Fallout 76: How to get Sludge Lung?
One of the Atom Survival challenges in the game is to catch all of the diseases in the game, such as Sludge Lung and The Whoopsies. Each of these diseases are had by being exposed to certain things in the game. Let’s explore Sludge Lung and The Whoopsies, two of the most difficult diseases to achieve. Let’s explore.
Sludge Lung
Just above I said it is one of the “most difficult disease to achieve”. Oh, it’s not that hard to actually get Sludge Lung, but it is difficult to get Sludge Lung to count against the challenge objective. This is one of the most frustrating things about the challenge system in Fallout 76. You can do all of the right things and still not see the challenge marked as complete. Sludge Lung is one of these problematic achievements.
The easiest way to get Sludge Lung is to enter Belching Betty mine without a mask on. In fact, without a mask, you’re likely to get it instantly upon entering. That’s not the problem, however. Simply getting Sludge Lung doesn’t make it count toward the Survival challenge like it should. This is plainly a bug in Fallout 76. This bug has existed for going on at least 2 years now. You would think that Bethesda could fix a bug like this in 2 years. Yet, here we are and it’s still not fixed. In fact, there are other long unfixed bugs still present today that were in the game on day one of its release.
Bethesda really has no desire to fix these long standing bugs. Instead, they prefer building and releasing expensive add-ons, like the now-defunct Survival World type, Vault 94 and even Nuclear Winter only to see these removed from the game months after introduction. These were expensive-to-build add-ons from a development perspective. We’re talking several months of design and coding only to be summarily dumped from the game without even so much as a farewell.
No, Bethesda can’t fix even the most simplest of bugs, like Sludge Lung counting towards a challenge, but they can spend months building an add-on that no one really wanted and which was proven out because it wasn’t played.
How to get Sludge Lung to count?
We now arrive at the heart of this article. Sludge Lung doesn’t count towards the challenge achievement after a player’s character contracts it. We know this. To get this disease to count towards the Survival challenge isn’t hard, but it also isn’t intuitive.
The easiest method is to immediately head over to Flatwoods after contracting Sludge Lung. There are three sleeping bags lying on the ground near or in Flatwoods. You may now even see where I’m going with this, so bear with me. There are two at the ghoul infested tent just across the field of Brahmin (near the Red Rocket) in Flatwoods proper. There is one more at located at the Overseer’s camp right across from The Wayward (just outside Flatwoods).
Lying on any of these sleeping bags on the ground may confer the Swamp Itch disease upon the player’s character. Why is this important? It’s important because the only way to get Sludge Lung to count is to immediately take on a new disease.
However, there’s a catch. As soon as the player character gets a disease, an invisible cooldown timer begins so that you can’t receive another new disease until that cooldown timer expires. However, server hopping immediately causes that timer to expire upon login to a new server.
This means that once you obtain Sludge Lung, you’ll need to server hop and then fast travel to Flatwoods to attempt to get Swamp Itch from a sleeping bag on the ground. However, Swamp Itch isn’t the only way, but it’s the fastest way. You can certainly try to find a diseased animal, creature or similar and get close enough to them to get their disease. However, you’ll need to be able to do this quickly as Sludge Lung heals and disappears quick… hence, the sleeping bag is the key to speed.
Sleeping Bags and Diseases
Once you have Sludge Lung, server hopped and are standing in front of a sleeping bag on the ground, hop into it. Make sure it’s not a sleeping bag in your camp. Camp sleeping bags on the ground in your camp may be considered “safe” by the game. Instead, use a world bag not located in your camp. These non-camp bags are always considered “unsafe”.
You may or may not get Swamp Itch on your first attempt. Sleeping in a ground mattress or sleeping bag doesn’t confer a high chance, just a chance to get a disease. However, if you do get Swamp Itch, it will happen almost instantly after lying down. No need to wait a while. If you don’t get it after lying down, stand back up and try again. Just keep trying over and over until you get it.
Once you get Swamp Itch, it will force the game to iterate through all of the current diseases your character presently has and update the challenge area. At that point, the game will notice you have Sludge Lung and mark that disease complete under the challenge. Why the game doesn’t do this iteration when you obtain Sludge Lung by itself, I’ve no idea. My guess is bad coding. There’s plenty of bad code in Fallout 76 and this area is no exception.
As I said, it doesn’t matter what other disease you obtain, you just need to get it before Sludge Lung wears off. For example, drinking Dirty Water can confer Dysentery upon the player’s character and that will also count. However, I’ve found that the chances of getting Dysentery from water is a whole lot less than getting Swamp Itch from a sleeping bag on the ground. Whatever disease you attempt to get while having Sludge Lung, you’ll need to do it quick before Sludge Lung wears off.
If Sludge Lung wears off before you can get a new disease, you’ll need to enter Belching Betty again, get Sludge Lung and start this process over again.
Once you get Swamp Itch in addition to Sludge Lung, the game will update that you have Sludge Lung and that challenge is marked as complete.
The Whoopsies
I could write a separate article on this disease and how to get it. However, I’ll just do it here. However, let me say that by far, The Whoopsies disease is the absolute most difficult disease to get in the game, but not for the same reason as Sludge Lung. There is only one enemy in the game that confers this disease upon the player and it’s exceedingly difficult to make this occur.
What enemy? Mirelurk Hatchlings. These creatures are only spawned from a Mirelurk Queen, one of the more difficult standard enemies in the game. While you can attempt to get The Whoopsies from any Diseased Mirelurk Hatchlings, the easiest location to do this is at Quarry X3 in the Cranberry Bog. This location has a half-round metal building located near the pond where a Mirelurk Queen spawns. You’ll use this building to help craft the situation needed.
The challenge is not to kill the queen while allowing hatchlings to continue to spawn. However, hatchlings don’t spawn often (about every 3-5 minutes) and when they do, the vast majority are not diseased. Only about one out of 10 spawned are diseased. Even then, a diseased hatchling might not confer the disease upon you even after attacking you repeatedly. Unlike diseased Ghouls, diseased Radstags, diseased Snallygasters and diseased Deathclaws which confer a disease instantly upon even getting close, hatchlings don’t confer a disease even after attacking multiple times.
The problem, even above their slowness in spawning, is that the hatchlings die on their own after attacking about 5-7 times. Corrected. As of January 2022, Bethesda seems to have fixed the hatchling dying problem. I was able to allow a diseased hatchling to repeatedly attack my character for up to 10 minutes or longer. This finally allowed my character to obtain The Whoopsies and close out this challenge. However there is still a need for the ….
Metal Building
The trick is to lure the queen next to the building and wait for the “pop” sound from the queen, indicating new hatchlings have spawned. You might need to venture out and let the hatchlings see you, but I’ve found they enter the building on their own. The queen can’t attack you easily inside the building, but the hatchlings can enter and begin attacking. You’ll want to kill all of the non-diseased hatchlings allowing only the diseased hatchlings to attack. You might get lucky and receive The Whoopsies quickly or you could be waiting for hours in that building standing around letting them attack you. You’ll want to carry a bunch of stimpaks or food to replenish your HP.
Make sure to remove any Perk cards that add disease resistance and also change to armor that doesn’t offer disease resistance. Using Radaway also helps because it reduces disease resistance by 50% for a period of time. However, none of this guarantees that any diseased hatchling will give you The Whoopsies quickly.
Further, if you do manage to get The Whoopsies and you find that it doesn’t count under the challenge, you’ll need to follow the same instructions as above by server hopping, then attempting to get another disease, like Swamp Itch, from a mattress to force the game to count The Whoopsies as part of the challenge. However, when my character got The Whoopsies, it counted instantly. No problems with this challenge, unlike Sludge Lung above.
As I said, The Whoopsies is the absolute most difficult disease to obtain in the game, bar none. It is likely to be the only disease you don’t have… unless you accidentally received it from a hatchling during a random Mirelurk Queen encounter. The likelihood of that happening is extremely low during the course of random play.
Good Luck!
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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? ⃪ 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. 😕
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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