The Battle of Bunker Hill

Fallout 4 Institute main quest
The Battle of Bunker Hill
Location	The Institute Bunker Hill
Given by	Father
Rewards	500 XP 500 bottlecaps
Quest chain
Previous	Synth Retention
Next	Mankind-Redefined
Technical
Form ID	000A8258

 

The Battle of Bunker Hill is an Institute main quest in Fallout 4.

Quick walkthrough

Institute Main Quest: Institutionalized

Talk to Father.

Inform the Brotherhood.

Inform The Railroad.

Meet the courser outside Bunker Hill.

Kill the courser and leave. (Railroad)

Find the escaped synths.

Kill the synths. (Brotherhood)

Issue synth reset codes. (Institute)

Speak to Father

Reward: 500 XP 500 caps

Leads to: Mankind-Redefined

Detailed walkthrough

Father wants you to go to Bunker Hill to send some escaped synths back inside The Institute. You will meet up with Courser X4-18 who is going to teleport them back. Bunker Hill is under protection of The Railroad, a group of people who help runaway synths. You can optionally inform Desdemona that the Institute are coming to get their synths back, that way they are prepared. You can also optionally inform Elder Maxson about the attack. If you have talked to both Desdemona and Maxson, X4-18 will be suspicious of your lateness, causing it to call for backup.

When the battle starts, and if you were to report the Battle to either the Brotherhood or the Railroad, a large firefight will erupt in and around the settlement. The main doorway into the settlement is locked, requiring the Sole Survivor to walk around and head to the right-side of the settlement where an opened door can be found. The inhabitants of Bunker Hill will cower during this firefight, and will most likely not get killed by either the Synths, Brotherhood or the Railroad.

Once inside Bunker Hill, there should be a small doorway into a basement where you will find the runaway synths Z3-22, B2-57, Y9-15 and F6-33. Should X4-18 still be with you once you've reached the synths, you've got the choice to let them go or capture them. Choosing the former will force X4-18 to go hostile. A new objective will be added where you are to talk to Father on the roof of the ruins of C.I.T. There you will have to talk to Father and explain your actions at Bunker Hill. From here, you have a choice to choose if you want to still be a part of the Institute.

Quest objectives

Stage	Status	Description
10		Speak with Father
20		(Optional) Inform the Brotherhood of Steel
30		(Optional) Inform the Railroad
40		Meet up with the courser at Bunker Hill
50		Find the escaped synths
60		Decide the fate of the escaped synths
100		Speak with Father in the ruins of CIT
200		Quest complete
1500		Quest failed

Notes

There are 3 ways to decide the fate of the escaped synths:

1. The way of The Institute - Escort the Courser to the escaped synths and let him take them back to The Institute.
2. The way of The Railroad (Optional - can only happen if you informed The Railroad about Bunker Hill) - Kill the Courser and leave Bunker Hill.
3. The way of Brotherhood of Steel (Optional - can only happen if you Informed The BOS about Bunker Hill) - Kill the escaped synths.

If you choose to inform both The Railroad and The Brotherhood of Steel the Courser will ask why you're late and call for backup from the Institute to help kill both members of The Railroad and The BOS. The Railroad and The BOS will most likely not attack each other because there will be a lot of synths.

• Option 1: clear a way for the Courser and escort him to the escaped synths. He can be shot down by both the Railroad and The Brotherhood of Steel, but cannot be killed.
• By doing Option 2 you can decide when to kill the Courser. The Railroad wants you to kill him the moment you meet him and tell Father that you were the only one who made it. You can also kill him during the battle. It doesn't really matter when, you just have to kill him before he gets to the escaped synths.
• Doing Option 3 might end in casualties if you already told the Railroad about the battle. You can then tell Father that the escaped synths have been killed.

Both Railroad and Brotherhood of Steel members will be present, regardless if you inform them or not.

If the player is a member of the Institute, the Railroad and the Brotherhood of Steel (by having completed enough of their respective quests beforehand), the fighters of all three factions will completely ignore the Sole Survivor, no matter how many of them he/she kills during the battle above ground. Those forces in the tunnels underneath the obelisk will retaliate when fired upon, but won't attack until the player picks a side. This not only eliminates most of the danger this mission might pose to the Sole Survivor, it also allows for the acquisition of ludicrous amounts of valuable loot (e.g. Gauss rifles or T-60 power armor pieces) due to the forces on the surface respawning indefinitely.

Once you have chosen a side, the side will start to win eventually, killing the rest of the factions' reinforcement.

If the player chose to free the synths, during the conversation with Father in the ruins of CIT, an altercation can lead straight to being banished from the Institute, instant completion of Banished from the Institute, and failure of this mission.

Upon completing this quest, the player can unlock this settlement if they have also completed the quests for Deb and Kessler. Also, asking your companion for their thoughts will garner a unique response and giving 10xp to the player. (This may have been a coincidence and exp from another source, but companions will comment after completing the objective "Deal with the Synths")

It may seem like this quest would alienate The Institute if solved incorrectly, but you are still allowed to be a member even if the synths die and you inform the other sides of the mission. To remain in the Institute's good graces under these circumstances, care should be taken during the concluding talk with Father (i.e. claim that you were ambushed, rather than admit you wanted to free/kill the synths).

When meeting up with X4-18, you will hear vertibirds in the background, if you hurry through the dialogue, you can persuade him through a hard charisma check to give you 3 Relay Grenades, but if you take too long, he'll give you the Recall Codes and skip that part of the dialogue.

Behind the scenes

The title of this quest is a reference to the historical Battle of Bunker Hill, an important conflict of the American Revolutionary War occurring near Bunker Hill in 1775.

Bugs

• ^{[platforms tag needed]} Should Doc Weathers and his Caravan guards be in the area, they will be hostile to all faction members, be aware that Doc Weathers dresses in a lab coat. ^[verified]
• ^{[platforms tag needed]} After completing the quest, the characters living in Bunker Hill can be stuck crouching in a cowering position, although they can still be interacted with and talked to. Leaving the area and continuing the quest line seems to fix this. ^[verified]
• Xbox One After informing The Brotherhood (and possibly The Railroad, needs verification), killing the courser before meeting the synths can break the quest, causing the synths to think they're being freed by the Railroad (even if you've destroyed the Railroad). Killing them when you do meet them and you've already killed the courser will result in a 'kill the courser' objective (which is impossible seeing as he's already dead), and 'Speak with Father' objective (note: not to be confused with 'speak with Father in the C.I.T. ruins'), and a quest marker inside The Institute, which disappears when you're inside The Institute, and Father is no-where to be found. ^{[verification overdue]}
• ^{[platforms tag needed]} If you talk to Desdemona after arriving at the Institute and are also sided with the Minutemen, you will be unable to warn her about the attack until you say you will side with the Railroad. Whenever you try to talk to her, Desdemona will ask you to work with the Railroad instead of the Minutemen, giving you no chance to tell her about the threat to the Synths on Bunker Hill. There doesn't seem to be a way to warn the Railroad without entering Underground Undercover.
• Xbox One None of the faction NPCs will be hostile to the player, even upon attacking them^[verified]
  • This can be exploited for easy EXP as there are no repercussions.^[verified]

• ^{[platforms tag needed]} If you join the Brotherhood of Steel after starting this quest, the optional quest stage to inform them will not appear.^{[verification overdue]}
  • ^{[platforms tag needed]} Verified. However, the quest will proceed as if the Sole Survivor had informed the Brotherhood, and they will take part in the battle.^{[verification overdue]}
  • ^{[platforms tag needed]} Verified. Additionally the same situation is true for the Railroad.^{[verification overdue]}
• Xbox One The front gate will be locked once the battle starts, and will remain locked for the duration of the game unless the player clears out all the turrets inside the hideout, where the four synths are kept. All turrets must be destroyed while this quest is still active since they become invincible once the quest is completed. This bug and its workaround applies no matter which faction the player supports.^[verified]
• ^{[platforms tag needed]} All Railroad members will become hostile to the synths once you have killed the courser. ^{[verification overdue]}
• ^{[platforms tag needed]} Game Will freeze when near the CIT Ruins, when you're going to talk to Father. Has been fixed as of Patch 1.2. ^{[verification overdue]}
• PC One or more of the factions will become hostile toward the inhabitants of Bunker Hill if the inhabitants get hit in the crossfire, which will make them instantly hostile towards the group(s) that accidentally fired upon them, prompting such confusing scenes as a Railroad NPC repeatedly firing his weapon at an unarmed and cowering child.^[verified]
  • ^{[platforms tag needed]} If any NPC kills the parent of a child NPC, where the child is in the same faction as the parent (not to be confused with join-able factions), this would normally result in instant hostility between the child and the NPC responsible for the attack. Since children in Bethesda games are scripted to flee and are hard-coded as essential and thus completely invulnerable, a bug occurs when the game AI are responsible for the attack or allied with attacker, and NPC/turrets will relentlessly fire upon the child and can even crash the game if too many turrets are firing continuously at the same time. Same situation occurs if you are in a settlement and attack the parent yourself, even if by accident. Once the parent dies, the game-controlled turret will relentlessly fire upon the child NPC indefinitely as the child belongs to the same faction as the parent and is now considered hostile. Appears to be a blatant oversight in the programming where the children are not fully ignored.

• • After completing the mission, upon returning to the Utility Basement, the remaining living allied faction NPCs will die upon entry, made known by an audible death-throe cue (also visible with General Subtitles on). This allows the player for a chance at looting powerful equipment such as Railroad Heavy Armor, Gauss Rifles, and ammunition.