The encounter designers for Fallout 4 love to scatter mines and boobytraps around. That’s in addition to giving your enemies an infinite supply of grenades and molotov cocktails, and arming the occasional raider with a nuclear grenade launcher (that whistling sound as they’re incoming is tied with the beeping of an approaching Super Mutant Suicider for my “ohshit” reflex).

Still, most of the time you get sent out for a Cleanup On Aisle One (“defeat $BADGUYS”, “rescue $SETTLER”, “clean out $NEWTOWN”), you don’t need a lot of radiation protection on your armor. You can line your Tuxedo with ballistic weave, pull out your trusty tommygun, and earn some caps by busting caps.

Then you run into someone who’s scattered a few of these around their base:

If you see one of these before stepping on it, retreat and put on your best anti-rad suit before returning; the people who use them have other glowing surprises waiting for you, too.

In other news, here’s my current list of most-wanted mods for the game (official or third-party):

1. Face-Saver: let me copy/paste any human face. It's hard to make your character look good, and every hand-designed NPC in the game could be used as a starting point.
2. Just Tell Me Who To Kill: hit a key to skip past the long, repetitive NPC dialog at the start, middle, and end of every quest or vendor interaction. You could do this in Skyrim, but in F4, you have to wait through every speech before being given the opportunity to respond, or to receive credit for the quest. And if they wander off in mid-sentence, you have to do it again.
3. Don't Stand So Close To Me: NPCs shouldn't speak their stock lines unless you're right next to them, facing them. Having Danse in your settlement is like an endless stream of Brotherhood propaganda sound bites, and Marcy Long is going to get fragged some night to put an end to her constant bitching. Worse, if an NPC is standing near you when you activate a crafting station, they'll keep spamming you for the entire session; the default placement of the weapons station in Sanctuary practically guarantees this.
4. Searchable Map/Inventory: ’nuff said.
5. Money Ain't Junk: put pre-war money in the Misc category so it doesn't get recycled for crafting.
6. Planet Of The Hats: add the ballistic weave modification to more hats. Right now, the only one I can find that accepts the mod is the Trilby, which is a great hat, but doesn't go with every outfit. Something colorful to go with the Summer Shorts would be nice (since it leaves the arm and leg slots free for additional armor...). Bonus for adding weave to the upgraded version of the Silver Shroud costume and its matching hat.
7. Make ’Em Glow: highlight lootable corpses the same way the power armor mod highlights active creatures.

[Update: #3 = No NPC Comments, #5 = Hey That’s Not Junk. Something I didn’t have on my list, but definitely like, Faster Terminal Displays (the long pause after unlocking/disabling something is still there. I tried one of the additional-music mods, but it was “poorly curated”, to put it kindly.]

So, this is your Thanksgiving recommendation for me?

As pleasant to look at as Mio Takaba (link NSFW) is, there always seems to be a challenge in her eyes that promises a need for UPRS should you disappoint her.

That’s Urgent Penis Reattachment Surgery. Seriously, even when she’s smiling there’s usually a predatory gleam, and her sultry look makes you want to lock up the kitchen knives. I’ve actually left out the most obvious examples, so I don’t scare you (and because several prominent cheesecake tumblr blogs have vanished recently, so the archives are a bit thin…).

NSFW after the jump, with a special present for Steven…

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No, you can’t “spin the cylinder” on a double-action .44 magnum revolver. This is one of only two things that have broken my immersion into the gun-porn weapon customization in the game, the other being the use of a PPK frame for the Deliverer unique weapon (a suppressed 10mm).

I’m willing to suspend belief for everything else, because it either looks silly-cool or does horrible and/or amusing things to my enemies.

PS: bought a gatling laser and Big Boy. Those “cleanup on aisle one” missions are a lot quicker now.

…which is good, because the lack of variety in Radiant quests is getting a little annoying. That chick in Sanctuary is way too needy, easily responsible for 2/3 of my requests. Hopefully the patch will include some randomization.

Speaking of patches, the game just played the cylinder-spin sound and hand movement when I drew my 10mm semi-auto. Oopsie.

[Update: I got it to give me the spin again (frequent if you draw the .44 in first-person), and it’s actually shown already cocked when you spin it. Someone is really proud of an animation that doesn’t even make sense for a single-action revolver.]

"It's taking a bit longer than usual, but it should be ready soon"
    --- Windows 10 installer on a Lenovo S12

That’s what she (Cortana) said.

Note: the lack of blogging has nothing whatsoever to do with Fallout 4. Nope, not at all. I can quit any time, as soon as I finish upgrading my power armor and fighting off waves of Super Mutants.

Scary moment: returning to my home town to find that one of my settlers was wandering around with a nuclear grenade launcher; I calmly explained the concept of “friendly fire” and confiscated both of his launchers and all his spare mini nukes. Kids today, I don’t know where they pick up these things.

What’s the proper collective noun for a gathering of Hestia cosplayers?

[Update: and what about Rory Mercury?]

I’ve seen this picture before, and now I know Anna Konno’s secret identity. See?

(NSFW after the jump)

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