What is the only thing greater than finally finishing the main plot of a long-awaited video game? Well, it’s hunting down each and every single hidden item, weapon, and quest in that fictional world and dedicating literal hours of your limited lifespan to that game for the sheer sake of completion. There is nothing better than knowing that you have single-handedly explored each and every single corner of a fictional world.
Hey, games are expensive and I am going to get my money’s worth. Sometimes you grit your teeth, roll up your sleeves, and chug through hours of bonus content. And sometimes the game is so absolutely wonderful that you find yourself unable to quit the game after its main storyline has ended and searching for any remaining glimmer of extra content that you can get your desperate, and oddly sweaty, hands on.
Fallout 3 definitely falls into the second category. Though the main storyline is certainly something that could very nearly blow your socks clean off your feet, the bonus content is where the true fun lies. Hidden within the main plot of the game is a series of humorous, serious, and intense quests that are sure to entertain even the most content starved gamers out there. So, without further ado, allow me to take you through twenty-five of the most entertaining side quests hidden throughout the immersive sandbox experience that is contained within the world of Fallout 3.
25 Getting Pronto Some Better Weapons
Pronto in Paradise Falls is tired of selling worthless junk and needs some good merchandise to sell.
Be a lamb and go get him twenty Chinese assault rifles.
He doesn’t care what condition they are in and he doesn’t even want the ammo to go with them. Complete this quest to make Pronto’s shop a good gun and ammo store with a twenty percent discount. Chinese assault rifles can be found on super mutant masters and as loot on tough enemies on occasion at high levels.
24 Ryan Brigg’s Wonder Meat
Have you ever come across a horde of mole rats and been forced to destroy them due to their hostility and then had an impossibly large quantity of mole rat meat in your inventory afterward and just wished there was some useful application for it? Go find Ryan Brigg in the Jury St. tunnels who has perfected the art of mole rat meat. Give him your mole rat meat to turn it into mole rat WONDER meat. Also requires wonderglue.
23 Happy Birthday To You
Sticky of Little Lamplight has turned that wonderful age where he is no longer a child and is now able to be ended.
A wonderful milestone considering his irritating personality.
Sticky wants to go to Big Town now that he is too old to live in Little Lamplight anymore. So take the boy to Big Town, or don’t and somehow get him ended. It doesn’t matter as Sticky has no money to reward you with despite his saying otherwise and his demise has no effect on your karma
22 Yearning For Learning
Make your way to the Brotherhood of Steel controlled Arlington Library and have a nice chat with Scribe Yearling, taking care not to insult her. The Scribe will ask you to bring her Pre-War books. This will earn you 100 caps and a paltry 10 experience points for each one you bring. If you had thoughts of “ooh an unlimited money and XP exploit, I am interested” calm down. There is a finite number of Pre-War books in the game and they do not respawn.
21 Lincoln’s Profit Margins
Scattered around the Museum of History just waiting to be picked up by you are the personal artifacts of Abraham Lincoln. You will find Abe’s Diary, Hat, action figure, voice, repeater, memorial poster, coin collection, and a poster for the draft during the Civil War, as well as a John Wilkes Booth wanted poster. Collect these and bring them to one of Hannibal Hamlin, ex-slave, Leroy Walker, slaver, and Abraham Washington, Historian, all of whom will give you extra trade-in value.
I don’t recommend the slaver.
20 This Old House
There lives a ghoul in Underworld who will take your scrap metal off your hands and give you one of; Stimpak, Radaway, or Rad-x. You can skip all this trading nonsense with a high enough strength or skill with any category of weapon, which will have Winthrop the Ghoul just give you ten Stimpaks AND Radaway. There is a similar trade-in quest with a much better value in another area. Winthrop won’t give you any exp for turning in scrap metal either.
19 Strictly Profitable
Is the Capital Wasteland just too populated for you? Are you just tripping over NPC’s no matter where you go? Are you just plain and simply dark? Well with a good old slave collar and the mesmetron you can turn in a profit by mesmerizing and collaring any non-essential NPC and leading them back to Grouse in Paradise falls who will buy these innocent wastelanders for a rather paltry 250 caps. Keep in mind that mesmerizer rounds cost 200 caps per ten rounds.
You monster.
18 Searching For Cheryl
In L’Enfant South, you can follow the tracks of a search party looking for their leader’s sister, Cheryl. You will find grave after grave on this small journey with paper notes detailing what happened up to that point of the search. This will take you to a super mutant camp southwest of the jury street metro where you will be attacked by a super mutant behemoth carrying a mini-nuke! You will conclude the search by finding the body of search party leader Manny Koch. if you stumble on the camp without following the search, Manny will still be alive, albeit hostile and glitchy.
17 Tailing The Tomboy
Upon your arrival on the riverboat landing in the Point Lookout add on, you will be approached by Catherine, who wants you to get her daughter Nadine back from Tobar, a dude that removes small portions of people brains for Point Lookout rituals. Nadine is none too happy about this and tells on him to you as soon as she is able too. You can then go confront Tobar in the Duchess’ Gambits engine room.
He will turn hostile after a short conversation but don’t worry about the fight.
You can just close the door after quickly grabbing the missing piece of your brain and there’s nothing he can do about that
16 Nectar Collecting For Fun And Profit
If you happen to be in Grayditch while holding onto some fire ant nectar, go talk to Doctor Lesko. Lesko wants you to gather up as much fire ant nectar as you can and bring it back to him. Do be careful though since if you complete the quest THOSE! The fire ants will disappear. Destroying a fire ant does not guarantee it drops fire ant nectar. These two factors as well as the fact that fire ants don’t respawn seriously limit the rewards you can get from Doctor Lesko.
15 Water Caravan Squabble
If you have Broken Steel installed, head to megaton after finishing the Holy Water quest to find the Megaton settlers about to attack the Brotherhood of Steel escort of the scavenger so they can take the Aqua Pura. Since the Settlers are woefully unprepared to take on the brotherhood you should step in and hopefully pass a speech check to either tell the settlers to back off or convince the Brotherhood to share their very nice water.
This will net you some good karma.
14 Blood Brotherhood
Another Broken Steel quest. After completing Who Dares Wins and not destroying the Citadel, Paladin Tristan will ask you to collect Super Mutant blood for research. As soon as he asks you to do this you can start finding blood samples on every super mutant you can find. Some good places to find them are anywhere in the DC proper area and on the reilly’s rangers quest. You will get 50 caps and 10 exp for each sample.
13 Church Donations
Is your Lone Wanderer in need of some good karma, possibly due to being a slavery monster?
Just pop into the nearest church, either the children of Atom or Saint Monica’s and donate some of your wealth to receive some good Karma. Just have a small chat with Confessor Cromwell in the church of Atom or Father Clifford in the church of Saint Monica. All it takes is 2000 caps to erase all your bad karma, you just gotta donate 100 at a time.
12 Leo’s Habit
Leo Stahl of Megaton has a jet problem and it’s up to you to find out by asking around or being nosy and hacking the saloons terminal. Then it’s up to you again to solve it. Confront Leo in the Brass Lantern or in the Water Processing Plant and you can either talk him out of his addiction and get him to give you the key to his secret stash or you can intimidate him into becoming your chem dealer and then end him later for the key to his stash.
11 Mississippi Quantum Pie
After you complete the quest The Nuka-Cola Challenge, Sierra Petrovita will give you a tasty offer.
Just bring her three ingredients and she will make her special pie and even let you take it with you without sharing. If you have one sack of Flour, one Nuka-Cola Quantum, and one Vodka, she will whip up a Mississippi Quantum Pie just for you. The pie gives you plus one strength and twenty action points but you lose one intelligence point and gain five rads.
10 Fungus Deal
Lucy of Little Lamplight needs buffout to cure rickets and Eclair, the cook, needs “strange Meat” which is actually human flesh (excuse me children? what?) so he can toss it into the caverns pools which allows the special fungus to grow. (Only slightly less upsetting). You need to get Mayor MacCready to agree to this which require 50 barter skill or the child at heart perk. That perk will also get you a much better deal when trading buffout or strange meat with Lucy and Eclair. It will go from three for one, to one for one.
9 Bittercup Runneth Over
In Big Town, there is a charming lady who seemingly has an obsession with mortality and really wants to become your romantic partner. Should you accept her offer, she will shyly end the conversation but if you talk to her again and once every twenty-four hours she will gift you with one of a long list of items.
You can get these items thirty times before she loop back into her initial state.
Some notable gifts include, stimpaks, purified water, Nuka-Cola, various types of ammunition, and Radaway.
8 Wild Bill’s Last Stand
Milly, a slave in The Pitt add-on, will ask you to look for her friend Wild Bill. if you go to the steelyard, you can find him dead on a flight of stairs. Loot his body for his unique weapon, Wild Bill’s sidearm and return to Milly. You can break the news however you want for a return of six stimpaks. If you choose the speech challenge you can tell her that you personally saw him being torn apart by Torgs and had to put him out of his misery, which will cause her to faint and drop the stimpaks. However, because of Fallout 3’s strange physics engine, she may start spinning uncontrollably and send the stimpaks flying away.
7 Getting Ready For Prime Time
Another Broken Steel quest, after completing Who Dares Wins, Scribe Rothchild will ask you to bring him some cameras and sensor modules for the theoretical purpose of repairing Liberty Prime. These are trash items that show up in various workbenches and toolboxes and do respawn so this has infinite caps and exp. unfortunately, no matter how many cameras and sensor modules you bring to Rothchild, Liberty Prime will never be repaired.
Oh well, 75 caps and 10 exp for sensors and 100 caps plus twenty-five exp for cameras is still a good deal.
6 The Sorrowful Suitor
The final hidden Broken Steel quest, in the Presidential Metro you can find a skeleton with a holodisk titled “Sorry, my Darling” it is an apology of a woman for being unable to make it to a secret meeting despite there being a secret gift. Head over to La Maison Beauregard and confront Lag-Bolt. He holds the key to a suitcase that has the secret surprise in it, the All-Nighter Nightwear, a leopard print lingerie nightgown for ladies and a leopard print pajama suit for men.
