First, I encountered a bug that seems to have affected a grand total of two people — me and some other guy who fortunately posted about it on reddit. He got about two replies, one of which contained an iffy console fix. Thankfully, it worked. I tried everything in the world to fix the problem legitimately, but nothing else helped. Had it not been for that reply, I would be permanently stuck running around with Elder Maxson and unable to fast-travel. So thanks, anonymous weird internet person.

Second, the BoS ending is unintentional comedy gold. If you haven’t completed the main story with this faction, thar be spoilers here, so look away.

1. I can see why the BoS would want to destroy the Institute, but I think they must surely have smaller explosives. Their “Nuclear Option” comically blows up not only the Institute but seems to take out most of Boston in the bargain.
2. For some reason, the Brotherhood insisted that I speak to ten-year-old synth Shaun and embrace him as my son. They also insisted on spiriting him away to the Prydwen, where I can visit him whenever I want and where they can spoil him. I think they plan to keep him as a pet. Since they wanted to kill Danse, you can imagine my confusion about this. They have a more rational explanation for wanting to keep P.A.M. from the Railroad.
3. The best thing was that Maxson conferred on me the rank of Sentinel and told me that he could no longer give me orders. I read up a bit on Sentinels. It seems that this rank is exclusive to the East Coast Brotherhood and is an interim designation between Paladin and Elder. Sentinels are free agents who do whatever they want, which is very unusual in this obsessively regimented organization. The last known Sentinel was Sarah Lyons in the Capital Wasteland. Therefore, I feel very special. This circumstance gives hope to all soccer moms whose sons never played soccer but instead became 60-year-old leaders of wack-job science outfits and got killed by their mothers, who were much younger than their sons because, you know, cryostasis. Mmmm . . .

So now, at nearly level 82, I believe I will take advantage of my freedom and roam about the Wasteland, visiting places I haven’t been and having many little adventures. I have no plans to visit my artificial son and hope the Brotherhood enjoys playing with him.

I am presently level 73 and have noticed an increasing number of settlement attacks. I don’t know what’s prompting this — leveling? more settlements and population? the lure of tasty carrots?

Whatever the reason, I get attack notices pretty frequently now. Mostly they occur down south and they’re usually in water-facing places like Kingsport Lighthouse. Often, I’ll not get a notice but decide to go to a place to improve it. About ten seconds into my workshop activities, an attack begins. I can pretty much count on some kind of violent occurrence when I’m in a settlement just trying to get something done.

I thought this would bug me, but I love it. I really enjoy running to the assistance of besieged settlers. I’m sure it will get old eventually, but right now it’s insanely cool to spawn in a place during a big battle. Appropriately, some enemies don’t notice me; some do. Fortunately, my 300 bl / 300 en ballistic weave armor protects me from most damage as I start sighting multiple targets in VATS. If I start getting shredded, I run for cover and wait for enemies to lose me. It all works really well.

The best thing, though, is watching my well-armed settlers and all my machine gun/laser/rocket turrets go nuts. Heaven help the poor schlubs who try to steal carrots from one of my settlements. Sometimes I don’t even get to shoot anything because the attackers are annihilated in a matter of seconds. Even high-level gunners and legendary raiders scurry for cover and probably have second AI thoughts about rushing into one of my places.

After one of these human-enemy attacks, it’s nice to loot the bodies and give a bunch of upgraded weapons to the settlers who don’t have any. It’s also a good way to collect legendary items without going to a lot of trouble.

Sometimes the settlers seem to handle things on their own. I’ll arrive to build or defend and notice a bunch of ghoul or animal corpses all over the place, and I had no hand in killing them.

Last night, for the first time in an age, Sanctuary got attacked. It turned out to be a couple of unlucky radscorpions. They were vaporized before I even figured out what was happening. They obviously burrowed past my defenses near the bridge, thinking they’d pop up closer to the middle of town and start eating my pathetic Sims. As a line in Beowulf might go, they soon learned how wise they had been.

As a cool plus, one of the settlers ran to a warning siren I’d installed and switched it on. Of course, the scorpions were dead long before he got there, but it was a nice touch. I think I’ll put sirens in all my settlements.

So to sum up: hooray for settlement harassment. Be assured that I will now improve more places. I just have to keep buying oil. I can never keep enough oil.

Last night, I got a Brotherhood of Steel mission from Rhyss to clean out some super mutants at Big John’s Salvage. I’ve been to this location several times and am well aware that it’s populated by higher-level mutants as well as yao guai, so I don’t scoff at it the way I do when I go to the Super Duper Mart or some raider place. Even so, I’ve always been able to clean it out without issue. I might encounter a few brutes, enforcers, maybe a couple of masters, and the odd overlord or primus.

This time, it was full of warlords. If you don’t know, warlords are level 68 enemies with perception of 12 and at least 1535 hitpoints. Some are really well-armed. I’m so used to one-shotting most enemies with my sneak perks that you can well imagine my surprise when my uber sniper rifle hardly made a dent in my first two targets. Also, it took almost no time for the whole crowd to find me and go into full-blown danger mode, which meant that my sneak damage advantage was gone.

There must have been eight of these guys, and even my explosive-ammo machine gun was scarcely hurting them. The only thing that saved me was X-01 power armor (which I was wearing completely by accident) and running. I hoped that I could gain enough distance to go back into sneak mode, but they were not going to let that happen. They broke into little teams and kept me exposed the entire time. My power armor was getting mangled and I was popping stimpacks like mad to stay alive and ward off crippling.

I finally reasoned that the only thing I could do was find the inevitable suicider and put him down first. Then, hoping that I could avoid being pummeled with grenades and missiles, I decided to just wade into them and use my Fusil Terribles shotgun, which helped quite a lot, as this weapon has a high chance to cripple enemies. Apparently, the mutants respected my berserker panic strategy and backed off slightly. I think a couple were distracted by yao guai as well. Anyway, I was able to advance and cripple most of them. I probably could have escaped, but Rhyss would have been mad at me, so I kept advancing on them and  unloading the shotgun, even though they were still firing their miniguns and whatnot at me.

At last, limping and clad in tattered armor, I killed the last mutants and dogs. Somewhere in there I killed a legendary, but all I wanted to do was fast-travel out of there.

The lesson I took away was that I need moar powah. Happily, I’ve been working on the Luck perks, which should give me a good supply of criticals, but I think I’m also going to get the chem addiction immunity perk. This kind of encounter calls for money, lawyers, and drugs.

I was fairly impressed by this. Ever wonder what the real places in FO4’s Boston look like?

behold

First, I’ll try to produce an image of my character, who is not as uber as Necro’s freakish toons but fairly uber nonetheless.

If that doesn’t work, try this:

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/362903713122668706/08B32A9335C3211E707AA8ECF2AFEF537CFF2819/

Anyhow, she is just shy of level 60 and roams the Wasteland without fear. In her spare time, she enjoys easy-listening music, taking long walks on the beach, and targeting the right arms of super mutant suiciders so she can watch packs of mutants and their little dogs asplode in a blinding mushroom cloud. When possible, she makes sure they’re next to vehicles that will also asplode.

She also enjoys hunting gunners on highway overpasses, collecting deathclaw hides, and one-shotting super mutant behemoths in Lexington.

Her minuteman uniform is fortified with 110 armor from the Railroad’s ballistic weave modification which, when combined with maxed polymer combat armor, provides an average of 200 armor for casual strolls. For jaunts in the Glowing Sea, she uses an almost complete set of maxed X-01 power armor (missing the helmet and right leg, so presently using maxed T60 parts).

She’s trying to collect all 2-shot legendary weapons but relies quite a lot on the Overseer’s Guardian modded for .308 ammo. For serious encounters, she uses a maxed gauss rifle.

Lately, she’s discovered the huge advantage of the Local Leader perk. If you don’t know, this allows you to send provisioners to outlying settlements so that workshops are connected. Once this happens, you can build anything in any settlement. You just have to keep loading up on every kind of junk item and dumping it in a connected work station. Abernathy Farm is hilariously well-defended. It’s great fun to watch a bloatfly get apocalypsed by missile launchers.

I suppose she should move the main story along. She’s about to visit the Institute, though she’s in no hurry to get there. She’s having too much fun watching random encounters between super mutants and a stray shaggy yao-guai or comical vertibird assaults on gunner camps.

More as other developments occur.