Continue on to the southern end of the New Vegas Strip to find the final areas; the NCR Embassy, the NCR Military Police HQ, Vault 21 Gift Shop and Michael Angelo’s Workshop.

Vault 21 Gift Shop¶

Start out by visiting the Vault 21 Gift Shop, which is the northern-most of the buildings on this side of the strip. Inside you can find Sarah, a friendly Vault dwellers who now runs this themed gift-shop and hotel. Ask about the vault stuff they sell, then ask about vault gear to find out that they are lacking particular stock; vault suits. Offer to help her out to start a free-form quest that requires you to gather thirty vault suits from whatever vault. Succeed at a [Barter 65] check to get her to accept Boomer jumpsuits, for what good that does. If you’ve been keeping the vault suits as you’ve found them, you should have had no trouble securing thirty of them by now. Hand them over to get 30 Caps per suit, plus a tiny bit of The Strip Fame. If you talk to her again after giving her the thirty vault suits she’ll be noticeably more friendly towards you, and you can parlay this disposition into some intimate time with her. Of course, you’ll have to rent a room for this, which will set you back 20 Caps (10 with a successful [Barter 55] check), but it’s a small price to pay for a little love.

In addition to that little quest, you can ask her about the vault’s history, how it operated, and how it turned from a survival mechanism to a tourist attraction. Get the guided tour, hear her stories, then ask if she’s ever left the vault and pass a [Perception 8] check to learn she’s a bit agoraphobic. If you want to find out more about her, you can hack the Vault 21 Reception Terminal [Very Hard] in the Gift Shop, but there’s an easier terminal you can tamper with in Vault 21 with the same information on it.

Speaking of Vault 21… well, you can try to loot the hotel. The odd chem and piece of clothing awaits you in the various Dressers, as well as assorted loot in Vault 21 Lockers. Search the guest rooms to find Strip Letter 1, 2 and 3. All of them are on desks. Your room, if you rent one, is just east of the game room Vault 21 opens into, through a door on the northern end of the room and down a hallway to the east. Further east of this is Sarah’s room [Average]. Inside you can find the Snow Globe - The Strip , and in Sarah’s Dresser [Hard] you can find 180 Caps and some clothes. Lastly, if you hack Sarah Terminal [Easy] you can snoop on some correspondence between her and her brother, for what that’s worth.

NCR Embassy¶

Leave Vault 21 behind and head across the street to find the NCR Embassy building to the north and the NCR Military HQ to the south. As of right now, there’s not much to do in here, although this place will become more interesting as you get more involved in the main story… at least, if you help out the NCR. For now, you can talk to Liza O’Malley, the receptionist, although she’ll largely just refer you to ambassador Crocker. Teach her a lesson in manners by hacking her Terminal [Easy], which contains some uninteresting NCR banter and the whining of your typical, over-worked bureaucrat.

Go through a door to the east to find a barracks room with the odd Locker and Footlocker to loot, as well as Strip Letter 11 on a table near some beds. Along this side of the building you can also find a cafeteria full of food stuffs and Strip Note 9 on a table, some bathrooms and a storage closet with little to recommend them.

Through a door to the west of the lobby, you’ll find two rooms after you turn a corner; an office room to the east where you can score the note “Ambassador Phillip Granger’s Final Report”. The larger office to the west is that of the current ambassador, Dennis Crocker. He will, at length, tell you about himself and the history of the NCR (with a focus on their efforts on the Mojave). If you want some backstory… he’s a good source of it. You can also play Caravan with him, and since he regularly bets more than 1000 Caps a hand, it’s well worth doing if you’re any good at the game. Before you go, consider hacking his Terminal [Average] to get some vague information on the Omertas, Freeside, the Fiends, and the NCR Sharecropper Farms. Lastly, grab the note “Ambassador Susanna Edith’s Final Report” off the top of the bookshelf along the western wall. Time to head across the street to the NCR Military Police HQ.

NCR Military Police HQ¶

This area is pretty simple, but there’s some goodies worth looting, if you can manage to pick a locked door [Hard] in the south-eastern corner of the room you enter into. Beyond this door you can find some contraband weapons on a metal shelf, four Ammo Boxes a First Aid Box and some NCR Trooper Armor. You can also hack a Terminal [Easy] for some useless information and pick the locked desk the terminal is on [Average] to gain an equally useless key. Head into the prison room to find Strip Letter 10 on a desk, then leave the building.

Classic Inspiration¶

The last stop on the strip is Michael Angelo’s Workshop, the southern-most building here. Once inside head west to find the inhabitants of this workshop, either on the scaffolding above the factory floor or in some rooms to the north of it. If you talk to Kate, she’ll point you to Michael Angelo, the creative mind behind all the gaudy neon that comes out of this place.

The man himself is usually in the rooms to the north. Find Michael Angelo and, if you’re a jerk, pass a [Speech 40] then either a [Speech 45] or [Repair 45] check followed by a final [Speech 55] check to score 300 Caps off the hapless artist. This will, however, lock you out of a quest, so it’s probably not in your best interest. You can string him along on three skill checks for bonus XP, then come clean before taking his money, if you want to at least get something out of talking to him.

Ask him about why he’s so worried about Mr. House and he’ll reveal what Kate probably already did; he designs all the flashy casino signs around here, and humans, being akin to your stupid, ordinary insect, can’t help but fly towards lights towards their peril. His problem? Same as his sister; acute agoraphobia. Pass a [Medicine 55] check (you can also loop through another [Speech 50] and [Speech 55] check to get more XP out of him, but it’ll mean retreading conversation lines a bit) and offer him one of a series of dubious cures, all of which he’ll reject. He’ll come up with an alternative, which naturally involves a lot of leg-work on your part.

Michael Angelos Workshop¶

Agree to help and he’ll hand you a camera, some film and list a bunch of landmarks he wants you to take photos of, all of which starts the quest Classic Inspiration . This quest should be quite easy by now, as you should have discovered every landmark Michael Angelo wants a photo of. All you need to do is fast-travel there, equip the mighty Codac R9000, and snap some images of the targets. These are the Bison Steve Hotel’s rotating sign, the dinosaur of Novac, the entrance to HELIOS One, Camp McCarran’s sign and the Sunset Sarsaparilla bottle entrance. Snap all of these landmarks and soak up the juicy XP each time, then return to Michael Angelo for your reward. If you’re returning after snapping all the photos, you’ll get Caps equal to the XP you got for each photo (100 for the first, 200 for the last, increasing by 25 each time) and a single payout of 200 XP, 500 Caps and The Strip Fame, for a total of 950 XP and 1250 Caps. Not bad for a little fast-traveling.

You’re now done with The Strip. And pretty much everywhere else in the game that doesn’t require a confrontation with the NCR or Caesar’s Legion. At this point in the game, you should have nothing but positive (or mostly positive) reputation with all the factions… if you played the Fame game as suggested in the guide and didn’t pick sides yet, anyways. Ideally, you are near the end of the game and can do anything, side with any one, and that’s a good place to be in right now. This privileged status won’t last much longer, however, as once you start playing serious politics in New Vegas, and take actions that may seriously determine the fate of factions, you’ll have to cross others to advance your favored faction(s)… or your own agenda. Some of these decisions will be considered again shortly, as - like in Cottonwood Cove during the quest Eye For An Eye - you’ll have the option to work for one side against the other.

For various reasons two areas west of Novac were avoided earlier in the guide; Camp Forlorn Hope and Nelson, the site of serious confrontation between the NCR and Caesar’s Legion. To complete one quest or another, the leaders of one side are going to have to die, although it’s possible to mitigate the Infamy you’ll receive for this. Camp Forlorn Hope will be the first target, as there are plenty of quests there that don’t directly affect the Legion, which will be impossible to complete later if their quest-givers are all dead.