Make the Most of ‘Automatron’ By Sicking Your Robots On The 10 Best Side Quests From ‘Fallout 4’

Even though it’s been less than 24 hours since from the release of Automatron, the first expansion pack for last year’s smash hit Fallout 4, there are already a lot of gamers who have already completed the short six-hour story. This has left several fans of the post-apocalyptic romp in something of a quandary.

Those who have just completed Automatron are left with a shiny, new robot pal with nothing to do and a deficit of weird humor with which to fill their time. Thankfully, Bethesda Games tend to come with more than enough material to keep most people occupied, and Fallout 4 is no different. There are plenty of quests out in the Commonwealth that will provide more than enough challenge for your robots and more than enough weirdness to make you forget all about the Mechanist.

Curtain Call

Simply walk towards the tallest building in Boston to pick up a distress call from screwy Shakespeare aficionado Rex Goodman, who’s gotten himself captured in the process of attempting to civilize a group of Super Mutants armed only with the Bard’s words.

What follows is one the game’s best firefights as the Sole Survivor is forced to climb through the forbidding Trinity Tower, mowing down bad guys as you head for a confrontation with the mini-gun toting dungeon boss, Fist. Once your captives are sprung, there’s a frantic elevator escape that heightens the tension by limiting both the player’s ability to move and take cover.

Even better, at the end of the mission, you get a set of spiffy new duds and a large, new follower who’s in search of the milk of human kindness.

The Big Dig

Wandering through the back alleys of Goodneighbor, the Sole Survivor can stumble across a lady in need of a hired gun. The shift character, Bobbi No-Nose, has a heist in mind, but she needs a little help to make it happen.

While it certainly helps to have a high Charisma level in order to get the most from the mission, there are several possibilities for getting from one end of the thing to the other, and the twist ending is a pleasant surprise that stems from well-established character development.

Pickman’s Gift

Fans of H.P. Lovecraft should absolutely take a trip to Pickman’s Gallery, the macabre celebration of a deranged serial killer. Players can pick this mission up in one of several ways, either as a quest from Goodneighbor’s mayor, a random occurrence in the wild, or by simply walking up and knocking on the front door.

Once inside, players have the pleasure of slinking through a grotesque art gallery where the resident artist uses dismembered Raiders as inspiration. After a series of close-quarters gun battles in the museum’s walls (power armor not recommended), player’s are confronted with a choice to let the killer continue his dark work or simply eliminate him.

Definitely let him go: as a reward, he hands over the game’s most brutal combat knife, Pickman’s Gift, which can be simply devastating to foes in the early hours of the game.

The Secret of Cabot House

The warped denizens of Cabot House offer several interesting missions in their brief arc, each one of which is worth investigating. It’s the story’s finale, though, where things really get interesting, as players are led to the holding cell of the alien-crazed patriarch, Lorenzo.

The Cabot House side quest provides one of Fallout 4’s most interesting decisions in its final moments: should you release the imprisoned man out of sheer moral obligation or kill him on the word of his deceitful kid?

No spoilers, but fans of gruesome plot twists should certainly let Lorenzo free. The crazy bastard.

The Silver Shroud

While admittedly a bit sprawling, “The Silver Shroud” is one of Fallout 4’s rare showcases of silliness. After wandering through the Memory Den in Goodneighbor, the Sole Survivor happens upon a ghoul who wants to ignite a little spark of hope in the desolate game world. He needs a symbol.

As a result, the player character is sent to the local comic shop to retrieve the costume of the Silver Shroud, a cheesy superhero sprung from a pre-War radio serial. The best part of the ensuing chaos is the repeated option to role-play as the Shroud, a hero who doesn’t know the meaning of moral ambiguity. Or inside voices.

Pull the Plug

“Pull the Plug” is actually a really short, easy mission. Wandering in the early moments of the game, the Sole Survivor may happen upon Thicket Excavations and a man named Sully Mathis, who’s trying to drain a giant puddle in the hopes of building a permanent community.

If you’re the kind of player who’s just super trusting (or in no way inquisitive), it’s possible to take a dip in the radioactive water nearby, solve Sully’s problem, kill a few Mirelurks, and then move on down the road. Of course, those players who double back a day or two later will find that Sully’s “permanent community” is actually intended for Raiders.

The resulting battle is a thing of glory.

Out of the Fire

In execution, “Out of the Fire” is pretty straightforward. When the Sole Survivor happens upon Finch Farm, the proprietor sends him after a family heirloom that’s been pilfered by a nearby cult that call themselves the Forged. In essence, you just need to head over, murder the cultists, nab the sword and head out.

Here’s the thing, though, the Forged are flame-wielding badasses. At any level, the fight to simply get in the front door is truly epic and the resulting conflict insider their stronghold will test any gamer’s mettle regardless of their playstyle.

Best of all, the mission wraps up with a nice little shot at a family’s redemption, and you get a sweet ass burning sword.

The Devil’s Due

The feint of hear need not apply to “The Devil’s Due.” After overhearing a guard in Diamond City, the Sole Survivor can head to the north east to check out the Museum of Witchcraft. Intrepid players can descend into the museum’s labyrinthine basement.

Though the entire Fallout series has its fair share of scares, the player’s journey through the Museum of Witchcraft stands head and shoulders above the rest as the series’ most terrifying quest. You may know what’s coming, but there’s still no way to prepare for the payoff.

Vault 81

Any fan of the Fallout series knows that the people who ran Vault-Tec before the Great War were a bunch of assholes. All of the refuges the company set up with the ostensible purpose of keeping people safe in the aftermath of nuclear conflict were actually bizarre little social experiments designed for some long lost purpose.

Vault 81 is home to one of the more sinister of these experiments. The community of people inside were originally intended to be a petri dish for viral tests conducted by an unseen group of people lurking on the other side of the wall. The journey through the mysterious vault and the story that emerges is artfully revealed and eerie the whole way through.

Last Voyage of the U.S.S. Constitution

Even a robot can be totally convoluted. If players head east of Bunker Hill, they’ll run smack dab into the USS Constitution, a ship that’s been beached among the tops of Boston’s buildings. The ship’s crew are an eclectic mixture of sea-faring stereotypes; it just so happens they’re also all robots.

While the quest does provide players with the option to pick sides in a conflict between the bots and a group of human scavengers, the real draw of the mission is the acutely delivered stereotypes that populate the ship’s crew.