Cait Fallout 4 Guide – The Truth about Cait

• About
• Latest Posts

Eoin Black

At the bright young age of nine years old, Eoin played his first-ever video game: Fallout 3. Should he have been playing it? No, but this reckless parenting inspired a love of single-player RPGs that has stuck with him throughout his gaming career. Despite investing serious time into Esports, Eoin always found himself returning to narrative-driven games, vowing to one day make it as a narrative designer himself. In the meantime, he has written for numerous gaming outlets on countless topics and titles. Outside of gaming, Eoin has a passion for reading and writing. He tells himself that he’ll write a bestseller one day, if he ever dares to actually put pen to paper.

Latest posts by Eoin Black (see all)

• Fallout New Vegas Snow Globe Locations Guide - February 11, 2023
• Fallout New Vegas Caravan Guide: How to Play Caravan in Fallout New Vegas - January 15, 2023
• Fallout 4 DLC Guide - June 8, 2022

I have a massive bone to pick with Cait. Her Irish accent is possibly the worst I’ve ever heard in a video game. I am Irish, and I can assure you that next to no one on this island speaks like that. It’s like her voice actress (who is Scottish) put on the same voice she would have used for a Lucky Charms advert.

Compare it to the performance of Liam Neeson, who is actually Irish, in Fallout 3 and the difference is night and day. So, I can’t stand listening to Cait even more so than other people, which may have influenced my opinion and experiences with her. Just be aware that I am coming from that point of bias.

If that god-awful accent isn’t a problem for you, then chances are you’ll have a decent enough time with Cait. She’s middle of the road in terms of her combat ability, and the same can sort of be said for her personality.

She lacks much of a backstory even when compared to the other underwritten followers in Fallout 4, but she does have a personal quest. She’s also a neutral Fallout 4 companion, like Hancock, making her a good pick for any party-loving playthroughs.

I’ve collected all the information you could possibly need in this comprehensive Cait Fallout 4 guide. I’ll run you through how to recruit her, use her, complete her companion quest, and more.

She’s not my cup of tea, but that shouldn’t stop you from taking Cait for a spin yourself.

Bottom Line Up Front

Cait is recruitable once you reach Downtown Boston. You need to complete a quest called The Combat Zone to get access to her. Thankfully, the quest is a standard “clear the area of Raiders” style of mission. To trigger the quest, either find The Combat Zone itself or overhear NPCs talking about it in Diamond City.

Cait has fairly exploitable likes and dislikes. She enjoys it when the player pickpockets, lockpicks, wears no clothes or uses chems. All of these are easy to farm, meaning you can max Cait’s affinity pretty quickly.

Before the arrival of the Prydwyn, she dislikes the player working with all four of the game’s factions. Once the Brotherhood does arrive, she doesn’t mind working with them but will still dislike the Minutemen, Railroad, and Institute. Despite this, she is faction neutral and can be recruited regardless of which ending you are trying to achieve.

Cait, despite being utterly void of any sort of interesting lore or backstory, does actually have a personal quest called Benign Intervention. Prior to completing the quest, Cait’s affinity will be locked at 999, preventing you from earning her perk or romancing her until it’s completed. Once you complete Benign Intervention, Cait will no longer use chems and will dislike it when the player uses them in her presence.

Key Details

• Character Location: The Combat Zone.
• Related Quests: The Combat Zone / Benign Intervention.
• Recruitment Cost: None (Quest Completion).
• Weapon: Double Barrel Shotgun.
• Faction Alignment: None.

Description Overview

Unfortunately, Bethesda hasn’t given us much to go off of in terms of Cait’s backstory.

We know that she grew up in an abusive household and regularly tried to run away from her parents. Once she turned 18, those aforementioned terrible parents decided to sell her into slavery.

Cait remained a slave for five years until, somehow, she managed to steal enough caps to buy her own freedom. She then returned to her home and swiftly pumped her folks full of lead.

The space in between this event occurring and Cait’s arrival at The Combat Zone is a total mystery. All we know is that she’s been at the Zone for three years, shoving herself full of Psycho and continuing to be subjected to abusive relationships. That is, until the Sole Survivor shows up.

Once recruited, Cait will actively dislike working with every single faction in the game. There’s no way to progress any of the questlines while also keeping her happy. However, once the Prydwyn arrives, she doesn’t mind working with the Brotherhood. Despite this, she is faction neutral and will remain your companion regardless of which ending you achieve.

Cait’s Likes/Dislikes

Likes

Pickpocketing

As Fallout 4’s resident chaotic neutral companion, Cait likes some of your less than moral behavior. Chief amongst them is pickpocketing. She seems to be impressed by how skilled you are at getting into other people’s pants, and taking things out of them.

Obviously, this is a great way to gain some extra affinity for any stealth players out there. However, there isn’t much of an incentive to pickpocket in Fallout 4, so you won’t find yourself doing it unless you’re purposefully trying to gain Cait’s affinity.

Lockpicking

In a similar vein to her love of pickpocketing, she also likes it when you pick locks. This isn’t actually as useful as it is with companions like Piper because Cait is capable of picking any difficulty lock in the game for you, provided she has Bobby Pins in her inventory.

So, if you want to use lockpicking to gain affinity with her, you’ll purposefully need to not take full advantage of the perks she brings as a follower. If you’ve got the skill and Bobby Pins, though, that’s not too much of a big deal.

Using Chems (Before Personal Quest Completion)

Prior to the completion of her personal quest, Cait likes it whenever you take chems or drink hard liquor. She’s an addict herself, and given her pseudo-Raider lifestyle, it makes sense that she wants to party whenever she gets the chance.

If you’re planning on running a chems-based build, then this will be your main source of affinity with Cait. For every other type of build, lockpicking should be your go-to. Once you complete her personal quest, she’ll no longer like it when you take chems in her presence. However, you should have already maxed her affinity at that point so it shouldn’t really matter.

Addiction (Before Personal Quest Completion)

Cait doesn’t stop at just taking chems, though. She likes it when you get straight-up addicted to them. Again, this stops once you complete her personal quest.

This is a far less efficient source of affinity than your other options here. Taking enough chems to get addicted is expensive, and chems-based builds go out of their way to make addiction impossible. So, there’s no viable situation in which you’ll be abusing this affinity source.

Nudity

Cait and Hancock are the only two companions in all of Fallout 4 that like nudity. Given that both are chem-loving party animals, this makes perfect sense.

Taking off your clothes and traveling between safe load zones will get you a chunk of affinity as well as a cheeky comment from Cait. Like lockpicking, this is a phenomenal way to quickly farm Cait’s affinity.

Head to Homeplate in Diamond City, set up a bed beside the door, take off your clothes, and walk in and out of the house. Sleep for two days between each load and you’ll find yourself maxing out Cait’s affinity ridiculously fast.

Related: Complete Fallout 4 Clothing Guide.

Dislikes

Cannibalism

Cait is neutral-karma personified, but she’s not an animal. Just like every other reasonable follower in the game, she’s disgusted at the idea of you chowing down on whatever riffraff you execute during your travels.

For the two Cannibal players that are reading this, you can expect this kind of reaction from more or less every companion you try to use. Except for Strong, because he’s a disgusting Super Mutant.

Doing Settler Quests

Cait shares this particular dislike with 99% of the Fallout 4 fanbase, and rightfully so. Preston’s constant “another settlement needs your help” quests are as repetitive as they are boring.

Cait actively dislikes doing them regardless of how you treat the settlers involved, so make sure you’re not bringing her along for your self-inflicted Minutemen torture sessions.

All the Factions (Except the Brotherhood After the Arrival of the Prydwyn)

Cait isn’t just chaotic neutral, she’s also an asshole, and I don’t mean that endearingly.

Prior to the arrival of the Brotherhood and the Prydwyn, Cait will actively dislike your attempts to work with any of the four factions. There’s no reason for this other than her being difficult.

Once the BoS does arrive in force, she doesn’t mind working with them. The other three, though, are still in her bad books.

Related Quests

The Combat Zone

Trigger the Combat Zone

You’ll likely trigger The Combat Zone passively without realizing it. You can get the quest to activate by either finding the Zone yourself or by hearing about it from the NPCs wandering around Diamond City.

If you’re struggling to find out about it in Diamond City, head to The Combat Zone directly. This will force the quest to start.

Find The Combat Zone

The Combat Zone is located East of Diamond City and South of Swan’s Pond. It’s not too difficult to travel there, with the only real opposition you’ll face being Raiders and Super Mutants.

At around level 10 or 15, you should have absolutely no problems making your way there, or clearing it out for that matter.

Clear the Area

Once you enter The Combat Zone, you’ll need to kill all of the Raiders in the area (with the exception of the two caged-up ones at the reception). All these guys are going to do is insult you, so do whatever you want to them.

Once you enter the main atrium, you’re going to hear a Ghoul called Tommy Lonegan speaking. He’s currently commentating over a fight between Cait and an unnamed Raider. If you stay hidden, you can watch the fight play out. Cait wins, obviously.

If you do decide to stick with stealth, Tommy will call you out after the fight, resulting in all the Raiders in the area turning hostile and attacking you. Alternatively, you can go gung-ho right from the beginning.

Either way, you’ll have to kill all of the Raiders before you can proceed.

Recruit Cait

Once you’ve finished up the Raiders, both Cait and Tommy will be waiting for you in the cage that dominates the room. Enter it and speak with Tommy. After a brief chat, he’ll give you some caps and The Combat Zone quest will complete. You’re then free to talk with, and recruit, Cait.

Benign Intervention

Trigger the Quest

Benign Intervention triggers when Cait reaches affinity rank 750, just like most of the other personal quests in Fallout 4. You can still earn affinity while it’s active, but you will be capped out at 999 until the quest is completed.

Once you reach the required affinity rank, Cait will stop and ask you for a heart-to-heart. She’ll tell you about her current and past problems with drugs, namely an addiction to Psycho that she developed while fighting in The Combat Zone. She’s had enough of relying on chems and wants to kick the habit for good.

Cait will explain that her addiction is too far gone to be treated with traditional tactics. Instead, she suggests going to Vault 95, which she learned may have the equipment she would need to cure her addiction.

Go to Vault 95

Vault 95 is West of Sommerville place and a little North of the Glowing Sea. This puts it in a fairly high level-range, so make sure you’re properly prepared to travel there.

Not only will you have to deal with enemies that spawn in the areas around Vault 95, but the Vault itself is swarming with Gunners. For a low leveled player, this is a death sentence.

Check out our complete Vault 95 Guide.

Fight Through the Gunners

If you feel confident that you’re up to the task, head-on into the Vault and prepare for a whole lot of combat.

You’re going to be fighting through a ton of Gunners while you work your way deeper into the Vault. There are traps and Turrets scattered around the place, so make sure you keep your eyes open.

Eventually, you’ll reach a Master locked terminal that controls a door you need to get through. If you’re incapable of hacking the terminal, you’ll need to make your way to the Overseer’s Office. Inside, there will be an unlocked terminal that can open the door for you.

Once you’re through the door, you’ll have to fight through a handful of grunts before you reach a room with the Gunner Commander. Bear in mind that there’s an active Bottlecap Mine on the desk in this room. Kill the Commander, and proceed to the Detox Chamber.

Enter the Detox Chamber

Before entering the Detox Chamber, Cait will get some cold feet. You’ll need to convince her to proceed by passing one of three different easy speech checks. These are really just here for window dressing. You’re going to pass one of them, and the outcome is the same regardless.

Once Cait enters the Chamber and gets cosy in the Extractor Chair, activate the nearby terminal to have it work its magic.

One brief period later and poof! Cait is cured of all her addictions and problems with drugs. Never mind the psychological reliance she had on them, they’re all out of her system now!

This will complete Benign Intervention and allow you to max out Cait’s affinity, meaning you can romance her and earn her perk. However, completing this quest makes her do a total 180 on her drug politics. She’ll now dislike you using and abusing chems, so don’t act surprised when she calls you a hypocrite for taking a hit of Jet right in front of her.

Cait’s Companion Perk

Trigger Rush

Trigger Rush is a weird perk; not in terms of its effect, but its implementation.

For everyone that isn’t using the Unofficial Fallout 4 Patch mod, this perk is actually bugged. Rather than its stated effect of giving you 25% faster AP regeneration when you’re below 25% HP, it’ll give you 50% faster AP regen when you’re below 25 AP. How you get this wrong in the code is anyone’s guess, but it can’t be helped.

Regardless of whether or not you’re running the Patch mod, though, Trigger Rush isn’t going to be all that useful. Given that you need to complete a personal quest to obtain it, it’s a shame that it’s so weak.

Trigger Rush isn’t even a case of a perk being niche, it’s just underwhelming. In theory, you could make it work with a radiation-based build that relies on low health, but they’re far more popular in Fallout 76 than they are Fallout 4.

For every other build, including VATs based builds, there’s just no need for it. You should actively be avoiding letting your health drop to 25%, making its patched affected useless in terms of uptime. When not patched, 25 AP is going to be a sliver of your Action Points total for a VATs build, so having a 50% faster regen rate under that number is barely going to be noticeable.

If you can make Trigger Rush work, then more power to you, but I can’t see any viable case-use for it.

How to Find Cait in Fallout 4

The Combat Zone

Cait is recruited through a rather underwhelming miscellaneous quest called The Combat Zone. The reason for this is that the entirety of The Combat Zone area’s content was cut before the release of Fallout 4. There’s a mod that restores that cut content, but for console players, that’s not an option.

In fact, Cait’s originally intended recruitment method involved you fighting, and beating her. So, technically, you were meant to win her in a bet. When you consider that in the context of her backstory, it’s actually quite ironically depressing.

However, we didn’t get that. Instead, The Combat Zone quest is your standard “go here, kill Raiders” style of quest, wasting a whole lot of potential.

You’ll get the quest by either finding the Zone yourself or by hearing about it in passing during your travels around and in Diamond City. Either way, activate the quest in your Pip-Boy and you’ll be directed toward it.

Once inside, you’ll encounter two Raiders locked in cages. These guys can’t be freed and aren’t hostile. Instead, they’ll just insult you. Kill them, or don’t, and proceed into the main hall.

You’ll enter the main hall during a fight between Cait and an unnamed opponent. If you stay hidden, you can watch the fight. Spoiler: Cait wins. During the fight, a Ghoul named Tommy Lonegan will be giving commentary. If you’ve remained hidden, he will call you out after Cait finishes off her opponent, causing the Raiders in the area to become hostile.

If you didn’t stay hidden, the Raiders will automatically be hostile. Clear them all out and speak to Tommy inside of the massive cage that Cait just fought in.

After a brief chat, he’ll give you a handful of caps. You can then speak with Cait and recruit her as a companion.

Cait’s Playstyle

When you find her, Cait will be equipped with a Baseball Bat, Double Barrel Shotgun, and some really weak unique armor. Given that she’s clearly built for close-quarters combat, you’ll want to suit her up with some better armor ASAP.

After that, I recommend you give her an upgraded shotgun rather than changing the weapon type. The reason for this is Cait’s unique ability to consume any chems in her inventory. In other words, you can buff her by giving her Buffout, Jet, and Psycho. At least, you can until you complete her personal quest.

These three chems will allow Cait to hang with the best of them, allowing her to deal some impressive damage with a decent shotgun. She can use drugs like Med-X, and even Stealth Boys, too, so do with that information what you will.

Given that she can also pick locks if you provide her with Bobby Pins, it’s clear that Cait is a very micro-management heavy companion. You’ll need to constantly keep her inventory stocked to make the most of her, but it does allow her to operate more effectively compared to followers like Piper or Nick.

Alternatively, you can throw her in some power armor, give her a high DPS gun, and call it a day. Either approach will be effective.

Key Relationships and Quotes

Tommy Lonegan

Tommy Lonegan is the Ghoul owner of the Combat Zone. He operates the arena out of a pre-war theater in Downtown Boston. He made a deal with the local Raider gang that allowed him to conduct live fights for their entertainment, resulting in a steady profit, although he was unable to branch his business out to the general public.

According to a terminal in the Institute Synth Retention Bureau, Lonegan is an informant for the Institute, informing them of any information he comes across regarding runaway Synths.

It’s unknown when or how he came into contact with Cait, but at the time of the Sole Survivor’s arrival, he is the holder of her employment contract. Killing the Raiders in The Combat Zone will result in him letting her out of the contract, allowing you to recruit her.

Tommy Lonegan has several cut lines dealing with the player entering The Combat Zone as a combatant. These lines can be reintroduced on PC with the use of mods.

Stratton

Stratton is only ever mentioned briefly by Cait. She cites him as the reason for her suspicion of people that do good deeds for free.

Cait and Stratton met during her time in The Combat Zone. The two became romantically involved, albeit in a toxic and verbally abusive relationship.

Cait, after refusing to put out one night, had a heated argument with Stratton before leaving the room they were in. Outside, she was jumped by Raiders. Stratton followed her out, saw the trouble she was in, and let the Raiders jump her regardless.

What happened to Stratton after that event is unknown.

FAQs

Conclusion

That’s all I’ve got for you in this Cait Fallout 4 guide. There’s not too much to work with when it comes to her, so I hope you managed to come away from this with some sort of new information.

While I consider Cait to be a poor man’s Cass, my opinion is biased. Give her a try for yourself and see how you like her. Who knows, you might end up enjoying her constant moaning and nagging.