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For the player character in Fallout: New Vegas, see Courier. For other appearances of the term "courier", see Courier (disambiguation). |
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The Courier is a main quest in the Fallout: New Vegas add-on Lonesome Road.
Quick walkthrough[]
| Main Quest: The Courier | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Navigate through the old missile silo to find Ulysses. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| (Optional) Rescue ED-E from its pod prison. | (Optional) Leave ED-E inside its pod. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reward: Lonesome Road perk (+10% Damage Resistance and V.A.T.S. accuracy when traveling without companions) The option to stop the missile launch later will be unavailable. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Enter the main chamber of the Temple and confront Ulysses. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Kill Ulysses. | Utilize one of several methods (see below) to convince Ulysses to let go of his vendetta. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reward: Old Glory + Ulysses' duster + Ulysses' mask (optional) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Survive against the marked men's assault. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Reward: 2,200 XP | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Leads to: The End | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Detailed walkthrough[]
After entering Ulysses' Temple during the previous quest The Divide, the player character must now reach Ulysses. The path to reach the bunker's central launch chamber is fairly linear, going down a hallway with one room locked by a Hard-locked terminal. The end leads past the maintenance bay, which guarded by a sentry bot outside, with a second one and a pair of turrets inside the bay itself. More importantly, the bay holds a trio of eyebot pods, with the central one containing the duplicate ED-E in an inactive state. ED-E may be optionally freed from the pod, which affects both the rest of the quest and the ending to the Lonesome Road add-on:
- Rescue ED-E. Choosing this option requires using the terminal in front of the pod to unlock it, restoring ED-E to function and regaining him as a companion with the perk Enhanced Sensors.
- Do not rescue ED-E. Choosing option can be done by avoiding opening the pod before going to the doors leading into the central launch chamber. This will grant the perk Lonesome Road (+10% Damage Resistance and V.A.T.S. accuracy when traveling without companions) but leaves the Courier without a companion for the remainder of the quest and renders certain quest options later on unavailable.
Once a choice has been made with ED-E, exit the maintenance bay and go southeast. If ED-E was rescued, it can be sent to unlock a nearby commissary terminal for last-minute bartering and repairs. An Auto-Doc is also placed in the tunnel just before the main doors to get healing and rad removal. Once everything is ready, venture forth to the "ending of things."
Battle of two couriers[]
Inside the central launch chamber, the player character enters on the far side and as they approach the main silo, a loaded-up nuclear missile rises up before an American flag. Standing before the missile is Ulysses himself, the voice heard through ED-E throughout the entire journey through the Divide. Upon approaching, Ulysses will turn to greet his nemesis, claiming their arrival was futile as the launch of the missiles is already set in motion. He rejects any attempts to guess at his rationale for turning the Divide's wrath against the cities of the West, saying only that what he learned from the Courier's actions bringing cataclysm to the Divide years ago, he will put in practice today and deliver that same lesson to the New California Republic. While he won't be able to destroy California in its entirety, Ulysses believes he only has to wipe out their supply lines and let the Bear starve itself to death in the aftermath.
At this point, there are two paths for resolving the conflict with Ulysses which will affect the ending of Lonesome Road, though it does not change the subsequent events of the current quest:
Peaceful path[]
If the player character does not desire to eliminate Ulysses, consistently avoid selecting either of the bottom two options during dialogue, as they will immediately lock into the violent path. Meanwhile, one must pass either a Speech 100 or Speech 90 skill check; the latter, lower check requires choosing a reputation check for the faction with the highest player reputation at that point. The reputation check will convince Ulysses to let the Courier argue for their chosen faction.
- Unique to a Courier who has a Neutral or negative reputation with all three factions, the reputation check will always fail but will open up its own dialogue tree. This tree involves making harder arguments for Ulysses to give up his vendetta, including having to pass Speech 90 and 100 skill checks to successfully pacify Ulysses and get him to listen longer.
If one's Speech skill is not high enough to achieve either skill check, a pair of alternative options is available to directly challenge Ulysses' philosophy using the knowledge gained from listening to either or both his holotape logs and recordings played by ED-E throughout the trek through the Divide; the former requires the player to have found all six of the tapes during exploration, while the latter requires never interrupting ED-E when it played its recordings of Whitley and its travels to the Mojave Wasteland throughout the questline. Uniquely regarding this option, one must be sure to choose the correct dialogue options to debate Ulysses successfully, otherwise he will be enraged by their lack of understanding and lock into the violent path.
- Ulysses' Odyssey
- White Legs
- "I'm talking about the past, in the respect they showed you"
- "So you carry two symbols then - the mark of America and the Twisted Hairs, neither dead."
- "Maybe there's something similar to be said about that Old World flag on your back."
- Big Empty
- "The question reminded the ones you spoke to of their purpose, why they cared."
- "You said in the logs yourself that technology's a dead road. These missiles will solve nothing."
- "Any symbol deserves a chance to defend itself, by words or acts - not... this."
- ED-E's Journey
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- "It has history inside it. The logs of what's left of 'America.'"
- "The Eyebot was a courier, sent to the West, to make contact with the remnants of America."
- "You interrupted its journey West, trapped it. If any part of American survived, it's cut off now."
- "The symbol you wear is dead, and you helped kill it. The question is - what will you do to fix it?"
Whatever method is used, once Ulysses is convinced to let go of his vendetta against the Courier, he alerts them to a new development: since he always expected to meet his end in the Divide at the Courier's hands, he arranged for a massive group of marked men to swarm the central launch chamber to ensure they would follow him into death. Now with his priorities changed, Ulysses elects to fight against the shadow of the NCR and the Legion alongside his former nemesis.
A short while later, 2-3 waves of at least 5-7 marked men armed with leveled weapons, including Gatling lasers, brush guns, and riot shotguns, will flood into the chamber from the entrance. Ulysses will fight with the same weapons he uses against the player character in the violent path, with a 12.7mm submachine gun at long range and his flagstaff Old Glory at melee range, supported by a repair eyebot and medical eyebot (Note: damaging the eyebots indirectly may cause them to turn hostile). There are also a total of 6 warheads laying around the launch chamber that can be detonated mid-battle to kill any nearby marked men.
Violent path[]
If at any point during the peaceful path, the player character chooses threatening or dismissive dialogue, or in the alternative paths of the holotapes/recordings, makes an incorrent statement on Ulysses' history, he will lose all remaining respect for the Courier as his nemesis and commit to shedding their blood beneath the Old World flag.
As a combatant, Ulysses has the following characteristics:
- Ulysses is 15% faster than a normal human character and the game's only human character with more than 1000 health points.
- Ulysses is one of four non-player characters in the Fallout series to have the maximum 10 for all SPECIAL attributes, the other three being Colonel Royez and Gaius Magnus, also from Lonesome Road, and Frank Horrigan from Fallout 2.
- In his temple, Ulysses is escorted by a medical Eyebot and a repair Eyebot. The former will regenerate Ulysses's health throughout the fight, more quickly than a stimpak would.
- Like Colonel Royez and Gaius Magnus, Ulysses is impervious to knockdown attacks, such as the Ranger Takedown move or the special attack of the bumper sword. Because he cannot be knocked down, he simply freezes in place when he suffers a critical hit from the Compliance Regulator.
- He is one of the very few characters that cannot be pickpocketed. Attempting to do when he is at the pass to canyon wreckage will simply initiate conversation instead.
One can influence his threat in battle by destroying the eyebots. However, after a short time, replacements will spawn and resume supporting him. To remove them permanently, one must locate two terminals situated on catwalks at a lower level to either side of the launch platform, requiring Science or Repair 100 to hack or disable the eyebots, respectively; the former option will turn them hostile to Ulysses (the medical eyebot, however, will not provide HP restoration to the Courier). Once Ulysses falls, one can loot his body to obtain his unique outfit and breathing mask, as well as his weapon Old Glory.
A secondary option involves obtaining a powerful ranged weapon (e.g. anti-materiel rifle) and using methods to maximize the damage that can be done with a sneak attack critical to snipe Ulysses when first entering the chamber, skipping the entirety of his dialogue as well as preventing him from entering combat in the first place.
The nuclear option(s)[]
Upon dealing with Ulysses, whether through cooperation or bloodshed, the threat of the Divide's missiles launching remains, requiring immediate intervention at a control console and leading into the final main quests of The End and The Apocalypse.
Quest stages[]
Notes[]
Like in previous quests, Ulysses' opening dialogue upon confronting him will differ depending on which (or none) of the player character's reputations with the three major factions in Fallout: New Vegas is the highest at that point (as well as whether ED-E was rescued and returned as a companion earlier),[1] as follows:
Bugs[]
If Ulysses is killed before all the marked men are, the quest will appear stuck. Killing all the marked men will cause the quest to complete, triggering the next quest.[verified]- If you use the perk Robotics Expert to disable the turrets around ED-E, the option in the terminal to release ED-E may disappear, making it impossible to rescue him. This can be fixed by destroying all the turrets after they're deactivated (the other robots don't need to be destroyed).[verified]
References[]
- ↑ NVDLC04UlyssesTempleDoor02SCRIPT -- This script updates Ulysses' dialogue variables for the player's reputation checks at the moment of entering the final chamber in Ulysses' Temple.
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