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In other news, my vision may be going.

Still want toast.

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Art project complete! Marc on the second Fallout 76 account has a new base at what is now dubbed Recon Beta. As per the info given in the WIP post, he's located at my favorite build site just west of the bog, with a handy-dandy junk node, slightly-cheaper travel access to Watoga, and no scorchbeast spawns:

Let's have a look at the power generation area first, ne? Commander Daguerre has her domain here, along with all the machinery for the junk node and whatnotery:

Now for the main house, starting on the first floor. The entire thing is a bit of a puzzle to navigate, though I made the weapon and armor crafting levels connect along the same stairway route for simplicity's sake. But yes, first floor first:

Relatively simple, but this is the much-neglected second account which has a lot less cash shop and BP decorating goodies to play with, plus Marc hasn't collected a ton of stuff even though he's the high level just past 100. A'ight, now up to the second floor, where the dining room is right upstairs from the kitchen for sensibility's sake:

Hmm, whose bedroom is whose, I wonder? When it comes to Marc, it's anyone's guess. Jackass is just grinning over there not answering the question. Whatevs, bucket-head, let's hop on up to the top floor which is mostly collection show-off areas and the end of the crafting route:

Aaand we're done! Pretty happy with the improvements to build mode, except for the stairs being glaringly unchanged. You still can't snap them anywhere but their default middle-block location even in free-place mode. Sure, you can float them in useful spots if no snappable floor is nearby, but then nothing new will place near the top or bottom of the stairs because the game is still going "there is a thing in the way." Yeah, it's called the heckin' awful stair hitbox and snap restrictions we've been cursed with since the game's debut.

Update: I figured out what's wrong with stairs. If they were previously snapped to something, they will keep trying to snap. They have to be placed in the air or whatever in free mode, then picked up again and will properly move without snapping after that.

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It's art! Or well, it's "Marc needed a new camp" and I'm migrainey and we decided that playing in the improved Fallout 76 build mode would do for a brain-pain-waster. This is a design I've messed with a little bit at workshops but it didn't look very good when door walls couldn't be snapped directly beside ascending stairs. It works now! And we can happily plunk together this navigational abomination.

The structure isn't completely done yet, but the main idea is there. That top balcony edge is gonna get some sort of railing and the corners will probably have turrets, since this is a critter-attracting zone with two random encounter spots nearby plus the raiders camped by the monorail support (out of frame downhill). It's also essentially my favorite spot to build, as Wednesday and Morrigan have camps there too.

Update: Aaaand it be finished.

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Ghoul test complete, and uh... one thing is certain in both human and ghoul form: Cato doesn't look right without glasses. The comparison shots I took today are the first of his face taken outside of the not-great character creation lighting, and bleh, Fallout-face hit him harder than I thought. Didn't notice right off because he got thrown into his outfit faster than you can say "check him in outdoor lighting?" Five or so days later, he's slightly past level 50 and man I forgot how easy it is to level in the beginning. Like, y'know, before level 100 lol.

I don't think I'm annoyed anymore that there isn't a sixth character slot yet. Cato can stay on the mostly-shelved second account, though I'm debating on if I want to un-ghoul him or not. For now, I can keep checking out the ghoul mechanics with him and since I got a month of Fallout 1st for that account, he can derp around earning daily score since the new BP has some nice stuff. Once we hopefully get that sixth slot, I think I'll make Mei Ling on my main account as there's a perfect face for her in the girl ghoul options.

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The second Fallout 76 account is definitely seeing playtime again with work progressing pretty quickly on Cato for the ghoul test. He's level 30 and generic auto-rifles aren't really cutting it yet, so he's still happily booping around with unarmed weapons and two pieces of regenerating legendary armor so he doesn't blow through quite so many diluted stimpacks. His profile pic is the one I posted the other day, while the rest of the chars on that account are shown above: Marc (power armor), Karl, and Gaz (pink suit).

Bonus Cato listening to story time because free snacks are free:

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A drink for psycho mommy, as per three separate playthroughs.

America main: male MC who is nice, brave, helpful, hardworking, loyal, extremely gullible, and doesn't expect rewards America f2p challenge: female MC who is mean, cowardly, paranoid, lazy, greedy, super meta, and generally a terrible person EU: male MC who is similar to America main but more meta and less Lawful Stupid

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Genshin Impact's Imaginarium Theater is basically too difficult on Hard mode now. For my dolphin account. My dolphin account. Sure, I haven't been dolphining since the shitstorm that is Natlan but come on. And the f2p challenge gang... they had to do Normal mode this time. That's how fucking bad the power creep is, plus the bullshit that is Natlan bosses. Seriously. Come on.

For a few cycles this garbage was actually fun. The creative element interactions, the rogue-lite gimmicks, the challenge of making specific chars work together, etc. But for the last few cycles it's been not fun. A slog. Why do you do this, devs? Why did you shit all over your own game?

Right. It's "your game." Not ours. And hemorrhaging players and support ain't gonna change that, from the looks of things. Honestly dreading the release of Nod-Krai because it looks depressingly like Natlan / Zenless Zone Zero all over again.

Seriously though, ZZZ looks so much like Natlan and vice-versa, the coinciding of that game coming out with Natlan's release tells me the devs knew that Natlan didn't belong in Genshin and should be its own game if anything at all (Natlan's plot and a bunch of its chars are so awful it would flop as a stand-alone).

Ugh.

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The recipe was for Molotovs... not sure where I went wrong.

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Surprise Mizuki for the f2p challenge gang via Standard banner. O.o

I didn't know / forgot she'd been added to Standard. So guess what, girlie? You get to healer-meme the friendship farmies until I figure out what to do with you. XD

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Wat dis? Dis new camp! And it's on my second Fallout 76 account no less. I was pouting to myself recently about not being able to ghoul anyone on my main account (they're just too pretty), which led me down a rabbit hole of checking out relevant info on the wiki. I noted that there's a pretty good black guy ghoul combination, and finally reached the conclusion of "why don't we try to make Cato again?"

Thus, Cato Jakande the Nigerian mercenary exists once more. Both this game and Fallout 4's character creators have failed him pretty miserably in the past... go fig, as soon as I think "ghoul fuel?" he turns out decent. 'Course, the glasses help a lot.

Anyways, his camp is located just south of Point Pleasant aka the town of Mothman cultists:

Initially built a couple of days ago with Michael's help from the main account, the building got expanded a little more today as Wednesday visited to plunk in a fusion generator. There's no resource node but I wanted something on the water in the forest region to start, and it checks those boxes. Let's have a closer look around, shall we?

Hmm, I should put in a light outside the front door. The whole thing is pretty sparse, but then Cato is a whopping level 9 at the moment with very few plans unlocked, and the second account has a lot less cash shop goodies. Plus, I'm not 100% sure this ghoul-bug will stick to ye olde attention span... I'd rather have made Cato on my main account but until we get that rumored sixth character slot, the main pain gang is full up.

Test build and original version before the second floor got expanded:

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When you're not sure if any of this garbage will ever be useful... but hoard it anyways, just in case.

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Random gift from doggo. He must have noticed Liam didn't have any clothing-type shoes equipped (I hadn't noticed myself lol). Thanks, puppers! :D

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Brotherhood of Steel Style.

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How nice of Shorekeeper to rerun shortly after I found out she's the best healer in the game currently. Had to tweak settings and I'm still not sure I've remedied her motion sickness triggers (it's the camera movement x.x ) but the main issue is aggravated by staying on her and I don't expect her to be on-field much.

It was a high-pity slog on her banner and I lost the 50/50 to Encore again, she's apparently my Diluc for this game. Shorekeeper's weapon popped in the first ten-pull though, so I'll take the weird luck and run with it. 150 total wishes total for C0R1, with the other useful results being Encore's C4 and Sanhua's C5.

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New Fallout 76 install, new character profile pics... until I take better ones or fish the classics off the other PC. Not my best work here, but I'm half asleep and will probably forget again for a while so it's nice to have something other than the default "who da heckin' heck is dis?" image when logging in critters.

In row order from top left: Wednesday, Michael, Morrigan, Riddick, and Seth.

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EU server, custom crit Aventurine build (see end of post).

I hadn't tried this Divergent Universe bonus-goodies goal yet on any playthrough, and my critters on EU are my weakest roster. Anaxa failed soloing the end boss today during my usual run of the weekly variant (got CC'd in phase 3) and I redid the fight with a full team out of annoyance. But then I thought... what if I run through the entire thing again with buffs designed purely around Señor Gambler-kun?

Whaddayathink, boyo? Can we do this?

Yes. Yes we can. The fight took a while, but the main thing I was worried about was that phase 3 crowd-control debuff. Aventurine merrily resisted it every time Hoolay fired it off, thanks in part to copious amounts of sustain built up during the run. Good normal attacks averaged about 200-400k, though most of his damage was from follow-ups.

DU variant at the time: Relatively Successful Prescription curio Difficulty: Threshold Protocol 1 3-star equation I used: Wounds of Plenty Buff highest focus: Sustain (shield, effect resist, max hp, def, take less damage, resurrect on being downed, anything useful that will self-heal, healing increase) Medium focus: Anything related to blazar, spread single-target damage to adjacents, follow-up attacks, normal attacks, Butterfly Soul stuff Lower focus: Buff on skill use, ER, action order increase, speed, weakness break (situational for Hoolay's minions)

Oh, and Aventurine's best hit was a follow-up which isn't a surprise:

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In Fallout 76, we take everything seriously, especially our screen names.