Random Thoughts – Randocity!

I did say I wasn’t going to write more about Fallout 76, but I felt this information I’ve acquired while playing the game might help someone who’s still playing and in the same predicament. What is that predicament? If you rely on power armor, you’ll need fusion cores and they can be difficult to find. Here’s my list of known locations for Fusion Cores in Fallout 76. Let’s Explore.

Locations

These are the locations I’ve found that spawn 100% full cores (unless otherwise stated), so far, in no particular order. This is also not a comprehensive list (yet):

Fusion Core Generators

These are environment located generators which can spawn cores at 100% full, but don’t always. Note, these generators spawn cores S L O W L Y. If another player has happened by and taken the fusion core recently, you could wait hours before another one spawns. If there’s not a core in the unit, it’s simpler to move on and locate another. Or, alternatively, server hop and hope you find one on another server. Unfortunately, server hopping may no longer work on these generators.

1. Forest: In the back of and on the lowest level of the Kanawha Nuka-Cola Plant.
2. Toxic Valley: Wavy Willard’s in a basement employee area with standing water on the floor.
3. Camden Park: One is below the Widow Maker wooden coaster and one is in between the Atomic Ball games and Bumper Cars.
4. Watoga: Located inside of Watoga Transit Center behind a level 3 lock pick door or, alternatively, you can open this door hacking a level 2 terminal.
5. Cranberry Bog: Under the tall Monorail Elevator structure and near the elevator itself.
6. Watoga: In the AMS building on the third floor. This location can be difficult to reach for a number of reasons. First, Watoga has hostile robots unless you’ve completed the quest ‘Mayor for a Day’. Second, this location can randomly spawn high level Mr. Gutsy and Robobrains inside the building if there’s a player in Watoga who hasn’t completed ‘Mayor for a Day’.
7. Morgantown: In the basement area of Mama Dolce’s factory. You’ll need to get the card key from the manager’s office to get into this area via a large pipe outside. The basement area is likely full of Liberators.
8. Savage Divide: There is a fusion core generator located outside and in the rear of West Tek Research Center. You can get to this generator from the rocks above it off of a road. West Tek Research Center is the home of Supermutants, so be prepared for a fight with high level enemies to even get close to this fusion core.

Loose Fusion Core spawn locations

These spawn 100% full.

1. Forest: Located on a shelf in a closet on the lower level of the the New River Gorge Bridge West. You’ll need to get the key from the roller coaster at Camden Park to get into this area. It’s near a power armor chassis.
2. Forest: Located on a table next to the fusion core generator at Poseidon Nuclear Power Plant.
3. Forest: On top of a blue console inside of Relay Tower EM-B1-27 south of Vault 76.
4. Forest: Not far from the fusion core generator at the Kanawha Nuka-Cola Plant in a cage behind a level 2 security door. It’s next to a weapons workbench.
5. Cranberry Bog: Located under a table in Appalachia Antiques on the second floor. This location may spawn multiple different ammo types including fusion cores, plasma cores and other types of ammo. This one is not a sure thing.

Power Armor Frames

Power armor frames spawn with cores around 50% or less. The vast majority spawn at 25% capacity. Occasionally, a few spawn at 75%. They never spawn at 100% full.

1. Forest: Located in a power armor frame under New River Gorge Bridge West in the a small room.
2. Forest: There is a power armor frame in the basement area of Poseidon Power Plant.
3. Toxic Valley: A power armor frame spawns at The Crosshair northwest of Wavy Willard’s. It’s a small camp that usually spawns low level scorched.
4. Savage Divide: A power armor frame spawns at the Arena at Pleasant Valley Cabins.
5. Watoga: There are 5 power armor spawn points which may contain cores: High School rooftop, Watoga Transit Center behind the door, next to a crashed vertibird near AMS, near a crashed vertibird on the roof of a condemned building across from the Civic Center, on the rooftop of Emergency Medical Services.
6. Cranberry Bog: There are also power armor spawn locations at all (or most) of the military camps located throughout the bog including Survey Camp Alpha, Forward Station Delta and Firebase Hancock. Again, cores spawned here are on power armor frames.
7. Ash Heap: A power armor frame spawns in a security cage in the basement of the Rusty Pick. Unfortunately, this location typically spawns higher level enemies, typically Mr. Gutsy, Colonel Gutsy or Supermutants.
8. Fort Defiance, Cranberry Bog: A power armor frame spawns on the 4th floor of this building. Unfortunately, you can’t reach the 4th floor until you’ve completed portions of the Brotherhood of Steel questline that gives you access to the elevator.
9. Point Pleasant, Forest: A power armor frame spawns in a garage area down the street from the museum.

Note, because fusion cores spawned on power armor frames are nearly always 25% charged, it’s almost not worth considering chasing these. If you’re really desperate for cores, you can go for these, but you should consider looking for 100% charged cores first.

Workshops

Clearly, you can pay to own certain workshops and produce them in the Fusion Core producer. However, taking over a workshop is subject to PVP activities, something you may not want. Additionally, the Fusion Core Producer creates one fusion core every 7.5 minutes. This means you’ll receive 8 cores per real life hour playing the game. You can likely find more cores in an hour than a Fusion Core Generator can produce. I also believe these generators max out holding less than 8 cores (perhaps 3 or 4). This means you’ll need to empty the generator periodically or the generator will stop producing.

Workshops that produce fusion cores are:

• Poseidon power plant, south of Vault 76 in the Forest
• Monongah power plant, east of Vault 76 in the Savage Divide
• Thunder Mountain power plant, east of Monongah in the Mire

The downsides of owning a workshop (and specifically a fusion core generator workshop) are numerous:

• Can’t keep a workshop longer than your present session. If you log out (or crash out) of the session, you lose the workshop (and anything you’ve created in it).
• PVP is automatically enabled when you own a workshop. If another player shows up and decides to contest the workshop, they can kill you without going through any PVP handshaking.
• Defend events happen about every 15-30 minutes, quicker if you’re not at the workshop. If you fail to defend the workshop, you lose it.
• Due to defend events, you are forced to use your own resources to build turrets and other defenses. You will lose these unless you scrap them before leaving the server.
• You are forced to either power up the power plant or place a fusion electric generator down to power the Fusion Core producer. This resource requires 100 power to function. If you don’t have plans yet for a fusion generator, you’ll need to power up the power plant first.
• Odds of a PVP encounter go up dramatically the longer you hold onto a workshop, particularly the workshops that produce fusion cores. So, be prepared.
• Workshop turrets do not attack PVP players contesting a workshop. This means you’re left to fend for yourself when another player comes to attack your currently held workshop. The only time the turrets activate against another player in a workshop is if they attack the turrets or other workshop objects. As long as they remain focused on your character, the turrets will not attack a contesting player.

Perk Cards

To get the most out of fusion cores, there are three cards you should consider for your character.

• The first is Power User (Intelligence). This card, when max leveled (3 stars), increases the duration of fusion cores by double.
• The next card is Full Charge (Strength). This card, when max leveled (2 stars) will a consume no extra power when sprinting in power armor.
• The final card is Batteries Included (Intelligence). This card, when maxed leveled (3 stars), reduces the weight of fusion cores by 90%.

Regardless of your perk cards, fusion cores only last so long. Adding on the first two cards may reduce usage by a small amount.

In fact, I have personally found the Power User perk card to be somewhat broken. What I mean by that is that even though fusion core usage says it’s doubled, it doesn’t seem to actually be anywhere close to doubled. Instead, it seems to be closer to about 20-30% slower discharge rate and discharges much faster than you might expect.

I haven’t tested Full Charge only because it sits under Strength. Because my primary character’s Strength cards are already maxed out with weight reduction, there’s nothing I can remove to actually use Full Charge. However, the Batteries Included card does do what it says and reduces the 3 weight down to .3 which is, in fact, 90% reduced weight of fusion cores.

This all assumes that Bethesda doesn’t screw with and reduce these perk cards, just as they have reduced the effectiveness of the damage perk cards for weapons and damage resistance reduction for armor and even the reduction of the armor and weapons themselves. And yet, with all of the tweaking and fiddling and screwing around that Bethesda has done with Fallout 76, it’s still no better… and, in most cases, is actually become worse. If Bethesda is actually trying to chase off gamers, they’re certainly doing a bang-up job.

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I will update this list as I go. If you’ve found any other spawn locations for fusion cores, please leave a comment below.

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