Wasteland Remastered walkthrough part 4: Highpool

If you missed it, go back to part 3 for party management tips.

After 3 introductory parts, we have reached our first adventure, in the settlement of Highpool.

Highpool is a small place with not a lot to recommend it.

Head for the main building in town and you’ll find a note pinned to the wall with everything they need your help to sort out.

Wander to the southern end of Highpool and you’ll find two useful buildings. One is the town hospital – the cheapest in the wasteland. The other is a room with a broken engine in it.

The engine

The room contains a broken engine and a loot cache. The cache is useful to sell for money. There’s no skill that will fix the broken machine, you have to buy a new engine.

An engine is available in the store at the Rail Nomads, priced at a reasonable $500. If you stripped the equipment from the original party members and sold it all, the money from that plus the cache should give you the $500 you need. If you are still short on cash, consider skipping ahead to the Agricultural Centre, as defeating Harry there will give you access to more cash via selling fruit back to the farmers. (Don’t question it, it just works!)

Once you have the money, take a trip up to the Rail Nomads and visit their store

The engine is all you need at this point, although they also sell a pick, a useful item for later.

With your new purchase, head back to Highpool and use the engine over the broken machine

You’ll receive a nice reward, which includes armour for the whole party, and almost as much cash as you spent buying the engine. I guess no one from Highpool ever walked as far as the Rail Nomads.

The cave

You may have noticed the little buy in the lower left of this image. This is Bobby, and he’s upset over his lost dog, and lost friend, Jackie. Ask him about the cave and he’ll tell you where to find it. Sort of.

The cave can be found between two trees opposite the main building of Highpool. You’ll need to use your Perception skill on the space between the trees to notice the cave, even if Bobby already told you where to find it. This is where having a starting character with Perception 2 comes in useful.

Now that you have found the cave entrance, you’ll need to get in there using a rope. Use the item on the square next to the cave and that should set up your rope to get in and out. The graphics will change.

With the rope set up you can now enter the cave.

Here your Climb skill comes in useful as the cave is filled with rubble piles you have to scrabble and scramble across to make your way through the cave. Use your Climb skill in the direction you want the party to travel to progress through the cave.

Rex, the poor rabid dog, will attack you early on and must be put down. Continue to the top left of the map to find Jackie huddled behind a large pile of rocks.

Use the Encounter (ENC) command and the select (H)ire to get Jackie into your party. Then the party can retrace their steps and get back out of the cave.

Jackie is your first NPC, and probably also the first NPC you will Disband, as she doesn’t really bring anything to the group.

Except for those ten dollars. Remember to pool the money to a continuing party member before giving Jackie her marching orders.

Your Highpool adventure is now complete! Well, almost. You’ll notice the Highpool quest is not yet marked as complete in your Journal.

There’s a new grave in town, dug by Bobby for his poor dog. Bobby will attack you as you leave town, and you can either ignore him or kill him. Ignoring him leaves the Highpool quest incomplete, so…

Moving on, join me for part 5, where we encounter large and valuable fruit in the Agricultural Centre!