The Powerhouse of the Cell is a main quest in Fallout 76, introduced in the Skyline Valley update.
Quick walkthrough[]
- Speak with Oberlin
- Go to Shining Creek Cavern and speak with Hilda
- Find "Henry" in the greenhouse
- Create and apply the serum in the laboratory
- Find the cave gate key and enter the caves
- Find three unusual fungi
- Give the fungi to Hilda
- Enter the pharmacology wing and apply the second serum
- Enter the fluids wing and apply the third serum
- Speak with Hilda
- Speak with Oberlin
Detailed walkthrough[]
Oberlin informs you that an emergency alert was sent from the Vault 63 organics sector. Only Hilda Stolz would have been able to set off this alarm. Oberlin tasks you with rescuing Hilda from the organics sector, even if she refuses to leave.
Travel to Shining Creek Cavern and enter the cave. Fight your way past the radscorpions and radroaches. Use the Vault 63 access key card you received from Oberlin to enter the organics sector. Simply keep going forward, fighting several Lost along the way, and cross the foyer, going through a laser grid to find the elevator leading to Hilda's office.
Speak with Hilda. With no method of persuading her to leave immediately, she will task you with finishing her current experiments into restoring the ability of Lost to communicate with others. She requires a serum from a special plant, nicknamed "Henry."
Exit Hilda's office, and take the door on the left of the foyer. Head deeper into the pharmaceutical wing until you reach the greenhouse, surrounded by rocky walls. Find "Henry" in the dirt on the left, emanating green light, and take a sample. Hilda will then ask you to create a serum from the sample. Exit the greenhouse again, and enter the hallway on the left into the laboratory. Find the equipment and create a serum, and administer the serum to the Lost bound to a bed across the hallway. Unfortunately, the serum is ineffective, and the Lost wakes up and begins to attack, and must be killed. Hilda suspects the serum lacked a stabilizing agent, and tasks you with finding one back in the greenhouse.
Return to the greenhouse, find the cave gate key in one of the planters, and use it to enter the drain pipe to the right. The pipe leads to a previously unreachable part of the shining creek cavern through which you accessed the organics sector. The various gasses in the cave cause visual and auditory hallucinations, resulting in shadows of various enemies appearing around you regularly. Shadows can attack, but have negligible HP. Additionally, directly on your left, a deathclaw emerges from the ground and begins to attack. Once dealt with, pick up the unusual fungus to your right. Head deeper into the cave, and enter a small crevice on your right with stairs leading down, where you can pick up the second unusual fungus. Head back up the stairs and take a right, and pick up the final unusual fungus next to a camper. With all unusual fungi collected, return to Hilda's office, either by backtracking, or by heading deeper into the cave, through a fence gate, and then through the organics sector's front door.
Speak with Hilda. Hilda will create a stabilizer from the fungi for you to use, and direct you to the pharmacology wing where there is another Lost for you to try the serum on. Exit Hilda's office and take a right in the foyer. Keep going deeper until you find another Lost tied to a bed, and administer the new serum. The new serum, too, fails, and the Lost must be killed.
Hilda remarks there is one more serum that can be tried, with a higher dose than the previous attempt. Exit the room, take a right, and enter the fluid handling wing. Walk past the huge vats of green goo until you reach the vats control room. Eliminate the Lost in this room, and place the final serum in the serum administrator. The room behind the glass pane starts to light up, revealing dozens if not hundreds of vats containing Lost. Hilda tells you over the intercom that the experiment succeeded, and asks you to return to her office. Do so, optionally taking a right after leaving the current room, opening the door with the terminal on the right wall, and then heading straight ahead until you reach the foyer again.
Talk with Hilda in her office. She reveals that the final Lost you experimented on was her father, and that the experiments you helped her conduct were not to help cure the Lost, but instead were merely attempts at sedating them to make other experiments safer. The many Lost stored in this facility are fellow vault dwellers who had gone feral, for which no cure has been found yet. Either way, with Hilda's experiments completed, she promises to return to the Vault 63 atrium. Return to Oberlin, and report that Hilda is now safe. Oberlin will be happy to hear so, completing the quest, leading to Double-Crossed Wires.
Quest stages[]
Behind the scenes[]
The quest's name is a reference to the memetic phrase "the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell," a line commonly used in introductory biology courses and textbooks to summarize the function of the mitochondria.
Bugs[]
After the hallucinations start upon entering the cave, shadows should stop appearing after re-entering the vault. However, if one leaves the cave entirely, restarts the game, and then walks into the vault again, shadows will continue to appear for the remainder of the quest, even while in dialogue with Hilda. The shadows might only continue to shapeshift and inflict melee attacks without actually incurring damage. This bug may also occur if one simply re-enters the cave after finding the key, even without switching servers.[verified]
- The hallucinations may not clear until defeating the Lost for the Serum Beta, with no indication as to why they would clear so late.
- Under some circumstances, one may be unable to place the third serum into the serum administrator. To resolve the issue, restart the game until the objective resets to "Take out the Lost from the vat storage," and resume the quest from that point. This may require several attempts.[verified]
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||