South Boston High School¶

After you’re done dealing with Bobbi and Hancock, head back north to find an unmarked monument. Head up near the monument and head south to find a door leading to a Raider camp. Clear the Raiders out and make your way east through a wooden shack to discover South Boston High School. Enter the building and fear not, as there are no enemies in this small portion of the wrecked High School. To the south is a pair of bathrooms where you can find a First Aid Box. The lower level has nothing left but junk, so follow the ramp upwards and around to a room where you can find a Chem Station and an [Advanced] locked safe. That’s it for here, so head back outside.

Continue to the east past the Raider housing and hang a left so that you’re traveling can north. Watch out for Frag Mines on the ground out here and make your way forward to a wooden gate. Open it and kill the Super Mutant and Mongrel you find. Now, you will find “The Gwinnett Restaurant” location here and the doors to it in front of you, but there is another Super Mutant off to the left you can put down easily. Take him down and enter the restaurant.

The Gwinnett Restaurant¶

This place has quite a few Super Mutants inside, so save and get ready to take them out. Right in front of you are some can traps you can disarm. Do so and take out the Super Mutants you find to the left. A Mongrel will very likely rush you here, so stay near the entrance and take it out. Behind the waiter counter here you can find a Bobby Pin Box. Nab it and head upstairs to the left, where near the ledge you can find some “Super Mutant Arm Guards” for Strong (assuming you have him). Head to the back and hang a right, to the bar area. There may be a Super Mutant here if you haven’t killed him yet, but do so and check behind the bar for a caps stash and the [Novice] locked “Bar Terminal”. There is also an elevator here and a locked [Advanced] terminal, but ignore both for now (you will get back to them).

Head back to the west and go down the stairs, killing anyone that may be left. From here, loot the cash registers and head east into the bathroom. There is a [Novice] locked door on the right (with a first aid kit across from it) and loot the junk and first aid kit inside. Continue past that into the kitchen, killing any Super Mutants you might find and looting the place for junk. There’s also note-ably a hole in the wall here that leads to the “brewing area”, and this hole connects you back to the terminal you just skipped. Before bothering with that, though, head north into a storage room and grab the “Super Mutant Cage Helmet” off a table.

Now, if you want you can either jump down a hole in the wall to the east or go back to the terminal and go into this room that way. There is a Super Mutant inside (very likely a leveled-up one) and a Mirelurk lurking in the mud down here, so don’t jump through the hole unless you are ready for them. No matter what you do though, be sure to head up the ramps and hack the [Advanced] terminal you see (there is a terminal on each side as well!). Up on the top there is also the “Gwinnett Brewery

Password“ to be found and a Chemistry Station if you want.

The next stop is the Gwinnett Brewery. Head down to the watery bottom of the room here and you’ll see a gigantic water pipe. Head into it and be ready to kill a Mirelurk, but stick to the right at both of the path splits (the left paths either get dead-ended by grates or rubble) and soon you will be in the Gwinnett Brewery.

Gwinnett Brewery¶

You will find yourself at the bottom of the brewery. Down here there are a number of Mirelurks to kill, so be sure to use VATS to try and spot them in the mud so you can get in some sneak attacks. There are also quite a few a few nests of Mirelurk Eggs you can find, where you can get three eggs and three Hatchling enemies per nest. Take some time to explore this very lower area and do some killing/egg looting. Once you are done, head back to the entrance where you came in at (the south-west

corner) and head up the catwalks to continue. Up the catwalks you’ll find a useless “Brewery Terminal” next to locked door [Expert], which leads to the front office. Inside the front-door office area you can find a [Novice] terminal on the desk and a [Novice] locked locker on the wall.

Now, this next part is… a bit weird, but worth the effort. You are going to be hopping around on pipes out in the brewery area. From the formerly locked double doors leading to the lobby, look out to the brewery and you can see you can jump north-east onto a vat easily. Go ahead and do so, then jump to the assembly line. From there, go directly forward (east) to the pipes and use them to reach a catwalk beyond. Follow the catwalk north-east, then north-west across a strut to reach a room in the upper levels of the brewery, which houses a copy of Tales of a Junktown Jerky Vendor and a Steamer Trunk (along with various junk).

Head back out to the walkway and follow four pipes to the south-east to reach a walkway on the south-eastern end of the level. Get on this walkway and turn south-west to find a door out to the roof. Go ahead and head out, then head up to the roof. Up here you can find one door with an [Advanced] lock on it you can pick for various goodies and another door that is barred. You can actually open this door if you shoot at the bar through the window, as that will jar the bar upward and unlock the door so you can reach the Duffle Bag inside. You are now done with the Brewery area as a whole.

General Electronics Factory¶

Make your way off the roof and head north-east to find the General Atomics Factory, which is near the Four Leaf Fishpacking Plant explored earlier. Mind the Super Mutants in the ruined building along the way and head into the factory. In the room you enter into you can find a “Receptionist Terminal” which contains utterly no useful information. If you head into a hallway to the south you can find two bathrooms, one of which has a Nuka Cherry in it, amongst other junk.

Return to the lobby and head north up some stairs and waste any Mr. Handy robots you find, then pick a locked door [Expert]. In the office beyond you’ll find a “General Atomics ID Card” on a desk near “Kincaid’s Terminal”, the latter of which is just full of the whinings of an old man. Leave this office and continue into another room to the west where you can find a Tesla Science magazine on a desk.

Return downstairs to the lobby continue through a door to the south to reach an assembly line room, where another pair of Mr. Handy Robots patrol. Deal with them and head upstairs to find a Laser Turret and some junk to loot, but your next goal is to the east, which you can reach by jumping on the assembly line and following it east through a hole in the wall, or by hacking a Terminal [Novice] on the ground floor, which can be used to open the nearby double doors.

Mrs. Nanny Training¶

Clear out the robots here and head through a door to the south (use the “QA Department Terminal” to get it open) where you’ll hear the soothing accented voice directing you to do things. Curie? Or limited voice actor pool? We report, you decide. Head into a room to the south and the robot will tell you a story about bad ol’ Timmy, whose role is played by a very dead skeleton on a couch. After the robotic voice is done talking, turn off the radio and you’ll be directed to the next room, which is to the north. In this room a Teddy Bear will helpfully play the role of a baby, and you’ll be directed to figure out what’s wrong to shut the thing up. Grab the Large Baby Bottle off a nearby dresser and plant the bottle in the Teddy Bear’s inventory. After this, return to the hallway, head west, then turn south to reach the third and final test room, where your “hazard detection matrices” will be tested. Pick up a box of Abraxo Cleaner from a table near a couch, grab a Machete that’s lurking in the fridge, then pick up an Adjustable Wrench on the floor under a footrest. After this, head out into the hallway again and turn west to find a Safe, which will be unlocked for you. Pillage it for several Fusion Cores and some other junk.

Return back to the room to the north and head east through a doorway and up some stairs. Enter a room on the second floor and loot a Toolbox [Novice], then head east to find a door [Advanced] leading to a small room, where you can find a wall Safe [Novice] and a First Aid Box. Loot, leave and head south to find two sealed doors with a Terminal in front of them. Use the Terminal to open the doors, then kill the Laser Turrets and the Mr. Gusty and Mr. Handy robots beyond said doors. Loot a Steamer Trunk and return to the stairs and head up to the third floor. In a room to the south you can find a Terminal [Expert], which controls the turrets in the room with the Steamer Trunk. Finally, head west across a bridge to find a Wooden Crate [Novice], after which it’s time to leave the building.

The Castle¶

That was the last stop on the way to The Castle. It’s time to continue south-east to your destination and meet up with Preston. Good news, you’re almost there! Seriously about time, right? Follow the waterfront as much as possible, navigating the docks until you’re heading east from The Gwinnett Restaurant, where you’ll find Preston and three Minutemen in a restaurant. Loot the goodies on a counter, then talk to Preston, who will tell you of the Mirelurks that are nesting in “The Castle” to the east. Here he will give you three options on how to attack the place: “Draw them out”, do a “Pincer Attack” or just go in “Guns Blazing”. The Mirelurks aren’t too dangerous here, but drawing them out is by far the safest method for your AI companions, for what little they matter. Still, choose what you will and head to (and discover) “The Castle”.

Follow your Minutemen allies and soon they will be in place, after which they will follow your orders from earlier. If you can, head forward and snipe at the enemies inside the yard to get easy sneak attacks in. You will be facing a total of 7-8 Mirelurks in total, but if you are fighting inside the yard you may also run over nests of Mirelurk Eggs and have to deal with the Hatchlings that come out of them. Once you clear out all of the enemies in the yard, your objective will change. Preston will mention the Mirelurks have nested and you need to clear out the nests of eggs.

Now… there are a lot of nests in this area. There is a catch to this objective though, so go ahead and quicksave right now. To clear out the nests, start in the yard and once they are all cleared head up the wreckage of the walls to the est and start to clear the nests out up there. As you are doing so, the fort will be attacked by a Mirelurk Queen. You’ve dealt with these things before, so you should know what to expect: they’re big, poisonous, and can deal lots of damage… but a few well-placed sneak attacks and/or critical hits can take one out quickly enough. You cleared out the yard first to make sure when the Queen showed up you would be on the ramparts, so go ahead and fill it full of lead from your height advantage. The AI will help distract it a bit, but it may very well come after you anyways. If you just keep filling it with lead and it will fall. It should be noted that there is a Missile Launcher down in the northeast corner of the fort, but you may run into another Mirelurk/Nest here and to be quite honest missiles and AI companions don’t exactly mix.

Once you kill off the Queen, go talk to Preston and he will examine the radio with you. As you can see, turning it on does nothing. To fix this issue you’ll be tasked with powering it up. Be sure to grab the Guns and Bullets skill magazine by the radio on the desk after checking out the radio. Now… what you have to do to “power the radio up” is to turn The Castle into a Settlement, so go interact with the Workshop to the east to claim this settlement, which will, of course, allow you to build things. You can get a lot of the components you’ll need by breaking down junk lying around The Castle, and the Workshop starts off with some basic supplies.

The Radio Transmitter takes a whopping ten power to function, which can be done by building a “Generator - Large”, two “Generators - Medium” or four “Generators - Small” or “Generators - Windmill”. By now you should know how to build generators, run wire from the generator(s) to the Radio Transmitter. As an example of what you can do here, build two Medium Generators to the right of the power pylon switch (which is to the right of the Workshop). This switch will be your “Power On/Off” focus point. Just build two Medium Generators side by side and wire them to each other and then to the pylon. From there, build a power pylon (Power > Connectors & Switches > Power Pylon) halfway between the radio and the power switch, and wire the power switch to the pylon you just built and then onto the radio. This will meet the requirements easily (just make sure the power switch is turned on!), so go talk to Preston afterwards and you will officially finish this quest. This will also get the “Radio Freedom” station up and running, if you care to listen to string instruments.

Old Guns¶

Once that’s done, you might as well build this place up as a proper settlement. There’s a “Water Purifier - Industrial” to the north, north-east of the The Castle, outside the walls, which will provide all the water you’ll ever need… and then some, but you’ll need to provide five extra Power to get it running. If you take enough time building up your settlement (transporting resources can take up a lot of time!) you should get notified that somebody is waiting to talk to you at The Castle. If not, just rest somewhere for a few days and this quest - “Old Guns” - should pop up. If you stay tuned in to “Radio Freedom” you’ll be notified via the airwaves once this quest becomes available, or Preston or another Minuteman may just tell you.

Travel to The Castle and once you get there go talk to Ronnie Shaw. This woman will claim to be a veteran Minuteman and wanted to see the new general for herself (making it clear you’ll need to earn her respect). Funny, despite pulling rank, she didn’t seem to care enough to come around when the Minutemen were nearly extinct, did she? If you want, you can reply rudely to her and get in a brawl, which will end long before you kill her. Be cordial however and ask her what she wants and she will tell you that you need her but, more importantly, she knows how to access the Castle’s Armory.

As you may have guessed, the Armory is located behind the door in the courtyard with the massive steel strut blocking it. Go figure… Ronnie will head to the General’s Room nearby though and point out the hallway filled with rubble. She will then ask you to “do something about it”. Ha! What you need to do is enter “Workshop Mode” and scrap the rubble in the hallway if you haven’t done so already. Once you do that, the path down to “The Castle Tunnels” is opened up and you can follow Ronnie down into them.

The Castle Tunnel¶

One very important note down here: there are Frag Mines everywhere in these tunnels! Everywhere! Be sure you use VATS around every corner and in every room to locate and disarm them. Or, if you have Sneak rank 2, you won’t set off the traps, but companions are still pretty derp.

With that out of the way, start disarming the mines and exploring the rooms down here. There aren’t many enemies down here, but you can find a room full of cannonballs (for the Broadside weapon) and, as you head west, you can search a middle room for a Laser Musket. The room just to the right of that has one of two enemies in these tunnels; a Machine Gun Turret. Take it out and quicksave. Up ahead is the final enemy down here, a Sentinel named “Sarge”. If you head into his room nonchalantly, Ronnie will mention he has guarded this area forever but he will soon attack you. Therefore, it is better to go on the attack right away as you enter the room. Try to destroy his mini-gun arms on both sides and take him out from there, watching out for his self-destruct sequence once he dies.

Once he is dead, Ronnie will use the nearby computer to open the nearby door (which you can’t use, so don’t bother getting to it before her). Inside of this room you will meet General McGann, a previous Minuteman general. You can loot his body for the unique items “Minutemen General’s Hat” and “Minutemen General’s Uniform”. Hey, it’s not like he needs it anymore, right?

Armory and Artillery¶

From here you will have access to the armory and the west bastion as you leave the tunnels and Ronnie opens the steel door. The Armory is open for business! Ah, so good… there are a lot of goodies to be had here, including the “Laser Musket Four Crank Capacitor”, the “Laser Musket Medium Scope”, and lastly a “Laser Musket Beam Splitter”. Those are just modifications though, you can also find all sorts of grenades, a Fat Man, and two Stealth Boys. The real key here though is the “Artillery Schematic”, which is what you need to progress this quest. Be sure to grab the Artillery Supplies to the left and right of the schematic (each supply is enough to build one artillery piece) as well as the “Artillery Smoke Grenades” from the yellow box nearby (you will need these soon). There are also weapon and armor crafting tables here as well, if you wish to use them.

Up next Ronnie will ask you to build some artillery for. A great idea! You can do this by using the “Special” tab in the workshop and, thanks to the supplies you just picked up, you’ll have enough parts to easily craft two pieces of artillery (although you only need one). Now as usual, you can place these things anywhere you wish but there are actually spots for the artillery pieces up on the walls (the round, grey bricks) that they fit nicely into. Up to you, of course.

Once you have that done, Ronnie will say that next you need to test the artillery and will tell you to head to the nearby house outside The Castle and use an Artillery Smoke Grenade to mark it for shelling. You’ll also be told to optionally to tune to Radio Freedom (which is easily done). Head out to the nearby house and chuck a smoke grenade into it, then get back. Watch as it gets shelled to hell. And this power is now yours!

The last part of this quest asks you to talk to Preston, which is easy enough but it should be noted that as of now, Ronnie Shaw is officially a Minuteman Merchant. You can “re-supply” with her, but of course that means buying things from her. One of these things is “The Last Minute” , which is a legendary Gauss Rifle variant that does +50% Limb Damage. Quite powerful, but expensive. Once you’re done messing with Ronnie Shaw go talk to Preston to finish this quest.

That’s all for the Minutemen, for now, anyways. You’ve explored pretty much every area in the south here, but there are a few (read: many) places to the south-east that are very well worth exploring. Simply put, it’s a Bobblehead bonanza. You’re going to want that sweet loot.