For some reason, I’ve ignored all the islands in Fallout 4 — until now. I think it’s because I never wanted to bother with swimming and, consequently, getting irradiated. I have to say, though, that Spectacle Island is worth swimming out to. Here’s a little video where a chap discovers the island:
I guess one reason I wanted to see this place is that I reached character level 105 and was at something of a loss regarding what perk to choose. I noticed that Aqua Girl does two things: (1) it lets you breathe underwater (good-bye, mirelurk cakes), and (2) it makes you immune to rads when swimming. At this point in the game, I couldn’t think of a reason not to take it. Plus, it would give me a good excuse to look at some of those islands.
The video gives you a fair idea of where Spectacle Island is located and how big it is. There are plenty of basic workshop resources, especially wood, but perhaps the best two things are that it has its own power generator and it doesn’t have the settlement-building altitude limitation commonly found on the mainland. Let me explain. When you build settlements in the normal mainland areas of the Commonwealth, you can’t make your structures too tall. The game imposes a limit on how close your structures can get to the skybox. On Spectacle Island, there’s still a limit, but it’s more relaxed, so if you want to build that ten-story hotel made out of junk plywood and old tires, you can. You just need lots of wood and old tires, which the island supplies. Well, you need lots of other things, too, but whatever the island doesn’t supply, you can get it by sending a provisioner and linking to your other settlements. At first, I thought they’d have to swim, but it turns out that once you establish a settlement, a boat becomes available for ferrying back and forth. Not that you actually get to use the boat; it’s just an explanatory conceit for fast-traveling.
Which brings me to another discovery. Did you know that you can make Jun and Marcy Long into provisioners? You can’t kill them and, as far as I know, you can’t easily move them to someplace like Starlight Drive-in, but you can make them useful and have the satisfaction of knowing they’ll be attacked over and over as they schlep around on their supply routes. I didn’t want to overdo the supply thing, so I had to choose between Jun and Marcy. This was a no-brainer. I would much rather have Marcy in Sanctuary because her temperament is more like mine would be in a real Fallout world. I can’t stand criers and whiners, so Jun is out there, fighting the good provision fight and getting shot over and over, which makes me really happy.
As you can see in the video, some settlers tried to occupy the island and were soon harassed by raiders. Both parties died because the place is infested with mirelurks. At level 105, the puniest ones are Glowing, Savage, Uber-Spikey and whatnot. Their numbers are matched by Kings, Hunters, and a Mirelurk Queen, all appropriately leveled, so buyer beware.
Turning on the generator not only supplies power; it also lets you switch on a special siren that emits a high-pitched sound designed to drive mirelurks to the outer shore areas. It doesn’t always work, but it makes the place generally habitable. Fortunately, my maxed Sneak allowed me to turn on the generator and make it to the siren without being seen. This kept the mirelurks from mobbing me, but they were still a problem. Fortunately, I had brought with me a couple of maxed Exterminator weapons that did 50% extra damage to bugs and mirelurks, so even the Queen went down with one shot.
Now I need to go back to see if my supply line is working and start building my luxury plywood/old tire hotel. By the way, here’s another video where a guy built a very ambitious settlement (sadly, he uses some mods, but you can imagine what’s possible even without them):
I kinda want to check out the new DLCs and find some of these areas, but I haven’t played in months and my character is a complete stranger now. Would have to start over, and ugh…
Also: I still hate level scaling. It’s still a bad gameplay mechanic and they should stop.
I may be wrong, but I think Spectacle Island is part of the main vanilla game. You should be able to see it from the Castle or Warwick Homestead.
I agree that level scaling is a sucky mechanic in general. It was especially awful in Oblivion. Skyrim was a bit more subtle and FO4 is even more subtle. Well, maybe “subtle” isn’t the right word. It’s not like high-level enemies start wearing power armor and toting gatling lasers, but at about level 60 you start seeing more veteran-class raiders and super mutant masters/overlords. The Gunners start increasing in rank — you’ll see more sergeants and an occasional captain. The human enemies are a bit better equipped. They wear more combat armor and start using assault rifles, combat shotguns, etc.
By level 90 or so, the Gunner ranks tend to rise. You’ll see a lot of captains and majors, as well as occasional brigadiers. They and the raiders will be using more weapon mods. Animals become more powerful with titles to match. It’s rare, for example, to see common Deathclaws. When you encounter them, they’re nearly always Alpha, Matriarch, and the like. By level 100, Mythic Deathclaws are pretty much the norm.
Of course, you’ve been leveling, too. By now, your armor and guns are benefiting from more mods, and if you’ve been managing your perks right, you should be insanely powerful. Come to think of it, if the enemies didn’t level, you wouldn’t have any reason to play. You’d just one-shot everything with a 10mm pistol.
But it’s not like everything levels. If you discovered a place early in the game, the enemies will typically be the same level they were when you first encountered them. Good examples are the raiders at Corvega plant and the Federal Radiation Stockpile. The super mutants in downtown Boston and Cambridge remain about the same.
Some places, though, don’t follow this rule of thumb. The enemies at salvage yards will level no matter what. So even though you found weak super mutants and Gunners earlier, they grow with you. I have no idea why this is the case. Maybe salvage yards have special radiation or better Blamco Mac and Cheese.
The most worrisome enemies are super mutants. In certain locations, they’ll nearly all be Warlord-class and very hard to kill. Also, you’ll start running into “charred” feral ghouls with a gazillion hitpoints and lots of damage. But if you’ve been focusing your perk choices and doing your armor/weapon modding correctly, and if you play to the advantages of your “class” (sneak-assassin, etc.), you probably won’t get mauled.
It all works out really well, in my view. I don’t mind level scaling at all in FO4.
As for the DLCs, you might like Far Harbor. It’s fairly strong in terms of story-telling and has lots of conversations. In fact, you should be prepared to pass numerous speech checks, some of them quite high. Otherwise, it’s disappointing. To be as pricey as it is, it ought to have more unique locations, interesting loot, and so on, but it’s a dismal, mostly empty place with little to keep you there once you’ve seen it.
The Automatron DLC is less ambitious but more interesting if you like the idea of constructing any kind of robot you want. The story is not especially deep, but it has a funny ending (it was funny to me, anyway).
Neither DLC is worth the retail asking price, so wait for a sale. I can’t speak to the other offerings like Wasteland Workshop and Vault Workshop, since I didn’t get those. I suspect they’re overpriced and wildly outclassed by any of 10,000 free mods.
I don’t have Nuka World and I do want it, but not at full price.