Random Thoughts – Randocity!

While there’s lots to discuss about this event, here’s a How To article which is short and sweet and offers a quick important tip when playing the Radiation Rumble event. Let’s explore.

Enough People

[Updated 4/4/2022] If you’re one of those “can’t wait” people who joins this event and instantly runs to Marion Copeland to start it. Don’t! Just don’t. If we’re all standing around not starting the event, it’s because there’s a reason. WE NEED ENOUGH PEOPLE to run it. It takes a minimum of 4-5 people to successfully run this event. We need enough people to defend the scavengers, but we also need at least ONE person in a power armor suit to run the tunnels and gather ore.

Without enough people to properly defend the scavengers, this event will FAIL. If there’s no one running the tunnels to gather ore, this event will ALSO FAIL. THIS is why we wait nearly the full 6 minutes before activating the event. We are waiting for enough people to arrive to successfully start and run the event.

Therefore, do not rush to Marion to start the event. Wait until the timer has nearly timed out before starting. If you rush to start the event early, you may find people leaving you by yourself standing there with no way to successfully complete the event. Yes, we’ve learned and so will you… the hard way.

Friendly Fire

Let’s get right to the point. Radiation Rumble is a defend event. It has “Scavenger” NPC friendlies which must be defended against ghouls and various foes inside of a mine in Fallout 76. The friendlies have white HP bars which reduce as they are attacked.

It seems a lot of players don’t understand that you can health up these friendlies! Yes, you can! It’s easy with a fire based weapon and the perk card Friendly Fire. This card applies health back, like a stimpak, to any friendly you strike with a fire based weapon. The card states:

Teammates hit by your flame weapons regenerate health briefly (no molotovs).

Any NPC friendly in an event is considered a “teammate” and therefore this card applies. It also applies to teammates of the human player variety.

What kind of weapons can be used?

• Heated Baseball Bat
• Flamer
• Heated Pitchfork
• Shishkebab
• Heated Power Fist
• Crossbow with Fire Arrows
• Bow with Fire Arrows
• Heated Chainsaw
• (Maybe) Floater Flamer Grenades

Basically, ANY weapon that produces fire damage of ANY kind (except molotovs) will health up your friendlies with the Friendly Fire card equipped. It works fastest and offers the most health up with each strike using a 3 star version of this card, but all versions of the card will work. This can be used during any event where protection of NPC friendlies is required. This includes Radiation Rumble, Project Paradise, Bots on Parade and even during the Fasnacht event with the robots.

However, it only works on “live” friendlies. It doesn’t work on plants, like in Death Blossoms. Any robot, person or creature will gain health from Friendly Fire when struck by fire based weapon. There may be some type of friendlies (like Death Blossoms) where it doesn’t work, so you’ll have to try it and see. Most event NPCs work properly with Friendly Fire.

When Friendly Fire doesn’t work

The Friendly Fire card doesn’t work with any “energy” weapon like the Tesla or Gatling Plasma or Gauss. Don’t think you can equip just any energy weapon and have this work. Electric energy weapons aren’t the same as fire weapons. The weapon must specifically produce fire damage to add health to a friendly. It also doesn’t work with energy grenades. Floater flamer grenades may work, but since these are new to the game, Bethesda may have excluded these grenades from working with Friendly Fire. Stick to legacy fire based weapons which are guaranteed to work with Friendly Fire.

Failure is not an Option

I’ve seen Radiation Rumble fail so many times, I can’t even count. It fails because everyone is running around trying to kill stuff and actually failing to protect the scavengers. Protecting the scavengers means hanging around them and being ready to health them up with fire weapons using Friendly Fire whenever their health drops.

Menu Failure during the Event

One word of caution. Set up your weapon and perk card loadouts BEFORE entering the Radiation Rumble event. There are so many creatures, fire and random junk moving about in the environment, you can’t open the Pip Boy to change your load out. If you intend to switch to a fire weapon during the event, make sure your loadout is set up prior to entering the event OR have the weapons set up on the wheel.

The Pip Boy menu gets so slow and bogged down in the event that you can’t even move the cursor. There’s no way to set up your load out using the Pip Boy once inside the event. However, the wheel mostly works. Meaning, you can mostly rely on using the wheel to change weapons, but you cannot rely on the Pip Boy menu or in setting up your perk cards. Do that activity before entering… which means planning this in advance.

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