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Fallout 4

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Starlight Drive In

By
Nathan Garvin

Walkthrough for the Starlight Drive In area, as well as the quest Taking Point: Starlight Drive-In in Fallout 4.

The Starlight Drive-In.

Starlight Drive In is east and a bit north from the [Drumlin Diner] - you should be able to easily spot Starlight Drive In’s outdoor screen from the aforementioned location. You may have received a quest from Preston - Taking Point: Starlight Drive-In - to claim this settlement, but aside from being able to return to Preston for some extra XP afterwards, it doesn’t really affect how this area plays out.

The Starlight Drive-In is an excellent potential staging point for your future ventures into [Lexington], as the area is only a short distance north of [Super Duper Mart], an area on the northeastern edge of Lexington.

(1 of 3) Exterminate the burrowed Mole Rats infesting the drive-in’s parking lot,

Exploring the Starlight Drive-In

The grounds of this area consist of several buildings and a large, car-strewn parking lot, which the aforementioned structures surround. The parking lot features a water-filled pit which is polluted by radioactive waste - getting too close will cause you to catch a high dose of Rads. The radiation, in turn, has attracted a pack of Mole Rats, which you must exterminate before you can claim the area as a settlement.

Mole rats and radiation aren’t your only concerns, however, as there are also several explosive devices strewn about the area, including near the door to the main building, a Bottlecap Mine near the Workshop shed to the northwest, and possibly some Frag Mines on the stairs of the screen structure.

The northeastern-most structure, consisting of the concession counter and projector tower, contains various bits of items you can scrap and a few parcels of food, but little of great interest. If you don’t mind bedding down with a skeleton, you can use the Mattress in the projection room to regain lost health. Just be wary of the Makeshift Bomb near the door on the ground floor - using the collapsed roof to reach a safer door on the second floor is advised.

In an isolated shack [Novice] along the northwestern edge of the grounds you’ll find the settlement’s Workshop, which you can activate once the Molerats are dead. There’s a bit of junk you can grab for scrap, just be wary of the Bottlecap Mine near a skeleton outside.

(1 of 2) In a storage room behind the screen you can find a Fusion Core,

In a storage room behind the screen you can find a Fusion Core, (left), and a Nuka-Cola Quantum. (right)

Finally, at the southwestern edge of the area you have the screen structure, which consists of three separate areas. First there are the stairs inside the screen structure, which you can use to reach the top. Be wary of random Frag Mines along the stairs and when you reach the top, search some containers to find the Back Storage Key. This key opens the door to the Workshop shack.

Behind the screen you’ll find two small rooms, an unlocked room with a crib and some food strewn about, and little else of interest. In a second, larger room behind the screen [Novice] you’ll find shelves strewn with goodies, including a Fusion Core, a Nuka-Cola Quantum. There’s also a Safe [Expert] on the floor in the northern corner. Like other settlement-bound locks, you can simply enter build mode and break the safe down if you wish to spare yourself the hassle of picking the lock.

(1 of 2) The water-filled pit in the middle of the parking lot is highly radioactive.

The water-filled pit in the middle of the parking lot is highly radioactive. (left), You can deal with this pollution by breaking down the radioactive barrels in the water - but doing so will inflict you with an awful lot of Rads. (right)

Starlight Drive-In as a Settlement

Starlight Drive-In has a lot going for it as a settlement. First, it has a rather large build area, much of which is flat land suitable for constructing structures - pretty much everything between the screen and the projection tower will, with a little bit of cleanup, serve your purposes nicely. The water-filled radioactive pit in the middle of the parking lot does present an obstacle, but you can turn this hindrance into a boon if you brave some Rads. Enter build mode, pop a Rad-X, then enter the water-filled pit and break down the yellow radioactive barrels. Once they’re all gone you’ll have a clean source of drinking water you can build Water Purifiers on, which makes providing water easier.

As for food, you’ll either have to seek out an unpaved area (basically anything near the screen or along the northwestern edge of the settlement) or find breaks in the parking lot, which are numerous. If you have access to Garden Plots, things are even simpler.

Given its merits as a settlement, the Starlight Drive-In is a prime area to develop before you venture south to Lexington.

All in all, Starlight Drive-In is a pretty forgiving settlement with plenty of space, a decent amount of farmland, and a convenient water source. An all-in-one structure near the screen works wonderfully. Given its proximity to Lexington, you should spend some effort establishing a settlement here, as it’ll prove quite lucrative to have a port in the storm for when you eventually start exploring further south.

This completes the southern stretch of our exploration of the areas (loosely) around Sanctuary, and when the settlement at Starlight Drive-In is established, we’ll be quite well situated to press south into Lexington. There are, however, some areas to the north we should really wrap up before we turn our attention further south, including a pair of settlements which will make a future eastward push easier.

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Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Bethesda Softworks
  • Platforms,
    PC, PS4, XB One
  • Genre
    RPG
  • Guide Release
    16 December 2015
  • Last Updated
    2 August 2023
    Version History
  • Guide Author
    Nathan Garvin, Greg Wright

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It’s just another day. Having just been accepted into Vault 111, you spend the morning with your family going about your daily routine. That is until alarms blare out, signalling a nuclear attack. You and your family sprint towards the Vault along with everyone else in the neighborhood just as a bomb explodes nearby. After surviving the blast, you are lowered into the Vault and enter cryosleep. Two hundred years pass and you awake to a world ravaged by nuclear war. You are the Sole Survivor and what awaits you is a mystery as you set out to conquer the Wasteland.

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