Fallout 3 -- Operation: Anchorage

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Release Date: January 27, 2009

This Galaxy Ain't Big Enough...

Edit Page    Last Edit: 7 months 7 days ago


  1. Activate the Engine Core teleporter.
  2. Reach the bridge of the alien ship.
  3. Disable the Death Ray.
  4. Defeat the Alien Captain.
  5. Secure the bridge.
  6. Defeat the attacking alien ship.


  • Alien Power Cell (M)
  • Alien Biogel (M)
  • Alien Epoxy (M)
  • Alien Squid Food (M)
  • Alien Worm Food (M)
  • Large Alien Crystal (M)
  • Small Alien Crystal (M)
  • Alien Atomizer (M)
  • Alien Disintegrator (M)
  • Tesla Armor (M)
  • Frag Mine (x6)
  • Plasma Mine (x4)
  • Plasma Grenade (x4)
  • Gatling Laser
  • Pulse Grenade (x3)
  • Microfusion Cell (M)
  • Energy Cell (M)
  • Plasma Rifle
  • Plasma Pistol
  • Atomic Pulverizer
  • Drone Cannon
  • Destabilizer
  • Combat Armor
  • Metal Armor
  • Med-X
  • Psycho
  • Alien Log #9
  • Alien Log #10
  • Alien Log #18
  • Alien Log #20
  • Alien Log #23
  • Alien Log #24

Part 1

First things first -- find the lone switch in the red-glowing room you find yourself in after the spacewalk, and press it. This will decompress the chamber you're in, which will allow you to go through the door ahead. Do not remove your Spacesuit until you're in the next room and the door is sealed! Once you're through into the subsequent room, hit another switch to turn on the teleportation device. This will link the engineering core to the top tier of the ship, and your friends will come and greet you, one after the other, as they come through the teleport link. And if you're curious about the door to your left that's locked, Sally will come through and unlock it once everyone is through the teleportation device. Be sure to scour the containers in this room for more of the standard types of goods you've been finding before running down the corridor to the adjacent room.

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An impressive site can be seen in this next room. There's glass lining much of the floor, and through it, you can observe the nuclear-ravaged Earth below. And there seems to be an extra bright spot on the surface. What is that!? Well, a hologram of an alien head will show up, either yelling at you or threatening you (or both) in its native alien language before disappearing. At this point, Somah will talk to you and let you know that she thinks progress is being made, that we've managed to get under the aliens' skin. And then, Sally busts out of the adjacent room, and you're able to proceed. Unfortunately, the teleportation device in this room has been disabled, and Sally lets you know that you're probably going to have to find the other end of it to activate it manually, so that everyone can join you.

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Head through the door marked Weapons Lab, which should be right next to you (feel free to grab things like Large Alien Crystals and search the containers en route). Your time spent on the first floor of the weapons lab will be brief. Push your way down the corridor and begin to head leftward. There are containers to your left you can loot, and enemies on a balcony above to snipe away at. When you're satiated with new items and have spilled the blood of more aliens, you can then head down the corridor underneath the balcony where the aliens were shooting at you from. There are doors on your right and on your left, where everything from Alien Epoxy to Alien Biogel can be found, and even an Atomic Pulverizer, if you look hard enough.. But ultimately, you're going to want to head down the path ahead and to your right. Swing rightward again and you'll find a multi-tiered staircase leading up to the floor above. You may run into one or more enemies en route to the stairs, so keep your firearm at the ready.

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Once at the top of the stairs, the corridor you encounter is of a completely linear variety. No matter which way you decide to explore, you'll still be led in the same direction, which is towards the balcony the cloaked alien was firing from you on earlier. If you didn't kill the alien from below, you're going to have to kill him now at close range, so keep that in mind moving forward. To your left is a healing station, so use that, and then hit the nearby switch. This will eliminate the barrier directly below the balcony so that the two sides of the first floor are connected. This will also unleash a few Guardian Drones from various teleportation devices on the first floor. Eliminate them from your heightened position, and now, you may want to grab one of their powerful Drone Cannons, which is a cumbersome weapon with a weird firing arc and the ability to damage you in addition to enemies, but one that is much-needed to deal with the more difficult enemies you'll be encountering more and more of as we move forward.

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Descend the stairs. The door to your left leads back to the part of this floor we've already explored, so ignore it. There are containers to pillage full of the usual items as you move forward, and the rooms on your right and left are the teleportation rooms where enemies earlier came from. Ignore those too, and move forward to the room directly ahead, where you can swing rightward to continue. In here, there's a container to your right containing more alien goods, but ignore it until you deal with the alien foes sniping at you from a platform above and to your left. Try to lure them down the staircase on the left to engage you on even ground, and then rapidly lay into them to eliminate the threat they pose. Now you can safely loot the container on the left before scaling the staircase upward and proceeding through the weapons laboratory.

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Part 2

If you were curious why this was called a weapons laboratory, your exploration at this point will give you some answers. There are a few hostile aliens in your vicinity, as well as their pesky drone robots, but overall, you won't see a whole lot of resistance here. The isolated laboratory on your right has some prototype robots within, but you can actually ignore that room entirely if you so desire. Instead, examine all of the control panels in the recessed section directly in front of the door you used to access this area. Something notable can be found here -- Alien Log #24. Once you've acquired that, proceed forward and begin working your way leftward. What will no doubt catch your attention at this point are the tables along the top wall lined to the brim with Earth-based goods. Stock up on whatever you need here. The most valuable stuff you'll find is some Tesla Armor, Frag Mines, Plasma Mines, a Gatling Laser, Microfusion Cells, Energy Cells, and perhaps most importantly of all, more rounds for your Alien Blaster in the form of Alien Power Cells.

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After pillaging the aliens' looted pillage (see what I did there?), you're free to explore the rest of the weapons laboratory. As you continue to move through, you're likely to run into the last vestiges of alien resistance here, so have your firearm-of-choice at the ready. You could simply move forward and up some stairs at the end of a brief corridor to reach a door that leads to the Experimentation Lab, but before you do that, explore the wing of the lab on your left. There's little to do here (though there are more containers to grab items from), but you can find some switches here that will open up teleporters below. Go ahead and do this, and then take potshots at the aliens and captured Raiders that appear, which will help you bolster your experience. Also, be sure to grab the well-hidden Destablizer from a shelf on the right side of the room (if you're facing the teleporters below). That's an incredibly powerful weapon. Bring it with you to the next lab.

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As soon as you enter this next lab, grab the Alien Worm Food from the table on your left, and then proceed rightward. Here, you're likely to run into Alien Workers, non-hostile foes we mentioned earlier in the walkthrough. Dispose of them if you want, but rest assured you will receive paltry experience and negative karma for each kill. You'll encounter an alien dinner table here (for lack of a better term). In the next isolated room, you'll find some bizarre-looking apparatuses that the aliens likely use to conduct experiments on their unsuspecting captured victims. If you explore this room, you'll find some containers to loot, and something perhaps even more important -- Alien Log #20 on the wall in this room closest to the "dinner table" in the previous room. You can also find a Wastelander corpse in this room containing Psycho and Med-X.

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While facing the "dinner table," move leftward to proceed through the laboratory. This will bring you to a room-lined corridor, with rooms on both sides. The first room on your right contains some Alien Biogel for you to grab. The first room on your left contains some Alien Epoxy for you to acquire. And the subsequent room on your left contains more Alien Biogel, as well as a healing device for your use. After exploring those three rooms, head to the end of the corridor and swing rightward to reach the next room.

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We're nearing the end of our journey through the experimentation lab. In this room, you may run into some hostile aliens, but chances are better that you'll run into a few Alien Workers who want nothing to do with you, and they will run away as a result. There's little to see in this room, though there are a few important things to do here nonetheless. First off, explore the wall on the right to find Alien Log #9. Then, examine the generator mechanism in the middle of the room, which is powering the force fields surrounding the doors leading out of the room. You should know what to do with these generators -- hit the switch to raise the three coolant mechanisms, and then examine each of those. Give yourself some space from the generator, and watch it explode sky-high thereafter.

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Part 3

With the door now unsealed, you can head forward down another corridor, opening a container on your left. From here, you'll have an option as to whether to go right or left. Going right will lead to the next location on the map, marked Biological Research. But first, head left to an isolated operating room. En route, you'll run into enemies called Abominations. These guys are a lot easier to kill than they seem, but their agility makes them hard to hit, so use VATS to increase your precision. In the operating room, you'll find more (dead) Abominations, and more importantly, Alien Log #10. After acquiring that, loot the nearby containers for any goods you may want, and then backtrack to the entrance to Biological Research to proceed with our mission.

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This area is a relatively manageable one to get through, and will prove to be fairly short as well. Initially, you can go down a corridor to reach a large, wide-open room, but there's little to initially see or do here. Ignore all of the staircases leading up as you arc leftward around this entire room. When you reach the very last staircase in the far corner of the room, take that one up, and have your firearm ready to deal with a few Abominations that will run forward to greet you. Again, there's little else to see or do up here either, though you'll want to deviate in a specific corner of the raised section of the room to grab Alien Log #18, the only log to find here in the biology lab.

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On the opposite side of the second floor from where Alien Log #18 was found, you can proceed through a door into a completely vacant room. Other than more Alien Workers, you shouldn't encounter many enemies here, though you can scour shelves and the like for valuables like Alien Power Cells if you so desire. Press the switch next to the sealed door on the far end of the room to open it, and then proceed to the final, still enemy-less room in this sector of the Mothership Zeta. You can continue straight across to a (rare) active teleportation device that leads to another section of the ship. But if you want to collect more items, such as Large Alien Crystals, Small Alien Crystals, Alien Epoxy and Alien Biogel, be certain you descend the staircase you reach to explore an isolated area chock full of items such as those. Then, head back upstairs and head forward to the aforementioned teleportation device.

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When you arrive in this next area, head forward and then to the right, proceeding down a corridor there. There are doors flanking your arrival location on both sides, but they can be ignored completely, as there's nothing of interest whatsoever in either of them. There is a door on the left side of the corridor before the corridor itself bends leftward, however, that you'll want to open and loot. Alien Epoxy, Alien Biogel and more can be found within. Then, wrap around to the large room at the end of the corridor. A healing mechanism is on the right side of the room, and you'll encounter hostile resistance here in addition to many more Alien Workers that, as usual, don't want to fight with you. Deal with them however you want.

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Hereafter, the journey through the rest of this area will be completely uneventful in every sense of the word. Use the staircases on your right to reach a lower tier, dealing with more alien adversaries in addition to pesky gun turrets. Then, run through either door you encounter, as they both ultimately reconnect and lead to an identical area. From there, it's a matter of running down completely linear corridors and down several staircases to reach the Death Ray Control Room. En route, you can deviate slightly to collect more items if you want, but you're probably drowning in items at this point, so you may want to simply proceed down the linear path laid before you and go through into the next area.

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Part 4

In this location, we'll be able to undertake one of our mission's primary objectives, which is to disable the aliens' death ray that's been aimed at Earth for however long. Simply run forward through the linear passageway until you reach the control room for the death ray. You'll run into some hostile aliens here, so the first thing you're going to want to do is defend yourself, eliminating all of the threats you find there. Then, take a look around and see what's laid before you. There are four control units in front of the death ray itself that control the unit. The two on the left control the power, and the two on the right control where it's pointing. Ignore the two on the right completely and deal with only the leftmost switch on the left side. Each time you press it, a generator will pop up in one corner of the room, and you'll be able to disable it as you've done to so many other generators, by examining the cooling devices and subsequently watching the generator explode.

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There are four generators to destroy here, and they'll pop up in clockwise order starting with the one directly on your left. As long as you don't hit the right switch on the left side, the device will never fire, so you don't have to rush around to destroy the generators. Once one is destroyed, repeat the process and destroy the next one, and so on and so forth. After two of the four generators are destroyed, alien reinforcements will show up on the scene, so be ready to rebuff them. Then, when that final wave of aliens is destroyed, you can go about eliminating the other two generators. Once the fourth and final generator is obliterated, the sealed door to the left of the entrance to the room will open up. The teleportation device on the other side will bring you to the ship's living quarters.

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The living quarters, as if it comes as any surprise to you, is going to be chock full of pesky aliens. So, you're going to need to come into this situation relatively prepared for the incredibly difficult onslaught you're going to have to survive. Expect to run into basic alien enemies equipped with all manner of weapons, as well as plenty of cloaked aliens and gun turrets. In addition, they've setup these green plasma weapons all over the place. They create impassable barriers and must be shot continuously to be destroyed, but keep your distance when you do so, since the explosion can damage you (as well as the aliens, meaning you can use these devices to your advantage). For starters, simply head forward in either direction from the teleportation device, since the paths soon thereafter meet up. Then, go rightward, where you'll run into your first of these pesky barriers.

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Beyond the location of the initial barrier and the aliens and Abominations you'll have to do battle with thereafter is the first wide open room you'll encounter. And this room is rife with those same barrier weapons, as well as a slew of aliens to defeat. Keep a very close eye on your health during these encounters -- you may want to use Med-X, Buffout and Psycho to give yourself an extra boost here, because this is one hell of a battle you've walked into. You can ignore the rooms down below completely if you want, and can take either staircase leading downward at the far end of the room once you've defeated the enemy contingent here. Make sure you're healed and your firearm is reloaded as you go down the stairs, because your encounters here are just beginning. You may also want to loot the containers in the previous area for more goods, as well.

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Once down the stairs, you can either go right or left. If you want to cut right to the chase, you should go right and ignore the left path completely, but if you want to see everything and kill as many enemies as possible for valuable experience, then continue to the left first. The linear pathway you ultimately find yourself on will lead, eventually, to a dead end, where you'll run into a familiar character (or characters). En route, expect to deal with more of those pesky barriers and plenty of aliens and gun turrets. After doing that, you can then head rightward to the previous junction. This pathway will prove to be the most difficult one yet, rife with gun turrets and covered with disabled robots and aliens galore.

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Part 5

There are rooms on the right that you could explore -- in fact, if you want Alien Log # 23, you're going to have to do just that (it's in an identical state of storage as all of the others). As you clear enemies and just barely squeak by here, you'll encounter a healing apparatus on your left, and then a staircase leading upward. Keep in mind that while you traverse these areas, you'll be dealing with more of those plasma barriers as well. From here, things are pretty linear. That initial staircase leads to a linear pathway and then two more staircases leading upward. Here, you'll encounter Abominations and any aliens you've yet to dispatch. Otherwise, there's little to see or do. What you're seeking out is the teleportation device that leads to the ship's bridge. It's time to end Mothership Zeta's reign of terror once and for all.

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Doing so is easier than you think, though things can get a bit confusing up here. For starters run forward from the teleportation device, look left, and enter the bridge. Here, about a half-dozen aliens or so will be occupying the space, in addition to the alien captain you have to kill to proceed. Thankfully, the captain is no better-armed or stronger in any respect to the lesser aliens around him, so you can kill him as you would any other alien. When he's downed, a hologram of an alien head, colored orange, will appear before you. Identical to the hologram we found earlier, this appears to be either the aliens' leader, or perhaps the captain of another ship. And speaking of another ship...

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...we're going to undertake some ship-to-ship combat that will require speed and precision. But first, you have to wait for your friends to show up, which will happen automatically a minute or two after the final alien on the bridge is downed. Once they arrive, they'll each man a generator station, two on each side of the bridge, allowing you to use the death ray on our ship on another alien ship that's come in. Since you've basically ransacked the entire ship and left virtually no aliens left behind, the aliens find it easier to destroy Mothership Zeta than have to board it and deal with you manually. So, they turn their own death ray on you, and you'll need to go back and forth with that ship in order to down it before they down you.

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Getting the death ray to work properly can be a little tricky. You can control the power of the beam on the left control panels, and then fire it once it's charged with the center control panel. Expect intermittent visits from still-alive aliens roving around the ship, who will appear in a last minute attempt to do you in. But all-in-all, as long as you continue to fire at the other mothership and down it before it downs you, the mission will end in victory. Congratulations! Mothership Zeta has been successfully conquered, and is now under the control of your friends. You can return to the Capital Wasteland now, with all of your new loot and plunder. And better yet, you can use a beacon at a static location on the surface to return whenever you so desire!

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What Links Here

Mothership Zeta | Achievements / Trophies

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