Hard Luck Blues

 is a side quest in Fallout: New Vegas.

Quick walkthrough

 * Speak to Morgan Blake at the NCR Sharecropper Farms
 * Go to the East Pump Station and enter it.
 * Activate the terminal and restore the network connection.
 * Go to Vault 34 and enter it.
 * Find the terminal in the reactor room.
 * Choose whether to help the Sharecropper farms or the trapped vault dwellers.

Detailed walkthrough
Go to the NCR Sharecropper Farms and speak to Morgan Blake. She will tell you that crops are farming 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, bringing plenty of Radaway and Rad-X along (more on this in the next paragraph). You will come across a truck with many radioactive barrels surrounded by a group of 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'll come upon Vault 34's open Vault door. The Vault is saturated with radiation so make sure you brought all that Rad-X and Radaway. If you're just a little short on supplies, there is an average-locked safe with 14 Rad-X and 11 Radaway inside the vault clinic. These supplies will help, but should not be depended on to get you through the whole vault (there is a lot of radiation down here). It also is advisable to bring a radiation suit or the space suit to help with radiation resistance. There should be a radiation suit on the corpse of an NCR trooper found next to an old army truck in the cliffs surrounding the vault entrance. Note that you will frequently be taking a minimum of +1 RAD/sec even with high radiation resistance as RR is capped at 85% (boosting it above this value has no effect).

The population of the Vault have been turned into feral ghouls, with the security officers being turned into glowing ones. 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. If you have insufficient Science skill to hack (100), the first two passwords can be found on glowing ones that are underwater in two separate but nearby locations. Both locations have stairs that go down into radioactive water, and each location is marked with a stream of water falling from the ceiling. Neither location needs to be drained in order to obtain the passwords, but you need to swim underwater and search both ghouls. You are strongly advised to save your game before you submerge in the water, as you're given a timer for how long you can hold your breath, and it's very short. The Rebreather if you have it proves very valuable here.

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), loot the average-locked wall safe for 11 Rad-X and 8 RadAway (PS3) (lots of radiation in the rooms to come), and make your way out the clinic's 2nd door in the back. After exiting the Utility Room, you'll find the Security Room to the right by opening a door to the stairway that was filled with water before activating the pump. After opening the door, 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 and the two turrets beneath him. Take the 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, 2 Grenade launcher (Fallout: New Vegas)s, roughly 3 bricks of C-4 plastic explosive, and the pulse gun (inside a very hard locked chest, can be opened with key from Nellis).

After you obtain access to the Overseer room, descend under the Overseer's desk to the Reactor room. Work your way along the dripping corridors, and eventually you will come to room with half-flooded stairs. In the back, to the left of the stairs you will find another computer terminal.

From the terminal you will obtain some vague information about opening a reactor door, closing the exterior vents and rerouting vault control. You need to read the SOS message in order to be given the alternative quest ending.

You need to open the reactor door to proceed - it is about 12 to the left of the terminal. Click to unlock, and give it a few seconds while it does. There are glowing ones/vault techicians in the room. Enter and walk to another computer terminal. You are presented with a choice on how to end the quest.

Vault dwelling humans are trapped in the (unreachable) underwater side of the vault. 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 100 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 150 XP.

Considerations on whether to help the vault dwellers or the sharecroppers is this. By freeing the dwellers you not only poison the water for the sharecroppers, but also the water to Freeside and the diverted water to Westside. This would effect a larger amount of individuals and communities vs the release of five vaultdwellers. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, would apply in this case.Carinth 23:41, July 8, 2011 (UTC)

Bugs

 * Entering the armory can cause save game corruption.
 * 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: Sometimes after waiting 3-4 days and returning to the office park they will appear.
 * The terminal in the East Pump Station may be accessible even without the required Science skill of 50; the terminal will turn on and the "WARNING" message will still be readable.
 * Two feral ghouls come through the broken glass near the reactor and attack you, they have no names and allow no searching of their bodies after being killed.
 * After choosing to save the trapped vault dwellers, one may encounter a docile glowing one. Sadly, you cannot engage it in dialogue. It's marked as an ally, both in VATS and as a tick mark on the mini-map. Like the unnamed feral ghouls, the glowing one has no name and nothing in its pockets.
 * 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.
 * Sometimes the terminal in the reactor room will be locked with the message (terminal locked please contact an administrator) with no way of activating it and not being able to finish the quest. Ensure you grab the Overseer's password from the Overseer's corpse beforehand.
 * Vault 34 disappears for an unknown reason. The quest will be left in the pip-boy but will have no option to "Show Location" and upon looking at the map you will see vault 34 is completely gone.
 * Upon entering the overseers office, he will be dead and no feral ghouls will swarm you.
 * The vault dwellers will not be found in Aerotech suite 300.