For those that have been watching my streams lately, this may not come as a surprise, but I've been playing a lot with the Harpoon gun from the Far Harbor DLC lately. So, when I heard the next FO building event was going to focus on unique and odd weapons I couldn't help but think of my beloved "Admiral's Friend" and the very satisfying amounts of damage it can do (especially at lower levels).
Therefore, I now present to you my idea for the event: A build inspired by good old Captain Haddock from the Adventures of Tintin comics with as an added bonus a big old whaler's harpoon gun. So strap in and enjoy, you Duckbilled platypuses!
Strength: While Captain Admiral Haddock was never renowned for his strength, his heavy drinking combined with his rich vocabulary makes me think he probably knows how to handle himself in a barfight. Besides, I needed this stat for some of the more important perks for the build. Those being: Heavy Gunner, Steady Aim and Basher. The Harpoon gun's biggest flaw is its long reloading time, each of these three perks help with that in a way; either do as much damage per hit as possible, make sure you hit, or be prepared in case you have to get into a melee!
Perception: Despite working closely together with a friendly detective, Admiral haddock has ahistory of being incredibly thick in certain situations. Like the time where he met said detective and discovered after months of being too drunk to care, that his crew had taken over his ship and had started smuggling hard chems. So, no perks here.
Endurance: Haddock and Tintin are two motherfucking hard-asses; for the amount of times they got hit in the head or worse, they have surprisingly little neural damage. Even if that might be debateable for Haddock, I still believed putting some points in endurance was a good idea. This gets us the Life Giver perk, for that small amount of extra stopping power.
Charisma: Admiral Haddock is one hell of a drunkard. And to make sure, you'll all feel like one as well, I made sure to take the Partyboy perk. The second rank of this perk actually helps a lot to counter the harpoon gun's weaknesses as well; as the increased strength impacts the damage you'll do while bashing. Other perks that may come in handy here are the Local Leader perks; set up farms and everything else you need to keep the supply of booze coming. You'll be going through it quite fast.
Intelligence: Did I mention the whole "To drunk to notice mutinery" thing? Anyway, we'll be under the influence of alccol way too often to care with the intelligence stat. Again, no perks here.
Agility: Probably the most gameplay related stat I went for, agility is used, once again, to counter the weaknesses of the harpoon gun. With Action Boy and Moving Target you'll be able to sprint from cover to cover while you reload, or if you get caught out in a melee they should cover your quick retreat. Of course, VATS can also be used to handle short range encounters if you want to make sure you get the time to hit that charging feral.
Luck: While Tintin may be a very decent detective, a lot of Haddock's methodology consists of being surprisingly lucky. Plus, this stat houses the last perk that affects the Harpoon gun's damage output. Bloody Mess will add that extra bit of fallout-ey gore that we all appreciate from time to time. You know, for when harpooning your enemies to the wall wasn't satisfying enough.
The event this build was made for came with a set of seemingly very simple rules. The first is that the build has to focus on a single weapon and you would have to use only that weapon once you found it. The second rule is that the build can't go past level 30. And oh, boy did that combination bring its share of trouble. It means we have very little perks to work with and that we'll have to make sure they're focused on improving upon the weapon of choice but also that we need to try and get our hands on the Admiral's friend as soon as possible. There are however a few little problems with this.
- The Admiral's friend is a heavy weapon and will therefore only be affected by the Heavy gunner and Bloody mess damage perks, which ensures that all alternative weapons we may use on our way to get it will be far from effective against the stronger foes we may face until we get to the Harbringer's friend, seeing the other heavy weapons tend to have rare ammo if you can find them at all.
- Since we have to focus and use only our gun of choice you need to learn how to work the weapon's strengths and its weaknesses and do your best to capitalize or cover them respectively. The character will be limited by your capacity to do so.
- The Harpoon gun, and therefore the Admiral's friend, is a DLC added weapon and unlike Nuka World, the Far Harbour DLC has entry requirments. To start the Dlc and therefore gain access to this phenomenal weapon you have to progressed past the quest where you track Kellog (no need to go into Fort Hagen and kill him though), so if we want to be effective in combat it's best to reach this stage as soon as possible.
So, in order to gain full combat effectiveness, we need to be able to get to the Harbringer's friend as soon as possible. I happen to know how.
First, ignore all semblance of the main quest. Yes, that may seem counterproductive but FO4 allows you to insert yourself into the first arc of the story at any point so we'll be ignoring Concord and the arrival in Diamond city and head towards Vault 114 to save Nick immediately but first we have to get a simple thing and a small amount of scrap. Also you better have a decent aim and a good sprint.
Make your way to the beach west of Libertalia as soon as you get out of the Vault and find yourself a beached tank. Pay attention to the numerous Mirelurk spawns on the beach, to the ghoul hiding underneath the tank and of course the nearby Mirelurk queen (she spawns at the end of a small pier behind a ruined house). At this tank you'll find a dead soldier and his faithful automatic combat rifle. The latter is what we came here for. You'll have to quickly mod it into a non-automatic rifle, get a handful of bullets and then you'll be good to go to take out the mobsters in Vault 114. If you use your ammo sparingly and are even slightly lucky with the droprate of .45 ammo in the Vault you should be able to pull this off with about 20 rounds of .45 when you walk in and walk out with a few hundred. At this point you just have to walk into Diamond City, search Kellog's house and as soon as you walk out, talk to nick and tell him to promptly fuck off, then go back to Nick's office in Diamond City and start the Far Harbor questline. Don't hesitate to take Nick along from this point onwards.
The Admiral's friend can be bought from Allen Lee in Far Harbor and while it is slightly costly your high charisma and the right choice of beverage (Beer or Dirty Wastelander) should help a lot with the price. Then simply sell off your other weapons and ammo and procure yourself a good stack of harpoons as well. You're now ready to go.
An Admiral needs an army, I recommend therefore, that you join the Minutemen as their figurehead leader while Preston, as per usual, does all the actual management of communications and what not. At least you'll have time to drink, right? As a fun tidbit; funding the minutemen empire with jet as we'll all try to do, works as a perfect homage to the Crab with the golden shears.
I personally like to focus on the seaside settlements with this character and have used a plethora of mods to actually build myself a little naval armada. Not to mention that the artillery is always a lot of fun to use.
Besides that I recommend you spend all of your time running around the commonwealth with Valentine. Do all his cases, go to Far Harbour or try to advance the main quest until you can get Valentine's personal quest. After all, who is captain Admiral Haddock without his loyal friend; Tintin Nick Valentine?
For those that have been watching my streams lately, this may not come as a surprise, but I've been playing a lot with the Harpoon gun from the Far Harbor DLC lately. So, when I heard the next FO building event was going to focus on unique and odd weapons I couldn't help but think of my beloved "Admiral's Friend" and the very satisfying amounts of damage it can do (especially at lower levels).
Therefore, I now present to you my idea for the event: A build inspired by good old Captain Haddock from the Adventures of Tintin comics with as an added bonus a big old whaler's harpoon gun. So strap in and enjoy, you Duckbilled platypuses!
Strength: While Captain Admiral Haddock was never renowned for his strength, his heavy drinking combined with his rich vocabulary makes me think he probably knows how to handle himself in a barfight. Besides, I needed this stat for some of the more important perks for the build. Those being: Heavy Gunner, Steady Aim and Basher. The Harpoon gun's biggest flaw is its long reloading time, each of these three perks help with that in a way; either do as much damage per hit as possible, make sure you hit, or be prepared in case you have to get into a melee!
Perception: Despite working closely together with a friendly detective, Admiral haddock has ahistory of being incredibly thick in certain situations. Like the time where he met said detective and discovered after months of being too drunk to care, that his crew had taken over his ship and had started smuggling hard chems. So, no perks here.
Endurance: Haddock and Tintin are two motherfucking hard-asses; for the amount of times they got hit in the head or worse, they have surprisingly little neural damage. Even if that might be debateable for Haddock, I still believed putting some points in endurance was a good idea. This gets us the Life Giver perk, for that small amount of extra stopping power.
Charisma: Admiral Haddock is one hell of a drunkard. And to make sure, you'll all feel like one as well, I made sure to take the Partyboy perk. The second rank of this perk actually helps a lot to counter the harpoon gun's weaknesses as well; as the increased strength impacts the damage you'll do while bashing. Other perks that may come in handy here are the Local Leader perks; set up farms and everything else you need to keep the supply of booze coming. You'll be going through it quite fast.
Intelligence: Did I mention the whole "To drunk to notice mutinery" thing? Anyway, we'll be under the influence of alccol way too often to care with the intelligence stat. Again, no perks here.
Agility: Probably the most gameplay related stat I went for, agility is used, once again, to counter the weaknesses of the harpoon gun. With Action Boy and Moving Target you'll be able to sprint from cover to cover while you reload, or if you get caught out in a melee they should cover your quick retreat. Of course, VATS can also be used to handle short range encounters if you want to make sure you get the time to hit that charging feral.
Luck: While Tintin may be a very decent detective, a lot of Haddock's methodology consists of being surprisingly lucky. Plus, this stat houses the last perk that affects the Harpoon gun's damage output. Bloody Mess will add that extra bit of fallout-ey gore that we all appreciate from time to time. You know, for when harpooning your enemies to the wall wasn't satisfying enough.
The event this build was made for came with a set of seemingly very simple rules. The first is that the build has to focus on a single weapon and you would have to use only that weapon once you found it. The second rule is that the build can't go past level 30. And oh, boy did that combination bring its share of trouble. It means we have very little perks to work with and that we'll have to make sure they're focused on improving upon the weapon of choice but also that we need to try and get our hands on the Admiral's friend as soon as possible. There are however a few little problems with this.
- The Admiral's friend is a heavy weapon and will therefore only be affected by the Heavy gunner and Bloody mess damage perks, which ensures that all alternative weapons we may use on our way to get it will be far from effective against the stronger foes we may face until we get to the Harbringer's friend, seeing the other heavy weapons tend to have rare ammo if you can find them at all.
- Since we have to focus and use only our gun of choice you need to learn how to work the weapon's strengths and its weaknesses and do your best to capitalize or cover them respectively. The character will be limited by your capacity to do so.
- The Harpoon gun, and therefore the Admiral's friend, is a DLC added weapon and unlike Nuka World, the Far Harbour DLC has entry requirments. To start the Dlc and therefore gain access to this phenomenal weapon you have to progressed past the quest where you track Kellog (no need to go into Fort Hagen and kill him though), so if we want to be effective in combat it's best to reach this stage as soon as possible.
So, in order to gain full combat effectiveness, we need to be able to get to the Harbringer's friend as soon as possible. I happen to know how.
First, ignore all semblance of the main quest. Yes, that may seem counterproductive but FO4 allows you to insert yourself into the first arc of the story at any point so we'll be ignoring Concord and the arrival in Diamond city and head towards Vault 114 to save Nick immediately but first we have to get a simple thing and a small amount of scrap. Also you better have a decent aim and a good sprint.
Make your way to the beach west of Libertalia as soon as you get out of the Vault and find yourself a beached tank. Pay attention to the numerous Mirelurk spawns on the beach, to the ghoul hiding underneath the tank and of course the nearby Mirelurk queen (she spawns at the end of a small pier behind a ruined house). At this tank you'll find a dead soldier and his faithful automatic combat rifle. The latter is what we came here for. You'll have to quickly mod it into a non-automatic rifle, get a handful of bullets and then you'll be good to go to take out the mobsters in Vault 114. If you use your ammo sparingly and are even slightly lucky with the droprate of .45 ammo in the Vault you should be able to pull this off with about 20 rounds of .45 when you walk in and walk out with a few hundred. At this point you just have to walk into Diamond City, search Kellog's house and as soon as you walk out, talk to nick and tell him to promptly fuck off, then go back to Nick's office in Diamond City and start the Far Harbor questline. Don't hesitate to take Nick along from this point onwards.
The Admiral's friend can be bought from Allen Lee in Far Harbor and while it is slightly costly your high charisma and the right choice of beverage (Beer or Dirty Wastelander) should help a lot with the price. Then simply sell off your other weapons and ammo and procure yourself a good stack of harpoons as well. You're now ready to go.
An Admiral needs an army, I recommend therefore, that you join the Minutemen as their figurehead leader while Preston, as per usual, does all the actual management of communications and what not. At least you'll have time to drink, right? As a fun tidbit; funding the minutemen empire with jet as we'll all try to do, works as a perfect homage to the Crab with the golden shears.
I personally like to focus on the seaside settlements with this character and have used a plethora of mods to actually build myself a little naval armada. Not to mention that the artillery is always a lot of fun to use.
Besides that I recommend you spend all of your time running around the commonwealth with Valentine. Do all his cases, go to Far Harbour or try to advance the main quest until you can get Valentine's personal quest. After all, who is captain Admiral Haddock without his loyal friend; Tintin Nick Valentine?
