I've only recently discovered the joys of Fallout 2 and am currently in the middle of my first playthrough. I installed the official 1.02 patch but didn't want to get into any custom patches until future times. Although I'm enjoying the game immensely, I've hit kind of a bump in the road towards the middle of the game, ie visiting the mining towns Redding and Broken Hills. Broken Hills especially seems well… broken. My status screen tells me I've already destroyed the mutant mine even though I hadn't even been there yet. I'm supposed to have the choice to repair it or destroy it, but apparently I've already destroyed it? Is this a known bug? Anyway, I've been journaling all my experiences at sprayahen.wordpress.com, so feel free to go there for the back story. In the meantime, I'd appreciate any general tips/suggestions, because things were going pretty smoothly through Modoc and now I find myself overmatched. Please, don't make me to turn to the walkthroughs on my first time through.

As soon as you tell Marcus whee you found the missing people the "Blow up the mine's air purifier" quest is added (if you didn't get it before) and crossed out in the Broken Hills status screen of the pipboy. It's just a little bug, you did fix the purifier.
If you tell Jacob that you hate mutants and free his friends from prison you get this quest. The super mutants (including Marcus) are lured into the mine and killed when it explodes.
It's very evil, the super mutants disappear, your karma drops a lot and your town reputation becomes vilified.
When you tell Marcus where the missing people are you can't do this quest any more since he arrests Jacob.
You didn't destroy the air purifier. There are several quests in the game which will be crossed out if you can't do them any more. You can't do all quests.
It's great reading your diary. I hope you won't get spoiled too much.
The deathclaw in the mine is an immature one. Extremely easy to kill for 250 XP.