Fallout: 76 Catch-All

What I don't quite get is how increasing certain SPECIAL stats changes gameplay. What's the benefit in increasing your intelligence or charisma stats through drugs? It doesn't let you equip additional perks, does it?

The base SPECIAL stats still have a concrete effect on your character. Endurance give you more HP, strength lets you carry more and do more melee damage, etc. The only different thing is the perk system being cards limited by the SPECIAL value.

Not additional perks, but it does affect derived stats.
A higher strength increases carry weight and melee damage.
A higher perception gives better VATS percentages and a larger sweet spot for lock picking.
A higher endurance gives more HP, a higher disease resistance, lowers AP cost of sprinting.
A higher charisma affects vendor prices,rewards from group quests, and lets you share higher ranked perks.
A higher intelligence affects hacking (more of the brackets and fewer word options), the condition of items you make and the durability loss rate of items you use, and should affect general XP gain.
A higher agility increases your max AP and sneaking ability.
A higher luck increases how much a single successful hit in VATS charges your crit meter, and means you find more/better loot in better condition.

Stengah wrote:

The perk system is great, but needs some streamlining. I'd love to have the ability to switch between perk "decks" instead of manually having swap in and out each perk (supposedly there's a mod that will do this, but I haven't looked for it). I've gotten to the point where it takes an extra 15 seconds to pick a lock or hack a terminal because I have to manually swap the relevant perks in. I'd also like the ability to trade in duplicate perk cards for a new random one, as well as be able to pick what rank a maxed card gets used at.
That or make some of the more utility based perks count against a separate pool of generic perk points that aren't tied to SPECIAL traits.

First, you would need to pass the G.O.A.T. test.

If the concept of decrypting the launch code makes your brain hurt (as it does mine), you can use this website to do the work for you.

You don't even personally need any of the pieces to launch the nukes. They and the decrypted launch codes are posted on the FO76 reddit every week.

So I bought this on Christmas Eve.. I'm up to level 16. Liking it more than I feared, so far. I got a bounty for opening a box at an airport, so a level 93 hunted me down and one-shotted me. That was fun.

Mostly I'm playing with my kid sister. It's been a good bonding game, and fun on my own. I went down to complete the Overseer log quest line at level 10, the area with the miners is a bit tense at that level, but I managed to get it done.

I'm really impressed with the color palette and sounds, and the voice acting is pretty impressive. Even though I'm only getting to interact with people through their audiologs, it's pretty neat. The junkie confession tape from near Flatwoods was especially well done, I thought.

I've been killed for no reason by one person so far, clearly someone with a lot of time on his hands. I mostly dodged his attacks and made him run around for 20 minutes like an idiot trying to kill me, then finally he wore me down. I guess it made him happy? He left after that.

Make sure you go into settings and set your PvP mode. If you turn it off attackers will only do minimal damage to you and you can't accidentally start PvP by accidentally shooting someone. (Shooting an attacker will activate it as normal)

I put myself in pacifist mode. You say I can still engage an attacker if I choose though?

Yes, but in pacifist mode you won't do any damage.

I'm pretty sure if you respond to an attacker you do normal damage. You just can't initiate combat yourself by shooting someone.

Of course, if it doesn't work that way, that's another one for the bug list.

If you were at the Wade Airport, that's a workshop, and the locked box was owned by that player. They didn't shoot you for no reason, but because they thought you stole from them. A good rule of thumb is to not pick any locks in player-owned workshops. If you go to the map and select the workshop it'll say whether it's been claimed by a player or not.
Workshop pvp overrides your pacifist setting. I've had someone contest my workshop to enable pvp with me. I blocked them and left when it became clear they just wanted to have fun with their hilariously unbalanced explosive legendary weapon, and they never finished claiming the site because I still owned it for the rest of that session.

In other news I hit level 100 and have finished most of the quests (haven't started the Order of Mysteries yet). Main story-wise I like it a lot better than Fallout 3 or 4. The ending of the main quest doesn't have any denouement, which isn't that unusual for a multiplayer game, but it'd be nice if there were some acknowledgement of reaching the end of the story. We can get a nasty message from the Overseer for using a nuke on a non-fissure site, but nothing for nuking Fissure Site Prime. I'm hopeful it'll be addressed at least a little in future updates, maybe when they start opening the Vaults.

Stengah wrote:

If you were at the Wade Airport, that's a workshop, and the locked box was owned by that player. They didn't shoot you for no reason, but because they thought you stole from them. A good rule of thumb is to not pick any locks in player-owned workshops. If you go to the map and select the workshop it'll say whether it's been claimed by a player or not.
Workshop pvp overrides your pacifist setting. I've had someone contest my workshop to enable pvp with me. I blocked them and left when it became clear they just wanted to have fun with their hilariously unbalanced explosive legendary weapon, and they never finished claiming the site because I still owned it for the rest of that session.

In other news I hit level 100 and have finished most of the quests (haven't started the Order of Mysteries yet). Main story-wise I like it a lot better than Fallout 3 or 4. The ending of the main quest doesn't have any denouement, which isn't that unusual for a multiplayer game, but it'd be nice if there were some acknowledgement of reaching the end of the story. We can get a nasty message from the Overseer for using a nuke on a non-fissure site, but nothing for nuking Fissure Site Prime. I'm hopeful it'll be addressed at least a little in future updates, maybe when they start opening the Vaults.

Oh, I figured it was something like that, but it seems a bit bad that they don't indicate ownership when looking at the locked box. Having to check if something is owned on the world map seems terribly clunky.

I was not upset, I realized what happened right away, but felt bad because I wouldn't have picked it had I known it was owned.

I'm up to level 18, and I was working on the Order of Mysteries quest - ran into an area with level 60+ mobs, and died when I got double teamed by a diseased charred ghoul and a radscorpion. I was able to handle the charred ghoul, but couldn't sustain damage from both and heal fast enough.

Fun times!

Has anyone else encountered a bug while leveling up where the points added to your S.PE.C.I.A.L. attribute don’t match the card you picked?

I’ve had it happen twice. The first time i picked an endurance card (which should have put me at 5 for endurance) and it gave me two points in strength (one of which was filled with a level 1 version of a card I already have level 3 of, and it wouldn’t let me unequip it). The second time I picked an intelligence card, which should have put me at 10 for intelligence, but it put the point into luck. So now I have these two perk cards that I can’t use because I don’t have the spots for them, and empty spots in other attributes because I didn’t pick cards for them.

Did I do something wrong, or is this a bug?

I think I had a bug with stat points too but I'm not entirely sure what happened, so I can't really confirm what you're saying. I thought I picked INT, but I was unable to equip my second INT card because my INT was only 1. On the surface at least, sounds like what you're describing.

I had it happen. Apparently it's not a bug; it's just really bad UI design that's meant to allow you to pick a perk card from one stat while leveling up another.

Most of the people I've encountered who have done that have done it by accident though.

Fortunately it's not difficult to compensate for it as you level, and levels come pretty quick.

It's not a bug. You spend your attribute point first, then pick a card, which doesn't have to be from the same attribute you increased. I'd say the bad UI design is that the game defaults to only showing cards from the attribute you just increased which makes people assume they can only pick a card from that group. Once you hit level 50 and choose to take a new card instead of moving a point around (you should really get to do both), the default list is all available cards listed alphabetically. The UI for moving a point around is separate from the one for picking a card too, which is how it ought to be when adding points below level 50.

So how do I view which cards are available before picking the attribute point?

I’ve been selecting an attribute to see the cards then hitting the circle button (I’m on PS4) to go back and check the cards in another attribute.

I think you can hit whatever button is cancel or back and pick a different attribute. If you're not able to change the attribute you're spending the point on, you've probably only been changing the filter for the cards and not actually going back.

Stengah wrote:

I think you can hit whatever button is cancel or back and pick a different attribute. If you're not able to change the attribute you're spending the point on, you've probably only been changing the filter for the cards and not actually going back.

That might explain it. I thought the card just came with the points needed to use it.

Thanks for the explanation.

I was in the upper 30's before I figured out they were separate myself, so you're far from alone.

It's horribly designed, to say the least and definitely something I read or watched in a "tips and tricks" article/vid.

Man, this game got totally slagged in so many GOTY shows. Bethesda seems worried, because they’re giving away the first three Fallout games (1, 2 and Tactics) away for anyone who played it in 2018.

I don’t honestly understand why. The biggest complaint seems to be that the world is empty, but that’s not been my experience at all. If anything, I’m constantly shutting quest markers off so they don’t interfere with the quests I’m currently doing.

As for the story, I like it better than pretty much any mainline Fallout story. Fallout 3 was the better for having a story that you could easily ignore, and I honestly couldn’t tell you what New Vegas’ story actually was. Fallout 4s story wasn’t exactly bad, but it was precisely bad.

As for the complaint about NPCs, frankly I don’t see the difference between the robots and the NPCs in previous fallout games except that they’re less hideous to look at. Oh darn, I don’t have wait here for three hours because the virtual vendor has gone to its virtual bed. How terrible. :eyeroll:

Yeah, it’s buggy. So are all of Bethesda’s games. Frankly, I’m surprised it works as well as it does.

Fallout 76 emphasizes the environmental storytelling and exploration, which is pretty much the only thing I play Fallout games for (which might explain why I didn’t like New Vegas— the exploration was just bad in that game)

Also, it has some of the better Fallout characters in a decade.The overseer is genuinely likeable, and Rosie is kind of an interesting, bizarro take on Moira Brown, who is my favorite fallout character. And I love the mayor of Grafton.

I might turn this into something for the front page, but I don’t really understand where the haterade comes from.

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I havn't played it, but from reading this thread and other places on the internets, it seems like it is suffering from being on the fence, and mismanaged expectations. For the people who wanted for Fallout 3/4/new vegas it's not enough of that (without human npcs or enough crafted stories), for the people who wanted Rust 2: post-appocolypse, its not enough of that either with managed pvp and less granular survival elements.

I'm still looking forward to playing it at some point, but from all the different criticisms from different angles, I understand why it got so much grief. There's the old saw about trying to please everyone pleasing no one.

I am really hoping that it will get patched up and adjusted and we will get private server options and then I will probably check it out.

Every Fallout game that Bethesda makes goes through this sort of hate-fest. It's practically tradition at this point!

I played a bit last week and enjoyed it more than I expected to. I actually found myself drawn to it a few times over other things...

...until I picked up Diablo III for Switch... :-/

Fallout 76 is kind of like an MMO but not an MMO. You have to care about the survival mechanics, but not that much. It's kind of a story game, but all of the characters are dead. Those are all things a lot of people have strong feelings about. This game was going to piss people off even if the coding was rock-solid because people want things from it that Bethesda never intended to deliver. And pissed-off people click on links and watch videos.

Fallout 76 is not the best Fallout experience, although I think it might evolve to be. Do you know what Fallout 76 definitely is? A solid Fallout experience. The tone, feel, and world are so Fallout its crazy. I think for most of us that like it, that's the only really key ingredient.

If it feels like Fallout, then it feels like I can live there for a while, and that's enough for me.