Become a Prizefighter is an unmarked quest in Fallout 2.
The New Reno championship is a boxing tournament that the Chosen One can join if they wish. This quest relies heavily on the Unarmed skill.
Quick walkthrough[]
| Side Quest: Become a Prizefighter | |||||
| Speak with Stuart Little. | |||||
| Decide which name will you be known as. | |||||
| Defeat Joqq. | |||||
| Reward: 500 XP $50 | |||||
| Defeat Pete McKneely. | |||||
| Reward: 750 XP $50 | |||||
| Defeat Evan Holyfeld. | |||||
| Reward: 1000 XP $400 | |||||
| Defeat the Masticator. | |||||
| Rewards: 2500 XP $1000 Prizefighter reputation (Optional) Player's ear (Optional) Masticator's ear | |||||
Detailed walkthrough[]
If the Chosen One goes into the Jungle Gym and talks to Stuart Little, they can box. If their Strength is below 6 or are female, they will have to pass a Speech check.
Four different opponents will have to be defeated in order to win:
- First fight: Joqq, a regular boxer. The reward for the winner is $50 and 500 XP.
- Second fight: Pete "The Hurricane" McKneely, a weak contender. The reward for the winner is $50 and 750 XP.
- Third fight: Evan Holyfeld, a competent fighter. The reward for the winner is $400 and 1000 XP.
- Final fight: Mike "the Masticator", the heavyweight fighting champion. The reward for the winner is $1000, 2500 XP and the Prizefighter reputation.
The sums are given assuming that the Chosen One gets the default 50% of the winnings; with Speech 76% and Barter 76%, they can haggle for 75% instead. They also get any corresponding kill experience if they happen to beat a boxer to death; the announcer will count this as a knockout.
The ways of winning a match include:
- Knockout: scoring a Critical Hit that knocks the opponent unconscious, or if the opponent scores a critical failure that would make them lose their next turn.
- Technical knockout: hurting the opponent so much that it makes them flee.
- Points: managing to make a fight last 12 full rounds and win the majority of them by landing more punches than the opponent.
Upon winning all four matches, the Chosen One is awarded the Prizefighter reputation title, which also allows them to loot the gym lockers without the inhabitants stopping them.
If the Chosen One loses a fight, they must ask Little for a rematch immediately, or they won't get another chance, and pass a Speech check. The royalties will then be dropped to 25% but the XP gained is the same.
A low Intelligence character can box, too, provided they are male and have a Strength of 6. Apart from getting no pay and rematches, there are no differences to how the quest functions.
Fighting[]
When a fight starts, the Chosen One is equipped with boxing gloves. If they have plated boxing gloves, these will be used instead.
In a fight, only punching the opponent with the gloves is allowed; any other attack will get the character disqualified. Unlike real-life boxing, though, it's permitted to hit any part of the body and to finish off a fallen opponent.
The Masticator can bite off the Chosen One's ear – reducing Charisma by 1 and adding the ear to the inventory. If the Chosen One has an Unarmed skill of about 160% or higher, they may end up biting off the Masticator's ear instead.
Boxers comparison table[]
| Statistic | Joqq | Pete McKneely | Evan Holyfeld | Mike the Masticator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strength | 07 | 06 | 09 | 10 |
| Perception | 10 | 10 | 10 | 10 |
| Endurance | 07 | 04 | 09 | 10 |
| Charisma | 03 | 03 | 03 | 02 |
| Intelligence | 03 | 03 | 03 | 02 |
| Agility | 07 | 07 | 10 | 10 |
| Luck | 05 | 04 | 08 | 09 |
| Statistic | Joqq | Pete McKneely | Evan Holyfeld | Mike the Masticator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hit Points | 90 | 75 | 125 | 150 |
| Experience Points | 100 | 100 | 500 | 1000 |
| Armor Class | 7 | 7 | 20 | 30 |
| Action Points | 8 | 8 | 10 | 10 |
| Carry Weight | 200 | 175 | 250 | 275 |
| Melee Damage | 2 | 1 | 4 | 5 |
| Sequence | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Healing Rate | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 |
| Statistic | Joqq | Pete McKneely | Evan Holyfeld | Mike the Masticator |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Unarmed | 90% | 80% | 110% | 125% |
| Melee Weapons | 75% | 65% | 90% | 100% |
Remarkably, the second opponent Pete McKneely is weaker than the first, Joqq.
Alternate boxers[]
If the Chosen One has lost a match, an alternate opponent is substituted for the rematch. The same happens if the boxer that the Chosen One is meant to face is dead. The substitutes are:
- Joqq —
Mal Fisto - Pete McKneely — Tony Gunn
- Evan Holyfeld — "Steel" Mark Torrance
- Masticator — Xander "the Sure Thing" Holyland
The first and the last replacements cannot actually be fought. Joqq isn't present anywhere before the fight (thus cannot be killed), nor is there a code entry for replacing him. If the Masticator is killed in the Shark Club, there's dedicated code that makes Stuart Little disappear upon returning to the 2nd street map unless the player already completed the quest, making it impossible to proceed. Xander Holyland, however, can be fought as a result of a bug.
The rewards for defeating the backup opponents are the same as for the normal ones.
All of the alternate boxers use generic boxer models that have the same stats as Joqq:
| Statistic | Generic Boxer |
|---|---|
| Strength | 07 |
| Perception | 10 |
| Endurance | 07 |
| Charisma | 03 |
| Intelligence | 03 |
| Agility | 07 |
| Luck | 05 |
| Statistic | Generic Boxer |
|---|---|
| Hit Points | 90 |
| Experience Points | 100 |
| Armor Class | 7 |
| Action Points | 8 |
| Carry Weight | 200 |
| Melee Damage | 2 |
| Sequence | 20 |
| Healing Rate | 2 |
| Statistic | Generic Boxer |
|---|---|
| Unarmed | 90% |
| Melee Weapons | 75% |
Behind the scenes[]
- Among the nicknames to choose for the boxing ring, the Chosen One can pick Balboa, Clubber Lang, Drago or Apollo—references to the movie series Rocky.
- Two of the other possible names are Glass Joe and Bald Bull, a reference to the NES game Punch-Out!!.
- Masticator biting off the Chosen One's ear and vice-versa is a reference to the infamous boxing incident in which Mike Tyson bit off a portion of Evander Holyfield's ear.
Bugs[]
- At the start of every match, the Chosen One gets a permanent +3 bonus to Damage Threshold for normal damage (to a maximum of 100), -1 for plasma and explosive damage, and a bonus to Damage Resistance (DR) for each listed damage type except fire (to a maximum of 90%). If they use normal gloves, they get +1% DR for all four types, and for plated ones, they get +2% for normal damage, +5% for laser damage and +1% for the others (there's also a -1% penalty to Chosen One's unlisted EMP resistance, but this doesn't matter in the least; the electricity resistance is unaffected).[verified]
- The Chosen One gets to keep these bonuses even after losing a match. Therefore, they can deliberately throw one match and ask Stuart Little for another shot to get the fifth toughness bonus.
- The bug's cause is the game not taking away DT/DR bonus stats from the gloves at the end of the fight.
- This has been fixed in the latest Steam version (1.02), Damage Threshold and Damage Resistance are no longer granted at the start of each match.
- If the player character has lost a match by a critical failure that caused them to lose their next turn (counted as a knockout), they will immediately lose the following match, too, as soon as it starts (by a knockout, too), thus failing the quest.[verified]
- A workaround is to ask Stewart Little to wait, then enter combat mode (it will immediately end by itself) before the next match.
- The reason is the same as the previous bug: fights in the ring are not terminated correctly, so the player character continues to serve their penalty at the start of the next combat.
- You fight Xander Holyland for a rematch if you've lost to Masticator. Be wary that Stuart Little will still disappear if you leave the 2nd Street map before doing the rematch. The winning message will still say that you defeated Masticator.[verified]
- That's because when the boxer's object is destroyed after the match, the same procedure is called as if he has been killed and the script logic doesn't make a distinction.
- In the unpatched game, when Masticator bit off the Chosen One's ear, their Charisma wasn't decreased by one but rather increased by current Charisma minus one (due to a scripting error instigated by a counterintuitive function name).[verified]
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