River Monsters

River Monsters is a side quest in the Fallout: New Vegas add-on, Honest Hearts.

Quick walkthrough

 * 1) Deal with the yao guai at Pine Creek.
 * 2) Optional: Kill the yao guai at Pine Creek.
 * 3) Optional: Collapse the yao guai cave by planting explosives.

Detailed walkthrough
Make your way to Pine Creek. From here you can either enter the nearby cave to set explosives and close off the entrance, or kill the yao guai outside the cave. The cave option does not require combat. Completion of either option ends the quest successfully, and the particular method chosen has no effect on the rest of the game.

If opting to collapse the cave entrance, enter the cave. From here, explore the cave, looking for each of three marked positions on the floor where you must place the explosives. Note that there are three yao guai in a central area of the cave, but killing them is not a requirement for this quest—they can be avoided while placing the explosives. When all of the explosives are set, exit the cave and trigger the detonator, sealing the cave and completing the quest.

If opting to kill the yao guai outside the cave, simply follow the map markers to the targets and dispatch them. Once all of the target yao guai are killed, the quest is complete.

Bugs

 * If you chose to blow up the yao guai cave, after you set up the explosives, outside you will equip a special detonator. Changing the detonator with some other weapon from this point, sometimes you will not have the possibility to bring back the detonator, therefore forcing you to continue by taking the road to the three bears to complete the side-quest. Having a detonator in your inventory will not allow you to make the charges go off.