Fallout 4 Guide: How to Find and Join the Institute

Fallout 4 is full of factions you can join. We’ve already shown you how to locate the Railroad, by following the Freedom Trail. However, one faction is even tougher to locate and join. The Institute, the shadowy organization that came together in the remnants of the Commonwealth Institute of Technology, can only be discovered by following through on a bunch of missions, and building a special device. So here’s a quick guide on how to join the Institute in Fallout 4.

The Institute can only be joined by following through on the main storyline. Keep pushing the quest to locate your son Shaun. You’ll eventually fight a Courser, get his implant, and have it worked on. Finally you’ll come to the mission Institutionalized” which will task you with building a teleportation device that will get you into the Institute. You can build this with the help of any factions you’ve already joined, including the Minutemen in Sanctuary.

Once you’ve progressed far enough and asked the right people for help you can build the device, which takes quite a few parts. These are all placed in a special menu within the Workshop, so you can go there to see what needs to be built. You’ll need a lot of power for this thing, so having the Science perk is helpful, as it allows you to build the biggest generator.

Build each piece of the teleporter, power it up, and you’re good to go. Save your game, as you might want to retry this if anything goes wrong, and step into the teleporter. This will send you deep underground to the Institute. Just follow the hallways, and listen to the announcer, and you’ll come to your final spot. Speak with Father and you’ll be given the chance to join the Institute.

No matter how you feel, you’ll want to say yes here. After meeting with the various department heads you can begin fast traveling in and out of the Institute, and can decide how you want to proceed. If you want, you can keep helping the Institute, or you can rebel against them, the choice is yours.