Starting Far Harbor’s secret Shipbreaker quest

There’s plenty of hidden content just waiting to be discovered in this already feature-rich expansion to the Fallout 4 experience. From armor you can’t get anywhere else to five new magazines that offer unique bonuses, there’s loads of secret material in Far Harbor’s island location.

One such hidden quest tasks you with taking down a gigantic mutated beast called the Shipbreaker, who new companion Old Longfellow has been hunting for years. It’s his own personal Moby Dick, elusive and dangerous, but your character will no doubt be more than up for the task of destroying the beast.

Simply finding the creature to begin with can be a serious pain, but with enough persistence it can be done. If you manage to survive the titanic battle to come, a brand new legendary weapon that’s only available here awaits you.

The Shipbreaker Quest

Before jumping into the secret Far Harbor Shipbreaker quest, you may also wanted to check out these other DLC guides:

• Far Harbor’s new perks guide
• Islander’s Almanac magazine locations

Starting The Shipbreaker Quest

To get this quest started, you have to first find a radio signal. The problem is that the location of the radio signal is entirely randomized and is different for everyone. But it seems to appear most frequently in the second half of the DLC after wrapping up the Turn Back The Fog quest.

Locations where the radio frequency can be found include the Echo Lake Lumber Mill, Dalton Farm, and Old Longfellow’s Cabin.

The Radio Signal

Unfortunately, it appears the quest may be currently bugged, as even forcing it to start on the PC version via console commands doesn’t work as it should if you haven’t already found the signal.

For those who enjoy playing around in the console, the code you are looking for is SetStage DLC03WorkshopRadiantOwned05 10 and the quest ID is 03040c3a. The stages to utilize if you want to try forwarding to different segments if the quest glitches out include:

• 10 = Quest Started
• 20 = Gained Infro From Longfellow
• 50 = Listened To Radio Frequency
• 200 = Shipbreaker Dead
• 400 = Quest Finish

Finding Shipbreaker

Chat up Old Longfellow after the quest starts, and he’ll give you some background info on the monster you hunt.

After listening to the signal, you have to follow the sound until the signal strength nears the 90% – 100% range, basically playing a game of hot and cold while running in random directions until the percentage starts to reliably go up instead of down.

The signal leads to a gigantic Fog Crawler monster called the Shipbreaker, which will sometimes show up before the frequency hits 100% in this infuriating quest that doesn’t seem to behave as its supposed to.

If you don’t see him, keep an eye on your surroundings and enter VATS repeatedly if you suspect he should be around but you aren’t at the source of the signal yet.

Battling Shipbreaker

Shipbreaker has a very high defense and deals tons of radiation damage, so you will definitely want power armor. The easiest way to take him down is from a distance, especially if you can get up on a ledge where Shipbreaker can’t easily follow. A few mini-nukes ought to do the job.

Skipper’s Last Stand

After the fight is over, chat up Old Longfellow (which is much easier if he’s already your follower, otherwise head to his cabin north of Far Harbor) to finish the quest.

Old Longfellow’s Nemesis Is Finally Dead

He will reward you with the unique harpoon gun called Skipper’s Last Stand, which has the following base stats:

• Damage: 165
• Special +150 damage resistance while reloading.
• Fire rate: 2
• Range: 143
• Accuracy: 63
• Weight: 16.3
• Value: 1005

Skipper’s Last Stand

That’s all you need to know to complete this secret Far Harbor quest. It’s frankly more trouble than its worth unless you really want that harpoon gun so your character matches the atmosphere of the expansion.

Let us know where you found the radio frequency and if you have any tips on taking down the Shipbreaker beast!