There Stands the Grass

There Stands the Grass is a side quest in Fallout: New Vegas.

Detailed walkthrough
To start the quest, you speak to Dr. Hildern at Camp McCarran. Dr. Hildern can be found in his office located inside the Camp McCarran terminal building on the east side of the terminal in the south wing. After speaking to him, he will tell you that Vault 22 has data on its computers that will help him prevent a food shortage. He will give you the location to Vault 22 and ask you to enter and download the experimental data onto your Pip-Boy. Before leaving the base, make sure to speak to Angela Williams so you get the optional objective to find Keely, a researcher who went to the vault before and is now missing. You find out from Dr. Williams that Dr. Hildern has sent other people on his task but none of them have returned. If you speak again to Dr. Hildern before heading to Vault 22 and explore the speech options a little, you can demand that he double the caps he is paying you for the job (40 Speech is required). To get this option, you must not have delivered the invoice from the Crimson Caravan, or you will only have the option to say goodbye.

The vault is easily found by following the map marker. Quite a few cazadores roam the area near the vault. There are large and colorful plants outside the entrance, and a sign saying, "Stay Out! The Plants Kill!". There are also 4 giant mantises hiding in the foliage. The door is permanently open and has a curtain of overgrown plants.

Inside the vault are numerous mantises and spore carriers hidden in plant beds. Spore carriers blend in with the vegetation and will not show up as enemies on your compass until you disturb them. On Level 5 - Pest Control there are spore plants who spit spike projectiles.

There are many password-free terminals throughout the vault which you can access to find some of Keely's notes and information on what became of the Vault's inhabitants.

Once inside you have the choice to repair the elevator (Repair 50) or walk the five levels by stairs. Since access to some staircases is blocked, repairing the elevator will make things easier.

If you have a Lockpick skill of 75 or higher, you can take the elevator directly to Level 5 - Pest Control and unlock the data bank room. If you haven’t repaired the elevator, or you don’t have a high enough Lockpick skill, or are also doing Still in the Dark and/or Bleed Me Dry, you will need to go to the Overseer's office on Level 4 - Common Areas. Follow the signs through the common areas to the Overseer's office where you will find a terminal (no password needed) that can be used to unlock the crew quarters, the data banks, and the cave entrance. (The crew quarters can also be opened with a Lockpick skill of 50.)

Trying to disengage the cave entrance lock will give you the error message: “Override engaged at door site.” You will need to retrieve a keycard, which is located in the crew quarters (now unlocked via the Overseer's computer). The key card is in the first room on the left side of the hall as you enter the crew quarters, on a shelf to the right of the entrance. There are three spore carriers waiting inside.

(NOTE: there may be a glitch on the metal shelf where the key card should be. Items will be invisible and only the item identification will be shown when you scroll over where the object should be. In this case the key card will be on the bottom shelf in the right corner next to a couple of purified waters.)

With the keycard, climb back up the stairs to Level 3 – Food Production (the stairs to Level 5 are blocked) and follow the arrows until you see a door to the caves. The keycard will access the adjacent terminal, where you can disengage the lock. The vault door to Pest Control will be down towards your left in the cave. Follow the arrow to the door.

Once you are on Level 5, you can access the Data Room either by picking the lock or having disengaged it from the Overseer's office. At this point you can finish the quest by downloading the data and returning to Hildern, or, either with or without downloading the data, you can look for Keely (this will give you opportunities for additional XP, caps, and either positive or negative Karma).

To find Keely you must locate one of two entrances to the cave where she is stranded. The shortest route is through a room with a hard lock (Lockpick 75). Open this room and there will be a cave entrance. There are plenty of spore plants and mantises in the cave, even a family of baby mantises. Follow the arrows to find Keely. If you don't have a high enough lockpick skill, the room adjacent to the room with the hard lock has another cave entrance. The entrance is partly concealed by a computer wall panel that's been moved slightly from the wall. This route takes a bit longer.

Keely can be found at the far end of the caves. She is on the south end of the cavern sitting alone next to a mantis pod. She will ask you to meet her in her lab on Level 2 - Oxygen Recycling. If you haven't repaired the elevator yet, Keely will do so at this point, making your trips up and down a bit easier.

When you see Keely on Level 2, she will tell you about her plan to eliminate the contagious spores. She is pumping flammable gas through the vents on Level 5. She wants you to find the vents and ignite the gas without killing yourself in the process.
 * There is a duffle bag with frag grenades beside Keely in the room where you meet up with her on level 2 (Oxygen Recycling). To find the duffle bag turn right (west) after entering the room with Keely's terminal in it, it's in the corner on the floor.
 * On the bottom level of the common areas (where you found the overseer's office) there is a room marked "Utility", which contains a flamer in the far corner along with plenty of fuel.

Survive the Blast
There are several ways to achieve the intended outcome. First, go to level 5 and locate the "vents", which you can identify by the fuzzy distortion of the air. The vents can be found in an area at the end of the hallway nearest the Data Room and the room nearby room full of mantises.

Next, you need either explosives or an energy weapon with which to ignite the blast. If you don't have any, grenades can be obtained from Keely's duffle bag in her lab; the AER14 prototype is accessible through a Very Easy locked door on the fifth level, and a flamer can be found in the same room on the fourth level.

Finally, once you ignite the vents, you need to survive the resulting blast. This can be done either by hiding in the reinforced data room with the door closed, by making it to the elevator before the blast reaches you (see below), or by simply surviving the substantial fire damage that the blast causes.

The following methods for surviving blast are ranked by your chances of minimizing or escaping damage entirely:
 * Placing a C-4 plastic explosive near the vents, and then detonating it while standing next to the elevator.
 * Placing a time bomb by the vents and then running for the elevator. Wait for the thump of the explosion before using the elevator.
 * Consuming a turbo and then shooting a laser at the vent from the end of the hall and simply running to the elevator (as the flames are slowed considerably by its effect).
 * If you choose to use explosives to ignite the gas, long-fuse dynamite will provide you the most time to get to safety. The six-second fuse allows enough time to run back into either the data room or the room across the hallway, close the door, and move as far away from it as necessary.
 * Shooting an energy weapon or throwing an explosive from the data room and then CLOSING THE DOOR and backing up farther into the data room SHOULD prevent all damage from the blast. But closing the door quickly enough can be tricky and it is entirely possible you will take damage depending on your timing.
 * Another method is throwing an explosive toward the gas vents from the opposite side of the file cabinet blockade right next to the data room door. Immediately run to the room directly behind you with the purple lights, closing and moving away from the door.
 * Yet another method is standing near the room with the cave entrance, at the end of the hall opposite the vents. Ignite the gas and then turn and run out into the cavern.
 * Consuming an atomic cocktail and/or a Fire ant nectar should help you to withstand the flamese, although keep in mind any followers may be momentarily knocked unconscious, or even killed if you're playing on Hardcore mode.
 * Standing behind the gas, right where the vent is, doesn't subject you to as much damage as standing in the hall--a high level character can survive this.
 * Stocking up on stimpaks and hotkeying them will let you outpace the damage being done but will burn through quite a few stimpaks, depending on your medicine skill. The hotkey is important because while you are on fire you will not be able to use your Pip-Boy.
 * It's also possible to crouch in the gap between two main frames, right of the main terminal in the data room and fire an appropriate weapon for setting off the gas, but the blast will definitely reach you since you don't have the door closed.
 * Almost ironically (given the distance from ground zero), it is possible to survive the blast by standing in the very nearby room where you download the research data, if you close the door and back up away from it after throwing a grenade or otherwise use an explosive.


 * Returning to Keely

When you return to Keely after igniting the gas from the vents, she will tell you that she intends to destroy the research data. If you have the files she'll discover they were downloaded. You have multiple options from here:
 * Avoid talking to her. You can unlock the door by accessing the terminal in front of her and walk out of the vault by pick pocketing her.
 * Tell her the truth and destroy the codes for good Karma. If she lives you will get caps or Karma depending on what you bartered with Dr. Williams.
 * Tell her the truth and refuse to destroy where she will become hostile. Killing her gives you the password to leave. Make sure to use her computer to unlock the door. This gives you NCR infamy.
 * Tell her the truth and refuse to destroy it, and flee the area. Go back in and she should be non-hostile again. Pickpocket the password from her.
 * Lie and let her live. You will lose Karma for lying but gain it for saving her. This results in a net gain of about 50 Karma.
 * With a Science skill of 70 (hidden), you can keep the data while Keely remains alive by suggesting science learns from failure as much as from success. She will unlock the door for you and you receive positive Karma. You must choose the speech option of telling Keely that Dr. Hildern sent you for the data in order to get the Science speech option.
 * If you are on the Veronica's companion quest I Could Make You Care, you will have another option to save the data without bloodshed. If you tell her Dr. Hildern sent you, you can say that your friend is part of a big organization that can use this data to help people. She will then state that you have given her no reason not to trust you and will open the door for you. Note that it will only pop up anytime after you find Elijah's data, and then settle for going after the data as your then central objective for the quest.
 * If you've already handed in the data to Dr. Hildern, Keely will tell you that the data should be deleted but will not confront you. This can result in a situation of being locked in the vault; to escape either pickpocket or kill Keely for her password, and use her terminal to open the locked door.


 * Returning to Dr. Hildern

After that, whatever you choose you must return to Dr. Hildern.
 * If you saved the data he will give you 1200 caps and you can get an additional 600 with a high enough Barter(50) or Speech(50) skill.
 * If you deleted the data, the quest will end with you informing Dr. Williams that Keely is safe or dead. Dr. Hildern will suspect that Keely was responsible for the data being gone. No matter what response you choose afterwards, he will suspect you as an accomplice and angrily demand that you leave the lab. You will earn 1200 xp for this ending.
 * If Keely died, you can tell Dr. Williams a lie with a speech check. You get 800 caps and lose Karma this way. If you don't, you will not get anything but you will not lose Karma.
 * If you saved the data and saved Keely, speak to both Hildern and Williams to finish the quest. You will receive the amount of caps mentioned above from both, and 1500xp.

Behind the scenes
The title of the quest may be a reference to a 1953 country song "There Stands the Glass", performed by Webb Pierce.

Bugs

 * Make sure you'll have delivered the parcel from You Can Depend on Me before you complete this quest as the dialogue option to hand over the parcel to Tom Hildern may not appear afterwards. This also affects whether the courier will be able to recruit Rose of Sharon Cassidy as a companion.
 * You may experience problems in Vault 22 completing Keely's quest igniting the gas if you have already cleared Vault 22 and got the data before starting the quest. Firstly you may already have taken the grenades and laser weapons making it hard to ignite the gas. Secondly, there may be a bug in that if you have already obtained the data, prior to starting the quest, at the end of Keely's dialogue she goes through the data deletion dialogue meaning you cannot give it to Dr. Hildern. It may be fixed by shooting the gas with the laser, then proceeding into other levels and returning, where you will automatically witness an explosion of the igniting gas.
 * ED-E might disappear in the explosion and be lost indefinitely. To prevent this, save before you light the gas and make sure your companions are in a safe location.
 * If you have ED-E with you when you start, and have not gotten the second (possibly first) record log from ED-E, it may begin to play after talking to Dr. Hildern as you leave his room and before Williams talks, causing you to freeze in place and only able to look around.
 * Veronica, Boone, ED-E (unless ED-E has vanished by being caught in an explosion like the one in Vault 22), Arcade Gannon, Rose of Sharon Cassidy, Lily Bowen, and Rex turn up by the elevator every time after using it, even though they had been told to wait.
 * When detonating the gas, you don't need to close the door to the computer room. The fire doesn't enter, even though it's wide open.
 * Sometimes it becomes impossible to reach the Fifth level to burn all the spores. Every time you use the elevator to the Fifth level the game crashes to the desktop. The solution is pretty easy, leave your companions on the second level and complete the quest alone. That should prevent the game from crashing.
 * After rescuing Keely and going through the dialogue in which she tells you to meet her in her lab on the second floor, sometimes she will run to the elevator and go through an animation in which she is attempting to repair it. When you engage her in dialogue, she notes the good work you did in repairing it, but then instead of entering it, she walks into the food production tunnels nearby, and then aimlessly runs throughout them. If approached, she will engage in dialogue normally as if she is in her lab. If other bugs result in her disappearing (see above), you may want to check the food production tunnels for a possible location.
 * Occasionally, Keely may get stuck beneath the floor in 2nd level for no apparent reason. Using console commands seems to be the only remedy to this.
 * The gas may not ignite or only ignite the space surrounding the collapsed door, preventing the quest from progressing.
 * Sometimes, even if the door is closed, the explosion will still kill you, or it may knock your humanoid companion unconscious, but leave you intact.
 * The controls to close the Data Room door may be invisible, though the activate prompt will still appear if your cursor selects it.
 * if you shut both doors in the 5th level of the vault when igniting the gas, the flames will go through the door and you will die. Closing ONLY the door closest to the gas will keep you safe.
 * If you obtain the research data before starting the quest, giving the research data to Hildern upon starting this quest to complete it without leaving the room will result in the player character from being unable to move or interact with anything upon leaving the room and having Dr. Williams start up conversation, however she won't mention Keely as scripted because the quest has already been finished. This can be avoided by talking with Dr. Williams before completing the quest.
 * Sometimes the game glitches and you can continually pass Williams' Speech check (25) for infinite experience by asking about her feelings on Dr Hildern.
 * After speaking with Dr. Hildern, while leaving his office you may get stuck in place and can only look around.
 * It is possible to rescue Keely, and after meeting her on the second level to kill her, leave the vault and come back, THEN destroy the spores, and the game registers her as still alive. When going to talk to Hildern at Camp McCarran, you have a forced conversation with Williams that confirms this. After this exchange though, you are stuck in cinematic mode, and cannot move. Thus, this quest becomes impossible to complete.
 * Companions may enter attack mode even though no enemy is visualized in the vicinity in the vault.

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