The First Step is a Minutemen main quest and achievement/trophy in Fallout 4.
Contents
Quick walkthrough
| Minutemen main quest: The First Step | |||||||||||||
| Speak to the leader of the settlement. | |||||||||||||
| Travel to the raider hideout. | |||||||||||||
| Eliminate the target raider. | |||||||||||||
| Report your success to the leader of the settlement. | |||||||||||||
| Reward: ~100 caps A new settlement | |||||||||||||
| Report your success to Preston Garvey. | |||||||||||||
| Reward: 300+ XP Rank of General of the Commonwealth Minutemen Flare gun | |||||||||||||
| Claim a total of 4 settlements for the Minutemen. | |||||||||||||
| Leads to: Taking Independence | |||||||||||||
Detailed walkthrough
Upon returning to Sanctuary Hills at the end of When Freedom Calls, Preston Garvey will approach the Sole Survivor and ask them to help rebuild the Minutemen. After the Sole Survivor agrees, Preston will tell them about a nearby settlement that has been having trouble with raiders. Preston will ask the Sole Survivor to travel to the settlement and help them out, hoping that the settlers will choose to support the Minutemen in return.
To proceed with the quest the Sole Survivor must travel to the settlement and talk to their leader, who will give the details: a large group of raiders has been harassing the settlement and causing trouble. The settler will point the Sole Survivor to the raider hideout and ask that they are eliminated for the safety of the settlement.
To complete the objective, the Sole Survivor must travel to the raider hideout and eliminate the marked raider. Unmarked enemies do not need to be killed to complete the quest. With the threat neutralized, the Sole Survivor can talk to the settler from before to receive thanks and a reward of ~100 caps, as well as ownership of the settlement (and thus access to its workshop).
To complete the quest the Sole Survivor must return to Sanctuary and talk to Preston Garvey. He will congratulate the Sole Survivor on their success before presenting the rest of the reward: a flare gun and several flares that can be used to summon a team of Minutemen to the Sole Survivor's location. As the quest completes, Preston tells the Sole Survivor more about the fall of the Minutemen. He expresses his hope for the future before offering the Sole Survivor the position of General of the Minutemen.
If the Sole Survivor accepts the offer, Preston becomes available as a companion. If they refuse, Preston remains in Sanctuary; the Sole Survivor can return at any time to accept his offer. In either case, Preston will begin offering Minutemen radiant quests to the Sole Survivor in order to recruit more settlements.
In order to continue the Minutemen questline, the Sole Survivor must agree to become the General and continue recruiting settlements. After recruiting at least four settlements, Preston will offer Taking Independence, initiating the next phase of the questline.
Quest stages
Companion reactions
Since Preston is always at Sanctuary until the dialogue is completed (at which point he becomes a companion and can be relocated), all other available companions can be dismissed to Sanctuary to witness the dialogue, allowing multiple companions to have their affinities raised or lowered at once.
Notes
- The settlement is chosen based on proximity to Sanctuary. As a result, the Sole Survivor will usually be sent to Tenpines Bluff or Oberland station, unless both have been unlocked. Abernathy Farm is technically closer, but doesn't qualify because it has a unique recruitment quest.
- Killing both the settlers at the settlement will fail the quest.
- Although the XP and caps are only given if one completes the quest, the flare gun is given and the rank of general offered even if it's failed, and the Minutemen questline continues as normal.
- Completing this quest unlocks the Minutemen paint for power armor.
- With Nuka-World installed, should the Sole Survivor become the overboss of Nuka-World by completing Taken for a Ride before finishing this quest, the next time Preston Garvey is spoken to he will be upset about what the Sole Survivor did in helping the Nuka-World raiders and say he feels like that it would be too much of a risk to trust them. He will ask that in order to continue working with the Minutemen, they first eliminate the Nuka-World raiders. Accepting his request will start the quest Open Season. The Nuka-World raider gangs don't have to be eliminated nor Open Season completed to continue the Minutemen questline, simply becoming hostile to the raiders (by wiping out a raider outpost or killing any named Nuka-World raider) will restore Preston to his normal dialogue and allow the Minutemen questline to resume.
Bugs
In certain locations, NPCs might spawn in inaccessible locations (for instance, Roger Warwick at Warwick homestead might spawn inside the water cistern). This bug is shared with the other settlement quests.[verified]
- This can be resolved by using the console command targetID.moveto player to teleport the NPC in question.
- The Warwick homestead example can be resolved by building stairs into the cistern and a bell outside of it. Using the bell and waiting for an in-game hour (using the Wait option) will cause the NPCs to spawn near the bell.
- There is often a significant delay in the middle of Preston's dialogue. This is related to initializing the next quest stage. This bug is technically related to the bug that causes the PipBoy to often incorrectly display settlement population statistics.[verification overdue]
