Twelve Hours of Fallout 4...

Today is Martin Luther King Day and I am grateful for what Dr. King, Malcolm X, and hundreds of other Civil Rights leaders have done for America over the past 100 years.  Even though America still suffers from flaws of hate and nonacceptance, I feel confident in writing that things could be so much worse.

This is not a soapbox post, about our current affairs.  Rather it is a tribute to the people that have made things undoubtedly better, so that I, like so many others, can celebrate a long weekend.  Somewhat selfishly, I challenged @blerdwords to a Fallout 4 filled weekend.  Between Saturday and Monday, our goal was to play 12 hours of Fallout 4.

You might be scoffing, and depending on your stage in life, it's either because you think this task too simple, or nigh impossible.  I am a husband and father first and foremost, but my daughter is 13, so I have it easier than my buddy, with three girls all under ten. I think he shares my thought that in our "prime" a 12-hour gaming session would have been a good night, not a three day affair.

I have a few characters active right now.  Alden Gere (a rough translation of Tolkien for Lord Loose) was my first character, with numerous flaws, thanks to just getting the game and midnight and getting started.  I did level him to 41, before I decided I want a less jack of all trades, and more of a Min/Max person.

That character is John Matherson (a fictional character from one of the best "apocalyptic" novels around, One Second After) who is a former military, current college professor, tasked with leading his North Carolina town when an EMP causes all hell to break loose.  I thought this would be the perfect 10 charisma with high intelligence backstory.

So my task with John is to get every possible settlement and get them as close to 100% happiness as possible.  My goal with this character is also to actually finish the game.  I have spent hundreds of hours playing and the farthest I have gotten is killing a Courser.  Looking at how much I have already written, I think this will carry us through my Saturday, but I digress.

Thanks to the awesome Playstation 4 feature, Rest Mode, when I awoke around 5:00 am Saturday morning, I was one button press away from where I had last left off, inside Sanctuary, obsessing over my current settlement issues.  I wish I would have better planned my 12 hours of gaming, but instead I spent the first hour making sure I had enough beds, that my supply lines made sense, and that I had responded to Preston Garvey's nonsense (seriously, this dude has some nerve, wanting to rebuild the Minutemen, but never leaving the extreme safety of Sanctuary).  Ever since I completed The Castle, I can no longer carry on conversations with Garvey that will allow me to have him accompany me, or move him to somewhere more likely to be invaded.

By about 6:30, I figured it was time to actually play Fallout 4, instead of a trumped up version of the mobile app, Fallout Shelter.  Wanting to try a mission I had never attempted, I started my walk towards Diamond City and beyond that Fanuil Hall, the location for the quest Gilded Grasshopper.  It was after 7:00 before I arrived.

You see, when at all possible, I try not to fast travel, and if I do, I only allow myself to fast travel to the nearest settlements.  This is just one of many "rules" that I impose on myself.  More of which you will learn if you read on.

To make sure I keep spoilers to a minimum, I will just say DAMN!  I think I massively over-estimated my combat effectiveness with this character.  I leveled up to five before ever leaving Sanctuary, by building up defenses and rooms.  This caused me to be woefully under gunned, so I turned the difficulty down to Easy.  Once I found some better weapons and armor, I upped it back to Normal.  Fanuil Hall actually had me pausing the game to make sure I did not set it to Survival.

After more than 30 minutes, of running, healing and sneaking potshots, I was finally able to complete the what I needed to there and move on to finalize the mission.  Of course the walk there ended up being treacherous and caused me to get blown up.  Which also caused me to REDO FANUIL HALL.

Unfortunately, one of my "rules" is only auto saving when sleeping, other than that it is if I remember.  So back through it all and though it took less time, I was no less frustrated.  I was gunning for 5 hours on my initial play through and after completing Gilded Grasshopper and arriving at Bunker Hill (and then Diamond City, and Good Neighbor) to sell all my loot, I was just about there, with it being 9:55 am.

I spent the next 25 minutes going to my settlements that had too many people again and removing the radio towers, making beds, and when necessary moving settlers to different places.

The fun really started to kick up on Sunday.