Hard Luck Blues

 is a quest in Fallout: New Vegas.

Quick walkthrough
No XP is granted through the quest, just faction boost.

Acting on information retrieved from a terminal in the "East Pump Station" regarding irradiated water, the Courier heads to Vault 34 to determine the cause. Once there he or she finds that all of the vault dwellers have turned into feral and glowing ghouls and that the reason for the radiation is that the reactor for the vault has broken down and is leaking. After obtaining the correct security clearance and battling several ghouls the Courier obtains information about surviving dwellers who are trapped behind doors that have been flooded. The Courier must decide if control should be given to the dwellers so they can escape or should the reactor be fixed so that the NCR Sharecroppers can once again grow much needed food for the New Vegas Wasteland.

Detailed walkthrough
Go to the NCR Sharecropper Farms and speak to Morgan Blake. She will tell you that crops are faring poorly, and she thinks there may be something in the water. She asks you to investigate the East Pump Station to find the source of the contamination. Agree to initiate the quest.

Travel east along the pipe to the East Pump Station. Enter the larger building (the door marked "East Pump Station" rather than "East Cistern") and activate the terminal on the desk. It has a damaged network connection which you must restore (50 science skill required) before it will activate properly. Once you have activated the terminal, read the message marked "Warning". The message tells you about a problem the pumping station is having with radiation contaminating the pipes. If you have not already visited the farms and received this quest, reading this message will cause it to start.

Now leave the building and head east towards the map marker. You will come across a truck with many radioactive barrels surrounded by many golden geckos. Head to the map marker, and you will come across a door marked "Vault 34- 1st floor". You will enter a cavern filled with golden geckos.

After fighting through them, and descending deep within the cave, you will come across Vault 34's open Vault door. The Vault is saturated with radiation. Bring lots of Rad-X and Radaway. It also is advisable to bring a radiation suit or the space suit to help with radiation resist. (You always seem to get at least +1 RAD/sec though.)

The population of the Vault have been turned into feral ghouls, with the security officers being turned into a glowing one. There are a lot of glowing ones in the vault, especially down in the armory.

In order to access the armory you need to obtain the Vault 34 security terminal password, the Vault 34 utility terminal password and the Overseer's password. The first two passwords can be found on glowing ones that are underwater in two separate locations. Both locations have stairs that go down into radioactive water--and each location is hinted at with a stream of water falling from the ceiling. Find water pouring from the ceiling, and you'll know you're in the right spot to find the first two passwords. Neither location needs to be drained in order to obtain the passwords. But you need to walk under the water and search both ghouls. ***NOTE: Save your game before you submerge in the water!! You're given a timer for how long you can hold your breath, and it's pretty short. Drown while trying to find the dead glowing one, and you'll go back to your last save--which, given how difficult it is to find your way around this vault, you won't be happy about (or use the Rebreather if you have it).

The Overseer's door is unlocked through the terminal in the security room. In order to get to the security room, you have to locate the terminal in the Utility Room next to the entrance to the armory, and select Activate Pump to drain all the water from the flooded level. To help you find this room, first find the clinic (it's the 1st door before the Overseer's room) and make your way through and out the clinic's 2nd door in the back. (There's a wall safe in this room as well.) You'll find the security room pretty quick once you exit the clinic, where you'll find the terminal to unlock the Overseer's room.

Head back to the Overseer's door, and kill the Overseer waiting inside. *WARNING* It is highly suggested that you save before entering the Overseer's room because many high level ghouls will swarm you, as well as the powerful Overseer. A well-aimed frag grenade might take care of the turret. Take the key (or it might be a password) from the Overseer's body. There's a terminal at the back of this small room where you can unlock the armory door. You can choose to go back to the armory now, but it will save time to get it after. The armory has lots of useful equipment. Several suits of Vault 34 security armor and helmets, a combat knife, 10mm pistol, many 10mm SMG, a sniper rifle, an assault carbine, the All-American, a marksman carbine, a minigun, a riot shotgun, a missile launcher, missiles, and the pulse gun (inside a very hard locked chest, can be opened with key from Nellis).

After you obtain access to the reactor room, descend under the Overseer's desk to the Reactor room. Work your way along the corridors, and eventually you will find another computer terminal in the back corner. Here you will obtain some vague information about opening a reactor door, closing the exterior vents and rerouting vault control. What you want to do is open the reactor door. Click to unlock, and give it a few seconds while it does. The reactor door is about 12 feet to the left of this terminal. Enter and walk to another computer terminal. You are given a choice on how to end the quest. Vault dwelling Ghouls are trapped underwater. Either disable the Reactor, thereby removing the radiation contaminating the Sharecropper farms, or reroute control of the computer system to the Vault dwellers.

Neither decision gives you karma, but if you choose to help the Sharecroppers you will get a faction boost with New California Republic and 200 XP. If you choose to help the dwellers, you will be able to find them in the Aerotech Office Park "Suite 300", east of Camp McCarran and earn 250 XP.

Bugs
If you choose to save trapped Vault dwellers from Vault 34 and meet them at "Aerotech Office Park" you will have an option to ask for a reward "Vault trinket", which doesn't actually add anything to player's inventory. Furthermore - dialogs appear to be looped and bugged. The vault dwellers might not appear at Suite 300 at all despite the quest being finished and your Pipboy entry showing that you saved them. Note: I have investigated this and have found yes they are not there sometimes but, its the common theme in this game wait 3-4 days then boom they fall out of mid air right into the centre of the room all 4 people, it is silly though you get nothing from them at all not much thought went into this part of the quest.

Whilst inside reactor room, computer may be disabled and ask for administrator preventing you from completing the quest. Make sure you checked the Overseer's inventory, he has the password. (Confirmed on PC.)

Two feral ghouls come through broken glass area and attack you, these ghouls have no names and allow no searching of the body after being killed. (Confirmed on PC, PS3, and Xbox 360)

If the East Pump Station map marker isn`t triggered as a discovered location,when standing in front of it (entrance door) - Jump on the pipe(left of the east cistern) and walk towards the pump house.

If you use the terminal to pump the water out of the sunken area before swimming in to get the Utility Terminal Password, the corpse that normally contains the password will no longer have the password. This makes it impossible to access the Armory.

If you go into the vault and decide you made the bad decision by letting the people out instead of shutting down the reactor and then try to reload from the Autosave created when entering the reactor floor when you activate the computer to open the vault reactor door the game crashes, the computer initiation sound plays and everything gets blurry but it just freezes the game. Leaving the Vault Level and reentering will fix the crash.