When players complete the Red Tape missions on Cydonia in Starfield, several new missions in the city open up. For instance, players can help the Deimos psychologist hand out her test forms, or help one of the miners with her overbearing father.
The miner in question is Rivkah Ovadia. Like other side missions, Starfield players can hear about it from a local guard and "Speak to Rivkah" will appear on the activities list. However, this can only happen after players complete all three Red Tape missions since Rivkah mentions them during her introduction.
How to Begin Runaway
During working hours, Rivkah is one of several miners on the bottom level of Cydonia. At night, she spends her time in the miner's barracks halfway down the big staircase. Players can find and speak to Rivkah the first time they arrive on Mars, but her mission can't begin until after "Red Tape Reclamation" ends.
Rivkah has a problem: she's sick, but her overbearing father is an executive of Reliant Medical and will find her if she goes in for treatment. Players can give her a Med Pack at one point in the conversation, but this doesn't change her condition or the way the mission progresses. Instead, players must speak to her father on her behalf and try to smooth over the bad blood between them.
Be sure to ask as many questions as possible before continuing. In particular, ask her "But if you don't get help for your illness, wouldn't that be worse?" And "Anything else you can tell me about your father that might help?" Her answers will come in handy later.
How to Get Red Harvest Reserve
The first goal of this mission is to get a bottle of Red Harvest Reserve, the favorite whiskey of Rivkah's father. As she suggests, the person to speak to is Jack, the bartender at the Broken Spear.
As Jack explains, Red Harvest Reserve is extremely rare, and players can only get a bottle in one of three ways:
- Buy Jack's last bottle at the current market price of 15,000 credits.
- Steal the bottle Governor Hurst bought. Hurst stares directly at the bottle during his working hours, so players may have to get creative.
- Persuade Jack to give up his bottle since Rivkah's life is at stake. It's an eight-step Persuasion, but if players succeed he'll only ask for the bottle's original price of 600 credits.
With the bottle in hand, it's time to head to the Hotel Volii on Neon.
How to Avoid the Runaway Bug
"Runaway" has a fairly serious bug at this point in the mission. If players go straight up to the manager and tell her about the Red Harvest Reserve Whiskey, the door to Natan Ovadia's room may become "inaccessible." If that happens, there's no way to get into his room without cheating.
Fortunately, there's a way to fix this bug. Instead of speaking to the manager, head to the elevator and choose Floor Three. Once there, try to walk through the closed door. Players should see a notification pop up that mentions their activity log but not a specific activity. For whatever reason, this fixes the bug, so head back down to talk to the manager. The next time players are on the third floor, the door should open without a problem.
What to Do with Natan Ovadia
Once they enter his room, players have four ways to handle Natan.
- Convince Natan to see his daughter's point of view. This is an eight-step Persuade, but it may be the easiest Persuasion in the game. By getting extra information from Rivkah, players can get several special blue options that are guaranteed to succeed. They include +2 for giving the Red Whiskey, +1 for mentioning that Rivkah is sick, and +3 for bringing up Natan's dead wife. After all that, players only need to pass a single green +2 check.
- Kill Natan. There are no witnesses, so players can get away with shooting him without speaking a word. He's a level 1 NPC, so a single hit from any weapon will take him down.
- Don't Persuade Natan, but don't give Rivkah up, either. Natan will call security on the player, and as soon as players go back to the hotel lobby they get a 350-credit bounty and two security guards spawn in by the entrance.
- Don't Persuade Natan and give up Rivkah's location.
On paths one through three, Rivkah will thank the player for however much they managed to do and give them a small credit reward along with 100 XP. On path four, Rivkah will be gone since Natan's bounty hunters will have already reached Cydonia. Players must instead speak to Trevor to learn what happened to her. This conversation ends the mission and gives players 100 XP, but without Rivkah the reward doesn't include any credits.
Starfield is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.