Summary
Fallout 4manages to pack the map with a variety of locations. While some areas are overtly quest related, or seemingly benign, there are others that let you piece together their history; if you’re able to put your detective skills to use, you’ll be rewarded with intriguing lore and background information.
Not every location is made equal, however, and with so much to discover, it’s not uncommon for players with hundreds to thousands of hours of playtime to find something new after their fourth, fifth, or sixth playthrough. If you want to skip straight to the good stuff, we’re happy to save you some time.
Spoilers ahead: If you’d like to piece together the secrets of these locations on your own, head out into the Commonwealth, put on that detective hat, and get digging.
8Electrical Hobbyist’s Club
The first thing you notice about the Electrical Hobbyist’s Club, found just east of the Mass Fusion Disposal Site, is that it’s armed to the teeth with a wide variety of traps. Whether it’s a mine, rocket launcher trap, Assaultron,or some other method of inflicting damage, it’s clear you’re not welcome here.
Digging deeper, you’ll find a few Holotapes in the basement, revealing that someone named Coral likely set these traps. Sadly, it’s because they had a kid with someone, and they’re desperately trying to escape from the responsibility.
7Nahant Oceanological Society
Found far to the east on the coastline of the Commonwealth, the Nahant Oceanological Society, as you probably inferred, observed and studied marine life before the war, and made multiple efforts to warn the public about dangerous levels of radioactive waste causing problematic mutations.
While the robots there fail to reveal much useful information, the terminals there document the increasingly tragic damage to marine ecosystems, and point you towards Lake Quannapowitt. After some lengthy, investigative travel, you’ll eventually discover that Mass Fusion has been dumping radioactive waste through a pipe, secretly and illegally.
6Pickman Gallery
Found just northwest of the Railroad Headquarters, Pickman Gallery is a simple, unsuspecting building with an impressive array of largely black and red paintings with shadowy arms, flames, eyes, and other imagery that most would label disturbing.
At first glance, it can feel natural to infer that these works are simply products of a twisted, Picasso-esque creative, or perhaps a raider’s method of evoking fear in potential visitors. If you snoop around the basement, however, it becomes clear that the red ‘paint’ in these works is actually the blood of Pickman’s victims.
5Cranberry Island
Cranberry Island, found in the southeastern section of Far Harbor, invites you to repair and follow a string of three yellow generators connected to a cranberry farm. Exploring the rest of the island and its structures,dodging the occasional Gulperalong the way, you’ll find journal entries belonging to Eliza, a member of the Gibbons family.
It’s evident from Eliza’s notes that the family had problems, but just when it seemed like things were starting to get better with an upcoming party on the mainland to look forward to, the entries abruptly stop. Sadly, the power you restored to the generators reveals the fate of the Gibbons family, opening a door to a room filled with five named feral ghouls.
4Dunwich Borers
Dunwich Borers, found northeast of Saugus Ironworks, is a seemingly benign marble quarry that’s been taken over by a group of raiders. If you poked your head around and visited Hugo’s Hole first, however, you’ll get an inkling that something is off about this place.
Digging deeper, no pun intended, you’ll receive strange hallucinations and visions, giving hints about the miners and their fate. Logs from terminals along the way reveal the company’s hidden agenda: this was never about marble, it was about finding a cult-like relic, Khremvh’s Tooth,arguably the best melee weapon in the game.
3The Yangtze Nuclear Submarine
The Yangtze, located north of the General Atomics Factory and east of the coastline, can be found barely submerged under the ocean’s surface. Belonging to what once was the Chinese navy, this nuclear submarine was strategically placed likely before, and certainly during the war, to deploy multiple warheads.
While the mission was successful, there aren’t any winners when it comes to mutually assured destruction, a sentiment echoed by the Yangtze’s captain, who details how apathetic any and all survivors were about the sub’s arrival to the bay after sustaining damage from an underwater mine.
2Suffolk County Charter School
Located southeast of Gunner’s Plaza, Suffolk County Charter School is… yuck, what’s with all this pink goo? Not long before the bombs started dropping, the school’s very own Principal Hudson subjected students and staff to an experimental pink food paste program that government and Vault-Tec scientists called NAPP.
Outside food was strictly forbidden, and it only took a few weeks for the lackluster paste to cause both behavioral problems, and a pinkening of the skin, which is seen first-hand by the strange-looking ghouls found inside. Digging deeper, it’s likely that Principal Hudson enabled this experiment without consulting others beforehand to secure additional funding.
1An Abandoned Shack
Found northeast of the Crater of Atom on the edge of the Glowing Sea, the Abandoned Shack is an unassuming building with a huge secret hiding in plain sight: just inside, it has a hatch on the floor that leads to a gigantic, multi-level governmental facility.
Listening to Holotapes left by someone named Jeff Buzensky, you discover that Jeff and his colleagues were government employees that fled to this facility just as the bombs started dropping. Sadly, some employees didn’t make it in time. For those who did, it only delayed the inevitable, since alleged budget cuts didn’t allow for sufficient food supplies; everyone starved.
