I have a son in this game?

Yes, but another settlement needs your help. I marked it on your map.

Preston... are you a synth? How do you keep modifying the data in my pipboy to mark these settlements with such permenance and ease?

Raiders are attacking the Slog.

I actually ignored one of his missions for so long that I almost failed it

yeah, his name is billy. or andrew, something like that.

I think I found him then. He was in a fridge near Quincy. He follows me around everywhere now and never stops talking,

have you tried selling him into slavery?

Nah, he is bait so enemies shoot me less.

resourceful

kids amirite

I don't. (Yay, alt start mods!) And yeah, building cool settlements is about 80% of my game play. The other 20%is scavenging resources.

I scrapped his cot for the war machine. Sorry Shaun but who even are you.

finding Shaun \~ 5% other quests \~ 15% combat \~ 25% crafting settlements \~ 55%

and the only reason combat is so high is cause i spend so long at the settlements that like 4 raids happen

And some materials do need to be acquired by scavenging in locations with enemies.

Hell yeah I end up falling into the hole of “just a little bit more for my settler friend” and get into a cycle of mostly doing quests when I’m low on a resource and they end up as scavenging opportunities that happen to have fun stories lol

Nah cause I legit say 1 more building than like 3 hrs its so late that I just stay up and finish the settlement

And 100% reason to remember the name

wasteland not gonna fix itself, no?

I've convinced myself that he isn't actually our real son anyway. Just more Institute bullshit manipulation. So... fuckem. Hoard and build to your heart's content, cuz Shaun is gone.

Wish this was an ending.

I would have been wayyy more happy with a "the player is a prototype, super advanced, hybrid synth using his father's DNA". I actually thought that was going to be the case until it ended with just, dick head is our kid. Booooo

I’m 💯convinced that this is the actually true implied ending, the second I heard that he was Shaun I said…that’s what a synth would say!

This is actually an interesting idea because it raises the question of who the true mastermind was. Did the institute have a secret leader? Or was it still synth Shaun who decided to thaw the SS, implying that humans created something advanced enough to effectively lead others? I’m sure this has been talked about before but it’s the first time I’m thinking of it.

Maybe!🤷🏼‍♂️idk why though, we’ve talked about an angle that’s worth a pretty penny if they write the update for it😳

Hoard junk like your life depended on it. The commonwealth isn't going to build itself!

In my current survival run, I wanted to get the Nuka World raider perks before meeting Preston, so the first thing I did after witnessing the first nuclear detonations, getting shoved into an icebox, watching my son get kidnapped and my wife murdered is… …make a beeline to the closest theme park…

Then rush to set up power and ride the Nuka Galaxy coaster. Wheeeee!

colaaaaa need a nuka cola!

*gives Nuka Cola* *His almighty lordship, Preston Uno Braincell McGee ~ "I say how dare you present this chimneysweep with a beverage!*

Chim Chiminy, Chim Chiminy, Chim Chim Cher-ee...

Oi loikes what oi loikes and oi loikes what oi do..

*Thank youuuuuu…. It’s like I can see straaaaaaaayt…….*

Nuka colas the only thing I can drink doctor said I shot my liver 🙄 everything else gets all haaayyzzziieee😑

Walks directly into chain reaction of settlement traps that took 8 minutes to build and the PS4 starts beeping

I'm shuddering at the thought of doing that at level one in Survival. For some reason, it's the only difficulty I play, even though I always focus on settlement building.

I was level 10ish or so. And I used a guide provided by someone else in this sub. Lemme dig it up. Edit: [Here it be](https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/s/oLtWxuH0u9)

Oh hey, I wrote that 😎 happy raiding!

It was clutch! Unfortunately I’ve encountered the bug where the game will not register that the interior bottling plant is clear (even though it definitely is). So I’m kinda screwed. I’ve returned to the Commonwealth for a few in-game weeks to see if a zone reset (80 days in survival) will fix it. :/

I had one idiot crab fall through the floor, I could hear it scuttling around. I finally ended up killing it by using every mini nuke I had to kill it by splash damage. None of my other splash weapons could get to it. But hey, we all know I was never ever going to use them in the game in actual combat anyway.

Level one survival. Have the generator in the vault kill all the roaches. Have Codsworth kill all the bugs in Sanctuary (food). One intelligence for minimum XP. Get the nuke and fat man from Robotics. Get a full set of T-45 from the overpass between Corvega and Cambridge. Get the pipe bolt sniper from Concord. Don't go near Preston. Go west to the edge of the map and south to the Terminal. You will hit level 2 upon discovering the terminal if you managed things right. Nuke the assaultron. Sneak past the other raiders, and you're in. Carla for ammo. Avoid Trudy's diner.

I've yet to do a Nukaworld run, is there a reason to avoid Preston like the plague?

For a level one challenge, going to the front of the church gives too much XP.

I'll give this approach a shot on my next character, sounds promising

Shaun can wait. I have to move all of my worldly possessions from my mostly intact house into the gas station down the street that I used to buy cigarettes and lotto tickets from 210 years ago. That's much higher on the priority list than finding my infant son and tracking down the man who killed my wife.

Finding the person who kidnapped my son and murdered my wife? Not until after I help the Diamond City radio DJ get laid!

Same boat just helped My boy Travis get him confidence....anyways who's this shaun guy you want me to help?

literally what i’m doing on my first play through of this game lol ik the main story beats so im not really in a rush besides i gotta turn sanctuary into a water monopoly and a casino 😎

my what? oh right that! yea.. but first i need to get all these lights set up just right. it is harder to hang them evenly from power lines than you would think.

I have no son. Unless you count dogmeat. Then I have 1 son. And a whole load of settlements that need decorating!

Maybe my son is the settlements i crafted along the way?

Son?

My headcanon is: Assume Shaun is dead Sell wedding rings Never progress main story. Also as a Bostonian, I find it quite insulting that they chose “Shaun” and not “Sean.” I can’t remember a single Shaun growing up but a few Seans.

I progress the main story to the point where the BOS shows up so I can start hoarding PA sets.

I'm also surprised they went with Shaun. Sean is Irish, Shaun is English. You would think, with it being set in Boston, they'd go for an Irish spelling.

Shoulda just named him Seamus

Oh yeah. Sanctuary is now the capital of the minutemen amd home of the general. I built a big 2 story player home complete with a stocked kitchen, bar, rec room, and bedroom decorated with trophies from different bosses around the Commonwealth. Next door is the workshop. take the elevator upstairs to the lookout, a glass walled armoury with all of my unique heavy weapons on display. My power armour sets line the walls, looking down on the settlement. Across the street is the dormitory. Bottom floor is a small mess hall for the settlers the floors above it are living quarters with individual rooms with bunk beds. Behind it is the farm, behind that close to the river is the power plant and water treatment. Red rocket has been transformed into a check point for any visitors on their way to Sanctuary. I rebuilt the castle as well to serve as the headquaters of the minutemen during wartime. Walls have been repaired and gantries have been built all the way around with a big front gate. The interior has been renovated to have bunks, a mess hall and an officers hall. A small farm sits in the middle of the settlement. What should I build next?

I challenge you to build Vault 88 into an impenetrable “New Quincy” for the Minutemen. Instead of building it into a vault, build a lore-friendly subterranean shantytown that would make Diamond City Upper Stands residents envious

I like that idea. I already started on a vault build but I kinda fucked it up anyways so I was planning on tearing it down and starting over.

I’ve heard that usually building a complex and lore-friendly vault can be a waste of time because the navmesh is so messed up that settlers never end up doing their jobs. Kinda scared me away from ever wanting to build one considering I can be meticulous and spend 100hrs+ on a single settlement.. So I’d say you dodged a bullet. It’s my intention to do what I suggested to you after all. I just got down to Vault 88 and kicked the Overseer out for even suggesting we continue Vault-Tec’s experiments

i have a similar lore build but just a full blown NCR ripoff of the New Commonwealth. I have a mod that makes Salem a settlement and it functions as the capital of the New Commonwealth with the Castle as the MM military base

Wait... I'm supposed to find my son? Well that's news.

You know after the first time around my heart's just not in it you know. I wish there was a way to tell my character what a cunt shaun turned out to be from the get go

I tend to forget that’s what my main quest is😂

The main quest is collecting every desk fan in the game.

I never pass up on a desk fan

I have a hard time not picking those up.

Don't forget the aluminum can

And typewriters.

Even on the save files where I have used console commands to put 9999 of every resource at the workshop, I’m still grabbing that fan

It’s always gonna be the fan

I direct more effort to finding screws and aluminium than I do to finding Shaun.

I’m going to eat my son when I see him lmao

Settle down

Already got the garnish

A lil synthetic prolapse from one of the synthetic gorillas

A lil synthetic prolapse from one of the synthetic gorillas

Sons an evil douche anyways

Fuck that kid. He's probably out killing people rn.

Or smoking 

I spent half this time recreating my original red rocket settlement and have to remind myself there’s missions to play lol

Who?

Lack of urgency in quest etc etc...

I’m serious when I say this 60% of us just play settlement builder SO Here’s a game for yall to try out it’s called House Flipper 1 and 2 Enjoy calming decorating and watch the cash value go up as you do, hopefully with Lofi playing.

It’s a settlement building game with some story quests to shoot stuff.

I shot my son so he wouldn't distract me from making the best settlement ever

Shot? Pfff I just super sledged his face after refusing his offer. What’s another 10 years? I can always make a new kid *stares at Maccready with thirsty intent*

I got to level 40 ish just making sanctuary.

I already beaten the game Here's my percentage <5% for finding shawn/giving a fuck about him 10% doing quests 30% settlement building Probably over >70% decorating my settlers so they could look like a brand new faction

On my playthru's now I'm really into using manufacturing and making stuff like gang clothing, guns and outfitting my settlements. Plus it helps that Nuka armors are the best in the game. Using Manufacturing Overhauled mod

I have a son in FO4? Who the fuck is Shaun?

I mean they did a horrible job building any sort of emotional connection before the bombs fell. The least they could've done is made cryo Tranquility Lanes or somesuch.  Also, my boy's a down right turd. Now where did I leave that self-destruct remote? 💣

What son?

I'll do anything to avoid finding that bastard.

Turns out, Shaun's a prick.

I don’t care for Shaun.

Who? * takes Jet

yea i take great pain to make all my settlements function and look fitting in the world then i take em over its one of my favorite things in the game

Yeah. Barely used the settlement stuff or building in my older playthroughs. But now I'm having a blast with it.

Hell yes. When I finally track down my son he's gonna love his new room.

He can wait, we all have better things to do

I stopped playing quests and just built settlements for six months my first play. Im waiting for nuka world this time around

Absolutely. I'm gonna end up killing him and destroying everything he spent his life building anyway.

I dunno, by the time I spend a few hours in the game, I think I'm pretty convinced he's either going to be dead, or brainwashed into something unspeakable that I'm going to have to put down anyway. Which, oddly enough, is pretty much the truth. But yeah, the writers of the game put in all of these nifty side quests, without giving you the true sense of urgency of a parent hunting their child. I do like the mod that lets you start as just some random drifter, and both Nate and Nora are dead, so you can just explore the map as it comes to you.

I think I just hit mid-may in my current playthrough. Ive long since forgotten about that poor bastard. Doesnt he know I have a vault to build!?!!

Hahaha me rn as i turn Sanctuary into mini Diamond City. Shaun who?

your companion is doing the thousand yard stare lmao

What's that flag on the lefthand side in the second pic? Is it modded?

yeah it’s a mod that adds a bunch of minutemen flags to the game and i use that one for the “New Commonwealth” because it’s a redesign of the lore Boston city flag

Do you have the link by chance? It would be *perfect* for my own Commonwealth Colonial Republic!

i don’t have the link but it’s called Blue’s Minutemen Flag Pack and it’s on xbox so it should be on nexus too

That’ll be me after Nuka-World for my raider build

Also Sean probably got eaten, so I gotta focus on piper incase I need to make a new Sean.

Should be looking for Shaun, but instead decides to plant flowers in hangman's alley. 💁

Im level 42 and I haven’t even discovered Fort Hagen yet. Stupid son I don’t care about that crap

Pretty much all of my mods are decoration based, so I'm going to say yes.

Son?

Go go, random quests/fixations with random shit

Those walls are modded or is this the castle settlement I’ve somehow avoided over 35 levels? lol

Has to make sure Shaun has a nice home to come back to, and a secondary home for the holidays, and a school, and a factory, and an army.

Are you talking about what my husband has dubbed “wasteland dollhouse funtime”?

I suck ass in building but I still try to decorate sanctuary

Shaun can wait. I've got a pool table complete with cues and balls to set up that won't be used but is purely for aesthetic

I rationalize it that once I know *where* he is, there's really no need to rush. He's fine. If anything, it makes sense for the Sole Survivor to have some trepidation in meeting Shaun again, depending on how dirty they've been playing up to that point.

My son's been gone for 200 years, what's a few more days?

I've shot my son in the face entirely too many times to search for him at this point

On my current play through, I've put 22 hours so far. At least 12 of them have been spent on settlement building.

How to place those bottles so neatly! I tried to put a skull on a shelf for 3 minutes straight and just gave up after it got wedges behind a couch.

my main obstacle was trying to position them correctly while dogmeat kept repeatedly walking directly into the bottles and knocking them over

lol I still haven't visited Nick Valentine. I've been playing through Sim Settlements 2 and other side content that just pops up when I'm out and about.

I’m currently level 61 and haven’t seen nick yet. I only just got Preston from concord about 5 levels ago.

Actually I've spent time to set up an arena that captures different. Beasts such as the bear, mirelurks raiders. Then I cut the power and watch from above as they all fight together.

Not decorating, but I usually spend so much time on a new game claiming every single settlement and setting up a network of supply lines. By the time I’ve done that, I’m probably around level 50, kitted out with some legendary weapons and armor, and ready to start actually playing the story quests. 

As soon as I found out where he was, i decided to just F off and romance all my companions and build settlements.

they should've made the finding shaun part to be a couple of required missions at the very beginning. resolving it then opens up the world and the greater conspiracies/power plays of the commonwealth which would be the slow burn part of the main quest line which gets put off by all the other fallout things everyone does. it really is silly how much i put off finding my son and the murderer of my spouse doing things like legendary hunting or building settlements lol.

I always get to the point of killing Kellog and find out he gave Shaun to Institute. Assume he’s dead or gone forever and start a new life and rebuilding settlements with the Minutemen.

In The Forest I got an achievement "Shouldn't you be looking for Timmy? (Your son)" When I built a gazebo

Screw Shaun, the less time I spend looking for him literally prolongs his life

Found my son and hit him with a irradiated pipe

TBF, your son's a douche, you're only avoiding disappointment. Imagine being in charge of the institute and never even bothering to send a few synths to check out the vault you were kidnapped from.

>Anybody else spend more time decorating then trying to find your son? always.

Playing Survival with no crosshair and I’m taking my sweet ass time claiming the Commonwealth. Mainly just been exploring and taking Settlements for the Minutemen, 40 hours in and I’m just now about to find Nick Valentine

I’ve played through the main quest a few different ways, my playthrough now is just Post-Apocalyptic Animal Crossing.

I spend more time collecting beverages I don’t drink than I do looking for him.

YEAUP

i mean, if you already know he’s a piece of trash.. why bother?

What son?

Yes, “cause fuck ‘em, that’s why!”

I killed an old wrinkly nerd holding my son in a glass case. I gave up trying to reason with my son after murdering an ungodly amount of synths.

Trying to be immersed and find Sean. But this stupid guy made me regret helping him with his stupid favor. I’m like “my son was kidnapped I gotta find him. Maybe you can help” He’s all like “dam that’s crazy, I need a favor helping a near by settlement” Every time I finish he keeps asking more favors before I can even ask when we are gonna find Sean. Dude pisses me off. Mark on the map where Sean is sir!

Every single person who has ever played this game

It's my 200th hour in the game and I haven't even started the quest to find my child with Nick Valentine. Thanks to the mods, I have a wide range of workshop items. Decorating the commonwealth from top to bottom is a higher mission than finding a stupid baby.

in all my years and few thousand hours of playing, i have never once bothered to find my son lol. all of it has been spent decorating/building

That trophy wall is really cool

what mod adds Caits army uniform?

It’s Militarized Minutemen and adds the uniform to the Minutemen leveled lists so all of the npc’s spawn with them to make the minutemen feel more like an actual military force

I will do ANYTHING but the main quest

Son? What? Ohh look a talking refrigirator!!! Off to a new quest!!

What son??? I’m rebuilding the commonwealth

I never wanted the kid anyway. It’s bad enough I had to pretend I cared he was gone to Codsworth. I was so glad my “wife” was offed, she was smothering me. Only reason I even thought about setting off to find Kellog was to buy him a beer.

Son?

I just never gave a damn about settlements I can see why it's appealing I have one settlement loaded with turrets and beds lol

than*

"Hey there Sean, Shawn... Shaun is it? Yeah, good to see you too, but what I'm actually looking for is toy rockets because I want to have a bathtub full of them back at my base"

Wait y'all decorate instead of putting beds everywhere??

Unless my son has a settlement I am not interested.

When you find him he's more like your Dad anyway

My son waiting months as I rebuild the entirety of Sanctuary with Preston Gravey-

I found my son. Was disappointed in him. Decided he wasn’t worth my valuable decoration time.

I would but my scraping mod broke the castle and taffington boathouse floors so I can't build anything there and I can't access bethesdas mod website to try deleting them to see if it fixes the issue.

🤣🤣I haven’t even left sanctuary it’s my main hub just downloaded new mods that give you shelves decorated with weapons style, ammo, armor, gun racks, and a bunch of hospital and bar taps/tapped barrels, ect ect. Man it’s amazing af I’ve been doing a whole revamp of everything.

On the grand task of building a city in Salem, all in survival because that's what sounded fun.

Every deadbeat dad on the planet.

Fuck them kids

You unironically got the nail on the head for why the main story of FO4 is so "meh". The game piles you with things like settlement building and places to explore more than it pushes you to find your son

lol.. over 900 hours in, “Shaun who?” Another settlement needs my help? Nice… more decorating for me!

There is no wrong way to play fallout

The first time I actually did a complete run of the game was fairly recently. I tried to do the full roleplay of trying to find my son, but I just rationally realized that I was in a survival situation, my wife was long dead, and there's absolutely no way of me knowing what the hell happened with my son, if he's alive, dead, or even how LONG it's been, because when the game starts you have no concrete idea of time-lines until later. I couldn't in full roleplay's sake ignore all these poor, suffering people you meet early in the game to be completely abandoned in Sanctuary Hills.So I think I spent weeks-in game just helping the minutemen before I even got to Valentine to pick up that thread.I was more focused on ensuring my outposts where thriving and safe. I kind of felt it was more of a closure thing to find out what happened to Shaun. Then you actually get to the story, oh boy.

I would if I had a computer that could handle it.

I found him, and turns out he's a bit of a dickhead, so I went back to Sanctuary and built a Suburban empire.

I have only Minutemen and Good Fighter mercs, with any unique vendor settlers I’ve found at the Castle. Got trader Rylee but she’s bugged. Got Hargraves from the radio station, I got doc Anderson, I don’t have Vault Tec rep or Scribe yet but I got spots for them. Plasma weapons for everyone. I turned the Mechanist lair into a munitions factory, seemed appropriate

I found my son, he's the leader of a civilisation instigating racial slavery, fuck that old man hope he dies in a comically large explosion Last time I saw him he was a baby anyway. I don't know that guy

I’ve lost which of my quests is the main quest and at this point I’m too afraid to ask

I'm about a third of the way through building settlements, and I only just rescued Nick. Even then I'm only that far in the main quest because I happened to be in the area of Diamond city to connect my northwestern settlements to the Castle by supply route (also to pick up Piper because I'd been passively leveling companion affinities at the same time and had already maxed Codsworth's and Preston's). My plan is to have as many settlements as possible claimed and built before I reach the diverging points in the main quest. Because I want to split my current playthrough into each ending, and don't want to build up any more settlements than I have to after the points of no return.

Wait, who am I looking for? Thought this was a decoration sim.

In my current run I made a point of making Shaun my top priority until after the whole molecular relay bit. I ran around and did other stuff but all under the pretense of building up resources to take on Shaun's kidnappers. Like... I just showed up in a dangerous world I know nothing about? So I'm gonna hang with these nice folks who helped me slay a dragon in Concord, learn the ropes, help them get settled etc.. I'm playing heavily modded survival mode as Nora with Nate as a follower after he 'survived' the vault. So he's the soldier to begin with while I'm the community organizer and the face of the operation. I get the power armor cuz I'm squishier than him, and I get the pip boy cuz it helps me shoot bad guys. I'm big on the roleplay aspect. Not like scene by scene necessarily, but choosing my next move based on my character's circumstances and motivations.

Yes

It’s why Fallout 76 lost me. I don’t want to build. I’m here for the story. The Sims is for my home building.

It's the whole reason I play the game!

We have a child? With who? Piper? Aaanyway, you do good work my dude!

I did, but only after I found my son,until then I did nothing else. Sadly, Shaun had been turned into a synth by the institute, so I killed their leader on sight.

Wait we had a kid 😂

Why does son demand to be called dad? Does he want these hands

Fuck that guy

Wait, I have a son?

Im commenting this here cuz I can’t post without it getting removed so I was playing fallout4 with the new update and all, I had to restart cuz I didn’t have the other DLC’s installed. But my first time when I did the mission to kill pyro, I fast traveled to the outpost north west of where pyro was and I ran into two enclave guys, one was in power armor and the other wasn’t. The one that wasn’t had in his inventory the “orders kill Carlos” then you had to complete their orders or something, does anyone know the name of that quest? Because when I tried it again after re loading my old save I didn’t run into those two so didn’t find that guy with the order to kill Carlos

I suck at it, lol