Where I Hang My Hat II: The Slog · 7:43pm Apr 13th, 2016
art by WillhemTier
My Afterthoughts for "On Your Marks" should be up in the next few days. And I hope to write up the next segment of Angel's Pip-Boy Diary sometime this weekend. However, I have been a bit distracted lately. 
You see...
Fallout 4's second DLC, "Wasteland Workshop", dropped yesterday. Even though I am not interested in the monster-capturing and arena elements, I absolutely love the DLC for great handful of other items it adds. And I have been playing around with it to the exclusion of other things like blog-writing and sleeping. 
This morning, a good friend of mine noted that Steam has me logged as playing over one thousand hours of Fallout 4. As I've mentioned before, the hours it lists are inflated compared to actual game time. With Angel's Pip-Boy Diary, I have spent a lot of time replaying sections for screenshots, or with the game paused while I write up notes. I have also played the game obsessively enough to have fallen asleep at the keyboard more than once. Even so, I have poured several hundred hours into the game. And a significant bulk of that has been with settlement crafting.
I currently play with thirty mods, the majority of which are crafting or settlement related. The three newest additions include a mod that triples the length that I can extend power cables, a Dependency quest bug fix, and... most importantly... a patch that allows Wasteland Workshop to play nice with the Homemaker mod. Because yes, the new DLC does have some conflicts with popular mods that expand settlement crafting options; and yes, it took the modding community less than ten hours to create plugins to fix it.
I expected my favorite part of the mod to be the neon lighting, but I found the offering there limited. (I may end up trying the Better Stores mod for my neon craving.) However, the new concrete building options are superb! And I adore all the new lights. (Homemaker, my favorite mod for expanding settlement building options, tried to add many of these, but without the GECK, the lights just don't work right. So I'm thrilled to be able to finally use these kinds of lights!)
Meanwhile, allow me to show off the work I have done so far on my settlement The Slog. 
art by Monmonstar
The settlement isn't quite finished yet, but the bulk of the work is done. Click the pictures if you wish to see larger versions of the images.
Let me know what you think. And please share pictures of the settlements you are most proud of. And thank you for your patience.
Nothing says class, luxury, and restoring civilization like making patio furniture.
Seriously, this looks quite awesome.
Okay, my jaw actually dropped when I saw that. I've been loving the DLC too, but alas on Xbox there are no mods yet. That was easily the most amazing thing I've ever seen though.
I couldn't get my arena to work. I built two robots to have fight each other (Because I'm not a monster) but I can't make them fight, they refuse to do so.
That is some awesome Wasteland Chic going on there.
3868098 Yeah, I think the Arena's bugged on consoles. I tried to make Codsworth fight a gorilla, but they just stared at each other for a while.
3868139 That's just annoying.
Nice! My placement technique in my settlements tends to be 'if it goes green, it's good', and so my settlements are a mess. I've had to evacuate Coastal Cottage because every time it gets attacked all the food and water supplies are destroyed, and I can't get to the fight fast enough due to all the mess in the way. It's empty now, so I can rebuild in peace, but it won't look anything as nice as your place.
Oh, and while most cages are kinda worthless, you do want a pet gorilla, dog, and cat. They seem to live in harmony with each other, and will boost happiness (and defence in the case of the gorilla and the dog). Plus they're cool. Just don't trap and release anything else. Your pet deathclaw will live with your and your settlers, but it'll eat your gorilla for breakfast. And your radscopion will attack your deathclaw. And your molerat will attack your ghoul, etc.
3868098 you aren't a monster? Nobody eats their girlfriends hearts if they aren't a monster. And I'll have you know, I found Stellar in the ally and her chest was torn open. No heart.
3868158 Totally not me BTW.
Do you even play Fallout Fluffy?
3868142 Also, the Garden Plots seem to be glitched, as every time I used them, they kept resetting my water and power.
3868152 My Deathclaw was fine with the gorilla, cat, and dogs, but lost his shit as soon as he saw the Ghoul.
3868168 I thought that too, but then I came across the corpse of my gorilla, and I could have sworn that I didn't have anything else wandering around at the time.
I may have blown the head off my pet deathclaw matriach for a crime she didn't commit. Oops.
3868162 I saw your yellow hoofprints
What's fallout?
3868180 I have no idea how you're following Kkat and don't know.
3868184 XD I'm not dumb! Its some kind of game, right?
3868195 Yes.
3868202 no
3868195 It's a series of games, originally starting with Fallout: A Post Apocalyptic Role Playing Game, released in either 1997 or 1998. Since then, it has had 4 main games, three spin-offs, and one canceled game.
I like what you did with The Slog. I put a wall around mine and turned it into a surprisingly well-defended fortress. One entrance with a ridiculous amount of firepower. Its the perfect anti-Deathclaw defense, except that my settlers refuse to stay on the safe side of the turrets and charge at the most feared creatures in the wastes with no thought to personal safety.
This makes me miss my ps4.
I can't play Fallout 4.
That looks super awesome XD.
Eh a friend of mine is very iffy about the dlc. He feels that dlc should generally have more substance ot it than an addon of items to it.
Mainly cause all the other companies are super exploitive with the dlc, and he belives, and i partly agree, that we should disuade minimal stuff and encourage more complex concepts.
Course it is all subjective in the end. He really dislikes the robot crafting from automotron, but i like it. Generally he wants more than just stuff added.
3868206 oh, alright then
3868222 With all do respect, your friend sounds like a massive snob.
3868264 Mostly cuase, well, look what all the other gme companies do?
That's sooooooooooo much nicer than my atrocity of a settlement at The Slog
Oh my God, it's a glorious mansion.
Looks very nice and I imagine it's a nice little timesink to allow the rest of those DLC to come out to add them to the story.
A Mr. Handy for every Hovel and a Sentry Bot for every Settlement, I Say!
Nice, now that's the Slog I wouldn't mind slogging through the mud to reach.
We here at Kkat Real Estate would like to take a moment of your time and talk about... Home. Your Home. A place to kick up your feet, a place to hang your hat, a place where there is a statistical percentage of you not being murderf
cked by raiders and or mutants into hamburger.
Well now you too can enjoy the prestine visage of Boston from your back porch. Boston, land of mystery! Whats out there, no idea! But now you can build a homestead from which to begin your endeavors of jet running and slave trading! And that's not all sports fans! You can plant a garden, tend herds and know the thrill of brahmin branding, build a "Defensive" perimiter! And much much more!
Merely send 10'000 caps through our young intern Parker Quinn, and in no time at all, you'll be regretting that rad roach casserole in your very own homesteads outhouse!
Kkat industries... we told you so
I've always favoured the survival/exploration side of the game over settlement building, but that looks seriously awesome.
Oh my God...WHY CAN'T I BUILT SUCH WONDERS?! ALL I BUILD ARE THESE!!! lh5.googleusercontent.com/-7BCumdaUpm0/VwR7Oyt044I/AAAAAAAAALg/yqSk37YQPeYcAo6aU07RaEV8Nc89q8gjQCL0B/w1218-h685-no/12140955_1125457820819723_5037624961153939605_o.jpg
I'M NOT WORTHY! i'M NOT WORTHY! *bows before your greatness*
3868098 Turn the arena pads around
3869102 They were facing each other. I actually got it to work now, I don't know why it wasn't before.
3869112 I made the mistake of putting those windowed walls for my combatant enclosures, and I had one robot (named Siggy) in the blue enclosure while sending another to the red and it saw Siggy...
Poor Siggy....
3869120 I have one set up to face captured gunners. The two cages open with random level gunners, but even against the Brigadier my Arena bot won.
3869125 I want to try that, but with a deathclaw, and Mama Murphy...
3869194 See how how one shot works?
Damn, that's not a settlement, that's a five-star resort!
Haven't touched this mod yet, but I have some ideas for those concrete walls with the windows. Looks like the perfect place to put a turret behind without melee enemies being able to fight back.
You make me feel like a filthy casual.
Woah. That mansion. So amazing. I'm totally wasteland jelly.
I'll admit, I haven't messed with much of the Wasteland Workshop building since it dropped. I just recently picked up the game, so I'm still sort of going through the game for the first time, but I have fallen in love with making robot minions. And Cogsworth may now be one of the scariest, flying killbots ever, able to rain electric laser death on my foes. Yeah, he lost the ability to wear a hat, but a small sacrifice in the name of gatling laser death.
I managed to remake my sanctuary wall using cement walls, and the neon lighting is pretty nice, I've unofficially changed Sanctuary's name to 'Hawke's Nest' by placing it on the sign near the bridge. (Hawke is what I named my character)
Now I just wish they'd let me tear down the remaining houses and get rid of the vegetation, leaves, and junk; the hedges and overgrown bushes are annoying and make the whole place look ugly. Hard to have an nice little fortress town with tufts of grass poking through a solid concrete floor.
Ah, the woes of a console peasant.