Random Thoughts – Randocity!

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

⬆️ See update note above. ⬆️ 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:

1. (I) Nerd Rage — While below 20% Health, gain 40 Damage Resist, 20% damage and 15% AP regen (3 star)
2. (A) Dead Man Sprinting — Sprint 20% faster at increased AP cost when your health is below 50% (3 star)
3. (L) Serendipity — While below 35% health, gain a 45% chance to avoid damage (3 star)
4. (E) Lifegiver — Gain a total of +45 to your maximum Health. (4 star)
5. (L) Last Laugh — You drop a live grenade from your inventory when you die. (1 star)
6. (A) Evasive — Each AGI point adds +3 Damage and Energy Resist (Max 45). [No Power Armor] (3 star)

High Radiation:

1. (E) Radicool — The greater your rads, the greater your strength! (+5 Max) (1 star)
2. (E) Ghoulish — Radiation now regenerates even more of your lost Health! (3 star) (only somewhat effective)

More Damage:

1. (A) Adrenaline
2. (I) Nerd Rage
3. (P) Rifle, (A) Pistol, (S) Melee, (S) Heavy Gun and/or (S) Shotgun damage multiplier cards
4. (L) Better Criticals
5. (L) Bloody Mess
6. (I) Demolition Expert
7. (C) Tenderizer

Damage Evasion:

1. (E) Rad Resistant — +40 Radiation Resistance (4 star)
2. (E) Nocturnal Fortitude — Gain +40 to Max Health between the hours of 6 p.m. and 6 a.m (2 star)
3. (E) Ironclad — Gain 50 Damage and Energy Resistance while not wearing Power Armor (5 star)
4. (E) Fireproof — Take 45% less damage from explosions and flame attacks (3 star)

Sneaky + Bloodied + Unyielding:

1. (A) Sneak — You are 75% harder to detect while sneaking.
2. (A) Covert Operative or (A) Ninja — Ranged or Melee sneak attacks do 2.5x normal damage (3 star)
3. 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:

1. (A) Born Survivor — Falling below 40% health will automatically use a Stimpak, once every 20s. (wastes Stimpaks)
2. (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).
3. (Legendary Perk Card) What Rads? — X Rad Resist, restore X Rads per second. (like Sun Kissed, avoid)
4. (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.

1. 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…
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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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