Cait wasn’t the only one with a monkey on her back.
I continue my play diary of Fallout 4. Last time was all about Preston, this time it’s all about Cait. It was supposed to be all about Nick Valentine, but yet again I got distracted and ended up going off in a different direction.
On the character front, I spent the perk points I had been stockpiling on cleaning up a few outstanding things. I took the third levels of both Hacker and Locksmith. No secret is safe from me! Although I specifically said I wasn’t going to, I also took the next level of Armorer. I really wanted to construct ultra-light armor.
Obviously, there will be spoilers ahead!
Boston Common is a Bully-Free Zone!
Way back on Day Four I met up with Swan, a super-mutant behemoth nesting in Boston Common. He had taken up a new hobby: killing me. I was young, I was foolish, I was murdered. Several times. After meeting up with Cait, I was inspired by her strength, take-no-prisoners attitude, and commitment to violence. I decided to pay Swan a visit.
Yeah, he wasn’t that tough. I probably over-estimated him; could have likely dealt with him without the mines. Still, I’m finding there aren’t many problems in the wasteland that a pile of mines can’t handle.
My Story so Far
Who’da thunk the Combat Zone was inside?
As I mentioned, I had planned (honest!) to rescue poor Nick Valentine today. I headed into downtown Boston to do so, but got distracted by an older request to visit the Combat Zone. I thought that I already had. Clearly I missed something, and I did: it turns out the Combat Zone is a building.
This has become a minor problem: when you know the actual Boston very well, you tend to play the game to those expectations. I assumed that “The Combat Zone” was the square – section of street. When the location popped while I was, um, making a strategic withdrawal from raiders, I assumed that the raider camp was the Combat Zone. Nope, it was a building down an alley and I completely missed it. Similarly when I heard about Cabot House being in Beacon Hill, I looked where I thought Beacon Hill should be (protip: if you want to find Beacon Hill in Fallout, look in the North End).
Cait: ready for action.
The Combat Zone felt like Easy City Downs from Day Sixteen all over again. From the signage and the lack of aggression in the lobby, I was absolutely sure that this would be a new “safe” place. I could bet on the fights, maybe even fight myself, meet some people, collect some quests – the usual. I expected The Thorn from Fallout: New Vegas, instead I got attacked by raiders instantly. Again.
Once things died down, I met the owner – a guy that clearly had no power to enforce his own rules – and we arranged a trade. I took over the contract for his pit fighter, Cait and he… let me, I guess? It was all a bit fuzzy, but hey: new companion! A foul-mouthed, red-headed one! We’re going to get along great.
Since I had a new companion, I decided to continue ignoring Nick Valentine. Instead, Cait and I started cleaning up my quest log in earnest. After kicking Swan’s ass, we popped into the Boylston Club. The room was littered with poisoned wine and the remains of an upper-crust suicide pact. Of course, Cait sat right down and had a drink.
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- That bottle on the bar is literally labeled “poison”.
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- See?
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- Still, it is a pretty place to commit suicide, I suppose.
She survived, so we moved on to the The Shamrock Taphouse. Rufus in Goodneighbor had asked me to locate a fabled beer brewing machine rumored to be there. Unsurprisingly, we were distracted. This time by 35 Court, an unmarked location, but one who’s automated defense systems caught our eye. An elevator ride later, and we were being murdered by robots. A pile of mines later and we were murdering robots. This netted me a nifty new set of X-01 power armor!
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- Cait and I are already getting closer.
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- Assaultrons mean business.
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- Not my favorite color, but I’ll take it.
Since we were close and I had an abundance of power cores, I decided to keep the armor for our visit to the Taphouse. Cait and I took out the raiders entrenched there, found Buddy the Brew Machine and sent him on to the Hotel Rexford where Rufus was waiting. Of course, Cait sat right down and had a drink.
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- Apparently I can tiptoe in power armor?
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- Even the apocalypse can’t bring down these animals.
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- Party table, for one?
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- I didn’t realize the lunchboxes have drawings inside them!
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- It strikes me that by the time I find all the magazines, I might have already hacked all the terminals.
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- Buddy the Brew Machine, happy in his new home!
That done, we struck out for the Four Leaf Fishpacking Plant to see about Marowski’s Chem Lab. We cleared the place of ghouls, only to realize that the plant was actually only accessible from the roof of the building. The trip netted us an issue of Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor, some sweet hazmat suits, and a load of chems. I also reached level 34.
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- Creatures are definitely leveling up.
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- Good thing he’s already dead, or that fall woulda killed him!
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- Say what you will about the smell, but you can’t deny the view.
I had been returning to Cabot house regularly in an attempt to clear the quest “Speak to Jack Cabot” (which did not provide a map marker). Each time I went, a new Zeta Gun (which I thought was the promised reward) appeared in Jack’s lab – I’ve got five of them now – but no Jack. I thought I might be glitched, but decided to check the asylum first. Turns out he was there and he gave me the actual reward: Lorenzo’s Artifact Gun. The whole misadventure impressed Cait enough for her to open up about her past.
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- These just keep appearing at Cabot House!
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- While I was gone, somebody put all the mannequins back in place.
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- Maybe it was this guy?
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- There he is, just where I left him.
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- He says this won’t kill people. I aim to prove him wrong.
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- Cait warmed up and told me about her terrible childhood. I used the opportunity to flirt with her.
With Cait melting more and more every second, we moved on to the Hallucogen Building to find a canister of “something good” for Fred, Goodneighbor’s friendly drug dealer. The building was flooded with poisonous gas, deranged Gunners and twisted experiments. It was also littered with cartons of “Drugged Water”. Of course, Cait sat right down and had a drink.
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- Cait seems to have something of a habit.
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- Not that I’m judging.
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- Well, maybe I’m judging a little bit.
Finding and returning the canister led her to open up some more and admit – big suprise, sister! – that she had a substance abuse problem. Apparently, one unable to be treated by a regular doc or Addictol. She asked for my help in storming Vault 95 rumored to contain a “detox machine” that would cure her instantly of her next-level addictions. The trip would penetrate much farther into the dangerous South than I had ever gone, but I stand by friends, so we headed out.
Radscorpions seem more common down South.
There were some adventures along the way. Run ins with super-mutants, mirelurks and other undesirables. There were also some deaths along the way. We also met a sweet crazy lady who, after some handling, let me set up a settlement at Egret Tours Marina. A weird couple of radio people were holding a copy of Live & Love for me and requested I rescue their friend from super-mutants. I put it on my to-do list.
Approaching the vault, it became clear this wasn’t going to be a cake-walk. Multiple high-level gunners and a couple of assaultrons were split across the entrance and an overlooking cliff. I decided to do the honorable thing.
Vault 95, if you lived here, you’d be dead now!
I snuck up behind and above them, threw a bunch of grenades and then ran and hid. Once things calmed down, I saw that I had taken care of all the raiders on the cliff and reduced the first assaultron to a crawling torso, easily dealt with a well-placed sniper shot. After that it was just a matter of leveraging another pile of mines on the ramp up the cliff to take out the final assaultron and gain access to the vault.
Inside the vault was little better. The enormous main area was host to large group of Gunners, a Mr. Gutsy, and another assaultron. The last of my mines got rid of the robots and an extended campaign of sniping and hiding eliminated the Gunners.
A bobblehead and a Bottlecap Mine. I’m liking Vault 95!
Material in the residential wing told the sad story of the vault: populated with addicts forced to live clean and undergo treatment until, after five years, a mole amongst their ranks flooded the vault with chems and booze. The results were clearly not pretty. But hey, I also got the Big Guns Bobblehead, so it all worked out well in the end, right?
The facilities wing was less interesting, but at least there were no more assaultrons. Dispatching Gunners easily with my suppressed plasma infused 10mm, we finally made it to the detoxification chamber. The Gunner Commander holed up there was soon a puddle of green goo. Cait had second thoughts and needed some tough love to convince her to enter the machine. Reason prevailed and she’s now as good as new.
Cait appreciates a good ensemble.
As we collected a lot of material at the vault, I did the fast-travel-tango to move everything to Sanctuary Hills. Oddly, every time I did Cait “liked” the trip and made a strange comment like, “Leavin’ nothin’ to the imagination, eh?” I finally realized what was going on: during my gear transfers I accidentally stored my vault suit in the workbench. Apparently, Cait enjoys when I hang my ass out. More importantly: even with all of that, Cait still didn’t idolize me.
Cait is my new, second girlfriend.
More adventuring was in order! We went into a swamp, killed some mirelurks and collected some baseball artifacts for Moe in Diamond City. I know the joke with Moe is that he doesn’t understand how baseball was actually played and the lone survivor does, but don’t all the pre-war ghouls know as well? We took out a random camp of super-mutants and another of raiders. Finally, I ducked into the Trinity Church, just to check it out. After dealing with the super-mutants inside, Cait finally wised up and loved me!
Next time – I pinky-swear-promise! – I am going to get Nick Valentine.
