The Outer Worlds Botanical Labs Quest Guide

Botanical Labs Quest Guide

Botanical Labs is one of the Locations in The Outer Worlds. Botanical Labs is a small town north of Edgewater in the Emerald Vale. Its residents are deserters from Spacer’s Choice saltuna cannery at Edgewater. Beware of mines as you explore the area.

A Few Kindred Spirits Walkthrough

This quest is obtained by talking to Grace Romero near the entrance to the Botanical Labs, north of Edgewater in the Emerald Vale. Talk to Grace and ask her what is going on, and she will reveal one of the deserters has gone missing. Offer to help find the missing person and then ask more questions. You will be told to investigate Zoe’s room and talk to her friend Stefan.

Stefan Garcia can be found on the porch of his residence, which is right next to Zoe’s. You can talk to him and inquiry about the day of her disappearance. He will mention that they were going to watch a serial, and she never showed up for it. He says he had a surprise for her, a copy of the Masked Marketeer. He will also mention that she was “journaling”.

Go to Zoe’s house and read the journal for 1125xp and a quest update.

Toward the Marauders

Make your way east toward Zoe’s destination. You’ll come upon a group of Marauder and Canid that you must defeat, and you may loot Mag-Pick from a container in this area. Beware of the Primal Behemoth nearby as they are quite tough to take on. Defeating them and the Primal Hunters will allow you to investigate a nearby cave with a container that has Heavy Ammo, Energy Cell, Weapon Parts, Armor Parts and Bit Cartridge.

Abandoned Industrial Zone

As you arrive at the abandoned industrial zone, watch out for landmines littering the road in. There are many Marauder and Canid enemies lying in wait. You can sneak around the back to the area where Zoe is, but you’ll have to trigger combat to be able to talk to her.

There are many Level 5 Marauders to defeat so make use of the exploding containers nearby, and once you have dealt with them talk to her. You can tell her that people are looking for her, and she will reveal she does not care. Talking to her will show that she traded Adrena-Time in order to join the confidence of the Marauders. She will tell you she was kicked out from Edgewater for getting sick and stealing medicine. She joined the Botanical Lab expecting outlaws and instead found a peaceful community, not to her liking.

Persuade (10) or Intimidate (38) allow you to push her to return. Persuading her, will give you the option to talk about Stefan, and if you talked to him you can bring up the surprise episode he had prepared. This will yield 1125XP and she will return to the Botanical Lab. Conversely you can kill her for 1500 XP and pick up her ring as proof she is dead.

Go back to Grace at the Botanical Lab and you can tell her the truth about Zoe joining up with Marauders, or tell her she wanted to be an outlaw. Telling her the truth does not cause any problems and rewards with with 4125xp and increased positive reputation with the Deserters faction, raising your status to Agreeable if you had none.

If you Lie (5) to Grace, assuming you killed her, and say you had to put her down, you will gain some extra XP and you can show her Zoe’s ring as proof she is dead. This will net you 4000 XP, Deserters Reputation and a Bolter Pistol.

The Frightened Engineer Quest Guide

This quest is at the Botanical Garden next to the vending machine. Speak with Thomas there and he will say he isn’t really an engineer. If you offer to help him he will need three volumes of a book. Go to the way markers on your map and collect them all. Each book is worth 500 credits and all of them will net you a nice exp bonus as well as some Deserter reputation.

The first book is on your map, the second and third may not be, depending on past conversations and events. To locate the second go to Parvati’s house in Edgewater. There’s a terminal upstairs in her dads old room. Access the terminal and read about the engineer manual.

Then head to the Cannery. It’s in one of the offices upstairs. The final one is inside the Geothermal Power Plant. Progress through the area until you run into Higgins, he’s in the silo section, on the lowest level. Near Higgins, it’s resting against a nearby wall.

Comes Now the Power Walkthrough

You will obtain this quest during Stranger in a Strange Land, by talking to Reed Tobson and asking questions about the welfare of the deserters’ community.

You should talk to Parvati after leaving Tobson’s office to obtain an optional objective to talk to the Vicar. You can do this by going left after exiting the cannery, and going into the large building past the square. Vicar Max, who is a priest for The Order of Scientific Inquiry (Scientism). You can talk to him to learn about the Grand Plan, Grand Architect, and his role within it all.

Bring the conversation to Reed’s request and earn a bunch of xp. If you have high Intelligence, you can comment that it’s a responsible choice based on whether the leader can provide. Max will advise that if you wish to save as many as possible, uniting the people and bringing them back to Edgewater would be ideal. Ask if that is possible, and Max will warn you that outside the walls is a dangerous place. You can ask why he says this and he will reveal he wants to retrieve heretical books in the possession of a collector outside the walls. He claims it is to keep it out of layman hands. Ask to know more about it and he’ll mark you on your time and initiate the Companion Quest: The Illustrated Manual.

You can loot 1x OSI Vial from a mission counter before heading out.

Go North from Edgewater and you’ll come to an intersection with several Marauders to take out and loot. Further ahead, the Edgewater Community Center area is swarming with them so give it a wide berth to avoid heavy combat for now. The road ahead has dead thugs to loot and a container with 25x Light Ammo and 20x Heavy Ammo before you make a left and arrive at the Botanical Lab sign. There are dead Canid Feral that can be looted for Canid Tail around this area.

The Botanical Lab
Discovering the Botanical Lab gives you 400xp. An armed guard ahead is Grace Romero, who you should talk to. Tell her that you’re looking for Adelaide and mention Reed- she’ll let you through after telling you Adelaide is over at the hothouse. If you ask about her problems she will mention someone named Zoe has gone missing. You can offer to keep an eye out and unlock the Side Quest: A Few Kindred Spirits. You can ask her follow-up questions about Zoe to assist with that quest, she will mention Stefan might know more about it.

Go to the greenhouse and you can speak to Adelaide McDevitt. Tell her Reed sent you to make peace, you will get a lot of XP. You can tell her about Reed’s plan to cut off the power, or opt to say that he’s willing to make amends. She will not believe Reed’s good intentions, and you must tell her that he asked you to divert power. She will ask why you have agreed to his plans, and you can explain your need for a power regulator. She will counter that you should instead divert power from the town to the Botanical Lab, and free the town from service to the cannery.

If Parvati is in your party, Adelaide will comment that her father died of overwork. Parvati is not ready to accept that as a fact. If you pick up the Gold Teeth nearby and ask her about them afterwards, you can find out that she is using the corpses of dead bodies to fertilize her soil if you pass a Science (15) check.

If you investigate the rooms and pick up Gold Teeth, and learn about Eugene’s death from the people of Edgewater, you can piece it together and ask Adelaide about it. You will find out that her fertilizer is being made of the dead of Edgewater, and she claims it is this natural process of proper decomposition that is making the greenery around the Botanical Lab and preventing the Deserters from catching the Plague.

Head over to the Geothermal Power Plant to continue the quest, but be mindful that the world state will change upon completing so you might want to finish up tasks, side quests and companion quests available first.

The plant is guarded by Mechanical Sentry robots. and there are some corpses that can be looted for Adreno, Ammo and some Armor. Head inside, and you’ll discover the place has six floors to explore!

Power Plant Entrance (6F)
Pick up some Dervish Mist, Energy Cell, and loot containers for Adreno, Gyro Syght, Mag-Num, Bit Cartridge and other goodies. Head toward the control room and pick to redirect power. You’ll be warned of an error and asked to active all three electrical track switches to perform the action manually. Go back toward the entrance and take the path going down to the 5th floor.

Power Plant Security Lockdown (5F)
Read the nearby terminal and learn about the replacement of guard personnel with machines, their malfunction and events that lead to the security lockdown. You can then lift it with Reed Tobson’s passcode and explore area. There is a locked door that that requires high lockpicking or the Security Chief’s Card item (found in 4F) a bunch of loot and the Corrupted Logic Module, needed for the Die, Robot quest (1700xp) so make sure to grab that and the Adrena-Time, Weapon Parts, Adreno loot.

First Switch & Repair Bay (4F)
The first switch is found soon after you descend to the 4th floor. Activate the switch then explore a nearby room to find Jeremy from Die, Robot has made its way here. Talk to Jeremy and he will say the logic is defective and all other automechanicals must be permanently dismantled. Accept its offer and explore the are to further advance your understanding of Die, Robot events. From the Repair Bay, take the staircase leading up and follow it to a room where you will find the Security Chief’s Corpse. Loot the Geothermal Security Chief’s Keycard from it and pick up Light Machinegun if you want. In this same room, if you have Chester’s Passcode you can hack a terminal.

Second Switch (4F)
Go back to the first switch ant take the side room with the reddish light. You can go down a floor (You’ll see 02 on the wall) and can then use a door to access a passage. Pick the lock on the next door you encounter to your right and you’ll access a Workbench and a path that is blocked by steam. Take the ladder going up instead to return to the 4th floor and use the switch.

Third Switch (5F)
From the previous switch, take the door on that level and you’ll come to a larger area with a drone and some sentry enemies. Defeat them and go up a level. The next switch is here. You can now unbar the door that was blocking your access to here. Back in the room with the second switch, going down will allow you to access a terminal and use Engineering (20) to turn off the steam you encountered before.

Higgins (1F)
Go back to the red room and descend the ladders until you see 04, your map will show you the 1st floor. Here you meet Higgins, who is convinced you are not real. Talk to him and calm him down, he will introduce himself as Chester D. Higgins. He was an engineer that got trapped when lockdown happened. You can ask him if he can stop the mechanicals, but you need Persuade or Intimidate 20 to succeed. If you persuade him, he will reveal that you can rewrite the mechanicals to attack each other. You need Engineering 10 to reveal someone tampered the logic module. Chester will give you Chester’s Passcode and 1800xp. You can pick up Impact Hammer from nearby before heading off to the 5th floor to access the terminal. Redifine intruders as Spacer’s Choice Automechanicals if you’d like.

Redirecting the Power
Back at the master control room, it’s time to make a choice. If Parvati is in your party, she will ask you if you understand what you’ll do. You can hear her opinion: she thinks that you should not cut off Edgewater’s power as people there are just living their lives the only way they know how. She thinks that Ms McDevitt is delighting in Edgewater’s suffering and you would be part to it if you sided with her. You can thank her for talking to you as you end the conversation for some appreciation from her.

Redirect power to Edgewater:

• Spacer’s Choice Reputation Up
• Deserters Reputation Down
• 2828xp
• Possibility to earn trophy to “Permanently Save Edgewater” later

Redirect power to Botanical Camp:

• Deserters Reputation Up (major)
• Spacer’s Choice Reputation Down (16% negative)
• 2828xp

Return to Reed
You can go back to Edgewater to talk to reed and pick up the Power Regulator that you need in order to advance Stranger in a Strange Land.

Reed can be found down the stairs in the Saltuna Cannery. He wants to talk to you and will ask you why you did it. Selecting “To Teach you a Lesson” and “You’re all slaves to Spacer’s Choice. I’m Liberating You” will have him tell you he never asked to be liberated. He says he has guards posted with orders to fire on you. You can apologize, ask what will happen to Edgewater, or intimidate him (30). Pass the intimidation test and you’ll earn 350xp for the check, then 1800xp for the objective and 15000xp for the quest. Reed will walk away and not talk to you anymore. You are now on Stranger in a Strange Land.

Return to Adelaide
If you redirected power to Edgewater then you’ll need to speak with Adelaide. When you speak to Adelaide she tells you that you have to convince the others, and when you probe further you find out that her son died of the plague in Edgewater and is buried in the cemetery because Reed refused to use medicine on him. She will give you the optional objective to get Reed to step down or she will not return to Edgewater.

Speaking to Thomas Kent, you can convince him to go back if you’ve completed his quest The Frightened Engineer, by telling him to become an Engineer. If you plan to get Reed to step down, tell him to wait.

Grace will agree to return if you let Zoe die or you killed her, since she feels she cannot defend the settlement. If you plan to get Reed to step down, tell her to wait.

You can Persuade (15) Reed to step down or you can kill Reed by attacking him. If Parvati is in your group she will freak out if you kill him and she’ll tell you she needs to leave. You can Determination (10) to keep her from leaving. You will obtain “Reed’s Key” from looting his corpse, and you will gain max negative Reputation with Spacer’s Choice from killing him.

Speak to Adelaide for 22,500 XP, Deserter’s Reputation up, The Board Reputation down (by a couple percent) and you will receive Adaelaide’s Watch, which is worth 1,750 but has no other use.