[Bethesda] Fallout 76

[DOS=HIGH]

The RNG with Legendary gear really is a P.I.T.A. They made it a little better with the ability to re-roll legendary items, but it's still not great. I have a character that I have set up as a shotgun build and have only gotten him one decent weapon after 150 levels.

But the re-roll only works if you have found the weapon/armor to begin with. If you don't have the gun/armor, you can' re-roll.

True, but I think I've only found a few 3 star legendary combat shotguns across 200+ hours of playtime since launch and none with desirable traits. Now I just need to find any legendary combat shotgun and keep re-rolling it as a three-star, which cuts my overall RNG a lot.

Once you hit level 20? and do the quest, you can build a shelter only CAMP which makes for easy moving. When you find Foundation(Settlers base),

You are talking about the underground shelter, right?

Yes, they don't have a ton of space but enough to build the basic necessities. The ATOM shop has some bigger ones but they are pricey for newer players without actually buying ATOMs. Having been around since the earlier ATOM collecting days I have over 16k of free ATOMS. An ATOM shop shelter is one of the few purchases I've made, now I just actually need to build it out in game.

I still play relatively frequently so can help out with some gear or stuff if you need it. My game ID is Letotse.

Thanks, I'll make a note of that and look out for you.

PS, your name brings back a lot of gaming memories from years ago. How far we have come.

Yep, pretty soon we'll all be as old as DBT. I usually play during the late morning PST but can jump on at almost any time.

[Blackhawk]

I've been dipping my toe back in after quitting in frustration just a month or so after launch when Bethesda blew off my issues.

It didn't last long. I tried the new quests - big improvement. Base building seems better. No crashes.

I also had quests that wouldn't trigger, a bug that kept me from equipping any weapons in the middle of a mission, requiring me to log out and lose progress, the controls are still abysmal, with different keys doing different things in different menus in the most intuitive way possible. You shouldn't have to read the controls on every single page of a menu. Tonight I spent two or three hours getting my base just so. Unfortunately, I was a few feet too close to a telephone pole, so I couldn't put the walls on one corner. No biggie, I just walked to a nearby flat spot and moved the base. "Cannot place item selected. Item is floating." Great. Reasearch time. Bug that's still there from day one. Apparently you have to remove anything near a wall or hanging on a wall prior to moving the base to avoid this issue, as it is caused by objects that are clipping. There was only one solution listed: scrap the base and start over. Two to three hours of building erased because Bethesda still can't fix a day-one bug. And this was all in probably five or six hours of play total.

I don't want to have to fight this hard against the game to play it. I have too many games that I can just play to spend my time this way.

Quoting this to remind myself as I'm finding that I'm tempted to give it another go. On the bright side, they've added the ability to build a second base, so I may just be able to find a spot to build a big one and never move it again, then use the second slot for a 'portable' base. I'll look into the system and actually make sure it works that way before I commit, though.

[D.A.Lewis]

I'm mostly through with F 76 now.
(level 300 plus, 2 full bases with a third one in planning. My main character is a melee guy with a death claw weapon. I had planned on doing the power armor thing, but the freedom of melee in this game is just to compelling and satisfying. When I come back I will need to work on my armor but I love my stealth capabilities.

But before I go into semi retirement, I need to get to level 50 on the current scoreboard, then I will be the occasional player until they upgrade the game. There is nothing wrong with the game but I know just about every nock and cranny of the game world. And now I am just playing to advance on the scoreboard. (I love the scoreboard). But after near a year of grinding, the game is starting to feel like work. And I got Elex2, Cyberpunk with perhaps Elden Ring in the wings.

The one thing though that I loathed in Fallout 76 was the limit to inventory. They say it was needed due to the game being a multi-player but at least half of you time is spent managing your inventory. Bethesda kinda kicked themselves in the butt on that one. All those goodies in the game store are pretty useless when your base is 98% full. I could have easily spent another 50 bucks in the game store but hey . . . no space for the goodness.

[Sudy]

I got into this because of a couple of discord friends. I had low expectations after remembering poor impressions at launch, but I know they've done a lot of work on the game since then and I'm really enjoying it! I've never liked the idea of instanced, mini-MMOG games and have steered away from them. But this game is making me realize they may actually be the future of the genre since full MMORPGs are so costly to develop and maintain.

I've only played several hours of FO4. At first I was dismayed to see many of the same objects etc. in FO76, making it feel more like a multiplayer mode of FO4. However, I realized the base-building aspect actually makes a lot more sense in this style of game. The social aspect seems to be fairly well done, even though most people go about their own business. I don't like the character building though; they're too dedicated to preserving some form of SPECIAL as well as VATS. I get the pressure Bethesda felt to include a form of VATS in FO3, but it really has no place in an action game. It has even less place in a multiplayer PvE game.

I don't think I would have tried it if it weren't on PC Gamepass. I'm quite skeptical of Gamepass and similar subscriptions, but since Microsoft owns Bethesda I assume it will never disappear from the service.

The amount of store-gated content is a bit annoying. It's mostly cosmetic, sure; but base building is a major part of the game. All in all I guess it's what's expected in non-subscription MMOG-lites and it's how they keep the lights on. But it must be especially annoying for those who paid full price. The unavoidable "what's new" store page on launch feels particularly egregious.

I'm still in the honeymoon phase and I'm sure the game gets repetitive. But similar to New World last year, exploration is especially fun and even better when you're playing with friends. I do find the storage/encumbrance system annoying though. Work benches are plentiful in the world, but you still need to constantly fast travel back to your base to salvage junk and weapon drops. Also, I'm glad they eliminated the penalties for not drinking/eating, though it also makes this aspect of the game feel useless. (It would have been better if food didn't spoil so damn quickly.) The positive buffs granted by food/drink seem unimportant, at least during the early game. Story elements are actually pretty engaging in terms of holo recordings and terminal logs if you have the patience for them. I'm glad they added NPCs to the world; it would feel too empty without them. Even though most of them don't do much.

[Daehawk]

Is anything permanent in that game? Like if you build something then go back and log in the next day is it still there? And is it solo friendly? Or a gank fest?

[Max Peck]

Is anything permanent in that game? Like if you build something then go back and log in the next day is it still there? And is it solo friendly? Or a gank fest?

If you build a camp, it despawns when you log out and respawns when you log back in unless the spot is occupied by someone else's camp at that time, in which case you can either relog until you get an instance where your spot is empty or just carry on with your camp packed up. I've always played solo with no problems.

[Daehawk]

ty

[Sudy]

I would say it's very solo friendly, at least in my first 20 hours. Though it's definitely better with friends. But as I understand it, the reason most random players join a team is just to get stat bonuses... they don't actually play together on the map usually. I believe each instance is limited to 24 players and it's often rare to see anyone for long stretches (though that's probably different in the endgame areas). There are fairly popular locations to build a home and experienced players often allow you to take resources from their bases. If you build your base in a secluded spot you're unlikely to ever have your base blocked when joining a server, but that also makes it less likely that anyone will come across your base--showing off a well-designed base is half the fun of building it.

As I understand it, PvP is 95% opt-in. If you don't fight back, you can still be killed but it takes a very long time. I'm not 100% sure what happens then (what if they keep following you?), but I haven't found one person who's tried to engage in PvP with me in my time playing. If you do kill someone who doesn't fight back or lockpick one of their locked resources, you'll be marked "wanted" and a bounty placed on your head until you're killed. You can also temporarily claim a workshop (kind of a temporary camp near resource nodes that's periodically attacked by waves of mobs), and it's possible for other players to try to take them over and put you in PvP. But I sat on one for eight hours yesterday and no one was interested (though that may just have been because it was near the starter area and uninteresting to higher level players). But this is optional gameplay. Edit: I looked up more about them and they're definitely intended to provoke PvP. But I suspect it's less common for people to fight over the early-game ones unless they're jerks.

Note that there's no text chat in the game for some reason. (Though there is a mod that makes it possible.) The default is voice chat which seems to work fine... I haven't come across anyone being annoying or who even wants to talk.

[Daehawk]

Weird'ish

[Sudy]

Here's my work-in-progress base I'm building on a fairly secluded hill under a transmission tower:



EMFs may be a concern if they ever get the power grid up and running again, but I figure it's more likely the rads will kill me first.

[Daehawk]

Dont players bother your stuff?

[Sudy]

Resource gathering objects can be "locked" so that someone needs to lockpick them to steal from them, which makes them wanted. They can also destroy them I believe, but they can't harm the actual structure of your camp/base like walls and decorations etc. Crops can't be locked but they grow back quickly. Other players can use your workbenches at no penalty to you (it's always a relief to come across someone's base if you're encumbered). You can't steal from someone's stash. Even if they do steal from your harvesters, nothing seems so valuable that it would wreck your day if you lost some of it at this stage of the game. I don't know if that changes later. And if someone becomes wanted in your base, any turrets you have installed will attack them. So major griefing/theft isn't really a thing that happens.

[Blackhawk]

Dont players bother your stuff?

Your stuff only exists while you're logged in. When you log out, it disappears. When you log back in, it puts it back in the world, unless someone else has built on that same spot. If that happens, you can switch servers or log in with your camp in storage.

When you're logged in, if anyone tries to access your storage, it just shows their storage - they can't mess with your stuff much at all. Not only that, but you used to be able to set up 'stores' that people could buy things from. I assume that's still so.

[Blackhawk]

The only real griefing I remember early on wast that some people would build camps over the entrances to certain locales. I don't know if that was ever addressed or not.

[Daehawk]

Is it worth $8.50 for a guy who loves Fallout and likes Fortnite but is a single player.

EDIT: Cause GMG has it for that. 79% off.

[Blackhawk]

I'm not sure how the Fortnite fits in, but yes, as long as you accept that you may occasionally encounter another human being. Most will be benign, but some may be dicks (like any public multiplayer game.)

[msteelers]

I bought this game at launch, struggled with it, and haven’t gone back. I might have to fire this up again after I get bored replaying Skyrim.

[Blackhawk]

I also bought it at launch, and the resulting bullshit (especially their customer support and 'never going to happen' microtransactions) thoroughly tainted my view of Bethesda. But I have heard that, greedy companies aside, the game has improved considerably and actually plays fairly well as a solo Fallout title. One of these days (maybe soonish) I will be going back and giving it another spin.

[Daehawk]

I was gonna get it at $8.50 but time and money ran out for this month.

[jztemple2]

Haven’t taken a dive into Fallout 76? Explore post-nuclear Appalachia (and, following the game’s recent Expeditions update, The Pitt with your friends at no additional charge during Fallout 76’s Free Play Week, starting October 4 to October 11.

[Daehawk]

Supposedly they gave me 76 and the Pitt for free for being a Prime member but i cant for the life of me find it or play it.

[Max Peck]

If you have Amazon Prime, you can redeem a free copy of Fallout 76 The Pitt from the Microsoft store as part of the October batch of free games.

[Blackhawk]

Supposedly they gave me 76 and the Pitt for free for being a Prime member but i cant for the life of me find it or play it.

When you click claim (and yes, the code is already redeemed), you should see this:



If you missed it, you should be able to go back to the page to get your code.

[Max Peck]

Supposedly they gave me 76 and the Pitt for free for being a Prime member but i cant for the life of me find it or play it.

You can claim the free games from the Prime Gaming page. When you claim it, it will generate a key that you will need to redeem from the Windows Store.

Edit: So much crossposting...

[Blackhawk]

Mid-bam?

[Daehawk]

Oh I redeemed it on the MS store. Can even see details of my order. I just have no idea how to find it to install and play.

Looking online it says open my xbox console companion in WIN10 under the start menu. What a weird thing. I did but its still not showing.

[Blackhawk]

Open the MS Store app (it's built in to Windows) and search for "Fallout 76."

[Daehawk]

Open the MS Store app (it's built in to Windows) and search for "Fallout 76."

Doing that it says I have to buy it. Says get gamepass or buy the game.

[coopasonic]

Try this one in the Windows Store: "Fallout 76 - PC"

It doesn't show up in my library, but it will let me install and play from that listing in the store app.

[Daehawk]

I claimed it on there from the amazon prime freebies but it wont show up there...just says a price to buy it play it on gamepass.

[Sudy]

If you want to get together, come on the Discord so we can organize: https://discord.gg/P4zxacke .

I usually play for a couple hours late night, albeit it's with my friend and she might be a bit anxious if you just crash our session.

Or let me know if we can just meet up once for me to give you some starter resources.

Mind you I'll be away for most of next week.

[Blackhawk]

I claimed it on there from the amazon prime freebies but it wont show up there...just says a price to buy it play it on gamepass.

Did you check all the different versions?

[Blackhawk]

Supposedly they gave me 76 and the Pitt

And just to be clear, they gave you Fallout 76. The Pitt is just the current content, not a separate product.

[Daehawk]

Did you check all the different versions?

I see 3 listed...

Fallout 76 with gamepass...click it and it brings up Gamepass join for $1

Fallout 76 ....shows it at $9.99

Fallout 76 The Pitt Deluxe Digital .....its like $59.00 or something.

[Daehawk]

Edit : I got it to bring up a INSTALL button but it wants me to use the xbox app so I installed it and dont see it there. I thought maybe it was under a different account but its the same email I use on my desktop MS Store account...so dont know.

[Tampa_Gamer]

Try this one in the Windows Store: "Fallout 76 - PC"
It doesn't show up in my library, but it will let me install and play from that listing in the store app.

Appreciate the heads up Max Peck/Coop. I had the same issue with it not showing up in my library but doing a search and reviewing all of the Fallouts revealed that it was "owned" under the gamepass green icon. Not the best GUI in the world, what an unwieldy beast but then again it is MS.

[Max Peck]

I already own it on Steam, so I didn't have to jump through the hoops to redeem it on the Microsoft Store. Thankfully.

[Daehawk]

What exactly IS Fallout 76 now? As I recall when released it was supposed to be a server based PVP game. So what is it now? Instanced open world do what you want? ..Are there NPCs? Quests? What? I dont understand why someone should pay $10 for what.

[hepcat]

It started off as a pvp survival online game with quests in a destroyed West Virginia. But after folks got a little tired of the empty world, they revamped it and added a lot of npc’s and quests.

[Sudy]

Yeah, there's almost no PvP to speak of now outside of temporary ruleset servers. There's consensual PvP but I've never seen people do it. You can be killed without opting in to combat, but you can usually get away first and again it's rare to be attacked by someone out of the blue. I've also heard of people having their bases griefed, especially when anguished youngsters have run out of season objectives to work on, but it's never happened to me. Even then you just need to pay some mats to automatically rebuild anything that was destroyed. And if you're killed, you only ever drop the crafting mats currently on your person. It's not usually a big loss. The game has no text chat, so there's little toxicity. (There is a mod to enable text chat, but it doesn't work on the Game Pass version.) Local and team chat is on by default, but it's rare to find randoms who use it. Most experienced players are helpful and frequently drop gear for younger characters. Though non-voice communication can be a little confusing because it's emote-based, and there aren't helpful emotes for all situations.

I'd call it an instanced open-world PvE looter shooter with a never-ending level climb and minor survival elements (some of which can be ignored), and base building that's not necessary gameplay-wise if you're not into it, other than providing you with a spawn point and a place to access your stash and crafting stations. Each instance of the game world can hold 24 players, plus an additional 8 so that people from your friends list can join you even if the server is at capacity. It's just the right size for the map and content. If you pay for the optional subscription you can create a private server, but they only remain active while someone you invite is on them. And honestly I've never felt the need to create one unless I'm muling. I guess it could be cool if you're playing with a large out-of-game guild. (There are no in-game guilds.) But it's more fun to run into strangers and see their bases. There are also smaller mission instances that are private for those on your team.

Once you complete the main questlines (which are also largely optional and play-at-your pace--some things are gated behind them, but not a lot); all content within the game is scaled. It does get pretty grindy eventually as you have to replay the same pool of public events that pop up every hour at :00, :20, and :40 to gain multiple endgame currencies and crafting components, but if you've got a grinder/collector personality or just enjoy the gameplay, it can last you a long time. That and daily instances (which are pretty repetitive) are really the only endgame there is at the moment. (But that doesn't keep people from playing Diablo endlessly; the game itself is just fun.) You can re-roll gear indefinitely to try to get the perfect attributes for your playstyle. There are a lot of different builds to try, and you're only limited by the perk cards and gear you've unlocked. It can take hundreds of levels to unlock all levels of all perks, but it doesn't take long at all to put together beginner's versions of most builds. Power armour builds are optional but provide another dimension. You can play it as an FPS, or make a build that focuses on V.A.T.S. that works similarly to FO 3 and 4 in which you can auto-target enemies until you run out of AP.