Fallout 4 | Ep. 59 – Come for the Seafood, Stay Because Something Ate Your Boat

🌫️ The Commonwealth’s Worst Sightseeing Tour

The Far Harbor tourism board really needs to work on its messaging. We may have finished with the fog for now, but apparently the Commonwealth still has plenty of mysteries, monsters, radioactive sightseeing and potentially disastrous decisions waiting in the places we somehow never visited.

With the end of this enormous Fallout 4 journey looming, Episode 59 became a sightseeing expedition through the forgotten corners of the map. Naturally, that meant loot goblin behaviour, an accidental soft lock, unexpected bobbleheads, green goo and the discovery that I’ve apparently been carrying an absurdly powerful weapon around for months without using it.

☢️ About Fallout 4

As the Sole Survivor of Vault 111, Fallout 4 drops us into a Commonwealth devastated by nuclear war, where settlements cling to life between ruined cities, irradiated wilderness and everything mutated enough to consider us lunch.

Every choice can reshape the wasteland, and after more than a year and a half of Bethesda Nights, we’ve made rather a lot of those choices. Some were even sensible.

🗺️ Where We Are in the Journey

This is most likely the penultimate episode of the playthrough. Last week we completed Far Harbor with what I’d call a good ending: everybody lived, the factions survived, and Kasumi finally returned home.

With the main story and DLC adventures essentially finished, the plan for Episode 59 was simple: investigate the suspicious number of unexplored locations still sitting on our Commonwealth map. Episode 60 should finish that exploration before we engage no-clip and take one final behind-the-scenes flight over the Commonwealth, Far Harbor and Nuka-World/Land/Place/Park/Resort/Location/thingy/whatever it’s called.

🔥 What Happens in This Episode

We began the evening back in Sanctuary, where Carla’s brahmin was still faithfully performing its duties as the settlement’s rooftop mascot. Before we could head out exploring, though, the power armour needed some attention. Aluminium was running low again, so we jumped over to Diamond City which, as always, seemed determined to make us arrive at night.

We waited until daytime before I remembered that we probably could have just used the droid at the junk shop anyway. Regardless, we bought the aluminium, grabbed a few miscellaneous bits of junk and stocked up on a whole load of shotgun ammunition. With repairs and supplies dealt with, we were finally ready to start filling in some of those suspiciously empty patches on the map.

Our proper expedition began back at the Nakano Residence, Kasumi’s home and the place where we’d originally travelled to Far Harbor. From there, we headed south along the coastline towards Mahkra Fishpacking plant we’d somehow walked past before without properly investigating.

Inside, we discovered something we’d spent what felt like half the playthrough searching for: aluminium. Not just a little bit either. There were around eighty aluminium trays sitting inside the facility. After more than a year and a half of playing Fallout 4 in the Saturday night Bethesda Night slot and repeatedly scrambling for aluminium whenever the power armour needed repairs, apparently the solution had been sitting in this building all along.

Naturally, we took the lot.

The facility itself still needed clearing, with Nick Valentine accompanying us through the building while we dealt with enemies, hunted down legendary targets and applied the usual scientific principle that anything looking remotely flammable should probably be shot. Somehow, despite carrying an industrial kitchen’s worth of trays out with us, we weren’t overcucumbered yet. That particular inevitability was still waiting for us further down the coast.

Our next stop was Sandy Coves Convalescent Home, which initially seemed surprisingly peaceful. There were friendly Mister Handy robots buzzing around the building, and we were directed upstairs to investigate one of the rooms. Unfortunately, when we came back downstairs, a collection of synths had appeared at the entrance. Whether they’d followed us from somewhere we’d passed earlier wasn’t entirely clear, but the resulting firefight was enough to wipe out all of the Mister Handys.

That wasn’t even the biggest disaster Sandy Coves had prepared for us.

There was a computer terminal near the front controlling a locked door, and after the usual battle against Fallout terminals taking their sweet time to respond, I managed to open it. We went inside, investigated everything and turned around to discover that the door had sealed itself again. We were now trapped inside a tiny cupboard with no obvious way out.

Fast travel wasn’t an option. Getting out of the power armour didn’t somehow squeeze us through the gate. I even tried getting Valentine’s attention in the hope that I could direct him towards the terminal outside, but we couldn’t select him through the bars. Eventually he just wandered away, presumably thinking, “This idiot will leave him in there.”

Chat immediately began offering extremely useful solutions such as chewing our way out, while negotiations commenced over exactly how many death loops should be awarded for managing to soft lock ourselves inside a cupboard. In the end, one official death loop was accepted and we reloaded.

Thankfully, I have developed what is basically a nervous twitch when it comes to quick-saving while wandering around Bethesda games. Instead of repeating the entire building, we had a save from immediately before I’d started messing with the terminal. We retrieved what we wanted without imprisoning ourselves for a second time and continued rummaging around for the keys to the safes near the entrance. We found about half of them, but since the contents appeared mostly to be drugs and pills, we decided that was enough archaeology for one building and moved on.

Further down the coast we reached Salem, where a church and little market square briefly made me wonder whether we’d discovered another possible settlement. We may never know, because almost immediately we were given a mission to kill the mirelurks in the area.

There were only three of them, and after dealing with those the quest instructed us to speak with Barney. The slight problem was that when we reached the rooftop where Barney had secured himself, Barney was already extremely dead.

We definitely hadn’t killed him. I have no idea what had killed him. We tried moving his body around for a while in the hope that this might somehow encourage him to continue the quest, but apparently death was enough of an excuse for Barney not to speak to us. With that particular side quest looking slightly broken, we abandoned it and carried on south.

That brought us through Crater House and Kingsport Lighthouse, both occupied by Children of Atom. Normally, situations involving large groups of enemies are where our explosive machine gun comes out. It’s wonderfully forgiving because the bullets explode on impact, so technically you don’t even need to hit anybody. Hitting the ground somewhere in the general vicinity is often enough to start removing limbs.

However, there was another gun sitting in our inventory that I’d been meaning to test for months. It looked cool, we’d been carrying it around for perhaps six or eight months, and considering this was potentially the second-last stream, it seemed like now or never.

I genuinely don’t know why we hadn’t been using it from the beginning.

The thing absolutely obliterated people. Children of Atom who would previously have required a proper fight were disappearing in one shot, occasionally two, leaving behind little more than piles of green goo. After all the deaths, damaged power armour and ammunition we’d gone through during this playthrough, we’d apparently been carrying the solution around with us for months.

The Soylent Green era had begun.

Chat was running its own adventure alongside all of this. Gary had returned after attending a wedding and enduring a lengthy drive, which naturally meant he was immediately available to resume being blamed for virtually everything. During one of the evening’s Hunger Games, Happy_cat_lady defeated him, resulting in the beautifully concise summary that the cat murdered the leprechaun. Gary objected to this interpretation of events, although nobody seemed especially sympathetic.

Cheese also remained a significant part of the channel economy, with accusations involving stolen cheese, cheese taxes and disappearing supplies continuing throughout the night. Somewhere amongst conversations about Red Dwarf, Shaun of the Dead, steam trains, night shifts, House Flipper, Australia Minecraft and the questionable concept of iced tea, we did occasionally remember that we were supposed to be exploring the Commonwealth.

A viewer also brought up Absalom, an apparently very rare hostile NPC they’d encountered in their own Fallout 4 game. Because he’s automatically hostile, I wondered whether people actually encounter him more often than they realise and simply kill him without ever noticing who he was. We may even have encountered him ourselves at some point, but finding out would require re-evaluating more than a hundred hours of this playthrough, and I’m not quite curious enough to do that for one NPC.

Continuing south brought us to the Beast Hunters’ hideout, where there already seemed to be a small war underway when we arrived. Rather than immediately getting involved, we stepped back and allowed everyone to explode each other for a while. Once they’d finished reducing their own numbers, Soylent Green came out and efficiently converted the remaining survivors into non-survivors.

From there we reached the Nahant Oceanological Society and explored both buildings. By this stage we didn’t actually need most of what we were finding, but that has never prevented us from taking things before. We are good little loot goblins, and good little loot goblins pick up everything that isn’t nailed down.

Eventually, inevitably, we became overcucumbered.

That meant a temporary retreat to Sanctuary to unload our collection of extremely important rubbish before setting off again. The next objective was Spectacle Island, and the nearest useful fast-travel point was around Poseidon Energy. On the way we crossed over to the wreckage of the FMS Northern Star, cleared that out and continued north towards Warwick Homestead.

I was convinced we’d already been to Warwick and completed its missions, but apparently I was remembering my original playthrough from years ago rather than this one. I vaguely remember its quest involving suspicions that somebody in the settlement is a synth, although we weren’t there to start another storyline this late in the game. Spectacle Island was the target.

Getting there in power armour seemed straightforward enough: walk along the seabed until we reached the island. Unfortunately, the underwater terrain contained holes, pipes and assorted pieces of scenery perfectly shaped for trapping somebody wearing several hundred kilograms of metal.

After repeatedly getting stuck, we changed tactics. The power armour stayed at Warwick Homestead while we swam across, unlocked Spectacle Island’s fast-travel point, travelled back to Warwick, collected the armour and then fast-travelled back to the island. Completely efficient.

Spectacle Island turned out to have plenty to investigate. We worked our way from the north end all the way south, dealing with mirelurks and other creatures while exploring the buildings scattered around the island. We also powered up the tower in the centre, which seemed to activate something designed to drive away the local wildlife.

Then, on a boat just off the southern coast, we found something we hadn’t really been looking for at all: a bobblehead.

We hadn’t deliberately hunted bobbleheads for most of the playthrough and hadn’t found one in what felt like dozens of episodes, so discovering one this late was already surprising. Even better, it was the Lucky Charms one — a little leprechaun — which meant there was only one possible interpretation.

It was a #BlameGary bobblehead.

Another Hunger Games also ended with me victorious while we were out on the island, which was clearly the second most significant discovery made there.

With Spectacle Island explored, we continued towards another lighthouse we’d been looking at during the evening. After returning to the mainland and fast-travelling back towards the Northern Star wreck, we headed south and cleared the lighthouse. Coming back outside produced a mirelurk queen, and somebody in chat had already voted for taking the dangerous route involving the queen. There was only one vote, which I declared a tie, and as judge I naturally chose the dangerous option.

This would previously have been the sort of encounter requiring a prolonged fight. With Soylent Green, the queen lasted a couple of shots before becoming considerably greener and less queen-shaped.

There was still another unexplored patch around Quincy, so we fast-travelled to Quincy Police Station. I ignored most of the enemies there because the goal was simply to reach somewhere we hadn’t visited before. The area itself looked familiar from an earlier mission where I vaguely remembered spending ages waiting for an NPC to follow us, but beyond that we kept moving.

Eventually we arrived at the Atom Cats garage, somehow another location we’d never properly visited.

We’d barely started looking around when everyone suddenly jumped up and ran outside. Apparently, some of the upset customers hanging around Quincy Police Station had followed us and were now shooting up the garage.

We decided the Atom Cats seemed perfectly capable of dealing with the problem themselves, so while they fought outside, we stayed indoors and had a look around. This included finding and stealing their poetry tapes and then listening to them while the battle continued in the background. Rowdy’s Ode to My Hammer seemed particularly appropriate accompaniment for an ongoing gunfight.

While exploring the garage, we also discovered our second bobblehead of the evening. After going something like forty episodes without finding one because we simply weren’t looking for them, we’d somehow stumbled across two in a single stream.

The shooting outside continued for long enough that it became apparent the Atom Cats weren’t going to finish the job without some assistance. We headed out and dealt with the final couple of enemies, although an empty power armour frame standing nearby suggested at least one of the locals hadn’t made it through the battle.

The game marked the armour as stealing, so somebody clearly owned it. Whoever that somebody was, they appeared to have disappeared during the attack that we may have accidentally brought directly to the Atom Cats’ front door. Obviously, Gary’s fault.

Once things had finally calmed down, we went back inside and properly spoke with the surviving Atom Cats. Zeke gave us the opportunity to potentially become Atom Cat material, but with the stream getting late, we decided not to disappear down another quest line just yet.

Instead, we returned to Sanctuary for one final unloading session, where the rooftop brahmin was still mascotting successfully. There was another dam area further south that I’d hoped to explore during the stream, but that will now form part of the opening section of Episode 60 along with any other untouched markers we can still find.

After that, the plan is to do something we often save for the end of a completed game: turn on no-clip and leave the intended world behind. We’ll spend some time flying over the Commonwealth, Far Harbor and Nuka-World/Land/Place/Park/Resort/Location/thingy/whatever it’s called, looking down at the world from above and hopefully finding a few behind-the-scenes oddities along the way. I already know how to remove the water so we can investigate the wreckage underneath it, and I’ll see if I can find the command to clear the skies as well.

With the loot safely deposited and a solid save made, we brought the evening to a close by raiding over to Fahr_Avayana. One more large stretch of the Commonwealth had finally been explored, two unexpected bobbleheads had surfaced, the Atom Cats had entered the story, and an absurdly powerful weapon we’d ignored for months had suddenly become the star of the final hours.

Not bad for a quiet sightseeing trip.

📺 Watch the Episode

Want to see the soft lock, the aluminium motherlode, the rise of Soylent Green and our completely responsible approach to Commonwealth tourism? Watch Fallout 4 Episode 59 here.

You can also follow the adventure through the full Fallout 4 playlist, or head over to the Dr Ravenholm YouTube channel. If you enjoy the chaos, give the video a like, leave a comment and subscribe so you don’t miss the final expedition.

🔴 Join the Adventure Live

Videos show you what happened. Livestreams let you be there while everything goes catastrophically wrong.

Come aboard on Twitch or YouTube and join chat while we’re making the questionable decisions rather than merely watching the evidence afterwards.

With the final Fallout 4 stream approaching — and another raid into the wider Twitch wasteland awaiting us when it’s over — this is a particularly good time to join the expedition.

🌐 Community & Links

The Commonwealth journey may be nearing its end, but the crew isn’t going anywhere. If you want to stay connected between expeditions, there are plenty of ways to find us beyond the irradiated roads.

When the red light comes on, join us live: catch the streams on Twitch or YouTube.

Pull up a chair around the community campfire: join the Discord and become part of the conversations, chaos and increasingly questionable lore surrounding the streams.

Follow the signal across the wider network: find me on TikTok, Bluesky, Instagram, Facebook, Threads and X.

For something to listen to while crossing the wasteland: my music is available on Spotify and Apple Music.

If you’d like to support future expeditions: visit the Fourthwall shop, browse the Teespring store, or leave a Streamlabs tip.

Beyond the gaming bunker: explore the Transparent Aluminium Business Centre, download the service brochure, learn more about me or explore the blog.

🌅 Until the Final Expedition

Episode 59 proved that even after well over a hundred hours, the Commonwealth still has surprises tucked behind unexplored map markers — along with approximately eighty aluminium trays we really could have used a year ago.

Next time, we finish exploring, point ourselves towards the sky and prepare to say goodbye to Fallout 4 from a perspective the developers probably never intended.

Until then, stay out of the fog, keep your quick-save handy, and remember: if something goes wrong, it was probably Gary.

— Dr Ravenholm