Wasteland 2 Guide: How to Beat Matthias

Continue your journey with Prima’s free Wasteland 2 Guide and Walkthrough.

Zeolite

If you’re having problems gathering Zeolite to upgrade your rad suits for your journey south, head back up to Griffith Park. You can find three bags sitting openly on a wooden shelf near the radio tower you used to contact Ranger Citadel. If you look directly to the right, there is a safe with an additional two bags inside. Take your supplies and return to Santa Fe Springs. You won’t have to wait this time, as Woodson will automatically upgrade your radiation suits within a few seconds.

The New Citadel Exterior

Now that you’re properly geared up, it’s a good idea to stop by your nearest merchant. We had one waiting just outside the gates of our main base for the majority of our time in Los Angeles, so it’s very possible that you do as well. Grab any spare ammo you can afford as well as any extra medpacks or Pain Relievers. 

With everything ready to go, head out into your World Map. Continue south from Santa Fe Springs until you hit the rad wall (make sure you’ve equipped your new rad suit). Pass safely through the wall and enter the new area that pops up on your map.

Welcome to the New Citadel, home to Matthias, whom you may know as the man who wants to turn everyone into machines. You can talk with the NPC here, Mad Money Mike, and buy anything he might have that you want. Once you finish talking with him he’ll head forward to the gate and get gunned down by the guards while trying to sell them tiny robot toys.

Head up past the crashed chopper and down the western path ahead. You’ll come across two Children of the Citadel, Dweezle and Johnie Zipper. Both will accuse the other of trying to lead you into an ambush. Talk to both of them, ask them all the relevant conversation cues and once you’ve finished, attack Dweezle. Once he’s dead, Johnie will open the southern door and let you into the compound. Once you head around the corner, some of the enemies are bound to see you heading down the hallway. You’ll most likely have to fight them before continuing through to the next area. They weren’t too challenging, thanks to our advanced knowledge of them, as well as our newly acquired cover. Once you’ve sneaked through or taken all the enemies down, head down the ladder in the back of the area.

New Citadel Interior

Now that you’re inside, continue forward to next hall and turn east. Follow this until you come to the next junction and north into the room with the barriers set up on the floor. Take out the enemies here (our sniper worked wonders), and then continue through the room to the locked door at the end. Even at full Computer Science skill level, we had a 70 percent chance of success on this door, so we highly recommend saving your game so that you can easily reload if you happen to critically fail the challenge, or if you’re one of those who really likes to roll with the punches and take your chances, run headfirst into trying to unlock it. There is also a trap on this door (which your Perception skill should pick up), so you’ll need to use your Demolitions skill on it as well.

Once you unlock the door, you’ll head forward to a junction with a door facing east, one facing north and another facing south. Ignore the other two doors and head straight for the north hall. Use your Lockpicking skill to open it and press deeper into the facility.

Inside, you’ll see massive machines building more robots. As you continue along the walkway, you’ll get pulled into a conversation with Dugan. It is at this point where you learn one of the biggest twists of the game. Finish this conversation and Dugan will send in robot workers to kill you, as well as a Meson Cannon. Once you take them down, simply push forward into the elevator to head back up to the surface.

Dugan Face-off

Once you reach the surface, you’ll be pulled into another cut scene style interaction with Dugan. This time, he’s going to handle you himself. This is a rather tough fight, due to the large Scorpitron that Dugan calls in at the start. This massive synth has around 3,000 HP and shoots out small scorpion bot minions to help him. Dugan isn’t a tough target to take down, as he only has 500 HP. We focused most of our squad members on Dugan and the smaller bots, and used our high powered specialists (our party members specializing in the Sniper Rifles and Energy Weapons skills) to attack the Scorpitron and Meson Cannon.

Once you’ve taken down Dugan and the smaller enemies, concentrate all your fire power on the two larger threats. Energy Weapons and explosives like TNT or Grenades work well on the large bots to quickly pull their health down. 

Once you’ve defeated them, take a few seconds to reload everyone’s weapons and drop a few medpacks where they are needed before interacting with the Helicopter in the corner of the battlefield. It’s time to head back to Arizona for the final showdown.

Fight Your Way into Ranger Citadel and Defeat Matthias

Upon arriving back in Arizona, General Vargas will walk up to you and initiate a conversation. Eventually he’ll ask for you to let him come along. We allowed him to tag along since he is the commander in chief of the Rangers, not to mention the fact that Matthias has definitely made this personal now.

Head forward into the area. A Ranger on patrol will call out to you and then get shot in the back by a large Scorcher with 3500 HP. It’s important to try to keep your rangers in as much cover as possible, just as you did when fighting the Scorpitron earlier. Also, be sure to not get too close to the enemy, as he does have a large flamethrower that does a considerable amount of damage to you depending on your armor specifications. As with the other large robots, explosives, sniper rifles and energy weapons work well to quickly bring the enemy down for good.

With the immediate threat taken care of, reload and use any recovery items you need to before continuing ahead. Matthias will come on over radio transmission as you press forward. If you want to hear what he has to say, you’ll need to stop before you come to the large group of enemies ahead, otherwise the transmission will be cut off and you’ll miss some vital backstory to the whole ordeal.

With Matthias’ rant over, attack the large cluster of enemies ahead. We dropped a grenade in the middle of them, which allowed us to take a few of the smaller robots out before the battle even started. There isn’t a whole lot of cover here, so keep those medpacks and pain relievers handy in case you need them.

Once you’ve defeated these enemies, head inside the Citadel to spark a conversation with Matthias. Here, the choices are really irrelevant, mainly just here to let you choose why you’re going after him. We of course chose all the options corresponding with protecting humanity from his terrible idea of immortality. After it is all said and done, you’ll need to take out the two turrets on the back of the elevator to gain access to the lower level. You can explore the area some, but there isn’t much here – unless you just want to see the pile of dead and bloodied Ranger bodies in the medical ward, or you’re looking to escape the terrible ordeal around you with a quick game of Wasteland Snake that can be found in the bottom right corner of the museum area.

With the turrets taken down, reload and recover before entering the elevator. You’re about to enter one of the longest battles in the entire game, so make sure you’re good to go before you head into the next area. We also suggest taking everything but the bare minimum from Rose if she’s still in your party. You’ll understand why shortly.

Once you exit the elevator, head around the right side and up into the bowels of the Citadel. Once you get close enough you’ll be pulled into a conversation with Matthias as his glorious transformation takes place. Once the Cochise AI (which you’ve heard bits and pieces about throughout the entire game) is installed inside of him, it will quickly spread to the other robots around him. Sadly, it also spreads to your companion Rose if she is still in your party. Once the battle starts, you’ll have to shed a few tears as you turn your guns on your faithful teammate, then quickly get into cover.

The easiest way we found to fight this battle is to send your sniper and energy weapon experts to the front of the room, near Matthias. Here, you can take out the enemies by you and then push back to where your other party members are to take out the new enemies as they spawn. This fight took us quite a few minutes to complete compared to other fights, so you’ll probably have to dig into those medpacks somewhere along the way. 

Save the World

Now that you’ve defeated all the enemies in the lower area, you’ll be pulled into a cut scene with General Vargas. He’ll advise you to get up to Min’s workshop and set off the nuke from the museum in order to stop the AI from spreading any further. Head to the north corner of the room and take the set of stairs up to the locked door. Use your Computer Science skill to open the door and chat with Mercaptain who landed your chopper in the landing bay. Pass through the rolling metal doorway and into the center room of Ranger Citadel. The nuke you need to set off is located down the first set of stairs and through the room where you used to be able to buy explosives while in the Citadel. Use Lockpicking on the doors to get through and interact with the nuke to be given your final decision of the game.

Allow General Vargas to Sacrifice himself, take your entire team with it or leave one person behind.

Since General Vargas is an important part of the Rangers, we let him go with the rest of our team and left our leader to set off the nuke. But this is up to personal choice.

Once you set off the nuke, enjoy the ending cut scene and the subsequent text shots that inform you how your choices affected the world.