Now that I’ve discovered cutting fluid, which lets me craft oil, I am following through with my plan to start oil farms by putting water purifiers in every settlement I can. Sadly, I have to find bones, steel, and something else — I forget what it is. Oddly, steel is the thing I use up fastest. I never thought I would run out of it. For ages, I ignored anything made out of steel when looting because it was so common. Now I collect every wrench and bucket.

Of course, I can also make my own adhesive, thanks to my industrious planting of mutfruit and tatoes all over the place. For some reason, in spite of my obsessive tato farming, I can never have enough of these things. Maybe settlers don’t like to tend them.

Another odd thing I sometimes get short on is cloth. These settlers spawn like flies and I’m always running short of beds. So now I hoard all the prewar money I can find for this purpose.

Anyway, I’m now going around to previously ignored settlements and installing every modern convenience. Weird places like Nordhagen Beach and Country Crossing are getting big doses of civilization. Places that seem susceptible to attacks are getting major infusions of defense. These include the two infamous farms — Abernathy and Finch — as well as the boggy insane places like Murkwater Construction.

I mostly ignore walls because attackers can always somehow find their way inside. Instead, I try to position turrets strategically and load up the settlers with assault and combat rifles.

Speaking of strategic placement, I was quite disappointed in my setup at the Castle last night. I spent quite a long time building a wonderful tower of death in the center of the yard. It was bristling with missile and heavy machine gun turrets. They were all elevated on really high platforms and covered every angle of the yard. If anything got in, it would perish in seconds. I was about to quit for the night when I got a notice that the Castle was being attacked. Anxious to see my death tower in action, I hurried over there and watched with amazement as all my settlers rushed out the main door to confront a group of raiders. About half of my guys got shot to pieces because, you know, they didn’t stay in the Castle yard where all the turrets were. I don’t think my death tower got off a single shot. If I hadn’t been there, things would have gone badly. So now I have to disassemble my tower and move all the ordinance to the battlements, which is going to be a giant pain in the ass. I must go around and see if defenses in other settlements need to be rearranged.

Well, we live and learn. Never underestimate the stupidity of settlers when setting up your defenses.

These people are without a doubt the best faction in Fallout 4. They have a great Red Rocket base and speak the coolest lingo in the Commonwealth. They seem to be inspired by the innumerable beach party surf/hotrod movies of the early ’60s. They live on a beach and would probably be working on Corvega hotrods all the time, but at some point they became obsessed with power armor. If you complete an insultingly simple quest and help them defend their Red Rocket compound against a Gunner attack, you can become one of the gang.

Advantages include but may not be limited to:

• cool base
• crazy cool cats and birds to hang with
• power armor parts for sale
• holotapes with inspiring Atom Cats beatnik poetry
• custom paint for power armor suits
• your character starts speaking awkwardly in wild hip surf/hotrod/West Side Story slang
• no matter what gender you are, everyone calls you “Jack”

I can’t imagine a better social life. If you haven’t found these cheerful hoodlums, their garage is located on a peninsula northeast of the Quincy Ruins. So join today and become a crazy cool cat or bird. Don’t be square. Be an Atom Cat, ya dig, daddy-o?

First, I encountered a bug that seems to have affected a grand total of two people — me and some other guy who fortunately posted about it on reddit. He got about two replies, one of which contained an iffy console fix. Thankfully, it worked. I tried everything in the world to fix the problem legitimately, but nothing else helped. Had it not been for that reply, I would be permanently stuck running around with Elder Maxson and unable to fast-travel. So thanks, anonymous weird internet person.

Second, the BoS ending is unintentional comedy gold. If you haven’t completed the main story with this faction, thar be spoilers here, so look away.

1. I can see why the BoS would want to destroy the Institute, but I think they must surely have smaller explosives. Their “Nuclear Option” comically blows up not only the Institute but seems to take out most of Boston in the bargain.
2. For some reason, the Brotherhood insisted that I speak to ten-year-old synth Shaun and embrace him as my son. They also insisted on spiriting him away to the Prydwen, where I can visit him whenever I want and where they can spoil him. I think they plan to keep him as a pet. Since they wanted to kill Danse, you can imagine my confusion about this. They have a more rational explanation for wanting to keep P.A.M. from the Railroad.
3. The best thing was that Maxson conferred on me the rank of Sentinel and told me that he could no longer give me orders. I read up a bit on Sentinels. It seems that this rank is exclusive to the East Coast Brotherhood and is an interim designation between Paladin and Elder. Sentinels are free agents who do whatever they want, which is very unusual in this obsessively regimented organization. The last known Sentinel was Sarah Lyons in the Capital Wasteland. Therefore, I feel very special. This circumstance gives hope to all soccer moms whose sons never played soccer but instead became 60-year-old leaders of wack-job science outfits and got killed by their mothers, who were much younger than their sons because, you know, cryostasis. Mmmm . . .

So now, at nearly level 82, I believe I will take advantage of my freedom and roam about the Wasteland, visiting places I haven’t been and having many little adventures. I have no plans to visit my artificial son and hope the Brotherhood enjoys playing with him.

I am presently level 73 and have noticed an increasing number of settlement attacks. I don’t know what’s prompting this — leveling? more settlements and population? the lure of tasty carrots?

Whatever the reason, I get attack notices pretty frequently now. Mostly they occur down south and they’re usually in water-facing places like Kingsport Lighthouse. Often, I’ll not get a notice but decide to go to a place to improve it. About ten seconds into my workshop activities, an attack begins. I can pretty much count on some kind of violent occurrence when I’m in a settlement just trying to get something done.

I thought this would bug me, but I love it. I really enjoy running to the assistance of besieged settlers. I’m sure it will get old eventually, but right now it’s insanely cool to spawn in a place during a big battle. Appropriately, some enemies don’t notice me; some do. Fortunately, my 300 bl / 300 en ballistic weave armor protects me from most damage as I start sighting multiple targets in VATS. If I start getting shredded, I run for cover and wait for enemies to lose me. It all works really well.

The best thing, though, is watching my well-armed settlers and all my machine gun/laser/rocket turrets go nuts. Heaven help the poor schlubs who try to steal carrots from one of my settlements. Sometimes I don’t even get to shoot anything because the attackers are annihilated in a matter of seconds. Even high-level gunners and legendary raiders scurry for cover and probably have second AI thoughts about rushing into one of my places.

After one of these human-enemy attacks, it’s nice to loot the bodies and give a bunch of upgraded weapons to the settlers who don’t have any. It’s also a good way to collect legendary items without going to a lot of trouble.

Sometimes the settlers seem to handle things on their own. I’ll arrive to build or defend and notice a bunch of ghoul or animal corpses all over the place, and I had no hand in killing them.

Last night, for the first time in an age, Sanctuary got attacked. It turned out to be a couple of unlucky radscorpions. They were vaporized before I even figured out what was happening. They obviously burrowed past my defenses near the bridge, thinking they’d pop up closer to the middle of town and start eating my pathetic Sims. As a line in Beowulf might go, they soon learned how wise they had been.

As a cool plus, one of the settlers ran to a warning siren I’d installed and switched it on. Of course, the scorpions were dead long before he got there, but it was a nice touch. I think I’ll put sirens in all my settlements.

So to sum up: hooray for settlement harassment. Be assured that I will now improve more places. I just have to keep buying oil. I can never keep enough oil.