Finding the Garden of Eden

Objectives:

• Retrieve the G.E.C.K.
• Escape from Vault 87

Us, well, we opted out on the dangerous route and slipped in to Vault 87 quite easily all thanks to Joseph. In a chamber adjacent your initial chamber you will find a variety of spoils, among them a Stealth Boy and many other goodies. Take the time to access Peter Steven's Personal Journals and read through the entries if you wish. Lockpick the adjacent safe to loot some Caps and other useful items. Move on through the doorway to the south. If you ignore the corridor, open the hatch door in front of you, and follow it down to a dead end you come across a copy of Nikola Tesla and You at the foot of the mannequin. Reading this boosts your skill in Energy Weapons by 1 point.

Return to the corridor and head down it to the stairs. At the top of the stairs, the two paths merge (yours and Murder Pass) and meet at the rear entrance to Vault 87. If you'd like, you can always traipse along Murder Pass to see what you've missed (not much).

You may want to explore the innards of Vault 87 in sneak mode so as to avoid alerting nearby Super Mutants to your presence. Alas, furious and bloody battles with these hulking 10-foot monstrosities are inevitable, and as such, the most important tactic to consider is: control. Control the number of Super Mutants coming at you at the same time. If need be, use doorways and corridor corners as choke points. The tight quarters play to your advantage if you use Frag Grenades since it's much easier to bunch them up as well. It would also be wise to never stand still in the face of a charging Super Mutant if you are not already aware. Make sure you have plenty of room behind you and start back pedaling while chipping away at its health!

The first objective now is to find the Test Labs. You would first have to go through quite a few rooms bustling with Super Mutant activity. A majority of the dangerous beings usually consists of Super Mutant Masters and Brutes, so if you're not already packing a serious, hard-hitting weapon you might have a hard time keeping them at bay. To reach the Test Labs, head first into the Atrium. Scour the Atrium and its adjoining chambers for first aid items, like Med-X and Stimpak, ammo and other booty.

Securing the Atrium and continuing on, you may come across Engineer Daniel Koster's terminal, which hints at the disturbing atrocities that have been afflicted upon the Vault's unlucky dwellers. Reading the last entry pops open Koster's safe, which gives access to a Scoped .44 Magnum and .44 Rounds. Take your confidence in Lockpicking to a locked door on the left side of the corridor and try your luck with that to snag more optional items. Take what you need and be on your way.

Explore more of the corridor, where you are eventually led to a small laboratory. Here you can scour the room for items within a safe and examine Medical Records on the terminal. From here, head south and east through the door. Follow the corridor to the top of the stairs and continue forth to reach the Door to Test Labs.

The sights in the Test Labs won't exactly make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. The room to your right houses a Super Mutant, so you may want to introduce him to a floor nap and take this opportunity to ransack the vacant room for freebies from ammo boxes and a safe. Proceed down the corridor, inspecting test chamber after test chamber and letting the realization of the true horror within this Vault creep up on you, and through the right-hand door. Thumb through the Chief Physician's terminal entries and grab the Stimpak and Medical Brace.

Continuing further, you are stopped by a coarse voice asking for help. You discover the voice belongs to a Super Mutant named Fawkes, although Fawkes deviates from his kin by being civil and not trying to rip your head off. The overgrown, mutated humanoid pleads for your help in assisting his escape. So, you now have a choice here: you can choose to ignore him or help him out, the latter of which nets you a big advantage that you just can't refuse. There's no real benefit from killing him in the slightest, so you're better off helping the guy unless you just like to be mean.

To free the big guy, move past Isolation Room 03 and turn the corner to bump into some Super Mutants. After putting these foes to sleep, activate the Fire Console Control to unlock all five isolation rooms. You can choose to unlock only Fawke's prison, too, but that would require hacking the Medical Wing Maintenance terminal.

Ever grateful for your good deed, Fawkes lends you a helpful big, meaty hand in overpowering any enemies in your way. Let him skulk ahead of you, and while he soaks up the damage land well-assessed, VATS-assisted headshots on his targets. Be very careful not to catch Fawkes in your crossfire, though; he doesn't really like that.

When your invincible tag-team of death finally reaches the room with the G.E.C.K., let Fawkes retrieve the G.E.C.K. from its highly irradiated jail. If, for some reason, you don't have Fawkes to take the Rad damage for you, you are going to need the Advanced Radiation Suit and a Rad-X to mitigate the incredible radiated emissions. With the G.E.C.K. now in hand, you and Fawkes part ways and prepare to leave, but things don't always go as planned.