Started playing with the construction stuff a couple of nights ago, it's fairly entertaining working around the landscape, putting up fences and watchtowers. All at the Red Rocket, of course; I'm not even touhing the Minutemen quest-line, now I'm past the compulsory stuff, for fear of interruptions about needy settlers. Preston keeps trying to talk to me every time I pass through sanctuary, but I just blank him.

Rear of the property is nicely fortified, just need to figure out how to put together something welcoming looking but secure for a market out front, then I can move onto making a rooftop party area. Beats the hell out of building those tedious towers and shit I see everywhere.

What I'm having a lot of trouble with is finding Codsworth. I wanted to see if I could send him to Red Rocket, to live with Dogmeat and Beer Buddy, so that he can greet me with a cheery "Ah, Mister Badass!" when I get home. Trouble is, he doesn't seem to be haning around Sanctuary anywhere. I thought, maybe he'd fallen in the river and go stuck, or something, but so far my searching's been fruitless.  Anyone know where I might find my long-time metallic chum?

Doesn't it stop me getting trophies if I install a mod? A little as I value them, I value Codsworth slightly less.

Fuck settlement building, though; it does look crap, still. Adding coolness to my home base, though, that I'm up for. I guess, at some point, I might summon some settlers to make the place look more alive, but it might be enough just sticking some companions there.

With regards to other's criticisms of settlement building, I do wonder if they're not getting it or are expecting too much. I strikes me that layout may well be ignored when you're not there and less important because of being hardcore when you are. I really wouldn't be surprised if most of the things are more for aesthetics than anything else. Is there any definite information on how it all works?

As for it being fiddly, I'm not sure there's much that could be done while preventing people building impossible shit, without taking you out of the standard game view. All of my frustrations with it - bar not being able to move things towards and away from you and being able to jimmy stuff past hit boxes with some work - have been down to that. Personally, I think it would have been a lot better if you'd done all the designing on a blueprints kind of thing, then the settlers build the things over the next couple of days.

I appear to have misplaced two of my companions. Both were told to go to Sanctuary, but are nowhere to be found. Any ideas? I think one is trapped in Trinity Tower.

Also, do I need to have Bobbleheads in my inventory for the stat bonus to take effect, or can I store/sell them?

Companions are random fuckers, they'll probably turn up eventually. Might be stuck in a river or something, but they usually find their way out.

I built stairs from the roof of Red Rocket to the top of the construction area last night. View's not as impressive as I was hoping.

That thing looks tacky as fuck. I haven't even got an idea for a diorama to put it in yet.

Childintime wrote:

If your companions don't go where you told them to go you should probably go and check out...

Spoiler:

Bethesda lol

Any help?

Not really, no, but thanks.

I wouldn't be so narked, but they're my two favourite companions.

AJ wrote:

Companions are random fuckers, they'll probably turn up eventually.

Hopefully, as mentioned above they're the two coolest companions (IMHO, YMMV).

Bob wrote:

You can store them in the lovely bobblehead stand I posted a picture of mine full a few pages ago

Ah ha, that's awesome. I'm just getting my head around this settlement building gubbins, it's quite a neat feature of the game. I have a fair few magazines as well, so I'll have to build a shelf for those, too. Thanks much.

Talking of building settlements, pretty much all of mine need extra points in Defence, but building guard outposts doesn't seem to do anything, despite their description stating they provide 2 Shield. Am I missing something? I can't see wooden platforms needing power or anything like that. Turrets provide the requisite defence rating, but finding the circuit boards needed to build them is a bugger, so if I can provide for the people's defence needs without them, the better.

Bob wrote:

It's amazing when it's full. Also you can store the magazines too so I'd say once you've picked up the bobblehead the stat is increased permanently in the same way as when you've read the magazine. I just like to store things so I had two full magazine racks.

In the same way I have a book case at each house in Skyrim with all my stat books in.

I have a magazine rack. It's in a diorama with a scavenging station and containers I put all my best/coolest chems and stuff in. I might post some pictures of stuff I've been doing to try and show off.

Bobblehead stand looks like arse however full it is, but I'm sure I'll find a way to put it into something eventually.

There's a big Vault Boy statue that might go well with it, but I'm guessing that comes from an add-on pack.

I wish they'd done proper sidequest storylines for all the Companions.  Synth detective guy gets good treatment here (and later on in the Far Harbour DLC).  Others, like Strong, get nothing.  Clear Bethesda had their favourites.  Either that or they simply ran out of time and skimped on the others.  Never bothered much with them really, but the buffs you get from raising their affinity are awesome though.

So long as it's not the USS Constitution, it probably doesn't matter. That one's far too cool.

Nah, once you've made them your bessie mate you get their buff and then dismiss them and still retain the buff.  Then go make some other character your pal and get their buff too. You can have multiple buffs on the go.  To be honest, I just like saying the word BUFF.  Gonna call my next character BUFF I think.  But that wont be till my VR playthrough.

Cool. Motivation enough to partner up on my second play through then. Looking forward to going back, but I'm thinking of holding off for a GOTY + Scorpio combo.

I thought there was another bugged quest, but the bloke I was meant to be following eventually managed to figure out how to get around a fence.

In other news, I absolutely love this game. I had a quest to take out a crime lord, with an optional objective of saving an NPC. I did the first, but failed at the second. Made me feel genuinely sad. I took a few of the NPC's belongings back to their house, and left them in a trunk. Didn't feel right, having them. Who says video games aren't art?

There's always some other wastelander with too much time on their hands

Blocks100 wrote:

There's always some other wastelander with too much time on their hands

That's a thing of beauty.

Raiziel wrote:

It looks super, Swirly! Definitely getting the itch to return to this now, especially as the Pro patch dropped recently, but I must resist.

Pro patch?

I'm loving this game. Scouring the wasteland for magazines and bobbleheads is super addictive. I'm determined to get as many sets of power armour as possible, all in different paint schemes.

Two questions for folks:

1) Is it possible to craft power armour parts, or do they have to be found?
2) Can you keep playing after completing the plot? I'm probably no where near, but I don't want to distract myself with extra stuff until I've finished the main game. (I'd love to tackle Nuka World after the story is done, just for dat epic red armour set.)