To start with, let me just say that I was probably just two or three in-game feet from The Firelance, the best weapon and the most difficult to obtain in the entire Wasteland, and ... I just ... didn't see it. I mean, it must have been right there, just sitting there on the ground, among the dirt and weeds, and I must have walked right over it!
Zoom out, rewind. Last night, I'm playing Fallout 3. After the whole Survivor 2299 fakery fiasco, I've had a hankering for Point Lookout. DCHoaxer, spinning his FAKE BULLCRAP YARN about the Survivor and the Institute and all that stuff, kept including references to Desmond Lockheart, a focal Point Lookout NPC.
Now, Point Lookout is both a real, actual place, and the location of the Point Lookout DLC. And I've played through all the FO3 DLCs twice, with the exception of PL, which I've only played through ... uhhh ... uuuuhhhmmmm ... uuuh .. aaahhhh .... uuuummmmmmmmmmmm ... one and one-half times. The first time was great. The second time, I really far thru the game, save file was huge, and already at level 30 (max for FO3). The swamp folk were getting ridiculously hard to kill.
So I started over, asian male, named him Carol Krabit. Really generic-looking, preset 1 I believe. I'm going around, gaining levels and skill points, trying to get some good shit to take in there, instead of going in with fucking Chinese pistols at a really low level.
So I'm approaching Meresti Trainyard, right? From the west. I had just offed three raiders and looted their riverside shacks, behind me now, and down the hill to the water. Ahead of me is the chain-link fence, and the unlocked, closed gate.
Right there, just before you reach the gate, is a trigger point for a random encounter.
Now, at this point in my gaming sesh, it's near the end—late at night, I'm tired, and not at my sharpest.
Then, it happens. (Random encounter title "Unidentified Flying Debris") A silver streak travelling north, which bursts in smoke and glowing blue Alien Power Cells (1) and, invisible to me at the time, the Firelance, in the air in front of and above me. Looking off to the north, there's a smoky trail in the sky, landing on the ground some indeterminate distance away.
The gravity of the situation dawned on me as soon as it happened. My surprise and delight was genuine. Somewhere around here, among these train cars and rubble, was a weapon I've wanted to acquire since I began playing this game around four years ago.
Once, my I was watching my brother play his FO3 game. He walked out of the door of the Meresti structure, exiting from the subway tunnels. All of a sudden, explosion, alien power cells everywhere. But he didn't think anything of it, and certainly didn't find the Firelance. I kept wishing he'd do more investigating, to find out what the explosion was, but he kept on walking.
A few years go by, and I discover the Fallout Wiki, and I start wondering what the most powerful weapons in the game are, and how to acquire them. Turns out, the way to acquire the Firelance is to have that extremely rare encounter, "Unidentified Flying Debris," occur in your game. There's something like a 1 in 200 chance it will happen at the various A-type encounter spawn locations.
So when it happened last night, I was almost pissing myself. It was unexpected, delightful, and after being so disappointed in the crushing defeat that was the Survivor 2299 hoax reveal, I was really super excited at something happening in the game that I hadn't seen yet. (Incidentally I caught some new dialogue from Three Dog on GNR that I hadn't yet heard. Also cool.) And I knew the Firelance was around there somewhere, but .. but ...
I couldn't find it. I looked everywhere, all around the area, from the top of the large concrete tunnel structures to the tops of the train cars and the shacks to the wasted earth below. I couldn't find it.
After looking around for a while, I'm starting to wonder if it's been like, knocked inside an immovable object, or is clipping below the ground or something, ya know? I figure, leave the area, come back, see what happens. Sometimes objects reload above ground before disappearing in-game if you do that. That's the game engine for you, it's the same in New Vegas.
(by the way, Skyrim's game engine is a step up from that, where shit doesn't just disappear as often and your character doesn't get stuck in graphics as easily, so can you imagine what the next FO will be like? *drool*)
So I go north a little bit, to where I see a red compass marker (enemy). One simple raider. He runs off before I fully retaliate for his fully expected assailance. He heads right towards the explosion site, and abnormally fast. As I gave chase, I worried I might lose him. Then I find him. I target him in V.A.T.S.
And what's he holding in his hot little hand, and aiming right at me? The Firelance. He's crouching, aiming it at me, and it says, right there on my screen, "Firelance." It's in-game. It's here. He found it before I could, he grabbed it and now I have to fight him for it! Gragh!
Hey, his HP got refilled! What the fuck! How does he run away so fast, have me running after him at full speed, use stimpacks, AND find my rare, über-powerful alien laser blaster?
He shoots me with it and I catch on fire. Shit that thing burns! SHIT THAT THING IS A POWERFUL WEAPON! I cower to the left behind a train car.
Now, at this point a fully-awake me would save the game in a separate save slot. But oh no, not my two-drinks-in-and-tired-and-up-past-my-bedtime-ass. I injected a few stimpacks, took out my sawed-off shotgun, used a stealth boy, and remained hidden.
He didn't find me. "HIDDEN" He walked off to the left, on the other side of the train car from I. I creep up behind him, a little too fast. "CAUTION" I engage him in V.A.T.S. as he turns around, and target his head. The sawed-off shotgun is a really good weapon, if you're at close range, but it can't be just sorta close. It has to be really close. And I'm not that close.
Two V.A.T.S.-assisted shots at his head. Less than 1/3 of his energy is taken away. Shit! He shoots me once with the Firelance. I burn. Pip-Boy, stimpacks, jet. Have to get close before I target him again, as he runs backward full speed. He shoots me again, once, maybe twice.
I fall.
Zoom out, rewind. Last night, I'm playing Fallout 3. After the whole Survivor 2299 fakery fiasco, I've had a hankering for Point Lookout. DCHoaxer, spinning his FAKE BULLCRAP YARN about the Survivor and the Institute and all that stuff, kept including references to Desmond Lockheart, a focal Point Lookout NPC.
Now, Point Lookout is both a real, actual place, and the location of the Point Lookout DLC. And I've played through all the FO3 DLCs twice, with the exception of PL, which I've only played through ... uhhh ... uuuuhhhmmmm ... uuuh .. aaahhhh .... uuuummmmmmmmmmmm ... one and one-half times. The first time was great. The second time, I really far thru the game, save file was huge, and already at level 30 (max for FO3). The swamp folk were getting ridiculously hard to kill.
So I started over, asian male, named him Carol Krabit. Really generic-looking, preset 1 I believe. I'm going around, gaining levels and skill points, trying to get some good shit to take in there, instead of going in with fucking Chinese pistols at a really low level.
So I'm approaching Meresti Trainyard, right? From the west. I had just offed three raiders and looted their riverside shacks, behind me now, and down the hill to the water. Ahead of me is the chain-link fence, and the unlocked, closed gate.
Right there, just before you reach the gate, is a trigger point for a random encounter.
Now, at this point in my gaming sesh, it's near the end—late at night, I'm tired, and not at my sharpest.
Then, it happens. (Random encounter title "Unidentified Flying Debris") A silver streak travelling north, which bursts in smoke and glowing blue Alien Power Cells (1) and, invisible to me at the time, the Firelance, in the air in front of and above me. Looking off to the north, there's a smoky trail in the sky, landing on the ground some indeterminate distance away.
The gravity of the situation dawned on me as soon as it happened. My surprise and delight was genuine. Somewhere around here, among these train cars and rubble, was a weapon I've wanted to acquire since I began playing this game around four years ago.
Once, my I was watching my brother play his FO3 game. He walked out of the door of the Meresti structure, exiting from the subway tunnels. All of a sudden, explosion, alien power cells everywhere. But he didn't think anything of it, and certainly didn't find the Firelance. I kept wishing he'd do more investigating, to find out what the explosion was, but he kept on walking.
A few years go by, and I discover the Fallout Wiki, and I start wondering what the most powerful weapons in the game are, and how to acquire them. Turns out, the way to acquire the Firelance is to have that extremely rare encounter, "Unidentified Flying Debris," occur in your game. There's something like a 1 in 200 chance it will happen at the various A-type encounter spawn locations.
So when it happened last night, I was almost pissing myself. It was unexpected, delightful, and after being so disappointed in the crushing defeat that was the Survivor 2299 hoax reveal, I was really super excited at something happening in the game that I hadn't seen yet. (Incidentally I caught some new dialogue from Three Dog on GNR that I hadn't yet heard. Also cool.) And I knew the Firelance was around there somewhere, but .. but ...
I couldn't find it. I looked everywhere, all around the area, from the top of the large concrete tunnel structures to the tops of the train cars and the shacks to the wasted earth below. I couldn't find it.
After looking around for a while, I'm starting to wonder if it's been like, knocked inside an immovable object, or is clipping below the ground or something, ya know? I figure, leave the area, come back, see what happens. Sometimes objects reload above ground before disappearing in-game if you do that. That's the game engine for you, it's the same in New Vegas.
(by the way, Skyrim's game engine is a step up from that, where shit doesn't just disappear as often and your character doesn't get stuck in graphics as easily, so can you imagine what the next FO will be like? *drool*)
So I go north a little bit, to where I see a red compass marker (enemy). One simple raider. He runs off before I fully retaliate for his fully expected assailance. He heads right towards the explosion site, and abnormally fast. As I gave chase, I worried I might lose him. Then I find him. I target him in V.A.T.S.
And what's he holding in his hot little hand, and aiming right at me? The Firelance. He's crouching, aiming it at me, and it says, right there on my screen, "Firelance." It's in-game. It's here. He found it before I could, he grabbed it and now I have to fight him for it! Gragh!
Hey, his HP got refilled! What the fuck! How does he run away so fast, have me running after him at full speed, use stimpacks, AND find my rare, über-powerful alien laser blaster?
He shoots me with it and I catch on fire. Shit that thing burns! SHIT THAT THING IS A POWERFUL WEAPON! I cower to the left behind a train car.
Now, at this point a fully-awake me would save the game in a separate save slot. But oh no, not my two-drinks-in-and-tired-and-up-past-my-bedtime-ass. I injected a few stimpacks, took out my sawed-off shotgun, used a stealth boy, and remained hidden.
He didn't find me. "HIDDEN" He walked off to the left, on the other side of the train car from I. I creep up behind him, a little too fast. "CAUTION" I engage him in V.A.T.S. as he turns around, and target his head. The sawed-off shotgun is a really good weapon, if you're at close range, but it can't be just sorta close. It has to be really close. And I'm not that close.
Two V.A.T.S.-assisted shots at his head. Less than 1/3 of his energy is taken away. Shit! He shoots me once with the Firelance. I burn. Pip-Boy, stimpacks, jet. Have to get close before I target him again, as he runs backward full speed. He shoots me again, once, maybe twice.
I fall.
Fuck. FUCK FUCK FUCK!!
'Do you know how rare that occurrence is?!' I asked myself. 'You're not going to be able to re-trigger that without a ton of effort!'
Luckily, I had saved just outside of the zone of random encounter triggerance. When I respawned in that location, I ran in again, through the fence. Dammit, just a couple of female Wasteland Settlers and an Enclave Eyebot. Then a Wasteland Merchant peddling Nuka Cola Quantum. Then a few male Wasteland Settlers and a humorous scene involving frag mines.
Not humorous to me. Not now.
I went to bed.
Long story short, this morning, I tried again, many times, and I did it. I reloaded my game over and over again until Unidentified Flying Debris occurred again, and the Firelance is now in my hot asian man hands. I had to reload that save many, many times. It took me about 45 minutes. I started doing some internet stuff and started typing this blog entry as I was doing it.
And just as I was about to quit, just when I was losing steam and wanted to just get on with the game, it happened. Again. I made it happen again. My persistence paid off, and I'm here to tell you, Wastelanders, it can happen for you, too.
And it's worth it, for the Firelance. The damn thing sets people on fire immediately. ON FIRE. And it's got a really cool retro look. Ammo's hard to come by, so use sparingly!
And this SURVIVOR 2299 HOAX BELIEVER is off!
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