Serious warning for those who intend to play this game:

"Strawberry Fields" is a location in the game. on W. 66th Street.
There is one huge problem with this location that you better know of before going there.

*SPOILER ALERT*

It is HQ of the "Black Aggots" gang. They were hired by Van Helsing himself to kill you.
If you talk to Shock, he tells you they have been hired by Van Helsing to kill 'some guy'... that's you.

Fact is, you don't need to really come here *at all* to finish the game, this location is pure optional, but there is a reason to know what is going on here, and that's if you want to complete the Charlie Flyer side-quest (a very very cool quest). However even to finish that quest you still don't need to come here, if you continue reading this:

The reason that you'd want to come to this location is to get a 'well name' (cyberspace locations in the game arer called 'wells')and that well code is: "antibody"

Of course now that you know the name, you don't need to come here at all...
Bloodnet isn't a game where you need to actually talk to people in order to 'activate' a well in the game, you can enter "antibody" at any point if you wish, and save yourself the trouble of coming here, as I will explain soon.

Another thing you can do here, is hire Shock to your party (for exchange of the Rimbus Database), and to sell a Vassopressin to Stella for 1000$. Not a big deal, as you have so many good choices for party members... The problem is that after 2-3 days, Shock will leave your party (no way to avoid this)... and the trouble will start anyway.

Those are thw only 2 things you can find in that location. But from the moment you visit it...
Two to three days later, the attacks begin.

Almost everytime you travel through the New York Map your party will get attacked in some abandoned subway station. Even if you kill all of the Black Aggots in Strawberry Fields, the attacks won't stop! Just coming to Strawberry Fields will start the trigger, and you'll have to deal with it all game long.

Turst me, you'll quit playing. You can't deal with that same fight every time you travel on the map, for a hundred times, its pure frustration.

I honestly suggest to you to skip this location, and enter "antibody" anyway. You can save the game, talk to everyone and see for yourself you're not losing anything by the skip. Then load and continue on. This location is too troublesome, and probably made many players in the past to give up the game. It is infact an error, a bug of the game, that the attacks don't stop after killing all the Black Aggots members.

Thanks for the info. I suggest you put in a "tl;dr"/summary in bold, and maybe message a mod/staff member seeing if they will sticky this thread.

Interesting. In the original floppy version I played, the attacks from Shock Maraud's gang would start at a certain time regardless of the player having or having not visited Strawberry Fields. Instead, if you hired Shock Maraud before that, Van Helsing couldn't hire him and thus the attacks would never start.

Edit: Or maybe I just got him killed before he had the chance to leave the party. I'll test and see.

Very interesting indeed.
Please test it and let us know :-)
When I played it, all those years back... Shock always left your gang after 3 days, and the attacks would start anyway.
But the one game where I didn't visit the location at all, they never started.

I've been playing the floppy version from GOG.com now. I haven't finished yet, but here's what's happened so far:
I spoke with Shock Maraud on Strawberry Fields on day 1. He gave me a deadline of 3 days to bring him the Rimbus database.
On day 2 I brought Shock the database and had him join the party.
On day 8 Shock complained that the database has a virus and gave me 48 hours to get him a clean copy or he'll switch teams.
I have the clean copy now but I haven't reached the deadline yet. I'm currently on day 9. Shock Maraud is still in my party.

If I remember correctly you can jury rig or use inocculator on Rimbus database, thus making a valid copy of it, and Shock will stay in the group as a normal party member (no attacks).Shock Maraud's dialogue\quest triggers the sequence leading to attacks, you can safely visit Strawberry Fields and talk to all other NPCs there np :)

Finished the game on day 12 which should be well past Shock's 48h deadline. I fetched another copy of the database from cyberspace and used the innoculator on it which removed the virus. Shock never mentioned anything after his complaint on day 8 so I don't know if it's necessary to keep the database in the cyberdeck's memory until or after the deadline.
Anyway, no unavoidable problems with Shock during this playthrough on the floppy version. Maybe I'll try the same with the cd version next.