Equestria Gaming: Fussing over details - Let's Play - Fallout Equestria 1.0

Fussing over details - Let's Play - Fallout Equestria 1.0 - Part 8

This is the eighth installment of my Let's Play series about Fallout Equestria: Remains v1.0. The seventh post can be read here.

What changed?

It took me so long to beat the Zebra necromancer that v1.0 is finished already. So I exported my savefile from v0.7, and loaded it into the v1.0. It worked!

Now there's a sidebar in PipBuck view. It shows your

health,
head,
body,
legs,
blood,
magic,
companion health,
weapon status,
armor status,
bits.

The three extra skills have new effects, with new illustrations!

There is a ? button in the PipBuck that gives help for the current context:

There is a storage place in Prancing Pony base:

In the Vault, you can click "Lay out" to automatically store what's not necessary:

For example, laying out ammunition removes all ammunition types that are not needed by any weapon you are currently carrying (use the weapons stack to store/take weapons. Alternatively, use right mouse button.)

If you use right mouse button on items in the base camp, you get:

Laying out "stuff" removes all alchemy ingredients, as well as "Fool". Alchemy ingredients are useless to carry around while in the lab, because while in camp, you can craft things using items in the Vault:

Be warned that this doesn't work when you are out of the camp. For example, while in the Factory, and using "Field lab" or using some workbench you found out there, you can't craft with Vault items:

More hotkeys! Now there are 24 Weapons hotkeys. Previously there were 12. The extra 12 came from pressing SHIFT:

Here, SHIFT+= gives Magical energy dagger.

There are also 4 new hotkeys to be assigned to defensive spells.

The Status screen gives a lot more information. For example, the "Reputation" part not only gives you a numerical value, but also a description! Now I'm a "Close friend"!! Friendship is truly magic.

It also gives precise calculations to how each multiplier is calculated:

That's surely a floating point error...

New missions! For example, this mission was brand new:

It involved a dangerous "Pegasus Enclave":

The enemy screen also has a lot more information:

Let's break it down one by one:

Health: 120. Decrease this number to <= 0 for it to die.
Armor: 10 (75%). Every time I hit the griffin with a non-magic damage, after accounting for the resistances, there's a 75% probability that I would hit an armor, and thus the damage would decrease by 10.
Magic projection: 10 (75%). The same as above, but for magical damage.
Melee damage: blunt (20). The griffin has a blunt weapon such that if I touch the griffin physically, I would be subjected to a blunt damage, with base damage 20. To find out how much I'd actually be damaged by, a lot of calculations would be needed.
Weapon: Plasma grenade (250), ... Same as above, but for non-melee damages.
Evasion: +50%. This is used in calculating whether I would hit the griffin.
Alertness: +5. I don't know what it means, but my guess is that it means it can hear me better.
Weapon mastery: 100%. This is probably a multiplier for weapon damages.
Resistances: blade: 25%.... This is used to calculate damage I would deal to the griffin.

Gearing up

Before I start beating up Mchavi (side note: Mchavi might be short for Machiavellian), I decided to gear up, really gear up.

Step 1: Buy a "Fool" card from Dip Fanken to change difficulty to "Very Easy".

Step 2: Actually figure out how damage works in the game.

Some weapons shoot several projectiles at once. They get shown in the square bracket. For example, "Cerberus" shoots 3 plasma bullets at once.

Also, I have a +75% bonus for energy weapons from my skills,

so the base damage per projectile is 38 * (1 + 75%) = 66.5

I have also uncovered an unfortunate design feature: there is no mention of weapon multipliers in the "Main" screen of PipBuck.

One thing you must note while shooting a heavy gun: it "shoots upwards":

Step 3: Understand the theory and practice of battling.

Battling in FoE is very sophisticated. There are in general 11 aspects in a battle:

melee weapons
projectile guns
explosives
magic projectiles
magic defenses
companion
special moves
clothes
terrain
instant restoratives
passive bonuses

Melee weapons:

I don't favor using these weapons, since I prefer to be far away from the enemies. I use them only for utilities, such as crowbar for destroying concrete walls, shovel for destroying dirt walls, and magical energy dagger for melting corpses (very useful for those enemies that can come back to life!).

The one exception is with enemies that can't use projectile weapons, such as bats, parasprites, etc. For those, I use the dagger, or perhaps the lance.

Projectile guns:

Simple enough. They are close to what humans mean when they say "guns". They shoot small chunks of stuffs, and we call these stuffs "projectiles".

There are many kinds of projectiles. There are only two points of difference:

Only bullets work in water, all other projectiles disappear when they touch water. (Note that even if plasma projectiles disappear in water, plasma melee weapons work just fine in water.)
Different enemies have different resistances to different projectiles.

The projectile type is "damage type". There are 14 damage types in the game, which I organize into three groups:

Normal group: human weapons mostly fall into this class.

blunt
blade
explosion
bullet: all firearms, using their default bullets, have this type.

Some firearm bullets are special:

ap: armor-piercing. More effective against armored enemies, less against non-armored enemies.
exp: expansive. The opposite.
inc: incendiary. Inflicts "fire" type damage and causes "burning" status.
mag: magical. Inflicts "plasma" type damage.

Slightly special group: spells and energy weapons mostly.

lightning: more effective for enemies that are touching the ground.
EMP: "electromagnetic pulse". Can stun machines.
freezing: can freeze enemies for a few seconds. Damage dealt during frozen state is increased.
fire: enemies might get "burning" status which causes persistent damage. Creatures in "burning" status might panic and run around. Fire projectiles tend to travel very slowly.
plasma: can melt dead enemies. Useful for preventing them from coming back to life (a few enemies do that!).
laser: takes 0 time to travel.

Very special group:

poison: only "Gaseous Grenade" inflicts such damage. Effective only against biological enemies and small, airtight rooms. I never used it.
balefire: only for "Balefire Mine" and "Balefire Egg Launcher". Requires "Balefire Eggs" which are extremely difficult to find.
death: only "Grim Reaper" and "Death Ray". Only works for living creatures, and very effective for them!
stellar blaze: only "Star Blaster" and "Heavenly Lights ". Star Blaster's ammo is "Energy Cell" and it's rumored to be found only in the Pegasus Enclave (unconfirmed).

Explosives:

Mines, grenades, rockets, as well as some spells. They have very high damage and very slow reloading time/quite expensive ammo. They also have area-of-effect (so careful not to hit yourself), and sometimes stuns the enemies.

Magic projectiles:

Similar to energy weapons, but cost magic.

Tip: magic potions are a lot cheaper than healing by Doc Sepsis.

Magic defenses:

Magic spells that decrease damage dealt to you. There are 4 hotkeys assignable to them. I often use these 5 spells:

Kinetic dash: to escape
Kinetic blast: also to escape
Magical shield
Magical barrier
Distortion field

Companion:

Phoenix, robot owl, moonblade. You can press "U" to make them move where you want them to go.

I sometimes use companions. If they get hurt, it would cost some consumables to heal them, and they could be dumb. Moonblade is the most powerful

Special moves:

There are some very special moves that are hard to classify:

kinetic dash to suddenly move a great distance
telekinetic bullets and telekinetic blast to move enemies away from you
teleport away (takes time to "warm up" however)
telekinetically grab an enemy (this stops enemies from using their weapons, apparently. I sometimes use this to bring them close to me, then kill them with melee weapon.)
telekinetically grab a dead body or a box as a shield (untested)
throw an explosive, then telekinetically grab it and move it precisely where you want it to go. Great for killing turrets!
activate StealthBuck (enemies will take a lot more time to see you, and will miss you a lot more often)
drink potion of shadows (makes you unshootable and unable to shoot. Use this to escape)

Clothes:

Armor and amulet. Amulets give a passive bonus and should always be worn.

Armor can be worn down by being shot at. If its condition drops below 50%, its protection decreases. If it gets to 0%, it disappears and you must fix it before you can wear it.
There is exactly one armor, "Stealth armor prototype" that has an activable ability. It gives the StealthBuck effect for free, but takes time to charge up after each use.
The strongest armor is Power Armor.

Terrain:
Before battle, if I have time, I sometimes lay mines and dig trenches.

During battle, I sometimes take cover behind boxes/sofas/etc by pressing "UP". This isn't very useful however, since I can't move during this.

The shape of the ground and water. In most fights, the terrain stays the same, but there are instances where it can usefully change during battle:

Minigun takes time to "spin up", so I would start shooting my minigun hiding behind a door, and let the bullets tear down the door, before shooting the enemies behind the door. This is because if I open the door before shooting, it would let the enemies see me. This tactic allows me to maintain the element of surprise!
Grenades and rockets can destroy walls. Some blunt weapons can also. This could be used, for example, when the enemy is "upstairs". I would lay mines "downstairs", then destroy the "upstairs ground" from beneath, let the enemy fall down and get blown up.
There is a spell "Ghost walls" that creates a wall impassable for everyone except me. However, projectiles can go through it.

Instant restoratives:

Things like health potion, magic potion, blood packs, antidote, RadAway... They are used mostly to keep yourself alive and fighting.

Passive bonuses:

Mostly drugs and foods. They increase your damage, speed, etc.

Drugs are stronger than foods, but careful about drug addiction! I use them only for fighting strong bosses.

Step 4: design a battle keyboard setup.

There are 24 hotkeys for weapons, 4 hotkeys for defensive spells/items, and 3 "special keys". This is my setup:

24 hotkeyed weapons:

The first 10 are within the reach of my left hand, so they are used for those I'd want to switch reflexively during battle. The other 14 are for outside of battles.

Default gun for good damage and cheap bullets. Buckshot Gun, Telekinetic Bullet.
Close gun for close combat. Erebus (IF-9 Combat Shotgun), Squall (12,7-mm sub machine gun).
Big gun for big damage and moderate price. Light machine gun, Death ray.
Cheap Explosives. Hoofmade grenade, Frag grenade.
Energy weapons for laser and plasma damage. Righteous anger (Laser minigun), Plasma minigun.
Extremely big gun for slow big enemies. Gale (Minigun), Medium machine gun/Antidragon.
Far gun for sniping. Spitfire's Thunder, Storm Rifle.
Far explosives. Missile Launcher/Fireball, Automatic Grenade Launcher
Fire and freezing. Dragon Breath, Ice Shards II.
Lightning and EMP. Lightning bolt, Impulse grenade.
Utility explosives. Dynamite, Explosive X-37.
Utilities. Burglar's mate, Magical energy dagger.