Welcome back to Guub's Fallout 2 series! In the last episode I "cleaned up" most of the quests in Vault City and Gecko, before walking all the way back to The Den to buy a car, which will let me move over the wasteland more efficiently.
Welcome to New Reno. Trashcan fires and neon signs bathe the city in a hellish glow.
Thanks to the party's work in Vault City, Sara (our protagonist) got her citizenship, which allows her to enter the city's Vault (Vault 8) which we needed to do in order to look up Vault 13's location.
Unfortunately Vault 8's main computer has no information as to where exactly Vault 13 is, but it does have the location of other Vaults thus giving the party more leads.
Leads that we can follow now that we have wheels...
Before we can get started on that however, It's come to my attention that our current gear is... really bad.
It works for the everyday guy in the wastelands, but not for us, since we're going to be walking where the everyday guy in the wastelands doesn't want to go to.
So I drive towards New Reno, city of casinos and +18 things, because it's here that you get many opportunities to make a lot of cash.
Enter New Reno, the biggest pile of degeneracy in this wasteland. And also the place where we get rich.
Two seconds in and Cassidy's already telling us to be careful around Reno. This place is like Las Vegas, except most people want to kill you.
Right after this, someone greets the party:
He introduces himself as Jules, a man who knows everything there is to know about New Reno, and a man who can sell some good stuff (if you know what I mean by that).
The player can ask a lot of questions to Jules about pretty much everything, from "Where are the casinos?" to "Where are the quests?" and a whole lot of different things.
When playing this game for the first time I definitely recommend talking to Jules about everything you can think, as he has information about the "mafias" in Reno and can even get you discounts in some places. Since I've already played this game I'll just say hello and be on my way.
I would later learn that this is bad, because apparently Jules can give you information that opens the gates to a lot of quests. Not really because he just tells you stuff you can learn on your own about the families in Reno.
There's a lot of different ways you can earn some money here, most of them not really legal, you can get hired as entertainment in the Desperado, for example.
Please ignore this sir in front of me, this happens almost everywhere in this place.
The job you take depends on your character's gender and how you do in them depends on your character's S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats, charisma I believe. Although I'm pretty sure this is restored content from the restoration project I have installed...
Female characters can dance, whereas male characters try some stand-up comedy. I've also heard that having some items in your inventory before performing increases how much money you get as a result.
Of course, the best way to get money in Reno is to simply work for one of the families, the difficulty of getting hired depends on who you're asking for a job and if you play your cards right you can get jobs from all of them.
I personally start with Mr. Salvatore, to start with this family's quest you just have to go to his bar and ask for a job in the most respectful way possible.
This is Salvatore's place. His men are armed with energy weapons that can easily kill the everyday guy in the wasteland
Salvatore is pretty much the old mafia boss from the movies, if you want to get a job from him (or live after you speak with him) you have to speak with him with respect, always referring to him as Mr. Salvatore.
Mason, Mr Salvatore's bodyguard, explains it best to the player before they enter Salvatore's room and if you're not careful you can end up dead.
You need to be smart enough to successfully finish Salvatore's jobs, because if you mess up he makes all of his goons shoot you.
The first job Salvatore gives you is to look for someone who stole money from him, the main goal here is not to return the money but rather to make an example of that person for daring to steal from Salvatore in the first place.
The man's name is Pretty Boy Lloyd, and you can easily learn that he has a room in the Desperado, the casino the party was in a couple of hours ago.
Since this is technically a job from a crime family, expect to have to do "evil" stuff and dirty your hands a little.
When dealing with Lloyd you have several options, some of them resulting in the Salvatores being angry with you. You have to remember that part of the job is to "make an example of him", therefore sparing him for whatever reason would be a bad idea if you want to remain on Salvatore's good graces.
Remember that one way or another, Lloyd has to die, so leaving him alone at any moment is a bad idea. The way I normally complete this quest is by forcing Lloyd to dig his own grave.
Make him lead you to where he's hidden the money and force him to dig it up.
Give him a one liner to help speed things up
Ensure he digs up the mine by making him dig.
Finally, make him go down there first and then drop the landmine onto him.
If you did it well you now have a dead Lloyd and the location of the 1000$ that was stolen from Mr Salvatore, all you need to do now is go down that hole. There's a little "error" here, you have to walk towards the hole to go down because clicking into the hole will just give you the message "this hole is empty", walking will send you into the correct area where you can get Salvatore's money.
If you did it well, congratulations! you now have Salvatore's money and a corpse you can loot for some moolah.
Jesus it's dark here.
As soon as you report to Mr Salvatore about this one he'll immediately send you on another job. This time you have to look for a man named Renesco, who owes Salvatore 1000$ in protection money.
This one is a little bit more difficult, as you have to leave Renesco alive and take the money from him. Killing Renesco will anger the Salvatores and will leave you with no choice but to fight or die. Funny stuff, the first time I played this I actually killed Renesco and was shocked when they tried to kill me, it ended up showing me one of the easiest ways to make money instead...
The best way to solve this is to speak to Renesco and constantly mention the fact that you're one of Salvatore's me until he asks you to do something quick, since he doesn't have the money, tell him that you will pay his debt in exchange for a permanent discount at his shop, which is a decent alternative seeing that Renesco sells a lot of stimpaks we could use in the future.
Renesco's Pharmacy.
The man in question.
No matter what you do here Renesco will never give you the money he owes, presumably because he already payed and has no more money. Push him too hard and he'll become aggressive, say the right wrong things and he'll be scared instead and you'll have to kill him. The only way to solve this and still work for Salvatore is to simply Renesco's debt for him.
Once you're done simply return to Salvatore to receive your payment and your next mission, this one can only be received if you were extremely respectful with Mr Salvatore, otherwise he just lets you go.
Before going to Salvatore though, I bought some stuff from Renesco and I'm about to put them in the car's trunk-
...where's my car?
If you've gotten this far, thank you for reading!
I think this is a good place to end this one, don't you think so?
Before I can finish my business with Mr Salvatore I have to find my car, I don't want to be stuck forever in Reno after all!
Thank you so much for reading and voting, stay safe everyone!