I can by killing even Radstags just to get a little bit of xp here and there with my idiot savant perk. I haven't even gone past the first area beyond Trudy's Diner or more East than Tenpines and I'm level 15. Just about to enter the church west side of the first area.

Oh, that bottlecap mine.. That killed my first character!

Hmm strange though that you say you could send in codsworth to blow it, I don't think my companions can even trigger mines :s You can use them though to command them to disarm mines. I usually just shoot bottlecap mines on sight though, since they are so dangerous.

But yes, I guess the stupid ai of the companions would really more become a problem when you are in a really high danger area where you are not even sure what kind of enemy you could meet up with at any time. I will most likely put in a mod for permanent death though of companions once there is one available, but by "going down" I guess you mean when they go down on one knee, I still think you should have some time to save them when that happens. If they sustain enough damage in that state though I would like them to die permanently. But yes, I guess a mod would also have to fix their AI a bit to make them a bit more careful and being better to recognise when you are retreating from a battle so they don't just stay behind and get themself killed.

By the way, I have been thinking of doing a settlement playthrough at some point, focusing more on building up the settlement. I am just not sure if that particular play is a good fit with DiD? It is one thing to loose your character, but I could imagine it would be really annoying to build up a cool settlement and spend tons of hours on making everything look "just right" and then die and have to scap it all? Or how do you feel about that? It sounded like this was a settlement focused playthrough for you? I guess one way to make it would maybe be to take even less risks and try to stay as much as possible in the starting area. I have found that for every restart I want to try to explore new areas, and most of my unexplored areas are in the more dangerous zones, so now it is not rare that I go into the real dangerous zones with a lvl 3 character.. That is often recipe for disaster though..

Excuse my replies above, I wasn't sure how to split your quote up quickly and effectively.

the settlement way is a lot better for sure, you just need to have 6 charisma (not necessarily when you create character) and get the first rank in Local Leader (to avoid container abuse).

The only thing that worries me in the future is raids by monsters. To this end, firstly, I had to come up with a design that prevents a lot of potential happenings going wrong.

So, I give you Fort Sanctuary as an example:

http://postimg.org/image/6gy2vm2pd/

A bird's eye view

http://postimg.org/image/is10b8n0r/

The crafting area and bedrooms just inside there. (The top part of the aerial shot).

http://postimg.org/image/3yvcpw6lr/

That's the farm (right side of the aerial shot).

http://postimg.org/image/ldcplcrqt/

The one and only entrance into the fort. It now has 2 turrets set up behind the door to create bottlenecks for invaders.

Other points to observe are the total roofing (except one are for stairs to the top where I can snipe attackers) I did this as an anti grenade measure. And also, although you can't see, the brahmin are kept outside and will be the subject of attacks first, essentially saving the settlers some bullets to the face. Lastly I highly suggest build a siren (resource > misc.) and put it between the farm and the bedrooms.

It's been a while since I took those screenies but I now have a steady supply of vegetable starch for mod crafting and plenty of mutfruits for selling to traders. I've repeated the same process with Red Rocket, Abernathy and just starting on Tenpines next. I've now got over 1k bottle caps and as much 10mm and .308 ammo a guy could need. (Seriously I have 999 ammo on the HUD for 10mm pistol yet it never drops below that I think I have 1300 bullets).

Beyond that I've had to try and decide on Fast Travel, obviously I don't want to remove from the realism so I've had to come up with a transit system. So I've introduced to myself fast travel between settlements I own only, I can't go from Concord to Red Rocket but I can go from Red Rocket to Sanctuary. After that, I've made the deal with myself that if I collect all the settlements in a sector, I'm allowed to fast travel any where in that sector.

How do I define a sector?

http://imgur.com/Ne8mIIx

You'll notice there is two or three really thick roads (they create a crossroads in the center of the map, mostly) that seems to divide the map up, I have decided that they are a sector line. So when I say start area I mean from Lonely Chapel to Lexington to Zimonja.

EDT: I could have explained that better. What is going on in my head is that I have a transport system between my owned towns (like a land owner with some small villages would have back in the day. Then once I own the whole sector (or State if you're American or Borough if you're English.. whatever) I own the monopoly and can have say what gets built. And I say invisible trains!

It isn't, at least not in my opinion. Building settlements is for the most part quite fun to begin with. Expanding and figuring out how to do electricity right etc. is it's own fun minigame. However, rebuilding the same stuff all over is not fun. It's not the same as gunplay, it's always going to be fun shooting raiders. It's not always going to be fun laying out the same foundations, walls, etc. It does take hours.

If you're itching for a run including a lot of settlement building, I suggest you don't make it a DiD, and then also go through the main questline so you've got one of those endings under your belt. It's fun, and then you can go back to dying in DiD's. The game is not meant to be played as DiD - you will (most likely) die before you reach the end. Themepark Fallout is also fun!

I ran into a building to hide from a suicide and he followed me. sorry but I'm too much of a scrub to even attempt this.

and don't even get me started on the Cy-Young-winning-renade-throwers or the Rockets-Mcdikeface-missle-launcher-spammers......

Actually you can skip that first minuteman quest.. It's not part of the main story. There's other ways to find out how to get to diamond city or you can just run straight to diamond city if you know where it is.

This is a lot harder than it first seems on DiD difficulty. If you're on survival there's a lot of things you wont survive against on level 1-5

Yeah, but in reality, you can come out of the vault.. strip sanctuary and start building crap and make it to level 6 without doing anything but building. That of course would get really boring if you had to do it every time you died.. but hey, having to do everything else every time you die is boring as well.

Agreed, this is why I always do settlement building. In this mode you HAVE to svck up any xp you can before battles begin. I was a bit surprised when someone above was detailing the difference between buildy buildy and shooty shooty, it's all the same.. *move mouse* *click* if you really want a look at base mechanics.

This is actually why I've begun to formulate a point system for this thread. So far I've got the following deciding factors : Level (l), Time Played (h), Locations Discovered (d), and Unique Quests Completed (q).

Level should be cornerstone, and the rest influencing that in such a way it depicts and reflects a perceived notion of progress. Without going into too much detail about my reasoning here is the formula:

((l+d)*q/h)

2 examples to express it in a usable way and both of the same level upon death (level 12) and the same play time (9 hours):

1) A character like mine who spent most their time levelling using settlements. Level 12, 9 hours in dies when a mine blows them up. I discovered 10 locations and finished 5 unique quests.

2) A more combat driven character who is quick to get into fights. Level 12, 9 hours in dies against a super mutant suicider. They discovered 34 locations and completed 12 unique quests.

1) would have a high-score of ((12+10)*5/9) = 12 (rounded down)

2) would have a high score of ((12+34)*12/9) = 61 (rounded down)

As you can see a more proactive approach creates a higher score (to account for personal danger).

Name: Slapstick 83

PCN: Ben Castle

Rule Set:

Survival Difficulty

Player damage set to normal (mod)

Arbitration overhaul (mod)

Character Starting Stats: 4,4,9,1,7,2,1

PCLOD: Level 18

so....

went to Lexington today, sneaking around the one raider with the big boomstick. Tried to snipe him from the highway, when he started turning my way. I paniked, turned around and started sprinting. Too bad I forgot I was on the highway. Went over the side and started falling, but managed to alt+f4 before hitting the ground. So I am not really dead

or am I?

cheers,

Lol. Panicking when a raider aims a fatman in your general direction and jumping of a cliff is most certainly a good way to go!

I bugged out and died once while hoping around and over cars on the street. No explosions no shots staying in hidden state I just died from weird random collision stuff I suppose.

I'll wait until the game is patched and DLCed a bit more for dead is dead.

I'm loving this mode, its causing me to have to be much more careful and i'm finding myself utilizing a lot more of the game

i feel naked without my power armor now (which has saved me on numerous occasions), using landmines a lot more, and actually retreating and staying alive when i run into trouble; i'm also finding myself having to really think and use a lot more strategy in my engagements

i'm lvl 14 and in the middle of assaulting the water treatment plant for Greygarden and it's taking a lot of patience and strategy

the AI for the enemies is actually pretty good, i'm pecking off mutants from a distance and they sent a patrol out to scavenge the hillside, pretty thorough and non-repetitive; actually a suicider came after me, so i ran, then he walked over a mine i put next to a car, xD, that made a bit of noise; they sent the patrol out after that happened

some of the rules i'm using are:

no fast travel (i run into 1 or 2 surprises every time i travel the long way)

NO VATS (i mapped somewhere to opposite side of keyboard so i dont even hit it by accident)

no perks affecting damage or damage resist

survival difficulty

That is nice!

I am still thinking I will probably not do DiD for my settlement building character. Maybe it will be a bit of fresh air even to have one character without DiD for me since my other 10+ characters have been DiD. I will consider this character my kind of collector character I guess. Can be fun to build some sort of "museum" I am thinking, but then I don't want to worry about dying and losing it all. I am thinking I can load up and use this character when I feel I need a break from the blood pumping thrill of DiD, perhaps between deaths, since you actually get a bit bumbed out and sad when you character dies. Can be a good thing to maybe have another more casual character to build some stuff with, and maybe go and grab those bubble heads for the "museum" you found the location for before on your DiD run before you create a new DiD character and try to survive for your life again

I am still thinking of having some self made rules with this settlement builder though. Like only fast travel between settlements I own, and I will try to only go into areas and clear out buildings for building material if I have been there with a DiD character.

I would not consider this a real death if it was a bug that caused it. It happend to me to once also, I feel right through the concrete on a bridge. It is enough to worry about dying by "natual" means (a bullet to the head is kind of natural death in Fallout) without having to worry about bugs also

It is interesting how you don't pick any damage or damage resist perks but use the power armor, any reason for this? I do a bit of the opposite, I barerly use the power armor, but I instead put some perk points in damage and damage resist to better balance the surivival damage spoonging, without having to use mods.

What mod do you use to set the player damage to 1x? I think I am finally at the point where I want a bit more realistic damage output to get rid of all the spoonge enemies. It really hurts my immersion, and also actually makes the game feel having less replayability since you can't focus on just using 1 or two guns for each character so much since you need to have a whole roster of different guns with different ammo to be sure not to run out. I still like to feel that it really should hurt when getting hit so I want to keep the 2X damage from enemies on survival. So I want basically my damage to do 1x and enemies to do 2x to me, + the slow healing etc on survival. Is there a mod for this?

I use this one: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/222/?

After getting some gun upgrades normal became too high dmg IMO. The game expects a certain escalation. I would suggest hard, or maybe even very hard, but survival is completely ridiculous. If you're playing without putting perks in damage increase (for some reason I can't understand ) then normal would be fine.

For my next game DiD I'll also be using these:

Loot reduction: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1486/?

Item weight: http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1670/?

Respawn reduction (which I'm already using): http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/1371/?

Edit: Whoa, just found this hunger/thirst mod http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/3443/? I'm so testing this out on my next run