Butchers Bill¶

No reason to stop helping the Railroad now. You’re not going to be bothering with any main faction quests, but some of the side quests here are very, very lucrative, and most of them take you to places you’ve already been before, so it’s a good idea to do these now. Time to get on with “Butcher’s Bill” , then. Fast travel to wherever the dead drop is and grab the “Augusta Report” out of it. Once done, fast-travel to the Campus Law Offices building down in Cambridge; it’s finally time to explore Kendall Hospital!

From the eastern exit from the ruined Campus Law Offices building, turn your gaze to the north-east to spot Kendall Hospital. Outside of this building you’ll find some Bloodbug Hatchlings and some Bloatflies, which, like the Raiders earlier, are hardly a significant threat. There are again two entrances to this building; a blue door under an elevated walkway near where the Bloatflies lurked, and blue double doors up some stairs and around a corner, on the western end of the building. In this case, however, the single door is barred, which doesn’t leave you with much choice in the matter.

Enter via the latter approach and head up some stairs to the east, then go through a blue door to the south to reach a small room. Further south you’ll find a door which is locked, and can only be opened by hacking a nearby Terminal [Novice], but since the doorway is blocked, the only reason to bother is for the XP you’ll get from hacking the Terminal. Disarm and salvage the Bottlecap Mine to the east, then continue east and turn south, going through another blue door. To the south is a red door [Advanced], beyond which is a large room with a bonfire burning in the middle. This room is also crawling with Raiders, both on the ground floor and the upper floor. You need not open the locked door, you can instead go through a doorway to the south-west to reach the bonfire room.

Deal with the Raiders and their turret however you wish - if you left the red door locked they’ll only be able to reach you from one direction, which should simplify matters considerably. Once the Raiders are all dead, get to looting. Opposite the counter near the bonfire you can find a small room in which a Raider may have lurked. More interesting, however, is the Overdue Book on the shelf outside of the room, on a bookshelf. In the bonfire room you’ll find a pile of Railroad Agent bodies and the remains of a few Synths lying around… Somehow it seems unlikely that the Augusta safehouse is intact. In the southern corner of the level you may find a sleeping Raider in a room with a floor Safe [Advanced] behind a counter and, in another room, a Terminal you can use to activate a Protectron. You can also find another Book Return Terminal“, which will happily take your Overdue Books and give you garbage in return.

Continue around a corner to the south-east and head up some stairs overlooking the bonfire room below. Go through a doorway to the north-west, then make your way through another, larger, yet completely uninteresting room. Go through a doorway to the south-west, proceed down a hallway, past a bin full of more Railroad Agents, then turn south-east and go through a hole in the wall, where a Raider may yet be lurking. Clear the room beyond for some useful junk, then exit back north-west onto the balcony, where you’ll find an Elevator you can take up to the sixth floor.

Exit the elevator and turn down a hallway to the south-west, then zig-zag until you reach a turret overlooking a ramp. Dispatch if if you can, then head through a doorway in front of the ramp to the south-east and make your way through two rooms, looting as you go. If you go through a doorway to the north-west you’ll find yourself right next to the turret, if it’s still intact. Once those rooms are looted and the turret isn’t a threat anymore, go down the ramp.

Head south-east through a small room and into a larger room, where you can find a Ammo Box and some junk. Turn north-east and proceed through a bathroom, through another uninteresting small room, and then make your way out a blue door to the north-west to reach a nursery. Sadly, this room is no more interesting than the others. Head south-west through another doorway, then through some double doors to finally find something interesting; a large, ruined room where the Raiders have built a stronghold encompassing several vertical levels of the hospital, mostly with flimsy floor along the edges of the structure connected together by equally dangerous-looking bridges spanning the chamber. It’s a sniper’s paradise; if you have a suppressed, long-range weapon… well, enjoy.

Kill what you can, head along a walkway to the south-west, then head down a ramp to reach a landing where you’ll find a blue door [Advanced]. Through this door you’ll find a Syringer Rifle. It’s also a shortcut through the makeshift Raider stronghold, but you can always go the long way. Cross a bridge to the east to reach another platform, ascend some stairs to the north-east (after looting an Ammo Box behind them) then turn south-west and head down two flights of stairs, looting a First Aid Box in between them. Turn north-west and go down a ladder, then head through a hole in the wall to the north-west to reach a room with a bed in it, should you need some rest. There’s also another Overdue Book on the bookshelf near the bed. Most importantly, search a desk in this room to find the “Augusta Station Last Update” holotape, which is what Carrington wants.

From the bed turn north-east and go through another blue door, then continue north-east to find a red door [Advanced], which - like the last locked door - provide another shortcut. If that’s too easy for you, however, continue down a hallway to the north-east, then turn south-east to find a turret behind a makeshift barricade. Go through a door to the north-east and make your way through a hospital room, going through a hole in the wall to the south-east then turn south-west to get behind the turret. Further south-west you’ll find an unlocked blue door that leads to the same room as the locked red door earlier. In this room you can find the “Office Key”, which should open the way, if you can’t manage it yourself.

Exit back through the blue door and head south-west through a hole in the wall, where more Raiders may lurk. Once the way is clear, head down a ramp, then down some stairs before proceeding through a doorway to the north-west. Loot a small chamber to the south-west to find two Ammo Boxes and a Wooden Crate to loot, then return to the stairs you came down and turn south-east. Save your game and, if you’re brave and confident, head off a ledge to the south-east. Once you’re down here, you’ll have to survive against a most fearsome foe to get back out of the hospital; a Deathclaw. A few shots with a Combat Shotgun (especially if you sweeten things with a critical hit or two) should suffice to kill the beast.

When you are victorious, activate the Circuit Breaker in the southern corner of this floor, then head north-west to find a now-powered button that’ll open some double doors to the north-east. Before you continue down the hallway beyond these doors, however, grab a Fusion Core out of a nearby machine. Once done, head down the hallway to the north-east and loot a small room to the south-east to find a Steamer Chest before continuing up some stairs to the south-west and out a blue door to reach a small chamber outside that’s behind the barred blue door you couldn’t open earlier. You’ll catch RADS the whole way through the hallway, so popping a Rad-X isn’t a terrible idea. In any event, release the two latches and open the door to officially be done with Kendall Hospital. Return to Carrington for your reward and tell him what happened. He’ll have more work for you later, but it’ll take a while for a new development to turn up. In the meantime, why not help some other Railroad folks out?

Mercer Safehouse¶

Talk to PAM and she will - in her usual, indirect way - tell you about a settlement that needs to be secured, then developed for Railroad operations. This is another radiant quest, the lazy ad libs of RPG quest design, and a settlement will randomly be set as your objective. Claim it as normal (head over to the location and clear it out, then activate the Workshop) then building ten Defense around the Settlement (two turrets will do this) and report back to PAM.

Jackpot¶

She’ll immediately give you another task after completing “Mercer Safehouse”. Apparently there’s a black ops cache the Railroad wants recovered, and you’ll need an “RFID Device” to overcome come the “Tactical Counter-Surveillance Protocols” that cloak the cache. Sounds technical and stuff, but it’s just a glorified radiant fetch quest. There are several locations this quest can send you to; the Hub 360 building, Medford Memorial Hospital or the Ruined Skyscraper, all of which have been explored by now. Head to whatever place you’re assigned and reach the cache by following you map marker (you don’t necessarily have to kill anything there, although enemies will likely have respawned. Once you locate the cache, you’re good to go. You don’t need to even loot it, but… c’mon, why not uh… lend the Railroad a helping hand? Better hurry, though, as this quest will improve the Railroad efficacy by 2% (with a 3% margin of error!). Return to PAM when you’re done and she’ll reward you, and after more time passes she’ll give you another Jackpot quest, if you want more XP and Caps. You only need to do one, however, for the prize that makes all this worth doing…

Talk to Tinker Tom and he’ll tell you about some “Ballistic Polymer Weave” they were able to obtain from the DIA cache you found. This will allow you to infuse clothing with very, very potent “Ballistic Weave” defense mods. If you have four ranks in the Armorer perk, you can use these mods to imbue some normal clothing with up to 110 physical and energy damage resistance… you can even do this with underclothes and some hats. Simply put, this could triple the damage resistance you have right now, and the rarest component required - Ballistic Fiber - isn’t all that hard to find. This stuff single-handedly makes the Toughness perk obsolete, and is a much needed defensive boost for some of the late-game quests coming up in a bit.

Weathervane¶

Since you’re near near Tinker Tom, you might as well start working for him, too. He may have bothered you about this when you went to talk to him about the Ballistic Weave; he’ll ramble about his conspiracy theories and eventually ask you to place a surveillance device/atmospheric sensor called MILA on various elevated spots throughout the Commonwealth. The order in which he’ll assign you locations may be random, and most of them have already been explored, so they’ll be pointed out very briefly below:

• “Weathervane: Broken Monorail” : Head through the Haymarket Mall to the roof and descend the fire escape until you find a bridge leading into the suspended rail car. You’ll need to place MILA on a plank overlooking the city below.
• “Weathervane: Back Street Apparel” : Make your way through Back Street Apparel and climb a ladder to the roof to plant MILA on another vantage point.
• “Weathervane: Mass Bay Medical Center” : Ascend to the roof of the Mass Bay Medical Center by riding the elevator up from the fourth floor and going through Mass Bay Medical Radiology.
• “Weathervane: Hub 360” : The Hub 360 is near the Fallen Skybridge. Make your way to the top floor you can reach by foot, then take an elevator to the roof to find another vantage point.
• “Weathervane: Camp Kendall” : Fast-travel to Ticonderoga and follow the road west to find a Raider camp. Clear out the Raiders and note the tower with the “Now Leasing” banner on it. Enter some ruins to the north-west, go up some stairs cross a debris bridge to the north-east and ascend some ramps to reach a roof with a red-and-white striped water tower. To the south-west is a button that will summon a lift. Ride it to the top of the apartment tower across the street and place MILA on a vantage point.
• “Weathervane: Boston Bugle” : Enter the Boston Bugle building, take an elevator up, kill a Protectron, then exit out the door to “Beacon Hill” and plant MILA on some planks.
• “Weathervane: Parkview Apartments” : You’ll need to place the MILA device on the roof of the smaller, Raider-occupied apartments south of the Super Mutant-infested Parkview Apartments.
• “Weathervane: Cambridge Construction Site” : In the half-finished skyscraper occupied by Super Mutants west of Bunker Hill/south of BADTFL Regional Office. Ascend the structure, kill the muties, plant MILA just south-west of the Steamer Trunk, profit.
• “Weathervane: Corvega Assembly Plant” : You should remember the Corvega Assembly Plant from the quest “The First Step” . The vantage point you need to reach is on the metal walkways on the roof, right behind where the Repair Bobblehead was.
• “Weathervane: Four Leaf Fishpacking Plant” : Head up to the roof, killing Feral Ghouls along the way and plant MILA at the vantage point near the rooftop shelter with a Fusion Core inside of it.
  There’s no big payoff for doing these missions like the Jackpot missions, but it does give you an excuse to run all over Boston, and between the cumulative XP and Caps you earn for every MILO drop and the enemies you’ll fight along the way, it can be pretty lucrative.

Butchers Bill 2¶

After doing all that nonsense (probably much earlier) talk to Carrington again and he’ll tell you that an agent who was supposed to have died at Augusta has turned up, and is now in the custody of Raiders. He feels it’s a wild goose chase, but that won’t stop him from from sending you on the mission. Agree to go on this futile hunt and fast-travel to the dead drop site to find the “Blackbird Report”, which will point out the location of Blackbird as the Federal Ration Stockpile. Fast-travel there, kill the Raiders outside (including the one in Power Armor) and their little turrets, too. You’ve already cleared this place, so it should be easy enough to make your way south to the previously locked ration storeroom to find Blackbird’s body. Take the “Note from Blackbird” off his body and return to Carrington, who is pretty smug about being right about the whole affair.

Memory Interrupted¶

Once more time passes you can return to the Railroad HQ to hear from Drummer Boy that PAM needs you again. Head to her room to find that Carrington and Desdemona are gathered there as well. PAM will give some bad news and Dez will ask if you’re ready to fix things. Again. The Institute is apparently blocking a route the Railroad uses to smuggle reformated Synths, and it either needs to be cleared with force. this starts the quest “Memory Interrupted” .

Fast-travel back to Goodneighbor and enter The Memory Den. Talk to Amari and tell her the Railroad’s plan and she’ll complain before instructing you to pick up the “Goodbye From H2-22” holotape, which is upstairs, in the main room occupied by Irma, on a small round table along the southern end of the room. Grab it, listen to it, then head on out. Your goal now is to head to the original route and wipe out the Gen 1s that occupy the Malden Center Station. This area has already been cleared, so it doesn’t need to be detailed again. This time, however, you’ll have Glory helping you out, due to the Railroad’s organizational incompetence.

And with that, you’re done doing side quests for the Railroad. You did a lot of running around, sure, much of it back-tracking, but the XP and Caps you earned along the way were certainly worth it. Most importantly, however, you got the Ballistic Weave mods, which should have substantially improved your defensive situation. Now your total defense is roughly equal to wearing one piece of Power Armor! Huzzah! Anyways, you picked up several quests at Bunker Hill. You’ll want to resolves those shortly, but first, there’s one more map marker in the area around Bunker Hill you should see to…