Random Thoughts – Randocity!

One of the Atom Survival challenges in the game is to catch all of the diseases in the game, such as Sludge Lung and The Whoopsies. Each of these diseases are had by being exposed to certain things in the game. Let’s explore Sludge Lung and The Whoopsies, two of the most difficult diseases to achieve. Let’s explore.

Sludge Lung

Just above I said it is one of the “most difficult disease to achieve”. Oh, it’s not that hard to actually get Sludge Lung, but it is difficult to get Sludge Lung to count against the challenge objective. This is one of the most frustrating things about the challenge system in Fallout 76. You can do all of the right things and still not see the challenge marked as complete. Sludge Lung is one of these problematic achievements.

The easiest way to get Sludge Lung is to enter Belching Betty mine without a mask on. In fact, without a mask, you’re likely to get it instantly upon entering. That’s not the problem, however. Simply getting Sludge Lung doesn’t make it count toward the Survival challenge like it should. This is plainly a bug in Fallout 76. This bug has existed for going on at least 2 years now. You would think that Bethesda could fix a bug like this in 2 years. Yet, here we are and it’s still not fixed. In fact, there are other long unfixed bugs still present today that were in the game on day one of its release.

Bethesda really has no desire to fix these long standing bugs. Instead, they prefer building and releasing expensive add-ons, like the now-defunct Survival World type, Vault 94 and even Nuclear Winter only to see these removed from the game months after introduction. These were expensive-to-build add-ons from a development perspective. We’re talking several months of design and coding only to be summarily dumped from the game without even so much as a farewell.

No, Bethesda can’t fix even the most simplest of bugs, like Sludge Lung counting towards a challenge, but they can spend months building an add-on that no one really wanted and which was proven out because it wasn’t played.

How to get Sludge Lung to count?

We now arrive at the heart of this article. Sludge Lung doesn’t count towards the challenge achievement after a player’s character contracts it. We know this. To get this disease to count towards the Survival challenge isn’t hard, but it also isn’t intuitive.

The easiest method is to immediately head over to Flatwoods after contracting Sludge Lung. There are three sleeping bags lying on the ground near or in Flatwoods. You may now even see where I’m going with this, so bear with me. There are two at the ghoul infested tent just across the field of Brahmin (near the Red Rocket) in Flatwoods proper. There is one more at located at the Overseer’s camp right across from The Wayward (just outside Flatwoods).

Lying on any of these sleeping bags on the ground may confer the Swamp Itch disease upon the player’s character. Why is this important? It’s important because the only way to get Sludge Lung to count is to immediately take on a new disease.

However, there’s a catch. As soon as the player character gets a disease, an invisible cooldown timer begins so that you can’t receive another new disease until that cooldown timer expires. However, server hopping immediately causes that timer to expire upon login to a new server.

This means that once you obtain Sludge Lung, you’ll need to server hop and then fast travel to Flatwoods to attempt to get Swamp Itch from a sleeping bag on the ground. However, Swamp Itch isn’t the only way, but it’s the fastest way. You can certainly try to find a diseased animal, creature or similar and get close enough to them to get their disease. However, you’ll need to be able to do this quickly as Sludge Lung heals and disappears quick… hence, the sleeping bag is the key to speed.

Sleeping Bags and Diseases

Once you have Sludge Lung, server hopped and are standing in front of a sleeping bag on the ground, hop into it. Make sure it’s not a sleeping bag in your camp. Camp sleeping bags on the ground in your camp may be considered “safe” by the game. Instead, use a world bag not located in your camp. These non-camp bags are always considered “unsafe”.

You may or may not get Swamp Itch on your first attempt. Sleeping in a ground mattress or sleeping bag doesn’t confer a high chance, just a chance to get a disease. However, if you do get Swamp Itch, it will happen almost instantly after lying down. No need to wait a while. If you don’t get it after lying down, stand back up and try again. Just keep trying over and over until you get it.

Once you get Swamp Itch, it will force the game to iterate through all of the current diseases your character presently has and update the challenge area. At that point, the game will notice you have Sludge Lung and mark that disease complete under the challenge. Why the game doesn’t do this iteration when you obtain Sludge Lung by itself, I’ve no idea. My guess is bad coding. There’s plenty of bad code in Fallout 76 and this area is no exception.

As I said, it doesn’t matter what other disease you obtain, you just need to get it before Sludge Lung wears off. For example, drinking Dirty Water can confer Dysentery upon the player’s character and that will also count. However, I’ve found that the chances of getting Dysentery from water is a whole lot less than getting Swamp Itch from a sleeping bag on the ground. Whatever disease you attempt to get while having Sludge Lung, you’ll need to do it quick before Sludge Lung wears off.

If Sludge Lung wears off before you can get a new disease, you’ll need to enter Belching Betty again, get Sludge Lung and start this process over again.

Once you get Swamp Itch in addition to Sludge Lung, the game will update that you have Sludge Lung and that challenge is marked as complete.

The Whoopsies

I could write a separate article on this disease and how to get it. However, I’ll just do it here. However, let me say that by far, The Whoopsies disease is the absolute most difficult disease to get in the game, but not for the same reason as Sludge Lung. There is only one enemy in the game that confers this disease upon the player and it’s exceedingly difficult to make this occur.

What enemy? Mirelurk Hatchlings. These creatures are only spawned from a Mirelurk Queen, one of the more difficult standard enemies in the game. While you can attempt to get The Whoopsies from any Diseased Mirelurk Hatchlings, the easiest location to do this is at Quarry X3 in the Cranberry Bog. This location has a half-round metal building located near the pond where a Mirelurk Queen spawns. You’ll use this building to help craft the situation needed.

The challenge is not to kill the queen while allowing hatchlings to continue to spawn. However, hatchlings don’t spawn often (about every 3-5 minutes) and when they do, the vast majority are not diseased. Only about one out of 10 spawned are diseased. Even then, a diseased hatchling might not confer the disease upon you even after attacking you repeatedly. Unlike diseased Ghouls, diseased Radstags, diseased Snallygasters and diseased Deathclaws which confer a disease instantly upon even getting close, hatchlings don’t confer a disease even after attacking multiple times.

The problem, even above their slowness in spawning, is that the hatchlings die on their own after attacking about 5-7 times. Corrected. As of January 2022, Bethesda seems to have fixed the hatchling dying problem. I was able to allow a diseased hatchling to repeatedly attack my character for up to 10 minutes or longer. This finally allowed my character to obtain The Whoopsies and close out this challenge. However there is still a need for the ….

Metal Building

The trick is to lure the queen next to the building and wait for the “pop” sound from the queen, indicating new hatchlings have spawned. You might need to venture out and let the hatchlings see you, but I’ve found they enter the building on their own. The queen can’t attack you easily inside the building, but the hatchlings can enter and begin attacking. You’ll want to kill all of the non-diseased hatchlings allowing only the diseased hatchlings to attack. You might get lucky and receive The Whoopsies quickly or you could be waiting for hours in that building standing around letting them attack you. You’ll want to carry a bunch of stimpaks or food to replenish your HP.

Make sure to remove any Perk cards that add disease resistance and also change to armor that doesn’t offer disease resistance. Using Radaway also helps because it reduces disease resistance by 50% for a period of time. However, none of this guarantees that any diseased hatchling will give you The Whoopsies quickly.

Further, if you do manage to get The Whoopsies and you find that it doesn’t count under the challenge, you’ll need to follow the same instructions as above by server hopping, then attempting to get another disease, like Swamp Itch, from a mattress to force the game to count The Whoopsies as part of the challenge. However, when my character got The Whoopsies, it counted instantly. No problems with this challenge, unlike Sludge Lung above.

As I said, The Whoopsies is the absolute most difficult disease to obtain in the game, bar none. It is likely to be the only disease you don’t have… unless you accidentally received it from a hatchling during a random Mirelurk Queen encounter. The likelihood of that happening is extremely low during the course of random play.

Good Luck!

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