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Fallout: New Vegas Hints

Saving Private Halford

  • 1 of 8: Go to Guardian Peak (location 24 on the Zone 2 Map) and enter the Camp Guardian Caves area through its northern-most entrance. (It's the one near the tent.)
  • 2 of 8: Go along the tunnel to reach a small cave room, then get all the C-4 plastic explosives that are in and near the crate. You don't need them for this quest, but they can be extremely useful with others.
  • 3 of 8: Move on down the next tunnel until you find a dead lakelurk, then look in the side area to the left of it to find Private Halford.
  • 4 of 8: Talk to him and ask if he's okay, then pass a Medicine 50 check or use a doctor's bag to heal his leg. If you can't do either, come back when you can.
  • 5 of 8: After that, say that he has a nice gun. If you then pass a Speech 50 check, you can get him to join you as a follower to help clear out the caves. However, that isn't necessary or even desirable unless clearing the caves is something you want to do right away.
  • 6 of 8: Instead, say he's free to leave, then mention his rifle to get a service rifle. Tell him to have a safe trip, after which he'll give you dog tag fist schematics (which adds a recipe to workbenches) and take off in the wrong direction. If you want, you can follow him and loot the lakelurks that he kills, though you'll have to be very careful if you don't want to come under attack.
  • 7 of 8: NOTE: You could clear out all the lakelurks in the caves before talking to Halford, in which case he'd give you the dog tag fist schematics right away. Or you could just kill Halford and take the schematics and service rifle from his body (though note that he's not a total pushover in combat).
  • 8 of 8: NOTE: Making a dog tag fist at a workbench take 20 NCR dogtags, which is more than you can find in the caves. Also, they have other uses (like with the "NCR Dogtag Collectors" undocumented quest), so it's better to just get the unique dog tag fist called Recompense of the Fallen if you're interested in using one.