Painting the Town/'See Abbot at the Wall'

[Sarcastic Existance]

I went around Diamond City for hours and 'discovered' Hardware Town, but didn't enter it - I can't get the 'Painting the Town' quest to start - currently killing everyone at Hardware Town to see if Abbot will talk afterwards - not many people seem to have had this problem, any idea/console commands to make the quest happen?

[Sekkuar666]

I killed that guy

[Sarcastic Existance]

Originally posted by Sekkuar:

I killed that guy

Maybe a last resort after I get the cannibalism perk..

[Belaphon]

If you talk about the green wall quest, you need to go into Hardware Town and mix the blue and yellow colour to get the green colour for Abbot.

[Wonderloaf]

I always got the quest from one of the guards in emerald city. He tell you to go see abbott at which point the quest appears.

[Sarcastic Existance]

I 'discovered' hardware town before ever entering diamond city, and then after I entered diamond city and got the misc objective to see abbot at the wall - he doesn't respond, just says 'im busy' -- so it's a order of events bug that required I didn't discover hardware town before seeing abbot at the wall - although i didn't kill anybody or enter hardware town..

[ZeBunisher]

It doesnt matter if you discovered hardwarer town before entering diamond city.You can even clean the whole building if you want to and the quest should still be started by hearing a guard in the city tell you about abbot.
Maybe you haven't met that guard yet?I'd image you cannot talk to abbot before the guard telling you about him.

[-Na Shagul-]

I'm pretty sure I've gotten the quest directly from Abbot before a guard ever mentioned it to me. I just walked right up to him, initiated conversation, and it began as normally. Don't know what to tell OP though, sounds like a pretty crap bug :/

[Sarcastic Existance]

Yeah, I did hear it from a guard, that's how the misc objective appeared - only reason i can figure is like i said, i found hardware town before ever entering diamond city ( i didn't do anything at hardware town cause i predicted it would be part of a quest based on the woman) - then i went to diamond city , heard about abbot - misc objective appeared, but he's always 'busy' - so i went around trying to find the mystery of abbot myself by snooping through his house and stuff, maybe he was a synth? then i finally gave up and found out he gives this painting the town quest - but so far only one place mentioned the bug and they had no fix for it, i searched all the gaming forums i could

[cdarklock]

I almost always end up going to Hardware Town first, mixing the green paint, then bringing some blue and yellow paint along because seriously I want to see what happens when you paint the wall the wrong colour. But then I end up doing other stuff for a while, the yellow and blue paint end up getting stowed in a workbench or scrapped for oil, and I only have the green paint when I finally get around to talking with him.

Which I have no trouble doing. So uh... I dunno. That never happens to me.

[JJDrakken]

PAINT IT WITH YELLOW PAINT FOR THE WIN!

[Sarcastic Existance]

Ok, I grabbed the paint (green,yellow,blue) etc, and the quest started after it allowed me to talk to him, ty.

[(>- Fly -<)]

Had the same problem. Didn't even visit Hardware Town before. Got the quest to see Abbot at the wall from a guard. He was always 'busy'. Finished the 'flux compensator from Hardware Town' for BOS. Then it worked for me.

[Dr. Goldbergstein]

Finally figured it out. If you have ANY other open quests relating to Hardware Town the "See Abbot at the wall" quest won't complete and "Painting The Town" won't start.
I had a quest related to it where the last step was talking to Preston Garvey. I did that and got the quest off the list and Abbot stopped saying how busy he is. Apparently there's one with the Brotherhood of Steel where you have to go to hardware town too, but I've never sided with them.
But that's the fix. Clear all of your Hardware Town related quests and Abbot becomes responsive.