Vault 13 Cave:

This is where you come out of the vault ready to kick butt and take names! Fortunately for you all the butt you have to kick is a bunch of rats which is pretty much what you are ready to handle right out the door. Check out that skeleton in front of you for some stuff and then whip out your pistol and prepare for battle.

The main thing to do in the Vault13 Cave is to kill all the rats there for an initial experience boost, don't be so hasty to leave as you can get halfway to the next level right in that cave by knocking off the rats. Don't forget the stuff on the skelton and that is about it! Don't try and get back into the Vault as they are having "technical difficulties."

Shady Sands:

Okay, you head out of the Vault 13 Cave and head for the only other place that you have on your map...Vault 15! Along the way there though you will find a small town right below your path to Vault 15. Head for that and you will find yourself in Shady Sands!

When you walk into Shady Sands you will encounter Seth the main guard for the town. If you still have your pistol in hand he will ask you to put it away which you should do unless you want to get into a fight. I'll assume you don't at this point. Talk to Seth for a little while and he will tell you all about their problems with the Radscorpions and you can also wring out the location of the Raider camp from him. Talk to the Katrina the girl standing next to Seth, she will tell you about the Vault that she came from and various other tidbits, grill her for all the information that she has got and you will get some experience. Next head over to the building to the southeast and talk with Aradesh. He is the guy in the hooded robe standing in the top corner. Aradesh will tell you about the Radscorpion problem too and you can either ask him for money to solve the problem or volunteer to do it out of the goodness of your heart. You can also talk with Tandi, Aradesh's daughter although she essentially has nothing to say to you unless your charisma or speech skill is high then you can wring some information about the Deathclaw and the location of Necropolis out of her. Talk to the lady cooking food in the back and you can compliment her on her cooking and gain one karma point (Karma influences how people react to you in the game and is gained by doing good deeds or lost by doing bad deeds).

Next go explore around the town, there are several buildings that have things that you can pick up in them. Search the bookshelves in all the buildings and you will come up with some ammo for guns that you don't have (yet), a length of rope and a couple of Scout Handbooks which you should use to improve your Outdoorsman skill before heading back into the wilderness.

Talk to Razlo the town doctor (located in the building in the southeast corner of the main town square) and he will tell you if you get a sample of the Radscorpion poison he can make an antidote for it. You will have a chance to do this later. Talk to the farmer on the other end of the town and if you have the right combination of intelligence and speech skill you can suggest to him that he rotate his crops for maximum production, this will get you some experience. You might have to come back to town later (after you have acquired more speech skill or have a perk like Smooth Talker) to accomplish that.

The other thing to do is to get Ian from the building north of Aradesh's home. Talk to him for a while about things going on in the area, he will provide the location of the Hub and Junktown, offer him a piece of the action when he asks you for money to come with you, if he doesn't take your offer, just try again until he does.

Once you have Ian you are ready to take out the Radscorpions. You can talk to Seth and he will take you to the Radscorpion caves where all you have to do is kill all the Radscorpions and the quest is complete, pick up a few of the Radscorpion tails on your way out to give to Razlo to make into antivenom. Later, after you visit Vault 15 and get the explosives (read next passage) you should come back to the Radscorpion caves and blow up the entrance (see next passage) for some additional experience.

Vault 15:

The other way you can destroy the Radscorpions is to take the rope you find in Shady Sands and head over to Vault 15. Once you arrive at Vault 15 head inside and you will find some flares in the box on the right inside the door to the vault. You will also find the place infested with mole rats and other rat like creatures. These aren't much of a problem, just wipe them out using your pistol and Ian will help too. The elevator down to the second floor is broken so just use the rope on the edge of the elevator shaft and then climb down. Here you will find more rats, some ammo lying on the floor and a locker with some goodies in it such as another length of rope which you can use to go to the third level, some explosives, and a leather jacket (that might be on the third level, can't remember exactly). Proceed to the third level using the rope that you find and if you go to the west end of the floor you will receive some experience as you observe that you can't reach the water chip as the cavern has collapsed in front of the command area. The third floor has a couple of lockers on it that contain a machine pistol which can be useful as well. Kill all the rest of the rats for more experience and pick up the ammo lying on the floor and then get out and head back to Shady Sands.

When you arrive back at Shady Sands if you haven't killed the Radscorpions already talk to Seth and get him to take you to the Radscorpion Caves. Once there move your cursor along the wall to the north as you enter the caves and you should see a message telling you that the cavern looks weak in that area. Get out your explosives that you picked up from Vault 15 and arm them for at least 30 seconds and then drop them in front of the wall that looks weak. Make sure to get far away from the explosives (heading towards the entrance to the caves) and when they blow the cavern will collapse trapping the Radscorpions inside. You get as much experience for doing this as you do for killing the Radscorpions and blowing the entrance up after you kill them. If you didn't get a Radscorpion tail by now, don't worry as you will meet up with them in random encounters throughout the desert, in fact you probably had a few as you headed over to Vault 15. As long as you give one tail to Razlo at some point you can still get the experience for helping him make the antidote. Also you can give some of the antidote to the guy that is laid out in the back (Seth's brother) of Razlo's shack for some additional experience.

Thanks to Steve and Chris for pointing that last little bit out to me.

Junktown and Raiders