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Update 5: DEMOCRACY IN ACTION

Let's head on out of Primm.

A bit to the south, we'll find an old highway patrol station.



There's a gang leader that I put just in the top-right quadrant of the crosshair. You can see her legs.



And now she's lying flat in the top-right quadrant.



There's also two escaped convicts a bit in front



Who go down just as easily.



At higher levels she can have reinforced leather armor but no such luck today



You've made a powerful enemy this day, SIGN.



Pair of matching Jackal gang members inside. These are one of the two kinds of Raider the trooper outside of NCR mentioned, actually! It's kind of nice to see some sort of organization as opposed to the complete Fist of the North Star crazy mooks Fallout 3 had going on. Those exist too, mind you, there's just some variety and clear organization even there.



I didn't actually knife this nymph, they can also die from just attacking you. Puny things.



Star cap in the back room.



Corpse has some spare cards if I was playing Caravan.



Hydra can also help with broken limbs, but is addictive. More useful if you're on Hardcore mode.



Back out front is a rare Guns & Bullets ? a permanent +3 to Courier's Guns skill.





We get a levelup from some crafting ? some new perks are opening up!



I take Intense Training again to the tune of a point of Perception, though.



Out to the east we find the Ivanpah Dry Lake. There's nothing here but some giant ants and some junk in a toolbox out by the car.



Oh, and some scorpions. Bit tough to see, but this one's doing its glitchy thing where it glides around half in the ground.



Also I explode some ravens BECAUSE I CAN (there's no reason to though, they give 1 xp and no loot)



Proper radscorpions, now. This is a decent time to talk about the ammo types ? particularly armor piercing!



Note how I have like no ammo suddenly and it says AP between the Condition bar and the ammo counter. I've switched to my armor piercing ammo to help with the chitinous radscorpion's DT.



A little broken red shield appears by enemy health when you break their DT, and an intact shield when it's reducing a lot of damage you would be doing.



I run out of AP ammo and have to switch to Lucky to finish the job, though.

Let's check inside that rest stop, shall we?





Permanent +3 Unarmed!



Some dude's journal.







Ooookay. He's not here so that must not have gone too well...



...Why is he stockpiling a BB gun?

(Also there was another Star cap in here)



There's some ammo boxes in the back of this nearby truck:





Let's go look at those statues!



Gettin' kinda dizzy looking straight up at these. Wonder what they're for?



Oh.



Let's buy some stuff off this guy.



Not bad! The DT is a big upgrade from our regular leather, to a max of 10.



Courier picked up a pair of sunglasses and an NCR Helmet at some point, too.



We head on into the NCR Outpost HQ.



This is Major Knight. He can repair our stuff, and depending on how the voting goes I might be back to get NCR reinforcements or a pardon for Meyers.



This guy has some quests though!

And if you're passing through, you picked a bad time. Road north has gone to hell, and if I let a caravan through, they won't make it.

Any way I can help?

Help? No, look, I apprec... You know what, yes, I could use the help. And you look like you can handle yourself. I need to get the caravans moving again, that means clearing a path north. There's too much crawling the asphalt up the road to allow it.

Sounds like a deal.

Thanks, I appreciate it. Come back here when you're done, I might accidentally "lose" some supplies to pay you with.



Ranger Ghost is up on top of the bar.



Depends on the work.

I think there's trouble in Nipton ? no traffic from there on the roads, and while I can explain that away, the smoke from the town I can't. I'm sure it's been hit ? what I need to know is if they survived it. Might be the Powder Gangers with all that smoke in the air. If there's anybody left, they'd be in the Nipton Town Hall. Go there, check it out, let me know what you find.

If I pass through there, I'll check it out.

Better than nothing. But close to it. Listen ? I don't want you getting killed for this, so if you head there and run into trouble, I'm asking for eyes and ears, not your life. All right?

Got it. See ya.

Mind yourself on the plank going down.

Actually, Courier can just kinda jump off the roof, no problems, it's not very high



Inside the bar we find Lacey, local merchant and caravan player if I were doing that. Behind her are some special Nuka Colas I will, uh, never ever bother with.



Cass is here, too ? we'll see more of her later. She's a potential companion but we need to get out to fucking New Vegas before that opens up so yeah, we'll be back.

Let's head out for now, and deal with Jackson's problem.



I always love the old signs, I don't know why.



Jackson's problem is some giant ants.



No problem at all. Let's go see about payment.



You mentioned a reward before?

No, I mentioned you might accidentally get supplied, and I meant it. Not allowed to contract mercenaries at the Outpost.

We get a Service Rifle (a decidedly not bad weapon, actually), some ammo, and some Caravan Lunches. Those last are handier in Hardcore Mode (I say that a lot, it seems) but they are a health item for us.



Courier chugs some sarsaparilla and finds another Star cap. We're up to 13 now!

Okay, time for a slightly easier example of the game fucking you.



See this cave? See how close it is to the road? It is filled with a pretty strong enemy, and one of my least favorite ones for a reason.



Night Stalkers are a sort of mutant rattlesnake/coyote thing. The adults have a poison bite, but that's not why I hate 'em. See, VATS... really doesn't work well with them for me. I get two types of glitch ? just wasting an entire clip at 95% chance, that sort of thing ? and the one in this gif:



Just sitting there, tracking it in slow motion, never firing, until either VATS force-exits or I get killed.



We encounter our first Heavy armor! Metal armor is, in this case, just barely better than the reinforced leather that Courier is currently wearing, and takes off a point of agility and slows down his movement rate. Not worth it.



We did get a nice new gun though! Hunting rifles are solidly strong at this point in the game, with good damage, good crit chance, and low weapon spread (even if we probably won't see a scope mod for this for a long while).

Anyway, I head outside and promptly get killed by more night stalkers.



Let's try that again.



Much better.



Hey, a crashed plane! Let's check it out! (There's nothing here)



About this time I make another bad decision when I spot this giant radscorpion. They are MUCH tougher than an ordinary radscorpion, with a whopping 18 DT to a normal's 5.



Oh fuck oh shit





Whew.



Hey, gang members to snipe!



The leader has some metal armor as well that we repair the other one with. It is truly not much stronger than our reinforced leather.

Killing some nearby giant ants, we finish up the first rank of the Bug Stomper challenge





We'll be doing a lot more of this.



I also finish off Lead Dealer. It's really easy to pull off 10,000 damage with missile weapons since headshots do a ridiculous amount of bonus damage

Then almost back to Primm:







How did you initiate dialogue from way over there?!



DIE DEMON SPAWN







A location is marked on our map, as well. We'll finish that up. Let's go see about a certain other robot in Primm, now. This one's inside Johnson Nash's house:



Looks familiar!



You can repair ED-E with either some spare repair parts you can collect, a Science check of 55, or a Repair check of 65. We make the Repair check.



ED-E immediately starts hovering REALLY GODDAMN HIGH



And also gives us its companion perk, Advanced Sensors, which increases our detection range and allows us to see cloaked enemies on the compass and target them in VATS even if they are invisible. Practical!



With the addition of Lonesome Road, it also serves as a mobile work/reloading bench!

It is also EXTREMELY GODDAMN BUGGY to the point that completing its companion quest may permanently break it. We'll see what happens this time around.

Also, democracy came to Primm and chose a robot sheriff, so let's make that happen!

Well, first, I picked up Gun Runner's Arsenal on a whim since it adds more unique weapons and such.





Here's who we wanna see.



He's anxious about Vance's gun, since we fixed him to realize it's gone.



There are two ways to fix Slim to be Sheriff ? one with a Science check and the other with some spare parts. We make the check.



Beagle's sure to be happy with this result, right?



What's your problem now?



Bahaha. (He gets fired regardless of who we pick because he's a crappy deputy, implying the old Sheriff was either totally incompetent as well or was just letting this guy think he's deputy to shut him up)