The Next Piece

Walkthrough
Collect the next piece of the vault key.

Objectives

 * Kill Krom
 * Collect his vault key piece

Background Information
Crazy Earl gives you the quest, saying: "You want my alien doo-dad? It was stolen from me by one tough-ass bandit, a bastard by the name of Krom. If you're stupid enough to take him on, you'll find him northeast, in Krom's Canyon. Just follow the river north and past Flood Lock. If you get it back from him, you and that Tannis woman do whatever you want with it. I'm done with it."

Quest Information
Krom's Canyon is located at the northern end of Rust Commons East just past the Flood Lock. When you get to Flood Lock, you will come across a button which will open the lock, but doing so is not part of the quest, it simply lets in some critters which you then have to kill.

The connection to Krom's Canyon is heavily guarded by bandits, including two automated turrets and another manned one. Inside the canyon, take the left fork at the beginning and it will take you to Krom. You will see a cutscene when you enter his area, and he will be manning a turret firing at you from the far end of the area. Destroy the turret and you kill Krom.

Although Crazy Early gives you this quest, you have to take the key to Tannis to finish the quest and collect your reward.

Strategy
You can stay back at the entrance to Krom's area and shoot at him from a great distance without taking much damage from his machine gun. The problem is that he also fires rockets which can drain your shields and force you to take cover, during which time his health goes back up.

A faster approach is to run up the path to the left which leads to a group of enemies. If you are playing the Solider, you can drop your turret, lob a grenade or two, and run back to the entrance until those things take effect, then run back and kill the survivors. Then run to the far wall of that area where Krom cannot get a shot at you. From there, you can inch back until you can just see Krom's head, but he cannot get a shot at you with either his turret gun or rockets, then just keep plugging away at him.

Once he is dead, you still have to fight a lot of his underlings to get to the key piece, then you have to fight bandits and spiderants all the way back to the waypoint.

Completions
Once you have the key piece and escape the canyon, fast travel to The Underpass and turn the key over to Tannis, who is just around the corner. Her response:

"This artifact fits together with the one you brought me earlier, like puzzle pieces. I've seen other Eridian artifacts that worked like this. Apparently, those aliens really liked puzzles. Once all of the pieces are brought together, the object activates. You should find more pieces like this one, so we can put them together. Together."