My 2020 Stream Play Through of Fallout 3: Side Quests (pt.1)
- wanderingwonderbread
- Sep 17, 2020
- 13 min read
*THIS BLOG CONTAINS ALL THE SPOILERS*
First off, if you haven’t read my Fallout 3 playthrough posts please go here to catch up on the journey: Fallout 3 Main Story
In this post we will be exploring the base game side quests you could do while playing Fallout 3 (we will talk about DLC quests in the upcoming DLC post). I know a lot of people’s complaints with Fallout 3 is that compared to New Vegas there are not as many quests (main or side) in Fallout 3 as there are in New Vegas. Factually speaking this is correct. Fallout 3 does not have as many quests, but I think the quality of quests in 3 are wonderful. I found myself wanting to do every single side quest I could find, however when it comes to New Vegas I basically rushed through the game because I was not enjoying it as much. I have said that I will attempt to replay New Vegas in the future and try giving it a fair chance. Next time I’ll do more quests and all of the DLCs.
I won’t explain every single side quest there is in Fallout 3, but I will be going over my favorite ones. So lets get started!
Megaton Side Quest:
What are your thoughts on Moira from Craterside Supply? I know there are a lot of Moira haters out there. Some people just hate her because of her voice, but I love her Minnisotian accent. Her voice really matches her crazy personality. In my opinion the voice actor was spot on! Were you one of the people who blew up Megaton to kill Moira only for her to turn in to a ghoul instead? I kind of want to do a play through where she is a ghoul in the Underworld, but I love doing good-guy playthroughs and blowing up Megaton is definitely the evil route.
Moira’s quest, “Wasteland Survival Guide” was a lot of fun. The tasks are unique and bring some humor to the game. The entire time I did the quests I questioned if any of this would actually be helpful to Wastelanders.
Chapter One: This chapter is all about your basic Wasteland survival needs. Where to find food, how to deal with radiation, and how to deal with pain (because there is a lot of pain in the Capital Wasteland). You can do the chapter quests in any order you would like but I’ll explain them in the order I did.
A. Finding food: For this section of chapter one you have to go to the Super-Duper Mart to hunt for food. A side objective is to also find medicine while you are there. This is a relatively easy task to complete, a good starter quest, especially if you are new to the game. The mart is full of raiders so be prepared to fight back while you are on your search for food and meds. I like completing the optional objective of finding medicine because Moira will reward you with a food sanitizer, though a little heavy to carry around, I find it worth it because it helps increase your HP by 20% for each food you consume while it is in your inventory. Getting the food sanitizer early in the game can be really helpful when you are just starting out and low on resources to heal. Stimpaks are expensive!
B. Contracting radiation sickness: Moira wants you to get radiation sickness so she can test the side effects. This is one of those funny and insane tasks to me. She just expects you to go off and irradiate yourself for her experiments. Of course I did it since I was doing a good-guy play through, but damn Moira you’re asking a lot of a person. The minimum requirement to accomplish this task is 200 rads, but there is an alternative objective to get up to 600 rads. She will heal you so don’t panic if you do not have any radaway on you. There are plenty of highly irradiated areas you can go to for this but the quickest place is to just walk outside Craterside Supply and go drink the water surrounding the giant atomic bomb in the middle of Megaton. Moira will reward you with some rad-x and radaway and she will also start selling them too. If you complete the optional objective you will gain what she calls a “teeny,tiny, um, mutation.” This mutation is actually a rad regeneration perk. This means whenever you are in the advanced radiation poisoning stage, your broken limbs will regenerate automatically. It is a pretty cool perk to have if you are not paying attention to your rad poisoning.
C. Traversing a minefield: Once again, another absurd task she gives you. Oh hey, for science can you go to this minefield I heard about and collect some mines for me to study? K, thanks, bye! So your task is to make it to the playground in the middle of a bombed out suburb that happens to also be a minefield. Your optional task is to disarm and collect a mine for her to study. While you are making your way through the minefield you will notice that someone is actively shooting at you and the nearby cars to make them explode. A tricky task if you are not paying attention because you will either be blown up by a mine or an exploding car that is being shot at by a guy hiding with a sniper. I enjoyed the little challenge behind this task. It wasn’t crazy hard, but also wasn’t easy either. Moira gives you decent rewards for completing this task. If you only completed the main objective of reaching the playground she will only give you some frag grenades, but if you also bring her the mine to study she will give you the schematics to the bottlecap mine.
After completing the first chapter Moira will reward you with some stimpaks. At the beginning of the game this are rather expensive and harder to come across, so I appreciate this reward.
Chapter Two: This is a chapter on dangerous creatures found in the Capital Wasteland. (these can be done in any order)
A. Test the repellent on mole rats: For this task she wants you to test out a repellent stick she made and let her know how it works. Moira will tell you to go try it out in the Tepid Sewers, but you can really complete this task anywhere that has Molerats. Her main objective is to test the stick on three molerats but for the optional objective you can test it on ten. The repellent stick doesn’t actually repel them the way she would like, you have to kill them with it. Moira doesn’t want to hear that though so you can just tell her it was successful. I like going through the Tepid Sewers for the challenge. The sewers are not only filled with the molerats you are hunting, but there are also plenty of raiders, mines, and explosive gases to work your way through. I wasn’t able to “repel” enough molerats in the sewers so I went behind Megaton where you will usually find some molerats lurking about. This one is one of my favorite of her tasks, strictly because she gives you the repellent stick if you complete the optional objective and I love running around the wasteland fighting off creatures with a stick. For the main objective Moira will give you some Jet and Psycho as a reward.
B. Place an observer unit inside a mirelurk nest: Depending on how you go about this task it can be kind of tough. Moira wants you to place an observer unit inside a mirelurk nest inside Anchorage Memorial so she can study them. You have two options for this. You can go in guns blazing and place the observer in a mirelurk egg clutch. The other option is going in and places the observer without killing a single mirelurk. I did the harder option of not killing the mirelurks. To do this I highly recommend you have a stock of stealth boys on you so you can get in and out undetected. Moira will reward you with stealth boys for completing the task and if you do the optional objective you will also get a shady hat. The shady hat is basically just a fancy looking fedora. Nothing too special.
C. Return to Moira with injuries equaling more than 50% of your health: This task sounds exactly like it should. She wants you to injure yourself badly enough for her to study the effects. She would also prefer you to come back with one broken limb. Oh the things we do for Moira . You can obviously do this in a lot of different ways. I used frag mines to injure myself. Moira will reward you with Med-X for the main objective and an environment suite if you complete the optional objective of a broken limb. The environment suit is a medical radiation suit Moira made. It gives you +30 rad resistance and +5 to medicine. So it is actually a pretty cool suit for exploring highly irradiated areas in the Wasteland.
For completing the second chapter Moira rewards you with ammunition and 100XP.
Chapter 3: Is research based. She wants to learn about how certain towns and cities came to be after the Great War. (again these can be done in any order)
A. RobCo Production Facility Mainframe: Moira wants you to instal a processor widget inside the RobCo production facility mainframe. For an optional objective you can hack the mainframe. Moira wants to study robotics technology and what better place to do so than from the RobCo facility. I didn’t have a high enough Science skill check to do the optional objective of hacking the mainframe, but I wish I knew about it sooner because it does seem like fun. For the main task you have to fight your way through molerats and radroaches to find the mainframe to instal her widget (I used my handy-dandy repellent stick for this). When you instal the widget every robot in the facility awakens and becomes hostile towards you, so be prepared to fight your way out. Moira will reward you with some pulse grenades. If you completed the optional objective she will also give you a ‘Big Book of Science.’ If you do not complete the optional objective (like me) you will encounter more hostile robots out in the Capital Wasteland… they very much explains why I ran into so many angry robots.
B. Research Rivet City’s History: Moira really wants to know the true history of Rivet City. For the main quest you can just talk to any citizen NPC in Rivet City and they will basically tell you they don’t really know the history. This technically completes your task and you can return to Moira . However an optional objective will show up at this point for you to complete if you want. Moira really wants to know the most accurate history you can find. So if you choose (like I did) you can talk to Belle Bonny in The Muddy Rudder and she will tell you to go speak with someone named Pinkerton. You are told that Pinkerton lives in the abandoned section of the ship. To get through the door though you need level 100 Lock pick skill. I eventually came back to this task once I hit the right lock pick level. You can complete two tasks by talking to Pinkerton (I’ll talk about the other task later in this post). You can get information about the history from Pinkerton and his computer terminal. Once you get what you need you can return to Moira for your reward. For only doing the basic task you will receive some mentats. If you do the optional quest you will also receive 10% discounts from merchants in Rivet City.
C. Arlington Public Library: Moira wants you to go to the Arlington Library to get some data. An optional objective is to get a library archive tape. When you get to the Library you will see that the Brother of Steel is guarding the library. To make things easier just be nice to the Scribe there and you’ll be allowed in to do your thing. The computer terminal is right in the front room of the library if you are only targeting the card catalog holotape. If you chat with Scribe Yearling you can get the terminal password, or you can just hack the terminal if you would like. If you are doing the optional task of downloading the archives, you have to head upstairs and fight raiders and radroaches along the way. Moira will reward you in bottlecaps for completing the main task and if you do the optional task you will also receive a copy of ‘Lying, Congressional Style.’
The final reward for finishing the entire book is 100Xp, a mini nuke, the Survival Expert perk, AND a copy of ‘The Wasteland Survival Guide’. The more optional objectives you complete the more useful the survival guide.
I know in my first play through I completed all her tasks but I don’t remember ever running in to anyone out in the Capital Wasteland that acknowledges her book. In this playthrough I ran in to a random person wandering the Capital Wasteland who talked about reading her book and was impressed when I said I helped with the research. I just thought that was a really cool idea to have someone talk about the work you did. I wish there were more Wastelanders that mentioned the book, or even some of the NPCs talking about it in Rivet City or something. Something I did recently learn was that you can find copies of the survival guide in Fallout New Vegas and Fallout 4. I do not remember coming across these in my playthroughs but I definitely look forward to trying to find them in my next playthroughs of the games.
Rivet City Side Quests:
Stealing Independence:
Rivet City had some fun tasks you could choose to complete if you wanted to help the citizens out. One of my favorite tasks from Rivet City is “Stealing Independence.” Which is literally a task to steal the Declaration of Independence so Abraham Washington can display it in the Capitol Preservation Society. Washington sends you to find it in the National Archives building. He had sent someone previously and you bump in to her when you enter the rotunda. Sydney will want to be your companion so you can both fight your way through the Archives to retrieve the Declaration. I hate having companions so I declined her offer and went to find it on my own. I didn’t realize that later on in my playthrough I would run in to her again and she would be pissed off I “stole the glory.” In the end I had to kill her because she became hostile towards me. I felt bad but she started shooting so I had to end it.
To get to the Declaration you have to fight your way floor to floor fighting many robots and turrets along the way. It can be kind of tough depending on what level you are at the time. After you finally reach where the Declaration is locked away you meet a fantastic robot named Gwinnett (he has been programmed as Button Gwinnett, the second signer of the Declaration of Independence). He thinks the redcoats are coming to steal the Declaration. You have some different options here. Two of the bigger choices you can make is to kill him or offer to help him make a forged document for you to take to “trick the redcoats.” I chose to help Gwinnett make a forged document. It seemed like the nicer option and added some more quests for me to complete. An added quest for me was to find him the right ink to make the forgery, which was located in the Arlington Library (Library of Congress). This is where I said earlier that you could complete two tasks at once if you hadn’t already done either Library tasks. The bottle of ink is located in the media archives area of the library. Not incredibly difficult to get to. Once you retrieve the container you can bring it back to Gwinnett to make the forged document. Once you have your document you can bring it back to Washington for his little museum. Two other important documents you can find in the same area are the Bill of Rights and the Magna Carta. Washington will buy both documents from you for his museum.
The Replicated Man:
Another favorite Rivet City quest of mine is "The Replicated Man". I love this quest because it is a precursor to Fallout 4. In this quest we are looking for a missing android (or in Fallout 4 known as synths). You have the decision to make whether you will turn in the android to the “owner”/creator or let the android go about its life in peace. I chose to find the android but I did not turn him in.
The quest is given to you by Dr. Zimmer in the Rivet City science lab. He is not a member of the science team but is from the Commonwealth looking for “his” android. He tells you the android went rogue and he can’t find it to reset it and make it return to the Commonwealth with him. Dr. Zimmer came across as a complete dick and I very much did not want to help him find the android. You will be given an optional task to talk to the Rivet City doctor, Dr. Preston. He gives you a holotape recording the android made asking for help and wanting facial reconstruction surgery. You may have already come across one of these holotapes in Megaton’s doctor office. Copies were sent to every doctor in the Capital Wasteland.
During the quest you will be confronted by Victoria Watts, a member of The Railroad (a prevalent faction in Fallout 4). She wants you to convince Dr. Zimmer that the android he is looking for is dead. She gives you a piece of his body to try to support this theory. You can end the quest here by giving Zimmer the android component or keep digging for more information. I kept digging.
After you dig around some you will be directed to speak with Pinkerton, the fellow I spoke of earlier who lives in the abandoned section of the ship. Once you speak with Pinkerton you will learn that Pinkerton actually did the facial reconstruction for the android in question. He tells you that the android’s name is Harkness and he is actually the Rivet City head of security that you meet on arrival in Rivet City. Harkness has no recollection that he is an android, he believes he is human. You have a choice if you want to tell him who he really is and inform him that Dr. Zimmer is in Rivet City looking for him.
I decided to go ahead and tell Harkness that he is in fact a human. I kind of felt bad after I did this because he seemed so sad, but I wanted him to be aware of the danger he was in while Dr. Zimmer is around hunting him. Once Harkness knows who he is and that Zimmer is after him, he decides to kill Zimmer. You can talk him out of this option and talk him in to just kicking Zimmer out of Rivet City… but I honestly wanted to see him kill Zimmer. I wasn’t sad to see the doctor die, and neither was Harkness.
I really enjoyed this quest and the fact that it introduces you to things you would later encounter in Fallout 4 (seven years after 3 came out). When I first played 3 back in 2015/16 I had no idea the quest was tied to what I would later see in Fallout 4. I also never completed this task because I did not have a high enough lock picking skill to enter the abandoned side of the ship, and by the time I did, I completely forgot to go back and finish it. I was really glad to make sure this quest was finished in this playthrough, especially because I plan on replaying Fallout 4 in the future.
Thank you for reading! We will finish talking about the Fallout 3 side quests in the next post!
Questions:
- What are your favorite Fallout 3 side quests?
- Did you enjoy any of the ones from this post? If so, how did you handle each situation?
-What are your thoughts on Moira? Like, Love, or Hate?
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