On a lark, I decided to go look at Fort Independence (The Castle).

With Around 4-6k bullets for a Minigun, 50-ish mines of various sorts, T-45c power armor + Aquagirl, some 30 or so Molotov Cocktails and 45 (I counted) fragment grenades, I left Sanctuary.

It's actually fairly easy to get to the Castle at lv 15 or 16, since the river near Greygarden goes to the sea and is deep enough that almost nothing will see you (and Aquagirl (or boy for male chars) makes for effectively unlimited underwater travel).

Dealing with the Mirelurks out in the open (and using up pretty much all the ammo for the Minigun AND the Missile launcher there), I set out the mines.

While clearing out the Mirelurk Nests, I came across a rather pesky Mirelurk Ravager. I had precisely 2 HP left (and no power armor). After finishing THAT battle (and healing to a slightly more healthy HP level) I finished clearing out the nests (and the last few mirelurks that were inside) is when I finally saw the Queen. She had somehow managed to step on every single mine, thus blowing her own legs off (and she looks silly wothout legs. Also makes for a good dinner later).

I installed 2 large Generators to power the place and left (by fast travel back to sanctuary).

My question: How will Preston react (once I finally get around to meeting him) to the fact that I completed pretty much the entire quest Taking Independence before meeting him?

Unless this has been patched, you won't get the quest to take it so you never get artillery or that unique railgun whose name I forget. So this is mostly recommended for a non Minutemen game.

Hmmmm.... maybe I could go back and take down those generators....

I would reload a saved game. Doing certain stuffs before the quest activates will often make a little mess and as poster above said, youre going to miss some.

Cheers,

-Klevs

That unique railgun ? You talking about 'The last minute' modded Gauss gun ? That is the most OP weapon in the whole game that you can buy (aside from the Big Boy ofc).

Preston will say " Great"

Well if I recall correctly I did something similar.

Killed the queen but only with 10mm pistol and combat armour and secured the Castle without Preston's involvement.

That was a good pistol as it fired as fast as you could pull the trigger.

IIRC the next main quest "Old Guns" was something brought up by Ronnie Shaw and everything went smoothly for me.

I jumped around a bit and shot out it's poison spraying things.

Took a picture for posterity

http://ocau.com/pix/0i5wo

I did as the OP described. I took the fort and even turned it into a thriving settlement. Eventually I went and rescued the group from Concord. Preston got around to asking me to take the fort and I told him I already did. He was shocked since I had single handedly taken it back after the minutemen had been driven away in numbers. But he met me there anyway.

I then was given the quest to talk to the lady who inspects the grounds and then triggers the Old Guns quest. She never showed up... her marker did but it pointed to the ground. Since I am on the PC I decided to get myself into the locked portion of the castle. This gave me the schematics for the old guns but still no lady to talk to.

I might have been bothered by this but wasn't. This character was not going to really join the MM. Instead she went with the BoS. So incomplete MM quest at the castle didn't concern me.

Preston with give you 48 other quests...