[Solved] random encounters & rust devils

[Zes]

I've been trying to recruit Smiling Larry for about 4 days now, found a nice spot near Parsons Creamery for random encounters. Thing is I've just made my 228th try ;) %95 of random encounters are filled with ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Rust Devils.

If anyone is or will be planning to find this guy, I suggest him/her to do it BEFORE automatron questline. period.

[asarokk]

Oh yes, same goes for just about every other random encounters. As soon as you open that can of worms (Automatron questline), rust devils will crap on every spawning point.

P.S. You could also find him under the rope bridge on the railroad near Tenpines Bluff.

[Xeriath]

This design choice for Rust Devil random spawn is awful. Almost so awful as in Skyrim vampire could spawn in city and kill almost all NPC there. (I think they removed this with SSE)

I just use the mod Decreased Automatron ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ from nexus. SKK Random Encounter is a nice alternative if you want more encounter, and you have the possible to turn Rust Devil off.

[Zes]

I might wanna consider using that mod to make them reasonable.. this is frikking overboarding.

There should be a quest to end their tyranny once and for all. A factory maybe like their base at relay arrays.. I would gladly raize it to the ground even against ten legendary bosses. they are too annoying, not hard but annoying.

technically rust devils have more man and firepower than BoS has now ;)

[Zes]

I'm starting to be suspicious about if smiling larry could really be recruited at this point.

I probably tried 400 times on the same encounter spot and i believe i have seen every possible combinations of those encounters but no larry.. (I checked ReHoldingCell he is there.. alive i mean)

I even saw Gus (sentry bot) and the Kat (little girl) at least 10 times. And many raresr encounters.. more than once or twice or thrice.. still no Larry.

I will have to load it up on CK and see whats going on there, I'm afraid. I dont have enough knowledge how to mod random encounters yet. But i guess İ'll have to check a few mods to learn how. this game is gonna be the end of me *sigh*

[Zes]

I solved the case.

There is a Global variable DLC01REPercentageChance and it is set to 0 when you first started to game. Once you visit the Wattz Consumer Electronics at level 15 you trigger Mechanical Menace quest as you already may know.

After that point quest sets DLC01REPercentageChance = 50 and almost all your random encounters get filled by Rust Devils and Robots. Even after finishing the main questline.

So since it is a global variable, it can be modified by the console. You can set it to 0 and remove them from random encounters alltogether and it would actually make very sense once you finished the quest line, and destroyed their source. Still you can trigger "Rogue Robot" quest (from ADA) and hunt a few down under a seperate quest.

But this way they will just be gone.. as they should have. That said, you can still leave it a 1-2% chance to keep them in rare occasions, and fight them time to time.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2958628746

Now I have a Larry to find.. And I'm the one who is Smiling this time..

[Löthar Storm]

https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/28891
there's a mod for that. with an apropos name to boot.

[Xeriath]

Thank you Zes, is good to know that it gives a vanilla way to solve this behavior. I certainly will remember if I play next time vanilla (after the big bad patch :) )

[Zes]

Originally posted by Xeriath:

Thank you Zes, is good to know that it gives a vanilla way to solve this behavior. I certainly will remember if I play next time vanilla (after the big bad patch :) )

It's a good and clean way to stop this menace, I'm glad I found it, I knew some people delaying (or uninstalling) DLC just because of that annoyance. After setting it to zero, I still had a few rust devil encounters like 2%. They are still in the random encounter pool by their presence as a faction. So even with zero, you wont miss them completely.

It's pretty well balanced now :)