#the inspiration for this post was that I'm considering starting yet another playthrough

[chaosintheavenue]

An incomplete list of things that I, someone with literally at least a thousand hours in New Vegas and not much direct experience of any other Fallout games, am still adjusting to in Fallout 76 despite having over a hundred hours under my belt now:

* Lack of a local map

* VATS not freezing enemies outright

* Not being able to open my Pip-Boy and eat a feast uninterrupted in the middle of combat

* For that matter, raw food and dirty water not healing HP (still always forget this and waste raw meat trying to heal)

* Being able to fast travel when enemies are nearby, as long as they don’t hit you within a set window of time

* Sprinting! I still bunnyhop constantly to move faster as an old NV habit lol

* The radar of nearby locations (re: this and the above point- I have also played plenty of Skyrim, which has these features, but I never got used to them there either somehow)

* Losing junk items upon death

* The crafting/building system in general

* Inability to wait/sleep to pass time

* The ability to respawn somewhere other than where I last died

* Stimpaks and the likes having weight. Slowly learning the hard way that hauling around 100 Radaways is a Problem for Trin

* NPCs not turning around to face me upon opening dialogue

* Not getting every enemy’s clothing as part of their lootable inventory >:(

[macgyvertape]

BG3 Act 1 thoughts and liveblog part 1

With super long games like this (finished in about 110 hours) I like to take notes to 1) remind me of stuff I did at the beginning of the game and 2) to enjoy looking back on because I'm not doing another playthrough for a few years.

Going to suffer through the spider and half spider people since the mods don’t fully work yet and they disable achievements

Going for dark urge first playthough along the lines of Durge is guard dog to those they imprint on and I knew I was rolling a bard, so I watched clips of Felix RedvsBlue as a good starting point for my character roleplay. Starting character quote “At the end of the day, if I'm stronger than you and if I'm faster than you, then I can kill you! And that's better than anything money can buy”

Trying Not to be a “charismatic mercenary with gruff exterior and a heart of gold” 

I killed Commander Zhalk in the beginning area with viscous mockery. True bard experience

Passed the perception check of Astarion pulling a knife, some fun dialgoue options with him, and its a delight to hear his tone of voice really change

I can’t tell if Gale is just flirty/horny or really just dedicated to the facade of being surface deep and a braggart to mask his secrets. Seems both and though he seems full of himself I enjoy this kind of companion who lies about things

I think I like the inspiration mechanic, I got a point for killing the mindflayer “leaving it to burn”

I’m really having to force myself to be “that asshole” and ask people to pay me for helping them

Got another inspirational event for killing the cultists lol. The game gives me a lot of options to talk about my dark urge but I really want to play that close to the chest

I don’t really know about pre-rewrite version of Wyll but he really seems a good alignment nice dude, and unfortunately I want to be almost evil/neutral Dark Urge.

Had to reload to save Nadira, I’m struggling with interrupting actions outside of turn by turn combat

Rapheal sure makes an entrance, my character turned him down but didn’t attack since he seemed so powerful. Keep my options open but it seems like there are a lot of options there

Gale is fucking lucky I had a extra piece of enchanted gear so I didn’t lose my very nice sword. I also feel like I’m throwing away some approval points by my character questioning him but I’m trying to play someone who isn’t altruistic or too trusting.

Ok I failed several perception checks for a kid stealing my stuff then I caught the last one, but then the kid ran off and everyone in the hideout ran out. I’m not sure if anything was still stolen from me or if this is a a bug 

RIP Alfira, was not expecting that from the dark urge. I chose to confess to the others, if my character is murdering people in my sleep only fair to explain and not hide

My character told Karlach to tear the place apart as catharsis for being hunted, and it was fun to see that scripted sequence play out

Gale is telling me his unstable magic backstory, but he’s doing it at camp so there is no reaction for anyone else during the conversation despite him saying he wanted to tell everyone. (edit: Not sure if a bug considering he also referenced being mind whammied by the Almighty before that had occurred in the goblin camp). Also deeply ironic he talks about understanding if my character wants him to leave since he’s a literal timebomb, but this is happening a day after D!urge pc killed someone brutally

Also incredibly funny Lae’zel is now interested in my character, and will sleep with me considering her dialogue post D!urge murder

Wyll gets turned by his patron demon into a semi horned being, ok so I guess just seeing what he looks like shows the obvious decision you made with Karlach

Wtf is up with Wyll, that he’s so proud he made his pact when it was just made obvious he was sent on basically an assassination mission. All his talk of “saving innocents” wonder how many innocents he’s killed from bad intel

The trifling child gang hideout is very bugged

Perception check for the swamp reveal was really cool

I haven’t been taking many long rests so I just now got the Astarion vampire one. Fun to see all the options if you let him kill you, but I save scummed to let him really go for then stop for roleplaying purposes 

I actually realized I was right by the vampire hunter so I loaded a save where Astarion hadn’t revealed himself yet and fun how different it goes, he will kill the vampire hunter out of combat to keep his secret if you don’t intervene and that’s very fun. It also gets brought up when he tries to feed on you for the first time at camp, but I haven't found a dialogue option where you can say “weird coincidence the guy called you by the same name”

Got the scene at the goblin area where the party would get mind whammied if not for the mysterious artifact. I’m really trying to pick a moment when my character would go from “more people is better odds” to “ride or die for certain characters” and I think this is a good point along the line of “oh if these people aren’t with me then they’ll immediately be soldiers against me”

I really enjoy how Astarion treats you like a fool if you say he’ll be safe because you would protect him from Cazador, in the cliche all power player character here to fix the companion’s problems. I mean my character still said it of course because that was my favorite of the 3 options at that point. Interesting I only now can ask about what offer Raphael made, like that was hours and hours ago but guess it needed specific dialogue flags 

No other game has given me an S&M scene like this for a stat buff where its fun and horny. I love Gale’s “well whatever you’re into”. The first time I did the scene (pun intended) Astarion was standing a little too far away, so I only got Shadowhearts dialogue, but its much better with them talking back and forth

My character told Shadowheart she doesn't care that she worships Shar but more along the lines of not that she likes Shar its just she don’t really care about religion 

I am majorly arachnophobic so I just covered up the screen and freed the spiders so the goblins would kill them

My character asked the priestess to meet alone then assassinated her with Astarian cloaked to get an extra out of combat turn. I expect to do this setup a lot more

I found a Selunite outpost and went down there, then reloaded since that seems way too big an area to explore right now

Setting up Minthara to be doublecrossed was a great tactical way to clear out the goblin camp, especially since I’m out of short rests

Killed Dror Ragzlin with barrelmancy, aka stole a bunch of explosive barrels and put them around him and the crowd and then exploded them from the rafters above

Note to self in however many hours when I get to Baldur’s Gate, see how Ronan’s apprenticeship faired (I bet not well)

Astarion calling my character darling and saying he’s going to like me and it's clear I like him too, definitely feels like he’s rolling to seduce and being a bit manipulative so she will like him (tangent: Margaery Tyrell was one of my favorite GoT characters kinda similar vibes) 

My character was upfront about enjoying it but very funny to say that a less trusting person would be suspicious and have him vouch that the only thing on his mind was carnal lust. I tried the immediate agreement then reloaded and I love that his response feels very different like he’s succeeded in a seduction check. 

I made my dream visitor a hot masc teifling and there is big horny energy with his scenes

Got the “morally acceptable massacre” for defending the grove. I created some barricades out of crates, blew up the sappers with fire arrows and then the enemies were just trapped at the bottom as I killed them with archery. Took a few tries for barricade positioning but then was easy and none of the tieflings died

I’d like to think my D!urge character would love massacring the goblins, in the same way she enjoyed getting the Knoll leader to kill the others then kill themselves brutally. Sort of a “I just love killin’” character approach, but my D!urge character dislikes that the Dark Urge takes away her control. 

My character absorbed Minthara’s tadpole at the prompting, I figured my character would be all about gaining power she could control. Astarion certainly had a very camp approval option. 

I then used 4 Ithilid powers across Astarion, Gale, and myself really just to get rid of the menu icon being bright red and distracting

Oh wow I completely missed doing Kagha’s secrets until now, so I could tell Halsin but not much else happens 

Didn’t expect my character could talk Lae’zel into using the tadpole powers and make a good persuasion attempt with Kalrach, and then persuaded everyone else. Playing a charismatic character is fun, she is manipulative af