Finding the Garden of Eden

Fallout 3 main quest
Finding the Garden of Eden
The Garden of Eden Creation Kit
Location	Little Lamplight
Given by	Scribe Rothchild
Rewards	1000 XP
Quest chain
Previous	Picking Up the Trail
Next	The American Dream
Technical
Form ID	00014E8E

Fallout 3 achievement
Finding the Garden of Eden
Complete Finding the Garden of Eden
Bronze
20

 

“The G.E.C.K. is in a chamber flooded with deadly radiation. I doubt you could survive inside very long. However, I can.”— Fawkes when asked about the G.E.C.K

Finding the Garden of Eden is a main quest in Fallout 3. It is also a PlayStation 3 trophy and an Xbox 360/PC achievement.

Quick walkthrough

Main Quest: Finding the Garden of Eden

Enter Vault 87.

Proceed to the Test Labs.

Ignore Fawkes.

Free Fawkes.

Obtain the G.E.C.K.

Encounter Colonel Autumn.

Reward: 1000 XP

Leads to: The American Dream

Detailed walkthrough

Enter Vault 87

Depending on your choice during Picking Up the Trail, you either have to fight your way through Murder Pass to the vault door and enter or talk to Joseph in order to hack the terminal to enter Vault 87.

Find a G.E.C.K.

Both entrances of Vault 87 lead to the Reactor Chamber. From there, you proceed to the Living Quarters, then the Test Labs. There, you eventually encounter and liberate a super mutant named Fawkes who asks to hold a conversation with you over the intercom. Fawkes explains his upbringing in the vault and how he has become intelligible and civilized through continued access to the vault's database. Fawkes promises to retrieve the Garden of Eden Creation Kit from the irradiated halls above if he is released.

The radiation level where the G.E.C.K. is stored is extremely high. You can proceed in one of two ways:

• Attempt to get the G.E.C.K. without help. If you choose to do so, sufficient protection will be needed to resist the radiation and/or some RadAway. There is an advanced radiation suit in a locked storage room on the way to the G.E.C.K.
• Release Fawkes, who will assist you in both combat and obtaining the G.E.C.K., thus fulfilling the objective of the quest. See free Fawkes below.

The room with the G.E.C.K. can be found by going left from Fawkes' cell. If you release him, he slowly leads you to it and will engage the remaining enemies in melee. Fawkes is even tougher in this part of the game than he is as a follower, so you shouldn't worry about him dying.

Optional: Free Fawkes

• Upon your arrival at his cell, Fawkes will ask you to unlock his door somehow. An option that he provides is triggering the test area's fire alarm, which will explosively release all of the chamber doors, and the subjects within. To avoid the battle after triggering the alarm, it is possible to hack each hard terminal next to the occupied rooms (see below) and trigger the command "terminate subject," which will instantly kill them in a jet of fire. Whether you choose to do this or not, you need to go down the hall to the right. At the back of the last room, there is a fire control console here that can be activated to unlock all of the cells, or an average computer terminal next to it that can be hacked to open his cell directly (he is in room 5). Isolation Room 5's door cannot be picked, and using the chamber's local hard terminal to unlock it yields a message saying the door is jammed.
• The rooms contain:
• Isolation Room 01 - 3 dead people (2 wastelanders and 1 raider).
• Isolation Room 02 - vacant (centaur possible)
• Isolation Room 03 - The only "dangerous" test subject, a nutty human named Sid. If you unlock the door through picking the lock, he may be spoken with, where he will babble insanely, including how everyone is dead and "it's all his fault," and to "get out of his head." If the door is unlocked through the terminal (be it his or the master one) or the fire control, he will turn hostile.
• Isolation Room 04 - vacant (centaur possible)
• Isolation Room 05 - Fawkes

Once Fawkes is free, he will thank you, and hold up his end of the bargain. He will proceed to slowly walk to the room with the G.E.C.K., fighting any enemy super mutants along the way. Once he's there, talk to him again to get him to retrieve the G.E.C.K. He can be watched through the windows as he does this, or alternatively followed (talking to him during this will yield an amusing comment). If you do not feel like waiting for him in real time, a two-hour wait is enough to bring him instantly back to you.

However, if Fawkes is killed, the player will have no choice but to retrieve the G.E.C.K. on their own. Fortunately, Fawkes is extremely tough - practically invincible - so the only way you'd find yourself in that situation is if you intentionally killed him yourself. The easy way to murder Fawkes is by using the "terminate specimen" option on the hard terminal next to his cell, which will result in bad Karma. (The same option is available on other specimens' terminals, without the Karma loss.) If, after retrieving the G.E.C.K., Fawkes is engaged and killed before handing it over to the player, it can be looted from his corpse.

Escape from Vault 87

After all this effort you will be incapacitated upon attempting to leave the Vault by a type of flash bang grenade, and Colonel Autumn will show up with some Enclave soldiers, and take the G.E.C.K. from you. You will pass out a few moments later. An exception to this is in the bugs section below.

Followers

If you are accompanied by a companion, they will not be with you after you have been incapacitated by the Enclave. Be sure to retrieve any equipment from them you do not want them to walk off with (as if they were fired) before this happens, or right after retrieving the G.E.C.K. You will not have a chance to re-hire your companion until after The American Dream. After re-hiring a companion they will have all the items you left with them still in their inventory, so it can be a good way to free up inventory space of non-essential items you want but won't need during your time in Raven Rock, allowing you to stock up on the mountains of Enclave gear.

• Butch DeLoria will return to The Muddy Rudder in Rivet City. Butch will not follow you if your Karma strays from Neutral.
• Charon can be found at The Ninth Circle in Underworld immediately after escaping from Raven Rock. You can take him back for free (you still hold his contract) and, of course, regardless of your Karma. When you engage a conversation with him he will speak to you as if you had asked him to wait for you ("You return. Shall I join you once again?").
• Star Paladin Cross will return to the Citadel and can be rehired as long as your Karma is good; otherwise she will refuse to join you.
• Dogmeat will be waiting in front of Vault 101, but be warned that he may die before you take him back.
• Clover will be back in Eulogy's house in Paradise Falls, even if you killed everyone in town, including Eulogy. You can take her with you without having to pay and regardless of Karma (as a slave she is blindly loyal).
• Sergeant RL-3 will be waiting for you at Canterbury Commons. You do not have to pay to take him back, but your Karma must remain neutral.
• Jericho will be in Megaton, most likely Moriarty's Saloon. If Megaton is destroyed he will wander around the ruins. If your Karma is now too high for him (neutral or good), he will refuse to follow you again.

A good way to regain lost items from your followers is to sneak attack them with the Victory rifle and take your stuff while they are down. This has no loss of Karma, nor will the ex-follower turn on you. You cannot take the armor off. This is useful when you had 2 followers from different Karma zones, and do not want to commit Karma giving deeds to reclaim your items. Xbox 360

Completing this quest, and spawning in Raven Rock, will hand over all extra companion slots gained through exploits. See discussion tab.

Quest stages

Stage	Status	Description
10		Locate the underground entrance to Vault 87.
15		Retrieve the G.E.C.K.
20		(Optional) Rescue Fawkes from the Observation Cells.
30		Escape from Vault 87.

Notes

• The device used by the Enclave to incapacitate the player has the appearance of a standard frag grenade with a blue glow to it. A frag grenade looks very little like an actual flash bang grenade, suggesting that it was not intended to be the latter, but rather some other type of device. According to Three Dog, the Lone Wanderer was "encased in a block of ice." This grenade could be a reference to the cut "cryo grenade" seen in the limited concept art book. The cryo grenade was then introduced in the Mothership Zeta add-on.
• If the player reaches the G.E.C.K. on their own, the option is given to either take it or activate it. However, the player will be killed upon activation, preceding a question of whether they are sure they want to activate it and a warning of what it will do.
• If the player frees Fawkes, and manages to get the G.E.C.K. before the mutant, he will say something like "It was quite unwise to get the G.E.C.K, since I was at hand."
• If Charon is the player's follower, a unique dialogue option will open in which they can ask him to retrieve the G.E.C.K. However, he will refuse stating the contract only gives you his services in combat, and that he's "nobody's errand boy." No similar option is available for Sergeant RL-3, another follower who might be immune to radiation.
• If Fawkes dies, the player will have no choice but to retrieve the G.E.C.K. by themselves.
• There is an advanced radiation suit (0009b8ec) in a chamber right next to the G.E.C.K room.
• If you do plan on retrieving the G.E.C.K yourself, considered yourself warned as the chamber that the G.E.C.K is in is highly irradiated and can go up to 336 rads/second. Without the use of chems and rad resistance gear, the player will die in around 3 seconds, making Fawkes a much more sensible choice in retrieving the G.E.C.K. The advanced radiation suit as noted above can make the journey less perilous.
• If you choose not to free Fawkes and retrieve the G.E.C.K. yourself, after completing the quest The American Dream, you can return to Vault 87 and he will still be imprisoned. If you talk to him, he will speak with you as if you chose him as your companion, even though you never did so. Your dialog option will also allude to him having a Gatling laser, though if you kill and loot him he will just have 2 copies of Fawkes' super sledge.
• Rad-X is a huge help in the G.E.C.K chamber, by increasing your rad resistance up to the maximum 85%, which means a slower death, but rad levels are still high.

Behind the scenes

The name of the quest is a play on words: not only the player searches for the Garden of Eden Creation Kit, but the quest also ends in finding the residence ("garden") of Eden.

Bugs

• Xbox 360 It is possible that while talking to Fawkes, the game may freeze and you will have to reset your console. ^[verified]
• Xbox 360 While following Fawkes to retrieve the G.E.C.K., you can talk to him with a standard set of follower conversation options, and trade equipment with him. However, after he gets the G.E.C.K. for you, the talk options are not available any more - you lose anything you gave him. The next time you see him outside of Vault 87, he will have an empty inventory. ^[verified]
• Xbox 360 Fawkes may get stuck between a wall and a machine for a while when walking to the G.E.C.K. If that happens, the player can give him a shove to help get him out. ^[verified]
• Playstation 3 Even though Fawkes may be near "invincible," if the player moves through a path Fawkes cannot follow (over a ledge, jump, etc.) when first leaving Raven Rock, the player will hear Fawkes' Gatling laser firing continuously and Fawkes may die. Upon investigation it seemed he was killed by a lone yao guai. This happened when traveling over rock ledge to the southwest of Raven Rock. ^[verified]
• PC For some reason you may be able to hear Dogmeat's panting during the cutscene. ^[verified]
• PC It is possible when exploring Little Lamplight prior to initiating this quest that the Reactor Chamber door which is normally locked will be unlocked. This allows the person to explore Vault 87 and even acquire the G.E.C.K. (or two), Fawkes, and the Enclave ambush. Quest completion and achievement follow suit. ^[verified]
• PC If you have Star Paladin Cross as a follower when getting captured, she might vanish from the game entirely instead of being back at the Citadel. It may also happen with other followers (i.e. Clover). ^[verified]
• PC If you agree to rescue Fawkes, and yet leave him within his cell and obtain the GECK yourself, the game checks the objective "Optional: Rescue Fawkes" as complete, even though you end up going to Raven Rock while he is contained. ^[verified]
• PC If you choose to activate the G.E.C.K. rather than taking it, the pulse that emits from it will, rather than killing you, stun you indefinitely, leaving you to die slowly from radiation poisoning (unless your unconscious body lands in a non-radiated space, in which case you will remain lying on the floor forever). ^[verified]
• PC It is possible that the G.E.C.K. will not be removed from your inventory when you are captured by the Enclave. This does not interfere with the storyline and the next quest occurs as if the Enclave had taken the G.E.C.K. But, as the G.E.C.K. is a quest item, you cannot remove it from your inventory without the use of the console command player.removeitem 0003d34d 1. ^[verified]
• Playstation 3 If the Lone Wanderer leaves Vault 87 after agreeing to free Fawkes, upon returning, Fawkes might be in his isolation room with the centaur from Isolation Room #4. ^[verified]

Gallery

Colonel Autumn's ambush

Quests in Fallout 3 Main quests Baby Steps · Growing Up Fast · Future Imperfect · Escape! · Following in His Footsteps · Galaxy News Radio · Scientific Pursuits · Tranquility Lane · The Waters of Life · Picking Up the Trail · Rescue from Paradise · Finding the Garden of Eden · The American Dream · Take it Back! · Project Impurity Side quests Agatha's Song · Big Trouble in Big Town · Blood Ties · Head of State · The Nuka-Cola Challenge · Oasis · The Power of the Atom · Reilly's Rangers · The Replicated Man · Stealing Independence · Strictly Business · The Superhuman Gambit · Those! · Tenpenny Tower · Trouble on the Homefront · Wasteland Survival Guide · You Gotta Shoot 'Em in the Head Unmarked quests A Manhandled Manservant · A Nice Day for a Right Wedding · Happy Birthday to You · Church Donations · Collecting Holotags · Council Seat · Economics of Violence · Election Day · Fungus Deal · Gallows Humor · Geomapping with Reilly · Grady's Package · Hired Help · I Want to Drink Your Blood · Jiggs' Loot · Just for the Taste of It · Keller Family Refuge · Leo's Drug Habit · Lincoln's Profit Margins · Merchant Empire · Mississippi Quantum Pie · Murphy's Bombing Run · Nectar Collecting for Fun and Profit · Our Little Secret · Ryan Brigg's Wonder Meat · Searching for Cheryl · Slave Hunt · Strictly Profitable · The Kid-Kidnapper · The Lost Initiate · The Outcast Collection Agent · This Old House · Treatment · Walter's Scrap Metal · Water Beggars · Yearning for Learning · Zip's Nuka Fix Cut quests Infiltration · Last Rites · MS07 · Matchmaker Add-on quests Operation: Anchorage Aiding the Outcasts · The Guns of Anchorage · Paving the Way · Operation: Anchorage! The Pitt Free Labor · Into The Pitt · Mill Worker · Toys for Tots · Unsafe Working Conditions · Wild Bill's Last Stand · Slave Snitch Broken Steel The Sorrowful Suitor · Blood Brotherhood · Death From Above · Getting Ready for Prime Time · Shock Value · Who Dares Wins · Holy Water · Protecting the Water Way · The Amazing Aqua Cura! · Wastelander Water Request Point Lookout The Local Flavor  · Walking with Spirits · Hearing Voices · Tailing the Tomboy · Thought Control · A Meeting of the Minds · A Spoonful of Whiskey · An Antique Land · Plik's Safari · The Dark Heart of Blackhall · The Velvet Curtain Mothership Zeta Not of This World · Among the Stars · This Galaxy Ain't Big Enough... · The Legend of Zeta

The Citadel Characters Knight Artemis · Arthur Maxson · Paladin Bael · Scribe Bowditch · Knight Captain Colvin · Star Paladin Cross · Knight Captain Durga · Knight Captain Dusk · Scribe Jameson · Paladin Glade · Paladin Kodiak · Paladin Gunny · Knight Captain Gallows · Liberty Prime · Owyn Lyons · Scribe Peabody · Scribe Rothchild · Sarah Lyons · Sawbones · Paladin Tristan · Scribe Vallincourt · Paladin Vargas Sections Laboratory · A-ring · B-ring · The bailey Fallout 3 The Waters of Life · Picking Up the Trail · Finding the Garden of Eden · The American Dream · Take it Back! · Collecting Holotags · Gallows Humor Broken Steel Death From Above · Shock Value · Who Dares Wins · Getting Ready for Prime Time · Blood Brotherhood Groups Brotherhood of Steel · Lyons' Pride

Vault 87 Inhabitants Characters Fawkes · Sid Mentioned-only characters Paulina Day · Bennett Faust · Filo · Eve Greenawalt · Marianne Hanseu · Mary Kilpatrik · Daniel Koster · Mercia Koster · Wayne Merrick · Jason Stevens · Peter Stevens · Truman West Creatures Super mutants · Centaurs Quests Main Finding the Garden of Eden Notes Terminal entries Vault 87 terminal entries