NOTE: Should anyone from Fallout: Lonestar be checking this page out to check my bona fides, yes, this is me, and I e-mailed you on the 6th of December, 2014. Yay for me.

The Mod

Strangers Abroad is a quest mod, blending puzzles and combat, treasure hunting and storytelling and more besides into a series of 'episodes' that will hopefully provide not just some fun crap to blast through, but a lore-friendly addition to the current Fallout timeline. Drawing from canonical content, both in-game and cut, Strangers Abroad will explore areas of the game that may not have been fully elaborated upon...or just make crap up because it sounds good.

Okay, enough blabbing. What's it actually all about?

Chapter 1 (Complete)

Your introduction to an unlikely new ally takes you above ground and below, including chem dealers, secret underground bases and a great deal of swearing. Chapter 1 includes:

* 3 Main Quests (Strangers Abroad, Leaving New Vegas & The Viper's Nest)
* A new, fully voice-acted companion, Sky Piper (only available within the mod, sorry).
* A new weapon, plus new consumables and a new item-specific perk.
* A small, but functional player home, with the usual storage, utilities and bedding.

Chapter 2 (Complete)

Ensuring there's never a dull moment when you good pal Sky's around, you find yourself tangling with security systems, underwater labs and the mob as you begin to untangle the motives behind Lockheart's plan.

* 2 Main Quests (Blood On The Canvas & The Long, Cold Dark), playable in either order.
* Side/Ambient Quests.
* 1 New Craftable Firearm (Scattergun), 1 New Energy Weapon (SE-01 Prototype).
* 1 New Armour Set (Pressurised Diving Suit & Helmet).
* 1 New Melee Weapon (Diving Knife).
* 2 Unarmed Weapons (The Sunday Punch & Fitted Mantis Gauntlet).
* Various new poisons and other Survival recipes.

Chapter 3 (In Progress)

When Sky sets his sights on recruiting some allies, he ends up taking on much more than he bargained for. Between sadistic pimps and NCR intrigue, he's starting to wonder why he bothered...

* 2 Main Quests (Don't Fence Me In Part I & Mad About The Boy Part I)
* 2 New Companions (With off-mission services)
* 1 New Melee Weapon (Wiley's Hunting Knife)

Modder's Notes

Compatibility Patches

The very helpful Miidian 13 has been working hard on creating compatibility patches for Strangers Abroad with Freeside Open and New Vegas Interiors. Without these patches, the mods will experience serious conflicts that will knock the questlies out of whack. Go forth and download them here: http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/mods/48308/

User Feedback

If you played it, rate it! I'm not begging for endorsements, but if you have any feedback, praise or criticism, please comment. I thrive on feedback to improve these Chapters, refine my methods and create bigger, better experiences with each new instalment.

Installation

To install, download the files and place the .esm in the Data directory, and the 'Strangers Abroad Meshes' folder in the Meshes category. I apologise for the mess that using the autoinstaller seems to make.

As of v1.1, the files have been arranged so you can easily merge them into your Data folder without any fuss. Bliss.

IMPORTANT: Make sure you have bloadfacegenheadegtfiles set to 1 in your Fallout.ini file, or characters won't use the correct facial structure and textures. This is also very important in order to avoid the white heads/coloured bodies bug. To do this:

1. Search for 'Fallout.ini' and select it from the list. It should be listed as simply 'Fallout'.
2. In Notepad, search (via the Edit function) for 'bloadfacegenheadegtfiles'.
3a. If it's set to 0, change it to 1.
3b. If it's not there, scroll to the end of the block of code and enter 'bloadfacegenheadegtfiles=1'.
4. Save your file. Load New Vegas as usual.

Compatability

This mod should run fine with most other mods. There may be some incomptability with any that heavily modify the Freeside worldspace, though.

Credits

Modelling & Retexturing - Thundersmacker ( Check out Thundersmacker's other work right here: http://newvegas.nexusmods.com/users/2885762 )
* Scattergun
* Diving Knife
* Diving Suit

Voices

Sky - Me!
Carla - RangerBoo

Chapter 1

The following people are made of awesome and win for lending their voices to this mod. They deserve your love.

cl507 (Winner of the 'Thankless Workhorse Award') - Geri, Malc, Jade, Ron & Vince
MrRetroFingers - Winslow
TehSquishy - Donnie

Further kudos goes to darkus37, who supplied me with a huge amount of feedback on the mod, including a suggested change to the layout of the bunker which I'll be implementing in the next Chapter. Many of the bugfixes, changes and improvements are down to him, and he deserves credit for his contribution.

Chapter 2

The_Yellow_Dart - Agent Ascher
Jack Couch - Buckwheat
Mishaxhi (aka: Niner) - Kato
Grant Chastain - Thomas Hobson & Mikey 'Six Toes'
lolzinator42 - Dr. Waxmann

Chapter 3

Chris20855 - Darko
Josh Griffiths - Andrews, Featherstone & Wiley
yourboss117 - Omerta Thug & Samson

AncientGamer65 - Being generally useful, informative and supportive!

All of you put in such hard work to get this done - I thank you once again. You've brought some colour to these characters, often in unexpected ways, and for that I thank you. It's rare that a VA made me redesign an NPCs, but this happened three times throughout development. Kudos to you all.