Birds of a Feather is a side quest in Fallout: New Vegas.
Quick walkthrough
| Side Quest: Birds of a Feather | |||||||||||||
| Talk to Gloria Van Graff about work. | |||||||||||||
| Guard the entrance to the Silver Rush, dealing with the potential customers by remaining polite. | |||||||||||||
| Talk to Gloria. | |||||||||||||
| Deliver the package to the undercover Legionary. | |||||||||||||
| Return to Gloria. | |||||||||||||
| Talk to Jean-Baptiste Cutting. | |||||||||||||
| Find Rose of Sharon Cassidy and bring her to Jean-Baptiste. | IF Rose of Sharon Cassidy is dead: Inform Jean-Baptiste of Cassidy's demise. | ||||||||||||
| Talk to Gloria. | |||||||||||||
| Go to the abandoned warehouse and oversee the deal. | |||||||||||||
| Return to Gloria. | |||||||||||||
| Reward: 600 XP Van Graff combat armor 1000 caps | |||||||||||||
Detailed walkthrough
1. First you will have to guard the front door. A series of 5 non-player characters will come up to you, and you must remember to be polite, not allow drunks, and search everyone before allowing them inside. The third customer will require a 65 Speech check to be able to be searched, otherwise you have to be rude to him and deny him entrance. The fourth one will be carrying a bomb. If you choose to let him in, he will blow up the entire store and most of the items displayed as well, including the plasma caster, failing the quest. If you choose to search him, he will attack you, forcing you to kill him. The last person to appear is Pacer (unless he was killed during G.I. Blues or Kings' Gambit), wishing to talk to Gloria, but not doing so and asking you to deliver his message, which will make him mock you, saying "a good dog you are". You can also choose to tell him "why not tell her yourself" with Simon congratulating you for keeping a cool head (there are no negative consequences in the quest). If you are hostile with him the whole way through, he will then attack you. Once he is dead it will say that the quest is failed, but this is false. Report to Gloria and she will pay 200 caps. If you followed Simon's instructions to the letter, passed the Speech check, treated all customers politely - including the drunk - and agreed with Pacer about speaking with Gloria, she will pay an additional 300 caps.
2. You will need to deliver a package to a man a bit east of New Vegas, who is an undercover Legionnaire. With a Speech check of 75, you can get 200 caps from the man. Killing the man after the exchange will gain infamy with Caesar's Legion and fail the quest. Also, if you happen to have enemies of any kind nearby when you come upon the man he will flee the area and you will fail the quest.
3. You will need to recruit Rose of Sharon Cassidy as a companion and travel with her to the Silver Rush so that she can be executed by Jean-Baptiste. If you ask Jean-Baptiste where she is, he will tell you to talk to Alice McLafferty in the Crimson Caravan Company Main Office. Alice tells you to check the Mojave Outpost, which is west of Nipton. When you ask Cass if she'll follow you to Freeside, she says she is waiting for her papers to clear. You must first ask her if there is any work available, which will start the side quest You Can Depend on Me. The objective relating to Cassidy Caravans must be completed before Cass will follow you. If you have a companion with you when attempting to recruit Cass, you will need to split with him/her to allow Cass to follow you. If you bring her to Jean-Baptiste and allow her to die while in dialogue, you will lose her as a companion and fail her companion quest Heartache by the Number. You will successfully finish this part of the quest and receive 350 caps as a reward. Jean-Baptiste will tell you to talk to Gloria, who will initiate the final portion of this quest.
NOTE: Once you talk with Gloria, the final part of the quest begins immediately and you will not be able to retrieve any items from Cass's body that she may have been carrying for you.
If you end up killing Cass instead of recruiting her, the journal will update to tell you to 'Let Jean-Baptiste know that the Cassidy girl is dead'. Upon returning to him, you will still be rewarded and the quest will end as normal.
You can also choose to attack the Van Graffs. Obviously, failing the quest. This results in a fairly difficult gunfight, especially for a low level player.
Simon, the guard outside, will also be hostile once you exit the building, as well as the Silver Rush crier.
Normally, you are forced to either let Cassidy die or fight the Van Graffs as soon as you initiate dialogue with Jean-Baptise, but if you have the Terrifying Presence perk, you can exit the dialogue and take more time before coming to a final decision on how to handle the situation. This option works countless times, but the quest won't continue until a permanent solution is chosen.
4. If you choose to just let Jean-Baptiste kill Cass, then Gloria will ask you to help her with one more thing. A deal with the Legion is going down in the abandoned warehouse, and things might get rough. During the deal, NCR troopers storm in, and together with the Van Graffs, they take out the Legion. The Courier is actually not required to kill any Legionaries, as the NCR and the Van Graffs will easily take care of that. The reward for "helping" Gloria is 1000 caps, Freeside and NCR fame, and the Van Graff combat armor. This battle can be quite interesting if the player has sided with the Legion. Both the ambushed Legion soldiers and NCR forces are hostile, and companions may enter the fray killing both sides and netting both NCR and Legion infamy.
Journal entries
Notes
- As of Patch 1.2.0.31x, completing Heartache by the Number peacefully will turn the Van Graffs permanently hostile. Apparently, word gets around that the player turned them in to the NCR. This makes it impossible to complete both Birds of a Feather and Heartache by the Number in the same playthrough.
- If you completed the quest Kings' Gambit before this one and chose to kill Pacer, the last conversation when guarding the door obviously won't occur. This will make Gloria pay you only 200 caps, because your performance was not satisfactory, even if you passed the Speech check and treated all customers politely.
- It is possible to steal from the footlocker next to Simon and get the Van Graff combat armor. However, once you steal it, it becomes stuck in your inventory marked as a quest item. Because the armor is a quest item, it doesn't actually weigh anything even though it says it weighs 25. If you complete this quest and receive another set of the armor, they will stack, removing the quest item tag from the original stolen armor and giving back its weight. [Fixed in v140525, the crate is empty and the armor is forcibly removed).
- The gambler who tries to get inside with a bomb carries a note explaining his actions, reading:
- If you pickpocket the bomb from the man who wants to blow up the Silver Rush and then let him in, the store will still explode.
- Killing the Strange Man will result in gaining infamy with Caesar's Legion and will cause this quest to fail.
- The player can start this quest by bringing Cass to the Silver Rush and talking to Jean-Baptiste Cutting. The quest will begin and, after a short dialogue, he will attack Cass. However, since the player has never gone through the earlier stages of the quest, the door guard will still take all the player's weapons on entry, and will continue to do so even if the player goes out and back in after Cass is dead. This makes it harder to complete the final stage, because after talking to Gloria Van Graff to start the final section, the player automatically fast-travels to the Abandoned Warehouse, still with no weapons except for concealed ones.
- If Cass has already been recruited as a companion and has left to head west because of the player's evil Karma, the only way to complete the "kill Cass" section of the quest is to try to catch her before she leaves the map and kill her. Her path back to the west passes through the locked gate at the Mojave Outpost.
- Gloria Van Graff's big deal occurs in the Abandoned Warehouse near Cassidy Caravan Wreckage.
- It is possible to obtain a gas grenade during this quest. If the player is quick enough, the grenade can be obtained. See the respective page for more information.
- The man that is executed by Baptiste when you enter Silver Rush for the first time is actually a Van Graff Thug, and will attack you if you attack other Van Graffs, or walk past them during the killing.
- After killing the fourth customer if you go to the dumpster on the side of the Silver Rush you will see the gamblers dead body.
- The official player's guide erroneously states that a speech check of 60 is required to convince the third visitor that arrives while guarding the door to submit to a search, when a speech check of 65 is actually required.
- Originally the intro to the quest was longer. The Execution had more to it, however this was cut. It can be restored via the Van Graff Scorned mod on New Vegas Nexus. The intro originally had Gloria say that her and the man they are executing were in love. She caught him cheating on her at a Casino and she is now using him as an example for Mr. Soren to show even if she loves him, she will kill him, as a show to never break faith with her organization. Video of this cut content Here.
Bugs
If the fourth customer is let in, Simon will react as if the building had been destroyed, but there will be no explosion and the doors will remain inaccessible and the quest will not advance. [verification overdue]- After dealing with the fourth customer, Pacer walks by and starts a chat with Simon. If you aim at Pacer's head, he interrupts the chat and will just stand there. The quest log will not be updated and the quest will not advance. [verified]
- While you are guarding the entrance of the silver rush with the other guard, if you speak to him he will say "Welcome to the Silver rush" as if he had never met you before. [verified]
- When your fellow guard goes to the chest to "get your stuff," he repeatedly does the standard animation but never opens the chest and gives the player his/her equipment. The quest can be continued, but unless the player can pick the lock and steal the equipment, the equipment can not be acquired. [verified]
- Also during the door guard section of the quest, if the Courier denies the fourth customer entry he will turn hostile. If the Courier deals the finishing blow in the resulting fight, Simon may freeze in place. He is supposed to walk over to the corpse, but will instead stay next to the door with his weapon out and become unresponsive to dialogue. If that doesn't happen, Simon may walk over to the corpse and ask for you to help him "move the body from the store front". He will stand there staring at the Courier, and will never speak the dialogue that triggers the fifth customer. He will, however, become hostile if you go far away from the Silver Rush, like normal. The easiest way to avoid this is to let Simon kill the fourth customer by himself - he's more than capable. [verified]
- This bug may be bypassed by one of the following two options:
- Completing the entire quest.
- Open the console, and type SetStage 00124123 100
- Completing the first part of the quest.
- Completing the entire quest.
- This bug may be bypassed by one of the following two options:
- Enter Silver Rush and speak to Gloria Van Graff.
- While the initial dialog options are displayed, open the console and enter ResetQuest 0012412
- Accept the quest regarding the package delivery.
- Exit the Silver Rush and proceed as normal.
- This caused you to miss the XP of the first part, but gave you the Van Graff combat armor. The armor is stuck, weightless and marked a quest item. If you complete this quest and receive another set of the armor they will stack, removing the quest item tag from the original stolen armor and giving back it's weight.
- More so in the second leg, when going to the point to meet up with the Strange Man, you will find him standing on a set of rocks as you grow closer to him. At a certain point, he will glitch into the rock, disappearing and unable to interact with the Courier. Yet he is still marked on your compass. [verified]
- After telling Gloria that the package has been delivered, she tells the courier to speak with Jean Baptiste. However, it is possible for him to be in the locked part of the building and he will not appear, even after waiting for more than 24 hours in increments of 1 hour. Fix it by using these console commands: prid 0010d8e5, then moveto player. Or use sneak and lockpick to enter the back room. A Stealth Boy proves useful here, and after talking to Jean you can loot the store with impunity. [verified]
- Jean-Baptiste Cutting may not turn hostile when told "Shoot and you'll regret it". Instead he simply walk over to Cass, say his line and kill her. [verified]
- If you tell Cass to go wait at the Lucky 38 after you tell Jean-Baptiste to kill her, he will then follow her all the way to the Lucky 38, only traveling when the player is in the same area as him, and also being able to walk right in to the Lucky 38 without any penalty and will go to your suite and kill her. He also does not have to talk to Victor to use the elevator. [verified]
- Sometimes, after siding with Cass and eliminating all the enemies in the building, the player won't be able to loot Jean-Baptiste's body. Targeting it and pressing the interaction button won't bring the equipment exchange menu. In this case, try leaving the building and/or saving and loading somewhere far away and returning back there. [verified]
- If this doesn't help, one can loot the body by opening the console, targeting and selecting the body and entering activate. The equipment exchange menu will appear, close the console and take whatever you want.
- If the fourth customer is turned into a pile of goo, Pacer may not show up and Simon may not speak anymore. [verified]
- If Pacer is dead before you begin this quest, you may not be able to finish the door guard sequence. [verified]
- After completing the delivery, sometimes the other objectives will say to deliver the package again instead of get Cass to follow you to the Silver Rush. A way to solve the problem is ask Jean Baptiste Cutting again and it may refresh the objectives after about 10 seconds of waiting. [verified]
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