Ok, I got a proverbial shit-load done on the weekend, which is great, considering I was out and about all day Saturday.

I rescued all of the remaining Rangers, having done most of the heavy lifting getting to them, it was a piece of cake marching them out of the building they were holed-up in (if that's the right phrase, considering they were on top of the building).

Then I decided to continue along on the main-quest chain for a while.  I was looking for an entrance to Vault 87 to pick up a G.E.C.K., which I thought would be pretty straight forward.  Silly me.  On my wanderings to Little Lamplight, I came across a Talon Merc fort, which was a huge distraction, but good fun providing some much needed action.  I cleared the area, and killed their commander.  Hopes that he was the big commander, and that his death would mean no more Mercs appearing from nowhere, were dashed quickly as I travelled about and was attacked by spawning Mercs re-newed.

I then made it to Little Lamplight, thinking it would be straight forward to get to Vault 87 from here.  Wrong again - I needed to rescue some children from Paradise Falls.  No problem, another town to barter and trade and explore?  Deal.  I travelled to Paradise Falls, and despite circling the whole bloody encampment for like 15 minutes, I found its entrance.  At said entrance, I was accosted by a guard, and learned that the whole village was a bunch of slaving scum.  I let my plasma rifle do the talking.  I wiped them out, all of them.

I was a little sad at possibly missing some quests, but then again I probably would have felt icky capturing slaves or whatever anyway.  Some good exp mowing down all of those turds.  I rescued the kids, then headed back to Little Lamplight.

The kids there thought I was pretty ok after that (mostly) and I continued on to Vault 87.  Met a lovely chap Super Mutie there, Hawkes, who I freed and who in return, helped me get the G.E.C.K.  He warned me that on his release, many other test subjects would then be set free.  I did the smart thing and killed them all off first, so that I wouldn't be swarmed.  This worked a treat, except for some crazy human who was 'green' when I released him, but turned 'red' after I released Hawkes.  Ungrateful bugger.

On the way out of that complex, I was captured by the Enclave.  When I was helped by the President, I had suspicions about his nature (which proved correct, happily), and I slaughtered the Enclave, amassing about a billion fingers to trade in to the Regulators.  Caught up with the Pres, who I convinced to both not introduce the FEV into the water stream, and also to kill himself upon my departure (which seemed terribly easy - one simple line of questioning should not a suicide make, at least as far as I'm concerned).  I've just opened the door to depart, when I logged out of the game.

Killing all those people had lead to a massive growth spurt, and I'm now level 21 (and I took the Explorer perk, so I'm set to cruise around Capital Wasteland when the main series is done).

It felt as though I did a lot more, and I'm sure there are many little things I've missed - but lunch breaks at work are only so long, and I have other posts here to read!

Hrmm...  I'm trying to think what surprise you're talking about... was it the Speech +10 Bobble head?  I know I got one in there somewhere, but as I had just maxed out my speech, I was less than impressed, hehehe.

Ok, well I finished the main series of quests, and was frustrated and confused.  Not because of the story etc, which was fantastic.

It was fun walking along with Liberty Prime, getting rid of all of those pesky Enclave.  Originally I let the bad guy go... that general in the trench coat.  I gave him a second chance, as I'm general a nice guy (or something).  I also volunteered to go in myself and activate the purifier.  I didn't put int he FEV virus, as I just wanted to distribute clean water to everyone.

And I died.  Nice cut scene.  Then the game was over.  What‽

How can I play the expansions?  I just got dumped back at the title screen.  So then I went back to my previous save, and made Lyons go in there and sacrifice herself to see if it would be different.  She gave me grief, making me feel like a real jerk, and also used my FEV virus.

Another endscene, this time with water flowing everywhere.  And two weeks later I woke up in the Citadel.

So, do I finish the game as a hero, or keep playing as a jerk who's killed Lyons and poisoned almost everyone?  Shitty choices if you ask me.  After work today I'm going to see if I can finish the main series as I want to finish it, and keep playing afterwards.  Myabe my Game of the Year version didn't kick in the expansions properly or something, but I'm going to figure it out.

Huzzah!  I finished that quest the way I wanted.  I gave the FEV virus to Elder Lyons, did the whole Liberty Prime walk, and sacrificed myself.

I finally got the cinematic with all of the clean water in it, and eventually woke up.  And that's all I had time for.  Oh, and they let me join the Brotherhood - yay!  Hopefully all of the bodies and loot that mark the path of Liberty Prime are still about, so that I can become mega-rich.

Now, on to the expansions and more questing!

(and did no-one notice my interrobang symbol in my previous post?  Too subtle?)

Ah...  I'm too lazy to try and find an interrobang on a keyboard - I'd be surprised if it was there.  I did a search and found that one online, and just to make sure it was compatible, I copied it into notepad.  Then I re-copied it across to post above.  Completely de-mystifies me, doesn't it?  [Image Can Not Be Found]

Ok, just discovered what happened to poor Opti... er Liberty.  You can still talk to him though, how bizaar!  It was pretty sad, but I'm hopeful someone will repair him.

Cleared that area and levelled (took the Cyborg perk to make me even more tougher!).  There's too much loot these days!  I'm restricted to carrying about a dozen of the most expensive plasma and laser rifles back to hock in for bottlecaps!  And vendors seem to be running a bit low on them at the moment too.  Good thing I'm filthy rich (in the game, at least), so I'm not crying too much at the 57 bazillion power armour suits I'm leaving lying around.  I've got the Brotherhood companion with me at the moment (Cross or something?).  She's ok...  I just gave her a gatling laser and around 2,000 rounds to keep her out of mischief.

I'm just about to undertake Tristan's next mission.  I think I'll hand in the 70 or so fingers I have first, and go and download my new locations with Reily's Rangers.  That should get me some more ka-ching.

Moving forward (or levelling up) I'm not sure what other Perks hold much more interest.  I'll have to see if I can still get that stat raising perk - I read somewhere that Luck increases your chance to critically hit (amongst other things), so I may end up raising my Luck up the wa-zoo. We'll see.  Oh, and what I'd kill for someone who can repair my equipment to 100%!  Would be a nice change to walk around in stuff that wasn't always half broken.

I didn't get that quest, Spike, I'll have to keep an eye out for a camera and a sensor module and bring them back with me in case I can back-track the quest.

Thanks for the tip about repairing – something I hadn't bothered with before.  Rather than carrying 6 laser rifles, I can repair them into one or two, and minimise the weight load etc.  Great!  Now I have laser rifles worth about 800 caps to trade, instead of 200 or 300… how good!

I haven't invested in traders that I know of (or the Mayor of Caterbury), simply because I haven't had much to do with them.  I'll look into this.  And you have waaay too much caps!

Things are going ok – I've just made it to Adams Airfoce Base and found an Alien Blaster (damn, now I have to increase my Small Arms skill).  Oh, and I have a whopping big Tesla Canon, which has opened a massive can o' whoop ass. 

Incidentally, I see there's a Perk at level 30 that raises all of your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attributes up to 9 – so I won't be increasing any more attributes until I get that Perk!

Thanks Spike - dropped the hammer on their mobile platform that would put a Jawa crawler to shame.  Then spent a bit of time selling gear.  Do you know where I can get more ammo for that Alien gun?  It's pretty good, yet sometimes it makes the corpses hard to find as ash piles.

Also, forgot that I was going to help a kid go to Big Town - I've escorted him and just left Big Town in search of the Super Muties that stole the others.

Pity the Muties, they know not the wrath of the Alien Blaster.