Vital Equipment

Daily: Vital Equipment is a daily quest

Walkthrough
Speaking to Ward at Foundation each day after the daily quests reset reveals that someone has stolen a piece of equipment from the Settlers, and he requests that it be recovered. He provides a tracking beacon for the Pip-Boy to use to track the equipment down.

Travel to the location on the map where the equipment is, utilizing the tracking beacon to locate it. It will usually be found in a fast-travel location within the radius of the marked area. Once located, the equipment is either in the hands of a Raider or Blood Eagle thief. If a Blood Eagle has it, kill them to recover the equipment and return it to Ward. Mentioning to Ward that the player had to kill to retrieve the stolen item will result in a reward, including sixty caps and three extra legendary scrip. Offering to donate the reward grants a boost in reputation with the Settlers.

If the equipment is in the hands of a raider, a SPECIAL check in conversation (provided the raider is non-hostile) will prompt the raider to keep the equipment in return for paying the Vault Dwellers off to keep quiet on the matter, earning reputation with the raiders in exchange for losing some with the settlers. Alternatively, the Vault Dwellers can kill them in order to recover the equipment, which will allow for a similar result as to if it was recovered from a Blood Eagle.

Possible items to retrieve

 * Intrusion module
 * Medical scanner
 * Multifrequency scrambler
 * Multiscope
 * Osmosis kit
 * Portable power pack
 * Water cooled bone saw
 * Turret circuit board

Bugs

 * The Foundation reputation may not increase if the reward is donated.
 * This can be mitigated by not skipping through Ward's dialogue lines and by backing out of the dialogue window and trying again when he says one of his generic lines while the dialogue window is open.
 * Ward will not give out the instructions to obtain the equipment, making it impossible to finish the quest.
 * Finding any of the quest items while not having the quest active allows for instant completion of the daily quest without removing the item and never changing dialogue for further daily quests, thus allowing for an instant turn in of the daily quest for the future.
 * As of patch 1.4.0.20, this issue has been fixed. The quest item has been removed from the inventory and the quest works as intended.
 * After recovering the item, it may be impossible to interact with Ward afterwards to let him know you recovered it. The option to interact with him will appear, but pressing the corresponding button will have nothing happen.
 * Fixed as of the 1.4.0.20 patch.