Lou is a wanted Black Market customer whose storyline begins after you acquire the Business Permit. Her first visit offers a reporting decision with a 1,500-credit bounty. Reporting her begins a dangerous sequence of return visits; leaving her unreported ends that encounter without starting the same revenge sequence. Once the later storyline is underway, shooting her is not a solution.
If you have already reported Lou, protect the contents of Lou's Box of Toys and prepare for her later demand for weapons, ammunition, and medical goods. Her container events and her payment event are separate problems. Preserving the box does not settle the demand, and keeping money does not make it safe to lose a toy.
Identify the first visit before choosing a response
Lou does not need to announce herself with a convenient name label. Compare the visitor with the wanted portrait and read the conversation before treating the interaction as ordinary shopping. Her first purchase can involve melee weapons, a Plasma Cutter, or a Screwdriver, with a 250-credit budget.
The Business Permit is the key progression condition. Do not confuse her arrival with The Butcher's raw-meat visit or assume that every named criminal belongs to the same fixed calendar event. Lou's arrival is tied to your permit and financial situation rather than a universal day number that applies to every run.
After the permit, her first visit can arrive on a morning when your funds are low or when a rent or mortgage payment is due that you cannot afford. Her initial appearance is due no later than fifteen days after the permit. This makes the timing relevant when you are already under financial pressure: a bounty can look attractive precisely when its follow-up will be difficult to fund.
Before choosing, separate the immediate reward from the future commitment. Reporting earns money now, but the decision also starts the chain you will need to manage later. The choice deserves more attention than a routine sale of a screwdriver.
Identify her before making the first reporting decision.
Understand what reporting changes
Reporting Lou on the first visit awards the 1,500-credit bounty and increases Security reputation by five. She promises to return. Treat that warning as a description of the next part of the storyline, rather than assuming the arrest permanently removes the character from your run.
If you let her go without reporting, she does not return for this revenge sequence. That is the route for avoiding the later toy-box and demand events. It gives up the immediate bounty in exchange for avoiding those subsequent obligations.
The bounty also does not establish that combat is an alternative collection method. Post-release changes prevent shooting Lou during her visits. A weapon on the counter, a stronger firearm, or a remembered pre-release tactic does not create a supported way to bypass that restriction.
Use the actual interaction offered during the current visit. The first reporting opportunity and later encounters have different rules. Once Lou returns after her arrest, repeatedly searching for a reporting or shooting solution wastes the time you should spend understanding the event that is now active.
Read the follow-up as a sequence of separate visits
After an arrest, Lou can return at your door three or more days later. At that point she cannot be reported or shot. Later visits introduce a hidden-container scare, the Box of Toys, the box collection, and a disguised demand visit.
Do not compress all of these into one generic instruction to find a bomb. Each encounter changes what you need to preserve or prepare. A container scare is not the same objective as returning a borrowed box, and a disguised visitor demanding supplies is not simply another shopping customer.
The timing of these later encounters follows the storyline. Use the current dialogue and the items Lou leaves as your immediate checklist. A remembered day number is less useful if you have mistaken which event has already happened.
| Current event | Your immediate priority |
|---|---|
| First wanted-customer visit | Choose whether to report her |
| Return after the arrest | Recognize that reporting and shooting are unavailable |
| Container-related scare | Inspect the event without confusing it with the later toy collection |
| Box of Toys delivery | Preserve the box and its original contents |
| Box collection | Return every original toy with the box |
| Disguised demand | Prepare the requested categories of goods |
| Final collection | Present enough eligible goods or understand the cash settlement |
Preserve Lou's Box of Toys intact
Lou later leaves a Box of Toys containing the Old Republic Orders and items she bought from you during her first visit. Those goods are storyline property for the collection event. Treat them as a set you are holding for her, even if an individual object resembles ordinary sale stock.
When she comes back for the box, a missing box or missing original toy causes a real bomb ending. The practical objective is therefore simple and strict: retain the box, retain each original item, and make sure the set is available when she collects it.
Avoid letting normal inventory habits break that set. Selling a familiar tool, moving the box into a disposal routine, or treating the contents as spare crafting inputs can all undermine the requirement to return what she left. The fact that you originally sold her an item does not make it free stock once it returns as one of her toys.
Extra items placed in the box do not replace a missing original toy. During a successful collection, she returns anything you added. That distinction tells you what matters: the original set is required; additions are not payment toward a missing part of it.
If you need to reorganize the counter, keep the complete set together and check it before ending your preparation. Do not rely on recognizing only the container's appearance. Its contents are part of the event condition, so an intact-looking box with a missing item remains a problem.
Keep the toy collection separate from the demand
Successful box collection allows the storyline to continue. It does not mean Lou's financial pressure has ended. A later visit comes in the disguise of a Security Inspector and introduces the demand for 1,500 credits in weapons, ammunition, and medical goods.
Read the categories carefully. An unrelated expensive collectible is not automatically a substitute for the requested supplies. Reserve goods that belong to the categories she actually takes, and keep them available for the collection rather than assuming every item in storage contributes.
The disguised visit allows a week before the later collection. Use that interval to assess what you already have and what is still missing. The relevant question is the value of eligible goods you can present, not the total value of every object in the shop.
A clear preparation method is to identify the demand stock separately from normal sale stock. If you keep selling from that same pile without checking the remaining value, you can arrive at the collection with less than you intended. Protecting the reserved goods is part of preparing the payment.
Prepare for the final collection
At collection, Lou takes weapons, ammunition, and medical goods from the counter. Presenting the full 1,500-credit amount in those goods lets her leave for good. Put the eligible items where the collection interaction can use them; merely owning useful supplies is different from having them on the counter.
If the goods do not cover the full demand, the cash settlement matters. The storyline includes a That's All I Have response in which she takes remaining money from the register. A combined total of at least 500 credits in goods and cash allows that departure route, while being below that amount leads to the Bombed ending.
Do not treat the lower threshold as the same transaction as fully supplying the demand. It is a separate fallback with its own dialogue and cash consequences. Prepare the full requested goods if that is the route you intend, and inspect your current funds before choosing a response that lets her take money from the register.
This is also why the initial bounty should not be considered uncomplicated profit. The later demand changes the overall economic effect of reporting. A cash reward at the first meeting can be followed by lost merchandise, a register withdrawal, or a fatal shortfall much later.
Weapons form part of the goods requested during her later demand.
Avoid the mistakes that turn her route into a failure
The most damaging mistake is treating every Lou encounter as a combat problem. Her post-release shooting restriction means that preparation must focus on the event conditions. Having ammunition for yourself does not substitute for returning the toy set or presenting demand stock.
The next mistake is discarding a container because it looks dangerous. During the Box of Toys stage, losing the box or an original item is exactly the failure condition you must avoid. Identify the active stage before deciding an object should be removed.
A third mistake is counting all shop wealth toward her demand. The full-goods route uses specific categories, and the final collection takes those goods from the counter. Check category, availability, and value together. A shop full of unrelated stock can still be unprepared.
Finally, do not confuse her disguised visit with an ordinary Security inspection. Read the conversation and connect it with the earlier Lou events. Her demand is a continuation of her storyline, so the next useful action is to reserve the requested supplies and assess the payment route.
When she leaves for good, the next day's news reports the assassination of a visiting Republic admiral. That news is the follow-through to her departure. Until you reach that point, keep your attention on the specific object or payment condition belonging to the current visit.