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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.
Remodel & Respec
Whether you’re making a new character or your very first one, it’s important to know that almost none of your choices are permanent. You’ll get a quick pop-up when you finalize character creation, but know that you can always change your appearance at any time from the menu -- but you are stuck with your name.
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Perhaps more importantly, you can respec your character once you hit level 25. By that point you’ll have a better grasp on the perks you do and don’t like, and you can use any of the game’s Punch Card Machines to reconfigure your stats.
The S.P.E.C.I.A.L. Limit
Speaking of stats, there is a limit on how high you can take your SPECIAL scores. After level 50, you’ll stop gaining new points to put into the six main stats, with a total of 56 points distributed across them. You cannot increase any single stat beyond a max of 15 either.
This means you can’t max all six, though respeccing is always an option. You will, however, always unlock perk cards at every level up, and those can continue to buff your scores depending on what the specific card does.
Picking Perks
When it comes to picking perks at each new level, there’s a feature that’s really easy to miss: you are not required to pick a perk that matches the SPECIAL stat you’ve just increased. So you could increase your Strength but take a perk from the Intelligence pile, for example.
There’s an option to tab around at the bottom of the screen, but this is not explicitly stated. So don’t forget that your perk choice isn’t restricted. You might want to give yourself better lockpicking, but you can still buff an offensive stat if you know you’re about to get into a fight.
Crouching In Combat
And speaking of combat, remember that crouching isn’t just for sneaking. That’s its primary use, yes, and getting a sneak attack means doing double damage, so don’t shy away from being stealthy before the big battle begins.
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But don’t forget to crouch sometimes in active combat too. Simply put, it makes it easier for you to aim your shots. The added stability does nothing for VATS, but it’ll help you manually fire from the hip or down sights.
Blue Suitcases
Moving from combat to resource gathering, keep an eye out for blue suitcases. These have infinite storage capacity, and as such, have become reliable spots for players to share their stuff. It’s not something that Bethesda intentionally put into the game, but it emerged as a helpful move among players.
You see, many veterans are happy to offload weapons, ammo, or other items for lower-level players. Any public container in the game will do, but blue suitcases are a general signal within the Fallout 76 community. You’ll find them all across the game, primarily at train stations.
Strategic C.A.M.P. Placement
Another part of the meta is determining where to place your CAMP. As you build the home base of your dreams, you might be primarily thinking of a cool spot or backdrop for the place to build. However, many players will encourage you to think more practically.
Fast traveling to your own CAMP is free, so consider putting it in a centralized spot. If you’re exploring The Forest, for example, there’s a bit of a location gap north of Vault 76. If you set up camp there, you have an easy spot to start exploring the northern forest or pushing up further into Toxic Valley.
Repairing Without Repair Kits
Repair Kits are pretty restricted in Fallout 76: they’re not shareable between players, and they’re only available via a few in-game methods. Their real benefit is being able to repair your gear without a workbench, and that’s because you should be using scrap.
You’ll be primarily prompted to use Repair Kits at workbenches, but try not to use them there. Instead, use your scrap to patch up whatever needs fixing. If the option isn’t there, it’s because you’re lacking a certain resource. The important thing here is that you use Repair Kits sparingly, saving them for emergency fixes in the field.
Stash Junk Is Automatic
Going back to junk, know that your scrap is always usable from your personal stash box. These can be found all across the game map, and the same inventory will always be privately accessible by you, no matter where the box actually is.
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A, this means there’s no need to carry around a ton of scrap with you, so store your junk whenever possible to save yourself the carrying capacity. B, whenever you’re building in CAMP, your stash is automatically tapped into when consuming resources. To reiterate, there’s no need to carry it all around on your back.
How To Hack
This next tip is something that you’ll find in all the modern Fallout games, but it’s always good to have a refresher since 76 won’t explicitly tell you this. When hacking a computer, you can click on more than just passwords.
Look for these little lines of text bookended by angled or squared brackets. Clicking on these can either remove a fake password from the list or restore your total number of attempts. Both make hacking a lot easier, regardless of the difficulty level.
Photos = Loading Screens
Finally, know that photo mode isn’t just a fun way to share your experience on social media. Any photo you keep can also be used as a loading screen. You probably already have one from creating your Vault ID at the beginning of the game, but you can add as many as you want. Snap a few memories, and the game will periodically remind you of what’s happened.
You might have seen this in other Bethesda games like Starfield too. It’s a nice way to be reminded of where your adventure started and how it’s going.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.