Springvale Elementary School

 is a bombed-out elementary school in Fallout 3. It is now used as a base of operations by a 10-man group of raiders. is easily found by following the road from Vault 101 a few miles NE through Springvale until you see the giant school sign that reads "Springvale Elementary".

The raiders there had attempted to dig a tunnel in order to break into and pillage Vault 101 but their plans were foiled by several giant ants. The very hard locked door leads to this tunnel. There is no obvious way to complete the tunnel, explosives have no effect on the half-completed chasm at the end of the map.

Inside the school, at the top level is the raider party leader and her dog, who guard a room with some minor loot, a key to the basement tunnels, and a computer terminal with his logs of his group's recent activities. You also find a Library Key off a raider in the library. The key opens the library door (double leaf door) which is sometimes already open.

Springvale Elementary is a great first place to start killing. There is some minor loot here including Stimpaks and Rad Aways in the various lockers and boxes scattered throughout the school's ruins. Additionally, there are many parts available to construct weapons when you have the schematics like the lunch box, sensor modules, wonder glue, turpentine, a vacuum cleaner, fire hose nozzle, conductors, crutch, pressure cooker, steam gauge, paint gun, toy car and surgical tubing. The raiders themselves carry small guns and standard raider armor. Looting all the armor and repairing it will, if your skill in repair is high enough, let you craft a nice piece of armor for a beginning scavver.

There is a small fenced area behind the building containing several radioactive waste barrels (max 6 rads/sec). Picking the very easy lock on the gate gives access to a Hunting Rifle and a First Aid Box. Note that if you have grass turned up to a significant level it may be very hard to see the Hunting Rifle and First Aid Box especially at night. On the top of one of the barrels lies a Rad Away which can only be picked up if you put the crosshair above it a bit.

Tactically, a good way to approach this building is by sneaking up to the south side of the school front which has the main entrance, two wooden doors. Its easy to remain hidden if you approach from the southeast. Slowly move toward the west in hidden mode. At the southwest corner of the partially destroyed west wall, you must crouch to remain hidden from two raiders who are roaming the areas. Inside the remains of the bombed out building is a raider on the north side of the school on the second floor who can easily see you if you stand and will shoot you with his assault rifle if you remain exposed too long.

If you have worked your unarmed combat up to a powerful level, it is not hard to sucker one of the raider into approaching you around this corner from within the school then beating them to death. Once again, be careful you do not overly expose yourself to the raider on the second floor on the inside of the building or you will be shot. Alternately, if you've picked up a shot gun, blow the head off the raider who comes looking for you. If a second raider is hanging around, briefly expose yourself to sucker him/her to come after you and give them the same treatment. It is possible that two raiders could come at you at once so be aware. Neither of them are tough kills.

If the raider roaming the basement area does not come after you, the next raider to deal with is the raider on the second floor on the north side of the building. It is safest to retire a ways from the building and find a place where you can snipe him from a distance. Just south of the school the land rises to Springvale and there are good places to set up to snipe this raider as the raider patrols back and forth. If correctly positioned, he/she will never see you, and you can snipe him through the broken out windows as he walks along the narrow edge of the second floor. Kill him with a hunting rifle if you have one or whatever intermediate range weapon you have. It may take several shots. If you only have a pistol you will have to fight at a much close range and will get hurt in the process so you might want to avoid this fight until you have a hunting rifle or an assault rifle. Alternately, you could approach from the north side of the building and lob a few grenades into the window he roams and take him out that way.

Once he/she is dead, you can enter the blasted-out wall on the west side of the school unmolested. However, beware as there is one raider left on the exterior of the building roaming what was the basement floor of the school who may surprise you. If you enter crouching in hidden mode he/she should not know you are there. I would avoid descending the sloping ground to the basement and stick to the first floor to the left as you enter the blasted wall of the school on the southwest corner. Passing a teacher's desk and student desks, sneak up on this one and you may surprise him/her looking the wrong way. At any rate, having the advantage of height, they should be an easy kill. At this point the exterior of the school is free of raiders and if you like you can loot the raiders' bodies and the surrounding metal crates and lockers.

The interior of the school is accessible by three routes. . . one single wooden door on the second floor, one double steel door from the basement of the interior of the school which you get to by traveling down the slope from the southwest corner of the exterior portion of the school which has been blasted away, or by the front main entrance, two wooden double doors on the south side of the school. There doesn't seem to be any tactical advantage from any one point of entry. However, entering by the basement double doors makes sense as that is where the last raider exterior of the building is killed.

The interior has no booby traps. In hidden mode, that is crouched, approach the corners in the halls, and the doors cautiously. Try and sucker one of the raiders (at several points the raiders are in groups of two, and the leader of the raiders on an upper floor has a guard dog with him) into coming after you. Hang back just around the corner and wait for them to expose themselves at which point you can use VAT and beat them to death or blow their heads off with a shotgun or assault rifle. Always try to avoid two raiders coming at you at once unless you don't mind getting hurt. Work your way through the basement level killing anything that moves, then the main floor, then the second floor. There are not really any surprises. When you are done killing all the raiders, you can loot their bodies and gather any items from the metal boxes, lockers and anything just laying around. Mattresses are available at several places throughout the building to sleep on and heal.

The Tunnel
Located behind a locked door, to which the Raider leader has the key, is the tunnel the group were using to try and break into Vault 101. As the Terminal records show, the diggers inadvertently found a Giant Ant nest, the inhabitants of which soon ate most of the workers.

The tunnel itself is full of Giant Ant Workers, and if the player heads into the main chamber and approaches the fallen corpses of the laborers, several more Giant Ants will flood the chamber and attack the player.

Several spoil heaps are also good sources for finding Giant Ant Nectar. Also, there are various items spread about the ground.

The entrance to the tunnel the raiders were digging with the slave labor of two Wastlander settlers is not marked on the local map of the lower level of the school but is on the east side of the basement. Approach the opening to the tunnel with caution as you will immediately be attacked by several giant worker ants crawling up from the tunnel. A frag grenade will kill them all on normal difficulty.

Note also that shooting one of the ants in the antenna will cause it to go into a "frenzy" and turn on ants in its immediate vicinity. The 10mm Pistol is effective for this. A good strategy is to draw ants toward the tunnel entrance and then shoot one in the antenna. It will then turn back and fight nearby ants. This works great when the ants come toward you in pairs. Be watchful that if one ant has defeated another and no other ant is around, the surviving ant will come back toward you.

An ant may be waiting for you as soon as you approached the tunnel entrance if you've have made noise around the entrance and then left the area for a time. Fortunately, they are not hard to kill. The tunnel itself is well lit and rather short. Shortly after descending the tunnel it splits. The left tunnel is the one to take. Watch out as an ant may be roaming in the right tunnel and may sneak up on you when it hears you blasting the ants that come after you when you travel further down the main tunnel so you may want to take the right tunnel and clear it of any roaming ants first. The ants you encounter along the main tunnel to the left will come at you singly or in twos. They are deceptively fast so make sure you know how to retreat back up the tunnel if need be to gain distance.

After taking out these ants singly and in pairs, you will find the two dead Wastelanders at the end of the main tunnel and after approaching them a bunch of giant ants will come after you from their hive which you cannot enter (except with setscale console commands, but the hive is a dead end). You will have to kill one or two then retreat back up the main tunnel to gain distance and kill more until they are all dead. (Or back up and give sufficient distance to use the "shoot them in their antenner" strategy.) Be careful as it is easy to get caught in a blind corner with no escape and the ants will swarm you. Loot the Wastelanders' bodies, and pick up an assault rifle and anything else you want like the contents of the ant eggs. Then exit via the route you entered the tunnel.

Notable Loot

 * Assault Rifle - in the tunnel by the giant ant nest. There are two dead Wastelanders and dozens of Ant Egg Clutches adjacent to the rifle.
 * Chinese Army: Special Ops Training Manual - near the rifle. Move the Wastelanders bodies if you can not see it or pick it up.
 * Duck and Cover! - It is in the raider leader's room on a table to the left of the computer. The room is on the Second Floor of of the school.
 * Sheet Music Book - Enter the school through the main entrance on the west side. Turn right and proceed to the wall, turning left and exiting the nearest right. Enter the room opposite the letters ABCDEFG on the wall. The Sheet Music Book is on the flipped desk.
 * Nuka-Cola Quantum - Top of the cage as you enter school from front entrance, the main entrance on the south side of the school.

Ruined Building
Off the subject of the school, walk behind the school and head in a northeast direction. You will come across a derelict building on the water, if you have done the The Waters of Life quest then there will be an Enclave base set up of with at least two soldiers and an officer. They seem to have been doing research as their terminal reports mainly on Mirelurks and Radroaches. If you go to the building in the center there is a crater which seems to glow and gives off at least 3 rads per second, there is nothing noticeable here apart from two Rad Away.

Appearances
 only appears in Fallout 3.