Hey fellas! I'm stuck on the "Heartache by the Number" sidequest, and was wondering if you could point me in the right direction...

I found Cass at the Majove Outpost and after speaking to her she told me to "Pitch in at the Crimson Caravan" if I'm looking for work. I did, I met up with Alice McLafferty and agreed to help with the caravan buyout by talking to Cass and using a [Speech 75] to convince her to hand over the caravan papers. During this time, I got Cass as a companion, and I helped her by starting the Heartache by the Number sidequest (finding the 3 locations of the sacked caravans). Simultaneously I did the following sidequests successfully for Alice McLafferty back at the Crimson Caravan: You Can Depend On Me and Pressing Matters.

So now I'm on Heartache by the Number, and I'm stuck as to what I'm supposed to do? If I check my Pip-Boy, it says: Find Alice McLafferty at the Crimson Caravan Camp and "settle accounts". Yet when I go there to her and engage in conversation, there is no dialogue that helps towards this quest. So I'm stuck, and don't know how to proceed? Any help would be great, thanks guys!

This glitch or whatever happened to me too and it's directly responsible for how I got Cass killed later on! (There's more detail to that but I dont want to spoill it for you )

I thought it was just me, I took cass there and i thought there'd be a shootout or something, but cass just stands there and the old woman only has her own dialogue options.
In the end I solved the problem my own way, but, it's very frustrating.



You might want to go visit the van graffs at the silver rush..?

Sounds like you missed the dialog option for the peaceful route. Try an earlier save, or if you don't have one the only way to advance the quest is to kill both her and the Van Graf lady. You have to kill her, Cass will not intiate it. Going this route negativily effects your NCR rep, so be warned.

PS You might want to try and open her safe at night to see if there is any documents in it, you may be able to forse the quest into the peaceful route this way (you have to pick the Van Graf's safe too for this to work). This way does not effect NCR rep.

n the end, I went to the Silver Rush and did some quests for them until Jean-Baptiste wanted Cass dead. I didn't want that, so I killed them all and went back to the Crimson Caravan and killed McLafferty too. It then said I had completed the quest, so it seems that's what I had to do. I'm now helping Ambassador Dennis Crocker with Things That Go Boom, to hopefully restore any negativity with the NCR.

Thanks for the help guys!

"settle accounts" = killing her.

Did you not get that?

I don't think you can restore your rep. I did it this way too on one play through and best I could get it back to was Wild Child (or whatever it is called, the one where they can't figure you out).

Nope, that's what you chose to do.
Also negative and positive rep are separate, meaning that if you have -1000 and +1000 with a faction it won't equal to 0. They'll remember both your good and bad deeds. There's one point in the story where both NCR and the Legion will give you amnesty for your crimes against them, but you already passed that point.