Fallout: New Vegas quest troubleshooting (spoilers)

Don't have a high-enough survival skill so that's not possible.
How do I spike the wine?

Also, I'm thinking I might revert to an earlier save and see if Philippe spawns normally. I'd like to get the xp from the conversation with Philippe if at all possible.
 
With medicine or Science, you look for the Bottle of wine in the kitchen, you interact with it, and you get a prompt.
 
Thanks. :)
I'll try that first but then I'm gonna have to see if I can get him to spawn him normally on an earlier save if possible. I'm worried that bug might cascade through the rest of my game. :(
 
That quest is rather buggy, I always keep a save file before starting it and just right in the middle point, stupid kid starts battle with the White Glove society randomly and gets stuck or killed.
 
Yeah, I just checked and re-checked and checked again and there's no bottle that it will let me spike. My Science is at 95 and my Medicine is at 48.

I think the whole basement area is bugged. NPCs and quest items are not showing up.

EDIT: I'm gonna try having Steam verify my installation. Maybe there's something wrong with my local files. I just went all the way back to when I first showed up at the Strip and there's still no Philippe.

EDIT^2: Nope, didn't work. It did find two files that it couldn't verify but that's because they were the config files I altered to fix their shitty FOV and some other settings. Now I have to change them again, lol.
I'm gonna have to resign myself to solve the quest by talking the substitute meal into going to the Ultraluxe himself. It's the most non-violent solution I can do at this point. >_<

EDIT^3: Oh well, gonna delete the game and re-install it. See if that changes anything. If not, it's probably something in my save files somewhere right? :(

EDIT^4: Just deleted the game and re-installed and that seemed to fix my problem. Philippe showed up and everything. However, once I locked him up in the pantry the game wouldn't let me cook the special meal. Selecting the Oven that says E)Cook does nothing. :(
 
Sick of editing previous post so I'm making a new one.

So I figured out why Philippe wasn't showing up before. It's because I have to choose the "<Lie> Sure I'll help you out, Mortimer" option in order for him to show up. I was just agreeing to do what he asked before. You have to choose <Lie> so that the game will give you everything you need to do the quest. Annoying. >_<

Anyway, now that I have that figured out, it's still not letting me cook. I can spike the wine, but that's about it. So, again, either I did something wrong or I'm not doing something in the right order. Will keep trying. :p
 
Very curious... I never once had any problems or bugs with this quest, and the most trouble it ever gave me was the numbnut running into the White Gloves "guard" and getting himself killed, but that was just a Temporary Companion AI issue, not necessarily a problem with the quest itself. It's interesting that you uncovered that Lying to Mortimer would cause Phillipe to spawn. Although it's been a long time since I've completed this quest (the good way), I don't ever recall NOT seeing Phillipe, or NOT being able to interact with the meal, once. Like many quests are with the muddled engine, perhaps the option is locked until you "find out" in some way? Either by saying to someone that it will be your plan, or hearing from someone that you can do it, etc. But wasn't that a detail given to the Courier by the contact in the steam room?

Hell, if you haven't already, the best advice I can think to give you is to follow the guide from The Vault, word for word. From a cursory inspection of it, I'd wager the reason you can't cook the imitation is because of your Survival Skill? You can always pickpocket the recipe off Phillipe to get around that, though.
 
I am following that exact guide. They are missing some information though. Or at least, these are the options I seem to have.

If I choose to help Mortimer, that removes both the option to ask Marjorie about the investigator so that I can go to the investigator's room to get the matchbook to find out about the steam room meeting. If I can't do that, then Chauncey can't suggest that I spike the wine or cook the imitation meat dish and that, I guess, is why Philippe isn't spawning.

If I choose to lie to Mortimer about helping him, then Philippe shows up and I get the option to talk to Marjorie and get the matchbook to find out about the meeting. The problem is if I do that, I get attacked when I enter the room. And since I'm playing non-violently, I really don't want to kill them. I do have the option to do non-lethal damage to them because Mortimer gave me a cattle prod. I have not tried to do that yet, but it is my next step.

The other option is instead of asking Marjorie about the investigator, I can just go down into the kitchen, talk Philippe out of his recipe and rescue Ted Gunderson. But it won't let me cook the meal though it will let me spike the wine and escape with Ted Gunderson through the banquet hall.

So it seems the only way to get the option to cook the meal and expose Mortimer as the evil scumbag he is is to choose the option that will get me attacked and force me to fight. That seems strange to me since this should be considered the pacifist option. Yet I'm being forced to fight people, even if I knock them out. It makes no sense.

re:my Survival Skill not being high enough, it says I need a Survival Skill of 75 -OR- an Intelligence of 6. I have an Intelligence of 8, so I should be fine according to the guide. Also, according to the guide you need both the recipe and the skill/attribute check. I got the recipe by smooth-talking Philippe. So I have it. It still won't let me cook. It's weird.
 
Okay, here is what I had to do to reveal Mortimer for the evil scumbag he was:

1. Lie to Mortimer that I would do his foul deeds.
2. Talk to Marjorie about the Investigator.
3. Go to the investigator's room to get the Matchbook.
4. Doing Step 3 spawns two White Glove Thugs who attack me. I knocked them unconscious with the cattle prod and ran away.
5. I go to the Steam Room and meet with Chauncey. After the meeting is over an Assassin shows up and kills Chauncey. The problem is he tries to kill me too. So I knocked him out with the cattle prod and ran away.
6. I go to Marjorie and ask to become an honorary member of the White Glove Society.
7. I go to the kitchen and get Philippe's recipe. To prepare the meal you need either 1) a Survival skill of 75 -OR- 2)the recipe -AND- Intelligence of 6. I had the second thing.
8. I call the head waiter to serve the meal.
9. I save Ted Gunderson.
10. I take Ted with me to the Banquet Hall and wait for Mortimer to finish his speech before I expose him as the evil bastard he is.
11. I return Ted to his father.
12. While wandering around I get attacked by the Assassin I knocked out earlier. I guess he woke up. I lure him to the casino area where Heck and his bodyguard make short work of him.
13. I realize the two bodyguards upstairs were only knocked unconscious too so I go back up there and sure enough they attack me again so I lure them down to the casino area for Heck Gunderson and his bodyguard to make short work of them as well.
14. I feel bad for beating up those guys previously. I could've caused them a lot less pain and suffering if I had just lured them to their death earlier.

So the ONLY way to do the GOOD thing and keep the White Glove Society from returning to Cannibalism is to have three people KILLED.

LOL!

This is an Eric Fenstermaker quest? Hah! He's better than this! :p
 
FearMonkey said:
So it seems the only way to get the option to cook the meal and expose Mortimer as the evil scumbag he is is to choose the option that will get me attacked and force me to fight. That seems strange to me since this should be considered the pacifist option.
Click to expand...
Okay, we're back to this again? So many of us have tried to get through to you since the very beginning of this topic that I just don't understand how you're not getting it. Karmically good is NOT automatically "pacifist", despite what you may think. In fact, the whole notion of "karma" would INSIST upon some levels of violence, because if bad people do bad with violence, then a "taste of their own medicine" would BE violence appropriately initiated upon them.

That being said, now everything seems to have fallen into place. You couldn't proceed forward NOT because the quest was at all bugged as you'd assumed, but because you simply refused to go through with its intended paths at certain points. You wanted for it to both be "good" (which, again, is RELATIVE) and cater to your "pacifism" at the same time, and it just doesn't. It reminds me that earlier on in this topic I alluded to this very quest as being "unplayable" for the very reasons you've been complaining about. I wasn't saying it's flawed, rather I was saying that YOU wouldn't be able to play it, because of how rigid you're being in your self-imposed restrictions.

It had been a while since seeing this topic that I'd forgotten you were doing a "technical pacifist" run of the game, and when you said the quest was bugged I just went with trying to solve a problem that didn't exist in the first place.

FearMonkey said:
This is an Eric Fenstermaker quest? Hah! He's better than this! :p
Click to expand...
Again, this isn't Fallout 2; as magnificent of a game as FONV is, the engine it runs off of and the extreme time constraints the devs had to work with means that the marvelous complexity and "limitless choices" of the original titles is a feat IMPOSSIBLE for this game to achieve. Stop assuming the game should play precisely how you want it to and believing that whenever it isn't what you want it to be that it's somehow a mistake. I can assure it, it's all quite intentional, and the ideas are very good.
 
Yeah it seems a lot of the missions in new vegas and the casinos are a mess or buggy, especially the one in Gamorrah.
 
SnapSlav said:
Okay, we're back to this again? So many of us have tried to get through to you since the very beginning of this topic that I just don't understand how you're not getting it. Karmically good is NOT automatically "pacifist", despite what you may think. In fact, the whole notion of "karma" would INSIST upon some levels of violence, because if bad people do bad with violence, then a "taste of their own medicine" would BE violence appropriately initiated upon them.
Click to expand...

I understand what you are saying and I agree.
Karmically good is not necessarily Pacifist.
Though it is strange. No matter which option one chooses to complete the quest, there is no Karma gain to be had. Only fame. And you get more White Glove Society fame for exposing Mortimer as the flesh-eating reprobate he is. Of course, I don't think my character cares about fame really. And in fact, I think at some point she may take the "Cannibal" perk, so exposing Mortimer would be awfully hypocritical on her part. I guess she just wants to rescue the boy and be done with it. So I'm just going to drug everybody and rescue Ted. :p
See, I'm just role-playing. ;)

SnapSlav said:
That being said, now everything seems to have fallen into place. You couldn't proceed forward NOT because the quest was at all bugged as you'd assumed, but because you simply refused to go through with its intended paths at certain points. You wanted for it to both be "good" (which, again, is RELATIVE) and cater to your "pacifism" at the same time, and it just doesn't. It reminds me that earlier on in this topic I alluded to this very quest as being "unplayable" for the very reasons you've been complaining about. I wasn't saying it's flawed, rather I was saying that YOU wouldn't be able to play it, because of how rigid you're being in your self-imposed restrictions.
Click to expand...

No. The *only* problem I had with it was that I didn't see the "<Lie>" option. I kept choosing "I will do what you want me to do Mortimer". That option means I had to free Ted without him knowing who kidnapped him and then find a suitable replacement. There was no option in that quest for anything else, and as you said, it was never intended. I do think this was short-sighted on the quest designer's part, but I understand it and have no beef with it. So to speak. :p

SnapSlav said:
Again, this isn't Fallout 2; as magnificent of a game as FONV is, the engine it runs off of and the extreme time constraints the devs had to work with means that the marvelous complexity and "limitless choices" of the original titles is a feat IMPOSSIBLE for this game to achieve. Stop assuming the game should play precisely how you want it to and believing that whenever it isn't what you want it to be that it's somehow a mistake. I can assure it, it's all quite intentional, and the ideas are very good.
Click to expand...

Yeah, overall I really did think the quest is well-designed and well-written. There really should've been more robust options at least as to when Philippe appears, but other than that I'm fine with it. And yeah, I know the engine is limited. I do like the game so far. You make it sound like I hate the game. I don't. :(

I guess you're right that I am expecting too much from the engine. I figured Obsidian could make it do things it was never intended to. And I think they did, but they can only do so much with that outdated engine I guess. :p
 
Yeah. I'd say the Karma system gets a bit confusing in FONV with the introduction of the Reputation system. Wouldn't you "earn fame" with the White Gloves REGARDLESS of what you did? If you "helped them" return to cannibalism, wouldn't they like you for it? If you "helped them" expose Mortimer and prevent reverting to their old ways, wouldn't they like you for it? Since the whole affair is governed by the Reputation system, the Karma system takes a backseat most of the time, so you either never notice it, or it doesn't even come into play at all. Many times, things that really ought to be somewhat Catch 22 are still painted as diametrically opposed in some way. They just have to for the sake of gameplay, I suppose. The end result is still a bit convoluted.

FearMonkey said:
You make it sound like I hate the game. I don't.
...
I guess you're right that I am expecting too much from the engine. I figured Obsidian could make it do things it was never intended to.
Click to expand...
Fair enough. I was just focused on the complaints about "pacifism", not necessarily that it was your opinion of the game as a whole, although maybe I thought it could have been, at times. But believe me, Obsidian DID make the engine "do things it was never intended to". They didn't pull any miracles, mind you, but I cannot stress enough how differently FONV plays compared to FO3 (which, if I recall, you said you'd never played, and intended to stay away from). They DID make remarkable changes given the severe limitations imposed upon them, but ultimately, those limitations are still there. =/

Oh hey, Walpknut has nothing to say, very loudly, again.
 
SnapSlav said:
Fair enough. I was just focused on the complaints about "pacifism", not necessarily that it was your opinion of the game as a whole, although maybe I thought it could have been, at times. But believe me, Obsidian DID make the engine "do things it was never intended to". They didn't pull any miracles, mind you, but I cannot stress enough how differently FONV plays compared to FO3 (which, if I recall, you said you'd never played, and intended to stay away from). They DID make remarkable changes given the severe limitations imposed upon them, but ultimately, those limitations are still there. =/
Click to expand...

I did play FO3, I just never finished it. The writing was so bad if I continued playing I would have lost whatever vestiges of sanity I have left.

"Hey, I got a great idea. Gonna make a quest where the choice of which hat the player prefers is how they ultimately decide if they're gonna blow up a nuke in a town or not. I'm so hysterical! I totally get Fallout humor!!!"

"Nice hat", indeed. Feh!

But anyway, back on topic, the other issue I have personally is a bit of OCD. It's hard for me to choose any option that isn't the "right" one. Ultimately though my role-playing instincts win out and I do the option my character would do. Which is why ultimately I chose the option to rescue Ted and not give them a replacement meal and not expose Mortimer. My conscience is clear and I won't become a hypocrite later if I choose the Cannibal perk. :P
 
Is there any way to be more than Liked in Freeside without bribing the Garrett's to put in a good word for you around town? I think I've done every single quest there is in Freeside. Are there non-Freeside quests that up your Fame in Freeside? Just curious. :p
 
FearMonkey said:
Is there any way to be more than Liked in Freeside without bribing the Garrett's to put in a good word for you around town? I think I've done every single quest there is in Freeside. Are there non-Freeside quests that up your Fame in Freeside? Just curious. :p
Click to expand...

I think giving them the energy from Helios One upgrades your reputation there.
 
hmmmm...

so I used the Black Widow perk to get Benny up to his room and then I killed him in his sleep yet it didn't register as a kill in my stats. That feels like cheating to me though. But it's such a simple solution to the whole thing. So tempting. :p

But nah, I'd rather not deal with Benny that way. My character would know she killed, regardless of what some OOC stats say.

What do you guys think? :p
 
FearMonkey said:
hmmmm...

so I used the Black Widow perk to get Benny up to his room and then I killed him in his sleep yet it didn't register as a kill in my stats. That feels like cheating to me though. But it's such a simple solution to the whole thing. So tempting. :p

But nah, I'd rather not deal with Benny that way. My character would know she killed, regardless of what some OOC stats say.

What do you guys think? :p
Click to expand...

If other people ignore it was you, they will not like you less. Doesn't sound like cheating, it just makes sense.
 
Well, I figured out another way to do it requiring a couple easy skill checks. So that's the way I think I'm gonna swing it.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top