Strictly Business

 is a Fallout 3 quest. It is also a PS3, Xbox360 and PC achievement.

This quest will begin the first time you discover Paradise Falls and attempt to enter it. A guard/slaver (Grouse) will approach you and tell you that you cannot enter Paradise Falls unless you have business there. He will offer to let you in only if you go and enslave select people off his list. He will split half the profit with you for each person. He will let you in to Paradise Falls after you have enslaved at least one person.

This quest involves enslaving the following characters for the slavers of Paradise Falls. Enslaving is done with the Mesmetron and a Slave Collar, which you will get from Grouse as well as the notes Slave Collar Insructions [sic], Mesmetron Manual and List of "Recruits". (Make sure to return to him after each slave to collect a new slave collar for the next one.)


 * Alternatively you can bribe the guard 500 caps to let you in, postponing this quest, or skipping it altogether.


 * It is possible to get in without completing the quest if you've got very bad karma.


 * Another option, while not completing the quest, but rather skipping it, is to kill everyone in the slave camp. Doing so will get you a lot of good karma, and access to free supplies from the shops in town.

Note: ''If you are seen enslaving an NPC, the inhabitants of the town you're in may become hostile. Try enslaving in sneak mode, while no one is around, or simply run out of the area and come back later.''


 * Flak from Rivet City
 * Red from Big Town
 * Susan Lancaster from Tenpenny Tower
 * Arkansas from Minefield

If Flak, Red, Susan, or Arkansas are dead before the quest is given, they're not on your list. If the last of the four are killed, a "Quest Failed: Strictly Business" message will appear on screen, though Grouse will still have the same dialogue and provide the same items.


 * Arkansas is sniping from a platform in Minefield. If you've gone there already for The Wasteland Survival Guide, or just randomly, he probably attacked you and you killed him for it, he's fairly aggro. One strategy is to wait until night(midnight) and sneak up to his post (sneak 70+) and mez him from behind.  Another method is shooting his rifle out of his hand in V.A.T.S. When the rifle is gone he will run downstairs with a pistol.  Its easy to Mez him then. MAKE SURE to take out some of the mines as it may alert Arkansas and/or Arkansas may accidentally step on one of them as he runs off to Paradise Falls (though he will not step on any mines if you immediately fast travel to Paradise Falls after mezzing him).


 * Susan Lancaster may be found on the top floor of Tenpenny Tower in her penthouse suite (at night). Simply shut the door, mez, and collar. However sometimes at night she will travel quite far northwest in sexy sleepwear. If you've gotten the ghouls into Tenpenny Tower, chances are they've killed all the smoothskins(even with the diplomatic approach). Simply wait a bit northwest from Tenpenny Tower and wait an hour at a time until you can intercept her travels, mez, and collar. (Don't take her stuff or everyone goes Rambo on you.)


 * Red can usually be found in her clinic. If she's not there try walking around a bit and then enter her clinic again. If you did not complete the Big Trouble in Big Town quest yet, Red is captured by super mutants and held in the Germantown police station. You can simply capture Red from there but it will prevent you from completing the Big Trouble in Big Town quest.


 * Flak can be found in his room on the Upper Deck (at night), and is probably the most difficult "recruit" to capture. One strategy that can be used: Wait outside his room until about 12am then follow him to the dead end by Doctor Li's room. Make sure there are no guards then mez him. Exit stage right into the lab before he sees a guard. You should be safe after this. Another proven strategy is to wait for him patiently to go have a drink at the Muddy Rudder.  If asked about the place in dialog, he will tell you that "No one asks too many questions down there."  Rivet City security is usually absent from the area as well, since Brock handles altercations.  Mez Flak and get the collar on him, regardless of who's there, and the only hostile you'll have to deal with is Brock, who can be killed easily. I don't think security even noticed when they saw Flak run by with a slave collar around his neck. A simpler approach is to pickpocket Doctor Li's room key and Mez Flak while he's asleep. If you enslave Flak, Shrapnel will disappear from Rivet city. He will return only once in a long while (every few days/weeks). he can be seen wandering the wastes and even in Paradise falls. There does not appear to be any pattern to his wanderings. For this reason it may be better to kill Flak rather than enslave him. This way Shrapnel will stick around in Rivet City.


 * Putting on the Slave Collar will lower your Karma by 100, regardless of who you put it on (including Arkansas).
 * If you enslave Flak, then remove his collar in Paradise Falls, he will return to Rivet City, however, you will not be able to engage dialogue with him (he will still say "Hello" and "Pleasure to see you"). Also, Shrapnel will stay in Rivet City (he'll be available at their store from 12pm to closing time).

Flak, Red, Susan, and Arkansas end up in the slave house once you capture them. If your science skill is high enough, you can get their collars off. However, they simply wander out and get killed by the slavers. Moreover, Arkansas starts shooting at anyone wearing a slave collar, once you free him.

Even after the quest is completed, Grouse will give you a slave collar. Sometimes it glitches and you end up with more than one. Slave collars can't be dropped, since they're quest items. However, you can use them on other NPCs, and get a caps reward from Grouse.

If you tell Grouse that slavery disgusts you during the initial dialogue, the slavers will turn hostile and you'll be unable to get this quest.

If you intend to kill Grouse it would be a wise choice not to take this quest since you get stuck with at least one screwed inventory space from slave collar.

If you want to do this quest with stealth, with nobody being alerted to your mezzing, simply mezz the NPC in a room without anyone else in it (it is ok if the other NPC that is not the target is asleep in the room) and mezz them. Tell them the usual, go to paradise falls or whatever, then immediately wait an hour in that location. This should prevent other NPCs from becoming hostile (this method has been tested on PS3).

Bugs

 * If you enslave and order a victim to go to Paradise Falls, and then die/reload previous save, the character you've enslaved before you reloaded the save may appear in the Paradise Falls slave pen, without a slave collar on, and with all of the dialog options they normally had (for instance, you can still trade with Flak in the slave pen if he does not have a slave collar). Reloading the save will not fix this problem every time, so you may have to somehow get the target to come near you in the slave pen where you are able to Mesmerize and fit a collar onto the target. If Arkansas was the target, he will pull out his sniper rifle and began shooting everyone around him.


 * Make sure you don't need to deal with any of the enslaved people ever again! Be sure to check all the characters here in order to have a full understanding of what quests they are involved in.


 * There seems to be an issue with some Rivet City citizens (such as Shrapnel), who sometimes become invincible and glitched out if Mezzed in their rooms.


 * If you Mezz Flak and put the collar on him while in the Rivet City marketplace and run out before he does, he may become lost and you will not be able to finish the quest.


 * If you grab the box key from Eulogy's Pad you can open the gate to the slave pen and gain entry inside. The VIPs will be in the slave house and you can speak to them.  If you choose the "deal with it" option, you can can return to speak to Grouse and he'll thank you for capturing them, even though he already did so.  You can do this many times and still receive the 250 caps plus an additional slave collar for each.


 * If you use the above glitch, then go back to Grouse he will give you 250 caps for each of the slaves you talked to and a slave collar that take up 1 WG each, which you can not get rid off unless capturing a slave


 * This was fixed in the 1.1 patch.


 * Post Patch: After collaring Susan Lancaster, (did not cause any Tenpenny Tower guards to go hostile), and fast travellng to Paradise falls, the sneak mode became broken; it always reads "caution" regardless of where the character is, even in own house. Not 100% sure when this error occured (sometime in between collaring her and attemptng to steal from the store in Paradise Falls, though as stated, fast travel was used, so it if someone fell of the map and is "following" the character, it is either a Tenpenny Tower resident or a Paradise Falls resident, though the "falling off the map theory" is only a theory, and not a great one at that). The author is uncertain as to the exact source of this glitch.