Random Encounter hotspots

[『 Matcha 』]

does anyone know any with particularly interesting encounters. ive looked several up but the only one that really seems to work is the mass pike interchange one...

[bunny de fluff]

hyde park

[AbsynthMinded]

There a guide on Cell Locations to goto for rare encounters. Then you just keep reloading and Fast Travel to that location over and over till the encounter you want pops.

[craigsters]

The road going towards general atomics galleria near Old Gullet Sinkhole has good ramdom encounters

The road going towards Cambridge near the C.I.T. ruins, there's a big fallen billboard on the road there, that's a good random encounter

Almost across from the museum of Witch craft is a small camp in a field!..

The above three locations I always find the level 4 merchants at, it may take a few hours to find all of the level four merchants between those three locations

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by AbsynthMinded:

There a guide on Cell Locations to goto for rare encounters. Then you just keep reloading and Fast Travel to that location over and over till the encounter you want pops.

For a lot of them, you can skip fast travelling once you work out how close you can get before they spawn. In a number of cases, it can be as simple as walking around a corner, or advancing slightly on open ground and seeing what spawns using a scope.

The direction of approach often makes a difference in how easy it is, and you sometimes need to wait for them to refresh in-game if you've visited that site recently (depending on the exact site and circumstances).

Originally posted by craigsters:

The road going towards Cambridge near the C.I.T. ruins, there's a big fallen billboard on the road there, that's a good random encounter

Specifically for this one, if you approach it from Cambridge Police Station by following the road closest to the river, the encounter around the corner spawns about when you reach the start of the guardrail for the final curve.

There's another good road encounter site on the road that runs down the western side of the Boston library. If you approach it by coming along the south side of Diamond City, there's a set of steps that leads from the wall of Diamond City up to the road beside the library. Running up those steps triggers the road encounter, which approaches from the north and/or south.

[Bored Peon]

There is over 120 locations in the vanilla game that have random encounters.

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_4_random_encounters

Originally posted by craigsters:

The above three locations I always find the level 4 merchants at, it may take a few hours to find all of the level four merchants between those three locations

The camp sites around Concord, Sunshine Tidings, House near Drumlin, and campsite near Thicket excavations are the best spots for Doc Anderson and Ron Staples.

Smiling Larry and The Scribe can be found all over, my most common locations is the area between Watts and the Cambridge park animostity encounter location.

There is also like a weirdness to some of the NPCs, if you can not get them to pop during Act 1, they wont pop until the encounter tables change at the start of Act 2. I have seen this with both Kelly and Ron Staples. No idea why it does that because both can be found during act 1 in some games. Maybe a game seed or something.

[Bored Peon]

If you are really good at digging through the forums you can probbaly find a partial list of the locations I put up. I think I was up to around 40-50 at that point.

Someday I will get my old PC back together again and get that notepad file off it....

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

There is also like a weirdness to some of the NPCs, if you can not get them to pop during Act 1, they wont pop until the encounter tables change at the start of Act 2. I have seen this with both Kelly and Ron Staples. No idea why it does that because both can be found during act 1 in some games. Maybe a game seed or something.

Sometimes they end up spawning for a different location and getting locked onto it until the get the new encounters included for later acts. For those with console commands, it can be worth checking whether their reference ID is already present in the wasteland.

I had something similar with Automatron, where the robot encounters becoming available seemed to unlock random encounter locations that had previously been stuck.

[Bored Peon]

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

For those with console commands, it can be worth checking whether their reference ID is already present in the wasteland.

You have to encounter them for their script and id reference to become active, so that wont work.

This is because it has to run a population check to ensure you have 20+ settlers so it can decide which dialogue options you get.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

For those with console commands, it can be worth checking whether their reference ID is already present in the wasteland.

You have to encounter them for their script and id reference to become active, so that wont work.

This is because it has to run a population check to ensure you have 20+ settlers so it can decide which dialogue options you get.

No, you don't need to encounter them, since their reference IDs already exist, and you can use them to determine whether or not the NPC is currently in the open wasteland or in the holding cell where their references are kept when they're not in use (along with a bunch of other random encounter NPCs).

[Bored Peon]

Always have to argue....

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

You have to encounter them for their script and id reference to become active, so that wont work.

This is because it has to run a population check to ensure you have 20+ settlers so it can decide which dialogue options you get.

No, you don't need to encounter them, since their reference IDs already exist, and you can use them to determine whether or not the NPC is currently in the open wasteland or in the holding cell where their references are kept when they're not in use (along with a bunch of other random encounter NPCs).

If you knew what you were doing with console commands and id references you would know this.

The NPC in the cell is a PARENT. The NPCs you meet in the wasteland are clones, the clones do NOT exist until the script activates them.

This is also why Ron Staples and Doc Anderson can STILL be encountered after recruiting them.

This is also why you can not simply spawn or move the NPCs to your settlement without meeting them first. The encounter script MUST run first. That is like rare merchant info 101.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Always have to argue....

Originally posted by DouglasGrave:

No, you don't need to encounter them, since their reference IDs already exist, and you can use them to determine whether or not the NPC is currently in the open wasteland or in the holding cell where their references are kept when they're not in use (along with a bunch of other random encounter NPCs).

If you knew what you were doing with console commands and id references you would know this.

The NPC in the cell is a PARENT. The NPCs you meet in the wasteland are clones, the clones do NOT exist until the script activates them.

This is also why Ron Staples and Doc Anderson can STILL be encountered after recruiting them.

This is also why you can not simply spawn or move the NPCs to your settlement without meeting them first. The encounter script MUST run first. That is like rare merchant info 101.

In the case of the merchants and a number of other NPC encounters, there's a pre-created reference ID stored in a special holding cell, instead of the NPC being created from the game's base ID as necessary. This is why the merchants in question always have the same reference ID, much like companions.

Yes, they need to be properly met and moved according to their quest script, but that's a matter of correct quest settings, not to do with them being a reference ID. From what I've seen and heard of them reappearing after recruitment, the game temporarily takes the NPC out of your settlement in order to run the encounter, rather than creating a new reference from the base.

EDIT: Though I will, of course, double-check to make sure it isn't using that original pre-created reference for the encounters, and making a new one for the settlements, which seems unlike given that you can walk with them and assign them on arrival, but could be possible. It would still be possible to use the original reference from the holding cell for determining the status of the encounter, however.

[Bored Peon]

Fine wtfever dont listen and be stubborn.

Go visit that cell with them in it.

First thing that will happen is the developers trolling you. Ness is in that cell and she will kill the npcs because she has protected status and NONE of the other PARENT npcs have protected status. This is because Ness is flagged as being hostile to them and a raider.

The next thing that happens is their dialogues wont work because their scripts were never run.

Aint it seemed strange to you that you NEVER see any mods or posts that spawn them for you. Nor do you see people handing out console commands so you can have them in your settlement WITHOUT having to chase them down.

The necessity of that script running is the reason why.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

Fine wtfever dont listen and be stubborn.

Go visit that cell with them in it.

First thing that will happen is the developers trolling you. Ness is in that cell and she will kill the npcs because she has protected status and NONE of the other PARENT npcs have protected status. This is because Ness is flagged as being hostile to them and a raider.

They're not base IDs; by definition, the base ID never appears anywhere in the game, existing purely as template data. All NPC cases you see as physical actors in the game are reference IDs.

Yes, they'll fight each other if you transport yourself there, because the cell is intended to remain unloaded; it simply serves as a place for those references to exist until they're needed.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

The next thing that happens is their dialogues wont work because their scripts were never run.

Aint it seemed strange to you that you NEVER see any mods or posts that spawn them for you. Nor do you see people handing out console commands so you can have them in your settlement WITHOUT having to chase them down.

The necessity of that script running is the reason why.

The reason spawning them wouldn't work would be because the game is normally working with those specific references it already has created (spawning a new reference from the base would create a new actor reference with a new reference ID). However, I already agreed that the script needs to run, because simply having an existing reference of an actor doesn't mean it magically does all relevant scripting for related quests.

If you doubt me about the references, you can easily check the reference IDs yourself. You'll find that they're always the same no matter where you encounter the merchant. In the holding cell, wandering the wasteland, and resident in your settlement, it's always the same reference ID for every merchant.

[Bored Peon]

Well I went to play around with it, learned a few new things.

1. I entered the NPC cell on my newest game at level 7, I didnt get to even turn around. Apparently that cell also holds Absalom and Regi Batalia as well. Of course the last time I visited the cell was years ago and those NPCs were already dead.

2. The UOFP does not retroactively fix your screwed up vanilla spawns that bug out.

3. When I did the player.moveto 190047 it placed me at the campsite near little damn near Oberland. So Doc Anderson must spawn at ANY campsite, which makes more sense considering the type of encounter.

4. I also have a susciscion that when the UOFP fixed the random encoutners so they stop bugging out and getting lock out they messed with the scripting. You need to meet the merchants a 2nd time before being able to hire them for some reason. Where in vanilla you could do it first try if you had the population requirement.

5. Once activated they never go back to the NPC cell. Instead a moveto command will only move you to the first location the script was activated, see #3 above. I should have known and remembered that.

[DouglasGrave]

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

1. I entered the NPC cell on my newest game at level 7, I didnt get to even turn around. Apparently that cell also holds Absalom and Regi Batalia as well. Of course the last time I visited the cell was years ago and those NPCs were already dead.

Yes, having them already exist as references means the game can set various quest values and whatnot in relation to those references, while a reference spawned directly from the base ID is essentially a blank slate (unless you somehow built quest stuff into the base ID). Then, the game just shuffles them around to wherever it needs them.

This may well also be why people have sometimes had them fail to remain in their settlements; if the game decides it needs them for the random encounter, it's not spawning a new copy, just moving the existing reference to where it's needed.

Originally posted by Bored Peon:

3. When I did the player.moveto 190047 it placed me at the campsite near little damn near Oberland. So Doc Anderson must spawn at ANY campsite, which makes more sense considering the type of encounter.

Yes, she can spawn at campsite locations, as can Ron Staples. In contrast, the Scribe and Smiling Larry both turn up on road locations.

I usually use "getdistance" for basic diagnostic purposes, since it makes no active changes to the state of the game (and doesn't require loading). If the merchant is in the open wasteland, the number will be fairly high (thousands to tens of thousands), but if they're not, it will be absurdly high.