Hole in the Wall is a side quest in Fallout 4.
Quick walkthrough
| Side quest: Hole in the Wall | |||||||||||||
| Donate blood and wait 24 hours. | |||||||||||||
| Go to the infirmary. | |||||||||||||
| Follow Bobby. | |||||||||||||
| Explore the secret vault. | |||||||||||||
| Talk to Curie. | |||||||||||||
| Reward: Vault 81 cure | |||||||||||||
| Take the cure back to the infirmary. | |||||||||||||
| Agree to use the cure for Austin. | Save the cure for yourself. | ||||||||||||
| Reward: Syringer Vault 81 room | |||||||||||||
| Reward: 250+ XP Curie as a companion | |||||||||||||
| Leads to: Dependency Emergent Behavior | |||||||||||||
Detailed walkthrough
After donating blood to Dr. Forsythe, leave the vault and either pursue the Here Kitty, Kitty quest to find Ashes or else wait for 24 hours or more before returning. (You may have to complete another quest in addition to waiting 24 hours before the next scene will trigger.) Austin Engill will have been moved to the vault's medical bay. Speaking with Dr. Penske begins the quest.
Austin was bitten by a mole rat when wandering in a secret part of Vault 81 and subsequently fell ill. The player must follow Bobby De Luca to the entrance hidden in the reactor room. They are asked to go into that part of the vault and find a cure. During the investigation, they must fight their way through run-down rooms full of Vault 81 lab mole rats, which will transmit a disease if they manage to bite the Sole Survivor, their companion or any activated protectron, conferring a potentially permanent loss of 10 HP. The true purpose of Vault 81 as an infectious disease incubation and vaccine development facility is also discovered. In the final area there is a terminal that must be hacked or unlocked with a password in the far room on the upper floor past a mole rat brood mother. The password to the locked terminal is next to the research comm terminal in the subsequent room. After this the player finds a robot named Curie who has manufactured the cure; however, there is only one dose left. Curie follows the player out of the secret vault up an elevator back to the locked door by the main vault's entrance. The player must then return to Dr. Forsythe in the medical bay with the cure and make a choice:
Option 1: Give Austin the cure
If the Sole Survivor gives the cure to Dr. Forsythe, they receive rewards including the syringer rifle and a room in Vault 81 located across from the depot. Most items throughout the vault are no longer marked as owned and can be freely picked up without angering the residents. As a side effect, if the player character has contracted the disease during this quest, they keep the disease.
Option 2: Deny Austin the cure
No matter whether it's by directly refusing it in dialogue (requires selecting "Only one, it's mine" followed by "Let him die"), selling or losing it, or using it on yourself (possibly to cure your own mole rat disease), all of these options are treated the same: Austin dies and everyone in Vault 81 blames the Sole Survivor. A small memorial for him is prepared in the classroom under the "America lives on... in you" poster, consisting of a candle, a new teal flared vase, a toy car, a baseball glove and a teddy bear.
Either way, the quest concludes and Curie asks to accompany the Sole Survivor around the Commonwealth in order to further her scientific research, becoming available as a companion.
Quest stages
Companion affinity
- Cait, MacCready, and X6-88 dislike giving Austin the cure and like keeping it for yourself.
- Danse likes giving Austin the cure and dislikes keeping it.
- Codsworth, Preston, Piper, Hancock, and Nick love giving Austin the cure and hate keeping it.
- Strong likes either outcome.
- All but two companions (Danse and Deacon) dislike the option to split the cure, "good" companions for being selfish and "evil" companions for offering even that much of it to Austin. Danse doesn't care, and Deacon likes this option, as well as loves giving Austin the full cure and dislikes keeping it.
- There are no affinity changes for the second set of dialogue after keeping the cure for yourself, whether you back down and decide to give it to Austin after all, or stand by condemning Austin to death, so affinity changes are reflected in the first choice only.
Notes
- Dr. Penske is essential to the quest, so if she dies before starting this quest, you will be unable to obtain Curie as a companion.
- After completing this quest, items in Vault 81 can be taken without being considered as stealing, with the exception of items within personal residences and the overseer's office.
- The mole rat disease is one of the very few status effects that not even the game's god mode command, tgm, can make the player immune to.
- It is regarded as a perk, 0023aec1, so using player.removeperk 23aec1 can remove the effect afterwards. Alternatively, you can add another cure to your inventory with player.additem 55f10, but be sure to complete the quest in its entirety before doing this.
- Selecting the "We'll split it" option results in an angry reaction from Dr. Forsythe, who will respond by saying that it doesn't work that way, and will chastise you for being selfish. Many companions will respond negatively to choosing this option, after which you can return to the original choice of keeping the whole cure for yourself or giving the whole cure to Austin.
- If hacking the expert-locked "Vault 81 secure access terminal" to gain entry to the room with Curie and bypass the final pack of mole rats, they will remain, but Curie will not open the door until you go back and kill all of the rats.
- It is possible to exploit the game's ability to "walk away" in mid-conversation in order to cure both Austin and yourself:
- Select the dialogue of your choice, then push the left stick/movement keys until the camera cuts away from a closeup of Dr. Forsythe.
- Turn the player's view away from Dr. Forsythe so the dialogue options disappear and the Pip-Boy becomes accessible.
- Open the Pip-Boy, use the cure (or drop it), and exit, turning back to face Dr. Forsythe.
You need to wait the first response of Dr. Forsythe otherwise the quest will just fail.
- With "Give it to Austin" you have a narrow window to execute this action before it is removed from your inventory. The dialogue options "Only one, it's mine" the "Just kidding" and "You're right" will remain as though you still have a cure to hand over. Note that companions will approve or disapprove of the action taken.
- The player should keep in mind that if they decide to keep the cure for themselves, they will not be able to start or finish the quest Short Stories.
- It is possible to make it through the secret vault without contracting the disease. Simply killing all the mole rats before they can strike the player, companions, or the protectrons will prevent infection, as these events trigger the disease.
- If you have a traveling companion with you and they get bit, you will contract the disease. However, you won't contract the disease by looting dead mole rats.
- The mole rat that has bitten Austin can be found on the bed inside the room in the clinic when Dr. Jacob Forsythe explains Austin's diagnosis to Dr. Penske. The mole rat will be gone when the cure is obtained.
Bugs
You can use the cure yourself and Austin by initially saying that you're keeping the cure, backing out of conversation and using the cure on yourself, agreeing to let Austin die, and when given one final chance to hand it over, agree to give the cure to Dr. Forsythe. The dialogue and cutscene will then play out as if you had given him the cure, even though you no longer have a cure to give.[verified]- If any companion or any type of creature not hostile to the player character, including the hackable protectron in the area, gets hit by one of the diseased mole rats, then the player character will get the disease, as if they had been bitten instead.[verified]
- If you leave the vault before Bobby opens the secret door, he will have gone into the secret vault with the secret door still being closed, making it impossible to finish the quest.[verified]
- Sometimes, the cure will duplicate when picked up by the player, making it possible for the player to cure themselves and Austin at the same time.[verified]
- Sometimes Dr. Penske will not be in the room discussing her grandson's illness with Dr. Forsythe and the quest will not start.[verified]
- This can be resolved by going to Dr. Penske's office, and talking to her there to start the quest.
- If Dr. Penske has been killed the discussion will never begin causing the quest to become glitched rendering it unable to be completed.
- When you exit the second elevator, the vault dwellers (and guards) in the area may open fire.[verified]
- Sometimes, even if you decided to save Austin's life, when talking to Neil Freund, he will say "What kind of person lets a child die?"[verified]
- Sometimes, Bobby De Luca will try to run straight towards the quest marker, and will get stuck in the room adjoined to the Medical Bay.[verified]
- To fix this, head to the reactor then type into the console: prid 0002a82b followed by moveto player. This should allow Bobby to reach the marker.
- On console, reload an earlier save.
- It is possible to get stuck under the stairs leading down from the overseer observation station in the secret section of the vault, requiring you to reload a save.[verified]
- After completing the quest, one of the security guards will thank you, calling you a brave man AND a brave woman, regardless of your gender.[verified]
- Sometimes when entering Vault 81 for the first time, the elevator door that leads to the entrance from the 'secret vault' will be open.[verification overdue]
- You can use the elevation glitch with a cone near the door that's locked if you haven't started the quest to get the cure. You can use the elevator to go down to Curie to get the cure, and you won't have the disease. This will not break anything such as quests, NPCs, etc.[verification overdue]
| |||||||||||||