Talk to Thomas Kemp in the Botanical Lab area and he’ll admit to being a lousy engineer, something he hopes to remedy by acquiring some issues of “The Young Spacer’s Guide to Mechanical Engineering”. You can pass an [Engineering 10] check for some XP, but it has no real bearing on the outcome of the quest.

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(1 of 4) Talk to Thomas and he’ll as you to find him three volumes of “The Young Spacer’s Guide to Mechanical Engineering”.

In any event, he wants you to find at least one of these datapads, and there are three in the Emerald Vale region you can possibly find. Their locations are as follows:

– Guide to Mechanical Engineering: Volume 1 - Emerald Vale Community Center. Head upstairs and search the desks in central room to find this datapad.

– Guide to Mechanical Engineering: Volume 2 - Edgewater, Saltuna Cannery. Make your way to the factory floor and climb up to the elevated walkway where you’ll find two rooms, one to the west and one to the east. Enter the eastern room to find this datapad on some filing cabinets.

– Guide to Mechanical Engineering: Volume 3 - Geothermal Power Plant: You’ll need to start the quest Comes Now the Power to gain access to the Geothermal Power Plant’s depths, facilitated by Reed Tobson’s passcode. Once inside, make your way to a part of the Geothermal Power Plant affectionately called “the pit”, which should be self-explanatory. Descend to the bottom to find a deranged survivor named Higgins. Search the northwestern corner of the bottom of the pit to find this datapad near a bedroll.

You can turn the datapads in as you find them, gaining escalating rewards for each one you turn in. For the first two datapads you’ll get Bits, while for the third you’ll get an Electro-Charged Surface mod, not to mention the Deserters reputation you’ll get for each datapad.