Fallout: 76 Catch-All

I started with melee and realized it wouldn't be a good way to make my way. Sneaky stuff continues to be OP in Bethesda games.

garion333 wrote:

I started with melee and realized it wouldn't be a good way to make my way. Sneaky stuff continues to be OP in Bethesda games.

I know. No matter how many times I reroll in Skyrim I always come back to ranged archer when times get tough!

I'm moving my way towards doing more ranged. I just picked up a sniper rifle and have already found the power of the sneak attack headshot. I can take out something twice my level in one shot.

So is perception the best for that? I'm really lost with these perk things.

Near launch there were some melee builds that worked at end game, but required legendary pieces. It helped managing ammo.

Sydhart wrote:
garion333 wrote:

I started with melee and realized it wouldn't be a good way to make my way. Sneaky stuff continues to be OP in Bethesda games.

I know. No matter how many times I reroll in Skyrim I always come back to ranged archer when times get tough!

I'm moving my way towards doing more ranged. I just picked up a sniper rifle and have already found the power of the sneak attack headshot. I can take out something twice my level in one shot.

But, yes, perception and agility, I believe.

So is perception the best for that? I'm really lost with these perk things.

Perks early on can kind of be irritating because you get such random cards. You want to be sneaky with a sniper rifle, but keep getting food and melee cards. Stuff like that. You kinda just have to roll with what you get for a lil while and slowly form a set of perks you like.

Melee can be viable, but you need to have the right perks. Having the right legendary effects on your gear isn't necessary at all, but it can take you from merely being viable to being overpowered. Two handed weapons are the best, and unarmed weapons can be very good too, but most one handed weapons just don't have the damage output to be worth it (much like pistols are far inferior to rifles). There are some good knife builds that take advantage of its very fast attack speed, but those require the right legendary effects on the weapon.
Sneaky sniper is still the best approach by far while you're leveling, but once you hit level 50 and get the right perk cards, heavy weapons and automatic rifles start outperforming them, with heavy weapons being far better.
I generally first picked the lockpicking/hacking cards when I leveled, then weight reduction ones, then damage increasing ones, then whatever I didn't have yet. One trick with perk cards is to use single star version of all three damage boosting cards for your weapon type instead of a three star version of one of them. The one star cards give +10% damage each, while a three star version gives +20%, so for three perk points, you can get +30% instead of +20%. If you've already improved the rank of one of them, you can just pick it again for your next level and not rank it up. If you play long enough you'll eventually have all three ranks of the same card for multiple cards.

I guess I role-play "real life" in games like these.

If it were the apocalypse and I came across a house that may contain irradiated bugs or zombies there's no way I'd just run right in there with my dukes up. I'd crawl around outside for 30 minutes with my sniper rifle slowly scanning each door and window to keep a safe distance.

Found my first set of power armor last night in the back of a blue transport like vehicle at the Airport! I'm ready to kick some a$$ and take some names now baby.

Very glad to hear that melee can be viable. I'll probably stick with rifles for now but really want to wield a big hammer in power armor and smash stuff.

It's very fun to beat down things with a Scorchbeast femur (the bone hammer), but you'll need something with good legendary affixes if you want to use them on larger enemies.

Sydhart wrote:

Found my first set of power armor last night in the back of a blue transport like vehicle at the Airport! I'm ready to kick some a$$ and take some names now baby.

Very glad to hear that melee can be viable. I'll probably stick with rifles for now but really want to wield a big hammer in power armor and smash stuff.

I like power armor cause you don’t take fall damage. Fun to jump off of high stuff.

I've now got 2 characters to around level 100 and another character in mid 40's. I've made a stealth rifleman/commando, a heavy weapons power armor build, and I'm working on a melee character. As I've played, one thing I've changed in how I level up my characters is that I now focus on getting mutations as soon as I can take the starched genes trait. That changes everything. I like to browse other player's vendors and whenever I can find a mutation serum that I want for 500 caps or less I pick it up until I have 2 points in starched genes and can use them. On all of my characters I've taken marsupial, speed demon, and adrenal reaction mutations. Don't let the downsides of the mutations put you off. Once you get 3 points in the class freak trait it reduces the negatives by 75%.

Kehama wrote:

I've now got 2 characters to around level 100 and another character in mid 40's. I've made a stealth rifleman/commando, a heavy weapons power armor build, and I'm working on a melee character. As I've played, one thing I've changed in how I level up my characters is that I now focus on getting mutations as soon as I can take the starched genes trait. That changes everything. I like to browse other player's vendors and whenever I can find a mutation serum that I want for 500 caps or less I pick it up until I have 2 points in starched genes and can use them. On all of my characters I've taken marsupial, speed demon, and adrenal reaction mutations. Don't let the downsides of the mutations put you off. Once you get 3 points in the class freak trait it reduces the negatives by 75%.

Any suggestions on how to level up faster? Doing Power up Monongah / Claim Monongah / Defend seemed to work for a little while, but now I'm 42 and it seems way less efficient. Also talked my wife into playing, and she seems to be leveling super slow. Barely 13 after a couple weeks of play.

Level up intelligence to whatever you think your build will need first because each point of intelligence gives you an experience bonus. Get the Inspirational perk under Charisma to level 3 so you get 15% bonus exp while on a team and just stay on a team either with each other or just a public team. If you really want to get crazy with bonuses you can also use mentats for an intelligence bonus and make cranberry relish for an experience bonus. The egghead mutation gives you +6 intelligence and if you have the herbivore mutation the relish will be even more beneficial. What I usually do if I'm trying to just grind exp is focus on the main story missions but quickly teleport to any public events that pop up. The ones with a exclamation point on them don't charge you to travel instantly. Even if you're under leveled there's still usually some way you can find to contribute. If nothing else just try to tag mobs while others are killing them and you still get the experience. My melee character who's at 42 has barely touched most of the main quests and has primarily leveled just from running events.

Thanks, Kehama. I was under the impression that the bonus XP for INT was something they didn't do in this game. There are a few videos from early on in the life of the game that mention not raising INT for that reason. I was raising mine regularly for science related weapons perks and hacking until I read somewhere that energy guns suck. I've still ended up with 9 INT so far. I hate how random the cards are, though, because I still only have 1 in hacking.

Doing daily quests is a decent way to get xp, but probably the fastest way to gain levels is to join a public building team (the bonus intelligence affects all xp gained, whereas events teams only boosts the xp from finishing the event, it doesn't affect xp from enemies killed during the event) while using the Inspirational perk card as well. Do events as they pop up and use a fast firing weapon so you can tag all the enemies. You could also run around areas with high enemy spawns. The Whitespring area has a decent loop you can do to kill lots of feral ghouls. The Watoga high school spawns tons of enemies during the trick or treat event, as does the asylum during Line in the Sand. The Wes-tek building, Charleston capitol building, Huntersville, Harper's Ferry (& underground), & Rob-Co building all have a high concentration of enemies too.

There are a couple of ways to get xp boosts too. Sleep in your bed to get an xp boost. Cranberries let you make food items that give an xp boost as well. Diseased ones found all over the Cranberry Bog area let you make a drink that gives +2% xp, normal ones (can be found in the groves and in a farm in the bog, and also a farm in the northern part of the Forest area) let you make a pie that gives +5% xp. The event at the lighthouse also grants an xp boost at the end if you commune with the wise mothman that gets summoned.

Checking in as someone who adores the single player Fallout games..how is 76 in September of 2020?

Thank you..back to Vault 111...for now.

I've had a blast playing mostly solo. Exception being when my wife gets on but that's rare.

One harassment incident in what two years? Not bad. The rest of the time it's just run from place to place with ridiculous piles of junk loot. Wastelanders has really made it feel much more like a Fallout game to me. NPCs handing out missions, new quest lines, etc. I even splurged on Fallout 1st for the private server and unlimited stash a couple days ago. Really enjoying it.

I stayed away from the game until a month or two ago thinking I was going to hate it because it wasn't a "real Fallout" game. I've now put in close to 300 hours I think. It's got a few "main" stories and tons of side missions that fits right along with other Fallout games. The MMO parts really only come into play in the end game after you finish the main missions and then you're grinding daily missions for special currencies or faction favor. That's all completely optional of course. Even if you only treated it as a single player Fallout game, which I did my first run through, you'll still get a good 40 hours of it if not more. They even account for all the other vault dwellers running around the wasteland with you because Vault 76 just sent all of it's residents out at the same time. And yeah, I've only run into one jerk but everyone else has been perfectly pleasant.

I've been playing since the beta and 99% of my time is solo. Even in public teams, very few people chat or really interact with each other. I've encountered 3 actively hostile jerks in the hundreds of hours I've played, though there are a fair number more thoughtless jerks I've encountered. They mainly take the form of someone one-shotting legendary enemies during events so no one else gets the loot.

I like the Wastelanders update a lot, but I think it hurts the experience that people just staring now will have. The loneliness of the game pre-Wastelanders helped sell the atmosphere the story used as a backdrop. Still, it's a better main story than FO4 had. Mechanically the game has never been better. A lot of engine and UI improvements have been made. There are still some major balance issues though. Energy weapons for instance, have never worked right. They don't penetrate armor like they're supposed to, and their durability is incredibly low. So they take more shots to kill things and fewer shots before they break.
The only things FO4 really has over FO76 is settlement building/management and the ability to use mods.

Yeah, I was one of those accidental jerks the other day. I've been fine tuning my bloodied stealth rifleman build who's using a bloodied lever action rifle. I was in the Uranium Fever event the other night and accidentally came around a corner and one-shot a legendary before I realized it. I normally try to just bash them and let everyone else get some shots in. Was too quick on the VATS button. For larger events I'm probably going to have to start using other weapons just so I don't run into that problem. I still love going out solo and taking down a behemoth in like 3 shots. It's just fun. But mix that with other people who are trying to tag mobs for loot and it's a bad combo.

Thanks everyone. Sounds fun. I’ll try.

I played a little early on and have played very little since. I adore the setting and had no issues with other players, even dying to one of them. The latter was a nice little story.

I'd ignorantly entered someone's occupied area--the/one of the junkyard(s) relatively close to Vault 76--and as I do in every game, looted and picked locks with abandon. Well, picking locks in an area occupied by another player gets a bounty on your head. I played for a while before that player tried tracking me down, and when they did I was stealthed by crouching while wearing a piece of stealth-field armor I'd found somewhere.

I assume they saw my username, and may have unsuccessfully tried talking to me, because they stood staring at me for a long few seconds before killing me. I didn't fight back. It was a neat experience.

By far my favorite part of Fallout 76, especially relative to Fallout 4, is that not everything automatically aggros. Woodland creatures often flee, and sometimes other creatures have. I've had a single experience in Fallout 4 in which a nominally hostile party didn't immediately aggro, which is really disappointing.

New update is out.
One Wasteland makes all enemies scale to each player's level (up to the area's level cap), which has been pretty nice so far. It also scales enemies down for low level players so they can contribute more when fighting in an area with higher level players. So if I'm doing an event in the Forest, I'll see a level 50 enemy, but someone who's level 10 will see a level 10 enemy. It's by no means a novel mechanic, but it's nice that they finally added it. It adds a lot of incentive for higher level players to do events in what were low level areas, as everything will now drop max level loot.

Legendary perks are finally available. You'll want to take some time to figure out what you want before assigning anything, as they cost perk coins (gained by scrapping perk cards) to unequip. They're definitely designed for long-time players, as you don't even unlock all of them until you're level 300.

They've added Daily Ops, which are instanced missions with rotating enemy types and enemy mutations. The first one is to wipe out a bunch of robots that can only be killed with melee damage (ranged damage can take them down to 1 hp, but won't kill them). Sneaky sniper builds are having a hard time with it, but that's mostly because they are trying to be sneaky snipers in a mission designed to counter them instead of adjusting their builds to suit the mission.

A lot of people who play bloodied builds are complaining about the changes. Apparently their damage has been nerfed and they can no longer do insanely high damage; they have to settle for only doing very high damage and they're sad they can't one shot everything anymore. They're also dying a lot more often due to the increased enemy levels making the enemies do more damage. I play a build that's honestly geared more towards carrying capacity than anything else, and I haven't noticed any significant differences in my survivability or damage output with the new patch.

I tried out the update last night. I'm not a fan of the scaling enemies. I tried Leader of the Pack, and Campfire Tales last night and failed both. I think there still should have been a level cap on the different areas (Forest/Mire/Savage Divide/etc.). I want to feel like I can accomplish something, and every enemy now feels like a bullet sponge, even if I walk up on some mole rats. I'm one of those sniper builds, and it looks like I going to have to change something.

That being said I would like to try the Daily Ops, but I know there is no way without a group. Anyone playing on Xbox wants to party up I'm off most weekends, and I play a little during the evening (doing daily stuff for the season).

So, I started a new character, which is kinda dumb in a GaaS but I'm finding it to be enjoyable. They've done a good job integrating the NPCs into the early game. I can't imagine the amount of work that went into that, wow.

Instanced shelters where you can basically build whatever you want? This is AWESOME.

There are some things that can't be built in them, but it'll be nice to finally be able to use many of my decorations. Most of my camp budget is taken up by more practical items.

This may be asked periodically, but what's the status of Fallout 76 at this point? I passed on it early and often due to the lack of content and the griefing that people were complaining about due to the online nature of it, but I've been starting to get the feeling that I want to play a Fallout game again at some point (I think it was the ad for the Fallout 4: New Vegas mod that did it), and I'm seeing some deep sales for this game on PC for the next week or two.

I've heard the later patches have fixed a lot of problems with the game and added more story, plus the griefers may have moved on to other games. Is this generally true, and how much of F76 is story and exploration vs building and crafting? And just as important, how are the radio stations?

Not played in ages but there has been a load of extra content added recently and the griefing problems were resolved very early on. As I recall if you ignored them they could only do very, very minor damage so were easily ignored.
I've been impressed with the updates reported so intend to get back in and start a new character at some point.

Building and crafting is almost non-existent compared to FO4. You have a personal camp you can move around the map, and you can temporarily take over static workshop locations, but that's pretty much it. Most of the game is wandering & quests, and 76 does both much better than FO4 did. There are human NPCs now, but honestly the initial story was better without them. They're necessary for the content that was added in with them, but I'd prefer it if they didn't show up until after you've beaten the main storyline so it could be experienced how it was meant to experienced. The wasteland's not as lonely and desolate as it's supposed to be with them everywhere you go.

Greifers were never that big of an issue, and even then mostly focused on contesting workshops as a workaround the pacifist setting. In fact, a lot of the initial hate was from players upset they couldn't grief people as easily as they could in other games. That and people using exploits to deliberately crash servers so they could complain online about server stability.

The game still has balance issues. Half the weapon types aren't really viable at all for endgame play. Either they don't do enough damage quickly enough (pistols, 1-handed melee, semi-automatic rifles) or they break too quickly (laser & plasma pistols/rifles).

The current endgame is okay. It's mostly jumping between events trying to get rare plans and better legendary items. They're adding new content at a decent pace, and have taken the "seasons" approach to give players something to do between content drops. They're free, although you can buy progress on them. Most of the rewards are camp plans or cosmetic items.

I know lots of people might recommend signing up for Fallout 1st for the private server to avoid griefing, but it's so rare that I don't think it's worth it. You'd also miss out on the much more common instances of high level players dropping supplies for you. Plus, many of the events are designed for multiple participants. Access to the scrap box is the only real selling point for it, but it's not worth $10 a month.

Stengah wrote:

I know lots of people might recommend signing up for Fallout 1st for the private server to avoid griefing, but it's so rare that I don't think it's worth it. You'd also miss out on the much more common instances of high level players dropping supplies for you. Plus, many of the events are designed for multiple participants. Access to the scrap box is the only real selling point for it, but it's not worth $10 a month.

A lot of people are allergic to anything but ideal multiplayer interactions, and they are very vocal. I'm similarly vocal about how great online multiplayer is in almost any format, including WoWing with randos back in the day and embracing Dark Souls' invasions. People just need to know who they are, I guess.

Fedaykin98 wrote:
Stengah wrote:

I know lots of people might recommend signing up for Fallout 1st for the private server to avoid griefing, but it's so rare that I don't think it's worth it. You'd also miss out on the much more common instances of high level players dropping supplies for you. Plus, many of the events are designed for multiple participants. Access to the scrap box is the only real selling point for it, but it's not worth $10 a month.

A lot of people are allergic to anything but ideal multiplayer interactions, and they are very vocal. I'm similarly vocal about how great online multiplayer is in almost any format, including WoWing with randos back in the day and embracing Dark Souls' invasions. People just need to know who they are, I guess.

For what it's worth, I'm one of those people allergic to anything but perfect multiplayer, and I can tolerate, and even enjoy, the small amount of interaction that's in Fallout 76. Mostly it's for that feeling you get from playing MMOs solo, the idea that you're not alone out there, and for some reason that actually means something, however intangible.

And I have all voice interaction turned off, so when I do run into people, they could be the biggest raging assholes in the world and I'd never know. It's almost always someone either passing by that might use a wave emote, or someone who drops a big ol' backpack full of gear, which I usually go turn into Legendary Scrip, but it's the thought that counts!

Even though I'm taking an extended break from the game currently, it has really matured, though I liked the direction it was heading right from the start. I loved that wandering, looking for odds and ends feeling of Fallout 4, and 76 does a lot of the same things, although admittedly with a slight nod towards multiplayer balance.