Is it irrational for me to be depressed because Piper has gone missing?

I lost Dogmeat. Haven't seen him since last week, even though he is supposed to be in Sanctuary Hills.

I hope it isn't irrational, because I'm bummed over it.

Edit: And after reading the rest of that thread, I am overjoyed that I might find Dogmeat in a dog house. I'm pretty sure there is one behind one of the houses there. Yay.

I've lost MacCready, the power armour he was wearing is abandoned in the middle of street. I have no idea where he is.

I'm currently executing a careful plan to try to retrieve Piper. There is one last mission which is supposed to involve Piper, and it's not on my books yet. The mission is called "In Sheep's Clothing", and I haven't reached it yet. I'm researching and trying to make sure I set things up so that I can be certain to do this mission, and when I do, hopefully Piper will magically appear, and I can nab her then. The trick is that the prerequisite mission, which must be completed before I can do the other mission, has an endpoint marker which is also the beginning marker for a battle which pits the factions against each other in a skirmish that has some repercussions. So I want to set up the situation where I can do the battle without losing affinity with any of the factions before starting that battle. So I have more stuff to do before I can run Piper's last mission.



I had that experience as well. There is more than one doghouse around Sanctuary Hills, mostly in the back yards of the houses. Make sure to make a complete circuit of the place. Each doghouse you find, make sure to go into base-building mode and scrap it. Then build a fresh doghouse near your spawn point. Optionally, move one of the backyard doghouses to your spawn point and scrap the rest. If you do that, Dogmeat will *always* be in the doghouse when you arrive.

With all followers, I am adopting a new strict retention policy now. Which is:
- Do not dismiss them unless you are already standing at the location you're dismissing them to.
- Do not dismiss them to Sanctuary (There is a known bug if you dismiss too many followers to Sanctuary). I send them to the Drive-In instead.
- Quicksave before dismissing them.
- After dismissing them, watch where they walk to.
- After that, fast travel away, then fast travel back, without quicksaving.
- Make sure you can still find them after fast traveling back.
- Only after that is it safe to quicksave.

One thing I read which was hilarious: Supposedly if you dismiss a follower while onboard , then they will try to *walk* back home from there. I haven't done that, but I think it's a hilarious bug, right in line with what we've come to expect from Bethesda.

Oh hey, here's a tip. Best tip I've heard about the game so far. I'll use spoiler tags in case you haven't reached this part of the game yet:

At a certain point in the game, you will obtain the ability to fast travel to and from a special location: . You travel there via the special transportation method of: . Doing so allows you to fast travel without spending any *time* fast-traveling. So normally, if you want to fast travel across the map, then hours of time will pass if you just do the fast travel normally, so any time-sensitive buffs (such as chem effects) will wear off by the time you reach your destination. But if you want to go somewhere without the drugs wearing off, then fast travel to that special location first, then fast travel from there to your destination. This "double hop" doesn't waste more than a few minutes of in-game time, and so your buffs will still be active when you reach your final destination. This can also be used if you're trying to reach a merchant in a settlement on the other side of the map, but you need to reach the merchant during the day, before their close-of-business time.

Massive bummer. If you reach maximum affinity with him, he gives you a perk which is the best perk in the game. The perk is actually overpowered, so much so, that I think it might be a bug. Hope they don't fix it.

Funny enough, that spoiler place was where I dismissed Dogmeat from. I was wondering what he'd do, so I watched him for a bit. In fact, that was the first place I went to trying to find him, thinking he was stuck.

I seem to recall that I had a human companion at the time I reached that location, and they didn't come with me on the journey, they just stayed at Sanctuary while I had my jaunt there and back. I guess dogmeat is an exception and you can bring him, but you can't bring a person? Honestly I haven't tried bringing a person with me lately. Does that work?

None of my companions ever came with me to the "special location", though I wasn't travelling with dogmeat at the time.

I meant the first one. Still on my way to the second.

My plan to retrieve Piper has hit a snag. My goal was to reach the mission "In Sheep's Clothing" where Piper was supposed to reappear. The thing I didn't know until recently is: That mission doesn't trigger unless I have finished the main storyline, or, I have taken actions to get myself excommunicated from a particular one of the three main factions.

Neither appeals to me. The whole point of having Piper would be to have her travel with me as I complete the story missions, so waiting until the main story is done before getting her back wouldn't achieve my goals. And getting myself deliberately excommunicated from this one faction earlier than normal will close off all of their remaining faction-related missions. (Plus, being a member of their faction has some benefits that I don't want to lose.)

My plan is now to do as many of those faction-related missions as I can until I reach the point of no return with that faction, then get myself excommunicated, then go get Piper, then finish up the rest of the story missions and side missions with Piper as my companion.

Bleh.

Bad bug, Bethesda.

(PS: I'm on PS4, so I can't find nor fix Piper with console commands.)

I got piper back! Yeah, I had to get excommunicated from that one faction so that the In Sheeps Clothing mission would trigger. Then she just appeared in the mission like nothing had happened.

I had some weirdness when I did In Sheeps Clothing. Part way through the last part of the quest Piper started attacking me and when I had finished the quest it became apparent that everyone in Diamond City wanted to kill me.

I had to go back to a previous save and do it again.

Did you fire any shots prior to piper opening fire?

Maybe you winged the secretary or something.

I didn't get to play much this weekend, but I did manage to find Dogmeat. That makes me happy.

Maybe, I don't remember.

I did have an entertaining time at Sanctuary the other day, I accidentally killed a settler and all my companions (I send just about everyone there) set upon me.

Dogmeat is fun, but don't spend all your time traveling with him. Take other companions, too. Each one is fun and has unique sets of responses to situations. They are all fully realized characters with their own stories and motivations, and it's neat to watch each of them. Some of them, once you've traveled with them long enough, will give you a special side quest to help them with something in particular related directly to them. And most importantly, if you travel with them long enough, then you'll get a special perk from that character which is permanent even after you dismiss them.

My suggestion is to focus on traveling with one companion exclusively until you get that companion's perk. Some of those perks are very useful in the early game. Dogmeat doesn't have any perks (other than being cute), so everyone's habit (including mine) of sticking with Dogmeat for so long in the early game is slightly detrimental to their progress.

The two companions who have the most useful early-game perks, IMO, are:

- Piper: Her perk, "Gift of Gab", doubles the XP you get from winning speech checks and discovering new locations. The earlier in the game that you get her perk, the more useful it is, because as the game progresses, you'll be doing fewer and fewer of those things. So earlier is better with her. I'm very sad because, when I lost Piper, it was in the early game before I had gotten her perk. I had dismissed her because there is an early-game quest where you must travel into a highly radioactive area, and I didn't want her to die of radiation poisoning. I took Nick instead, since he is unaffected by radiation. After that, Piper went missing, and I couldn't recover her until late-game. I've got the perk now, but I'm not getting much benefit from it.

- MacCready: His perk, "Killshot", basically gives you always-perfect (well, 95%) headshots in VATS forever. This one saves hugely on ammo, and makes you more willing to use special weapons with rare ammo. (If you are more confident the shots will connect, then you're more willing to spend the rare ammo). And using the special weapons with the rare ammo is *fun*. The fact that this perk's headshots are always perfect might be a bug. So get this perk to enjoy it before they fix the bug.

Side note: Strong is a great companion if you're hauling a lot of junk around and you're not actively trying to get a perk (his perk sucks). He has double the carrying capacity, and he's hilarious.

Because I had lost piper for so long, I've been traveling with her exclusively lately. Now that I've got her perk, I should be dismissing her and moving on to another companion, but I haven't been able to bring myself to do it just yet. I think that writing this post has changed my mind, and I'll dismiss her (carefully, checking she's not lost) in favor of a new companion. Maybe the robot butler, or the ghoul mayor this time.

I wonder how far I am into the game. Looking at the location of those companions makes me realize I must have missed quite a few of them (Goodneighbor, Combat Zone, Vault 81, etc etc).

I have "finished" the game and keep thinking I've explored everywhere. But then I'll go for a wander and discover some new places/buildings that I've not been to before.

I have finally met all the companions, I only went to find Cait and Curie after finishing the main story.

Unlike seemingly everyone else I didn't travel much with Dogmeat, as Codsworth made a far more useful (if sometimes annoying) companion early in the game.

I've been going through the story missions and side missions slowly and carefully, trying to optimize the missions that I can play for each faction before pissing them off. Trying, for example, to do as many missions with the Brotherhood as possible before getting into a fight with them. This means that I have a few missions that are "active" which I cannot complete yet because they'll trigger a showdown of some kind. This has been going well so far. I think I've decided that I want the endgame's winning faction to be the Minutemen, because I view them as the least evil of the four possible factions. But part of me wants to see the Brotherhood questline to the end, because I want to see...


Anyway, for anyone playing the game still, there is a 1.3 patch coming which will fix some bugs. Some interesting ones that will be fixed:



Damn. I was really enjoying that. There is a battle that occurs at Bunker Hill at one point in the game, and since I was friends with all the battling factions at the time, I was able to stroll through that mission without being shot at. This allowed me to leisurely collect some Gauss Rifles (a kind of railgun) dropped by the combatants. An upgraded Gauss rifle, combined with the bugged MacCready headshot perk, combined with a lot of points in the Rifleman ability, basically turns all combat in the game into a point-and click affair. Super mutants? One shot. Legendary glowing ones? One shot. Coursers? One, maybe two shots. Legendary Deathclaws? Two shots. Ah well, you can't have everything.

I'm wondering if it will also fix a couple of the inventory exploits. It doesn't say. There's one exploit where you can manufacture tons of resources for your settlements by exploiting a timing hole in the "Store all junk" and "take all" buttons at a settlement workshop. I've been using that one just so that I no longer have to worry about collecting random junk for resources when I'm out in the wasteland doing missions. Makes adventuring slightly less hassle because I run out of inventory space a lot less often. There's also one where you can exploit a timing hole when Dogmeat "fetches" an item which will let you duplicate that item. I wonder if that one will be fixed.

I also wonder about this one?



I wonder if that was the reason I lost Piper for so long?

I've been traveling with different companions, slowly working them up to max-affinity during our travels, taking their perk, and then moving on to another companion. I'm in the middle of Deacon right now. I missed my chance at getting X6-88 as a companion due to being excommunicated from his faction, but I think I can get the rest of them. Danse is on hold because I have to complete the Brotherhood questline before he becomes available (I think). I'm saving Curie until after I complete the main story line.

I was looking at ways to increase companion affinity, and I read this article which works but is kind of annoying to execute because it requires a game reload for each cycle. What I found most hilarious was this quote in the replies:



I find this hilarious from a game-theory-runs-counter-to-reality perspective. I can't bring myself to do it though.