Dang it, I think I may have messed up the save...

[Mevvallanneous Bob]

Yeah, I got to the Valdez, started the Chips Spleen quest, and now Chip is nowhere to be found. Since this game has long since turned itself around from my original consensus, I'm more than willing to start it over again. Does Chip regularly disappear for no apparent reason?

[Mevvallanneous Bob]

And upon restarting the game, it has taken 40 loads to try and finish the fight with Cameron at the end of the training area... huh...

[BreakinBenny]

Hopefully Chip didn't die because you took too long to bring his spleen back, seeing as Per Jorner's walkthrough mentions a five day timelimit for it. I'm afraid this problem also existed in Fallout 1 where if you save after accepting Gizmo's quest to kill Killian, a local variable doesn't get stored with the savegame.

You can also just take Cameron's key by stealing it (preferably from the angles where he does not face you) or convince him not to fight with good Speech... Alright, you sure you don't wanna use an unofficial patch[www.killap.net] or somethin'? It fixes many problems in the vanilla game, while also including Sfall for solving some engine-related problems.

[Mevvallanneous Bob]

I got that exact patch... it actually made an already frustrating game even worse. Things went from 90% guaranteeing a miss to pretty much endless misses and enemies will always land a hit. This is the single least enjoyable Fallout game I have ever played. The sooner I'm done with it, the sooner I never look back.

[BreakinBenny]

I don't see much of that being a *big* problem, are the enemies in the dark places or inside the light radius/sunlight and you still strike out? I'm pretty sure you had that happen a lot even without it, and a patch like this is to fix game breaking bugs.

I can say that I set up my stats fairly, with none of them being anything at 3: a balanced ST of 5, PE of 6 seems OK, IN at 7 is also decent because some events improve the outcome with that and it's 1 IN under super-intelligence in dialogue, Charisma of 4 or 5 gives me 2 companions to start with instead of 1 and gives an opportunity for three without Magnetic Personality, AG at 7 gives a chance for 9 AP and Luck seems good enough for me at 4 because I'm taking the NCR zeta-scan anyway.

[Mevvallanneous Bob]

Then how about enemies fleeing way too damn much and critical misses? The "vital enemies fleeing" thing is apparently just a fact of life with this game, and the critical misses... hmm, they happen a LOT since the supposed fan-patch. My luck is Good and I didn't select Jinxed. It's like... the game tailor makes a wondrous new way to piss me off every time I try and give it the benefit of the doubt.

[BreakinBenny]

I don't have any of those problems when I have Sulik dash after the guy trying to escape the fight, it's a 9 AP versus 8 AP in the Den slavers' case... Besides, direct NPC control with Sfall allows me to take control of my companions so they don't get suicidal or accidentally burst me from a bad angle. Critical failures seem to be more common if your chance to hit percentage is negative, and I don't even imagine Black Isle Studios having this as part of FO2 getting chockful of pop-culture references that make it less immersive than the first game.

...In addition, are the "Damage Resistance and Threshold-modifying" ammo still doing nil? Or, are you using the Restoration Project? *That* was clearly mentioned to be more challenging, as Killap stated.

[Mevvallanneous Bob]

Restoration project. I don't really use or notice any damage modifying ammo, just whatever is standard with the weapons. I am not using companions at all, so yeah.I will be using Goris as soon as I get to that point in the story. As for "more challenging", the Killap mod is a perfect argument against it. I hate it when people think "Stop having fun, guys!" equates to challenge. Tedium isn't fun. And I just realized that this "mod" does one of the BEST things I didn't ask for! Vendor cash is not stealable! Yeah, just... get rid of a core mechanic, right? Because you just get sooooooooooo much money, and trade-in value is so logical without it, right? I give the guy a hand, he restored cut content. I did in New Vegas for fun. Ya know, put an Armored Vault 21 jumpsuit somewhere in the game. But for ♥♥♥♥'s sake, taking away a core mechanic or item that adds to the game is the WORST thing a modder can do. There's always gonna be some "haerdkore" ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ who swears that taking away things makes games "Durr, haerdure, so moar fun!", but I hate the fact that such a mentality gets to speak for everyone in the case of mods like this. IIRC, that Tale of Two Wastelands mod at one point had some sorta "Remove all skillbooks from one of the Wastelands entirely" crap, and there are modders who try to remove skillbooks from the game altogether or lower their effectiveness... ya know, never stopping to think "Maybe not everyone thinks tedium makes a game better."

Haha, wow. I'm never touching this game again when it's done... try it the normal, unaltered way, it's barely playable. Play it with a mod that supposedly makes it superior, and it bottlenecks in such a way that it has brought the playability from "Barely Functional" to "...". And the critical misses thing? I dunno, maybe it was more "fun" by the modder, but it happens a LOT to me and enemies, and I don't have Jinxed or the Paraiah Dog following me around. Why not just volatile saves while we're at it?! I just don't get how FO1 was a lot more streamlined and made it feel like my character was doing something badass the entire time, yet I get to FO2, and it HAS good moments, but it's mostly like standing there waiting to get kicked in the nads. SOMETHING'S gonna ♥♥♥♥ up. This time, it had to be a modder that said "Stop having fun!"

[BreakinBenny]

Maybe you should write a message about this to Killap then, with every swear word you can think of to call his Restoration Project a load of BS and "broken" while adding he's a troll? I will say again I've never had these problems, and I do not see anything here as "troll moments" besides very bad luck like in a board game.

If those mods are a pain, then perhaps their original forms are nicer... Of course, I'm hesitant to use them because they might often be bad or messy (EPA mod by Chris Parks, weapon-related mods like Handmade or the Vertibird mod). At least Fallout Fixt is still full of win.

[Mevvallanneous Bob]

Nah, it's not that serious. A guy makes a supposed mod/fix for a game that's nearly 20 years old... it's not a fans job to do the developers job for them. No matter how you cut it, the game is poorly made.I really wanted to like it, I did... but between the base game being as unstable as it is, and the mod adding some stuff in at the expense of a core mechanic, I'm left with a total letdown. I guess I can just bleed it out and beat the damn thing... IF I can. Dunno when that'll be, I've never had to restart a game so many times on account of rampant instability.

[BreakinBenny]

Whadja know? I've read in places that San Fran is kinda like the Boneyard in Fallout 1, Black Isle was close to deadlines and thus many things are pretty broken. There were even endings for the Hubologists, but I don't think I could care because I hate Scientology and its puppets anyway... Regardless, FO2 could indeed have been done better had the team not been throwing pop-culture references around and thus killing the immersion, there are even fourth wall breaking points.

I've been looking through the web and figured out Chip dies within five days if his spleen isn't retrieved. However, if he walks off after you tell him Dr. Wong (or Fung) can help him, wait a day. I had the liberty of resting till 18.10 when my clock was at 18.00, for the sake of the doctor checking Chip was OK.