9 Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Fallout 76

Things I Wish I Knew Before Starting Fallout 76

• Your CAMP can be incredibly useful for easing the strain of hunger/ thirst levels with water purifiers, plantable crops etc.
• Power Armor is returned after a set amount of time if not stashed
• There’s definitely strength in numbers
• Workshops are incredibly valuable for crafting materials
• You can level a SPECIAL Stat, and choose a Perk Card from another
• Caps are Required for Certain Important Mechanics, Keep Some to One Side for Emergencies
• Playing Instruments Gives You an AP Boost
• Both players need to shoot before they can engage properly in PvP
• You need to use Plans and Recipes in Your Pip-Boy before you can craft them.

Your CAMP can be incredibly useful for easing the strain of hunger/ thirst levels with water purifiers, plantable crops etc.

Even if you don’t like the idea of having to build your own base in Fallout 76, it’s something you should absolutely spend some time building the bare basics for. That’s because doing so will enable you to have a bunch of handy items and tools at your disposal for getting your character back to tip-top shape before they adventure back out into the wasteland.

Need to restore some health? Forget about Stimpaks, use a bed that’s elevated off the floor at your CAMP. You won’t catch diseases as you’re not laying on the floor, and it slowly restores your health over time, and gives you the Well Rested buff. Workbenches can be built here for crafting ammo, armor, weapons, and food, and you can plant fruit and vegetables in the surrounding area so you’ve always got a constant supply. Not to mention, you can also build a Water Purifier to get the very best in hydration that the wasteland has to offer.

It’ll require a bunch of crafting materials, but if you get some of these things sorted, it takes a lot of the stress of your hunger and thirst gauges out of the gameplay loop. Just make sure you’re picking up every bit of junk you find in the wasteland, all this stuff won’t be built by magic.

Power Armor Can be Taken, but Respawns After a While

Power Armor has been a pretty huge part of Fallout for quite some time now, and it makes its return, as expected, in Fallout 76. With other players exploring the wasteland, however, chances are that you’re going to be beaten to the various Power Armor spawn locations that are dotted around the world.

If you head to one of these locations and don’t see Power Armor anywhere, though, fear not. It’ll respawn after a little while, you’ll just need to give it about 30 minutes or so. After that, if it’s your first Power Armor, you’ll get to keep the frame forever and it’ll be assigned to you. It cannot be stolen once you’ve hopped into it, but any additional frames, once placed, can be stolen. You can, however, place the frame into your stash box, and it only weighs a little, so you’ll never have to worry about it being nabbed.

There’s definitely strength in numbers

While Bethesda says Fallout 76 can be played on your own, there’s certainly strength in numbers. By playing with others, you’ll be able to explore more of the map at an earlier level, as the higher-level creatures won’t be quite as daunting. Not to mention, the more fellow vault dwellers by your side, the less overwhelming hordes of enemies become.

Workshops are incredibly valuable for crafting materials

Fallout 76 never really makes a point of explaining why Workshops are so damn good, unless you stumble upon one or venture through the game’s extensive ‘Help’ section. However, they’re absolutely something you’ll want to take the time to get your head around.

These are essentially existing locations you can build and further develop, but they contain rich sources of crafting materials that can be harvested and used for your own camp. For example, the Poseidon Energy Plant’s workshop can create Fusion Cores, which can be sold for a bunch of Caps, or used to power your Power Armor. Other Workshops contain rich sources of aluminum, wood, and other materials incredibly useful for expanding your CAMP. If you ever find yourself nearby an unclaimed one, spend some time getting acquainted with this feature.

You can level a SPECIAL Stat, and choose a Perk Card from another

Just because you’re investing in the Strength stat doesn’t mean you have to pick a Perk Card from it. If you really want to, and have unspent Perk Points in another stat, or just want to get yourself an upgraded Perk card in, say, Endurance, then you can absolutely do that.

By pressing either L1 or R1 on PS4 or LB and RB on Xbox One, you’ll be able to tab between the different sets of perk cards for each SPECIAL stat. Similarly, you can simply back out of your Pip-Boy, re-enter it, and then access the Perks menu to do the exact same thing whenever a better time comes around.

Caps are Required for Certain Important Mechanics, Keep Some to One Side for Emergencies

While Caps were used in previous Fallout games for purchasing weapons and armor from the many different human NPCs running stores, in Fallout 76, they’re used for more than just buying items and trading with others.

Sure, there aren’t human vendors this time around, but you’ll find vending machines and protectron vendors in the train stations that’ll be more than happy to take your Caps for some goods.

What you may not know, however, is that Caps are used for things like fast traveling to different locations around the map. It’s even more frustrating when you die and need to respawn. Unless you’re playing with others, you’ll need to pay just a couple of Caps to respawn at the nearest location to where you met your untimely death.

It’s a similar case with moving your CAMP in Fallout 76, too. The further away you want to move it from its last location, the more Caps you’ll need to spend to move it. Always have some Caps spare, just in case you desperately need to move your CAMP or fast travel a little further away.

Playing Instruments Gives You an AP Boost

You may have seen instruments lying around the wasteland, and that you can interact with them. This isn’t just some fun little thing you can do while a bunch of Super Mutants are charging you down. If you play an instrument for long enough, you’ll receive a Well-Tuned bonus, which grants a +25 AP regeneration bonus for an hour.

It may not seem like a lot, but considering jumping, sprinting, and using VATs all uses AP, being able to have it regenerate faster is certainly a bonus worth having, especially in combat.

Both players need to engage one another before PvP properly begins

The specifics of PvP have been a bit muddied in Fallout 76, but one thing remains a bit of a persistent issue in Fallout 76. Unless you and another player shoot one another, you’ll be unable to properly engage in PvP. It kind of removes the possibility of ambushing another vault dweller, and nullifies most of the fun, especially when combined with the auto-aim that is now VATs.

You can very slowly whittle down another player’s health by constantly shooting at them even if they don’t shoot you back, but it’d literally take an hour of constant shooting to get them down to anywhere near half health. And no, we’re not exaggerating.

You Need to Use Plans in Your Pip-Boy Before You Can Craft the Items

The amount of god damn time we spent trying to figure out why our plans and recipes weren’t usable in Fallout 76 is kind of embarrassing. We’re not gonna be too hard on ourselves, however, because the game never actually mentions that you need to ‘use’ plans or recipes within your Pip-Boy before you can actually use them at your CAMP, workbenches, or cooking station.

Don’t fall into the same trap as us, carrying around countless recipes and plans, or leaving them in your stash box hoping they’ll someday disappear and magically activate. Just press X on PS4, or A on Xbox One on them while in your Pip-Boy, and everything will be all better.