Fallout: Talking Time

Last time on Athena’s Quest for the Best, we hit the climax of the game when we collected our sick power armor. I would say it’s all downhill from here, but the rest of the game is when we get to use our sick power armor, so can’t complain about that. Anyways, yes, there’s the vault to save, mutants to kill, all that. There’s a lot of lives that are riding on our dear Athena! The Vault wants us to slay the mutants so they don’t hunt down and kill everyone we know and love. The Brotherhood is aware of them mustering an army to take over the rest of the wasteland, are possibly the only force around with the power to stop them, but need us to find out more about the mutants before they’ll be able to act. Athena is the crux of so many destinies right now. We should go take care of them.

Instead, we just head off to the Hub. Our pockets are full of loot, and we’ve got a need for cash.

On the way there, we come across someone. Patrick the Celt. A wanderer. He roams the wastes collecting Gaelic remnants, songs, stories, and histories, as a way of keeping his old family heritage alive. Athena chats with him for a bit, and he sings us an old Celtic song. She passes some time with him in that, then the two groups make their separate ways.

Then we continue on to the Hub, and start hitting up the stores there. Which introduces us to a weird facet of the Fallout economy. Namely, that the currency of the land, bottlecaps? Not necessarily the most efficient means of trading now. After our adventures in the Glow, we are full of equipment that we can sell for thousands of caps a piece. But we can only select caps in groups of a maximum of 999 at a time, making trying to move tons of caps between inventories while selling an onerous process. Also, none of the merchants carry more than two thousand in caps, meaning we’re not able to sell our heavy equipment outright. Most players, by this point in the game, trade in guns rather than in caps. So like breaking a twenty with a store, except you’re breaking a sniper rifle for like eight shotguns. I’m more a fan of using drugs as a replacement for currency because they don’t weigh anything, but either way, in a lot of situations, it’s more efficient to just trade for either the stuff you need or at least stuff you can trade for other stuff later than it is to actually make cash.

Not in this case though. The Brotherhood doctors need caps for their services, and won’t take anything else in trade. So we sell off a fraction of our inventory and completely wipe out all the caps from all the merchants in the Hub, and pick up a few lesser guns and drugs while we’re at it.

But then Athena’s pockets get completely full while we’re picking up miscellaneous guns and goods for selling later. We need to clear out some space. Athena chows down on the eleven pounds of fruit I’ve been holding onto for whatever reason, then washes that down by drinking seven bottles of Nuka-Cola in a row. Now we can fit more guns in her pockets. Priorities.

This has adverse reactions on her health, as you might expect. She’s now addicted to Nuka-Cola. She’ll experience a negative impact to her stats until she drinks another Nuka-Cola. This could be an irritation, but Athena proceeds to quit Nuka-Cola cold turkey until her body stops craving it.

On our way back to the Brotherhood, a particularly sneaky Radscorpion attempts to stealth its way up on us.

This doesn’t go very well for it.

Anyways, we make it back to the Brotherhood, and head down to the doctor. After our little reverse shopping spree, we’ve got enough caps for all the surgeries we haven’t taken yet. The recovery time for this takes weeks upon weeks. During which, once again, the mutant menace advances. The more in-game time we take, the deeper they come into human civilization, the more people they capture for their sick purposes, the more damage they do. Many lives probably ended in the time it’s taken us to recover from our completely elective surgeries.

Throwdown in Junktown. Fallout Chapter 7!

Last time on Fallout, y’all decided to side with the good, handsome lawman that asked kindly for our help over the evil fat jerk that threatened us. I know it was a hard choice for you all. But one that I’m happy to see through.

So, we head on over to Killian, and let him know the good news. We got Gizmo’s confession, courtesy of the recorder we were wearing when he hired us to kill the mayor/shopkeeper. For that, Killian offers us our choice from a number of different rewards. Not quite the ‘anything in the store’ he promised. In fact, outside of the stimpaks, everything he offers is something that we already have and couldn’t get any more use out of. So yeah, for finally breaking the stalemate that has locked Junktown down for who knows how long, he gives us like five of the most basic healing item in the game. Woo.

He follows by asking us if we’d like a piece of the action in taking down Gizmo, to which we respond that we’d love the chance to see the fat guy try to walk. With that, we head out.

Unfortunately, we never get the chance to see that through. Killian gathers the guard, storms into Gizmo’s office, and announces that Gizmo is going for a long trip downtown. Gizmo decides that he’d rather not, so he pulls out a gun and fires a shot into Killian. All from behind his desk. The guy in fact never leaves that desk at all, so no walking for him.

In any case, Killian and his guards return fire on Gizmo. Athena takes aim at Gizmo’s bodyguard, Izo, and nails him in the head. Izo is a pretty simple combatant, no weapons, no items, nothing special, just pure physicality to him. He might be dangerous, if we didn’t find metal armor long before we’d be able to get it if we hadn’t taken on the raiders. As is, he strikes at us twice in his turn, neither of which break past our armor class.

The guards and Killian continue the firefight with Gizmo while Dogmeat and Athena take on Izo. Athena knocks him down with a critical hit, and Dogmeat closes in and finishes Izo off herself. Next turn, a shotgun blast blows Gizmo’s chest out of him, and the crime lord is down.

This gains us the good well of most of the justice-styled folks in the town, as well as enough experience points for another level. We’ll be waiting until it’s night to level up, for the extra skill points that come as Athena’s intelligence rises. We’ve got some business in town before then, however.

So hey, you remember Tycho, the desert ranger at the bar who taught us some stuff about survival? We check in with him, and tell him that Killian has asked us to clean up the town, and he’s all to happy to join up. He suggests we start by taking down Gizmo. Yeah… I guess we could have picked him up after turning in Gizmo’s recording, but I’ve always remembered his recruiting criteria as being after we take down the plus-sized crimelord.

The Count of Dark Souls

Little known cultural fact.  Ever since the darksign started blighting people in Lordran, and death stopped being a thing, we’ve developed a fun little game.  Basically what you do is you get a partner, and you see who can be more dead.  I lose.  All the time.  For example, I played it with Nito last time on Dooty Doot Dark Souls, and I lost hardcore.  Nito ended up so much deader than me.

But now we’ve got all the Lord Souls!  So we can do the Best Chosen One thing and save the world, right?  Man, I bet you can’t wait!  We’ve been running this series like two years now, and finally, we’re ready to go and bring it!  The end is in sight!

Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut I’ve got some business to take care of first.  See, we had picked up the Darkmoon Séance Ring in the Catacombs.  You recall what I mentioned from the ring’s description?  That it claimed the Dark Sun Gwyndolin was the last remaining deity in Anor Londo?  And how we got set on this whole crazy kill everybody for their souls deal by the supposed Goddess Gwynevere, right there?

Somebody’s lying to me.

AND I DON’T LIKE THAT!

I speak with her.  She just repeats her tired spiel.  Urging me to go and be the Best Chosen One I already am, and just listen to Big Snake Dungmouth.  I’m not having it.  The ring says you’re not here, yet here you are.  I want to get to the bottom of this.  By force.

I swing.  My blade doesn’t reach her.  No reaction.

I hurl a fireball into her gut.  It explodes against her.  No reaction.

I draw my bow, and send an arrow up her nose.  No…

Well.

The Eye of the Dark Souls

Last time, on Dueling Swords, Dark Souls, we slew a legend!  Then found out we were fated to do the same work for which that lazy bum had been posthumously taking all the credit for.  Sucks to be us.

I’d go on the whole screw destiny kick here, but really, if Artorias doesn’t do it, and we don’t do it, then Lordran’s pretty much screwed.  I’m pretty sure it’s this Abyss that completely wiped Oolacile off the map back in my time, and if it’s not checked here, there might not even be a Lordran for me to run around and be the Best Chosen One in.  Besides, I haven’t rescued Dusk yet.  And I want to try rescuing a princess just once.  I think a hero of my stature needs that behind them.

I head back to the Sanctuary to heal up, then return to the arena in which I fought Artorias.  There’s someone there.  A woman.  Here in the place of that Epic Battle of the Ages.  It looks like she’s placing a memorial to how awesome our fight was.  She must be a fan of mine.  I walk up to her, and start telling her all about my awesome fight with Artorias.  She turns, and…

Oh! Ohhh.  She was… close with him.  In mourning.  And here I am, running my mouth.  I hang my head, then hand her Artorias’s soul.  I’m sure I could use it to make something awesome, but Artorias, at least, the man he was before the Abyss took him, deserves something better.  Let her have the soul for his little shrine.

In return, she gives me her weapons.  The Dark Silver Tracer and the Gold Tracer, a pair of short swords.  She seems to understand the condition Artorias was in, and doesn’t hold a grudge against me for killing him.  I look over the weapons, and realization comes to me.  That is the Lord’s Blade Ciaran!  Another of the Four Great Knights.  Her blades require a fighting style that does not match mine in the least, but I suspect her giving these to me is more for her sake than anything else.  She does not need these anymore.

I leave her to grieve in peace, and head up the stairs at the other end of the chamber.

That path leads me to a large, open area with a few staircases branching off.  I take one, and find myself on a balcony outside, overlooking the Royal Wood.  I follow it around, and it leads me to this locked door set into a tower.  I can hear movement inside, but the door’s locked, and I have no way to enter.

I collect some souls from up here, head back down, and take the other exit.

A hallway to the side leads to the Battle of Stoicism Gazebo.  Like someone was throwing darts at a dictionary.  Basically an area for people looking for a fight online, because apparently Dark Souls’ random invasion mechanic doesn’t give you enough opportunity for that.  It does give you some unique duel and deathmatch options, but I don’t really get much out of playing against people I don’t even know, so I don’t have a whole lot of interest in this type of multiplayer.

Instead, I take the staircase down, and find myself near a bonfire in a whole new section of the city.

The Dark Souls Nature Trail

Last time, on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dark Souls, we got taken someplace a long, long time ago, in a land far, far away.  Oolacile.  What I know as Lost Oolacile.  A fallen land that no longer exists, because, much like me, it is just too pretty for my blighted world.  Whatever happened to pull me here must have somehow yanked me across time, too.  I’ve followed Dusk to her home.

Look at that.  Sunlight streaming through the trees onto a sacred copse in the woods.  Anor Londo, Firelink Shrine, and the Undead Burg all have some direct sunlight, but it just feels different here.

 

A bunch of humanoid statues that are, admittedly, creepy as all blazes, but hey.  At least these people have some art and culture in them.  That’s beautiful on its own.

And of course, the giant mushroom man, well renowned for its wait WHAT?!

I’ve been pounded by these guys too many times.  Wary, I raise my shield and approach.  The mushroom does nothing.  In fact it doesn’t even have limbs.  Slowly, I lower my guard.  Then it… she… speaks.

If blood and sewage and whatever Frampt’s been eating smells like human to you, I’m not sure I want to see who you hang around with.  Also, how do you tell that when YOU DON’T HAVE A FREAKIN’ NOSE?!

Oh, wait, Dusk’s been talking about me?  She, uh, say anything good?  Like how gorgeous and powerful and totally dating material I am?

“…snatched away by that horrifying primeval human.” she says.  Yeah, she was kidnapped the last time I saw her, too.  Can that girl keep out of distress?  I get that she’s a princess, and getting kidnapped is like, what they do, but that still seems excessive.

Oh fair knight, canst thou pleasest saveth our princess and smiteth the evil dragonst Generica plaguing our landst and liveth literally every classic Heroic Romance ever?  Let me guess.  The princess will be set up to be sacrificed to fuel or satisfy some greater monster.  A false hero will appear, who will seem cooler than me in every way, but ultimately fail in his endeavors.  Then it will be up to me to save the day in which I need to slay the dragon and dispel some lie the princess believes and then she’ll fall in love with me and I’ll hang up my sword and buy a farm.  Eh.  I’ll think about it.

Dicking Around in Dark Souls

Last time, on Aether Plays Dark Souls… you know what? Let’s not talk about last time. That way lies memories I don’t really want to re-live. We’re forward-thinking, here at Lost to the Aether. It’s all about the future! And in my future lies… fighting against a list of possibly-innocent supreme badasses in order to harvest their souls. Erm. Don’t think I’m ready for that just yet. What say we procrastinate a bit, eh?  We’re going to spend this entire entry cleaning up loose ends and doing nothing the ‘main plotline’ wants you to do!  We’re fighting the man on this one!  And not like the actual physical man that we kill all the time but the metaphorical one… you know what?  Forget it.  Let’s go!

Hey, you remember way back in Sen’s Fortress, when I rescued that hat? Well, he’s made his way back to Firelink Shrine! Griggs’s so excited to have his old teacher back! He says the hat master wants to talk to me. I’m popular! This chosen one gig is finally working out in my favor!

The hat offers to teach me sorcery, but then tells me I can’t learn any. Even though Griggs managed to teach me. Are you saying you’re a worse instructor than your own student? You know what? Whatever. Pyromancy’s working out much better for me anyways. No needing to adjust my stats, no worries about education, I just make things burn.

Speaking of burning, I take a warp through the newly restored Firelink bonfire. I’ve still got business in Anor Londo.

I start by chatting up the Firekeeper there. She congratulates me on utterly dominating the City of Lords, as everyone should, and prays that I’ll be able to fulfill Gwynevere’s wish. Then she starts chatting about Seath the Scaleless, one of the beings on my fate-imposed hit list. The dragon born without the scales of immortality who turned against his kind during their war with man. After Geezer Zeus got all sweet on him, Seath retreated to the Duke’s Archives way up in the mountains to research how he might be able to grow those scales. As everyone knows, you can’t do science without going completely mad, and Seath is no exception. His experiments turned wicked, and now nobody who goes to the Archives ever returns. The knightess finishes by warning me against ever going there.

You know what? That actually makes me feel a bit better. Sure, he’s camped out in some evil library from which none are ever seen again, but I guarantee none of those disappeared people were the Best Chosen One. They were probably more like the diet soda version of chosen ones. They look the part, but they’ve got half the substance and they don’t make nearly as good of cocktails. And if I’m going to have to kill someone, I’d much rather kill someone who’s already gone killcrazy. At least that way it’s not technically murder, and my morals survive intact.

Anyways! Two things we came to Anor Londo for. For the first, we head up to the top floor of that big entry hall in front of where Ornstein and Smough were painting the walls in my blood. I head through this broken window, which lets me walk along a decorative outcropping on the outside of this grand structure. I follow the outcropping beyond a fence below, drop down, and…

You remember those giant bows the silver knights used? The ones that fired arrows the size of lances? We’ve got the same artillery, now.

Laying Siege In Dark Souls

Wow, it’s been a while since I had myself some Dark Souls adventures. Well, last time on Oh My God How Long Can I Keep This Going, we had a bunch of trouble with some imaginary people in a fake world, then met a beautiful woman who didn’t want anything to do with us.  Because of this, we jumped off a cliff.  Somehow that led us back to the real world. So now, rather than barely being able to handle the Painted World of Ariamis, we’re up against the rest of the famed Anor Londo, city of the gods. Will we be barely able to handle this one, or are we doomed to a life of failure and hollowness? Read on to find out!

Leaving from the entrance to the Painted World of Ariamis puts us pretty much exactly where we left off; at the foot of this chapel. I don’t get a really good screencap of it, but all this is built really high off of the ground. Good thing I’m not afraid of heights. I would be, but after the first couple hundred times you come back from the dead, the more pedestrian ways of dying kind of start losing their sting. Of particular note, you can see some bat-wing demons, those spindly little pale creatures, perched gargoyle-like to each side of the staircase. They’re the same creatures that brought me here from Sen’s Fortress, except these ones seem armed. I’m wary of them, but they don’t make a move as I head by. Either they’re as docile as the ones that served as my transport earlier, or I’m just not within their sphere of aggression.

Interesting thing to note about these stairs, they come in two sizes. Suggests there’s two sizes of people that visited this place. One relatively human-sized, much like me, the other some sort of giant.

Like these guys. Two sentinels guarding the entrance to this place. I got my practice in against them near the entrance to Anor Londo, so I don’t expect these guys to pose much challenge. Well, as long as I can keep the fight one-on-one. I’m still not crazy enough to be facing these guys en masse yet.

Fun thing I quickly discover, if you lure a sentinel far enough down the staircase, they’ll hit a point where they just start backing up to their original position, ignoring everything else up to and including the Best Chosen One slipping behind them and taking them on from their unguarded rears. If you don’t think I abuse this… well, you clearly haven’t read the earliest posts in this series.

I spy one of the bat wing demons lurking behind this door, seemingly trying to get at me. I guess it was too much to hope that they wouldn’t hate me just because they took the time to bring me here. Don’t know why I’m surprised. This is Lordran, everything and everyone hates me. Comes part and parcel with the undead curse. The more you die, the more likely you are to go hollow, and those already hollow, well, they’d love to have more of their own. Given how much I’ve fallen in this pursuit of becoming the Best Chosen One, it’s a wonder I’ve stayed as sane as I have. Anyways, lending further credence to my ‘humans and giants coexist here’ theory, this gate is built to accommodate to size. As a whole, it opens large enough to fit beings of a grand stature through, but it also has a little doggie door for those of my height built in. Hmm… ‘doggie door’ seems exceptionally fitting, the way this is built. Makes one wonder how relation between the two races was shaped.

In any case, this gate is locked from the other side, and my big beefy arms are just too large to reach to the lock through the bars.  The main doorway into the chapel is solidly locked as well. The gate to the right of the doorway is wide open, however, and it’s through that I venture forth.

It’s through that path that I finally come face to face with those demons. They… well, they’re very different opponents. They’ve got some tricks in them. They’re quick and jumpy and somewhat hard to hit and they have a habit of sneaking around corners when they go aggro unbeknownst to me so I end up fighting groups when I was trying to take them on one by one. They have electric spears, too, meaning I can’t entirely block their damage. They also slide backwards when they’re hit, so I can’t get more than one blow in at a time unless I’ve got them cornered. All these tricks makes them incredibly difficult to fight. I swing my Black Knight Sword low, so they often fly right over my attacks before punishing me for them. They’re too fast to be using pyromancy efficiently. And with how much they move, it’s hard to find an opening. Once I learn they’re moves, though, they end up pretty much being cake. Spears don’t actually have a whole lot of flexibility to them; like an inexperienced jock on prom night, all they can do is thrust. When you know what to expect, it’s not too much trouble to slip past their attack and strike out with your own. My favorite thing to do is to fight them up against a ledge. Since they slide back when hit, it doesn’t take much to fill the abyss below with their corpses.

A quiet, peaceful walk through the woods in Dark Souls

Some people say that you can never go home again. Last time on “Oh my God why is Aether showing us how much he sucks at Dark Souls?” we proved that those people are full of it by traveling back to our old haunt, the Northern Undead Asylum. Now, we’re never going to go back, because we’ve got almost no use for the place, but we totally could if we want to.

Instead, we go to our new home at Firelink Shrine! Land of mysticism, adventure, and total jerks but also Griggs and That One Guy! Speaking of Griggs, let’s see what he’s up to now!

Griggs is busy fanboying over his wayward instructor, Big Hat Logan. Logan was actually pretty happy turning undead, it seems, because that meant he could join the rest of the undead adventurers in prowling all over this land while not being quite as good a chosen one as I am. Griggs is convinced that Logan left him to go check out all the libraries in the land. Because of course books are much more important than the well-being of your proteges.

We knocked out one of our options last time, but we’ve still got our choice of new places to explore. There’s the forest outside of the Parish tower, and the Depths in the Lower Undead Burg. The plot is pushing me towards the Depths, because that’s one of the ways to Blighttown. I’ve played enough videogames to know that means all the best treasure is in the forest. Also, the Depths totally seems like an underground/sewer level, and it’s a matter of principle for me to put those off as long as possible.

A simple decision, really.

Of course, the forest is absolutely festooned with these Ents. They’re weak, but their attacks have some good range, and they’ve got a heavily damaging grab attack that can easily take of half my life. On top of that, they have a really high awareness range, so if there’s one anywhere near the area, you can be sure it’ll be coming soon. They’ll also hide for ambushes, appearing as simple bushes until you hit just the right place. Annoying foes, but luckily for me, I’m strong enough to slay them in a single strike. They drop mosses very frequently upon death, so they’re good sources if you’re looking to boost your supply of remedies.

 

The area’s divided into two parts: the Darkroot Garden, which makes up most of the forested area, and the Darkroot Basin, covering the nearby cliff and lake. The two cross over at several points, but we’ll but have their own unique features and enemies.