Starfield: Can this Game Survive?
Bethesda, a now wholly owned Microsoft game development studio division, stands poised to release its new space role-playing game (RPG) entitled Starfield on September 6, 2023.
Starfield’s release has already been delayed once by nearly a year, when it was formerly slated for release on November 11, 2022. Starfield’s nearly year long delay along with being made exclusively available to the Microsoft’s gaming platforms, coupled with its Game Pass inclusion might not signal great things for this upcoming game release. It might not even signal great things for Bethesda as a company. Microsoft is definitely not doing any favors for Bethesda. Let’s explore.
PlayStation 5’s Banner Launch
According to Kotaku, Sony is now seeing banner sales with its PS5. It can be difficult tell what’s boastful speculation around such sales, but one thing is certain, getting your hands onto a PS5 console can still be difficult nearly 3 years after the PS5’s November 2020 launch. For nearly 2 years, the PS5 was almost impossible to find on store shelves. When they did manage to appear, they were gone within hours. Going into the third year, it’s become somewhat easier to find as the demand has somewhat eased, that or Sony has drastically increased production or both. “Somewhat”, doesn’t imply that the PS5’s sales are in any way slowing, however. For Sony, the bristling sales of the PS5 continue.
Because this sales fact means Sony’s console is shaping up to be the banner console of this decade, one has to question both Bethesda and Microsoft’s decision to keep a game like Starfield exclusive to Microsoft’s platforms alone. One thing is certain, cutting off sales to a massively growing gaming segment is probably not the brightest of ideas. For Microsoft, Starfield may not become an overall major problem for Microsoft on the whole, but why intentionally tank part of your company when you don’t have to? For Bethesda, on the other hand, these mounting problems could end this division.
Exclusivity and Sales
Prior to the digital download explosion, the primary way that video games had always made bank was by selling physical game copies. Physical copies would show up at retailers like Amazon, Best Buy and Gamestop. Once the digital download explosion began, not only could retailers sell boxed copies, they could also sometimes sell digital codes for online digital stores.
Because both the PlayStation and the Xbox are the primary two video game consoles on the market for a game like Starfield, this meant sales from both platforms play fully into both the success and the revenue of that video game title. So as not to exclude the Nintendo Switch from this conversation, know that this console also exists and some “adult” style games do eventually make it to the Nintendo Switch console. Whether Starfield would have been tapped for the Switch is questionable. As of Starfield (and likely many future Bethesda game titles), though, producing availability across all non-Microsoft platforms has halted.
Bethesda (likely at Microsoft’s prompting) has made the dubious decision of making Starfield (and likely most new Bethesda games) available exclusively on the Xbox and on Windows-based PCs (Microsoft’s platforms). You might have thought that Microsoft’s Bethesda would have stopped there and just accepted the loss of half of the video game market in revenue, but no. It gets worse for Bethesda.
According to Forbes, the PS5 has also sold the fastest amount of consoles since its launch that Sony has ever sold in its history. That means that the PS5 appears to be on-track to outsell the PS4. Considering that the number of PS4 consoles exceeds 117 million today combined with the over 38 million PS5’s sold so far, that’s a huge number of potential buyers to exclude from a video game’s sales. I did say it would get worse.
Game Pass
For video game players, an all-inclusive monthly game subscription service like Game Pass is a huge win. For video game developers, not so much. Let’s understand why. Video game buyers can, for a relatively small monthly fee, instantly buy into a massive library of games that can all be downloaded and played immediately. A single game that formerly cost each buyer $60 to purchase new, now costs a game player $9.99/mo for 30 days of play! That $10 doesn’t just cover one game, though. That monthly fee covers hundreds or maybe thousands of games available in the Game Pass library all unlocked the instant the subscription starts. No trips to the store. No game discs to scratch up. No wasted plastic. Quick and easy access over the Internet.
Sony has a similar subscription product called PlayStation Plus Essential. It’s effectively Sony’s burgeoning version of Game Pass, with a similarly growing library of games all accessible at a flat monthly rate.
With these subscription services, the monthly costs can be reduced if you’re willing buy into 24 months of Game Pass service. Unfortunately, this bundled deal is only available if you buy an Xbox console at the same time. Still, not a bad deal. If you already have an Xbox console or are looking to extend your existing subscription past the 24 months, the only option is the $9.99 per month deal.
Game Pass versus PlayStation Plus Essential
This article would be remiss without discussing an important aspect around buying into Game Pass versus Sony’s PlayStation Plus Essential. The $10/mo Game Pass plan DOES NOT include Xbox Live Gold, the service needed to play online multiplayer games. This means that in addition to the $10/mo, you’ll need to buy or have Xbox Live separately. However, with Sony PlayStation Plus Essential, this plan offers both access to the PlayStation Network along with a limited library of games. Essentially, Sony’s lowest tier plan is equivalent to having Xbox Live Gold and Game Pass together at Sony’s lowest monthly price tag. While Sony gives you both services together, Sony only allows limited access to games with the Essential tier. You’ll have to pay up into Sony’s larger PlayStation Plus tiers to gain access to more games from Sony’s game library.
To get Xbox Live combined with Game Pass for your Xbox, you’ll need to buy into the Game Pass Ultimate edition, which is priced at $15 a month ($5 more than the base Game Pass edition without Xbox Live). However, that’s still a savings of $5 a month when paying for Xbox Live Gold monthly, which is priced at $10 a month separately.
Why is having access to Xbox Live and PSN important? These services are required to allow you to play online multiplayer games. Because many games these days require Xbox Live and PSN to function, buying into the lowest edition of Game Pass alone won’t allow you to play games that require Xbox Live. You’d need to pay up to the $15/mo edition to buy Game Pass Ultimate to enable play of online multiplayer games along with gaining access to the Game Pass library of games.
Having Xbox Live is not required when buying into the Game Pass $10/mo edition. However, without Xbox Live, you will be limited to playing only Game Pass library games that do not require Xbox Live, which consist of offline single player games. There are fewer and fewer of these games released every year.
Subscription Services vs Profits
The one thing that hasn’t been discussed much with these gaming subscription services is exactly how developers will make money. Right now, $9.99 a month is great for a gamer who immediately gains access to perhaps thousands of games, including many day-one releases.
For the game developer, Microsoft cannot afford to hand that game developer $60 for each downloaded game from Game Pass. Same for Sony. This means that developers see drastically reduced revenue from games on Game Pass.
What this means is that for each download from Game Pass, the developer will receive a tiny fraction of money in a monthly payment tallied up for each gamer who downloads a specific game title. No download = No money. Simply because a game has been listed in Game Pass doesn’t mean the developer gets money. Developers are only likely to get paid IF a player downloads and plays the game. Even then, once a player deletes the game after installing it, the monthly revenues stop.
Let’s do the Math
Console Physical Disc Model
If there are 117 million PS4 consoles and if just 10% of those console owners buy a game at $60, that’s 60 * 11.7 million = $702 million in total revenue from that game’s sales. Of course, that’s what the retailers get. The wholesale price for a video game is around $50 paid by the retailer to the game studio. That’s 50 * 11.7 million = $585 million in sales that went directly to the game studio. Clearly, other fees will need to be paid out of that revenue by the developer who might net $200-300 million or so. This revenue windfall occurs within a month of two of a video game’s launch.
Game Pass Model
There is no revenue windfall, at least not for the developer. As stated above, a video game placed into the Game Pass library means drastically lower income. Instead of the $200-300 million windfall in physical disc sales nearly all at once, now developers must live on a much lower fraction of revenue that gets spread out over many months.
If 11.7 million players subscribe to Game Pass, in one month that equates to $10 * 11.7 million subscribers = $117 million per month (assuming that the number remains steady). This next part assumes that ALL 11.7 million decide to download the Starfield game. We know that’s not likely, but let’s assume this anyway.
If a game developer drops a brand new day-one game onto Game Pass, like Starfield, the game’s revenue will be a tiny, tiny fraction of that $117 million per month. Where a game developer receives 100% of the wholesale revenue from physical box sales, subscription based sales might receive 1% (probably way less) in total revenue from the revenues brought in by Game Pass’s monthly subscription fees. Why $1 million? That’s ~1% of $117 million. Keep in mind that $117 million is already fractionally less than the $585 million the developer could have received by selling boxed copies.
Instead of the $200-300 million for boxed sales for a single game, the game’s developer might now receive $1 million in that first 30 days after release, possibly not even that much. Keep in mind that the monthly revenue collected by Microsoft for the monthly Game Pass subscriptions must be shared amongst ALL video games that are being played and downloaded that month. The more games being played, the more developers must share in that revenue. That means that the more wide diversity of games that are being downloaded and played, the less revenue there is to go around to all of these developers. That $1 million mentioned might actually become $100k because of the revenue sharing and the wide diversity of games being played at any given month.
Revenue paid to developers who place games into Game Pass library is only for actively played games. Once gamers play the game fully, then each deletes the game from their console, the revenue stops the instant the game is deleted from the console. The game developer will only be paid as long as the player keeps the game installed and likely only if the game is launched and used periodically. If the game can be beaten in under 30 days, then the developer will be paid for only the days the player has actively played the game. If many players beat the game in 10 days, that’s only 10 days of revenue paid out for each specific player.
What all of this means is that it offers Microsoft ways of reducing payments to developers based on how often and how long a player plays a game. In other words, instead of the pay-$60 model where the revenue is locked in as long as a sale is made, developers are now under a much stricter, lower revenue model. It is also a model that can see Microsoft reduce payments because of revenue sharing and lower use. If two games were the only games played on Game Pass in a month, that means that Microsoft would only need to pay out revenue to 2 developers from that $117.5 million pool of income. If 100 games from 100 different developers suddenly become active, Microsoft must now share revenue amongst those 100 developers from that same $117.5 million pool of income.
Microsoft must also determine which of the Game Pass games deserves a larger portion of revenue than the others so that the most often played games get the most revenue. Meaning, of those 100 game developers some might only see .01% of the sales while some might see as much as 1% or 2% of total revenues from monthly subscribers. As stated, the point here is that $117.5 million in subscriber fees is a mere fraction of money that could have been had using the $60 per disc price.
It only gets worse from here. Microsoft itself also instantly skims revenue off the top of the Game Pass subscriber fees to cover its own service management costs (hosting, managing listings, paying out revenue, etc). Only after Microsoft skims its own Game Pass revenue is any remaining money left over to cover developer game use payments.
Assuming there’s $117.5 million in total Game Pass revenue (as exampled above), there might only be $20-50 million left (after Microsoft skims its expenses) to pay developers for their games. This ultimately means there’s fractionally less than you might think to pay off developers for the inclusion of their games on Game Pass.
For Starfield, this game’s revenue may fare even worse. Because Microsoft wholly owns Bethesda, Microsoft may have chosen Starfield to become a loss leader. In the sales world, that ultimately means that the product is intended to be a “giveaway”. In other words, Microsoft may require Bethesda to forgo receiving any payments from Game Pass. Thus, Starfield may not make ANY revenue from its day one release on Game Pass. Under this loss leader strategy, the only money Bethesda may make would be from the tiny amount of boxed copy sales from stores like Amazon and Best Buy. Considering the price of Game Pass and its current popularity, not many players are likely to opt to pay $60 for boxed copies.
Digital Sales
While you might be thinking that some people might opt to buy the game digitally, like boxed copy sales, a few will opt for this approach. Some don’t want to invest in Game Pass and be saddled with a monthly expense to keep track of. This means that some digital sales will occur. However, the benefit of gaining access to thousands of game titles usually wins when it comes to these types of sales. Like physical boxed copies, digital sales are also likely to be limited and few. I fully expect the vast majority of Starfield players to play via Game Pass (both on the Xbox and on the PC).
Sleazy Game Pass Sales Strategy
One sleazy strategy which Microsoft has used with Game Pass and which attempts to force gamers to buy a game outright is when Microsoft removes a game title from Game Pass library 30 days after its release. This limited time release followed by speedy removal is solely an attempt to prey on the consumer’s wallet. Many gamers do fall for this tactic and opt to buy a digital copy over a boxed copy. Digital purchases offer instant access and allows the gamer to continue playing once the game is downloaded. No trips to the store looking for a physical copy.
This Game Pass sales strategy is extremely sleazy and is also worth noting because Microsoft could pull this stunt with Starfield; tease players with a 30 day Game Pass limited availability, then pull the plug and force all players to purchase the game full price to continue playing. Because of the purported scale and size of the questing within Starfield, a player likely cannot fully complete Starfield within 30 days. Be wary of this sleazy sales tactic when buying into Game Pass. Personally, I’d consider this tactic as a form of bait and switch, which is illegal in the United States under federal law.
If you’re concerned that this could happen with Starfield in Game Pass (it has a reasonably high chance), you should opt to buy the game outright either a physical boxed copy or a digital copy at full price and forgo using Game Pass to play Starfield. This will allow you to continue playing the game should Game Pass decided to pull the game quickly. Of course, you can opt to play under Game Pass until the game is pulled from the library at which point you’ll need to decide whether you want to buy it to continue. If the game is as potentially buggy as I expect it to be, many Game Pass players may choose not to buy it after only a few days of play. This sleazy sales tactic has a high probability of backfiring on Bethesda and Microsoft if the game launches with as many problems as Fallout 76.
Starfield Sales Cannibalized?
Why spend $60 for a single game when you can pay $10 and gain access to perhaps thousands of games, along with day-one releases like Starfield? While a few physical disc sales might be forthcoming, the vast majority of players are savvy enough to realize the usefulness of buying into a large library of games under Game Pass all for $10.
For Starfield, the revenue handwriting is on the wall… and it’s doesn’t paint a rosy picture. Voluntarily cutting revenues by less than half via excluding the Sony PlayStation – fractional amounts of revenue by placing Starfield on Game Pass day one = drastically reduced income for Bethesda. Instead of the potential for nearly a billion in sales by tapping the overall video game market (Xbox + PS + PC + Switch) by forcing boxed sales only, Microsoft has made the dubious decision to reduce Starfield’s potential revenue down to perhaps at most $100 million in Day One Game Pass downloads. That number is if Bethesda is very, very lucky. If Starfield is considered a “loss leader” on release then it will receive zero in revenue from Game Pass.
You might be saying, “But what about physical disc sales?” What about them? With the Starfield game being released onto Game Pass day one, what incentive is there to run out and buy a physical disc copy at $60 when you can save $50 and instantly sign up for Game Pass at $10, download and play the game on release day sans disc? For that matter, what incentive is there to buy a digital copy at $60? Sure, Starfield may see a smattering of physical box and digital sales, but the total revenue for these sales might not even exceed $10 million. Game Pass is most definitely cannibalizing boxed and digital video game sales. This Game Pass idea is actually one of the strategies that Microsoft wanted prior to the introduction of the Xbox One; basically, an all digital universe of games. Microsoft is moving in this direction rapidly, clearly at the expense of the developers.
Keep in mind that subscriptions can be cancelled at any time. This means that a player can pay $10, play and beat the game in 30 days and then cancel their Game Pass subscription. Instead of paying $60 to own the game, they’ve now paid only $10 to play the game. That’s a whopping $50 savings for the gamer and a massive amount of lost revenue for both the game developer and Microsoft.
While the release of Starfield might see a temporary boost in Game Pass subscribers and in Xbox hardware sales (this is the hope Microsoft has for Starfield), that boost still won’t be any where near enough for Microsoft to cough up the nearly $1 billion in revenue that Bethesda could have had by including all consoles and by releasing only boxed copies day one. Instead, Microsoft has relegated Bethesda’s Starfield to becoming one of the least profitable AAA game titles to be released by a major developer.
Revenue over Time
Subscription models gain revenue slowly over time. You might be thinking that maybe Bethesda can reach the $1 billion revenue mark in 12 months. Video game sales don’t work like that. Video games see a surge in play until many players play the game out. One the game has been played out, it’s dropped and forgotten. The only games which can see continued revenue models are massively multiplayer online (MMO) style games like Call of Duty, Fallout 76, Fortnite and even Destiny. Even then, these MMO style games see dwindling subscribers over time until eventually there aren’t enough playing to support the game financially. When that happens, the MMO game shuts down.
Starfield as an MMO?
We don’t yet know enough about Starfield to know if it even contains an MMO component. Only when the game is released will we know if Starfield is designed like Fallout 4, a completely offline single player experience… OR if it is similar to Fallout 76, a completely online MMO. Maybe it’s like Grand Theft Auto and offers both an offline gaming experience and has a separate online MMO map. Until the game releases, there’s also no way to know if Starfield has been built to support an ongoing revenue model.
It’s clear, the sales revenue for Starfield (as a game) will not be had by day-one game sales. That means that Bethesda must make up for the severely cannibalized day-one game sales by compensating for that major loss in revenue in some other way. With Fallout 76, that’s done by using the Fallout 1st subscription and the sale of Atomic Shop “Atoms.”
For Starfield, I’d expect Bethesda’s team to make up for that loss in day one game sales by forcing an in-game monthly subscription plan. This separate in-game monthly subscription will likely unlock downloadable content (DLC) and other required add-ons. With Fallout 76, Fallout 1st is not required to play the game. However for Starfield, Bethesda may be forced to make this change. Starfield might offer up a very basic and limited gaming experience included in the base price, then require paying into a monthly subscription plan to unlock the entirety of the game. At least, this is one avenue that could be taken. Even the $60 full disc buyers might be forced to pony up for these extras to continue playing.
This avenue may end up the primary means that Bethesda utilizes to make back the amount of lost revenue required to cover its multi-year game development expenses when producing Starfield. As described above, Game Pass revenue alone will not be enough to cover these incurred expenses. Keep in mind that Starfield had been in development before Microsoft bought Bethesda. After Bethesda was purchased, Microsoft has seemingly tied Bethesda’s hands by forcing exclusivity to the Xbox and PC and by also forcing Bethesda to release the Starfield game through Game Pass on day one. It’s possible that Microsoft might rollback the decision of a day one Game Pass release for Starfield. It’s also entirely possible that to play the game via Game Pass, a separate second subscription might be required.
For Bethesda, that means that once each player enters the Starfield game world, revenue will need to be found separately by Bethesda inside the game… and that likely means a separate monthly subscription for Starfield itself. It may also mean paying for a separate currency, like Atoms, to unlock in-game features, spaceships, outfits, consumables and so on. If you buy into Starfield, expect to be hit in the wallet at every turn within the game’s universe.
Can’t progress? Pay up. Can’t fly into a new solar system? Pay up. Need a special outfit to complete a mission? Pay up. Even though Microsoft has seemingly tied Bethesda’s hands for how the game gets sold initially, Microsoft likely can’t tie Bethesda’s hands once the gamer enters the game’s universe.
Inside of a game’s universe, Bethesda has seemingly complete control. It can force subscriptions, microtransactions and a whole slew of other for-pay options to draw in more revenue. As a direct result of Game Pass’s near non-existent revenue, expect Starfield’s game world to be chock full of microtransactions using your credit card almost incessantly. It’s honestly the only way Bethesda can recoup the money it took to develop this game over several years, even if Bethesda can’t control how the game gets into the consumer’s hands.
PlayStation Plus Essential
For all of the reasons as Game Pass above, all of the revenue and low developer payment arguments will apply to the PlayStation Plus Essential service. With that said, let’s hope that Sony will change the PlayStation Plus Essential service name, though. This current naming is completely clumsy and does not in any way state what it is. Even re-using the PlayStation Now brand would have been a better choice in naming for this game library service, as the “Now” indicates instant access.
Bugs, Bugs and more Bugs
One thing Bethesda has not been good at is writing solid, bug free games. It doesn’t matter what game it is, the affectionate moniker of Bugthesda has been given and it is more than just for humor’s sake. This moniker is at once both truthful and problematic. It says that bugs are inevitable with any game released by Bethesda. Bethesda’s Todd Howard chooses to laugh this off as not a problem at all, as if Bethesda’s products are truly bug free. Sorry to disappoint you, Todd. Every Bethesda game I’ve ever experienced has had myriads of bugs and still contain many bugs to this day. Fallout 76 STILL contains day-one release bugs nearly 6 years later!
Starfield won’t fare any better. Starfield will release day-one with a massive number of bugs. That’s not a prediction. That’s a fact. If you go into Starfield on day-one, expect it to be chock full of bugs. Some of the bugs might be minor and cosmetic (lights don’t work right, 3D characters standing and moving in T-poses, weapons don’t render properly, etc). However, there will also be at least one showstopper bug where mission progress cannot move forward. Oblivion had them, Skyrim had them, Fallout 3 had them, Fallout 4 had them and, yes, even Fallout 76 STILL has them.
There has not been a single Bethesda game released that has not had showstoppers. I expect Starfield to have at least one, but probably more than that. I also expect Starfield to have crashing bugs; bugs that see you play for an hour, then the entire game crashes back to the OS… possibly losing progress.
Why mention bugs at all here? Bugs have become the bane of the video game industry. In the 1990s, video game developers took pride in shaking out nearly every single bug before placing their games onto cartridges. When the Internet wasn’t the “thing” that it is today, game developers had to make their games function 100% before sending it out to the consumer. Unfortunately, using the Internet as a crutch, revisionism has allowed video game developers to become extremely lazy. This allows developers to release horrible, bug-laden experiences, then begin shaking out the bugs along the way with one, two or even hundreds of releases… all while using paying players as beta testers.
Unfortunately, games like 2020’s Cyberpunk 2077 initially released to incredibly bad reviews over its horrible bugs. While Cyberpunk’s developer, CD Projekt RED, has ironed out many of the bugs since its 2020 release, that doesn’t make the game’s overall reviews better. Once those reviews are there, they’re there for the life of the game. Those low reviews will remain and taint the review system regardless of whether the developer shores up the game. If you release a bad buggy game initially, your initial reviews stay there to impact the game’s rating long into the future. Those bad reviews, thus, impact that game’s sales forever.
Was Cyberpunk 2077 able to recoup from its initially bad launch? In some small way, perhaps. Maybe through word of mouth, but definitely not via its Metacritic scores.
For Starfield, the first 3 months after its launch will become crucial to its success or failure. Starfield’s release date is set for September 6, 2023. Bethesda’s developers are now all working at a feverish pace to complete this game in time for that September launch date. Yet, we know it won’t be complete even after a year’s delay. If it was delayed a year, that means its bugs were major and the game was as yet unfinished. It is doubtful a year will buy them enough time to fix all of that.
What this means for Starfield is that its initial reviews will make or break it. It also means that game players are becoming intolerant of being taken advantage of by game developers. Game players are not beta testers, yet more and more game studios are treating game players as tertiary beta testers. Instead of hiring actual beta testers, game developers forgo those expenses and expect paying players to report the bugs. Worse, they do. More than ever, this is the wrong choice and it is a choice that can doom a game. We pay to PLAY the game, not BETA TEST it.
Overall
Considering the massive loss in revenue due to Game Pass, the high probability for the inclusion of pay-for-play micro-transaction features, the probable need for a separate subscription, Starfield seems poised to become one of the worst games ever released by Bethesda. Unfortunately, Bethesda has too many “fanboys”; “fanboys” who are willing to buy anything released by Bethesda regardless of its useful state. For the purposes of this article, “fanboy” is used in a gender neutral capacity, encapsulating both males and females alike. For the same reason, Apple has too many of these same “fanboys” type buyers willing to buy anything Apple releases, good or bad. Bethesda’s “fanboys” are just as avid and ravenous and, for whatever misguided reason, believe Bethesda can do no wrong. To them I say, enjoy being exploited.
The purpose of this article is to call out all of the problems that Bethesda faces with the release of Starfield. Because Microsoft has strongly tied Bethesda’s hands in very specific ways, that leaves Bethesda employing other not-so-favorable options to gain that lost revenue back. As a result, I fully expect Starfield to be a poor gaming experience overall, mostly because of the compromises required for Bethesda to make back the revenue it ultimately lost as a result of Microsoft’s exclusivity and Game Pass release decisions. That and Microsoft isn’t likely to allow Bethesda to delay Starfield any longer. Whatever state Starfield is in come September is how it will launch.
How does this make a difference to me as a gamer?
Good question. For you as a gamer, you might not care much overall. That is, unless you’re really looking for a new high quality gaming experience. Though, while the incessant micro-transactions designed to bilk you for money exist at every turn, the rest of the game might seem still like a benefit to you. Game Pass itself was designed to be a huge benefit to gamers, giving them access to a huge library of games. If you don’t like Starfield, you move on and try another. In the hundreds or thousands of games out there, there may be some that work for you. If Starfield bombs, it will simply be relegated to a game on Game Pass that no one plays.
For Starfield, it doesn’t mean good things. For Bethesda, it means even worse things. For Microsoft, it means great things. Well, maybe not great, but definitely something Microsoft can ignore. If Bethesda is forced to continue down this path by Microsoft, as a developer it may cease to exist inside of Microsoft… ultimately being folded into other game studios. Microsoft doesn’t care about exactly who does what as long as someone does it. Does that mean Fallout or Starfield or other Bethesda franchises disappear? No.
Like Halo before it, Microsoft will hand Bethesda’s intellectual property to another developer to continue building new games under those franchises (or not). Microsoft doesn’t actually care who develops any given franchise as long as they’re willing to do it and what they create sells more of Microsoft’s goods and services. Once a franchise runs its course and it’s done, Microsoft is also willing to shelve the franchise indefinitely, like it did with Fable. If Bethesda as a developer fades into oblivion, Bethesda’s IP may or may not live on depending entirely on Microsoft.
That’s why all of this might (or might not) matter to you.
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Fallout 76 Rant: The Impact of Legacy Removal
While Pipe might be life in Fallout 76, the Legacy removal might actually mean the death of Fallout 76. While some gamers are praising the removal of Legacy weapons from Fallout 76, those who are impacted by this change might actually have the power to sink the Fallout series, and possibly even Bethesda itself. Let’s explore.
Misguided Maneuver
It’s clear that Bethesda is horribly misguided internally. On the one hand, I get Bethesda’s rationale behind the removal of these “illegal” mods from Legacy weapons. On the other hand, Bethesda’s rationale is entirely misguided and fails to take into account the real damage that has now been inflicted on the game and, ultimately, the game’s player base. The real question now is not whether the game is better, but whether Fallout 76, ironically a survival game, can survive this change.
One thing is certain, some players are reeling from this change and rightly so. Bethesda itself also doesn’t seem to fundamentally understand the player base which has been born out of these legacy weapons having been included in the game for literal years.
What is a Legacy Weapon? A Legacy weapon is any weapon that was formerly in the game and could be obtained through loot drops, but was removed from the loot drop list by Bethesda Fallout 76 devs in the game’s early years (loot drops removed around 2018-2019). This meant there was no way to obtain these weapons after the loot drops stopped… until Legendary Modules were introduced when Nuclear Winter began in 2019. Once these legendary modules were added, for a short time it may have been possible to craft such weapons on a crafting bench until the crafting of these weapons was also patched. Since then, these weapons have been unavailable.
Which Weapons were Removed?
The “Legacy” weapons to which this article refers are any legendary energy or plasma weapon with an explosive attachment. These explosive attachments have now been deemed “illegal” by Bethesda even though they were perfectly legal when they originally dropped. Such weapons could be obtained earlier in the game’s life legitimately, but today are no longer obtainable and are now marked as “illegal” by Bethesda’s Fallout 76 team. Weapons which have now been removed include:
- Explosive Gatling Plasma
- Explosive Laser Pistol
- Explosive Laser Rifle
- Explosive Gatling Laser
- Explosive Flamer
- Explosive Gauss Rifle
- Explosive Gauss Shotgun
- Explosive Gauss Minigun
- Explosive Gauss Pistol
- Explosive Tesla Rifle
All of the above weapons have had their explosive attachment removed by the Fallout 76 devs, turning many 3 star Legendary weapons into 2 star weapons.
Note, I won’t even get into the severe bugs introduced as a result of the removal of these Legacy weapons… bugs which have heavily impacted many rogues in addition to the Legacy removals. It’s not pretty for Bethesda or Fallout 76 right now.
Righting Wrongs
Once Bethesda knew these weapons shouldn’t have been included in the game back in 2018-2019, a patch should have been swiftly crafted and implemented then to remove these “illegal” weapons. This would have saved Bethesda this headache today. Instead, Bethesda waited and let this situation fester for going on nearly 5 years now. Not only did it fester, it actually born a whole new type of gamer in Fallout 76… a type of gamer willing to spend real cash money to not only obtain and own these “illegal” weapons, but who were also willing to pay Bethesda for Fallout 1st and pay Bethesda for Atoms to buy the Atomic Shop’s literal valueless junk.
Yes, this new type of gamer is the one who is literally propping up Bethesda’s Fallout 76 game. These are the gamers who are paying Bethesda’s bills, keeping Bethesda’s lights on and ensuring their staff remain employed.
Removing these weapons is literally a situation of “biting the hand that feeds you!”
Fallout 76 Gamer Types
When Fallout 4 began and also when Fallout 76 began, the primary type of gamers that Bethesda had hoped for were those interested in playing the game firmly on their “golden path”. In programming, a “golden path” is the path that most users will take when using any piece of software. This path is the path the engineers design the game for users to find and use. I dub these types of users the “golden” users. The vast majority of software users fall into “golden” users. Video game software users take a different route.
Gamers are somewhat different for this “golden path” approach for a number of reasons. The primary reason gamers are different is that video games entice children to play. By the very nature of this product being a video game, children are naturally one of the video game industry’s primary demographics… regardless of the game’s rating.
Let’s define children. Children include ages 8-17, with the primary age of most children playing ranging from 12-14. Because children don’t have a lot of life experience, their minds aren’t constrained by “adult” thinking. Children play games in ways that suit their fancy, which means children do not always remain on the golden path. In fact, in most cases, children stray from the golden path frequently in video games. Children actively try to poke holes in, find problems with and generally do things that an adult gamer might never think to try.
Children aren’t the only players doing this, however. Many adults can maintain this childlike poke and prod thought process well into their 30s. This leads to the next type of gamer I dub the “rogue” gamer.
Rogues vs Golden
Rogue gamers don’t follow the golden path laid out by the developers. These gamers intentionally and actively seek to find bugs, exploit holes and obtain “rare” objects in a game, including weapons. Almost every “rogue” gamer seeks to one-up their fellow player by finding something that their friend doesn’t have, whether that be a way to build under the map, go out of bounds or obtain a weapon that few other players have.
Rogue players don’t play the game as intended and are unwilling to follow EULA rules. They’re so flippant in the way they play the game, they actually don’t really care if their account gets banned or if Sony shuts their PlayStation down by disabling their PSN account, for example. In the gaming world, Rogues don’t care about the rules or abiding by them. With that said, they do care about finding the latest rare thing to have in the game.
The thing is, many of these rogue gamers come from well-to-do, dare I say wealthy families. This means they are willing to pay and pay and pay. They will pay for Fallout 1st. They will pay for Atoms in the atomic shop. They will even pay other players real cash money on places like eBay to buy rare in-game items.
In short, many rogue gamers keep Bethesda’s (and by extension, Microsoft’s) bills paid and the lights on. That’s not to say that every rogue gamer is wealthy enough to do this, but many are. At this point, I think you might understand where this is heading.
One thing that rogues typically don’t care about is the game itself or even the game’s story. They’re not playing the game because it’s Fallout and they’re not playing it because it has interesting lore or interesting quest lines, they’re playing the game because it’s an MMO, because it has multiplayer, because it has combat and because they can find and exploit heavy guns that no one else has. Rogues will only follow down a quest line because it unlocks their character to have or use something unique or better than someone else, not because of interest in the RPG aspect or the story.
Golden players, on the other hand, play the game by the rules using weapons considered legal within the game. These are also players who typically respect the Fallout canon, who are genuinely interested in the story being told, who play by the rules, who choose to play using guns the game provides and who don’t stray outside of the bounds simply because they find a loophole. These are dedicated Fallout players who’ve likely played many previous Fallout games, if not all of them.
Mixing The Two
These player types are not hard walled into two groups. Some players remain mostly golden, but go occasionally rogue when they deem appropriate. For example, some of Bethesda’s rigid game rules go too far. Some players become rogue when it’s necessary to bypass some of these Bethesda rigid rules, simply to save time, to cut weight down or for other reasons that help them play the game better.
Bethesda doesn’t get its player base
One thing is certain, Bethesda does NOT fundamentally understand who’s actually playing Fallout 76 and who is actually paying their bills. It goes even deeper than this.
Because there was a whole separate black market for these high powered “illegal” weapons, Bethesda completely overlooked this aspect of its game. Instead of taking advantage of these payers and bilking them for money, they decided to remove the weapons from the game.
It’s clear, you can either benefit from these players by making real money off of them or you can alienate them… and alienation is exactly where we are now.
Black Tuesday
On Tuesday January 24th, 2023, rogue players had to say goodbye to their “illegal” weapons. Bethesda removed weapon modules from the game, which during the 2018-2019 years were perfectly legal to own and use. This change sends not only a mixed message to players, it sends an exceedingly bad message.
It says that Bethesda really doesn’t give one crap about a huge segment of its very player base who are paying its bills, keeping its staff employed and keeping the game from going under.
This change is likely to be the beginning of the end for Fallout 76. Why?
Perplexed
Rogues are as perplexed and mystified by this late change now as anyone. For years these weapons were in the game and remained so. However, it’s just now that Bethesda decides to rid the game of these weapons?
Because these rogue players comprise a substantial portion of the revenue given to Bethesda for Fallout 1st and other pay-for-play features, it’s surprising Bethesda was so willing to risk losing that revenue and possibly even the entire game over this silly change.
Rogue players must now make a choice. They can either stay and play a hobbled version of the game using no special weapons or they can go find a new game where they can, once again, feel special and own special weapons. This is the actual real danger to Fallout 76. Rogues are fickle players. They only stay and play where they can find their “specialness”. If they can’t find and remain special, then the game is done and they leave it.
That’s exactly the crossroads at which Bethesda now finds itself. The question is, are there enough newbie players to keep the lights on and the staff employed? The answer to this question comes in how Bethesda chooses to respond.
High Levels and Endgame
After playing any game, not only have you amassed levels for your character, you have unlocked perks and skills. The problem is, once the quests have ended, what do you do with these skills? That’s fundamentally the problem with most games. You spend your time playing through the quest lines leveling up your player only to find that when you reach the end, all of that leveling up and those perks were for nothing… as there’s no endgame content.
Many gamers find little to no endgame content to utilize that high level skill. That means, you reach the end and you go find a new game to play.
Fallout 76 is only different in its endgame because it offers Events (and Legacy weapons). After the quests are done and there’s no more quest lines to follow, the Events and Daily quests are what’s left. These are repetitive activities that offer a slight chance for rare loot rewards. It also offers the chance to try out a new overpowered weapon.
Leveling up in Fallout 76, unfortunately, is mostly worthless. Because guns cap out at level 45 or 50, that essentially means your player is capped out at level 45 or 50, regardless of the level number your player may actually achieve. The only benefit to leveling up is to max out the Legendary perk cards, an addition that gives higher level players a tiny bit of an incentive to stay with the game.
Once a player reaches level 650-700, that player can easily have maxed out the Legendary Perk cards. Max leveling these Legendary Perk cards sees a tiny bit more damage out of weapons, if utilized correctly. So then, what’s left after this? Not much, other than going Rogue and trying to find unobtainable, but overpowered weapons which formerly existed in the game.
While these weapons were once in the game circa 2019, they have since stopped dropping as loot long, long ago. That means that new players can’t easily obtain these overpowered weapons unless they monetarily buy them from another player. Hence, a player economy is born.
Initially, caps were the answer to this economy. Unfortunately, caps became mostly pointless as a currency in the game when Bethesda moved to bullion, scrip and stamps offering up the newest, most rare items. This is when players moved to selling these highly prized and overpowered weapons for real cash money, as in USD. Internet forums and trading boards came to exist to list and sell these weapons for real money.
In one fell swoop, Bethesda shut all of this down… the trading, the sales, the weapons, all of it. Without these weapons in the game, there are no more sales of them. You can’t sell what’s no longer in the game.
It goes way deeper than that. Not only did it kill third party sales of in-game weapons, it is poised to see a massive number of high level players abandon Fallout 76 and cancel their Fallout 1st subscriptions. Why play a game when there’s nothing special left?
Endgame content is firmly limited to Events. Unfortunately, in retaliation for these high powered weapons being in the game, Bethesda ramped up these events to be likewise overpowered. Without these weapons in the game, the events are STILL way overpowered…. to the point where these events are likely to FAIL the vast majority of the time when using standard weapons. Bethesda retaliated against the players by removing the weapons, but failed to reduce the overpowered nature of the events back to a level where standard weapons can be successful. Right now, these “golden” level 45 and 50 level weapons are not enough against these highly overpowered event enemies.
It gets worse, as players dwindle from the game due to natural attrition and now because Legacies have been removed, new players will be hard pressed to find enough higher level players on a server to take on the Scorchbeast Queen, the Titan or even Earle. These events are now so overpowered because Bethesda souped them up against Legacies, it’s near impossible to win these events with non-Legacy weapons, especially if a server has maybe 10 players on it.
Bethesda is definitely at a cross roads.
Microsoft
Now that Microsoft owns Bethesda, Bethesda is most definitely playing with fire. In fact, Bethesda’s choices surrounding Fallout 76 have always been questionable. Legacy removal is probably one of THE most questionable changes Bethesda has ever made for Fallout 76, considering when the problem actually started. Why does Microsoft matter? We’ll come to that answer in a bit.
For now, Fallout 76 is on the cusp. We don’t yet know the fallout (ha) from Bethesda’s meddling with Legacies. The point is, we cannot know how the rogue players will respond or how much financial damage these players who abandon the game can literally do to Bethesda.
It’s clear, without these Legacy weapons in the game, rogues who were playing Fallout 76 solely because these weapons existed will evaporate… and along with that, so will the income from Fallout 1st and all other income that keeps Fallout 76 afloat. Are the rogues a big enough population to make a dent in Bethesda’s income stream? My personal guess is, yes… at least for the longevity of Fallout 76. Without the rogues, Fallout 76 may be hard pressed to remain a viable entity, let alone Fallout as a franchise.
Does Fallout keep Bethesda afloat? It most certainly isn’t the only game that Bethesda publishes. However, Fallout 76 is currently the only Fallout franchise title available. In short, probably not.
Obsidian, another developer, was purchased by Microsoft in 2018, the same year that Fallout 76 released. Obsidian contains the remnants of Black Isle Studios, the original studio who developed the Fallout franchise. Because Microsoft now owns both Bethesda and Obsidian, it’s possible that someone at Microsoft could easily mandate the transition of the Fallout IP and franchise from Bethesda back over to Obsidian to handle.
Bethesda is clearly out of their depths with Fallout and they clearly don’t understand the franchise. Worse, they don’t even understand multiplayer systems in relation to Fallout. This first multiplayer Fallout game is probably the worst implementation that could have possibly been imagined. Partly this is due to its design goals, but partly it’s due to the inept team who couldn’t actually build a workable product… and here we are today. Because the Fallout 76 team failed to build a workable product, they’re now forced to remove a feature from the game that shouldn’t have been in it in the first place. Yet, that feature remained for nearly 5 years, solidifying them as legitimate in the game.
What Bethesda has done is tantamount to yanking a baby bottle from a baby after that baby has already begun to drink. If you didn’t want to give the baby bottle to the baby, it’s simpler not to do it up front than yanking it away after you’ve already given it to the baby. Heartless.
Can Fallout 76 tank Bethesda?
At this point, maybe not. What the loss of Fallout 76 will do is sour future gamers towards Bethesda games.
“Once bitten, twice shy.”
Few will step up to the plate again knowing the disaster that befell Fallout 76, especially once it disappears. Believe me, Fallout 76 WILL end. The question isn’t if, it’s when. After this Legacy removal, I believe Fallout 76’s end days are here. It’s just a matter of time before the remaining high level players (many of whom are now rogues) walk away and find a new game.
Gamers are fickle and these kinds of stupid maneuvers are ripe for rage quitting. Some die hard gamers will remain and play, but only for a short time until they become frustrated with the crappy standard weapons and find a new game to play. At a minimum, I’d certainly expect to see a rash of Fallout 1st subscriptions cancelled in the next 30 days.
The answer is that, alone, Fallout 76 likely can’t tank Bethesda. However, Fallout 76’s demise can most certainly make a big enough dent that someone at Microsoft (Phil Spencer?) retaliates against Bethesda through layoffs (Buh Bye Todd Howard), closures and by handing over various game IP to better equipped and better managed studios.
It’s clear, the current developers are ill equipped to understand what Fallout 76 should be. Let’s understand why…
Rogues, Games and Marketing
Rogues, whether a game studio likes them or not, are a market force. These are players who have money and are willing to spend it. A game studio can either embrace this fact, or go bankrupt trying to eliminate these gamers from the game. As they say, “Get woke, Go Broke!”
Bethesda is firmly in this latter camp. I don’t know what impetus is driving Bethesda’s management team and devs to take this “woke” approach, but clearly it’s not about trying to make money. Clearly, rogues represent real money sales. If a single player is willing to pay $20 or $50 or $150 real cash money for a single over powered weapon in the game, then Bethesda clearly isn’t actually trying make money. Who leaves money on the table?
Leaving an untapped market on the table is not only stupid, it’s probably one of the stupidest things I’ve seen Bethesda (or in general, a game developer) do.
Pay for Play
As much as gamers harp on the pay for play scheme, it’s a real thing, it exists and it needs to exist. Yes, buying an in-game weapon for real cash money is considered pay for play. You can’t deny that. Whether pay for play is good or bad thing is entirely debatable. One thing is certain. Pay for play makes money… and that’s exactly why game developers are in business, to make money.
In fact, pay for play already exists in Fallout 76 with Fallout 1st and Scrap Kits and Repair Kits and the list goes on. Even foodstuffs like Perfect Bubblegum and Lunch Boxes are forms of pay for play. Selling overpowered rifles for real cash money is just the next logical step.
At this point, Fallout 76 is almost 5 years old. When a game is brand new, perhaps pay for play isn’t something that’s needed. However, 5 years later with 95% of players at endgame, then pay for play is perfectly fine and, dare I say, necessary. It extends the life of a game. Anything that extends the life of a game I consider a good thing. It allows new players to step in and know their time won’t be wasted because the game must close down due to lack of players. It allows rogues and endgame players a means of keeping the game interesting and keep them coming back for more play. Anything that keeps players playing is a good thing. That alone continues to make money for Bethesda. I’d say that’s win-win-win all around. Everyone wins.
High Level Players, Veterans and a New Map
One thing that Bethesda has failed to take into account, in among Fallout 76’s many failures, is the failure of planning for high level players reaching the endgame. In The Elder Scrolls Online, this game’s devs seemed to properly plan for endgame high level players. In fact, ESO devs went so far as to convert level 100+ players into then new “Veteran” levels. For example, for every 100 levels, you got 1 Veteran level. A level 300 player would convert into Veteran level 3. These new Veteran levels were denoted by a Veteran symbol next to the player’s new rank, just above their head. This distinguishes Veteran players from low level players of a similar number.
In addition to being converted into Veteran levels, this change also unlocked the game to be played from the beginning using a new harder Veteran challenge level. Eventually, the devs even opened up a new Veteran level territory that required teaming up with other Veterans to handle this new difficult area. This area was so challenging, in fact, there was simply no way to solo it. The hordes were so difficult, you were forced to go in with a team even as a high Veteran level. While the lower level territories remained trivially easy for a Veteran, the Veteran territories were intensely challenging. Even group dungeons were incredibly challenging.
Likening this to Fallout 76, there is no way to liken this. While Fallout 76 devs are busy introducing silly and bugged out territories like Nuka World and slapping high level players on the wrist by removing legacies, the ESO devs (at about this same time in ESO’s lifecycle) were treating high level players like valued players and giving them more challenges. Effectively, the Fallout 76 devs are treating high level players like a nuisance when they should be celebrating players who’ve made it to level 600 or 800 or 1200 or 2000. This celebration should include rewarding these players, not chastising them.
If a player has given up a year or two of their life to play Bethesda’s Fallout 76 game and reached level 1000 (and who continues to actively play it), that’s a celebratory moment. Bethesda devs should be celebrating long standing players who continue to play the game instead of slapping these players on the wrist and saying, “Bad”.
ESO celebrated high level players the right way. Fallout 76 devs treat high level players like nothing more than a mere annoyance.
Here you have one team at Bethesda who fully understands and embraces their entire player base. On the other hand, you have an inept team who hasn’t the faintest clue of who their player base even is. I shake my head at this incredible disparity within the same corporation. It simply makes no sense.
Inept Developers
You’d think that if anything, The Elder Scrolls Online would have taught the Fallout 76 team some valuable lessons. Unfortunately, you thought wrong. It seems that these two MMO system teams do not at all communicate their valuable lessons from one team to the other.
The reality, which has become incredibly apparent, is that the Fallout 76 development team is wholly and completely inept; not just from a development perspective, but from a money making perspective. They don’t seem to understand the value of keeping ALL of the players happy and, most importantly, paying.
A game studio makes money by keeping people playing the game WHILE spending money. You don’t make money when you chase away your paying players. It’s pretty simple. Removing legacies from the game is a seminal chase-away-players moment. It’s also quite clear that the Fallout 76 developers and even the management team don’t get the real danger here.
Instead of embracing the legacies and the whole real money economy that’s grown up around these weapons’ accidental existence, Bethesda turns its back on the players by removing the weapons from the game. Not only has this shut down that entire real world economic situation (which Bethesda could have tapped), players who wanted these items have no reason to stay, pay and play the game any longer.
This means some walk away from Fallout 76 immediately and others leave slowly over time as they lose interest, “because it’s boring”. Some players, specifically rogues, must make their own fun in a game. Legacies were the rogue’s way of making that fun and cutting the boredom. Without the legacies, there’s honestly no reason for these players to remain playing the game… let alone spend any more money on it.
Business Lessons
While I hadn’t intended this article to become a business lesson, it’s moving quickly in this direction. Let me take this section to discuss this aspect of business operations.
Every college student should be required to take at least one or two business classes. What I mean here is that it’s vitally important for students learning software development to understand how their work impacts the bottom line of the company. Not all software features are good for business. There is no more clear illustration of that here than the removal of the Legacy weapons from Fallout 76. Adding new features can help out users. Removing features can easily cause people to walk away from your product.
This is where business classes come into play. Business classes teach students to have the smarts enough to realize that, “Hey, this feature that I’m being tasked to implement has a high chance of losing 70% of our PAYING clients!” Businesses must empower all employees to speak up when they see problems like this.
While software architects come up with ideas, they may not be privy to exactly how many people might actually be using a given feature. Before implementation of any feature that impacts the userbase, someone needs to put on the brakes and say, “Let’s pull the numbers of how many people are actually using this feature before rolling it out!” Sanity must always prevail in any software business. You can’t simply roll out a feature without understanding exactly how it might impact your existing bottom line.
This is why business classes, and more importantly, business intelligence and reporting is important. Blindly making changes without understanding the business impact can easily tank a business. Case in point, Musk’s incredibly poor handling of Twitter. Now we have yet another poor business case, Bethesda’s shitty handling of Legacy removals in Fallout 76.
Too Late
This article is written after-the-fact. Unfortunately, removing these weapons is more or less a done deal. What I mean here is that knowing the way that Fallout 76’s code is written, there’s no way to undo this change. Meaning, it’s easier to stop a code rollout before it happens than it is to undo a change already made. In many cases, it’s actually impossible to undo code changes due to the nature of the way it was rolled out.
At this point, Bethesda is stuck with this change, for better or worse. At this point, unfortunately, we’re probably at the “or worse” point. As I said above, we’re nearly 5 years into this game’s lifecycle. Instead of Bethesda celebrating high level player achievements, these players are being chastised and chased off by removing weapons these players relied on.
The point in becoming a high level player is to take the benefits that go along with that high level, which includes high damage weapons. That’s an expected staple of any game that supports having high level players. If level 1000 players are reduced to using weapons at the same level as a level 50 player, what’s the point in playing Fallout 76? In fact, what’s the point in leveling up beyond level 50?
Not only does this Legacy removal impact high level players, it impacts low level players because they know they can’t get these weapons in the future. That means that players who might have hung around to level their character up to level 1000 for the chance of getting one of these weapons might now get to level 100, quit and go buy something else. That drastically reduces the income of Bethesda… and by extension Microsoft.
When the Fallout 76 team could have embraced these weapons and monetarily leveraged the external market by retooling them to be legitimate and finding legitimate ways to sell and use them, the Fallout 76 team’s lack of business intelligence and foresight prevailed.
It’s anyone’s guess if Fallout 76 can recover from this change. My guess is that this Legacy removal will be the last major thing the Fallout 76 team does before the plug gets pulled on Fallout 76 by Microsoft. Bethesda, prove me wrong.
Compensating Controls
This final thought is yet another failure of business intelligence on the part of Bethesda management regarding the legacy removals. One idea that many game developers employ to soften the blow of any negative change is introduce a compensating positive change. For example, when something gets removed from a player’s inventory because of a policy change, the developer will offer up some kind of freebie for all of those players who are impacted. This can include free currency, a free new weapon, a freebie in the game store or something similar. This freebie offsets that player’s item loss in compensation.
Unfortunately, with this Legacy removal, Bethesda offered players no form of any kind of compensation for the loss of their weapon. They still had their weapon, yes, but severely altered. Bethesda might as well have removed the weapon as the weapon that remained is pretty much worthless. It’s surprising that Bethesda has offered up no compensation at all, but here we are.
For all of the above reasons, the rogues are likely to abandon this game entirely… perhaps even the franchise itself… said as if rogues even care about Fallout as a franchise. That leaves the golden players left to carry the weight, but unfortunately there are likely not enough of these golden players willing to shell out for Fallout 1st in the numbers needed to keep the game afloat. Thus, this change is likely to be Fallout 76’s death knell.
Way to go, Todd! Phil, if you’re reading this, you probably need to have a sit down with Todd to figure out what the hell is going on with the Fallout 76 development team.
Update: 1/29/2023 — Positive Changes vs Balance
While I didn’t discuss this above, there was really no need to state the positive changes by removing legacy weapons. We all know that exactly what taking overpowered weapons from the game means. For those who need this spelled out, it means less powerful weapons now exist in the game. That means shooting more, making more ammo and grinding more to keep your guns working. It also means the need for finding more ways to buff your weapons using Magazines, Bobbleheads and other consumables. It also means reworking perk cards to max out the damage done with these weapons.
In short, it means spending more time reworking your character to find the highest damage build based around the game’s crappy level 45 and 50 weapons. Ultimately, it’s an exercise in futility.
Does the game have balance after legacies? No, it does not! Fallout 76 is actually quite unbalanced. It is entirely because Bethesda has now given enemies many questionable unbalanced buffs. Removing legacies from the game doesn’t in any way negate these problematic introductions around enemies. Let’s list these enemy problems…
- Enemies are allowed to instantly and silently teleport right behind you and instantly damage or kill you. Not balanced.
- Enemies are still given perfect aim with every single shot, where players are given VATs that misses more frequently than it manages to hit. Not balanced.
- Enemies have perfect accuracy with every single shot and are given 100% anti-armor per shot while players must live with weapons that afford drastically reduced accuracy and are given zero anti-armor per shot unless using perk cards and/or Anti-Armor legendary weapons. Even then, anti-armor afforded to the player is never 100% even though enemies are given 100% anti-armor shots. Not balanced.
- Enemies have majorly enhanced perception, which can instantly negate Sneak cards. For example, if one enemy “sees” you, the horde around them all instantly see you. It’s not enemy by enemy, but by the horde. Not balanced.
- Daily Ops is worthless due to actual enhanced perception given to enemies. Players spend major amounts of time building their character’s method of combat. If the player has chosen a sneaky sniper build, for example, Daily Ops entirely negates that. This means Bethesda expects us to completely retool our build strictly around Daily Ops? Not balanced.
- Daily Ops, once again, is worthless due to stealth fields given to all enemies. Stealth invisibility fields negate using VATs. If you’ve built your character around using VATS criticals, once again Bethesda has negated that. Not balanced.
- HP bar above an enemy lies. If an enemy’s bar says level 50, yet it takes hundreds of shots to kill it, that’s not level 50. A level 50 enemy should take a similar number of shots to kill it no matter what type of enemy it is. Not balanced.
- Weapons show a high level of accuracy in the UI, but do not provide that high level of accuracy when shooting. Not balanced.
- Weapons show specific damage numbers, but never actually provide that level of damage when shooting. For example, an Instigating Fat Man purports around 1500 damage in sneak, but never actually shows more than about 100-200 damage when landing a direct hit while sneaking. Not balanced.
As you can see, the vast majority of Fallout 76 has no balance at all. Unless you consider enemy tactics and damage stacked against the player as balance, there is very little balance about the game. The legacies were, in fact, the only way to negate Bethesda’s entirely unbalanced game. In fact, the legacies gave balance back to a game against Bethesda’s unfair and unbalanced enemies.
Unfortunately, we’re now right back to a completely unbalanced and unfair game, where enemies can cheat against the player using tactics like teleportation where the player been given no such ability or defense.
Balance in Fallout 76? Hardly.
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Fallout 76: Map locations of Wood Piles
Many players are wondering where to find Wood Resource Piles (aka Wood Piles) throughout Fallout 76. While there are websites showing map locations leading the way to gold, concrete, steel, lead, waste oil and acid deposits, none yet show where to find wood resource piles for your camp. Yes, there are a number of these wood piles in Appalachia. Let’s explore.
Wood Pile Sites
Starter List
Wood Pile Update #1
Wood Pile Update #2
Wood Pile Update #3
Wood Pile Update #4
Legacy Removals and Wood Piles Update #5
The links above lead to the list of wood piles that have been found. Unfortunately, as many others have found, there are no maps to find these resources easily via Google. Well, now there is. The research for this article is time consuming as it requires searching all over the map for these wood piles. That’s where this article comes in. I’ve done this work for you and now the article is closed.
For ease of writing this article, I will abbreviate C.A.M.P. to simply the word ‘camp’ except when I’m referring to the device itself. There are a number of workshops that have wood resource piles. This article does not include wood resource piles located in workshops. If you wish to know which workshops have wood piles… then from the Fallout 76 map, hover over the workshop icon and the game will display resources available at each workshop.
Wood Resource Deposits
What are these deposits and why are they special? Like iron deposits that produce steel scrap and crystal deposits that produce crystal scrap, wood deposits produce wood scrap when equipped with a proper resource extractor in your camp. Some of these deposits exist inside of workshops, but you cannot build a camp in a workshop. Many players want to build their camp on top of a wood resource deposit so they can extract wood scraps at their camp.
Yes, these deposits do exist separately throughout the Forest and even into the Cranberry Bog. Wherever there are forests and wood, these wood pile deposits exist. That I’ve also discovered while scouting, these wood deposits seem to exist near, but outside of workshops and usually aren’t far off of a road. Though, they don’t always appear near workshops and they are not always near a road. These wood piles can be claimed using your C.A.M.P. device and used within your own camp with a wood resource extractor.
Wood resource piles have a distinctive look and shape from regular logs of wood in the landscape. Here’s an example:
Note that the cones on this pile are only for this specific pile. All other wood piles I’ve found do not have these orange cones. Additionally, note the four posts that constrain the wood pile. These wood resource piles always look like this (with the exception of the cones).
If you see one of these wood piles in the wild AND which is not located in a workshop, you can use it in your camp to extract wood by placing down a wood resource extractor. The extractor will produce wood scraps for you. The above is how a wood pile looks when a resource extractor is placed down. Resource extractors require power to operate, hence the reason for the two solar panels to power it. While you can use any generator of sufficient power, I prefer using two solar panels which can be placed right on top.
Settlers and Wood
Since the introduction of Wastelanders, the game now offers random NPC settlers living in the wasteland. These settlers can sometimes point the way to finding such wood pile resources. For example, if you hear the sound of wood being chopped, there’s a high probability that locating the sound will lead you to a settler and a wood pile. Settlers don’t spawn all of the time, but they do occur the vast majority of the time. This means that some wood piles must be found by stumbling onto them. By following the sound of wood being chopped, it is likely to lead you to a wood pile.
Again, these wood pile deposits are available to use as resources in your camp, just like ground copper, silver or iron deposits.
Wood Resource Deposit Locations
Let’s get right to the heart of this article and the reason why you are here. These are all of the wood pile resources I’ve found. Every single resource I’ve scouted is available for use in a camp, allowing for a wood extractor resource to be placed. The vast majority of these piles are located in The Forest. However, a few do exist in the Cranberry Bog and other locations around the map. As I find more, this article will be updated.
I’ve also tested all of these locations to ensure that a C.A.M.P. device can be placed which will include the wood pile. Though, placement on some may not work if placed directly in front of the pile. These piles may require you to walk around a little to find a suitable location where the device turns green and allows placement while still including the wood pile.
Let’s start with this first set of wood pile locations …
Location #1 — Gilman Lumber Mill (Forest)
This wood resource deposit is located near the Gilman Lumber Mill just below Vault 76. The arrow marker points to the spot. This location actually contains two wood deposits. Unfortunately, the deposit closest to Gilman (next to a fence) cannot be claimed for use in a camp. This second one which is farther away and not sitting against a fence (see the arrow marker) is usable in your camp. It looks like so…
This wood pile below, unfortunately, is NOT usable in a camp. It is shown to prevent confusion from the above pile, which can be used in a camp. Again, this pile just below placed next to the chain link fence cannot be used as a camp resource, but it can be harvested for wood by your character. Yes, it would be nice to have two wood extractors in the same camp, but alas it’s not to be. Thanks Bethesda.
Location #2 — Back end of Wixon Homestead (Forest)
This wood deposit exists not far from the Wayward, but sits at the very back end of the Wixon Homestead’s farmland, not far off the nearby road leading to the Wayward.
Location #3 — Hunter’s Ridge (Forest)
This wood deposit is near Hunter’s ridge along the road where the marker shows. This pile has two orange cones.
Location #4 — Pylon V13 & Drop Site C2 (Cranberry Bog)
This wood deposit is somewhat near the Abandoned Bog Town workshop, but is not part of it. It’s fairly far off of the road and you can hear a settler chopping wood all the way from the road if they are there.
Location #5 — North of Twin Pines Cabin (Forest)
Near where the road forks into two, you’ll find a wood deposit which is not far from Twin Pines Cabin (the Blood Eagle symbol on the map).
Location #6 — Deathclaw Island (Forest)
Slightly off of and north, just up the road from the spawn point for Deathclaw Island (pine tree marker on the map), here’s another wood resource which can be used at your camp. See the arrow marker. The wood pile looks like this.
Note that the building seen in the background is the small red shed which is part of the Tyler County Dirt Track workshop. However, this wood pile is not part of that workshop and can be used in your camp.
Location #7 —Â Point Pleasant (Forest)
This wood pile is very close to Point Pleasant. However, the spawn point for Point Pleasant leads you to the south entrance. This pile is near the north entrance of the city with no fast travel point close. You’ll want to fast travel to Black Mountain Ordnance Works and walk down the road towards the north entrance of Point Pleasant. Immediately after you pass a red colored large hauler truck, it’ll be on your left. Careful of a possible Blood Eagle camp nearby.
Location #8 — Silva Homestead (Forest)
This wood pile is located a little bit south of Silva Homestead and is also a little bit off of the road near and sorta behind a red tractor. This location is a little bit tricky to place the C.A.M.P. device. However, if you are creative with your C.A.M.P. device placement, you might be able to include both water and wood as resources in your camp. Note that you only need to cover about half of a ground resource with the green perimeter circle for that resource to be usable. Placement of water resources are a bit more finicky.
Location #9 — Billings Homestead (Forest)
This wood pile is located just up the road a little from the Silva Homestead pile. This pile is close to, but not part of the workshop. Like Silva Homestead, this one also requires creative placement of the C.A.M.P. device to be able to use this pile as a resource.
See the placement of the C.A.M.P. device below. Any closer to the pile and it turns red due to the workshop proximity.
Location #10 — Grafton Steel (Toxic Valley)
This wood pile is near Grafton Steel, but is on the north side. Similar to Point Pleasant, the fast travel point for Grafton Steel is on the south side. You’ll need to trek up the road to the point where the marker is. It’s just a little bit off the road, but you can still see the pile from the road.
Location #11 — Near Black Mountain Ordnance Works (Forest)
From the fast travel point at Black Mountain, travel down the road to the point you see. There’s a small gravel road that leads into an unmarked junkyard which looks like this…
At the back of this makeshift and unmarked junkyard resides a wood pile…
I didn’t scout this area carefully to see if there were any other resources present, such as a junk resource. You’ll need to visit to determine this. It looks like there might be a junk resource available off to the right as shown in the wider picture of this makeshift junkyard.
Location #12 — Alpine River Cabins (Forest)
Just above Alpine River Cabins there’s another wood pile. Seems like there’s a lot of these in the Forest area. Makes sense, though. It looks like this…
Location #13 — Mosstown (Mire)
Very near Mosstown, but just outside of it is a wood resource pile. This resource pile is usable in your camp even though it’s very close to Mosstown.
Location #14 — WV Lumber Co. (Forest)
This wood pile is so close to the water line, you can likely claim both water and this wood pile in your camp.
Location #15 — Groves Family Cabin (Forest)
This one is closer to Groves Family Cabin than Darling Sister’s Lab. The trouble with this map image is that when the Groves marker is selected, the text obscures the arrow. I selected the Darling Sister’s Lab marker to give you a better idea of the map location.
Location #16 — Miner’s Monument (Forest)
This wood pile is just across from Miner’s Monument.
Location #17 — Southern Belle Motel (Mire)
Next to the Southern Belle Motel is, you guessed it, a wood pile ripe for claiming in a camp. This one is directly next to water. With this one, you can definitely claim both water and the wood pile in your camp. You can probably even put up a bunch of water purifiers along side your wood extractor.
New Piles Update #2 — Cranberry Bog
There are apparently a number of wood piles strewn around the Cranberry Bog, but not close to roads. Some of these wood piles reside fairly close to various Firebase sites, but not always. Here are the four newest wood piles I’ve found. Thanks go to a game friend who knew about two of these piles and helped me locate them with markers near the sites. That also spurred me to traipse around the Cranberry Bog looking for the two others included.
This player also told me he was unable to place a wood extractor at the wood pile located near Drop Site V9 when he had his base there. I have tested this location by placing an extractor and have experienced no difficulties (see below). Please let me know in the comments if you experience any problems with any of these sites listed.
Location #18 — The Thorn (Cranberry Bog)
Not far from The Thorn (see marker) is another wood pile. Sometimes a settler is not there.
Location #19 — Bootlegger’s Shack (Cranberry Bog)
And another near a grove of Sundew Trees.
Location #20 — Drop Site V9 (Cranberry Bog)
A small trek north of Drop Site V9, you’ll find another wood pile. This one is far enough north that it shouldn’t be inside of a blast zone very often, if ever… unless it’s a newbie player who doesn’t know exactly where to nuke.
This is the wood pile I was told wouldn’t place an extractor by someone who had a camp here previously. I have tested this site and I was able to place down a wood resource extractor without any difficulties, like so…
Location #21 — Firebase LT (Cranberry Bog)
Halfway between Firebase LT and that fissure site, you’ll find another wood pile. It looks like so…
Location #22 — Sunrise Field #1 (Cranberry Bog)
This wood pile is the first in three wood piles located near Sunrise Field. You’ll need to take a close look at each marker location and correlate that with each image. Note that one of the locations that would seem natural to have a wood pile instead has a uranium deposit (see below). The third wood pile is farther away and in a different area than one might expect.
Location #23 — Sunrise Field #2 (Cranberry Bog)
This is the second wood pile located near Sunrise Field. It exists next to this small red shack.
Location #24 — Sunrise Field #3 (Cranberry Bog)
This third wood pile is located halfway between Sunrise Field and Sparse Sundew Grove. I’m connecting this one to Sunrise Field due to its close proximity.
Sunrise Field — Uranium Deposit (Cranberry Bog)
For completeness, I roamed to an area near Sunrise Field (to the right and below) where I thought another wood pile might be located. Instead of a wood pile, I see a uranium deposit. Here’s the location of this uranium deposit in case you’re curious.
The reason this uranium deposit is included here to keep you from wasting time roaming over to this area thinking there might be another wood pile there. There isn’t. It’s a uranium deposit.
For this update, I’ve finally found the location that I remember seeing months back and it’s actually in the Savage Divide! I originally thought this wood pile site was much closer to The Whitespring than it is. It’s actually very close to the Garrahan area of the Savage Divide right where it meets the Ash Heap. These wood piles, though, are considered in the Savage Divide.
Location #25 — Bastion Park (Savage Divide)
From Bastion Park, travel down the road and you’ll find this wood pile just off of the road near a semi truck with logs on the back.
At this location, you’ll see this semi truck with logs on the back right next to the wood pile.
Location #26 — Monongah Power SS MZ-03 (Savage Divide)
From site #25, trek just a little ways down the road and you’ll find this wood pile which is close to the substation fast travel point. This wood pile is the pile I thought was very close to The Whitespring. Instead, it’s much farther down near Monongah Power Substation MZ-03 and not far from the Garrahan Mining HQ. I was also surprised to find that there are actually a number of wood piles in close proximity in this area.
Location #27 —Â Garrahan Mining HQ (Savage Divide)
Even further down this same road near the Garrahan Mining Headquarters, you’ll find another wood pile to use. It looks like so…
This wood pile is located near a small unmarked village of houses.
Location #28 — Braxson’s Quality Medical Supplies (Mire)
This one is in The Mire. From Braxson’s Quality Medical Supplies (the icon looks like a factory), trek to the below location and you’ll find this wood pile…
Location #29 — Crimson Prospect (Cranberry Bog)
We’re back in the Cranberry Bog for yet another wood pile. Halfway between Crimson Prospect and the Ranger District Office, you’ll find another wood pile ready and waiting for a camp to be placed.
Legacy Removals and Wood Piles
As a result of Tuesday January 24th’s removal of Legacy weapons (aka Black Tuesday), I have made the decision to no longer search for any more wood piles. There are now 29 Wood Piles in this list, well enough to satisfy anyone who wishes to base their camp around one. While I was unable to find any of these wood piles in the Ash Heap, Toxic Valley or the vast majority of the Savage Divide, you’ll need to search in these areas yourself if you want your camp in a specific area not listed near a wood pile.
If you’re simply wanting a wood pile to base your camp around, there are plenty of sites listed in this article from which to choose. If you’re specifically wanting one in a region where none is listed above, I’ll leave it to you to go find one close.
My reasoning for closing this article at this time is that Fallout 76’s player base is actively under siege by Bethesda, which I further foresee many players leaving this game over the course of the next 30-90 days as a result. Without Legacy weapons, the game is likely to become “boring” and “no longer fun to play” by many. That reduction in players leaves fewer and fewer players playing Fallout 76 on all platforms. That further means that information articles like this one will see fewer and fewer searches from a dwindling set of players who need this information.
With the 29 sites already discovered above in combination with the likely significant reduction in player base, there’s no reason to continue searching. If Bethesda changes their stance on legacies or finds a way to entice a whole lot more players back into the game, then I may revive this article and continue to update it. As of now, this article is officially closed with the 29 sites listed. I am no longer actively searching out any more wood piles.
Ending Notes…
I haven’t tested placing extractors down on each of these wood piles in this list. Some of these locations may or may not allow for placement of an extractor. You’ll need to test this. The only test I have performed is to see whether it’s possible to place a C.A.M.P. device at or near the wood pile. Every wood pile in this list turns green when testing a C.A.M.P. device placement, but that test doesn’t guarantee that a wood extractor will place once a camp is established.
For map reference, the arrow marker not only denotes the location of the wood pile, the arrow’s direction also points directly towards that wood pile.
If you happen to locate a wood pile not listed or find that one of these wood piles above doesn’t work to extract, please leave a comment below. If you find a pile that is missing from this list, please tell me where it is located is in a comment below and I’ll credit you for having found it. Even though this article is closed for updates, I am still actively accepting comments from people who may find a wood pile not in the above list. You will be duly credited for having found any wood pile not in this list.
Enjoy and happy camping!
âŠī¸
Rant: Fallout 76 Event — Invaders from Beyond
On the close of the Fasnacht event, not a week later Bethesda launches Invaders from Beyond, a new limited time “seasonal” Fallout 76 event. Let’s explore.
Invaders from Beyond
Since the inception of Fallout 76 (and indeed, the Fallout franchise), hints at aliens have been littered throughout the lore. However, Bethesda has now taken the leap and created a full fledged event out of aliens. Too bad they released this just a month or so after the alien invasion in Grand Theft Auto. This one feels like Bethesda is ripping off Rockstar.
The event begins with a round typical saucer ship hovering overhead. The aliens are typical and what you might typically expect when you think of an alien, but a bit more menacing looking with jagged teeth. There are some in power armor. There are also robotic floating drones, for whatever reason.
Fallout 76 has hinted at the presence of aliens with the inclusion of the Alien Blaster weapon since the launch of the game. This weapon could be found in Toxic Valley in a sunken and broken safe, along with a few other items and a key since day one of the game. This weapon, unfortunately, has always been more of a joke than useful. In fact, it still is. Additionally, while a small amount of AB rounds of ammo have been available in the game, it could never be crafted. Thus, you had to get the plan to convert the Alien Blaster to use Fusion Cells, which could be crafted.
Unfortunately, the conversion to using Fusion Cells with the Alien Blaster heavily nerfs the damage output of this pistol, making it effectively worthless for in-game use. Even with the AB rounds, it’s not that powerful.
With the introduction of the Invaders from Beyond event, the Alien Blaster Pistol and the new Alien Disintegrator Rifle plans now drop as potential loot from this event. In addition, not only can the weapon plans drop, so to do the mod plans that go with them adding cryo or poison damage to the each gun’s energy damage, in addition to some other limited mods.
Additionally, there are a number of CAMP decoration plans which can drop, such as Alien Autopsy Bed, Alien and Human Tubes, an Asteroid and an Alien Stashbox. Because of the new Alien Disintegrator addition, Bethesda has unlocked crafting of AB ammo, which works in both the Alien Blaster and the Alien Disintegrator.
Unfortunately, Bethesda forgot to unlock AB round creation in the CAMP ArmCo Ammo appliance and supplying AB rounds in the Ammo Converter appliance. This is currently Bethesda’s half-assed method of operation. Unlock something new in one place, like the Tinker’s bench, but then forget all about all of the other places where it also needs to be supported.
Bethesda did this same shtick with Fallout 1st members. Sure, Bethesda gives us an infinite Scrapbox with Fallout 1st, but then conveniently forgets to support Fallout 1st members at train stations by adding Scrapboxes there. Fallout 1st members should be considered “premium” players. First members are actively paying monthly for that service. Yet, Bethesda still treats Fallout 1st members as second class players, giving priority to non-1st players. It makes zero sense. I digress.
Locations for the Event
This event, unlike Fasnacht which spawns only in Helvetia, spawns in a number of different locations on the map. The multiple event location is both a good and bad thing.
The good thing is that it prevents players from nuking the area in advance of the event. Though, they could wait and nuke the location immediately after the event starts. It’s possible, though, that the event disallows nuking while active. I haven’t tried nuking the area with the event active to find out.
The bad thing is that one of the locations entirely sucks when playing this event.
The event locations are as follows:
- Dyer Chemical (The Mire)
- Charleston (Forest)
- Sparse Sundew Grove (Cranberry Bog)
- Garrahan Mining HQ / Garrahan Estate (Ash Heap)
- Monongah (Savage Divide)
- Wavy Willard’s (Toxic Valley)
Couldn’t they have chosen some better locations? These locations really do suck overall.
The event claims to be “Easy”, but that is all dependent on the player and the location where it spawns. It also depends on your character’s build. For example, Sparse Sundew Grove is the most difficult location, but only because the plants are like rocks and immovable. What I mean is that, unlike most plants in most games (and in real life) which move out of the way when you intend to shove past, you know like plants actually do, these plants do not move. The game offers no physics on these plants at all, preventing the plant from moving should you run into them. They become like brick walls that block movement. This makes the event much more difficult than it should be.
Additionally, unlike Helvetia where the Scorched are temporarily removed to make way for the event, these event locations are not cleared of enemies, requiring players to clear the entire area of the existing enemies prior to starting the event. Way to go, Bethesda. You had one job.
Grenade Drops
This event is narrated by “Homer Saperstein” and the event has 3 “Brainwave Siphons” which must be destroyed. To do this, you must kill all of the aliens in each wave (30), then kill the bosses that appear for each siphon. The final siphon boss is a 3 star legendary which drops random legendary loot, usually worthless one-star crap.
By the second siphon, the overhead alien ship changes tactics and begins dropping grenades, denoted by a red streak. The grenades aren’t randomly dropped. Oh, no no no. The game explicitly targets gamer positions, sometimes multiple times in a row. Sometimes even without warning. Just, boom and if you’re Bloodied, you’re dead. No warning.
Let’s talk about the worst location for these grenade drops. Because Sundew Grove plants don’t move with physics, if you get pinned by one of the plants, unable to move, the grenade will hit you. In open areas like Dyer Chemical or Garrahan, there’s no problem moving away. With these stupid plants, it can make player movement impossible. Even simple movement like jumping or running can see the player blocked by a plant. It’s a pain in the ass. The lack of plant physics makes this event 3 times harder in this grove than it is in other open area locations. Simply even walking through the plants is a pain in the ass.
Why is all of this important? It’s important because Bethesda has changed how (and where) characters respawn. No longer do you spawn near where you fell. No. Now you respawn sometimes so far away you’re outside of the event area. You have to spend at least 30 seconds running at full speed to get back to where you were. By that time you reach that location, it’s too late to participate because other players have already killed everything and the event is over. This respawn mechanic fucking sucks. So too do these fucking grenades.
Crap Event for Bloodied Build
Here’s where things get exceedingly dicey when you’re running a bloodied build. This event explicitly targets bloodied players, both in dropping grenades on them and in heavily nerfing bloodied weapons against the aliens at the same time. Oh, it gets so much worse. Because a bloodied build must rely on ranged weapons, implicitly requiring VATS, to effectively make the bloodied build actually work, Bethesda heavily nerfs VATS against the Aliens. Where you can stand a car length away from any other enemy in the game and see a 95% VATS hit chance, Aliens show 72% or less. Way less if you’re a house distance away or more.
Bethesda has explicitly targeted bloodied builds to make this event much more difficult for no added benefit. I also find that alien grenades target my bloodied character way more frequently than other players.
The “Brainwave Siphons” also aren’t siphons. What they are is big ass grenades. When they go off, they wipe away HP instantly. If you’re running a bloodied build, being anywhere near a siphon will instantly kill you when it pulses. Homer says that the siphons may “sting” a bit. It’s way more than a “sting” if you’re running a bloodied build. However, it is simple enough to stay far away from the siphons. The grenades, on the other hand are frustrating as hell for all the reasons I discuss above (and below).
Sneak Card
This event negates the Sneak perk card entirely specifically against alien grenade drops. The point in the Sneak card is that if you’re [ CAUTION ] or [ HIDDEN ], then nothing should know you’re there. Yet, the grenades ALWAYS target my character directly even when [ HIDDEN ]. The red warning indicator doesn’t land in front of my character or next to my character. It always lands directly ON my character. Sneak should protect you from grenades if you’re seeing [ CAUTION ] or [ HIDDEN ]. Yet, many of these crap Bethesda events entirely disable Sneak from functioning. This Sneak card bullshit started during the first Daily Ops event when Super Mutants had stealth ability. That Daily Ops bullshit sneak card problem is the reason I don’t play Daily Ops at all ever. It seems Bethesda intentionally keeps bypassing Perk cards willy nilly with these new game modes. We spend our time tweaking our character build and combat strategies and Bethesda spends their time building game modes that bypass it all.
What’s the point in buying into this perk card system (or, indeed, this game at all) if you don’t intend to use it as it was built? Why even have a Sneak card if you don’t intend to honor it ALL of the time? Or, do you Bethesda guys sit in a room when designing and say, “Fuck the Sneak card users. Let’s target them anyway.” ??
Invaders from Beyond is a Technical Failure
This event shows everything wrong with Bethesda in one single event. Not only does the event unfairly target certain players types, it does so with intentional vengeance. Yes, I said intentional. Basically, the event intentionally penalizes bloodied builds for being bloodied. Not just from the player health perspective, but reducing damage output from bloodied weapons to be mere pin pricks on the aliens, reducing VATS to being entirely useless and by negating perks from perk cards. Literally, targeting the torso (the most basic of VATS hits) misses at least 50% of the time even when VATS shows 95% chance). Missing 50% of the time is not a 95% chance.
While other non-bloodied builds can shred aliens almost instantly, bloodied characters must take 6-10 (or more) shots to kill a single alien. It’s ridiculous. Bloodied weapons that shred HP on robots, Liberators, Scorched, animals and even Super Mutants can’t kill one tiny alien in one or two shots? It doesn’t make any sense and it’s entirely fucked up. Because it makes no sense, it means Bethesda has intentionally targeted Bloodied build characters against this event unfairly, though this issue probably also affects other player builds to a lesser degree.
And yes, it even gets worse. The grenade drops are timed perfectly to interfere with the event. Right when the boss arrives, within 5-10 seconds, a barrage of grenades fall, typically targeting my player. This means I have to stop what I’m doing, move far away to avoid grenade damage, which means I can’t even shoot at the boss (or at anything). Typically, that allows other players to shred the HP of the boss with their OP weapons while I’m trying to avoid a stupid grenade.
Once the boss is down, within 5-10 seconds of that and right after Homer suggests we start shooting the siphon to destroy it, another huge barrage of grenades fall from the sky again targeting my character. This means I have to move again to someplace else, preventing me from, you know, actually shooting the siphon.
This event should not be about avoiding damage from fucking grenades! It’s about the combat against the aliens. Why the hell should I invest time in an event when the only thing I’m doing is avoiding fucking grenades? Grenades that I shouldn’t even be avoiding because my Sneak 3 card is active and my screen says [ HIDDEN ]. If I’m hidden, then those grenades can’t find me. Capeesh, Bethesda? That the grenades can and do find me with the Sneak card active is fucking insane.
“Don’t play Bloodied”
I can hear some players exclaim. To that I say, “Fuck Off!” It took me months to get my character tweaked to be a bloodied character. I can’t just turn it off overnight and choose an entirely different play style. That means not just redoing my character’s stats and SPECIAL, that means changing crap tons of things about my character including carry weight, finding entirely different weapons and armor and completely rearranging my perk card stack to accommodate that new build. I don’t tell you how to run your character, don’t tell me how to run mine. So, “Fuck Off”.
To Bethesda and this event I also say, “Fuck Off”. Do you really want us to play this game or not? Why must you keep rewriting the game’s established rules arbitrarily for each of these events? If my gun does a specific and expected level of damage using VATS, then stick with that on ALL enemy types. These aliens aren’t special. In fact, they’re weaker than even a Ghoul. So why the hell are my weapons so fucking nerfed during this event?
Environmental Perks
Here’s something that’s ongoing with the game, but is now exacerbated by this event. When your character picks up any environmental perk, such as Kindred Spirit, Strength, Agility, Luck or Endurance perks via camp items like the exercise bike, the weight bench, the fortune teller or similar, Bethesda has not only reduced damage resistance while these perks are active, but allows enemies to unfairly target your character.
It’s even worse, though. It seems the game has seemingly put a bright red halo around the character alerting every enemy in the game of the character’s presence while carrying these perks. It also seems that the more of these you stack, the brighter that halo becomes. Not only is your damage resistance drastically reduced by carrying these perks, the game allows enemies to find and target your position in an attempt to instantly kill you. Carrying these perks even seems to give the enemies better accuracy. Worse, it seems that this “halo” allows enemies to teleport instantly to your position and silently attack from behind. If you’ve been wondering what the hell is going on with this game, well this is it!
Again, it’s another case of Bethesda intentionally, yet unfairly targeting players who are using standard in-game features, like a bloodied build and bloodied weapons AND environmental perks.
The problem with these environmental perks is that they’re instantly wiped away upon death and respawn. It’s like someone at Bethesda doesn’t want you to actually use or carry these perks. Why the fuck did you include them in the game if you didn’t want us to use them? Worse, why the hell are you penalizing us when we do use them?
Literally, one swipe from a ghoul of any level can kill my character instantly with ANY environmental perk active. Without these perks, a swipe with my character carrying the same exact amount of HP only does half the damage and my character remains alive. I’ve tested this. Why the hell did Bethesda reduce damage resistance while carrying these perks? I don’t know, but it’s entirely facetious.
Bethesda also knows these perks disappear after a character death. Why paint a huge fucking target on me when I carry them? That’s not cool at all and it’s entirely unbalanced and unfair gameplay… which is entirely what Fallout 76 has devolved into.
Why Intentional?
Because of the duping scandal in the game’s early life, Bethesda has been itching to take intentional vengeance against ALL players by specifically and unfairly targeting players choosing to play using officially supported builds and taking advantage of official environmental perks.
Worse, it seems that Bethesda is now targeting not only players carrying environmental perks, but those also playing using a bloodied build. How do I know this? Because whenever I kill legendary enemies, the chances of a bloodied weapon drop have drastically increased. Just like the game knows that I’m predominantly using a .45 ammo weapon and drops this exact kind of ammo with every enemy’s loot, the game knows I’m playing using a bloodied build and using a bloodied weapon. Thus, the chances of receiving a bloodied drop is drastically higher.
The game is now unfairly targeting bloodied build players to not only instantly kill them as often as possible, the devs are also intentionally nerfing damage output and screwing with VATS percentages to reduce the frequency of hits and damage output. Again, I call bullshit on this.
Bethesda, if you don’t want us playing a bloodied build, then remove all of these fucking bloodied weapons and all perk cards enabling this build. Simply remove it. Don’t play internal games to fuck us over in an attempt to deter us from using this build, simply TAKE IT OUT entirely. If you don’t want us playing this build, then take it out! Don’t silently fuck us over because we have chosen to use this build.
Losing Perks after Death
This one chaps me so hard. Oh no, can’t lose that stupid disease after death and respawn, but yes, we’ll wipe away all of those environmental perks and force you to go get them all again. What a fuck job, Bethesda. Even Homer’s Aid remains after death and respawn, which is the same fucking thing as an environmental perk. Oh sure, that one can remain, but not Kindred Spirit. Not the SPECIAL perks. Oh no. Gotta fuck us over, but keep only the things you think we should keep.
This game is completely inconsistent and ridiculous. If one perk can remain, then they all can. If one can’t remain, then they ALL must be wiped away. That’s what consistent means. Having these exceptions is bullshit.
Crashing
The one last important thing I almost forgot to include is crashing. The game client now officially crashes just as often as the Beta in 2018. Probably more often. Bethesda had been working towards some semblance of stability in the game client, but it seems that has all been tossed out of the window. Now the game crashes randomly after having played the event.
I’m playing on a PS4, so I guess Bethesda has given up any thought of trying to keep this game playable on the “last gen” consoles. If you’re going to go so far as to abandon all stability for the game, then just pull it from the platform entirely. Why support a “last gen” platform when the game literally crashes at the drop of a hat?
Crashing was bad during Fasnacht, but is officially twice as bad with Invaders from Beyond. And note, I’m no longer reporting crashes on my PS4. They never fix the bugs anyway. So, why bother reporting them? If they can’t be bothered to fix bugs, I can’t be bothered to report them. Seems only fair.
Rating
Overall, I give this event 1 star out of 5. Not only is the event insanely predictable and stupid easy once you know what to do, the fact that Bethesda has chosen to play fuck games with certain types of player builds makes this event (and this game) completely worthless. More than this, the loot drops are effectively junk. The best items are the CAMP decorations. The weapons are worthless.
The reason for the 1 star and not 0 is that the event is playable and it does drop loot. You can also choose to stand at the edge of the event border, do nothing and collect loot from the event and not participate. Though, I expect Bethesda will nerf this too. At some point, events may require participation (i.e. killing at least one enemy) to get dropped loot out of the event. I wouldn’t mind this change as it prevents players from idling while farming events for loot.
The lowered rating is also because the alien grenades are entirely pointless and they intentionally bypass the Sneak card. Bloodied weapons are nerfed all to hell and so is VATS making the event frustrating and pointless for no real benefit. So now, there are other builds that are way overpowered. It used to be Bloodied builds that were, but Bethesda has seen to it that anyone running a bloodied build is now so weak it’s pointless. But, I’ve seen other non-bloodied builds that can shred the HP of the final Legendary enemy in seconds. In fact, this same build can shred the HP of any of the alien enemies in seconds.
So, what was the point in screwing with bloodied builds here, Bethesda? You simply pushed the problem off to other overpowered builds. Now, those overpowered builds are the ones using machine gun weapons or shotguns. Are you going to go and nerf those builds and weapons, too?
If you plan on nerfing every single build in the game, then why even run Fallout 76 as a game? The point in this game is to build out high powered characters. That’s the reward for reaching the endgame. That’s why we as gamers play your games. That’s why we spend time getting our characters to level 400 or 500 or 1000 because we want to have an overpowered build.
By picking these builds out and nerfing the hell out of each and every build (because some random game player complains), you’re simply chasing more and more gamers away. Leave the game the fuck alone. If you don’t want players building overpowered characters, then just shut the game down. Don’t fuck with nerfing every single weapon, armor and build in the game. SHUT IT DOWN. There’s no point in running a Fallout game if players aren’t rewarded for reaching the endgame and reaching a high level.
Instead, it seems we’re expected to live with level 1 underpowered weapons because you want to fuck us over with every single release and every single event type. Stop screwing with us. If you can’t do that, then just shut the whole fucking thing down. There’s no reason to keep the game system alive if all you want is for every player to play with level 1 powered weapons against level 100 enemies.
âŠī¸
Fallout 76: A Guide to a Bloodied Build
It seems a lot of people don’t really understand how to manage a Bloodied character build in Fallout 76. It’s not terribly hard once you understand the details. Let’s explore.
[UPDATE: 3/17/2022] “Invaders from Beyond” brought with it a new alien event, but also nerfed VATS critical shots. VATS critical shots formerly never missed. This “never miss” critical made sense. It takes about 5-10 standard shots to fill the critical bar, affording one critical shot about every 5-10 shots, a few less if you have VATS critical luck cards on. VATS criticals are already heavily nerfed from this inability to use VATS crits frequently. Yet, with this latest update, VATS critical shots now miss with the same frequency and sometimes more often than standard VATS shots. If you rely on VATS critical shots, expect your gun to miss often, wasting your precious VATS critical bar. This issue now builds upon my previous update just below.
With all of these nerfs to VATS, Bethesda is slowly and silently gutting VATS. In fact, hip-fire shots are way now more useful in this game than VATS… which is the wrong direction for Fallout. This forces people to build “tank” builds rather than sneaky snipers. Sneaky sniper builds have almost always been the strongest builds in Fallout, yet Bethesda devs have taken it upon themselves to effectively nerf the sneaky sniper to offer half or less the damage of a “tank” build. Bethesda is only serving to chase off more and more of its core gamers.
While this bug isn’t specific to a Bloodied build, it directly affects it. VATS has recently been updated to be far less accurate. In a recent change to Fallout 76, Bethesda has made an update (one of many) that drastically reduces the accuracy of shots made through VATS. Originally, VATS was designed as a sure shot method of fire. Meaning, VATS was intended as a form of aim assist that simply just worked and landed shots every time. No longer. Since the game’s launch, Bethesda has seen the need to muck about with the VATS system and has broken it many times since 2018. With some weapons, VATS is still entirely broken.
In fact, with the Flamer, VATS is still fully broken. Using hip-fire shots at close range, the flamer weapon is 100% accurate. Using VATS at that same close range, the Flamer is 0% accurate (missing the target completely) even though the flame has clearly engulfed the enemy. This is the kind of broken that I describe.
With the Lever Action Rifle, a rifle known to have high accuracy levels even at great distances, Bethesda has decided to screw with VATS again. While you can sniper scope shots with 100% accuracy, performing the same shot with VATS offers maybe a 10-40% chance of a hit. That’s a drastic reduction in accuracy for the Lever Action using VATS. It gets worse.
The change that Bethesda recently made is that the accuracy of the shot is directly related to the position of the head / body part (facing towards you or away from you). It doesn’t matter whether the body part is obscured, it matters the position in space. This change in accuracy is questionable. A head sticking out there is just as accessible facing towards as it is away. Yet, VATS now reflects a drastic reduction in accuracy under this condition. Facing towards, the accuracy shows 95%. Facing away, the head shot shows an accuracy of as low as 40-60%. Because the NPC is constantly moving, this VATS value is recalculated in microseconds. Meaning, what you see on the screen isn’t the accuracy that applies when you fire. Thus, you can see miss-miss-miss-miss with each bullet striking above or to the side or somewhere else, but not hitting the target at all.
What this translates into within Fallout 76 is a lot of wasted ammo and missed shots. It’s also exceedingly frustrating that even facing forward, shots can now literally miss multiple times in a row. I’m standing within the rifle’s distance of an enemy. I could bash them as close as they are, yet VATS misses multiple times in a row at a distance that shows a 95% hit chance. It’s also frustrating and annoying that it’s recently come down to the fact that the creature can now land a blow AFTER I’ve shot them and killed them.
However, that’s an entirely separate and long standing bug from VATS. Some creatures and robots can now land melee blows from yards away. For example, I hear the melee swatting noise from a Mr. Handy, yet the closest one is at least 10 yards away. I’ve also had this bug show with both Mutant Hounds and Liberators. Worse, enemies are now allowed to instantly warp to your position and land blows. There is literally no mechanism given to the player to avoid enemy teleportation. Typically, when enemies warp, they appear outside of the play field view, so you have no idea a creature has warped behind you. In fact, there’s no sound when it occurs. Yet, swat-swat-swat forcing you to turn around.
Bethesda has literally found ways to cheat against the player in Fallout 76. If the combat in Fallout 4 was fair, Fallout 76 now offers combat that’s anything but fair.
[UPDATED: 10/30/2021] As of early Sept. 2021, Bethesda has rolled an update to Fallout 76 that disabled interaction and collection of Toxic Goo at West Tek Research Center. However, as of October 29th, this issue has now been resolved and Toxic Goo is now, once again, collectible from the vat pools.
New Legendary Effects
In a previous update (but not necessarily the one above), Bethesda introduced a number of new legendary effects into the game (along with the ability to now roll legendary effects directly onto armor and weapons and now even power armor). These new legendary effects include Aristocrat’s, Gourmand’s and Juggernaut’s. Why is this important? Because these are brand new effects, it seems that Bethesda’s devs have given these effects higher priority over older effects, making these legendary effects more likely to drop as loot than the older effects.
This means that you’ll need to read the below knowing that when I said, “rare” in relation to Bloodied, it’s now even more rare and less likely to get a Bloodied weapon as a loot drop because of these new “higher priority” effects. The same goes for Unyielding armor, which was a rare roll anyway, but now it’s way more rare… especially on power armor pieces. The plus is that legendary enemies are dropping crap tons of power armor legendary pieces, mostly one star. They’re heavy, yes, but legendary PA pieces also offer more Scrip per piece when sold than standard legendary armor.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming….
Bloodied Weapons
There are many different types of legendary weapons and armor in Fallout 76, but none really more rare than Bloodied weapons. In fact, there are a number of relatively rare spawning legendary items in the game including Unyielding Armor and Bloodied weapons. Just visit Purveyor Murmrgh at the Rusty Pick and roll your chances to find out. You’ll find that it’s quite rare to roll a Bloodied weapon or get a piece of Unyielding armor. The most common armor received from the Purveyor are Assassin’s, Bolstering and Zealot’s, with the most common ranged weapons being the Zealot’s Gatling Laser and Zealot’s Laser Pistol.
What exactly is a Bloodied weapon? This legendary weapon effect increases damage of the weapon as the player’s health decreases. To get the most out of this legendary weapon effect, you must keep your character’s health as low as possible. Unfortunately, Fallout 76’s developers didn’t offer the player a way to manage the character’s health directly. Instead, the player must find substances in the world to keep the player’s health low.
Combat?
One might initially think that combat is the way to do this, but no. Well, it is one way, but it’s not the most optimal way. There are easier ways to do this, but it will take just a little effort to find the necessary items to manage a low-health character situation.
Toxic Goo
âŦī¸ See update note above. âŦī¸ There are few items within Fallout 76 that confer a substantial amount of health reduction on the player. One of these mechanisms is radiation. As radiation increases, health points (HP) decrease. By keeping radiation of the character high, the HP always remains low no matter what foods or medicines are consumed. In fact, this game mechanic is really the only mechanic that functionally works to keep your character’s health at a specified level. By keeping rads high and health low, you can take advantage of both of these conditions using different Perk cards.
One foodstuff item that can impart a boatload of radiation onto the player rapidly is Toxic Goo. This consumable is found primarily at one location in Fallout 76. That location is WestTek Research Center in the Savage Divide. This consumable adds 125 radiation points per vial consumed (more if you suffer from Radworms). It also does it even with the Lead Belly card in place, which means you can leave the Lead Belly card on while still consuming and taking 125 rads per vial. It takes about 3-5 vials (depending on your HP bar length), to get HP under 60. Don’t take too much or else your character will die.
As a side note, I’ve recently found that having the Aquaboy/Aquagirl card on prevents Toxic Goo from working. I don’t quite understand why. The Aquaboy card has nothing to do with consuming food items at all. In fact, drinking dirty water imparts radiation damage even with Aquaboy on. Why this perk card prevents Toxic Goo from working is anyone’s guess. My guess is yet another Bethesda bug. Bottom line is, always remove the Aquaboy / Aquagirl card when needing to consume Toxic Goo.
To obtain Toxic Goo, head to the WestTek Research Center (not far from Foundation), which houses a lot of super mutants. You’ll want to enter through the back door of the building. Going in through the front is pointless unless you really like mowing down lots of super mutants to get to the large cylindrical vats of goo in the back. If you enter through the rear of the building, the vats are right there. On the outside of the rear of the building, there are about 5 super mutants, a turret and a dog. Once inside, you only have to clear out one or two dogs and about 5 super mutants to get to the vats. If you have the Sneak card, you might even be able to get away with only one or two kills and then sneak your way up to the vat and grab a bunch of goo and fast travel out of there.
You’re also going to need the perk card Traveling Pharmacy or the backpack equivalent perk to reduce the weight of aid items. This will reduce Toxic Goo weight so you can carry a bunch with you. I usually stock up and carry about 150 of them at a time. When I get down to about 20, I head over and fill up again.
Under 60 HP?
Keeping your character’s health under 60 is the magic number for a Bloodied build. Over 60 and you don’t reap the rewards of a Bloodied weapon or Unyielding armor. Though, you can still reduce your health more and gain a few more damage points. This number exists for several reasons. A Bloodied build is a bit more complicated than simply drinking Toxic Goo and grabbing a Bloodied Gatling Gun. While that will work, you’ll want to also outfit your character with some damage and radiation resistance to avoid mucking with this build. This number is also optimal for keeping most creatures from one-shotting you instantly. Though, recently, Bethesda has given a major buff to too many enemies in the game and too many enemies can one-shot your player, regardless of either’s level, depending on their attack method.
Armoring up for a Bloodied Build
Note, there is no Bloodied legendary effect on armor. This effect only exists for weapons. There are several armor effects which work well with a Bloodied build, including Unyielding and Bolstering armor. Sentinel armor formerly existed in Fallout 76, but was removed and replaced with a crappy equivalent.
Sentinel armor formerly afforded 100% protection while standing still (effectively god mode armor), but this legendary armor effect was removed from the game. Sentinel armor was a fan favorite for a Bloodied build for the first 12 months of the game’s existence until Bethesda did away with Sentinel as a primary effect. Bethesda’s developers replaced and updated a tertiary Sentinel effect equivalent, which is literally worthless (75% chance to reduce damage by 15% while standing still). Not only does it reduce damage resistance down to a max of 15%, it will only offer that protection 75% of the time… which with Fallout 76’s developer math will actually occur less than 10% of the time. Worse, you won’t even know if the effect is working or not. There’s no notification to the player if the legendary armor’s effect has actually worked. Worthless.
Unyielding and Bolstering are the armor legendary effects of choice for a Bloodied build. These effects operate 100% of the time as you would expect of any legendary effect. How can you call something a legendary effect when it only works no more than 75% of the time? Why even add something that crappy to the game? Simply just get rid of it from the game entirely. I digress.
Unyielding works not only by having damage resistance (limited to the armor piece worn), but by increasing all SPECIAL stats (except Endurance) by up to +3 for each piece of armor worn. This means that you can gain up to +15 to every SPECIAL stat if you wear a full set of Unyielding (two arms, two legs and chest piece). Why is this important? Because you’ll get a permanent +15 buff to strength, perception, charisma, intelligence, agility and luck so long as you maintain low health. You can raise up Endurance in other ways, but not with Unyielding armor. If you happen to find 5 pieces of Unyielding Marine armor, you can really get your damage resistance up there.
Bolstering armor, on the other hand, doesn’t buff any SPECIAL stats, but it does increase damage resistance the lower your health. By keeping your health low, whatever armor type you are wearing will see a buff to damage resistance and hopefully keep your character alive even up against large foes. In this case, you won’t necessarily need to wear Marine armor to get a higher amount of damage resistance. Though, wearing Bolstering Marine armor wouldn’t hurt.
Personally, I prefer Unyielding armor because of the +15 extra charisma points means I don’t need to worry about putting on the Hard Bargain card to get the best buy and sell prices at vendors. Adding +15 to luck also means better drops at the end of quests and from dead enemies, especially from enemies like the Scorchbest Queen. Unfortunately, any extra points cannot be used to place more perk cards on the stack. Only applying a Legendary SPECIAL card and ranking this card up will afford extra points for card use, but that means you’ll need your character to be at least level 200 to have enough spare slots and enough perk coins to spend. As for armor itself, mix and match Bolstering and Unyielding in whatever proportions work best for your character.
Damage Resistance
Because a Bloodied build requires keeping health low, that means your character is constantly vulnerable to certain types of attacks, like Suicider Super Mutants whose mini nuke can easily kill your character in one hit. Additionally, being hit by the Scorchbeast Queen or Wendigo Colossus or even just a plain old Wendigo can probably take your character out with one hit. For this reason, Bloodied builds will want to combine with Sneak and other sneaky features to remain hidden while attacking. Not only does this keep you at distance from your enemies, it affords you 2x or more bonus damage from attacking while hidden.
Brahmin Milk
One trick to maintaining to a Bloodied build at just the right amount of health is Brahmin Milk. Before this consumable came along, there was no way to tweak your health in small amounts easily. This consumable is the only foodstuff in the game that not only increases health, it simultaneously removes a small amount of radiation. This means you can nudge your health up by a tiny amount while reducing rads. I believe each Brahmin Milk adds about 8 HP and removes an equivalent amount of radiation. Best of all, drinking Brahmin Milk has no chance of removing mutations from your character. This means you can combine Toxic Goo and Brahmin Milk even with characters below 30 and run a Bloodied build.
Unlike Radaway which affords a chance to remove a mutation without having a maxed Starched Genes card in place, drinking Brahmin Milk doesn’t do this. Though, without a maxed Starched Genes card, you can still gain more mutations.
This next part is where wearing Unyielding armor becomes a major benefit. Milking a Brahmin is entirely dependent on your character’s luck. With the +15 buff to luck while wearing Unyielding armor, you are guaranteed to get at least one milk every time. Typically, you’ll get 3 or more. Wearing Unyielding armor, I have occasionally received 5 milks from all 9 of the Brahmin in Flatwood… that’s 45 milks! With the additional 3 Brahmins now at the Wayward, that adds a possibility of 15 more milks for a possible total of 60.
If you’re willing to adventure a little, both Big Bend East and West tunnel entrances, the very long tunnel which links the Ash Heap to the Cranberry Bog, have Brahmin which can be milked: two Brahmin on one side, three on the other, adding a possible 25 milks. Between all of these locations, I pick up no less than 30 milks, and with Unyielding + Low Health, there’s zero chance of seeing that kicking behavior from the Brahmin, that you failed to milk it.
To carry this much milk around, you’ll need to have the Good with Salt perk card. This card reduces food spoilage by 90%. This means you can carry around a lot of Brahmin milk for a long time, though Toxic Goo doesn’t expire.
Note that Chally’s milk is special and not the same as standard Brahmin milk. If you run into Grahm, you can milk Chally, but it has special benefits. Recently, I’ve recently also run into a number of wandering caravans with multiple Brahmin which can also be milked, but these are random encounters.
If you’re really wanting even more milk, assuming you haven’t found enough already, you can start the Riding Shotgun event at the East side of the Big Bend tunnel, by talking to Vinny Costa. This event spawns 2 Brahmin which can be milked, but you’ll have to enter the tunnel to milk them. Of course, you can always server hop and usually get more milk each time from each location listed above. If you have Fallout 1st, you can load into that server and collect even more.
Finally, it’s worth noting that even with the Good With Salt perk card, Brahmin milk spoils rapidly. It’s one of the fastest spoiling foods in the game. Don’t rely on using a fridge or a fridge backpack mod, which only reduces spoilage by 50%. Instead, you’ll need to rely on a maxed out Good With Salt card (90% reduction of spoilage) to maximally slow spoilage of Brahmin Milk and offer the longest carry time.
Other things to do with Brahmin Milk
One recipe that Brahmin milk is useful for is Pepperoni Rolls. These rolls confer 30 carry weight for ~30 minutes when consumed. You can purchase this recipe from Molly at The Crater. You’ll need Gulper Innards x2, Pepper x2, Brahmin Milk x2, Razorgrain x2 and Wood x1 to craft. Pepper may seem a difficult ingredient to find, but check every kitchen, diner or restaurant you happen upon. You’ll usually find at least one pepper at each of these locations. You can amass a lot of pepper quickly. Gulper Innards can be had at Gulper Lagoon and from two gulpers near Crevasse Dam in the water. Be sure to use Butcher’s Bounty to get the most innards possible.
This recipe is an excellent way to use up Brahmin milk before it spoils.
Perk Cards
As mentioned above, there are a number of perk cards you’ll want to consider while keeping rads high and health low.
Low Health + Unyielding:
- (I) Nerd Rage — While below 20% Health, gain 40 Damage Resist, 20% damage and 15% AP regen (3 star)
- (A) Dead Man Sprinting — Sprint 20% faster at increased AP cost when your health is below 50% (3 star)
- (L) Serendipity — While below 35% health, gain a 45% chance to avoid damage (3 star)
- (E) Lifegiver — Gain a total of +45 to your maximum Health. (4 star)
- (L) Last Laugh — You drop a live grenade from your inventory when you die. (1 star)
- (A) Evasive — Each AGI point adds +3 Damage and Energy Resist (Max 45). [No Power Armor] (3 star)
High Radiation:
- (E) Radicool — The greater your rads, the greater your strength! (+5 Max) (1 star)
- (E) Ghoulish — Radiation now regenerates even more of your lost Health! (3 star) (only somewhat effective)
More Damage:
- (A) Adrenaline
- (I) Nerd Rage
- (P) Rifle, (A) Pistol, (S) Melee, (S) Heavy Gun and/or (S) Shotgun damage multiplier cards
- (L) Better Criticals
- (L) Bloody Mess
- (I) Demolition Expert
- (C) Tenderizer
Damage Evasion:
- (E) Rad Resistant — +40 Radiation Resistance (4 star)
- (E) Nocturnal Fortitude — Gain +40 to Max Health between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m (2 star)
- (E) Ironclad — Gain 50 Damage and Energy Resistance while not wearing Power Armor (5 star)
- (E) Fireproof — Take 45% less damage from explosions and flame attacks (3 star)
Sneaky + Bloodied + Unyielding:
- (A) Sneak — You are 75% harder to detect while sneaking.
- (A) Covert Operative or (A) Ninja — Ranged or Melee sneak attacks do 2.5x normal damage (3 star)
- With Unyielding, take advantage of ALL luck cards to gain better chances to repair armor, weapons, better VATS chances and better critical damage. Too many Luck cards to list here, but take advantage when wearing Unyielding.
Cards and Armor to avoid:
- (A) Born Survivor — Falling below 40% health will automatically use a Stimpak, once every 20s. (wastes Stimpaks)
- (E) Sun Kissed — Slowly / Quickly regen radiation damage between the hours of 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. (ensure teammates DO NOT share this one).
- (Legendary Perk Card) What Rads? — X Rad Resist, restore X Rads per second. (like Sun Kissed, avoid)
- (Legendary Armor) Life Saving armor — This armor, like its sister card Born Survivor above, wastes Stimpaks.
What are some other useful legendary armor effects?
Of course, there are other useful legendary armor effects, but none more useful to a low health, high rads build than Bolstering or Unyielding. These are the two best primary effects to wear. However, if you wish combine your Bloodied build with the Chameleon mutation, then you can’t use Bolstering or Unyielding and still have the Chameleon mutation work. To have Chameleon work, the only armor that’s useful to wear is Weightless. In fact, the Chameleon mutation requires that you are limited to Weightless armor if you wish to combine a Bloodied character with a functional Chameleon mutation AND still have functional armor.
Other secondary effects that are useful to a Bloodied + Chameleon (and, in general, a sneaky Bloodied sniper) is the “Increases action point refresh speed” secondary legendary armor effect. This effect stacks with each piece of armor worn and drastically (and constantly) increases action point refresh speed. This legendary effect is quite useful if you intend to use V.A.T.S. It is also great at being able to run extremely long distances without stopping… great at getting away from persistent enemies and remaining at a distance. You’ll only find these secondary effects on 2 and 3 star armor… with 3 star armor being the best to find.
However, because V.A.T.S. is fairly broken in the most recent builds of Fallout 76 (spring 2021), your V.A.T.S. mileage may vary depending on your weapon and amount of action points (AP). Regardless, having a lot of AP and regenerating it rapidly is exceedingly important for anyone who depends on V.A.T.S. for getting hits on enemies. You don’t want to be standing around waiting for AP to regenerate at a snail’s pace. You’ll need to consume AP enhancer foods (i.e., Corn Soup or Company Tea), wear Action Boy/Girl, or, better, wear the “Increases action point refresh speed” legendary effect on armor. Though, it’s exceedingly rare to find (or roll) this effect on legendary armor.
Other effects that can help a Bloodied build, but that aren’t super important are +1 to a specific SPECIAL. This secondary effect can be found on both legendary armor and weapons. If you’re planning on being a sneaky Bloodied melee build, having +1 to Strength on weapons and armor is important to add damage to the melee weapon. Keep in mind that the +1 to a SPECIAL doesn’t allow you to add more perk cards. Only the Legendary perk SPECIAL cards do this, up to a maximum of 5 points and even then you have to be above level 50 to even get one legendary perk card slot. However, having one character above level 50, allows all secondary characters to have the same number of slots as the high level character. For example, a character who is above level 300, will see all 6 Legendary perk card slots opened, allowing all other characters (of any level) in that account to also have 6 slots. At least, this is currently how it works as of 2021. Bethesda is constantly changing the rules of this game, so this rule could change in the future.
One other effect that is also useful to a sneaky sniper is “become harder to detect while sneaking”. This effect is equally rare to the action point refresh speed perk. It’s doubly rare to find it on Unyielding or Bolstering.
Most other legendary armor effects, while they can be nice, don’t offer that much benefit to a sneaky Bloodied build.
Rolling for Legendary Effects
Some useful effects can come attached to Legendary weapons that you can get from Purveyor Murmrgh. However, these effects are only active while you actively wield that weapon. If you put the weapon away or switch weapons, the effect is gone. If you rely on a specific effect on a weapon, you’ll need to keep that weapon out 100% of the time.
I prefer not to let my character become dependent on effects attached to weapons and, instead, prefer to find the effects attached to armor pieces which can be worn. This is why I’m constantly using Scrip to roll new 3 star Legendary armor pieces and hope that I get one decent piece every 20-30 rolls. However, I’ve been recently getting one Unyielding piece about every 30-50 rolls at Murmrgh. Unfortunately, those 3 star Unyielding pieces that I roll tend to have useless secondary effects… effectively making it a one-star Unyielding. I don’t keep these.
I’m specifically wanting Unyielding with “Increases action point refresh speed”. So far, I’ve gotten zip from Murmrgh in the last 100-200 rolls. When I top out at 1000 5000 Scrip (cap raised to 5000, fall 2021), I will roll about 6 pieces and see what I get. Then, Scrip those that are useless. Repeat until the machine runs out of Scrip for the day. Yes, I lose Scrip in this process, but it’s the only way to get exactly what I’m wanting. Though, it’s kind pointless that this is the process Bethesda has saddled us with in this game. I don’t know why we can’t choose the effects we want rather than having to roll the dice and waste excessive amounts of time and Scrip. After the cap raise to 5000 Scrip, Beth didn’t raise the Legendary Scrip machine payout cap.
It’s great we can now carry 5000 Scrip, but the max you can buy, then Scrip in one day is still limited to ~500 Scrip… unless Beth offers a double Scrip weekend on Legendary Scrip machines. It’s too bad we can’t buy stuff from the Legendary Scrip machine directly to replenish Scrip in the machine, like we can replenish Caps at vendors by buying things.
Other Legendary Effects
Another legendary weapon effect that’s extremely useful in low health situations is Vampire’s. This legendary effect gains a brief amount of health regeneration per bullet. This effect is particularly pronounced with high fire rate weapons.
Weapons such as the Minigun, Gatling Laser, Gatling Gun, Flamer and most other automatic weapons work exceedingly well with Vampire’s. It also works reasonably well with fast melee weapons, such as small knives and a Vampire’s Mr. Handy Buzz Blade. The best weapons, however, for the Vampire’s effect are shotguns. Because shotguns spew out up to 30 pieces of shot at a time, each piece of shot offers a regeneration effect, with up to 30 pieces acting like consuming a Stimpak. With a high fire rate shotgun, you can maintain your health even while being struck by gun fire or by melee attacks even from larger creatures like the Mirelurk Queen’s acid spray. Some consider these high fire rate Vampire’s weapons god mode weapons. However, you have to be cautious because while it does keep your health high, you can still be staggered which can then open you up to attacks. Also, some enemies can one shot a Bloodied player at around 60 health.
Note, there is some discussion that the Vampire’s Legendary effect might be removed from Fallout 76. If you’re wanting Vampire’s weapons, you might want to go searching now (Spring 2021). Unfortunately, if the effect is removed from the game, it is also likely that Bethesda will drastically nerf by reducing the effectiveness of the Vampire’s effect, effectively negating it, like its sister Two Shot Explosive weapons before it. While Bethesda can’t remove already owned Vampire’s weapons from people’s inventories, they can reduce the Vampire’s effect to being effectively useless.
Bethesda can even completely change how Vampire’s works. For example, instead of transferring health to the player, it could change to only confer health 10% of the time. The Bethesda developers can also make it so that players can no longer sell, drop or transfer Vampire’s weapons via vending or trading, thus making these weapons entirely useless and worthless. Be cautious if you are making your character reliant on this weapon. You might want to also consider trying other weapons instead, like Bloodied.
If Bethesda does get rid of it as a primary effect, it’s likely that Bethesda will turn Vampire’s into a secondary legendary effect that only operates some percentage of the time. A secondary effect could even turn into something stupid like 75% chance to add 1 point of health over 3 seconds as a secondary effect. Not only would that limit how fast the health is transferred, it only offers a maximum of +3 HP over 3 seconds and reduces the chances of actually getting it by 25%. Not only would each bullet strike roll the dice on whether you even see the effect, if you do get the effect, it’s limited in how much health you get out of the deal. Whatever Bethesda does in this area, it will make Vampire’s weapons effectively useless. If you’ve got Vampire’s weapons, use them now while they still work as they were originally designed.
Nuke Zones and High Radiation Areas
If you’re in a Nuke Zone, you’ll need to wear Starched Genes at max level and wear some form of high radiation resist armor (Chinese, HazMat, Power Armor or Diving Suit). If you don’t rely on Speed Demon (see bugs below), you can wear Power Armor. However, you’ll want to drink a radaway to keep your rads at a lower level, but also leave your health low. Don’t drink food or take stimpaks, though. Eating or drinking any HP increasing foods, will halt your bloodied build. If you lose any health, drink water only. This will increase health by only a little and allow you to maintain a Bloodied build. Also, remove any cards like Dromedary, Good Doggy and Slow Metabolizer that yield more HP for food eaten while in a radiation zone.
Putting It All Together
Toxic Goo increases radiation by +125 for each vial consumed regardless of Lead Belly. Each Brahmin milk decreases radiation and increases health by 8. These two together allow you to maintain your character’s health just below 60. You can keep it lower than this if you prefer, but this combination of foodstuffs is the only way I’ve found to achieve and maintain consistently high rads and low health at a specific level.
Weapons that boost your abilities at this low health include Vampire’s and, of course, Bloodied. Armor like Unyielding and Bolstering enhance the Bloodied build to allow this build to be maintained without constantly dying, particularly in combination with the above listed perk cards and properly configured legendary armor.
Secondary armor effects that can enhance your build include “Increases action points refresh speed” and “Become harder to detect while sneaking”.
Finally, a low health Bloodied build works best as a sneaky sniper build which doubles the damage level of the weapon and maintains a distance from the enemy.
Bugs
This article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning various bugs in Fallout 76 when maintaining a Bloodied build.
- When your character falls in battle and respawns, your character’s health resets to a default value of between 70 and 80 HP. This is frustrating if you’re trying to keep your health at or below 60. The game forces this reset upon respawn… which leads to the next bug…
- Toxic Goo fails to work for approximately 1 to 3 minutes after respawning OR logging into a server. This means that if you were in a heated battle and you want to get back to it quickly, you can’t lower your health until Toxic Goo begins working. This can be particularly problematic if your character has become overencumbered as a result of respawning with higher HP when combined with losing strength buffs from wearing Unyielding armor.
- Some world servers load your character in with HP and Rads different (and higher) from how you last logged out. This is similar to bug #1 above. You may need to wait for Toxic Goo to work to apply the +125 rads to lower your health and begin playing.
- I’m happy to report that this next bug appears to have been fixed in the September 2021 update. Entering and exiting power armor no longer seems to trigger this mutation bug. Please keep this in mind while reading. While not exactly related to this build, it can affect your Bloodied build. Many players rely on the Speed Demon mutation to increase reload speed and to run faster. Wearing Power Armor breaks this mutation. If you enter any Power Armor set, Speed Demon’s faster reload stops working while in it and for a time after exiting. The game will eventually correct itself after a couple of fast travels. The takeaway is, don’t use Power Armor if you rely on Speed Demon for faster weapon reloads. Instead, opt for the Cave Diving suit, Chinese Armor or a HazMat suit to avoid radiation damage in nuke zones and avoid broken mutations… and rely on being a sneaky sniper to remain far away from enemies and still do maximum damage.
One possible workaround for a broken health situation when combined with the Toxic Goo failure is to drink Brahmin Milk first. This can force a change to HP and rads and sometimes allows the Toxic Goo to begin working faster. Sometimes this workaround doesn’t work. Dirty water may also work. Carrying around dirty water isn’t as optimal for this purpose as Toxic Goo, but it may avoid the Toxic Goo failure-to-work after respawn bug, but it also means carrying and drinking a crap ton of Dirty Water to match the 125 rads you get from drinking one Toxic Goo.
Annoyances
Suffice it to say that Fallout 76 has a lot of annoying little problems. With a Bloodied build, there are plenty to find. One in particular is the new ally by the name of Solomon Hardy. He’s a former medic from the Brotherhood of Steel. While it’s nice that he’s a medic and a merchant, his dialog is particularly annoying if you choose to carry a Bloodied build. Several of his dialog pieces contain annoying bits about “bleeding all over the floor” or that the player “shouldn’t be bleeding like that”. Solomon makes incessant comments about bleeding everywhere and being injured, constantly offering to treat the injuries. That’s pretty much what makes up his dialog every time you pass him.
Unfortunately, there’s no way to get him to stop with his incessant badgering and complaints for medical assistance. I got so annoyed by this constant unnecessary dialog that I ended up removing him from my CAMP and replacing him with another ally. I know that I’m carrying a Bloodied build. I don’t need to be reminded about it every few minutes by Solomon. Be warned that if you choose to add Solomon to your CAMP and you carry a Bloodied build, you’ll be forced to listen to his incessant complaints about your character’s low health condition.
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How to complete the Fallout 76 Legendary Run
While this is intended to be a how-to guide, it also offers my take on whether or not this new rewards system is worth it. This article also serves as a review. Let’s explore.
[Updated for 9/29/2020]
The new ‘Legendary Run’ has started with a new game board. This game board is completely different from the images shown in this first Legendary Run. The rewards are similarly spaced and similar in style. However, as of the update needed to install this new ‘Legendary Run’ game board, Bethesda also made some very big (and unnecessary) changes to the game, shattering the already faltering game balance. As of this update and second legendary run, Fallout 76 is officially an unmitigated disaster. There is officially no game balance in Fallout 76.
Effectively, no matter what level you are, Bethesda has excessively nerfed ALL weapons and over-powered ALL enemies. A level 50 (max level) Bloodied Lever Action Rifle, which could pretty much one-hit and kill any enemy in the game and 3 hit and kill some of the hardest enemies (other than a Scorchbeast Queen), is now no better than a level 10 weapon of any kind. Any remaining balance that had been in Fallout 76 has been utterly destroyed by this latest update. To be honest, Bethesda has destroyed any remaining reason to play Fallout 76 in one update. There is absolutely nothing at all fun about Fallout 76 at this point… no, not even to play this updated second Legendary Run game board.
If I had even the tiniest of cravings to play this newest game board in Fallout 76, that craving has been totally and completely squashed by Bethesda’s ruining of the game balance.
The Legendary Run
What is it? As stated above, it’s a new rewards system for Fallout 76. It somewhat replaces the daily Atom rewards with a new type of currency called S.C.O.R.E. (another insipid acronym). For this article, I’m simply going to call it Score. Score points are given when you complete daily or weekly challenges.
By ‘somewhat’, I mean that the older Atom challenge system was designed as a loose, non-competitive system. You did these challenges at your leisure with no ramifications. This new system, on the other hand, sees a competition between you and a foe, forcing you to complete the game board ahead of the foe. Okay, so maybe ‘force’ is a strong word. However, it has the same effect as force because of the urgency required in keeping up with Zorbo’s game piece. Skipping a day of challenges can see you lose. Zorbo’s ship is the little teal ship where the gamer’s is a bright orange ship. See full game board image below:
What does ‘lose’ mean, exactly?
By ‘lose’, this is not yet clearly defined by Bethesda. It is currently believed that Bethesda will reset the board to start over with a new ‘season’ of The Legendary Run including all new rewards… after Doctor Zorbo (foe) reaches the final position on the game board. It has been confirmed as of September 1st that The Legendary Run ends September 8th (see image at right) at 12 noon Eastern / 9am Pacific. Additionally, not only is Bethesda offering double Score points until that time, they have added extra challenges to the board to help those who wish to get to the finish line and need a bit more effort. Still, it doesn’t absolve Bethesda from the OCD and anxiety issues that this challenge system brings.
If you haven’t completed the board, the clock is ticking on whether you will be able to complete it and get all of the remaining rewards. Remember when I said ‘force’ was too strong of a word above? Well, here is exactly where Bethesda applies the pressure. The assumption is that if you don’t complete the board by the time the foe reaches the end, you will not be able to finish the game board at all or receive any remaining rewards. You may even lose any unclaimed rewards (see CAUTION below).
For anyone not very far along, this means that to complete the board before the timer ticks down to zero, you’ll need to pay your way through the board using Atom (see the Pay to Win section below for more details) before Zorbo reaches the end and the board closes. In other words, if you’re still in Chapter 1 when reading this article, you’re going to be required to pay a LOT of Atom to fully open up the game board to the end.
CAUTION: As a warning, I strongly recommend that you claim every reward you are given. Don’t be lazy about this. Don’t leave any rewards unclaimed. Once the game board closes for the next season, you will likely not be able to go back and claim any unclaimed rewards. In fact, the board may be entirely wiped and reset losing any unclaimed rewards. Be extremely cautious as Bethesda is not likely to be forgiving about this at all.
Score Points
Score points are accumulated into a progress bar that’s either at the bottom or top of the screen depending on which screen you are in.
The Legendary Run also has a game board (see above) with individual rewards in each spot. As you progress and gain Score, your game marker moves to the next spot after you accumulate enough Score points for that specific place on the board. Each new game place increases the amount of accumulated Score it requires to move to the next game board section.
Under each game board section, you will find a specific reward. The rewards sometimes include currency like Atom, Legendary Scrip or Gold Bouillon. Other rewards include digital cosmetic items like Ghillie Suit paint jobs or Atomic Onslaught paint. You can even get consumables like Scrap Kits, Repair Kits and Perk Card packs. It also includes CAMP cosmetic items like a tree, a door or wallpaper.
Each spot on the board is already pre-marked with its reward. You only simply need to hover over the game board spot to view its reward. You can even click on it to get more details. There is no mystery involved. You know exactly what you’re getting all throughout the game board.
What I’ve Learned — The OCD Run WARNING
Playing through and completing this game board, I’ve come to learn a few highly negative things about this system. As a result, I’m not a fan of this new system at all.
The first thing I noticed about this new system is that it is not at all forgiving. If you miss a day of challenges, you’re probably okay and can make it up. If you miss a week of challenges, you’re likely to be so far behind you can’t complete the board. Because of this primary problem, this system can easily trigger anxiety and obsessive compulsion to complete this challenge system in gamers. Gaming is supposed to be recreational, not something to become OCD over.
If you’re easily triggered by OCD, then you should completely avoid participating in this reward system. In fact, this game mechanism is so heavily tied to reinforcing obsessive compulsive behaviors, it should be outlawed in games. To me, a system like this is just as bad as for-pay mystery boxes. Hear me, Bethesda.
Obsessive compulsive disorder is not something we need to be indoctrinating into children using video games. Something like this is bad enough for adults, but training kids for obsessive compulsion early is a recipe for problems later in life. In fact, I’d suggest that a game board system like this is just as bad for children as are for-pay mystery loot systems which train those portions of the brain about gambling. Both gambling and OCD are equally damaging to growing and developing children.
I have a lot to say on this topic, but I’ll forgo that for now and focus on how to complete this game board. Suffice it to say, if your OCD is easily triggered, stay far away from this challenge system and focus entirely on just Fallout 76’s main activities.
How To Complete The Legendary Run
The bottom line in completing this run is not missing a day or week of challenges. You can skip one or two daily challenges per day, but you will need to complete every weekly challenge.
For example, I skipped every daily Nuclear Winter challenge (I despise that game mode and refuse to play it) and I was still able to complete the run. However, it did require hitting every weekly and as many daily challenges as I could complete. Yes, you will need to play through every daily challenge that you can. This means playing every single day’s challenges, seven days a week.
Yeah, that’s why I wrote the above warning. If you can’t commit to playing this game every single day, then you likely cannot complete the run through challenges alone.
Pay to Win
There is a way to get to the end without playing at all. You can rank up fully by paying 150 atoms for each board space. In fact, you can pay your way through the entire game board if you want. If you’re willing to run to the PlayStation, Xbox or Bethesda’s store and buy Atom, you can use that Atom to pay your way through each game board spot.
This can help you if you need to catch up. But, you can also simply avoid the daily grind and pay your way to the end.
The choices you have then are as follows:
- Grind your way through the daily and weekly challenges every day
- Pay your way through the board entirely with Atom
- Combine some grinding and paying some Atom to get you through to the end.
In fact, I believe most players will end up falling into category 3… which is exactly what Bethesda hopes. That means you’ll have to pay for Atom (or get it through other Atom challenges which are still available) to make your way through The Legendary Run. Though, Bethesda is also enamored with gamers who fall into category 2.
The one thing to realize about The Legendary Run is that you must forgo playing the game to solely focus on completing the challenges. This means spending most of your time working through the challenges and, you know, not playing the actual game itself. In other words, these challenges waste a LOT of time doing inconsequential things instead of completing the main quest line. This is such an unnecessary diversion, it actually undermines the game.
Design Failure
In fact, this entire challenge system runs 180Âē counter to what the design goals for this board were stated to be. It was claimed that this new challenge system would work in concert with gamer’s actual game play. In reality, it’s just the opposite of that. To complete this board, you have to focus on the challenge tasks 100% at the expense of all else. Many of the challenges are esoteric. You don’t naturally go looking to kill 3 Deathclaws unless it’s part of a quest line. Even then, I don’t know of a single quest line in Fallout 76 that requires you to kill 3 Deathclaws as part of the quest.
You might find yourself near Deathclaws as a result of a quest line leading you there, but you don’t need to kill them to progress the quest. The most famous of these main quests is the Enclave quest which leads you to the Abandoned Waste Dump to begin this quest line in a bunker inside of a cave, with the cave infested by Deathclaws. Naturally, Bethesda assumed you might kill those Deathclaws being in close proximity. However, you can sneaky sneak your way through that cave and avoid killing those Deathclaws entirely. You can even flat out run through the cave to the elevator and be on your way. In other words, killing these Deathclaws is not naturally part of your game play activities.
That’s just one example. There are many other such useless challenge examples, such as taking over workshops. You don’t do this as a natural part of any quest line or as a natural part of game play. If you take a workshop, it’s entirely your choice and you must go out of your way to do it. To take a workshop comes with its own game baggage, the least of which is paying for the workshop in caps, the immediate Defend Event and any PVP activities assuming you do it in a public world.
As a final example, if you never play Nuclear Winter, you are now forced to enter that game mode to do whatever is required to pick up the NW challenges. That’s the very definition of unnatural game play.
While there may be a handful of activities that are considered ‘natural gameplay’ such as chewing bubblegum or collecting water, there are just as many that require you to spend time doing things you don’t normally do.
The Legendary Run forces unnatural game play onto the gamer (in addition to the anxiety and obsessive compulsion to complete the board). You must first find out what the challenges are for that day and then explicitly spend time completeing them. I ended up spending most of my play time grinding the challenges and not progressing quest lines. The Legendary Run is not a natural game play system and diverts attention away from playing the actual game.
Atom and Rewards
Another negative about this new system is that we have lost our most basic way to gain Atom. Yes, there are spots on the board that occasionally award 150 Atom, but that’s ultimately way less than the amount of Atom we were getting before this system launched.
Before The Legendary Run, we were getting around 50 Atom for daily challenges and up to 1000 Atom for weekly challenges. At 7 days, that would be 350 + 1000 = 1350 Atom per week. With this new game board, that dropped to around 150 Atom per week. That’s way, way less Atom than we were formerly getting by completing daily and weekly challenges.
Yes, in somewhat of an exchange, we are now getting some exclusive board rewards, but at the expense of not being able to buy much stuff in the Atomic Shop.
Bethesda’s Greed
I get it. I really do. Bethesda wasn’t making enough money off of selling Atom in the digital stores. I guess they thought they were giving too much Atom away. They felt they had to cut down on the amount of Atom being given out by challenges to force more sales of Atom. As I said, I get it. Greed rules.
Unfortunately, because of Bethesda’s greed, they have now saddled everyone with a system that so highly triggers OCD in gamers and wastes so much in-game time that it’s actually a huge loss for the game.
I mean, Bethesda’s systems get worse every single time they release and The Legendary Run is no exception. This is truly one of the worst ideas that Bethesda could have implemented in Fallout 76. Not only is The Legendary Run unforgiving, not only does it completely trigger OCD, not only does it force gamers to pay real money for Atom, not only does divert the gamer away from questing and towards spending time question for Score, the rewards offered are mostly inconsequential and the run itself is completely unfulfilling.
Worse, everyone gets the SAME rewards, so they are not at all unique. I preferred shopping at the Atomic shop directly. Everyone can pick and choose the things they want, so not every gamer has the same things. When it’s all cookie cutter, there’s nothing unique about what’s being given away. Everyone who reaches a specific game board spot gets a Ghillie suit paint, big whoop. So now, everyone who completes that spot has it?
What happens when you complete the board?
Good question and one Bethesda should have solved before rolling this system out. Yet, they didn’t. When you complete the game board and there’s nothing else to be had, the daily challenges still issue Score. Score that has no place to go and nothing to win. Once you complete the game board, there’s no reason to complete the daily or weekly challenges as it’s simply a waste of time and effort.
Instead, Bethesda should have planned for this eventuality and converted the system back to the older Atom system after the board is completed. This would allow gamers to still continue to get SOMETHING after completing the game board. We did just complete the game board. Shouldn’t we get some kind of continued reward for completion? Where’s the incentive to continue? There isn’t any. Crap design in my book.
Repeat?
Will I do it again? No. It’s a waste of time and effort. It diverts away from completing game world quests. Seriously, these daily challenges can sometimes take over 2 hours to complete. That’s 2 hours I could have spent finishing up quests. That’s 2 hours I could have been having fun taking over and building workshops. That’s 2 hours I could have spent hanging out with a few friends. That’s 2 hours I could have spent building out my camp. That’s 2 hours lost to challenges that get me what, yet another Ghillie or Onslaught paint? Heck, that’s 2 hours I could have spent writing a blog article.
Yet, if you really want that Fireplace secret door, you’re going to spend a massive amount of time enduring challenges and fighting OCD compulsions.
Triggering OCD behaviors in video games is not something we should be encouraging in video games. Bethesda shouldn’t be rewarded for creating this system. They should be scolded. Better, these kinds of OCD compulsion inducing systems should be outlawed in video games for the same reason that mystery loot boxes have been outlawed by triggering gambling compulsions.
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Gaming Breaking Bugs Series #1: Fallout 76
With this series, I intend to start calling out video gaming’s game-breaking-bugs as I find them and boy are there a lot to report with Fallout 76. Here is report I recently filed with Bethesda. Let’s explore.
Report
Re: Enemies not dying after multiple shots.
It is truly becoming impossible to play Fallout 76. That’s not an exaggeration. I’m using various ranged weapons and it can literally take 2, 3 even sometimes 4 (or more) shots to actually kill an enemy that should die in 1 shot. This MUST be solved. Combat is intrinsic to this game. When combat doesn’t work, then the game is broken.
How this problem manifestsâĻ
It begins when you attempt to VATS shoot an enemy. It doesn’t matter where you shoot the enemy, but the head is usually the place where combat fails most often. I have a bloodied Lever Action and a bloodied Pipe Bolt Action Pistol. I’ve also had this problem occur with various melee weapons. So, it’s not limited to any specific weapon or type.
You begin by using VATS on the head using Concentrated Fire. Take the shot. The shot connects. The thud sounds. The enemy’s health bar drops to 0. Then, inexplicably, the health bar instantly recovers to full health and the enemy is alive to lunge or shoot at you. Not only that, the failed shot alerts the enemy to your presence. You can perform this action multiple times in a row to the same effect. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Ghoul, insects, a Super Mutant, dogs or a robot. This broken combat mechanic affects every weapon type and every enemy type.
To 100% reproduce this bug, sneak your way into The Whitespring Golf Club, head to the left on the upper level. Then as you come through the door, there is an enemy that spawns right near the back left window in a corner.
Once you have cleared the rest of the ghouls in that room, stand by the entry hall area and attempt to VATS shoot this specific Ghoul in the head. It may take 2, 3, 4 or more shots before it will die. Targeting the limbs or torso sometimes works around this game breaking bug, but sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes using a scope instead of VATS works, sometimes it doesn’t.
It’s one thing if the shot misses entirely, it’s completely another when the shot connects, makes a thud noise, shows a 1200 damage number also showing the enemy health bar dropping to zero and then the enemy’s health bar magically recovers fully? No, these are NOT legendary enemies.
This combat issue needs to be resolved pronto as this is literally a game breaking combat bug.
Expected Behavior
When you shoot an enemy and the bullet is recognized by the game engine as connecting, then the enemy needs to take the required amount of damage and/or die if health reaches zero. This combat bug is entirely unacceptable.
Enjoy this bug as this series has many more coming. If you have experienced this specific combat bug, please leave a comment below.
Why Fallout 76 sucks badly
Whenever I play Fallout 76, I just want to pull my hair out. This game is so fraught with bugs, poor design, piss poor consistency and overall crap gameplay, it’s a wonder anyone wants to actually play this turd of a game at all. And, it gets worse with every release. Let’s explore this crap game in all of its crap glory.
Bugs Bethesda Won’t Fix
One of the most infuriating things about this game is its incessant bugs which Bethesda has consistently refused to fix. Some of these bugs have existed since before the release in the Beta (if you can even call one week of early play “beta testing”).
Here’s a non-exhaustive list of gameplay bugs I’ve run into with this game (in no particular order):
- Getting in and out of power armor breaks mutations, specifically Speed Demon. This bug persists until you log out and back in. If you use power armor at all, this mutation remains broken while both IN and OUT of power armor. This is a new regression bug and didn’t exist early in the game’s life.
- When playing sneaky while crouching, the game will sometimes overload the fire gun action onto the run button and fire your weapon when you attempt to run from the crouching position. This happens with any weapon. Not only does this waste ammo, you may be forced to reload your weapon, wasting time. This is an older bug and has existed for at least 6-9 months.
- Getting stuck in power armor. While this bug has supposedly been fixed, I have run into occasions where it is impossible to exit power armor. It clearly is not fixed. This bug has existed since Beta.
- Getting stuck in VATS. This is a new bug that sees you pull VATS only to find that the game won’t let you exit it, while allowing the enemies to attack you without any resistance. This is a recent bug, but existed before Wastelanders.
- Enemies staggering the player. This is a new bug that sees enemy stagger your player for longer amounts of time. Like getting stuck in VATS, you are unable to move or fire your weapon for up to 5-10 seconds, all while letting hordes of creatures attack and kill you. This may have been introduced in Wastelanders.
- Camp over budget after update. This one begins after you buy and install Atomic Shop items into your camp. After an update, Bethesda will raise the budget of SOME item(s) in your camp substantially causing your camp’s budget to go WAY over. There’s no way to know what is causing the issue or resolve it without randomly deleting camp items one by one.
- Toxic Goo fails to work. After your character dies and respawns, Toxic Goo doesn’t work for up to 1 minute (or longer) after a load-in or respawn. You’ll end up wasting goo after goo after goo trying to get it to work. This affects Bloodied builds.
- Loss of certain perks, but not all, after your character dies. Yes, I consider this a bug. There is no reason why this exists in the game. The Well Rested and Well Tuned perks disappear after the character dies and respawns. You are forced back to your camp to sleep and play an instrument again to refresh these. This is a bug that, I think, has been in the game since the start.
- Can’t choose respawn point after character death. This bug has been in the game since day one. Under certain conditions, if your character dies, the game will give you zero respawn points on the map. You are forced to log out and log back in… losing any dropped loot and any other benefits you may have had coming. Day 1 bug.
- VATS accuracy…. When the game first arrived, VATS could reach 100%. After a ‘balancing’ update, this has been visually reduced to a maximum of 95% at all times (no matter how close the enemy is to you). This is a ridiculous change. However, during this ‘rebalance’, Bethesda introduced two VATS percentages (one you see visually and one you don’t). The one you don’t see is the one that determines whether the bullet will hit. This has caused VATS to become mostly unusable, particularly when combined with bug #4 and specifically with certain weapons. It fares even worse when attempting to use the Concentrated Fire perk card.
- After loading into the game world, the game client runs a background process to synchronize the game to the remote game world server. This process takes at least 5-10 minutes to complete. It’s very slow. While this background process is running, you can’t craft on a workbench as the workbench stutters on and off while this synchronization process runs. This is a new bug introduced within the last 6-9 months. It existed before Wastelanders. This bug prevents using workbenches for at least 10 minutes after you’ve loaded into the game world.
- In-Game Music can’t be controlled with volume settings slider. A volume slider for music was introduced into the game client, but it has been selectively applied to only certain music. For example, music inside of Whitesprings, inside of Valley Galleria and with musical instruments are not covered by this volume slider. You must endure this music in the world regardless of your settings.
- Main Menu Music Slider settings. This one is also broken. While it does not play music on the main menu on the PS4, it does not at all work on the Xbox One. Worse, after a few minutes inside of the Atomic Shop and after the music changes, the music will begin playing at full volume in the Atomic Shop. This slider is only minimally effective at doing what it’s supposed to do.
- Challenges don’t work. This is an ongoing problem. If you’ve bought into Bethesda’s Fallout 76 challenge system, then that means doing whatever convoluted activities are needed to win that challenge. Some challenges require you to perform multiple activities to win the challenge. Because of these multiple activities, if one of them does not register after completion, the entire challenge fails. This is one way challenges don’t work.
The second way challenges fail to work is if you do perform all of the actions successfully and receive a check mark, but the overall challenge doesn’t reward its bounty to you. Both of these are firmly broken. Even the newest update to the Legendary Run suffers from this same bug. You can perform everything required of the challenge and still not see the 1000 score you’re supposed to receive. Bethesda support won’t help with these failures. You’re just shit-outta-luck. Bethesda simply doesn’t support the game or gamers who are playing this game. These are Day 1 bugs. - Blue Screen Crash… yes, these still exist. I regularly experience these crash-to-the-dashboard bugs about once every day or so. They are about as frequent as they were when the game was released. This is partly because of the memory issues.
- Level of Detail Image Rendering… this bug as existed since day one. As you approach objects, the game won’t load in the higher res texture version until you’re standing on top of the object (literally). Even then, it may take 1 minute before the higher res texture loads in. It’s a cosmetic bug, but who wants to look at blurry 8 bit textures?
- Fast Travel Bug — Here’s a bug that has existed since day one. You open the map and select a travel point, choose to pay the caps and then …. nothing. The map exits and you’re back in the game. You haven’t fast traveled and nothing has happened. Worse, you try again and it does the exact same thing. This bug is annoying, frustrating and shouldn’t even exist.
- Workshop Bug — Here’s a regression bug. This bug existed a week or so after release. It was gone for a long time, but now it’s come back in the latest update: v1.3.2.9. Under some conditions, the workshop icon reverts to the older “regular” icon. As a result, the game requires you to pay caps to travel to your owned workshop.
- Bethesda Math — Here’s a bug (several actually), but this one’s very very subtle with the perk cards and with damage multipliers. Bethesda sucks really hard at math and they hope that players won’t notice. Too late, we have. When Bethesda calculates damage multipliers, it rarely does so accurately. For example, a multiplier card might say “does 30% more damage”, but in reality it may calculate out 28% more or 25% more or some random value way less than 30%.
You can see this in action after enabling damage numbers on your weapon. If you calculate out the number shown, you’ll find that the damage is far, far less than what the gun claims to offer with the damage multipliers. This is just one way that Bethesda reduces the damage level of weapons without showing that reduced damage in the weapon info panel.
This further continues in the weapon info panel as well by not accurately calculating the damage multipliers within this panel. While some perk cards offer exact damage multipliers, many of these cards offer nebulous increases like, “does more”, “does even more”, “does substantially more” without stating any numbers. This allows Bethesda to modify these nebulous cards at their whims on each release, so you never know exactly what those nebulous cards are actually giving you. In many cases, they don’t give you anything. As for the hard number cards, it only stacks these multipliers by calculating from the gun’s base damage level. For example, if you put on cards each offering 10% damage, it will be stacked like so:
Gun base damage = 197
Gun + 10% damage = 197 + 19.7 = 217
Gun + 20% damage = 217 + 19.7 = 237
Gun + 30% damage = 237 + 19.7 = 257
and so on…
Basically, Bethesda calculates the value based on the current gun value + the % to be applied. It doesn’t add by stacking. If it added by stacking, 60% more damage would stack like this:
Gun base damage = 197
Gun + 10% damage = 197 + 19.7 = 217
Gun + 10% more damage = 217 + 21.7 = 239
Gun + 10% more damage = 239 + 23.9 = 263
Gun + 10% more damage = 263 + 26.3 = 289
Gun + 10% more damage = 289 + 28.9 = 318
Gun + 10% more damage = 318 + 31.8 = 350
and so on… but this is not how Bethesda does math during stacking.
Worse, guns with +30% damage to Scorched (Zealots) or 30% damage to animals (Hunter’s) never see these percentages reflected in the gun’s damage information panel. You have no idea if the gun is actually giving you that extra % damage.
Even worse, when you kill something with damage multipliers on, you almost never see the damage level of the gun reflected in the damage number seen on the enemy. For example, with the 257 damage listed above, if this is an Instigating rifle, it would do double damage to an enemy with full health. This means that at 2x, Instigating damage should do 514 damage to an enemy. With sneaking, it should double that to 1028. However, shooting an enemy with sneak might show way less than that damage inflicted. Damage to an enemy should reflect actual gun damage. - VATS + Accuracy … this bug has been ongoing since day one, but affects some weapons more than others. For example, neither has the Tesla nor the Gauss rifle ever properly worked with VATS. Using these weapons is more likely to miss than hit. You waste so much ammo using VATS with these weapons, it’s not even worth considering. For every one shot that hits, you might have 10 that fail… even with high accuracy, even if you have the +33% VATS accuracy legendary perk, even with all of your best perk cards equipped, these electric weapons are the worst for VATS.
Even the Pipe Bolt-Action Pistol fares poorly with VATS. This weapon when set up correctly can have an accuracy of 108, yet it acts as if it as an accuracy of 2. It misses way more often than it hits. This is a VATS problem. In fact, I find that using the scope fares way better than relying on VATS. - Gauss Rifle Wind Up and Misfire — this bug has been ongoing since a week or so after release. You can press and hold the trigger to power up the Gauss, but upon release, you only hear a sad sputter and then nothing. The rifle misfires. This is the only weapon in the game that misfires. I’ve given up using the Gauss rifle entirely because of this one bug that Bethesda refuses to fix.
- Bullet Connects, Does 1000+ Damage, Health Wiped, Enemy Lives — this is a new bug, but I believe has existed for quite some time and is a regression from early in the game’s life. You can shoot an enemy point blank in the head, the heath bar is reduced to 0, but the enemy’s health bar goes back to full and lives to fight. This is not a legendary enemy. I’ve run into this bug with Ghouls and Robots alike. There is nothing you can do but shoot again and hope it will kill the enemy. This bug seems specific to shooting the enemy in the head, but can occur shooting any body part. Collision detection on this game is piss poor, to say the least.
- Delbert’s Traditional Chitlins Recipe — Here is a bug that has most definitely existed since day one and before. This recipe is supposed to exist on a piece of notebook paper sitting on a picnic table at Spruce Knob Lake, next to a blue cooler. The note paper is sitting there on the table, but it cannot be retrieved from the table. Bethesda has had this bug reported probably hundreds of times and at least twice by me since launch, yet they have still not yet fixed this very long standing bug. There are supposed to be 13 Delbert’s recipes in this game, but this one is not retrievable, leaving only 12 in the game. It’s anyone’s guess as to what this recipe offers.
- Backpacks — In a recent update, Bethesda decided to change how backpack skins work. Instead of selling individual backpacks as they had been formerly doing, they set it up to place skins on top of the generic backpack. In doing so, they introduced two fundamental bugs:
1) We had to pay to reskin our already skinned backpack, using up more resources again. We had to do this for every backpack we own.
2) The backpacks no longer sit correctly on the character’s back. Instead of sitting properly on the back, they are now embedded in the back and look crappy when wearing certain bulkier outfits. The original packs adjusted their placement on the back to accommodate outfits and the size of the pack. This new system doesn’t. It inherits the placement of the original skin and assumes that placement is correct for all packs. One of the worst cosmetic bugs in the game.
Perk Card Bugs
Under this section, I call out bugs specific to perk cards that have gone unfixed. They are just as numerous.
- Tenderizer — This Charisma perk card simply doesn’t work, it’s as simple as that. It’s supposed to afford an up to 7% bonus damage (3 star card) on every hit after the first, but it doesn’t do anything. Don’t bother equipping this card. I’m not certain if this card has ever worked. Day 1 bug.
- Concentrated Fire – This is a card that is supposed to not only allow you to target individual body parts of your enemy, it’s supposed to give bonus damage when you hit that body part. This card performs only one of its two stated perks. While it does allow you to target body parts individually, it does not offer any bonus damage. Day 1 bug.
- Super Duper – Lots of bugs here. This card is supposed to offer you a chance to duplicate whatever you are crafting on any crafting bench. This card has multiple problems. Its primary problem is that a 3-Star version is supposed to afford you your best chance at receiving a duplicate. However, ranking this card up to 3 does not increase your chances for a duplicate any more than using a rank 1 card. This card formerly functioned correctly for a short time after the game’s launch, but after a subsequent rebalance, it has been broken since.
Additionally, this card is entirely selectively applied to certain crafted items and in specific amounts when it does work. For example, attempting to combine a 2 star Ammosmith with 3 star Super Duper doesn’t yield a duplicate number when crafting certain ammo on the Tinker’s Bench. For example, Ammosmith increases the Mini Nuke x3 count to x5. Yet, Super Duper doesn’t provide 10 Mini Nukes when Super Duper fires. Instead, it provides perhaps 6 Mini Nukes, not 10.
Further, Super Duper formerly alerted us every time it fired letting us see how often it fired and how much extra we might expect. At some point during a ‘rebalance’, Bethesda stopped this every-time notification. Instead, now it only notifies us once inside the bench and once on the way out, no matter how many times it has fired. In other words, you have no way to know exactly how much extra you may have received. If you want to know, you are forced to exit the bench each time Super Duper fires so you can see exactly how many times it has fired while crafting… infuriating.
I believe this much reduced notification change is because Bethesda reduced the frequency with which Super Duper fires (even at 3 stars) and they didn’t want people to see this lowered fire rate.
Super Duper has also never been applied to the Brewing Station crafting bench. You can craft whatever you want on the Brewing Station and Super Duper will never duplicate it. This bug has existed since the Brewing Station was introduced. Some of these above are Day 1 bugs including this Brewing Station bug. - Butcher’s Bounty / Scrounger / Cap Collector / Can Do! / Pharma Farma design change. Yes, I also consider this one a bug. Butcher’s Bounty (and the rest of these scrounging cards) formerly allowed us to search containers at any time and, most importantly, after the fact. Can Do! and Pharma Farma and some of the others still do allow after-the-fact searching, but it is now hands off with no button presses. You must look at the container with the card equipped to get the benefits. Before this change, you were forced to pressed a button. After the change, it works simply by looking at the container.
However, unlike the rest of the cards, Butcher’s Bounty has some severe restrictions placed for how and when it works. It has also seen new bugs introduced. Unlike the rest of these scrounger cards, Butcher’s Bounty no longer allows after-the-fact usage.
Butcher’s Bounty now requires that you must have killed the creature yourself to be able to search a dead creature and to activate this perk card. Even still, searching a dead animal doesn’t really yield more meat. You hear the chime, but no additional meat seems to appear on the body. You only get what was originally dropped. Butcher’s Bounty is firmly broken. This bug was introduced during the Wastelanders release.
Additionally, Butcher’s Bounty no longer searches Bloodbugs or Ticks and will not produce any additional bounty from these creatures. There may be other creatures it also fails to search. Ticks contain Tick Blood and this ingredient is important in crafting Stimpaks. Without being able to search Ticks for Tick Blood, this means of crafting Stimpaks is lost.
Bloodbugs offered Bloodbug meat. Unfortunately, without Butcher’s Bounty, you could rarely ever find Bloodbug meat on a dead Bloodbug. You were nearly always forced to search them with Butcher’s Bounty. Unfortunately, this is another creature whose meat is now entirely extinct. There is no way to craft Bloodbug Pepper Steak… and this now entirely useless in-game recipe is rendered worthless by this specific bug. - Storm Chaser — This perk card is supposed to see you have health regeneration during rain storms. I’ve used this card multiple times in rain storms with no effect. This card is broken.
Regressions
So many of the bugs from the past are actually returning from the past. Particularly duplication bugs. I have grown exceedingly tired of the 12 and 13 year olds whose sole goal is to find some overpowered weapon and dupe the hell out of it so they can make a few caps, caps that don’t make a difference to their game play.
Instead, Bethesda needs to counter these problems by removing this problem from the game. In fact, I’d prefer if Bethesda removed vending entirely from the game. No more sales at all. What you own is yours to keep forever. If you don’t want it, scrip it, scrap it or send it to the game’s void. Nothing at all good has come from player vending. Nothing. The world is not a better place. Vending is a form of pay–to–win. It’s solely used as a way for players to buy their way into better weapons without having earned those weapons or armor.
The point in Fallout is to earn your weapons from your game play experience… not to buy the weapon from someone else.
Bethesda is already considering doing away with future item vending anyway. As more and more new items are introduced into the game, Bethesda is putting the no-vending restriction onto these newer items. You can’t sell them, you can’t drop them and you can’t transfer them to others. These newly introduced items are yours to keep, but not to sell.
I believe Bethesda is slowly introducing these items into the game to get players used to this new no trading concept. Then, at some point in the future, every new item in the game will be marked as player restricted. At some point, the newest great weapon will not be obtainable by buying it from another player. This change IS coming. Bethesda WILL introduce this in the future. It’s not a matter of IF, it’s a matter of WHEN. Don’t believe me? Just you wait.
Even more bugs
This next bug is one that has existed since the game’s release. The game has completely unresponsive button controls at the most inopportune times. You are forced to press a button twice, three times or more simply to get the game to respond to a button press. Infuriating. You press the button expecting VATS to trigger and it doesn’t. You press it again and again it does nothing. You press it again and it finally triggers. This multiple press issue sees the enemies getting ever closer or out of range. It’s entirely frustrating to have the perfect shot had VATS consistently worked. Instead, you’ve lost that shot because you were forced to press VATS multiple times to get it to activate, way too late to make that perfect shot.
This button press unreliability problem isn’t limited to VATS. It affects all manner of button presses from crafting, to firing your weapon to jumping to running. It doesn’t matter which button it is, they are all equally affected by this unreliability of the game’s controller input system.
I’ve never ever played a game with this amateur level of button unreliability. Never. I’ve been playing games since the Atari 2600 and this is the actual first time I’ve encountered a game with this bad of a controller interface. I cannot believe a top tier developer is putting out games with this low level of quality.
I believe this problem stems from multiple problems. I believe the game is giving priority to the back end synchronization with the server over front end input. This means that the game is willing to sacrifice controller button presses to ensure the game client is properly synchronized with the server. Ultimately, I believe this has to do with using a 20 year old engine and trying to retrofit it into a multiplayer system over the Internet. This engine was not designed for this purpose and the signature of this unreliability is in this game’s random and sporadic failure to read input from the controller.
This leaves the game with an increasingly problematic gameplay experience. This situation has only gotten worse with the game’s age. With each successive update and expansion, Bethesda keeps taxing the game engine more and more. As the game engine becomes more and more overtaxed, the controller input is given increasingly less and less polling time… to the point where button presses are entirely lost.
This problem is not a problem that should exist in a top tier game. No game should ever be released with this level of controller problems, let alone with all of the additional problems listed above.
Overpowered Enemies
With the addition of Wastelanders, the balance in the game has been lost. I do classify this as both a design failure and a bug. The human enemies that have been added into the game have not only begun overtaxing the already taxed game engine, but Bethesda has chosen to give level 15 enemies weapons that do the damage of level 98 enemies with similarly equipped armor.
A level 15 Blood Eagle with an automatic laser pistol can kill any level player (even over 200) with just handful of shots. If that’s not the very definition of overpowered, I don’t know what is. This isn’t limited to Blood Eagles, it works for Settlers and Raiders alike. All human enemies have these way overpowered weapons and overpowered armor.
Whether this was intentional design or simply janky happenstance, I’ve no idea. Bethesda has proven time and time again that they simply don’t care about the gamer. With every update, they make it increasingly harder to even play this game, let alone want to like or play it.
In fact, the joy I formerly found in playing some parts of this game is quickly evaporating with the ever mounting bugs, regressions and frustratingly poor design choices.
Atomic Shop and Camp Budget
Worse, I can no longer even build in my camp… which runs entirely counter to buying Atomic Shop items. If Bethesda wants us to buy Atomic Shop camp items, then they’ll need to understand this point of contention. We can’t buy anything for our camps that require budget if we can’t build in our camps. Camp budget maxed = no more sales!
Bethesda, however, doesn’t seem to get this fundamental concept. Bethesda relies on people buying Atom, yet no one will run out to buy Atom if there’s no camp budget available to build. It’s a Catch-22, Bethesda!
You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If this game is failing, it’s because of your short sighted management of this property.
Instead of throwing in NPCs because everyone complained about the lack of them, you should have focused on fixing these long standing bugs. Instead, you focused your time adding new and unnecessary features that are further overtaxing this game’s antiquated engine which exacerbates these existing bugs at the expense of actually useful and fun gameplay.
It’s getting almost impossible to play this game at times… just as it’s getting impossible to type this article into WordPress’s editor with its incredibly bad input lag.
Bethesda needs to wise up rapidly. The Fallout 76 team needs to focus on overcoming these listed shortcomings rather than spending more time crafting unnecessary items for the Atomic Shop which fewer and fewer people can buy with the updated daily challenges no longer giving out Atom. So, let’s talk about the ‘new’ ….
Legendary Run
This is supposed to be the replacement challenge system for Fallout 76. It was promised to be an improvement to help people perform the challenges more in-line with their daily play.
In reality, what this is is a junky and janky mess of a system. Not only are the rewards some the crappiest I’ve seen in this game, they are duplicated all over the place. Need Ghillie armor for Marine Armor? How about Robot? How about Secret Service? Well, Bethesda has littered the board with so many duplicate Ghillie armors that it’s entirely pointless. How many Ghillie armor types do you think that we need? It’s stupid and pointless.
We only need one Ghillie cosmetic suit that we can wear over the top of any armor we wish. We don’t need to own the plan to craft Ghillie skins on every type of armor in existence. We only need ONE cosmetic item we’re done. So many board spaces wasted with this single skin item, the same as the Atomic Onslaught paints.
Worse, handing out these skins runs entirely counter to the way the Atomic Shop wants us to play. This point has been hammered home, oh I don’t know, since the game launched… to wear cosmetic items over the top of our armor. So now suddenly you want us to not wear cosmetics and start crafting Ghillie armor pieces instead? This game is sending us such mixed signals. Show your armor, hide your armor, don’t wear armor, do wear armor. The messaging in this game is not only a mess, it’s a disaster. No wonder everyone is always so confused by this game.
Not a Fallout Game
And here is where we come to the crux of this article. This game is not a Fallout game. It is a cartoony representation of how someone who’s never ever played a Fallout game might think a game like this works. Fallout 76 only pretends to be a Fallout game. It certainly has the skins, the weapons, the armor and the rusted environments, but the game itself is just a hollow, vapid, pointless shell. It barely even resembles Fallout. Further, its lore is so weak and so shallow in storytelling, nothing even matters.
Beyond this, Bethesda has introduced new items into the universe that have never before existed in Fallout New Vegas, Fallout 3 or Fallout 4… games with world environments and stories that exist long after Fallout 76. Games that should have seen traces of many of these new Fallout 76 items.
That’s the danger in creating a prequel… introducing new items into a world where previously existing worlds you’ve already built won’t have these items. Not seeing these items in Fallout 4, for example, means major continuity problems… yet another reason Fallout 76 is a crappy installment.
It’s not just the continuity issues that are a problem, however. It’s how weakly handled the entire world concept is. You exit the vault with the hopes of rebuilding Appalachia, yet the 24 vault dwellers who exit the vault are limited to building tiny crappy camps in remote areas of Appalachia? That’s not rebuilding, that’s junk. That’s not coming together as a team, that’s every-person-for-themselves. That’s not how rebuilding should be envisioned or handled.
In fact, after all of the quests are done and all of the smoke clears, Appalachia remains the same old decrepit place with the same old enemies roaming it and so many of the old bugs present. The presence of vault dwellers did absolutely nothing to make Appalachia, or indeed, Fallout 76 a better place. For a multiplayer game, it’s hard to believe a top tier developer like Bethesda failed so spectacularly at producing a compelling and fun experience… but here we are. Even the combat fails mostly because of all of the bugs that remain unfixed. Bleah.
âŠī¸
Fallout 76: Let’s review Wastelanders
NPCs are now in the game and so are duping exploits. Let’s review.
[Update for 5/4/2020] It seems that Bethesda has released a hotfix to prevent losing your weapon to an NPC if that NPC kills your character and loots the body. However, all other vending bugs have not yet been patched. We’re still waiting, Bethesda.
[Update for 4/27/2020] Serious Bugs! Bethesda appears to have introduced several new very serious bugs related to player vending in Wastelanders! These bugs can see you lose not only your weapons and armor, they will be taken directly from your stash! You may want to reconsider playing the game until they’ve fixed these showstopper issues. If you need more details or examples, please visit this Reddit thread. Bethesda is aware of these and are in the process of a hotfix for at least Bug 2, but there’s no date set when these fixes may arrive.
Bug 1: Player vending machines appear to be selling random unlisted items from your stash at random prices. This means any legendary weapon, rare armor, ammo or outfit in your Stashbox could be up for grabs for as little as 0 caps. Some buyers report having purchased extremely rare outfits and legendary weapons for 50 caps. Players hadn’t listed these items in their vendor. There is no rhyme or reason why this one is occurring.
Bug 2: Players report having their equipped weapon looted from their dead body by an NPC after character death. This bug seems to occur both in and out of events. If you’re fighting NPCs anywhere in the game and they kill your character, that NPC can apparently loot your body for your equipped weapon before you respawn. This one is a showstopper.
Workaround for bug #1 — Store ALL of your player vending machines in your workshop until this one is resolved. I also suggest storing ALL other player vending items such as Nuka-Cola vending machines, beer kegs, punch bowls or any other vendors that allow players to interact with items from your stash. Display cases should be safe from looting by players, but to be safe it might be worth storing them too.
Alternatively, play in a Private World where no other players can buy from your vendors until this issue is resolved. If you invite friends into your Private World with your vendors out, make sure you trust them fully and explain not to buy anything from your machines.
Workaround for bug #2 — Other than not playing the game, I don’t know of any way to avoid this situation other than making sure your characters don’t die around NPCs.
[Update for 4/22/2020] Bethesda has re-enabled vending and displays after rolling out a hot fix designed to solve the duping problem. However, knowing Bethesda’s track record at performing updates around duping exploits, they likely didn’t solve this problem. I fully expect these items to be disabled again within a week after duping resumes… with yet another patch forthcoming.
Bethesda’s Bad Coding
We all know that Bethesda’s ability to code a great game isn’t the best. Bethesda’s games are always chock full of bugs, particularly day one releases. Well, Wastelanders has arrived (on April 14th) and like all new releases, it is once again chock full of bugs… some fairly severe, like duping.
Before you run out and attempt to dupe your items, let’s talk about the ramifications of these actions first. I’d also recommend that if you don’t own Fallout 76 that you hold off running out to buy a copy before reading this article.
Duping, Exploits and Consequences
Before I get into the meat of this article, which are my actual thoughts about the Wastelanders addition and general review of the new content, I need to talk about duping and exploits first. This is something that some gamers seem to live for in Bethesda’s games, particularly it seems, when they are playing Fallout 76.
But, “Hold your horses there, Mac”. Don’t run out and begin looking for the duping exploits lest you get your account permanently banned from Bethesda.net. Many players see in-game exploitation as some kind of game within a game. To be fair, I see their point. However, Bethesda doesn’t agree with it.
In fact, Bethesda has made their stance on venturing outside of the bounds of the game to be very much a ban-worthy offense. Not only is it ban-worthy, it’s permaban worthy. What I mean is that if you choose to exploit the in-game world by doing things not intended by Bethesda, expect to see your account banned. I don’t mean a few days of ban here either. These bans are likely to be so severe, you may never get your account back… and, you will lose all Atom you carry, all items you’ve bought in the Atomic shop and lose any remaining portion of Fallout 1st you may have left, in addition to never being able to play the game again.
If Bethesda finds what you’ve done severe enough, they may even contact Sony to have your PSN account banned at the console level. Yes, Bethesda can do this.
This section should be seen as a warning to those of you gamers who wish to tread on the very tenuous ground of duping and exploitation in the Fallout 76 world. If you wish to play a Bethesda online game, you need to keep your character’s feet firmly on the ground and away from all in-game exploits. Anything that feels like cheating in the game world is very likely to get your Bethesda.net account banned!
How Will Bethesda Know?
I know this game is played by a lot of naïve minors under the age of 18. Many may even be under the age of 12. Being of this younger age, it’s easy to fail to understand that there are such things as logs. Bethesda has been logging and monitoring Fallout 76 on their servers for months. They began this monitoring process when the last duping flare-up occurred early in 2019.
Since then, all of this monitoring has improved and, in fact, is likely being actively reviewed and monitored daily through reports and other condensed information. This means that someone at Bethesda has the job of actively looking for players using suspect behavior and/or carrying suspect stacks of items.
If you carry a stack of 1 million pieces of ammo, or a 100k stimpaks or 50k Large Holiday Presents or any unnecessarily large stack of items, your account is likely to be found and flagged for duping. The numbers of items you can reasonably carry range from 1-10000 depending on item. Even then, the 10k amount only applies to ammo where it is feasible you can find that much in the game world. While Bethesda will overlook 10k in ammo, they will NOT overlook 10k or 100k in Large Handmade Holiday Gifts or a million pieces of ammo… particularly if they all have the same object ID.
Once they see a large stack of suspect items, they will begin investigating the account for how it obtained this many of the item. The Bethesda staff person will then find if the account performed duping to obtain that item. Bethesda’s duping detection system isn’t perfect. Even if you didn’t dupe the items, but carry them on your account, your account may still be flagged. If your friend hands you 10k Holiday Gifts, be cautious and open them up quick or drop them. Don’t leave them lying around in your stash or in your character’s inventory. Simply holding onto a large suspect stack of items is enough to have your account banned… even if YOU didn’t dupe them.
I can’t stress the above enough. If you value all of the work you’ve put into Fallout 76 and your Bethesda.net account, then don’t dupe and don’t accept large duped stacks of items.
This is why we can’t have nice things!
When push comes to shove, Bethesda is king at punishing (and retaliating against) exploiters and, by extension, all other users of their games in general. Bethesda has continually proven, at least with Fallout 76, that they don’t really care whose toes they step on to solve gamer exploits in their games. If that means deleting game world items from every Stashbox, regardless of whether it was legitimately obtained or not, so be it.
That means that a small minority of gamers can run amok within Fallout 76 exploiting duping bugs which forces Bethesda to take their ire out on the entire Fallout 76 gaming community as whole. Bethesda will willfully modify their game in negative ways, regardless of whom it affects.
Additionally, with exploiters who Bethesda can identify were specifically participating in the exploits, they will outright ban these gamers from Fallout 76 and, potentially, Bethesda.net on the whole. What this means to exploiters is not only the loss of access to Fallout 76, but it also means loss of access to every game you’ve ever purchased from Bethesda’s store. Yes, this punishment is hard. But, some people need to learn lessons the hard way. Life’s lessons aren’t always wrapped in pretty bows… which is a life lesson in and of itself.
Though, I’m not at all saying that being banned from the game isn’t the right choice to make for Bethesda. If gamers choose not to play the game as written and instead insist on playing outside of those boundaries by exploiting bugs, then you take what’s coming to you. Bethesda’s Terms of Service are crystal clear as follows:
You agree not to access, receive, play or use any Service to:
- Promote, upload, transmit, encourage or take part in any activity involving hacking, cracking, phishing, taking advantage of exploits or cheats and/or distribution of counterfeit software and/or Virtual Currency or virtual items. In an effort to continuously improve the Services, You and other players discovering exploits, cheats, cracks or other inconsistencies are required to report them to ZeniMax;
If you participate in this or any other activity listed in Bethesda’s Terms of Service, Bethesda’s remedies are clearly defined here:
In response to a violation of these Terms of Service, ZeniMax may issue You a warning, suspend or restrict certain features of Your Account (including, but not limited to, user names), selectively modify or remove or revoke Downloadable Content at an Account and/or device level, immediately terminate any and all Accounts that You have established and/or temporarily or permanently ban Your Account, device, and/or machine from accessing, receiving, playing or using all or certain Services.
ZeniMax may terminate Your access to and/or receipt, play or use of the Services (i) for violating these Terms of Service; (ii) if ZeniMax, in its sole discretion, deems that Your information is untrue, inaccurate, not complete or incomplete; (iii) if Your access to or receipt, play or use of such Services infringes on or is suspected of infringing on another’s rights or any intellectual property; or (iv) if You or Your Account reflects inappropriate Content and/or violates these Terms of Service. Any and all Content (including, but not limited to, Software, Content, and Downloadable Content) will be considered forfeit immediately in the event of any cancellation, closure, or termination of Your Account by ZeniMax.
This means that, yes, you can lose access to a portion or all of your content for the game involved or, indeed, you can lose your entire account at Bethesda. Basically, you will forfeit your access to the software involved and potentially everything else you own from Bethesda. When you exploit Bethesda’s software, eventually you will pay the price and that price is fairly steep.
One additional problem that can arise is that Bethesda can also report your account to PlayStation or Xbox if you have also violated those service’s terms and conditions. Bethesda’s report can see your entire PlayStation or Xbox blocked entirely from online services. Not only can you not use any Bethesda games you own, you could lose your entire Xbox Live or PlayStation Network access for all other games. It all depends on how Bethesda plays it against you. Bethesda can most certainly play hardball if you press the point.
With all of that behind us, let’s move into the meat and potatoes of this review…
Wastelanders Add-On
With the addition of Wastelanders, the Appalachia wasteland has changed. How has it changed? It now has NPCs all over the place. This addition is a mixed bag, however.
While some of the portions of the game have been somewhat rewritten, the fundamental original game is still under there. The NPCs will help you get a handle a bit quicker because they can aid you in getting your character to where it needs to go. When you first exited Vault 76 before this update, you had to fend for yourself alone without much of any help.
Now there are NPCs to greet you just outside the vault who not only give you various information, they help you get a handle on what’s going on in Appalachia. That’s not to say these helpers outside of the vault are necessary, but now Appalachia doesn’t feel so barren.
The question is, does this addition really help the game out? As I said, that’s mixed bag. Nearly all of the original underlying quests are still in the game including the boring holotapes and terminal text lore. Some quests are somewhat altered with the presence of the new walking, talking NPCs.
Allies
Also with the Wastelanders addition, Bethesda has added on the concept of an ally. Think of this as effectively a named settler. If you’ve played Fallout 4, it’s similar to a companion with the exception that these allies don’t follow you around and aid you in combat. They live at your C.A.M.P. and help protect your camp. They also issue you quests that lead to a final 3 star legendary drop at the end.
Two of these allies include Beckett and Sofia. To entice them to come to your base, you must place down something that they need. Beckett wants a bar stand. Sofia needs a computer console. Once you plop down their requirement in your camp, they will join you there.
However, you can only have 1 ally present in your camp at a time. This also means you can only run one ally quest line at a time. These allies don’t leave your camp. They stay there and interact with whatever you place around them, such as musical instruments. Be careful with musical instruments, though. Sofia can, for example, sit and play the guitar for 20 minutes or longer constantly. That would be okay if they had given Sofia some actual guitar music to play. Instead, just like a player character, the guitar plays snippets and chopped together riffs that, after a while, become annoying as all get out. It’s fun to know that NPCs will play the instruments, but it’s torture to listen to them playing the same thing over and over for 20-30 minutes continuously.
Dialog Choices
With NPCs, comes dialog. Here’s a screenshot of how that looks:
Much of the dialog, as one would expect, is pointless. But, some of it does lead to adding map markers or other interesting actions. With some dialog choices, you can use your S.P.E.C.I.A.L. points which will lead to unlocking other dialog.
New Main Quests
In addition to the long ally quest lines, there are new main quests. This main quest begins at The Wayward, just across from the Overseer’s camp. Pretty much it seems the Overseer’s camp has now been discarded in lieu of beginning the game at The Wayward. The Wayward is a house that doubles as a bar. It’s a new addition to the world, along with many other new locations. Some original locations have also been converted into NPC communities.
If you’re used to how the wasteland looked before Wastelanders, many of the locations have changed. For example, the Isolated Cabin which was inhabited by mongrels has been converted into a settler settlement. These NPCs are generically named ‘Settler’. The dogs may or may not appear with the addition of the settlers. The settlers can be killed, however.
New Bosses
Of course, the addition of Wastelanders wouldn’t be complete without a new boss location to nuke. Instead of nuking Fissure Prime to get the Scorchbeast Queen to appear, there is a new location which now spawns the Wendigo Colossus. Don’t think that this boss looks anything like the long slender Wendigo, however. The Colossus looks like a Grafton Monster with tall skinny legs. This particular monster design was, in fact, far too lazily designed. It seems Bethesda did as little as possible to make a functional workable monster.
This boss also has a new attack. It throws goop at you that sees you literally run away screaming. There’s no way to counter, stop or in any way halt this animation effect. You are forced to let it play out. It’s a stupid effect and it completely gets in the way. I’m sure someone at Bethesda thought it was hilarious, but I find it extremely frustrating and stupid. You fight bosses to fight, not run away screaming. If Bethesda had given us a new perk card, food stuff or chem (i.e., Calmex) to negate this attack for a period of time, I’d be less harsh on Bethesda for this addition. This attack needs to disappear or we need to be given a way to negate the attack. It’s frustrating when you’re attempting to kill this beast and you’re constantly being forced to run away.
Updated Locations
Some locations have been updated and rebuilt to support NPC settlers. One of these is the crashed space station. Here’s a picture:
I’ve included the border because the original space station as it was is seen in the upper left corner. Compare this to the reworked and updated Wastelanders image. I realize the image is kind of drab, but the in-game world had a rainstorm going at the time. I also thought it would be important to 
show the rain storm look in this review.
This location introduces one of two new factions: Raiders. The other faction is the Settlers. You can view your acceptance level in these factions by checking your social menu.
Negating the Scorchbeast Queen
With the newly added Wendigo Colossus, few people are going to run over and start up the Queen event anymore. Because this is a type of Wendigo, all of the Zealots, Ultracite and Prime perks are useless against this boss. In fact, there really isn’t a Legendary effect that actually works against a Wendigo. You just have to be long and steady with your weapons. This usually means using heavy automatic weapons. Weapons that don’t necessarily do lots of damage per hit, but that cumulatively add up to lots of damage over time.
This is where Bethesda didn’t really plan ahead much. If you’re planning to add an entirely new boss into the game, you also need to add in perk cards and legendary effects to help defeat this boss, just like we had with Zealots and Prime against the Scorched. We have half of the equation with this boss addition, but we don’t have the other half of this in the weapons to help defeat or armor to protect against this boss.
This is where Wastelanders becomes a mixed bag. Yes, we do get a new boss in Wastelanders. No, we don’t get any new legendary effects, perk cards or chems that help us kill that new boss. Don’t think that you can grab your Zealots and have these legendary weapons be more effective against the Wendigo Colossus, like they were against the Scorchbeast Queen. It doesn’t work that way. You’re better off using basic legendary effects like Bloodied or Berzerker’s with a proper character build.
Perk Card Changes and New Weapon
With Wastelanders, a new set of perk cards has been added in support of the new bow and arrow weapon. The perk cards are standard 3 damage multiplier Archer cards in addition to Bow Before Me, an anti-armor card which applies to bows and crossbows. The bow itself is a decently powered weapon at level 50, offering up to 350 damage when sneaking. That’s not bad all things considered. However, it’s an exceedingly slow loading and slow firing weapon. Once a horde of enemies finds you, you better switch to a different weapon or you’ll want to pair it with the Sneak card and hope the enemies don’t find you.
New Power Armor
The newest power armor set is the T-65 power armor. This armor requires collecting gold bullion (yet another new currency). To get this bullion, you’ll need to complete as many of the new main and faction quests as you can. One you complete the main and faction quests, you will be able to visit Regs (another new NPC) who is located at Vault 79 (a new vault) where you can spend your bullion to buy the plans to build this armor.
Whether this armor is effective against the Colossus is as yet unknown. Though, I will say that power armor in Fallout 76 has been, in general, a joke. For example, 5.56 equipped Colonel Gutsy robots can shred your HP in just a few shots in or out of power armor. In fact, I haven’t seen any difference between being in or out of power armor when facing a 5.56 equipped Gutsy or Super Mutant.
Worse, while Fallout 4 offered legendary effects on power armor, these PA legendary pieces have never made it into Fallout 76. Even though regular armor regularly drops with legendary effects, power armor has never had any legendary effects in Fallout 76. This drastically reduces the effectiveness of power armor in Fallout 76. Why am I bringing this up here? Because Wastelanders didn’t fix this problem. It still exists just as it did before Wastelanders.
New Challenges?
Actually, no. Even though the Wastelanders update has added NPCs, no additional combat challenges have been added… such as Kill Blood Eagles with a Combat Rifle (0/1000). While NPCs have been added, Bethesda just didn’t work out these small details that would have added much more value to the game.
Lighting System Changes
Prior to Wastelanders, the lighting in the game was brighter and more dynamic. With the introduction of Wastelanders, the game has taken a questionable backward step toward darker lighting levels (see Whitespring Station image), including the elimination of many areas of ambient lighting. Walking into some buildings which were formerly well lit, we now see portions of the room exceedingly dark with a single bright light in the middle of the room.
The Charleston station, left, is exceedingly dark where before the interior was very bright. This is in the middle of the day in-game time. Even the daylight outdoors lighting model has changed seeing shadows on the ground as much darker. This lighting model change is unusual and unnecessary. The original lighting system actually looked better, particularly inside of buildings. This absence of ambient lighting thus makes many rooms, like the interior of Charleston Station, overly dark.
As you can see above, the before is brighter, lighter and more vibrant. The shadows are less intense. The before was taken about a month ago, perhaps. The After image is darker, less colorful, drab and is more difficult to read the signs. The whites were easier to see in the before.
…. Where does Wastelanders not work so well?
Changes, Not Changes
This is where I find Wastelanders to be basically a facelift, primarily on the surface. The underlying problems from Fallout 76 all remain. The bugs, the problems, the glitching, the crashing, the difficulties, the getting hung up on rocks while running, the getting stuck in a hole, the broken texture maps, the lack of responsiveness from button presses on down to the whole less than stellar way the interface is built and works. None of these basic day-one problems have been addressed. We’re still working on game foundation that wasn’t perfected from the beginning. So now we have NPCs plopped right on top of all of these still existing bugs.
Many people say that Fallout 76 has greatly improved since its launch. I’ve yet to see that. The game is still just as glitchy and broken as it was on release day. Sure, some problems have been addressed, but the majority of the underlying bugs are all still there. Wastelanders did little to solve these fundamental game engine problems. The problem here is that these bugs and glitches are mainly inconvenient. They are typically not showstoppers. However, some are more inconvenient than others.
For example, dead enemies can sometimes despawn moments after death. If you aren’t super quick to grab the loot from the body, you won’t get it. This includes legendary enemies. This is a bug that has existed from launch day.
Another bug is when you fast travel. You can land inside of rocks, under a building wedged, wedged between two walls or in other places that don’t allow you to move. You are forced to travel again.
You can still find enemies sliding around on the ground either standing up in a T position or in a lying or seated position. This glitch has been in the game since day one.
This next one I’ve seen so many times is one I can’t believe hasn’t yet been fixed. When you’re fighting a boss and your character dies, the game forces you to choose a respawn point. The problem here is that on character death, the game immediately recalculates your carry weight far below your in-game carry weight. This forces you to become severely overencumbered immediately after your character dies. This then forces you to respawn back at Vault 76 (all the way across the map).
Once your character has respawned fully and the game has recalculated your carry weight back to normal, you can then travel back to that death location and pick up your dropped loot. In my case, the game wouldn’t even let me respawn back at my Fallout 1st tent! I was forced to fast travel twice. Once to Vault 76, then once again back to my tent. It’s like, shit, just let me travel to my tent first. If I hadn’t had my tent there, I’d have had to pay caps to get back across the map. This problem has existed since day one.
Bugs, bugs and more bugs
These above are but a few examples. There are plenty of others that still plague this mediocre game. That doesn’t mean there aren’t new bugs. Oh, no no no. There are plenty of new bugs in this update. Duping is, as I mentioned above, back with a vengeance. It seems that many gamers were just waiting to pounce all over duping again, and dupe they have. In response, Bethesda has stopped display cases from functioning and halted player vending.
It’s clear that unless you (as a company) are absolutely stellar at programming, you shouldn’t attempt to have an in-game economy. This shows exactly how amateur Bethesda is at producing online games with any semblance of an economy. If you can’t lock down such basic things as duping, you can’t have an in-game economy.
At this point, it’s probably best were Bethesda to dismantle player vending entirely, disable dropping any items from inventory, stop player trading and halt all ability to transfer items from one player to another. If the devs can’t handle keeping these bugs from surfacing and resurfacing, then they must stop the underlying reason why duping continues to exist. If players can’t sell, trade or transfer items from one player to another, there’s little reason to dupe items. Items like Holiday Gifts should be removed from the game entirely and never see a return. Nothing should produce caps upon consuming the item, not even Nuka-Cola drinks. The only things that should give caps are in-game vending bots, cap stashes, dead enemies, containers and quests. Basically, items that cannot possibly be duplicated.
Additionally, vending bots should mark an object ID which has been previously sold as unsellable. This means that should another player show up with that same object ID attempting to sell it, the vendor bot will not only refuse to buy it, it will then confiscate it from the player’s inventory. Vendor bots that buy items never relist an already used ID. Instead, they will always relist the item with a new ID. This means that a duped item can’t be sold by a bot. If you can’t sell a dupe with an added double whammy of losing it, players will think twice not only about duping, but attempting to sell those dupes to vendors. It also means they can’t sell them to players either. This means duping is a dead end.
This is tough way to handle duping, but we’re at the crossroads with this game. If Bethesda can’t prevent duping, then it needs to be stopped using another more permanent method… and that way is to halt all further player-to-player sales and trading. Halting the ability for players to trade goods with one another is the only way to stop duping.
Player Vending is Broken
I’m singling out duping here because it keeps coming back over and over and over. Duping has not gone away and it is, once again, back. It will also keep coming back so long as player-to-player trading remains in the game. Instead of Bethesda playing this never ending game of “catch the duping mouse”, the answer is to simply halt player trading entirely. Only allow players to interact and trade with game controlled vendor bots. It’s long past time for Bethesda to have solved this problem and this is the ONLY solution.
Changing this fundamental aspect of this multiplayer game will have some ramifications. Yes, it will make traders exceedingly angry. At the same time, it will also stop all real money eBay listings, it will halt scammers and it will halt the third party trading marketplaces. This will force players to legitimately earn caps in the game through normal in-game means.
If Bethesda wants to better control these exploits and continue to allow selling, they need to do away with vending machines at each camp and place a vending machine at each train station (see next section for additional thoughts). A vending machine will always re-ID every object it receives to sell. This means there is no possibility a player could receive a dupe from a vendor bot. When a player lists an item, the item is checked for a duped ID. If this object’s ID has already been purchased by a vendor bot once before, the weapon is confiscated and the player is then notified the duped item has been confiscated. A notification should also be sent to someone at Bethesda that a vendor bot has confiscated a duped item and which account presented it.
Player to player vending can be implemented in the following way and should be limited to a centralized system. This system will list the item along with the player’s name. The item (after being validated as not duped) will go up for sale at the player’s specified price. The item remains listed for a period of time (i.e., 3 days) and will remain listed regardless of whether the player is online. After 3 days without purchase, the item is returned to the player’s inventory. If purchased, the caps will be placed into a centralized bank to which the player can withdraw those caps via the vending machine. Players should be limited to no more than 5-10 listings at a time and a max amount of caps in the bank.
Other bugs which were recently added include the rogue turret bug. If one turret is damaged in a workshop, the other turrets in the area begin shooting at friendly camp or workshop items. This is such a stupid bug. I can’t believe it has been allowed to persist across multiple releases in a row. Bethesda is well aware of this issue, yet they choose to do nothing to fix it. In fact, it seems that now a rogue turret in a camp can actually damage other workshop equipment. I shake my head that Bethesda can’t even fix what should be simple bugs, yet they spend massive amounts of time working on add-ons that really don’t add that much value to the game.
End of Player Trading?
At this point and strictly due to duping, I’d personally like to see player-to-player trading end. This won’t be a popular opinion among traders, but it’s definitely needed to stop all of these duplication problems. Trading is not really very useful, it causes bad behavior among players, it invites duping and it doesn’t really solve a problem for the game. Since Fallout 76 is pretty much a single player game with a multiplayer component, there’s no need for player vending at all. It simply gets in the way of the enjoyment of the game. With the advent of Purveyor Murmrgh and the ability to buy 1, 2 and 3 star legendary weapons and armor, player-to-player trading is now unnecessary.
I’m sure a lot of traders will disagree. Were Bethesda to make this change, it would stop the need for most duping. The primary reason most players dupe is to sell weapons to other players for high amounts of caps. The secondary reason is to dupe items that instantly produce caps for the player. Both of these problems need to be stopped. The way to handle it is to stop player-to-player trading and implement a duped ID checking + confiscation system when attempting to sell duped items to vendors. Further, stop giving away items that instantly produce caps upon consuming it. Instead, drop only objects into the player’s inventory. They can then sell the item to a vendor for caps. Keep caps issuance only from vendor bots, from world containers and at the end of quests.
Additionally, items can no longer be dropped into the world. This should also include stopping the drop of junk items upon character death. Further, like many of the newer items, if you attempt to drop any item, you’re then notified the item will be destroyed. With this change, you won’t be able to drop loot bags any more… which of course negates the idea of custom loot bags sold in the Atomic Shop. A small price to pay to get rid of player trading.
Halting all player trading means the player must rely on the game to produce caps and provide the player with weapons and armor. This change is actually in keeping with the way that Fallout 4 worked in single player campaign. Because Fallout 4 doesn’t allow multiplayer, the player had to rely solely on themselves to obtain caps and obtain the best weapons in the game. Moving Fallout 76 to this more stringent and similar model would actually heighten the gameplay, make it more challenging and more in keeping with Fallout 4’s model. No longer can gamers rely on others to give them “the best weapon”, a form of cheating. Instead, they must grind in the normal way, earn their keep individually and spend the money they legitimately earned to buy weapons from the Purveyor or, alternatively, find a legendary enemy and take their chances to get a better weapon or armor.
Moving Fallout 76 to a more-or-less closed single player system with limited multiplayer support, this stops players from wanting to exploit the game in an attempt to gain more caps, better weapons and better armor via cheating. Yes, I do consider player-to-player trading a form of cheating. You didn’t earn that weapon, you bought it. You didn’t earn that armor, you bought it. There’s no difference between pay-to-play with Atomic shop items and player-to-player for-pay trading. It’s all a form of pay-to-win. I’m most definitely for ending all forms of pay-to-win whether by Bethesda or via player trading.
Overall
The addition of NPCs to Fallout 76 is a long time coming. Unfortunately, it’s probably too little, too late. This should have been the way the game was released on day one, not a year and a half later. Will this make Fallout 76 a great game? With NPCs added, it’s better in some ways, but it’s worse in others. This is why it’s a mixed bag.
Can I recommend this update? For curiosity sake, sure. Download it and explore. If you’ve already played Fallout 76 through to completion, it doesn’t change the original game so much that it makes a huge difference. The changes to the original quests are relatively minor… just enough to introduce NPCs so they make sense.
The best part of Wastelanders is the addition of allies. This C.A.M.P. addition is probably the single best part of Wastelanders. You can now have an NPC at your base permanently. Your character can even have a relationship with them. While they cannot become companions that follow you around, they can help defend your base while you’re not there.
On the flip side, because this is a fluid multiplayer game without the ability to create saved game files, your character’s choices are permanent. If you wish to redo a portion of an NPC’s quest, you can’t do that. If you make a mistake which has specific unknown consequences, your only choice is to start a new character and try again on that new character. I might even suggest starting a new character so you can use this character to determine where these quest pitfalls are. You can then play the quests through a second time on your primary character and know the best choices possible while avoiding such pitfalls.
Is Wastelanders a great game? Hardly. Is it better than it was? In some ways, yes. In other ways, it’s much the same as it was. If you’ve already played the game through to completion, it does add on a few quest lines that you can explore. Unfortunately, the quests mostly consist of fetch this thing, kill this person or do this thing for me. For the allies, there are many of these before you get to the end. Though, I’d say that the game’s Wastelanders addition probably adds, at most, a month’s worth of additional play value if you play it through slowly.
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Fallout 76: Where to find Deathclaw Hide
If you’re trying to complete the Possum challenge for Leatherworker, you’re probably looking for Deathclaw Hide. Let’s explore.
[Update 7/1/2021] As of this update, Deathclaw Hide now reliably spawns as loot on Deathclaws again, though not every time. It seems that Bethesda has added Deathclaw Hide back to the possible loot drop list for Deathclaws. Because it doesn’t drop every single time, you’ll need to kill a few Deathclaws before it drops.
[Update 8/21/2020] There is a new temporary opportunity to pick up Deathclaw Hide during Meat Week. A Deathclaw spawns at the Forest’s Primal Cuts event as the final beast. This event’s location is right next to the red truck just outside Flatwoods. In addition to the Prime Meat you get from completing the event, this final Legendary Deathclaw sometimes drops Deathclaw Hide. By the way, this is the only Primal Cuts event that isn’t completely broken. The other locations I’ve attempted are entirely borked. At those other locations, the final wave of beasts never arrives causing the event to fail. This one in the Forest is properly working. If you’re wanting to collect Prime Meat for Grahm’s Cook-Out, this is the only Primal Cuts event to attempt. Meat Week (along with this event) ends on August 27th. Good Luck!
[Update 7/25/2020] As I predicted below, it seems that the Alpha Deathclaw carcasses at the fissure sites no longer drop Deathclaw Hide (or any other loot). I have visited several fissure sites, including Fissure Prime, and all of the carcasses are now empty… even when opening up the container into full screen mode AND even on private servers. This indicates that Bethesda has stopped the loot from dropping on these carcasses. The below information must now be amended to note this change in the game. Bethesda could return loot drops to the carcasses in the future, but for now loot no longer spawns on these fissure carcasses. Thanks go to reader Duggle for pointing this out.
With that said, I am still getting Deathclaw Hide from Deathclaws that you can kill. In fact, I found Deathclaw Hide on a Matriarch Deathclaw in the Abandoned Waste Dump cave today (7/25). However, I tried visiting that cave 5 more times after that and did not receive any further Deathclaw Hide drops, but did receive Deathclaw Hands (which doesn’t count for the challenge). It seems that you’re going to have to be diligent with world hopping this cave by killing the Deathclaws in this cave.
In fact, I’m beginning to believe that Bethesda may have made Deathclaw Hide a once-per-day drop from any Deathclaw. Why do I believe that? It seems that I’ve been able to find one Deathclaw Hide from the first couple of Deathclaws killed in a 24 hour period, but I’ve received no more after that from other Deathclaws. This could all be happenstance and rarity at work, but after a couple days of this loot drop behavior in a row, I’m leaning heavily in the once-per-day direction. If you’ve been able to get more than one Deathclaw Hide from killing a bunch of Deathclaws during a 24 hour period, please let me know in the comments below.
It seems that reader Duggle was able to get several Deathclaw Hides in the same session and even by world hopping. So, it seems the once-per-day drop for me was merely a fluke.
Where to find Deathclaws?
The only two places I know of which spawn Deathclaws as part of the location are the Abandoned Waste Dump cave in the Mire and the lower level Deathclaw that spawns on Deathclaw Island in the Forest (not far from Vault 76). There are mini-event locations that can also spawn Deathclaws, but these mini-event areas are randomly spawned from about 10-15 different mini-events… which makes this specific Deathclaw mini-event infrequent.
There may be one more location for a Deathclaw spawn and that’s at the Thunder Mountain Substation TM-02 in the Cranberry bog not far from Watoga. I haven’t visited this location in quite some time, but the last time I was there it regularly spawned a Deathclaw with a bunch of bugs (usually glowing ants). Updated note for 7/28/2020. I’ve recently visited this site again and I can confirm that it still spawns a Deathclaw with 4 glowing ants which the Deathclaw had killed.
Reader Duggle points out that a Mythic Deathclaw spawns inside of Hopewell Cave. I haven’t farmed this cave, but it’s worth heading into this cave and killing this Deathclaw to find out.
[Update 4/27/2020] It seems that since Wastelanders has been released, Deathclaws are once again dropping Deathclaw Hide. I found it on the Deathclaw on Deathclaw Island. I’ve also seen Deathclaw Hide drops from Radtoads. It seems Bethesda has potentially fixed the problem that caused this article to be written (see update Caveat just above). Still, these Deathclaw Hide drops seem to be rare.
Possum Challenges
The one thing about the Possum Challenges is that there’s always this “one thing” you can’t seem to find (or do). With the Leatherworker challenge, this one is no different. I have no idea why Bethesda feels the need to make these challenges drastically more difficult by limiting the ability to find the things you need. For example, the Possum Electrician challenge is entirely broken. There’s no way to actually succeed with this challenge because the ‘Restore power to a Power Plant’ challenge won’t complete no matter how many times you “Light Up” the Poseidon Power Plant … it seems Bethesda may have finally fixed this challenge to award the point after powering up Poseidon.
With pretty much every other animal in the game, you can find their hide in the loot pile after you kill them. Perhaps not finding it all of the time, but at least 50% of the time. This would mean you need to kill a minimum two of these animals to find its hide.
With the Deathclaw, unfortunately, Bethesda seems to have taken Deathclaw Hide off of a Deathclaw’s drop list (or at least, after Wastelanders, reduced its drop rate substantially) which you only find out after spending time and ammo killing several Deathclaws. It seems Deathclaw Hide is now back on a live Deathclaw’s drop list (see update above), but it is still a reasonably rare drop. So, no longer does a Deathclaw drop Deathclaw Hide. This makes the Leatherworker Possum challenge nearly impossible… until you know where to look.
Thanks, Bethesda.
Rant Mode On
At this point, I can’t believe this is an oversight. In fact, I believe that it isn’t. I believe these changes are intentional by people within Bethesda. To consider this unnecessary change as anything more than accidental in among so many other “accidental” changes is naïve. There is absolutely no way Bethesda is this mistake prone. No way! No company makes so many mistakes in writing code. No one does this. One or two mistakes here and there I can accept as accidental. With Fallout 76, it’s been a series of mistakes after a series of mistakes after even more mistakes.
In fact, it’s almost like Fallout 76 came to exist through a series of mistakes. No one (let alone a company as big as Bethesda) makes that many “accidental” mistakes and still produces a semi-functional product. No! These changes are not accidental, incidental or unintentional. No company operates like The Keystone Cops (too young for this reference? Â âĒ click here).
These mistakes are definitely intentional! They have been introduced by Bethesda’s engineers intentionally. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps job security? No company I’ve seen introduces bugs intentionally… except Bethesda and software engineers hoping for …
Job Security
What exactly is “Job Security” in the software and technical professions? I’ll explain.
Many technical staff are not confident in their own skills or abilities. Their job insecurity sees them play games to make themselves appear “more valuable” and, thus, help their prospects with job security. Everyone wants to be considered a valuable team member. Unfortunately, playing this “job security” game in the way described below is highly unethical, but few technical staff see it this way.
By Technical Staff, I’m referring to software engineers, software designers and software coders. I also include systems administrators, systems engineers and systems architects as well. All of these technical roles have the ability to play such games to help increase their perceived “value” to the company.
No one wants to be considered obsolete by their employer. To that end, many software designers, engineers and even systems administrators, choose to keep their jobs secure by engineering their own continued necessity. How do technical employees engineer their own continued necessity? By introducing system breaking bugs. If things are “broken”, the company will continue to need someone to “fix” it.
How this situation manifests is that these folks break small things here and there. They don’t break the whole system, though they could very easily do this if they wanted. No, instead, they engineer breakage in small tertiary components. They engineer situations that are just problematic enough to be annoying, but not problematic enough to keep the product from working entirely. Though, I have worked with some folks who will and have chosen to break the entire system, bringing down the entire product for several hours.
There’s a fine line when considering breaking small things versus large things. Breaking the whole system is a firing offense. If you break the entire system such that no one can use it for hours, that’s something that will get at least one person fired. This doesn’t afford job security. Just the opposite, in fact. Breaking the entire system will get someone fired.
Breaking tiny tertiary pieces isn’t a firing offense (at least as long as the engineer doesn’t go blabbing about what they did). In fact, breaking something small is usually seen as unintentional by most bosses. After all, a boss might think, “Why would they break this tiny thing intentionally?” For this thinking logic, such small things are assumed to be a bug.
Many software engineers (and similar people in similar lower level positions) take advantage of this flawed managerial thinking logic and choose to break underlying, but very small components. Why? As this section states, job security. If small things are continually broken, the company will need someone who “knows that code” to fix it. Hence, continued employment for that person. Yes, it’s a shitty thing to do, but people also want to remain employed. When you hire bright people to write code, you also hire their scheming minds. Expect them to take advantage of such internal managerial flawed rationales to their own benefit.
How does this relate to Deathclaw Hide? It relates because the person who manages this specific portion of Fallout 76 wants to remain employed by Bethesda. If they break something small, Bethesda will eventually turn to them to ask them to fix it once enough people complain. See, job security does sometimes work… as long as they don’t get caught at it. It seems that too many employees at Bethesda are playing the “Job Security” game at the expense of Fallout 76. After all, this video game is already mostly a piece of junk. No one is going to see a few more mistakes as any more than “par for The Whitespring golf course”.
Rant over.
So where can I find Deathclaw Hide?
I’m coming to that. I wanted to rant a little about Bethesda before I got to this point. Since Deathclaw Hide no longer spawns on Deathclaws after you kill them, you must rely on loot containers and via other means.
Unfortunately, it seems that the same engineer who removed Deathclaw Hide from the loot drop list for Deathclaws also seems to have removed it from the drop list for regular containers as well. This means you won’t find it in toolboxes, wooden containers, coolers, safes or any other similar containers. I know. I’ve spent days culling through every container I could find looking for it. Deathclaw Hide doesn’t even spawn in Deathclaw nests!
I even went looking in non-conventional places. I started searching through Scorchbeast nests. Specifically, the nests in Watoga. I rationalized that Scorchbeast nests tend to turn up unusual bones and stuff. There is a nest on top of Watoga’s Municipal Building (where Mayor for a Day is located). There is also a nest on top of Watoga’s Civic Center. While these nests both spawn all sorts of goodies, such as Scorchbeast Hide, Scorchbeast Brain, Scorchbeast Meat and Scorchbeast Heart, it doesn’t spawn anything related to Deathclaws.
However, the Scorchbeast Guano piles will occasionally spawn Deathclaw Hands. Unfortunately, these don’t count towards the Possum Leatherworker challenge, even though Deathclaw Hands provide 3 leather. Go figure.
After spending time making various runs to these Scorchbeast Nests, I then had another thought.
Fissure Sites
I realized that I was going about this all wrong. Around the lip of every fissure is an array of dead animals. I also realized long ago that existing already-dead carcasses in the game spawn the hide of the dead animal.
While a Bethesda engineer decided to remove Deathclaw Hide from the live Deathclaw drop list, he/she forgot to remove it from the already dead carcasses that you can find around Appalachia. For example, there’s an already dead Yao Guai at the Abandoned Waste Dump. This permanently dead carcass spawns Yao Guai hide. If you ever need Yao Guai hide for any challenge, make your way to the Abandoned Waste Dump and pick it up. No need to kill anything. Just loot and be done.
This is why I began thinking, “Where can I find already dead Deathclaw carcasses in this game?” That’s when it dawned on me to visit the fissure sites.
Sure enough, there are already dead Deathclaw (and other) carcasses around the lip of fissures. Deathclaw Hide still spawns on these already dead Deathclaw carcasses. Yay! No need to run around killing Deathclaws if we don’t have to, eh? If you’re looking for Deathclaw Hide, you’ll want to visit the lip of the fissure sites to loot these already dead Deathclaws. The difficulty, of course, is that these fissures tend to spawn a crap ton of Scorched and at least one Scorchbeast, in addition to irradiating you. Be prepared with RadShield, RadX, Radaway or Power Armor and also be prepared to take out the enemies… or, alternatively, use the Sneak card to sneaky sneak your way in and out without being easily detected.
Unfortunately, you will only find one hide per carcass. Even then, it doesn’t always spawn. But, it spawns more often than anywhere else. Fortunately, there are 9 fissure sites around Appalachia that you can visit and check out the dead Deathclaw carcasses. At least one of them will have a hide. If you server hop, you can probably find all 5 of the hides that you’ll need to complete the Possum Leatherworker challenge.
I have found that the fissure sites are the most reliable places to locate Deathclaw Hide in Fallout 76. That is, until another engineer chooses to remove Deathclaw Hide from the loot drop list for these already-dead Deathclaws at the fissure sites, too. đ
Update 7/1/2021, the video sizes have returned to normal. Thanks for your patience.
Good Luck.
If this article helped you, please leave a comment below. If you know of the location for other dead Deathclaw carcasses around Fallout 76 (besides fissures), please let me know where you found it in the comments below.
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