WuphonsReach Blog

After you complete the "Doberman" mission from Sweet, you need to take care of some business before you go too far into Sweet's final few missions. The reason for this is that you're coming up on a major story shift where you are going to be introduced to a new...

Welcome to Los Santos, CJ. You've been robbed by the cops and dropped off in enemy gang territory with no weapons and only a bicycle in the alley.First StepsGet yourself south/southeast to Ganton where you grew up.Follow the quest chain, meeting Big Smoke, Ryder, Sweet and Kendl.I recommend stopping after...

This is the introductory clip that plays when you start a new game. It explains a bit about CJ's background and has a bit of foreshadowing. (The issue with the police car shuddering is a limitation of the GTA3 game engine on the PC when the camera is moving and...

This drove me up the wall for a while tonight. I recently dug up my copy of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Second Edition) and installed it. The problem is that in the menus, the left mouse button (LMB) could not be used to click on the menu options. In...

Random conversation overheard in Fallout 3.Mutant 1: I was thinking. And it hurt! Hurt my head! But I remembered things. From before... I think I knew a woman. Or maybe, I WAS a woman... Aggh! It hurts!Mutant 2: Ha! You talk a lot! Sound funny when you talk, like a...

MMM, with Increased Spawns (more critters!), Hunting & Looting, Tougher Traders, Zones Respawn and Natural Selection -- MMM simply makes the wastes more interesting as critters will fight other critters and not just the player. One side effect of Increased Spawns is that any feral ghoul whose head is not...

Example of Fallout 3 game-play at Bailey's Crossroads in the Operation: Anchorage DLC. The Brotherhood Outcasts are battling against Super Mutants on their way to the Outcast Outpost. You can either hang back or attempt to help the Outcasts make their way through the ruined building. This is pretty much...

This is a cheat-sheet for the BM08 Random Bobbleheads mod for Fallout 3. The BM08 mod moves the location of all of the 20 bobbleheads in the game to new locations. Each bobblehead can appear in 1 of 5 locations. I'm going to try and be somewhat vague in the...

My current Fallout 3 load order. Whee...Fallout3.esmAnchorage.esmThePitt.esmBrokenSteel.esmPointLookout.esmZeta.esmSelected Containers Respawn.esmMart's Mutant Mod.esmGalaxyNewsRadio100[M].espDCInteriors_Georgtown.espDCInteriors_Mason.espDCInteriors_SewardSq.espMaintenanceShed.espSelected Containers Respawn.espLonger Days & Longer Nights.espXepha's Darker Nights.espVanishingPiles.espAmmo_Dispenser v 2.espchoose_XP.esp3EFhelmlessstealthsuit.espBD Merged Camo Battlearmor.espNightvisionGoggles(Powered).espSlower Degradation (-80%).espBM08RandomBobbleheadsFixed.espArmored Robes.espKarmaFutureImperfect1010.espKarmaCannibalIncrease1010.espKarmaChurchDecrease1010.espKarmaHard1010.espreduced karma loss for Stealing.espMart's Mutant Mod.espMart's Mutant Mod - Natural Selection.espMart's Mutant Mod - Hunting & Looting.espMart's Mutant Mod - Increased Spawns.espMart's Mutant...

So, here's the short (haha) list of items that you'll want to be squirreling away as you wander the wastelands. This is the list of things that may not have an immediately apparent use, but that you'll want at some point in quantities. I have not included things that make...

Well, one side effect of Mart's Mutant Mod on Fallout 3 is that it aggravates an already aggravating condition... it's too easy to get to level 20. Just to give you some data points (hours played, level attained):Vanilla Fallout 38 hrs, Lvl 520 hrs, Lvl 730 hrs, Lvl 1040 hrs,...

I've changed some of my thinking on skills and perks for the first 8-10 levels. See Getting started (Baby Steps) for a discussion of SPECIAL attributes and Age 16 and the infamous GOAT for a discussion of Perks.Level 2 and 3: Don't take a skill-boosting perk here. It's not worth...

Decided to start adding some mods into the mix for Fallout 3. I really want to try out FOOK2, but it's still in beta and there were enough comments about problems on the FOOK2 boards to make me leery. So I'm trying some others first.Mart's Mutant Mod: This is a...

Fallout 3 turns out to be very engrossing. While it comes from the same folks that made Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, they didn't make the mistake again of making *everything* leveled with the player. Instead, they sort of gated things, so that Super Mutant Masters and Overlords don't show up...

Here's a short snippet (5 minutes) of my first encounter with a Super Mutant... and his big brother who showed up during the fight.Warning: This gets a bit violent and gory at the end.So many bad tactical decisions:- At the time, while I had a .308 sniper rifle in my...

Right now, I'm playing a red-headed female stealthy/sniper style character and enjoying it immensely. She's a bit of a goody-goody, with exceptionally high karma, who rarely takes payment for services. No stealing, no unprovoked killing, no killing of neutral/good NPCs. However, there are a few other general concepts that I...

Currently, my character is very much a stealthy sneaky type. Sneak attack critical damage is my favorite thing. This means a very heavy focus on Small Guns, Sneak, and Repair along with perks like Gunslinger and Commando. At level 9, I have:40 Explosives - Useful for getting out of Minetown...

Picked this up on a lark, and mostly wish I hadn't.The story could be good, but the pacing is horrid and the main protagonist is simply over the edge for 90% of the time. The only interesting character in the whole thing is the hitman hired from Chicago. And you'll...

Here's a quick rundown of the basic guns in Fallout 3 that you'll find in the first few levels. The "DPS" (damage per second) values are from the Wikia Fallout 3 Wiki weapon page and should be taken with a grain of salt. These assume 100% weapon condition, which is...

Just some basic screenies from Age of Conan during my trial period.

One of the hard things sometimes with non-linear RPGs is deciding "what to do next". It's a big wasteland and it's not safe out there at all. But for the first few levels, odds are high that you're not going to stray too far from Vault 101. At least not...

Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life. The social structure inside the vault has gone haywire, your father has pulled a surprise, and the leadership is not pleased. There also seems to be an insect infestation...This is going to be your first real taste of Fallout...

Welcome to sweet 16. This is the point in the introduction where you find out what job you're going to have when you grow up. You're also going to have a little, but optional, confrontation with the Tunnel Snakes boys on the way to the exam room. As usual, there...

Welcome to age 10, and it's your birthday in the vault! Oh joy. You're going to be introduced to a few different elements here and game play will become a bit more open and less linear.I recommend creating a save point at the start of this section so that you...

Getting started in Fallout 3 isn't too difficult, the first portion of the story is done in a similar fashion as Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion where you start out extremely limited, then slowly gain the ability to perform additional tasks or customize your character.Birth (a.k.a. Baby StepsThe start of your...

Been kind of burned out on WoW raiding, daily quests and dungeon grinding, so I've been mucking around with other games. One, that caught my eye is the Fallout series. Now, the original game is ancient (well, late 90s), and is a isometric projection 3D scroller. Head to Youtube and...

Random Thought: One of the nice things about Civ4 is that you don't have to layout your cities perfectly (although dot maps are still somewhat helpful).I tend to play huge / marathon maps, where you can be managing relationships with a dozen other civs and trying to keep track of...

So I've been mucking around with Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword (a.k.a BtS); which is the second expansion pack for the original Civilization IV. They've done an excellent follow-on to the Warlords expansion, with more of a focus on Corporations, more wonders and civilizations, and a rebalancing of traits and...

So I dug back into Dragon's Dawn (Anne McCaffrey's Pern series) this week. The book is a lot shorter then I remembered, and it rushes at a head-long pace towards a pretty so-so conclusion. I think my problems with it were:- Too hard to identify the protagonists, and then keep...

I'm having a real difficult time getting into Morrowind. Even with a small selection of add-ons, the world feels empty and interfacing with it is painful. Oblivion just has a much more polished feel to the user interface and controls.But I'm only up to level 2 and still finding my...

Morrowind is written for a 4:3 aspect ratio. As long as you have a more modern video card and modern NVIDIA drivers, this should not be a problem even if you have a widescreen monitor (16:9 or 16:10 aspect). In the NVIDA Control Panel, there's a setting that lets you...

I've always been one to play custom classes in Oblivion, partly to min/max leveling (although that is dangerous with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul), but mostly because my roleplay doesn't fit into a narrow niche.For my first character in Morrowind, I'm going for the extremely sneaky and underhanded style. This has an...

I picked up Morrowind, GOTY edition a while ago, but hadn't installed it yet. It's definitely an older game, and the graphics show it (Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is much prettier and more polished). Still, I figured I'd give it a try while I wait for Wrath of the Lich...

So, as we approach Wrath of the Lich King release (probably Nov 13th), I'm trying to streamline and figure out exactly what I need for Xav's warlock gear using the badges that we're getting by running Karazhan each week. (Usually at least 11 badges, sometimes as many as 20 in...

So, Lucille is about 17 months old now and weighs about 8.4 lbs.She's all healed up from the surgery. Often, during the evenings if I'm reading on the couch, she'll come and sit on my lap and nuzzle for scratching.

Got a big piece of good news this afternoon. When the vets operated on Lucille, they found it that the lump was nothing more then a bit of fat protruding through a hernia in the abdominal wall. Apparently, whoever did the spaying operation last October, did not close it up...

Got a bit of bad news concerning Lucille in the past few weeks. A week or three ago, I noticed a strange lump on her belly when I was petting her and checking for such things. (It took me a few months for her to consent to being touched anywhere...

(never finished)Ammo counts are listed as (# of rounds in the clip / maximum rounds carried). The maximum rounds carried includes whatever ammo has been loaded into the weapon.AT-14 Pistol (18 or 36 / 200)Your basic pistol that holds 18 rounds in the clip. You'll start with this as your...

I've been mucking around with the F.E.A.R. FPS game for a few months now. F.E.A.R. stands for "First Encounter Assault Recon". It came out back in 2005 with the expansion pack released in 2006, but I always pick these up late. The rating is "M" (17+) and deserves it due...

1) Most Ayleid ruins contain meteoric weapons. But only the two weapons in Culotte are easily found, the rest are hidden in some fashion....I'm probably going to re-roll again, not entirely happy with my major/minor skill picks:Race: Wood Elf (Bosmer)Birthsign: The ThiefSpec: StealthFavored Attributes: Strength, EnduranceMajor Skills:25 Blade (Strength)25 Armorer...

Still working my way through the dungeons surrounding the Imperial City.Fort Nikel - This is somewhat of a pushover at level 17 with good potions and a moderately enchanted bow. The bandits and the marauders still mostly slaughter each other off in the last section, but you'll still end up...

So I went back to Sideways Cave at level 17 to get some revenge and finally clear out the last room with the gargoyles. Most of my kills were made using a single shot with the enchanted bow (+5 damage for each of the 3 damage types: fire / frost...

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Sardavar_Leed - Tried this at level 15 as a sneaky type character with moderate skills. A "guardian of oblivion" toasted me inside the entrance way. Apparently it has been beefed up by OOO. I suspect I'll need to be level 25-30 before coming back and tackling this dungeon.Yellow Tick Cave...

This is a follow-up post for Getting started with Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. After all, once you've done the things in that post, what next?1) If you have Shivering Isles - go ahead and start the main quest. You'll obtain Dawnfang/Duskfang, which is a good low-level 1H sword that will work...

I think I posted about Sideways Cave before and how it's a good place to come when you're a wee little adventurer? I think I also mentioned that in the "Lost Abagarlas" zone that there are a set of 3-4 iron gates that keep you away from the last area...

Trying to fill in a few slots on Falrok... looks like a lot of the slots, I have to fill with drops from Outland dungeon bosses.Note: Hit Rating values above 142 (9%) for a non-survival spec hunter are useless for Burning Crusade raid bosses. But you'll want a Hit Rating...

So I'm looking at Falrok's gear, which is going to need to be upgraded a lot before he can go to Karazhan.HP: 7000-8000Mana: 5000-6000AP: 1200-1400 (add 100 for MM builds)Hit Rating: 75-100Crit Rating: 17-20% At level 69, I already have almost the minimum HP for Karazhan (at ~360 STA). I'll...

Stumbled across this link while googling for some things about Angband. It provides a very good introduction into the differences between Angband vs Nethack. Both games are decended from Rogue (Hack -> Nethack, Moria -> UMoria -> Angband).COLUMN: @Play: Angband - At Last!I'm currently playing with Angband 3.0.9 (Vanilla). The...

Places that I want to visit for gear:Auchenai Crypts- [Collar of Command] (Head) - Shirrak the Dead Watcher Black Morass- [Scarab of the Infinite Cycle] (Trinket) - AeonusMana Tombs- [Cloak of Revival] (Back) - TavarokSethekk Halls - [Avian Cloak of Feathers] (Back) - Talon King IkissShadow Labyrinth- [Soul-Wand of the...

So it looks like I have (3) basic options for boots at L70:Imbued Netherweave Boots21 INT 30 STA 0 SPI +23 HEAL 8 MP5Slippers of Serenity22 INT 10 STA 15 SPI +35 HEAL 0 MP5- (1) RED and (1) BLUE gem sockets which gives the following options- +12 STA and...