Things Fallout 76 Doesn't Tell You
Fallout 76 and its irradiated Appalachia can be pretty daunting to players fresh out of the Vault, and there are plenty of mechanics that aren’t explicitly told to you upfront. Luckily, we’ve got a few tips to keep in mind.
Video: Things Fallout 76 Doesnt Tell You
Scrapped Junk Weighs Less
Sooner or later, you’re going to be carrying around more junk than you can handle. Before you even think about storing it all away, remember to use the closest crafting station to “Scrap All Junk” first.
Scrapping gives you all the components without the excess weight. Once you’re down to components, store all of it at your camp, which can really help make room for that Missile Launcher you just found.
Read Your Plans and Recipes
You can find recipes to craft new weapons, armor, food, and building parts. You’ll need to get them in the wild, buy them from traders, or get them as quest rewards. Once you have a recipe be sure to read them in your notes section to actually unlock them at crafting stations.
Duplicates can’t be used, but you can give them to other players instead!
Bulk Components to Sell Them
When even your components start to overflow your stash, you’ll find that robot vendors won’t accept items like wood or steel. However, you can visit a Tinker’s Station to create Bulk Items using a bit of plastic and a bunch of components.
This doesn’t always lighten the load, but it does make them worth something, so you can sell them to vendors to free up more space.
Fast Travel Free with Friends
Working as a team is always a plus, but there are other benefits to having friends. When a friend is on the same server as you - regardless of if they are in your group, you can fast travel to them for free.
This, of course, applies to anyone in your group, as well as their personal CAMP, and a smart team can place their CAMPs around Appalachia to cross the map quickly without spending caps.
Check ALL Your New Perks
When you level up, you’ll get to increase one point in the SPECIAL Stat of your choice, and you’ll also be able to pick a perk card to assign too. What isn’t as obvious is that while you are shown a list of Perk Cards from the stat you just increased, you can actually choose Perk Cards from other categories.
Use the filter controls at the bottom of the screen to see other options based on the stat, point cost, or newly added. If you realize you’re better off increasing another stat to include a newly available perk card, you can always back up before choosing the perk card to pick a different stat to increase.
Scrap Weapons and Armor to Learn More
Fight enough Scorched or Super Mutants, and you’ll start looting a lot of excess weapons that can take up a lot of space. Early on in your journey, you should go ahead and loot duplicate weapons and scrap them at the nearest workstation.
Scrapping weapons (and armor) can unlock recipes to mod your items to increase their power, even if the weapon you scrap is badly damaged.
Power Armor Finders are Power Armor Keepers
Everyone wants their own suit of Power Armor, but what happens when your group finds just one? You can only enter a Power Armor Frame if you are high enough level to use all the pieces attached. Otherwise, quickly hit the item transfer button to move the Power Armor sections into your inventory, and then you can enter the Power Armor Chassis.
Once you’ve climbed in, that chassis cannot be used by anyone else - even if you hold the interact button to exit your frame. You don’t need to worry about losing it either: after a couple of minutes, the chassis and any armor attached will automatically go back into your inventory.
As an added bonus, any armor attached to the Power Armor Chassis won’t increase its base weight when its stored in your inventory.
Public Workshop Rewards
Public Workshops can sound like more trouble than they’re worth - you’ll usually need to clear out a location of enemies, spend a few caps to claim the place for yourself, and then defend it from both creatures and other players.
However, if you’re looking to bolster your crafting abilities, claiming public workshops can reward you with additional building plans, including water purifiers that you can use at your own CAMP, so long as you generate some power.
Avoid Spoiling Food
Killing creatures and monsters is a great way to accumulate meat and ingredients to cook into meals that stave off hunger and boost your stats but be warned - raw food like meat or vegetables will spoil fairly quickly, making them almost useless (though you can turn them into fertilizer).
In order to stave off spoilage, craft food as soon as you can, and the rate of food going bad will be drastically reduced. Be sure to check the condition of your food items in your inventory, as you would weapons or armor. If the CND is low - eat up before it goes bad, or invest in perks that lower risk of disease.
Blueprint and Store Your CAMP
There’s a lot that goes into making a base at your CAMP - but what happens when you want to go somewhere else and bring it along? You can hold the blueprint button to “tag” your creation and save it as a custom blueprint which can then be built on command.
But wait! When you set up your CAMP somewhere else, don’t build your base back up from the Blueprint tab. Instead, look in the Stored tab, where you’ll find everything that was at your previous CAMP, and it won’t cost any materials to place back down.
Where to PvP
Player vs Player isn't something that's really spelled out in Fallout 76, when meeting others in the wild, you have to perform an awkward dance of consent as each player must shoot another before the damage modifiers are disabled and you can begin attacking for full damage
However, there are exceptions to this rule: If you search the Radio tab of your Pip Boy, you can find the Hunter x Hunted channel, which serves as an opt-in PvP mode where you are given a target to hunt, and someone will be hunting you - and in this mode the players who are part of this program will not need to consent to full pvp damage - but you'll need to find at least 4 people in the server to join before the games can begin.
You can also choose to claim and defend Public Workshops. Once claimed, other players can fight for control of these workshops, which will flag you for PvP during this period - so guard your resource harvesters closely!
Don't Choose Just One Faction
As you begin exploring the main questline and following the Overseer's notes across Appalachia, you'll slowly uncover the abandoned bases of the Responders, Raiders, Brotherhood of Steel, the Enclave - and more.
Many of these factions have questlines that give you the chance to initiate yourself into their ranks - but you don't need to choose just one. The over-arching story of the main questline will essentially take you through most of these factions - with the last quest of one faction pointing you towards the next. Each group has a few perks of their own and bases you can use, so don't hesitate to prove your worth and get some perks for your trouble. See the Walkthrough and Main Quests for more details.
Don't Loot, Search
There are a few luck-based perks like Pharma Farma that give you an additional chance to find more chems when you "search" a viable container. It's important to note that in this context, "search" refers to an added function that's different from just looting.
Look for the Search tooltip when highlighting a containers, and you'll be able to loot the contents, and hit search for a chance to find something more - and a little perk pop-up will tell you if things went successfully.
This Location Isn't Big Enough for the Both of You
Every region in the game has its own set levels attached, and the levels of enemies you encounter can fluctuate within a set range - depending on who is exploring it.
The Forest, the starting region of the game, can spawn enemies anywhere from levels 1 to 10, but will keep things on the low side when a new player is the first to explore a location in the forest.
By contrast, the Savage Divide region can host enemies in a wide level range - even past level 50. This means that if a level 50 player enters a location first, enemies that spawn nearby will compensate for that player, even if a level 10 players comes in after him.
Be sure to check your map often when exploring new areas - if you see a high level player is already there, you may want to give it a wide berth until that player leaves and lower level enemies can respawn.