I don't remember exactly where it is, but it's somewhere far to the southeast.
Very far to the southeast.
I think we've gone too far.
Aha, there it is!
Time to take some Rad-X. Ian and Dogmeat don't need any, since they're
NPCs secretly robots, and therefor immune to radiation.
That's a big hole.
Luckily my metagame knowledge once again prevails, as I knew to bring a rope. I'm pretty sure that's the last rope we'll need for the whole game.
Tour of The Glow
Welcome to the West Tech Research Facility, also known as The Glow for obvious reasons.
Level OneSince it is the highest up, the first level obviously suffered the most severe damages from the blast. If you couldn't tell, the facility was the target of some sort of nuclear barrage.
These guys probably didn't even know what hit em.
What conveniently placed loot! I'll probably have to take this since I waited until I arrived at The Glow before taking the Rad-X. Apparently two pills are enough to make me completely immune to radioactive particles and their negative effects.
Lockers!
One's empty, the other has a stimpak. The loot gets
much better. I promise.
Here's the elevator going down. Not shown is the explosive trap that I set off, because the screenshot I took got Black Screen of Death-ed. It did 3 whole points of damage though. Anyway, without the right access card the elevator door will shock you.
More poor bastards. Oh well, they won't be needing their expensive technological artifacts, so I'll happily relieve them of them.
This guy's entire body was incinerated, but the case of 150 bullets he was carrying around is in perfect condition. Seems legit.
Aha! More very convenient loot. Unfortunately for this guy, apparently Rad-X doesn't make you immune to direct atomic blasts, just their aftereffects.
Another explosive trap. This one actually did noticeable damage.
Fun fact: when you enter The Glow the game subjects your character to a Luck check. If you succeed, this door will be unlocked, giving you access to the goodies inside. If you fail, the door will be rusted shut and completely impenetrable, even with plastic explosives and dynamite.
Luckily, Mister Fister is pretty lucky. His base luck stat is average, but apparently he's lucky enough that his average luck was enough to pass a luck check. Metaluck.
More lockers.
Someone reserved an entire locker for their brass knuckles. Mister Fister, being a pugilist himself, finds nothing strange about this.
Somehow this assault rifle fit into that tiny locker. Whatever. Good loot is good loot, regardless of how it defies the laws of reality. Maybe the locker is Timelord technology or something.
Another rifle jammed into a tiny locker. This one's not as cool as the assault rifle, but we'll take it anyway. Also it just occurred to me that the large locker, which could easily fit both rifles, was used to hold only a tiny pair of brass knuckles, whereas the impossibly small lockers were used to hold the large firearms.
In another room to the west are more corpses. Among the typical scorched bodies is a dead guy in armor that is, dare I say it, cooler than the leather jacket.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to pry the armor off of the corpse, but I did find a strange holotape (which my Pip-Boy 2000 can read) and a yellow keycard.
On another burnt corpse I find another 14mm.
And another assault rifle. This place is a goldmine.
There's also a computer to play with.
But the only thing I can do with it is turn on the power.
Figures. The generators are probably busted.
And that's about all there is to level one. To the elevator!
Let's see if this yellow keycard works.
It does! On to level two.
Level Two
Right outside the elevator on level two is a power-control terminal. Once again we can't turn on the main power.
And it looks like we might not want to turn on the power. There's a room here full of deactivated security robots, who might come to life if we reactivate the primary power.
Mister Fister and company destroy one while it's sleeping, but I decided not to kill the whole room of them. That'd just be boring. Instead, I'm just going to be really careful about turning on the power.
Apparently Dogmeat likes the taste of metal and wire.
More
treasure chests lockers in the next room.
Forget what I said about Vault 15,
this place is surely blessed by Armok himself.
Mister Fister's mouth is watering.
Meh.
This seems to be the deepest the crater goes, although the blast surely shook and damaged the entire place.
More explosives!
Is that... by gods. Flamethrower fuel and a plasma grenade. We are swiftly becoming a force not to be reckoned with.
I don't think I can put into words how
cheap game-breaking great this place is.
In the room to the north, we find a red keycard, but no red elevator yet.
And that's about it for level two. A bunch of hibernating security bots and a ton of sick loot. I could have mined those robots for a fair amount of xp, but I'll reserve my mining for small children. Also that would be really lame and cheesy, not to mention boring.
To level three!
Level ThreeTo the east of the elevator on level three is another room full of security bots.
I just ran past them.
Near the northernmost part of the level are two storage closets. If they're anything like the rest of The Glow, they should be chock full of delicious armaments.
More bullets for Ian.
Minigun ammo (5mm), energy cells, and other bullets for trade. The small energy cells will be useful if we can get our hands on a power fist.
Meh.
Woohoo, more drugs!
Healing drugs.
Aha, here's the red elevator.
The red keycard worked on it. Notice that level 5 is missing from the buttons.
Level Four
More security bots west of the elevator.
Another treasure room. Also note the other elevator to the west.
Among this pile of loot is Dean's Electronics, a book that will boost our repair skill. I won't read it now, as the effects of Rad-X are limited in time, but this could prove useful later on.
Minigun ammo and pulse grenades, which will be very useful against the security bots if we have to fight them. Once again very convenient; the only place in the game with robots and radiation has loads of anti-rad meds and pulse grenades.
Kickass, more rockets.
But it's all getting too heavy for us. Time to offload some crap to Ian.
Another scorched dude in a room to the south.
He's got a blue keycard. Somehow it looks more important than the other two.
In the room to the east, there are some sort of horrible tanks, large enough to fit a person. Disconcertingly, the one on the right is smashed open.
More lockers.
Rockets, an assault rifle to trade, and even more skill books, including a Big Book of Science.
And the crown jewel of The Glow:
A motherfuckin supercomputer.
Meet ZAX, artificial intelligence.
He's got a bunch of mumbo jumbo to talk about that provides insight into West Tek, the FEV, and all sorts of other gubbins. Chances are that you already know about most of this stuff, either from reading the wiki or playing the game, but I won't be showing it here. Instead I will just be downloading all of the information to my Pip-Boy and posting screenshots of those logs.
The elevator to the west has a blue fringe on it, so I try using that blue keycard on it.
Unfortunately, we'll have to turn on the power somehow and face the wrath of the machines if we want to use it.
Well, there are no generators on level four, so let's check out level six.
Level SixThis seems to be the level where the staff lived. Either that or some sort of detainment level.
Here we've got more burnt people.
One with a crappy pistol, and one with drugs and energy cells.
Conveniently-placed Rad-Away and a worthless knife.
Wow. A plasma pistol. We don't use energy weapons, but we should be able to sell this for a fuck ton of caps/missiles/whatever we want.
A dead kid, who for some reason is called "peasant". Maybe that was his name or something.
What the hell a kid was doing with minigun ammo and .44 magnum rounds, I have no idea.
And at the southeast corner of level six is the generator room.
Let's see if we can fix this thing.
Using only our intrinsic knowledge of machines and that tool we got from Doc Morbid, we are able to make the engine purr.
"Let there be light" -Judea-Christian God
Unfortunately, with fluorescent lighting comes killer robots.
Beep boop, motherfuckers.
On our way back to the elevator, these robobrains wake up from their hundred-year slumber.
Unfortunately for us, they're armed with automatic weapons and sniper rifles.
Luckily for us, pulse grenades melt their circuits like butter. Unluckily for us, we only found three pulse grenades.
Bullets hurt.
Along with bullet wounds, that fight netted us a level up.
I poured all of my skillpoints into Big Guns. I have no doubt that we'll be able to afford all the heavy weapons we want with all the stuff we're finding.
I also knick a sniper rifle off of that dead robobrain. It's too bad Tycho isn't with us, otherwise our party would've just gotten a whole lot deadlier.
Now, let's go back up to level four and see if Zax can disable the security for us.
Back to Level Four
Too bad there's robobrains and sentry bots between us and the computer.
The clustered in the doorway, and I threw my last pulse grenade at them.
Dogmeat was caught in the blast, but wasn't injured.
Since brass knuckles won't do much against metal plating, and Dogmeat's too close to use frag grenades safely, I decide just to hang out behind Ian and let him do the fighting.
Apparently Ian's turned into a robot. Also Dogmeat bites the last sentry bot to death.
This robobrain had an assault rifle. The smaller bots can't be looted.
Now let's see if Zax can help us out with our robot problem.
It didn't work.
I also download all the information off of the mainframe to my Pip-Boy.
Here's the stuff:
F.E.V.
This will be very important later.
T-51b Power Armor
Dear Santa...
Personnel Records
Even though we couldn't turn off the security, I've decided to try and explore the mysterious level five.
It seems only the blue elevator can access it.
Level Five
There are quite a few robots on this level.
Fire in the hole!
I quickly get cornered. Frag grenades do little to deter these robotic fiends.
I have a feeling this won't end well.
Ouch.
One reload later, we're back right before we used the blue elevator.
I won't be going back down into level five this trip, but I will certainly return. Now, before I go I shall turn off the power, and thus the security system, in order to make our trip back topside a bit more pleasant.
Now, back to the Hub so we can offload all this fantastic crap we found!
Apparently Ian wasn't paying attention while we were talking to Zax.
Now, we begin our long journey out of this rock-forsaken radioactive hellhole.
One the way to the Hub, we run into something hostile. I bet it's raiders, or horrible mutants, or-
Rats.
Well, we know how to deal with this.
Dogmeat's such a kill-stealer.
Now, back to the journey.
Another encounter. I bet it's raiders, or-
Oh, it's just a dude.
He seems friendly.
We lie and tell him we're looking for a waterchip, when we're of course really looking for rocks. Just in case he's some sort of conniving rock thief.
I seem to remember that if you get this guy to sing you a song or something that you can raise your Charisma by 1 point. However, I couldn't do it. I probably should have looked on the Wiki, but Charisma isn't too important for Mister Fister.
He at least shows us the way to Necropolis.
Well I'll be damned, this guy actually has useful knowledge. So Necropolis has a vault, and therefor probably has a water chip.
But we'll have to fight through zombies to get to it. Fair enough; I didn't expect it to be easy.
Now, we can finally head back to the-
Son of a bitch.
Radscorpions.
Radscorpions aint shit.
Finally, that horrible trip's over.
You can see that Necropolis is marked on our map, to the northeast of the Hub.
Back in Old Town, we make another visit to Jake's shop.
Now we can actually afford what he's got for sale.
Several minutes of trading and fiddling with mine and Ian's inventories...
I think we're ready to kick some ass.
Author
Topic: Fallout: Rock Collector Playthrough (Read 14316 times)