we're all mad here

Welcome to Skybox City, formerly known as Murkwater Construction Site. This is Riddick’s third Nuka World outpost, and second proper build for the gangs since the Lighthouse is still waiting for something more than a few sleeping bags and a crapton of turrets. They’re gonna have to wait a bit longer because we have bizniss to take care of back in Nuka World now that the plot has continued beyond establishing a foothold.

But enough about that. Skyboxes! Skyboxes everywhere! The gaggle of stairways and catwalks makes it a bit more chaotic than it would otherwise be, but then the raiders would have a heck of a time getting to their beds without them. Jump guys! Jump! Not working? Jump harder! Fiiiine… function over form it is.

The Pack now owns this location, since the colorful vibe fits them so well. Turrets went in after taking over, mostly getting placed on balcony edges and the spaces between upper and lower skyboxes. The fully-enclosed corrugated-steel box on the east side of the property is the power generator room, and the longer building of the same sort on the west side holds a carrot garden for the Overboss and a couple of water pumps.

For an idea of how this would look without all the connecting stairways, here’s the original quick-test I did at the drive-in long before stepping foot in Nuka World. Some of the concept was modified into the Vault 88 build, but the true rendition has been waiting for Murkwater specifically:

A quick addition to Riddick’s build at The Castle, since I finally got some decent aerial shots of the insane roof structure. Still having PTSD from that thing’s snap issues, bwergh!

Kind of a mess of screenshots, but welcome to Riddick’s headquarters for the Nuka World raiders at Jamaica Plain. I used Bunker Hill’s build as a vague test run for this plan, and I like JP’s result much better.

This place was built for the Operators and is now finally manned by them, after the “ugh I forgot how fuckin’ fiddly this shit is” process of figuring out which settlement to take over first and of course I forgot that JP isn’t in that initial list. So the Lighthouse got a quick garbage build that’ll get fixed up later, the Pack got dibs because why not, Finch Farm became the first (and most likely only) vassal settlement with a whole bunch of razorgrain added to the build I’d already done for them, and then Jamaica Plain officially got up and running.

Indoors of the original building is a bit whatever, especially downstairs, mostly because I spent 99% of the build time on structure. There is just enough food (tended by a very unimpressed raider) and water for Riddick to yoink on his way through because the whole raider supply/vassal thing is bugged and whiny babies can figure out their own sustenance. Put on your big raider panties, ladies and gentlemen, and do not complain to the Overboss.

Bahahaha… was not expecting that, but I’m honestly happy for them. The “always wishing challenge” on Asia got mister snakey-snake at somewhere between 15 and 20 pity… they’re the eternal AR35 fish/farm world that my no-wishing challenge (AR59) very rarely steals stuff from. These days they mostly just raid each other’s teapots for spincrystals. Both of those challenges are also pure f2p. As to the always-wishies, I was mostly looking to bag the free Gorou from the event since they don’t have him in their mess of a roster, and getting specific characters with their particular challenge rules (and being extremely neglected in general) is really hard.

So they can has da puppers. And a doctah. I’ll probably build the latter in bits here and there, since the only other place I have him is the US f2p challenge (AR60).

The rules I’ve been using for the “always wishing” challenge from the day they started, for those who are curious:

• Primos must be used on limited banners immediately as soon as they reach 160 (and never used on anything else but wishes), and all pink fates must be used immediately on limited banners. Limited banners means the ones that take pink fates, aka the limited 5-star character banner(s), Chronicled Wish banner, and the weapon banner. If you do not want to pull the current limited 5-star character banner(s) or Chronicled Wish, you must pull the weapon banner.
• Blue fates must be used immediately to clear out the Beginner banner and then go into Standard immediately and indefinitely.
• Starglitter must be used immediately to buy pink fates whenever possible, with Stardust immediately going first to pink fates and then to blue fates when there are no pink ones available. Excess Stardust can only be used on Dust of Azoth, and only in the amount you need to ascend a character right now that has everything else ready to go except for gems in the right color, and only when there are no pink or blue fates in the Stardust store. Starglitter can never be used to buy store characters, weapons, or materials, because it must always be used on pink fates.

P.S. Baizhu’s tryout mode does him so dirty. Xingqiu makes sense but why the feck did they put Lisa in there, and no fourth character? Dendro traveler would have been perfect, and boot Lisa for Kuki. Or keep Lisa and have Xiangling in the last spot for burgeon option / dendro kitchen sink comp.

So… funny thing about this fight…

…my main Star Rail account auto-battles it on 2x speed with E4S3 Blade carrying in 7 mins and 40 seconds. My f2p challenge does it with E1S5 Jing Yuan in… 5 mins and 56 seconds.

They’re both using Hanya, crit Aventurine, and crit Luocha as supports, with element damage consumable paste matching the carry’s element, plus jade marrow diffusion for effect resistance (not actually sure they need that but I’m so used to using it on the heckin’ bug fight lol). The problem is the boss is weak to lightning, not wind. Maybe I should have pulled Acheron on main after all… it was too easy to see her as just another power-creep way-too-long-animation offering, but I like her more now for story reasons. Eh, whatever, at least I can auto-battle it at all.

When the newbie Aventurine in friend support party slot is trying his best:

Baizhu C1 for the f2p challenge gang, check. Showed up around soft pity, won the 50/50, and the previous 5-star I’d pulled according to wish history was… Baizhu during his last banner, how fitting. That tracker doesn’t count legacy or weapon banner, so welcome home again, doctah-mon.

Next up for The Plan? Neuvillette C1+C2. I skipped hydro daddy’s very recent banner because dendro daddy needed his extra charge of heal please and thank you.

Plot: We must find Gallagher!

My party healer: Never met him.

What do you mean, I’m doing it wrong? :3

The No Wishing challenge on Asia has officially flipped Puppers into phys mode. He sorta “borrowed” Amber’s phys kit and umm… well, Amber… I guess it’s time we finally suck it up and roll you a Wanderer’s Troupe set. ………don’t wanna. You can sit in Gorou’s half-rolled Husk until I have the resources to level more artifacts from scratch.

So yesh, Puppers is a happy pew-pew and specter farming will be a little bit faster at least. Amber really is underwhelming in phys, but I’m glad I refined that set as hard as I did because it’s working much better on Gorou. Could use more crit rate, but for now it’s doing the job decently.

With Father not needing Homa anymore, DPS Thoma snagged it… and toasted his crit ratio because he was previously running PJWS and already had substat issues even with that. Welp, a flower in the locked-artis stash rolled entirely into “we can fix this” and he is a happy pyro house-husbando now. Gonna see if I can strongbox him a better hat once Arlecchino’s artifacts are sorted. For once, they don’t have fodder to burn like candy, even with the large amount of trash the Whimsical domain is chucking out.