Discussion
I wish dock A in black lake had a bed cause I can't get myself to NOT go there as the sun is setting, and I inevitably end up having to wait out the night for like 20mins cause going outside in such an open space at nighttime without NVGs is practically begging to get killed by wildlife or some stalker in the dark
a second artifact has hit my inventory
2(!) more artifacts later, I wanna go back for a moment to the 5.56 rifle parenthesis I opened earlier today
I spent this last hour using a kitted out 5.56 with an actually good muzzle velocity and it makes all the difference
it's a variant that claims to be specialized for close quarters but even at medium ranges it SHREDS compared to my old rifle, and that's not even with armor piercing rounds (which I should start investing on)
the only issue I have with it as a "general purpose" rifle to carry when exploring is that it doesn't have a magnifying scope, so while the rifle technically performs damn well past close range, the harder acquisition of further away targets kinda limits its usefulness
still I'm definitely keeping this for when I start venturing into dungeons or when I expect to find myself in tighter spaces
probably due to how far I am along the progression curve, cultists are no longer an exceedingly rare sight on my strolls and I'm currently split on whether or not I should get on their bad side
they're the only faction I'm almost perfectly neutral with, and I'd appreciate having one less group to worry about on top of the insurrectionists and military (and the occasional loner); on top of that, they seem to be quite deadly thanks to the eather weapons they tend to have, so they'd either be a big threat to me or really valuable allies depending on the route I pick
..and the eather weapons are exactly why I'd be willing to add them to my list of inheritors it's fine to kill, I'm really curious about that weapon class
all this depends on one thing though, and that's whether or not they're one of the factions who are aggressive unless you have a decent reputation with them
they don't SEEM to shoot me on sight, but I encountered one earlier and he warned me to back off so uhh yeah not that friendly either, maybe it's cause I was fighting off another group shortly before that
thanks to a stroke of sheer luck I just witnessed a few insurrectionists kill off a cultist, I killed them in turn and upon checking the cultist's body I just got a free eather rifle AND a small eather cell
spares me the pain of making myself new enemies
thanks to steam guides I learned I can sloowly improve my reputation with cultists by sacrificing stuff on exceedingly rare shrines, of which one I just randomly stumbled across while artifact hunting
also I think the game is getting quite hard, military squads are becoming common even in places where they didn't use to show up in and insurrectionists are getting their hands on eather weapons too
finally ventured into the abandoned lab in flood plains (where I died when trying out the game before buying), it was a really tense 1h-1h30m exploration session but I came out with a couple spare pricey guns I got from some loners, and 3 new artifacts to my name, of which one that just. removes 5kg of weight off my inventory. no downside. I'm cool with that
the other two are more situational, there's one I heard is extremely handy for further dungeon exploration as it protects you from bad air at the cost of a bad cough that can alert enemies
4 or 5 more artifacts while roaming, I'm getting the hang of this I think
not selling them all right away cause there are a bunch with effects that could be handy in rare cases, and even then I already made at least 10 grand off the few I did sell, weapon upgrades don't seem like a distant wish anymore
having a ton of spare money also means I can finally start stocking up on ammo without worrying too much about needing to leave enough cash on me to be able to do impulse purchases of rare stuff I want
no idea what I've done but my cultist reputation is now -345 as opposed to the 100something from before yesterday
I know I accidentally killed one after mistaking them for an insurrectionist, but that should NOT be enough to nosedive my reputation that much
guess I'll have to sacrifice an insane lot of meat and whatnot to crawl back to a decent reputation again
tonight has actually been my first proper session in a few days, and boy what a session it was
first and foremost, I finally decided I should buy a heavy plate armor since I can afford it and its hit to my carry weight isn't as bad as I thought
and speaking of armor, shortly after that I randomly came across an insane trade offer for a 6 grand helmet with good stats, a hud AND night vision (compared to my setup until now which was a good helmet with a hud, and separate nvgs without any protection), needless to say I got that immediately
I also figured I'd check out the dungeon in crossroads after eyeing it for so long, and what I expected to be a relatively quick 1h-ish trip underground and back topside ended up being a 2h+ time sink with which I am STILL not done
long story short I underestimated the danger of breathing toxic air and walking next to the most radioactive thing I've seen yet while my geiger counter was screaming at me, and before long I started coughing up blood and taking huge hits to my health
I tried basically every sickness cure in my inventory and it didn't work after 5 minutes, so I figured it was about time I booked it, stashed away my loot thus far and returned another day (preferably with a real gas mask so I don't cough my organs out again) to finish the job
btw the dungeon has some insanely tense moments if you find the way to a connected underground lab from there, with ghostly shadows of bodies that only appear when shined at with a light, to EM disturbances that periodically kill your torches and nvgs leaving you in pitch black darkness surrounded by haunting howls
the horror element is so insanely well done
by sheer luck I happened to finish a task while underground that makes the horror tunnels from earlier safe in terms of paranormal shit and unsafe in terms of ordinary guys shooting at you, which I think is a major improvement
nvgs really shine in places like this cause it seems like enemies don't have nvgs at this point in progression just yet, so they're forced to navigate with flashlights and they instantly give away their position while you're relatively safe lurking in the dark
a neat detail about this is that if you have night vision on, flashlights pointed at your face can block your vision just enough to make things quite dangerous, it's kinda obvious but idk I really like that
started improving my (still negative) reputation with the cultists by sacrificing child-size gas masks, they seem to be the best sacrifice option since they're easy to get and they increase reputation quite a lot compared to other items
come to think of it, the cultists are an extremely intriguing faction, not only cause they're deep into eather tech fuckery, but also cause while they're a rare sight when roaming around, they have one of the (if not THE) biggest advantage out of every faction
taking contracts from them once I get in good terms is gonna be interesting
got back into last night's dungeon, this time decked out with hazop gear and mask, topped off by two poison resistance artifacts
everything went unbelievably smooth and I got what I needed
my reputation with cultists went down big time once again, and I think I figured out why
I'm fairly sure the "problem" is that I'm completing contracts for factions they're at odds with.. guess that means more sacrifices to repair the damage
I suddenly regret selling an artifact early on that doubles the reputation you earn or lose
I will admit it's quite frustrating trying to cater to the interests of both the cultists and the two factions I'm already friendly with, but then again I guess I AM making my life harder by trying to essentially be a double agent
I just noticed the red coins allegedly used by cultists give you the most realistic debuff
"you take psychic damage when making purchases greater than $1000"
while checking steam guides I randomly came across a bit about there being more to the crossroads dungeon which I thought I finished a couple days ago
turns out there's a little more content accessible by swimming through some flooded tunnels and lo and behold, I found a seemingly-unique artifact (which just gives you the pretty bad debuff of taking damage from contact with water, but it seems to be a quest item so idk might come in handy later on), and also the "sewer thing" that seems to be somewhat of a mascot among the community
that sewer thing just straight up trades you a refillable eather canister for 6 blue mushrooms which I found a short distance from there, and that's kinda huge considering an eather canister was the one thing I needed to start having fun with the really gimmicky artifacts (summoning ghosts to fight off enemies and turning npcs on your side to troll enemy squads)
oh yeah also I guess I also wanted a canister for boring serious reasons like powering one of the best sidearms I found and eventually to do the game's version of fast travel, when I find another artifact I don't have yet
I haven't actually got the canister yet cause on my way back, I had my hands full with the hydrophobic artifact from earlier so I couldn't swim to where I needed, and I didn't wanna go back after stashing the artifact either cause I need to sleep now so ig I'll do that tomorrow
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