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DAY 1
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I finally gave up trying to farm, because the ridiculous radius at which players can enter your encounter (3 squares in each direction, LOL) would always get in the way, and, on average, I would always waste more than I got, which sort of defeated the point of farming. The fact that all items you get from looting NPCs are almost broken didn't help either, but that's a whole different story which I might tell you some other day.
Anyway, with the above in mind, I decided to try and CRAFT something for a change. The obvious choice was a good armor, since these cannot really be obtained otherwise. After a little research, I found out that in order to be able to craft one, I'd need a high Repair skill, so I started leveling up a repair alt. A few hours later, I got him to 200% Repair and 200% Science. I checked his fix-boy, and oh, boy, did he have some cool items in there. Radioactive rockets, a million different types of ammo, and a ton of other things. The best armor on the list was CA MK2. In order to craft it, I needed 2 x rare metal parts, 2 x rare metal alloys, 2 x fire gecko leather, and 4 x fibers. A regular workbench wouldn't be enough to craft it though, I needed to find a "production machine," whatever that's supposed to mean, as well as acquire a mysterious "extended key pack," which looked a lot like a toolset.
All righty then, I said, let's see what I need to craft the components, and then let's get to work. I quickly established that I had to do some mining: I needed 4 x rare iron ore to craft 2 x rare metal parts, and 2 x rare iron ore + 2 x rare minerals to craft 2 x rare metal alloys. Unfortunately, there was no mentioning of where to find these rare resources in the official guide that Ras posted here a while ago, so I needed to find out where to get them on my own. That took me a while, but eventually I succeeded. It turned out that some mines have a secret level full of monsters where you can find the deposits of rare minerals/ore. However, locating these wasn't enough. In order to mine the rare stuff, you need a char with a very high Resourcing skill.
And so I started leveling up a miner. When I finally got him to 240% Resourcing, which – according to the guide – was the level at which I'd be able to obtain rare iron ore/minerals at a rate of 2 per pick, it was 2 a.m. already, so i decided to go to bed. I was a little sad that I didn't get my CA MK2, but at the same time I was sure that I'd get it the following day.
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DAY 2
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I woke up at 6 a.m., and decided to do some mining right away. It was rather early, so I was unlikely to encounter any problems, and that was fine, since I just wanted to rush the fucking armor, and be done with it. I ran through a fair-sized map to the mine entrance, then ran through the whole mine to the elevator that would take me to the secret level, then I ran through the entire secret underground mine level to the "small deposits" where rare minerals were supposed to be. It took me quite a bit, and as I was running through the level, a huge-ass deathclaw decided to hit me which almost killed me on the spot, but I survived so who cares, right? I used my pickaxe on the rocks, and... and nothing. The resources were all gone. I checked another pile. Nope, nothing. Finally, I managed to locate one more, and this time the victory was mine – I had 2 x rare minerals... each weighing 35 kilograms. Yes, that's right... they both combined weighed 70 kgs. That means that even if I found all three piles of resources intact, I'd still not be able to pick all the rare minerals up in one go. Considering the fact that it takes about 5 minutes to just get to the place where these rare things can be mined, I was rather disturbed. Also disturbing was that, as I later discovered, it was almost impossible to get access to an undepleted source of rare iron ore, but after FIVE more HOURS, I had all I needed ore-wise: 2 x rare minerals, and 6 x rare iron ore. Now I just had to get some coal to keep the fire in the furnace burning, and I could craft all the stuff I needed.
I was doing just fine, I thought. At this point, since I had already crafted the "extended key pack," which only required 4 x HQ iron ore, I just had to get 2 x fire gecko leather and 4 x fibers, and a set of CA MK2 was as good as mine! Sounds like nothing but a formality, right? Right, but only as far as fibers are concerned. Why?
I'll tell you why. To get 2 x fire gecko leather, you need to skin 2 fire geckos, and to skin fire geckos, you need a special perk, called
Fire Gecko Skinning. To get that perk, you first need to have another perk, called
Gecko Skinning. Now, to get THAT perk, you have to pay 14 brahmin hides to the NPC that teaches it. HOWEVER, in order to get 14 brahmin hides, you need to skin 14 brahmins, and to skin brahmins, you need yet ANOTHER perk, called
Brahmin Skinning. Now, to get Brahmin Skinning, you nee- are you still with me? Oh, OK. Well, to get Brahmin Skinning, you need to – and this one's really good, even FO: 2238 devs couldn't come up with something as ludicrous – well, you need to acquire 10 mouse skins. How do you get those? You get those from various random places. I found one in some locker, another 2 in random encounters... but, you see, you need 10 of them. I found 3 in total over the course of well over 100 hours of playing. I'd say they have approximately a 0.5% chance of spawning inside a random encounter and a 0.1% chance of spawning inside a random container in a town. There is no fucking way you can acquire 10 of them without spending at least a fucking WEEK doing nothing other than actively looking for them. They are the FO: DE equivalent of FO: 2238 blueprints, except they're even MORE pointlessly annoying.
At this point, I just decided to call it a day. I hereby declare the crafting system of FO: DE a complete and utter failure. It would be easy to fix, but I'm pretty sure devs won't do it. After all, if THEY, or their friends, need any good item,
they just spawn a special trader that sells it for caps (for caps mind you - not for free! - this way it's not GM/dev abuse! haha, right...).
