Fallout 3 Walkthrough - Tenpenny Tower Quest - Roy Phillips and His Army of Ghouls

2009-10-31

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Introduction

This quest starts up when you first walk up to Tenpenny Tower. You should see a ghoul named Roy Phillips demanding access to Tenpenny Tower. What follows could be a full scale war or a “peaceful” conclusion. It all starts by talking to Security Chief Gustav about Roy Phillips. He’ll send you off to kill him and his gang in Warrington Trainyard.

As a side note, the only “good” way to end the quest is to actually kill Roy. If you help the ghouls get into the tower, they’ll just take it over. This naturally changes the dynamic greatly. If you have an apartment there and don’t want to change, then you might want to just kill Roy. You’ll miss out on getting the ghoul mask though.

Finding Roy Phillips

Just getting to Roy Phillips in the first place is a big part of the quest. You just need to walk over to the Warrington Tunnels via the Warrington Trainyard. Be ready to face a lot of ghouls. I did it at level 17 and mainly saw normal ghouls and roamers, but there was 1 reaver waiting about halfway through. If you have Broken Steel, then be ready to pull out some serious firepower to get through. If we play this one right, we won’t have to ever face ghouls again.

Just go straight down the tunnel and gun down the ghouls in your way. A shotgun should work fine. Turn into the little maintenance area to move over to the next tunnel. There will be a few more ghouls in here, so stay alert. Pop out in the next tunnel and go forward. Turn to the left and follow the series of wrecked train cars until you get to another maintenance area. Go down the steps and pop out close to the final area of the tunnels. You should come out in Warrington Station, where Michael Masters will stop you. Just be nice and he’ll let you pass.

Go forward and open the chain link fence door. Go further down the tunnel and turn to the right into the little office area. Go down the steps and get into the bedroom area. Roy is usually here. Just talk to him to figure out your options. You can help him lead a ghoul invasion into the tower, or you can be diplomatic.

You can also just kill Masters, Bess, and Roy. They aren’t tough. If you want to do it without getting bad karma, then taunt them into attacking you. Otherwise just nail them with a few shotgun blasts. This is an absolutely awful way to finish up the quest though, since all you’ll get is money.

Attacking Tenpenny Tower

This is incredibly fun and fairly easy to do. I actually suggest that everyone try this once on a saved game.

Fallout 3 - Tenpenny Tower - Ghoul Assault on Tenpenny Tower

You need to get a key to access the generator room in order to open the containment doors holding back all the ghouls. There are 2 keys that you can get. If you ask around, you’ll find out that Chief Gustavo naturally has one. You can do standard pickpocketing to get it off of him. You can also just go up to the suites to talk to Herbert Dashwood. This old hero naturally wanted to explore the building, so he swiped a key for the generator room. If you ask about it, he’ll mention it being in his inventory. You can pickpocket it, or just tell him that you don’t have time for games.

With the key in hand, go outside and toward the firing range. The access to the generator room is down a set of stairs on the side. Go inside and forward. Just hack the terminal, it should be at the “easy” level, and open the containment area. Roy will come running up to the metal screen and thank you. He’ll then ask you to come around front for your reward.

Go back out and to the front to receive your very own ghoul mask. Don’t listen to him, since it will always work regardless of how close you are to the ghouls.

The rest is up to you. Just go inside and watch the security forces fight the ghouls. There should be more than enough ghouls to help Roy take the lobby. The second floor is a bit tougher, since Dashwood is absurdly strong. He’ll probably kill about 15 ghouls before they overrun him. It’s actually fun to reverse pickpocket better weapons onto him and watch the fight. As long as you don’t talk to the people, they won’t go hostile. Finish it up by going to the top floor to watch Tenpenny die. Wait for about 72 hours and Roy will take over the tower and Tenpenny’s old spot on the balcony.

Diplomacy

Another way to handle things is to convince Tenpenny to allow roy Phillips and his ghoul friends to live in Tenpenny Tower. Once you’ve talked to Roy, head over to Tenpenny and ask him if he’d consider it. It turns out that he’s open to the idea as long as his main residents are alright with it. This means that you have to convince Susan Lancaster, Mr. & Mrs. Wellington, Lydia Montenegro, and Anthony Ling.

As a side note, if Tenpenny is dead for any reason (presumably that you did “You Gotta Shoot’em in the Head” first) then this is still a possible way to finish the quest. Chief Gustavo will proclaim himself the new manager of Tenpenny Tower. He flat out refuses to let the ghouls in though and states that they can come in over his dead body. Grant his wish. Slip a grenade into his pocket or kill him quietly to pave the way for the ghouls.

Just about each of the 5 people can be convinced to let the ghouls in by a speech check. That isn’t the only way though. You can quietly kill them if you want. That’s inefficient and boring though. Susan Lancaster can be enslaved for the “Strictly Business” quest. Once she’s gone, it’s noted that she no longer is against the ghouls moving into the tower.

The 2 big shifts are a love triangle and some good old fashioned robberies. If you look in the suites on the second floor, you can find Lancaster’s room. There’s a love letter to Mr. Wellington on her desk. If you take it to Mrs. Wellington, she’ll go crazy and gun down Mr. Wellington and Susan Lancaster. The guards won’t stop her. She’ll then wander out of the tower into the wasteland. Anthony Ling and Lydia Montenegro are the 2 main shopkeepers. There is a large safe behind each of their counters. You can pick the lock on the safe or hack the terminal next to it to get a whole bunch of caps. When they realize that they’ve been robbed, they’ll storm out in anger. You should be able to rob the safes anytime, as long as you can get behind them and start sneaking.

With the roadblocks out of the way, you can talk to Tenpenny and confirm that the ghouls can move into the tower. Then you just have to tell Roy the good news.

Note, that there is a downside. Tenpenny will be killed and disappear as soon as you tell Roy. A few days later, the rest of the tower well fall into a ruined state and be taken over by the ghouls. All of the residents will be dead and lined up in the basement. There’s no real way to stop this either. It’s kinda of a poor move on Bethesda’s part, since there’s no good way to save the tower.

Aftermath

Fallout 3 - Tenpenny Tower - The Ghoul Run Tenpenny Tower

If you killed Roy to start with, then nothing will have changed. If you helped Roy, then Tenpenny Tower will look a lot worse and be inhabited by ghouls. Masters and Bess will move in and run the 2 stores in the lobby after a bit.

As a side note, if for some reason you didn’t pull the trigger and nuke Megaton before you finished the quest, then Phillips will be more than happy to fill Tenpenny’s role. Mr. Burke is a protected individual who happily aligns himself with the new management.

After all this, the only thing left to do is use your ghoul mask to avoid a lot of frustrating combat with feral ghoul reavers.

This post is part of the series: Fallout 3 Quest Walkthroughs

Having trouble completing Fallout 3? Check out this collection of walkthroughs to guide you from beginning to end.