'Outer Worlds' Come Now the Power best choice to get the most XP

The Outer Worlds is a game about choices. Sure, it’s also a game about gunning down outlaws and space monsters, but mostly, it’s about choices. And one of the first choices players must confront is the quest Comes Now The Power.

On the surface, it seems like a simple good guy versus bad guy decision. You need a power regulator to get your ship off the ground, and you have two ways to do it. Do you help Reed, the cruel Spacer’s Choice corporate boss or Adelaide and her noble Deserters building a botanical utopia on the edge of the wilderness? We’ll break down the choices for Comes Now The Power but, be warned, it will spoil things. And, in true The Outer Worlds fashion, the writing here develops into something much more complex than your typical good karma-bad karma dynamic.

Before I dissect Comes Now The Power choices let me briefly advocate for not reading about what the “right” thing is to do. As I said in my review of The Outer Worlds, the game truly does work best when you approach it with some light roleplaying. So maybe instead of diving into our amazingly detailed guide to learn the XP payouts and narrative threads that lie ahead of you, embrace the consequences. Think about who you are (or better, who your character is) and use that to inform your decision so that you can be pleasantly surprised (or disappointed) with how things play out.

Ok, with my plea for roleplaying and spoiler warnings aside, here are the Come Now The Power choices for The Outer Worlds:

The central choice in Comes Now The Power is whether you are going to divert power from the geothermal plant to Edgewater and take a power regulator from the Deserters botanical gardens, or divert it to the Deserters and nab a power regulator from Edgewater. We won’t be giving you a walkthrough on the geothermal plant here, but if you know how to follow waypoints and shoot things you’ll figure it out just fine. It’s basically the first real quest in The Outer Worlds so it shouldn’t be giving you a lot of trouble and, if it is, just knock that difficulty level down until you get the hang of the gameplay.

Here’s what you need to know about your two choices and what the results of each will be. And if you’re wondering which is technically best, it’s choice #2, which results in more people living.

Comes Now The Power choice #1: Help the Deserters and divert power From Edgewater

This choice is the simpler of the two, both in its front-facing morality and in how the consequences play out. If you route the power to the Deserters you’ll gain 2,828 XP once you hit the switch. Obviously, your Spacer’s Choice rep will go down and your Deserters rep will go up. You can go back and see Adelaide but she doesn’t give out any extra rewards. She thanks you for your help and asks you why you did it, and then tells you you’re always welcome among the Deserters.

Reed is … less happy … to see you again. When you go back to Edgewater to collect the power regulator you’ll need to confront him. He has goons at the ready to kill you, but you can get out of it if your Intimidate skill is 30 or higher. Otherwise, its guns a-blazing. Obviously killing Spacer’s Choice employees will hurt your reputation with them, and you’ll also earn 15,000 XP for finishing the Comes Now The Power quest.

Once you collect the power regulator, you won’t have any dealings with Adelaide or Reed anymore. Seriously, go back and see Adelaide and she doesn’t have anything new to say and won’t give you anymore work. Later in the game, this choice gives you access to a quest called Foundation, where Spacer’s Choice bigwigs ask you to kill everyone left in Edgewater now that it’s a decrepit colony draining resources.

Making these choices leads to a screen in the epilogue after you beat the game that explains how Edgewater became an environmental blight, except for the exploding sprat population that resulted from eating all the dead people. You also learn Adelaide dies shortly after all this too, but not before turning away a lot of survivors she didn’t think worthy of joining the Deserters. You learn those people likely starved to death in the wilderness. Bummer.

Comes Now The Power Choice #2: Help Spacer’s Choice and Decide Who Runs Edgewater

If you decide to divert power to Edgewater instead of the Deserters you receive the same XP as before - 2,828 - and instead of gaining favor with Spacer’s Choice you gain it with the Deserters. (Sidenote: If you’re worrying about reputation in general let me assure you that it is not THAT important to The Outer Worlds. It mostly affects prices at vendors but in my playthrough, I rarely needed to buy anything. The tinker feature available at workbenches is more than enough to keep your gear in tip-top shape and there’s plenty of health meds to be scavenged.)

Once you divert the power, go see Adelaide. She won’t be happy with you, and tells you it’s your responsibility to convince her people to go back to Edgewater. She also mentions that she’d be open to returning, provided Reed was gone (turns out he was kind of a colossal dick to her about her dying son, hence the beef.) The two deserters you’ll be talking to are Thomas Kemp and Grace Romero. Both require you to complete sidequests for them and, once you do, they’re willing to go back to Edgewater. Go back and see Reed to tell him what you’ve accomplished. You’ll get 13,200 XP, too.

Now you have to decide how to get rid of Reed. If you want to go the non-violent route you’ll need to have 15 persuade and 25 lie skill. If you’ve got the dialogue skills you’ll talk Reed into leaving by explaining that Adelaide can not only feed everyone in Edgewater with her miraculous fertilizer (secret ingredient: dead people) but she’ll also be able to cure the plague. Reed will humbly recognize that Adelaide is a better fit for the colony and step aside.

If you kill him, you have to kill his guards too. And you risk losing Parvati as a companion if you don’t have 10 Determination to convince her that murdering her boss in cold blood in front of her isn’t that big a deal. Once Reed is gone, violent or otherwise, Adelaide will give you a watch you can sell for 1,750 bits as a bonus reward.

If you decide to go this route with your Comes Now The Power choices, you’ll learn in the epilogue that Edgewater adapted quickly to Adelaide’s way of doing things. She turned the cannery into a massive garden, with fertilizer aplenty thanks to the cemetery attached to Edgewater.

Comes Now The Power provides your first real choice in The Outer Worlds and its a credit to the game that its ripple effects are felt all the way until the end. It also reveals the depth of the writing, as what appears to be the obvious good gy move - help Adelaide - ends up causing the most harm down the line. You’ll see these cascading consequences in a number of quests in The Outer Worlds, too, so maybe for your next big quest you’ll make your own decision instead of turning to the internet to relieve the anxiety brought on by your inability to choose.

Or keep cheating, cheater. It’s your choice after all …

Outer Worlds is available now PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows.