Fallout 76

Fallout 76 is a post-apocalyptic multiplayer online role-playing game developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the newest installment in the Fallout series (ninth overall) and released on Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on November 14, 2018.
Before the game released, game director Todd Howard explained how Fallout 76 at launch was intentionally not meant to be the final version of the game because it was meant to be an evolving live game that would receive many updates based on player feedback, similar to many other online games. Todd mentioned it could be a very different game ten years in the future.QuakeCon 2018 Q&A The 2018 version was merely a "starting line" as a result. Fallout 76 receives free seasonal updates via patches and new content is planned for at least roughly 2027.PC Gamer: Bethesda is working on a 'five-year roadmap' for Fallout 76 In 2024, Bethesda announced that Fallout 76 has reached 17 million players. Unlike other MMOs, no monthly subscription is required to play.
According to the game's former designer Mark Tucker, Fallout 76 will eventually have its own "ending" of sorts with Mark stating, "We have a story in the game that we have always intended to tell over a longer time span."Fallout 76's The Pitt Expedition Is The Next Chapter In A Story That Does Have A Planned Endpoint
==Setting==
While the story is primarily set in Appalachia, comprising the former state of West Virginia, parts are also set in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The player takes the role of a dweller from Vault 76. On their journey, the dweller discovers how Appalachia has been devastated by and suffered from the fallout, and how its inhabitants are struggling against a zombie-like virus known as the Scorched Plague transforming people into Scorched. The dweller crosses paths with different factions with conflicting ideas on how to revitalize or conquer Appalachia. 
Fallout 76 originally began on October 23, 2102 (Reclamation Day), 25 years after the Great War. Time progressed by one year with the release of additional updates, the starting year being 2103 with the Wastelanders update, 2104 with the Steel Reign update, and 2105 with the Expeditions: Atlantic City update. This places the game's story before that of any previous games.
Described by Todd Howard as a "prequel" to the series,Todd Howard @ E3 - Fallout 76/Starfield (0:18) the game delves deeper into the lore of various entries, such as Fallout's Forced Evolutionary Virus, the Brotherhood of Steel and Roger Maxson, whose voice is heard for the first time in Fallout 76. The Enclave introduced in Fallout 2 is expanded upon and the G.E.C.K. has a cameo. The Pitt from Fallout 3 was made explorable in the Expeditions: The Pitt update in 2022; additionally, the Vault 76 overseer almost became the overseer of Vault 101 and some characters such as Jen come from the Capital Wasteland or the Pitt. There are various minor connections with Fallout 4, such as the universe of Hubris Comics, Elliot Manfield, Del Walsh, the Mistress of Mystery's actress Shannon Rivers, and a Nuka-World tie-in location named Nuka-World on Tour. Fallout: New Vegas references include Robert House being mentioned in a terminal, the Ultra-Luxe casino is mentioned in an incident, and snow globes are collectable decorations.
==Gameplay==
===Changes from previous Fallouts===
Fallout 76 plays similar to Fallout 4 due to sharing the engine, although 76 has changes and convenient quality-of-life features over past Fallout games. Moving away from the controversial dialogue system of Fallout 4, players can now see their full responses, and conversations often have checks for factors such as SPECIAL, items and quest progress. Players can now fast travel from indoors and with enemies nearby as long as they are not attacked within fifteen seconds, although caps are now required for fast travel with some exceptions. Appearance and sex can be modified at any time. Photomode is available.
The inventory now has a tab for newly obtained items. Armor and apparel, as well as food and aid, are now distinct categories. The menu now differentiates between main and side quests. Quest markers now show the names of objectives. The player can use an easily readable semi-transparent menu HUD instead of the Pip-Boy. Players can now return to the top of the Pip-Boy menu by scrolling past the bottom item and vice-versa. Floating damage numbers can be enabled in the options. Updates added the ability to quickly loot all enemies within a certain radius, corpse highlighting for unlooted enemies, and the keyring absent in Fallout 4 was re-added. Items found in the world can now be used directly using a prompt instead of needing to open the Pip-Boy. Carry weight is now shown while looting to prevent being encumbered. A freecam function, not present in Fallout 4, allows the player to detach the camera while building in order to speed up the process and easily reach all areas.
Due to its multiplayer nature, it is not possible to manually save, as the game instead keeps track of every action the player does, such as moving around the map or dropping an item. Players level up much faster than other Fallout games, and some players have their level in the thousands.
One player can have up to five characters under the same account.
===World===
Fallout 76 uses new rendering environmental technology that allows sixteen times more detail than Fallout 4. This extra draw distance detail allows players to see buildings in the far-off distance at high altitudes and see distant weather systems in other regions. In order to take advantage of this, Appalachia is different than previous Fallout worlds due to featuring incredibly high cliffs. Two locations, Top of the World and Seneca Rocks, are the highest points in the map. The world map is four times the size of Fallout 4,Fallout 76 trailer at E3 2018 although it is likely around five times with the new Skyline Valley region.
Appalachia was only lightly nuked during the Great War two-and-a-half decades ago, preserving a lot of its nature and forests. Appalachia also has a railway connecting various train stations which can help supply the player. There are also thirteen lookout towers where the player can examine the landscape at the top which will add new locations to the world map.
Each server has its own weather and time of day with occasional verdant seasons for better harvest yields. Scorchbeasts tend to fly around fissure sites and will pursue anyone they see. Random encounters return and Fallout 76 has the most of them in the series, letting players occasionally come across bizarre events such as a group of mannequins facing each other, a terrified man running from a chicken, or encountering an insulting robot. Fallout 76 also contains many pop culture references in the form of environmental storytelling.
===Solo play, multiplayer, communication, trading and PvP===
While Fallout 76 was designed to be played with others, solo play was also kept in mind during development, allowing players to play 76 like past Fallout games. For example, every single story quest can be solved alone and a perk called "Lone Wanderer" allows asocial players to receive less damage. The world map is large enough to the degree that players can go a long time without encountering others. If a player finds another player to be a nuisance, it takes a minute to server hop in order to never encounter them again, although the game's community has a reputation for being very friendly and teaching new players how to play the game. The player may also use a private server via the game's optional subscription service known as Fallout 1st.
Events are quite difficult alone; however, these events are entirely optional and not required for the main storyline. Every 20 minutes, a new random public event will appear on the world map, allowing players to fast travel to it. Events usually involve players shooting off waves of enemies, although some events such as Tunnel of Love may require players to do tasks such as retrieve items. Three events, Encryptid, Radiation Rumble and Eviction Notice have some player etiquette surrounding them, however, as it is considred rude to immediately start them until more players show up since these events can fail without enough players.
Fallout 76 has hundreds of servers, each one having a maximum capacity of twenty-four players. To prevent griefing, players are forced into a random server upon logging in unless they directly join a friend's server. Players can team up into squads with a maximum of four people by joining a "public team" which offers group benefits.
Interaction with other players is done via the emote wheel and voice chat. Players can also write custom messages in build mode using various letter sets such as neon letters, for example.
Trading items with other players can be initiated by using an "invite to trade" prompt near them. This will open up a trade menu which allows players to see each other's inventories. Players can request an item, letting the other player know to put a cap price on it. The player who is buying may decline it based on one of six responses such as not having enough caps or wanting less of the item. It is also common for high level players to give items as gifts for free to low level players, in which case a loot bag will be dropped on the ground.
Player versus player (PvP) is entirely optional since players can turn Pacifist Mode in the game's settings so they never have to worry about being injured or killed by another player. Combat becomes available when the player is level 5, and it is only available to players who have Pacifist Mode off. Player characters invite other characters to duel by attacking, though these attacks do not deal any damage. Before patch 7.5, they dealt nominal damage. If the player being attacked fires back, the damage being inflicted between the two players is regulated, but only if there is a large level gap between them. Players who are close to the same level inflict full damage with no restrictions. Player characters who are severely different in level have their damage placed on a curve with the higher level player doing less damage than they normally would at their level, while the lower level player does more.
If the opposing player responds but then dies, they can seek revenge. If they kill the initial instigating player, they receive double the rewards. Killers can collect any junk their target drops. If a player continues to attack another player and that player has not responded, but eventually is killed by the instigating player, the offender will have a bounty placed on their head and are "wanted". They receive no loot or experience for killing the opposing player. The now-hunted player is visible to all others on the map, indicated by a red star. They also cannot see anybody else on the map. Killing the marked player results in higher-than-normal rewards.
===Combat and equipment===
Combat is similar to Fallout 4. Due to the game's multiplayer nature, V.A.T.S. is now real-time. It can now be used mid-air. The ability to target body parts in V.A.T.S. now requires a perk card. Grenades now have a visible throwing arc but only with a perk card.
Weapons and armor have durability and will need to be repaired occasionally using in-game materials, although White Knight can slow down armor deterioration. Repair kits can also be used which may be purchased or sometimes given out for free from the Atomic Shop, may be obtained after completing events, or may be obtained as seasonal rewards. Weapons and armor now have level requirements with the max level cap at 50. Some equipment known as legendary equipment have modifiers called "legendary effects" which each star by its name indicating the amount of legendary effects it has. Using modules, players can "roll" a weapon for different effects in a process known as legendary crafting.
Power armor plays similarly to Fallout 4 and requires fusion cores or else players can not sprint in it. These protective suits safeguard players against fall damage, radiation damage which allows them to enter nuke zones, limb damage, ballistic threats, and electrical shock. To get a fully functional power armor, the player must either follow the main questline, search contaminated areas for working pieces, or hope to come across one during random encounters. There are 12 different types of power armor. Power armor can also be modded to have legendary effects. To modify power armor, players will need to find a power armor station. Power armor players have a variety of perk cards available for them, a popular one being Stabilized.
Jet packs allow players to go airborne and hover in the air, and can be equipped with or without power armor. With the bird bones serum and careful use of timing button presses, jet pack users can even glide across long distances.
===Events and nukes===
A variety of different events are ongoing in each server. A player favorite, Radiation Rumble is the go-to event for fast character progression in which players fight waves of enemies. Two specific events, A Colossal Problem and Scorched Earth, require a player to nuke either Monongah Mine or the area around fissure site Prime in the southeastern Cranberry Bog. The first allows to fight Earle Williams, while the second results in an encounter with a scorchbeast queen, both of which are considered the end-game bosses. A third world boss, the Ultracite Titan, arrived with the Nuka-World on Tour update. Daily Ops are events in which up to four players fight mobs in a race against time to complete objectives in one of thirteen maps.
Some events are seasonal such as Fasnacht Day, The Mothman Equinox and Invaders from Beyond in which Appalachia becomes routinely attacked by aliens. A trick-or-treating system was implemented in October 2021 that has been re-appearing every October since then in which players build pumpkin baskets containing candy at their C.A.M.P.s in order to dish out candy. Bethesda releases community calendars that show what is taking place, such as weekends where players can earn double the XP.
Nukes can be used following the completion of the main quest, I Am Become Death. To launch a nuke, a player must visit one of the three main missile silos; Site Alpha, Site Bravo or Site Charlie, all of which have identical layouts. After a series of small tasks, the player can launch a nuke using a nuclear keycard and a launch code, the latter of which changes weekly. When utilized, the resulting nuclear blast zone is highly radioactive, and while it holds valuable resources and high level enemies, entering it requires a high Radiation Resistance. Any C.A.M.P. caught in a blast zone will be destroyed, while a player will be instant-killed. Excluding a protected part of the Forest starting region, nukes can be launched anywhere.
===Quests and NPCs===
Quests at launch were akin to found-world quests that were largely received through discovering locations, listening to holotape recordings, and reading terminals and notes. The story required players to remember key figures they learned about, such as Maria Chavez and Sam Blackwell, and piece together the clues in order to find out what happened in Appalachia. Robots were used to deliver the story and took over traditional roles played by NPCs in past iterations.IGN Todd Howard demo E3 2018 Robots and other creatures with personalities such as Grahm also engaged in bartering. At launch, almost all other living characters met by a player were those of other players at release.Fallout 76 - Official reveal from Bethesda.netYouTube live at E3 2018 Monday: Ninja, PlayStation & Ubisoft Press Conferences (Official Livestream)
The Wastelanders update introduced living characters who now give quests. However, many of the quests that involve human NPCs are bottlenecked by the Vault 76 overseer who can be found in a house in Sutton. If the player never meets the overseer at her house, and then gets inoculated from the Scorched Plague during An Ounce of Prevention, then they are missing out on a large portion of the Wastelanders storyline, particularly Meg Groberg's and Paige's questlines.
Quests in Fallout 76 are quite varied; while the game has its share of fetch quests, there are also quests such as photography-based missions requiring players to take photographs using an in-game camera. There are also has a few obstacle courses requiring players to run through an area under a time limit.
Fallout 76 does not have permanent quest companions due to being a multiplayer game. Instead, the game features over 15 temporary quest companions who will assist the player during certain quests. Due to the multiplayer format, many quests are instanced. For players to assist each other in an instanced mission, they require the team leader to enter a location first. Other members of the team can assist the team leader in their instance, although they will not have progress done on their own character. Members can listen to the team leader's dialogue with NPCs.
Due to the online shared nature of the world, with the exception of a few moments during quests, or some wandering NPCs outdoors, the majority of NPCs can not be killed or harmed by the player. Unless they are killed and their body is looted, they can not be pickpocketed and they do not react to the player looting items in their vicinity. Nuking an area with NPCs will result in them wearing hazmat suits. Some notable NPCs that can be killed include Roper, Barb, Johnny Weston, Frankie Beckett, Mochou, Mike Tiller, Farha, Jain, Nellie Wright, Daniel Shin, Leila Rahmani, Concerta Lombardi and Saltwater Sam.
===Role-playing===
While there is a tendency for some people to view Fallout 76 as having the least amount of role-playing in the series, arguments can be made for why the opposite is true. Role-playing is defined as the ability for the player to assume a role of their choice and have the freedom to craft the stories they wish to experience. For example, Bethesda once highlighted a video of a player who recreated Diagon Alley from Harry Potter, showing the extent of role-playing possibilities. A group of players may completely ignore the post-apocalyptic universe, and instead have a server full of Harry Potter enthusiasts where they pretend to be characters from within said universe, taking care of their pet owls. Players also have the ability to voice chat in-game, or via external programs, in order to role-play with other players. Because Fallout 76 does not have in-game text chat without a mod, players have created Discord clans, and have left their usernames written down in their C.A.M.P.s.
Despite some of the game's limitations, there are still many opportunities for role-playing, especially due to the SPECIAL and quest progress checks during conversations. The protagonist of Fallout 76 is arguably more of a blank slate than previous protagonists; for example, they are not trying to save their Vault from dehydration, a courier who has made a choice to seek revenge against a man, nor do they have a son who they are trying to locate. The protagonist of Fallout 76 is simply someone who lived in Vault 76 with no canonical job. While Vault 76 was meant for the best and brightest, the player can also imagine the protagonist as the offspring of someone selected to enter, and play as a low-intelligence character. The player may also be a rude jerk to NPCs, even being able to call Burke a freak for being non-binary, as well as bother other players with some low-level harassment such as trying to steal their kills, although the player can expect to be blocked or for the victim to change servers.
While the Vault 76 overseer invites the protagonist to have a meeting at her home, the protagonist can choose not to attend. Nothing is really stopping the player from doing whatever else they want the moment they step out of Vault 76; they may immediately choose to spend their free-time gathering flora to become a post-apocalyptic florist, try to collect all Mr. Fuzzy merchandise in the wasteland, rush to join the Enclave by doing the original questline to meet MODUS, become a Shakespearean actor with other real-life players, or recreate locales from other media such as Hogwarts. While the Vault Dwellers were meant to rebuild Appalachia, the player has the freedom to not bother with C.A.M.P. building.
While Fallout 4 forced players into a heterosexual marriage, Fallout 76 allows players to express their sexual orientation and gender identity through player icons and C.A.M.P. flags, and sometimes flirt at characters of the same sex. Sofia and Beckett may become the player's girlfriend/boyfriend regardless of gender.
The player will sometimes have to make morality-based choices that can determine the fates of NPCs, and there are some consequences for certain decisions. For example, if the player is too rude to Ra-Ra, she will not retrieve the Slug Buster for the player later. Choosing to side with the Settlers or Raiders will make the player lose the other quest chain, unless they begin a second character. Recruiting Colin or Marty will lock the player out of the other brother's unique weapon. Choosing certain options during Sofia Daguerre's questline will make her permanently complain about having headaches.
Another example of role-playing is that there are a variety of outfits, player icons and C.A.M.P. items for the different factions throughout the game; the player can dress as a Responder, build an Enclave-themed C.A.M.P., make a diner as a C.A.M.P. and sell baked goods to other players, etc. It is possible to be more creative with role-playing and dress as a pirate and build a pirate ship C.A.M.P., build a Japanese-styled house by merging objects together, dress as the Pint-Sized Slasher and follow other players, and so forth.
===Survival elements===
Todd Howard described Fallout 76 as a "softcore survival game."E3 2018 Fallout 76 reveal on YouTube.com Death does not result in loss of progression; instead, players merely drop all their junk items on-hand. Players can retrieve their junk left behind in a bag, indicated by a map icon, though other players may steal it. Sometimes players are downed instead of killed, in which case another player can use a stimpak to revive them. Like previous Fallout games, the player can sleep in beds to restore their health, but due to the time of day being uniform in the server, sleeping does not advance time. Bobbleheads no longer permanently increase stats and instead only give a temporary boost.
Initially, food and drinks were important to help survive as starving would result in continual HP damage while being dehydrated would limit the maximum AP. This was later patched out, so that being more well-fed will grant more max HP and disease resistance, while being hydrated will boost AP regeneration and disease resistance. 
Inventory management is a huge part of the game. Every player has their own instanced stashbox with a current maximum capacity of 1200. Stashboxes have the same contents no matter where they are accessed. Each character has their own stashbox, meaning a player has a total of 6000; it is a common practice for players to find others to help them transfer items between characters to take advantage of this. Fallout 1st players have access to a scrapbox which allows them to place unlimited amounts of components in it as long as their subscription is active. Components placed in a scrapbox can be removed if the player's Fallout 1st is no longer active.
Diseases act as temporary debuffs and can be acquired by various means; by being submerged underwater without protective headwear, sleeping on the ground, or by fighting diseased enemies. While diseases do not last longer than an hour, they can be removed prematurely by using antibiotics, disease cure or a Sympto-Matic. A special sulphur water fountain in a gazebo near the Whitespring Golf Club will also cure diseases.
Mutations can be developed, either by being exposed to radiation, or by using a special serum. They are an important gameplay mechanic, and each mutation gives advantages and disadvantages. They may be removed by RadAway, unless the second rank of the Starched Genes perk is equipped. Their effects can be temporarily suppressed by taking Rad-X. The perk cards Strange in Numbers and Class Freak boost the positive effects and reduce the negative ones, respectively.
Crafting is a major part of the game. Players loot junk items from the world, and scrap them into raw components, with which they can build a variety of items, ranging from weapons, ammunition, armor, furniture, to consumables such as food and medicine. Raw components are also required to repair weapons and armor, as they gradually deteriorate, with higher quality equipment requiring rarer components. Certain items also require plans or recipes in order to be crafted. Ore can be harvested from mineral deposits, which can then be smelted at a chemistry station.
Backpacks can be used to increase carry weight. A plan for small backpacks can be found exploring Morgantown Airport. A larger backpack involves the completion of the side quest The Order of the Tadpole.
===Faction reputation===
Two distinct factions were introduced with the Wastelanders storyline: The Raiders and the Settlers, located in the Crater and Foundation, respectively. A reputation mechanic allows for the player to slowly improve their standing with either faction. Certain decisions in quests can increase the reputation with a faction, and daily quests available in each faction's settlement guarantee that the reputation with both can be maxed out. The benefit of a high reputation lies in having access to more plans at a faction's trader. There is generally no reputation loss for killing members of a faction. 
===Housing, workshops and allies===
The Construction and Assembly Mobile Platform, or C.A.M.P. for short, is a key feature which allows players to construct their own dwellings. It can be moved to another location for a small amount of caps. Players on a private team can build objects at their teammate's C.A.M.P. even when the owner has not learned the plan for the object built, as long as it is not Atomic Shop. Players can also freely use furniture and appliances at another's C.A.M.P., though bypassing locked objects will result in the "wanted" penalty. Buildable vending machines let players buy and sell items to others. C.A.M.P.s can be attacked by hostile creatures or other players; creatures tend to go after crops, power generators and turrets. All destroyed parts of a C.A.M.P. can be instantly repaired as long as the player has the materials.
C.A.M.P.s sometimes will not re-appear upon loading a server if someone has a tent or C.A.M.P. nearby; when the player moves to a server without the C.A.M.P.'s area blocked, their C.A.M.P. will re-appear.
While initially only one C.A.M.P. per character was allowed, a free second slot arrived with the One Wasteland For All update, which also introduced shelters. Shelters have less strict building restrictions when it comes to placing items, as they are interior locations and not part of the actual game world, even though some items cannot be built inside them. Additional C.A.M.P. slots and shelter variants can be purchased from the Atomic Shop. 
Workshops are temporary C.A.M.P.s primarily used for material farming. Each workshop has a predefined amount of resource deposits available, which can be harvested by building mineral extractors. Just like shelters, certain items are prohibited from being built at a workshop. Control over a workshop is lost if a player leaves a server.
Much like settlements in Fallout 4, C.A.M.P.s, shelters, and workshops all have a budget limiting the number of items that can be built. Each buildable item has its own value contributing to the budget. Tent's are mini C.A.M.P.s available to active Fallout 1st subscribers that contain a bed, cooking item, and stash box; and sometimes a workbench, ammo box, or scrap box. They can't overlap another tent or C.A.M.P. area; or be placed too near certain locations.
Allies act like housemates but they will help defend a C.A.M.P. when creatures appear. Each one has their own piece of furniture which can be placed at a C.A.M.P. to summon them. Only one ally can be active at any given time. Three allies (settler wanderer, settler forager, raider punk) can be recruited if they are found wandering outside; these allies assign daily quests resembling radiant quests. Sofia Daguerre and Beckett, found in fixed locations, are unique in that they offer their own narrative questlines. An additional ten "lite allies" were obtainable through seasonal scoreboards; if they were not, they may be obtained after maxing Foundation's reputation and spending 4000 gold. Allies have their unique benefits; they may be vendors or offer certain temporary bonuses; for example, speaking with Maul temporarily raises Strength. Certain bonuses, such as Lover's Embrace, may only be accessed after meeting a personal reputation criteria. Excluding Adelaide, Daphne and Maul, the player can customize their ally's clothes.
There are various Collectron robots which the player can use to farm various resources while they are away from their C.A.M.P. One of them, the F.E.T.C.H. Collectron, even resembles a dog that lives in a doghouse and will hunt for electronic scrap.
===Abilities and perk card system===
Abilities are tied to a unique card deck system with a little over 200 cards available with different abilities and buffs. After completing the initial release from the vault (level 2), players gain a point and need to build their SPECIAL attributes by filling their slots with cards. The seven categories are each presented to the player in the form of perk cards. Players can then build on those SPECIALs by adding additional cards (perks) to them.
Initially, players receive a Perk Card Pack every two levels up to level 10. This is a random selection of four cards that the player can swap out with their current cards. After level ten, players receive the card packs every five levels. These packs can occasionally include a card that is higher in value than normal, increasing a stat or ability more than it would otherwise.
Players have to spend a varying number of points on cards, dependent on the initial value. Cards of the same type can be combined with an additional point cost to create a higher ranked version of that initial card, and the max rank depends on the card. The value of the card is shown in the upper left corner. Players gain a SPECIAL point on level up until level 50 which they can assign to a SPECIAL stat of their choosing. After level 50, players are still able to pick a perk card but no longer receive SPECIAL points.
There are also cards that buff a player's team as a whole, most of which fall under Charisma. There are few solo-player Charisma cards, as the majority are designed for team play. Another way players can support their team is by sharing perk cards. Players can only share one perk card, and the rank of the card that can be shared is based on the Charisma SPECIAL stat. For every three points of Charisma, one perk card point can be shared.
Legendary perks unlock after level 50 and allow the player to equip certain perk cards and rank up their effects using perk coins. Each star on a card represents a value of 2 perk coins upon being scrapped.
From level 25 onward, punch card machines can be utilized for different SPECIAL Loadouts. They allow for easy re-distribution of SPECIAL points for loadouts, and also for changing the currently active loadout.
===Fallout Worlds and private worlds===
Fallout Worlds was added to the game, allowing players to play in a rotating Public World for free, which offers a unique customized setting. Progress is not shared with Adventure and is lost when the Public World type rotates to a new type monthly. Additionally, Fallout 1st subscribers have access to Private Adventure and Custom Worlds.
Private Adventure is a mode where players with an active Fallout 1st subscription can play on their own private server with up to seven friends. It released on October 23, 2019, along with patch 14. Private Adventure servers generally have better server stability than Adventure mode servers. Character progress made in Private Adventure is saved and will transfer over to Public Adventure, however any changes made to the world do not persist from session to session, such as taking a workshop, farming junk spots, killing enemies, etc. If the server host leaves and no other players on the server have a Fallout 1st subscription, remaining players have a 30-minute grace period to leave before the server shuts down. However, if a player other than the original server host has a Fallout 1st subscription, the server will not shut down. After the server shuts down, a short grace-period exists in which loading back into Private Adventure will reconnect to the same server. This has generally been observed to be 10-15 minutes. After that time has elapsed, a new server will be spun up and everything in the world will be restored to the default state.
Custom Worlds, also commonly referred to as Private Worlds or Private Custom, are highly customizable Fallout 1st servers for up to eight people. Progress is saved per-character but is not shared with Public or Private Adventure. Characters can be re-imported from Adventure to Private Custom at will or kept as a completely separate game progression, if desired. There are over two dozen parameters that can be customized from weather, to combat mechanics, to relaxed building rules and crafting requirements, to even forced PVP settings.
===Expeditions===
Expeditions are a system introduced to Fallout 76 in 2022, taking a role similar to add-ons from previous Fallout games. The system allows players to visit cities outside of Appalachia. Expeditions feature repeatable mission-based content, new NPCs and quests. To lead an Expedition, a player will need to head to the Whitespring Resort and perform quests for the refugees there. However, players can join other players' Expeditions via joining the team of the leader and then selecting the Expeditions icon on the world map.
The first in the series was Expeditions: The Pitt and the second Expedition is Expeditions: Atlantic City, set in Atlantic City, New Jersey. While the Pitt does not have a free roam area, Atlantic City does. In Atlantic City, players are able to engage in gambling minigames at the Neapolitan Casino.
===Defunct game modes===
Fallout 76 has had a few game modes that have been removed from the game:
* Survival mode was a more competitive way to play that was separate from the main game, had fewer PvP restrictions, higher stakes for PvP combat and a permanent XP bonus. It released in a beta form as part of the Wild Appalachia update with patch 7.5 on March 26, 2019. There was also a scoreboard system, as well as new weekly challenges that had legendary rewards. Survival mode went defunct on October 1, 2019. Its spiritual successor is the "High Risk" Public World setting.
* Nuclear Winter was a battle royale mode that debuted on June 10, 2019. It went defunct in late 2021.
* Vault raids were introduced alongside Nuclear Winter. They went defunct April 14, 2020, and their spiritual successor are Daily Ops.
===Seasons and S.C.O.R.E===
Seasons last for roughly three months, and with each season, new obtainable rewards are added. Daily and weekly challenges, such as obtaining purified water, defeating mole miners or visiting a teammate's shelter, can be completed in order to gain S.C.O.R.E., which is automatically used to rank up and progress to the next page. Each rank increases the amount of S.C.O.R.E. required to reach the next rank. S.C.O.R.E. unlocks tickets and the player can choose which rewards to invest in using them. Rewards are usually only available for the duration of a season. With recent updates, Bethesda has started to make certain items of past seasons available via plans, which can be bought in exchange for gold bullion from certain traders, or through the Atomic Shop.
===Currencies===
Fallout 76 uses five major currencies, while several minor forms also exist.
* Caps: Caps are most frequently used for the majority of transactions with vendors and other players. They are awarded for completing quests, can be found in stashes and other containers, or on defeated enemies.
* Gold bullion: This is primarily obtained by exchanging Treasury Notes which are obtained by finishing events and daily quests. It is used to buy plans that are rare or unobtainable otherwise. Vendors accepting gold bullion are Minerva, Regs at Vault 79, Samuel at Foundation and Mortimer at the Crater. Smiley also exchanges caps for gold bullion.
* Legendary scrip: This is obtained from completing daily quests, or by exchanging legendary weapons and armor at a legendary exchange machine. Scrip can be used to buy random weapons and armor parts, as well as crafting components such as legendary modules, from Purveyor Murmrgh at the Rusty Pick. 
* Stamps: This is obtained by the Expeditions system and are exchanged with Giuseppe Della Ripa for plans.
* Atoms: Atoms can be obtained through different methods; by completing lifetime challenges, by ranking up S.C.O.R.E. and claiming them during seasons, or by purchasing them using real-world money (100 Atoms are akin to US$1.) Most challenges are tied to the account rather than a created character; for example, collecting 760 wood only grants Atoms once, collecting the same amount with another character does nothing. However, this also means that progression can be shared between characters; for example, a player could collect 500 wood with one character and 260 wood with another in order to obtain the Atoms for the challenge.
====Atomic Shop====
Atoms can be used in the Atomic Shop for a variety of items. The vast majority of content includes purely cosmetic effects in form of skins or paints for weapons and armors, furniture and other objects for C.A.M.P. decoration, photomode poses, player icons, or emotes. However, there do exist some items with functional bonuses:
* Refrigerators will slow down the spoil rate of food placed inside them
* The Slocum's Joe Coffee Machine will produce canned coffee which provides an AP boost
* The Tree Sap Collector will produce adhesive, saving budget from having to create an adhesive farm
* The Fusion Core Recharger recharges fusion cores
* Utility Box Generators allow wireless electricity throughout a C.A.M.P., saving budget
* Additional C.A.M.P. slots prove useful for resource generation
Certain items from the Atomic Shop can also be obtained through plans instead, such as the weight bench and Ammo Converter. The contents of the Atomic Shop are updated every 7 days, with certain bundles being available for as long as 14 days. Past offers are usually returning at some point, though it is impossible to say if or when. An item, such as a nuclear keycard or a repair kit, is available for free every 24 hours.
=== Ban policy ===
While basic profanity and sexual language is allowed, players can be reported and banned for hate speech, harassment and extreme toxicity, and role-playing is not an exception.Fallout 76 Players Banned For Life After Saying They Plan To 'Eliminate All Gays' Players are not typically banned for owning certain legacy items or using certain exploits, unless those items/exploits are used to bother another player. Players may also be banned for using malicious third-party software, attempting to access developer tools, or attempting to manipulate the game economy through exploits.
=== Mods ===
Mods are currently not officially supported by Bethesda as they were in Fallout 4. In 2020, Jeff Gardiner announced that the team were working on an official mod support system although nothing has become of this.PC Gamer: Bethesda confirms that Fallout 76 is still getting official mod support The Fallout 76 EULA on Bethesda.net claims players are not allowed to use a single mod in the entire game.https://eulas.bethesda.net/en/fallout-76 Despite this, Bethesda is not known to ban players for unofficial mods such as audio-visual cosmetic mods, or even the text chat mod, which is a bespoke software widely used by disabled players, although it is also used by players who need assistance, wish to buy/sell items, or simply enjoy being part of its community as it has a clan system.
Practically speaking, the PC version of the game fully supports asset and interface mods. However, there is no official launcher with an interface to enable mods, unlike other Bethesda RPGs. Players must either manually install mods and manipulate text files, or use some sort of mod manager. Thousands of Fallout 76 mods exist, including elaborate thematic asset overhauls, but it is not possible to add game content such as quests. Interface mods typically must be updated each time the game is updated.
==Setting and story==
The game is set in Appalachia, comprising the former state of West Virginia. Appalachia, as explored in the game, consists of seven distinct regions: the Forest, Ash Heap, Toxic Valley to the west, the Savage Divide in the center, the Mire and Cranberry Bog in the east, and Skyline Valley in the south.
Drawing from real-life inspiration, various West Virginia cities have been adapted into Fallout 76 such as Point Pleasant, Charleston, Welch, Beckley, Lewisburg, Summersville, Sutton, Clarksburg, Morgantown, Flatwoods, and Harpers Ferry. However, as Fallout is an alternate universe, their locations have been re-arranged compared to a real-life map of West Virginia. Some locations such as Camden Park, the New River Gorge Bridge and Mothman Museum exist in real life, while The Greenbrier was adapted into the Whitespring Resort and Woodburn Circle into Vault-Tec University. 
Several creatures from local folklore, such as the Mothman, Flatwoods monster, Grafton monster, Wendigo, or Sheepsquatch, were also taken over for the game.
===Original questlines===
Vault 76 is one of the 17 control vaults designed without an experiment; physical, psychological or social. Manufactured by the Vault-Tec Corporation, Vault 76 was designed to commemorate the 300 years since America's founding due to its opening in 2076. The player characters, the Vault Dwellers, some of the best and brightest of America, survived the nuclear blasts from China during the Great War on October 23, 2077. 25 years later on Reclamation Day in 2102, the Vault Dwellers emerge from Vault 76, having been sent on a quest to rebuild Appalachia by their overseer, who left the vault before the rest of the inhabitants.
Original 2018 questline
The Vault Dwellers discover a world in ruins with mutated animals, biological experiments and hostile robots running amok, including Chinese Liberator robots from the Great War days. The Vault Dwellers learn about the Scorched Plague, a virus transforming survivors into Scorched, and the emergence of scorchbeasts spreading the virus which are gigantic mutated bats.Whitespring surveillance recording 5.4.8 The player character is given the task of tracking down the overseer, following her footsteps and holotapes as she travels Appalachia and discovers how the War has changed her former home, as well as her fiancé Evan whom the player character may mercy kill. In the process, the player character becomes familiar with different pre- and post-War factions, and how they coped with the disaster, or were destroyed by it.
They first become familiar with the defunct Responders led by Maria Chavez, a humanitarian relief effort formed after the War but dissolved in 2096.Fallout 76 loading screens: "After the Great War, Appalachia's emergency personnel mobilized to help their fellow citizens. These Responders became part government, part crisis relief." With the research efforts of a Responder named Claire Hudson, the player character vaccinates themselves in an old medical center. Hudson's message sends the player character to become part of the Fire Breathers, once led by Melody Larkin, and they learn about Hank Madigan, a Fire Breather seeking to eradicate the Scorched.
Searching Hank's trail, the player character meets a robot named Rose at the Top of the World; Hank's body is trapped in a cage, having been killed by raiders. Rose's personality and voice is based on a raider woman named Rosalynn Jeffries. Rosalynn's boyfriend, David Thorpe, had designed the robot after her. In 2082, Rosalynn went to Charleston while looking for a Christmas present for David, but she was imprisoned by the Responders and Melody Larkin. The Responders lied to David about Rosalynn being killed by them. David used a mini nuke to avenge her by destroying the Summersville Dam dam on Christmas morning. This caused Summersville Lake to catastrophically flood Charleston, actually killing Rosalynn, and over one thousand other survivors and Responder members in what would be known as the Christmas Flood.The Christmas Flood (holotape) The player character puts down David who has become a Scorched. Rose requests the player character to find an old Raider stash. After seeing they can be trusted, Rose helps them obtain Hank's uplink, a device that can locate Scorched, but it was broken by Raiders.
To help repair the device, Rose sends the player character to the bunker of Abigayle "Abbie" Singh, who was developing the project. The player character becomes familiar with an anarchist group Abbie was part of, the Free States, who distrusted Vault-Tec and, apprehensive about the United States' government's ties to the corporation, decided to build their own bunkers instead in the Mire. Abbie survived the War in her family's bunker and learned about the Scorched threat which took over Harpers Ferry in 2086. Her deceased father built a defense detection system against them, although its sensors were damaged by the swampland humidity. Although Abbie took over and quit the project out of difficulty, the player character is able to bring it to fruition after finding the access codes located in a terminal owned by Sam Blackwell, another Free States member.Abbie's bunker terminal entries; Abbie's workstation, The Scorched Detection System (SDS)Coming to Fruition Abbie left to go to the Top of the World to retrieve Madigan's uplink, but her fate is unknown.
Although Scorched can become detected, the player character still requires weapons to fight against them and the scorchbeasts. Abbie's message informs about the Appalachian Brotherhood of Steel. The player character heads to Fort Defiance, previously known as Allegheny Asylum, and learns the Brotherhood in Appalachia was led by Elizabeth Taggerdy, which was adapted from the Taggerdy's Thunder unit due to Elizabeth's close ties with Roger Maxson, whom she communicated with over a radio transmitter from California. Elizabeth pleaded with Maxson to grant her team permission to use nuclear weapons against the scorchbeasts but was forbidden by him because he found the concept of using nuclear weapons, even to help fight the scorchbeasts, to be too morally abhorrent after their world was destroyed by nukes.The nuclear option The Brotherhood was joined up with the Responders to fight super mutants at the Battle of Huntersville in 2086, though the relationship between the organizations deteriorated when the Brotherhood began pestering the Responders for supplies.
The player character may learn about the fate of the Responders and how the Brotherhood was involved. Some time after the Christmas Flood, Responders member Jeff Nakamura attempted a marriage proposal to Amy Kerry but she sorrowfully declined before he even had the chance to make it, feeling focusing on rebuilding Appalachia was more important. By 2095, Amy received constant pressure from the Responders to join them, but she opted to remain separate from them but continued working on a project to create a program to monitor the environment for contamination by the Scorched with their assistance. The frequent requests for her to join caused her friction with Jeff and Maria. One day, Amy got bit by a mole rat and became quite ill. Believing was done for, Jeff came to visit her by chance and it made her realize how compassionate and noble Jeff was and how important he was in her life.
Loose lips at the Responders ended up leading to the Brotherhood catching wind of the project, which led to them trying to procure information and project assets from the Responders at gunpoint. However, even after being talked down by Maria, the Brotherhood would continue looking for Amy and her research. Amy learned that the Brotherhood was after her and she theorized that they were after her technology to use for their own purposes, even to create weapons. Amy noticed signs that the Brotherhood were close to finding her so she abandoned her trailer and went into hiding, as she refused to give the Brotherhood anything following the way they had treat Jeff and his fellow Responders. She left a holotape for Jeff, telling him he could find her at the place where they had their first date: Cow Spots Creamery. However, Amy apparently overlooked that a message from Jeff on her terminal also mentioned the location of the date. She died at the creamery with a note for Jeff imploring him to share her research with the Responders, while Jeff's fate is unknown. The rest of the Responders did not fare well after; boyfriends Miguel Caldera and Garry Wilkins were torn apart when a stray Scorched broke into the airport and killed Garry. Maria and the rest of the Responders were killed in 2096 at the airport during a planned invasion by the Scorched and scorchbeasts.
On their search for Elizabeth, the player character finds out the fate of the Brotherhood in a cavern after the group attempted Operation Touchdown back in early 2095.Belly of the Beast It turns out that nuclear strikes are essential to defeating the scorchbeasts. The player character attempts to fulfill the overseer's desire to secure one of the missile silos in the region in order to launch a nuclear weapon to fight the scorchbeasts spreading the plague, protecting humanity by preventing the plague from spreading beyond the boundaries of Appalachia.
After doing more investigation into Sam Blackwell, as Taggerdy's notes suggested he could be the key to unlocking the nuclear silos, the player character learns of a bunker under The Whitespring Resort and goes there in hopes of finding survivors. There, they discover the bunker was used by the Enclave, the remnants of the United States government. They encounter the Enclave's AI, MODUS, and also discover the scorchbeasts are a bioweapon unleashed by Enclave leader Thomas Eckhart in 2086 in order to overcome DEFCON.Whitespring surveillance recording 8.5.2 With MODUS' assistance, the player character launches a nuke, inviting other vault dwellers to fight against the scorchbeasts and their virus. However, the overseer has left behind a frustrated holotape for the vault dwellers who chose to launch nukes for any purpose other than destroying the scorchbeasts.
===Wastelanders===
Wastelanders was a major content overhaul to Fallout 76, featuring human NPCs. Wastelanders begins on October 23, 2103. By this point, humans and ghoul survivors have returned to Appalachia upon hearing rumors of a treasure, as well as news that Appalachia has become safer with the efforts of the Vault Dwellers. Two women, Isela Mejia and Lacey Drummond, are located outside Vault 76 and are disappointed they are having difficulties locating a rumored treasure. Afterward, the player is directed to The Wayward bar where they encounter the owner, Duchess, being held at gunpoint by Batter, demanding she tell him where "Crane" is. The player helps Duchess against a local gang known as the Free Radicals, either by killing the gang, offering them valuables or joining them.
Finding a cure to the pandemic
After a series of events, the Vault Dweller reunites with their overseer at her house, who has returned due to her curiosity of the new people arriving in Appalachia, even despite her disgust at the portion of her vault dwellers who used the nukes like playthings. She may be informed that Evan has been laid to rest, causing her to become sad but appreciative, albeit with the guilty conscience that she abandoned him. The Scorched Plague is relevant in this storyline, as well as efforts in order to widely spread a vaccine against it. Both the Vault Dweller and their overseer head to the Kanawha Nuka-Cola plant to prepare the vaccine.
The Vault Dweller meets two new groups that have settled in Appalachia; the Raiders at the Crater led by a woman named Meg Groberg, and the friendlier Settlers at Foundation led by a man named Paige. The Vault Dweller can learn more about the people within each faction and the struggles they face. After the people have agreed to take the inoculation, the overseer convinces the Vault Dweller to see the value of revitalizing the economy with a gold-based currency, hoping it will bring humanity together in the end. The Vault Dweller and the overseer learn about Vault 79, the site of the rumored treasure, and discover the vault may hold the country's gold reserves. However, the Vault Dweller must eventually choose which of the two factions to raid the vault with. Regardless of the faction, a socially isolated ghoul (Penelope Hornwright or Lucky Lou) will, after an abduction, help break into the vault and try to find a home in the faction where they can be accepted in spite of their biology.
Settlers storyline
The Vault Dweller decides to side with Paige and Foundation for the raid. In order to break into Vault 79, Paige requires a massive drill to bypass RobCo's defense grid entirely by drilling straight into the vault itself. The problem is that Foundation does not have this kind of heavy construction equipment, since the caravan had to travel light. In order to find a solution, the Vault Dwellers are asked to seek out the remains of Hornwright Industrial and find a way to provide the settlers with the means for carrying out the heist. The Vault Dweller encounters Penelope Hornwright in the remains of her old family estate. She has been followed by a giant drilling robot known as the Motherlode which is under her command. Skeptical, Penny agrees to the idea of the heist.
With the problem of breaching Vault 79 resolved, Paige moves on to the next problem on the list: Defeating the laser grids protecting the gold. Schematics indicate the laser grid is a high-powered, military-grade system that will send the facility into lockdown if the most minute fluctuations in power occur. Paige will forward the residents to Jen, one of the youngest members of the Foundation community and the daughter of two Chinese spies who fell in love and quit their loyalty to the Chinese government. Jen has come forward and volunteered to solve the problem of penetrating the laser grid in Vault 79. She posits the idea of a Chinese stealth suit and begins tracking one, but it is discovered on Mochou, her mother who was previously thought dead. The player takes the suit, either by killing Mochou or encouraging Mochou to join Foundation.
The next problem to tackle in terms of storming Vault 79 is the so-called Grim Reaper's Hallway: A hallway chock-full of military grade laser turrets designed to eliminate any attacker who manages to get through passive defenses. Paige suggests reaching out to a group of ex-military operators that has been shadowing the Settlers since their presence in The Pitt, and sends the vault dwellers to the agreed meeting spot, so that they can enlist their aid in the heist. They meet Oliver Fields, Thompson and Fred Radcliff. Radcliff agrees to go with the Vault Dweller to RobCo Research Center where they create a robobrain who can bypass turrets.
With everything ready to begin the raid on Vault 79, the Foundation team gathers at Freddy Fear's House of Scares for last minute preparations. Unfortunately, Penny becomes abducted by Hijack; the Raiders from the Crater demand that the Vault Dweller come to Hornwright HQ alone to talk terms of her release. After rescuing Penny, the raid begins and ends up being successful, though the player may choose to betray Paige by taking more gold than agreed to for themselves. Additionally, during the vault raid, a group of Secret Service agents is met as well; they have been trapped in the Vault.
Depending on the Vault Dweller's interactions with Jen, however, she may retain positive relations with them, or she may run away from Foundation to return to the Capital Wasteland. In the latter case, Jen's goodbye holotape is either addressed to Foundation, or she may address it to the Vault Dweller who she calls an asshole.
Raiders storyline
In order to prepare for breaching the Vault, Meg needs an expert on heists. The problem is, Lou, her ghoulified expert, is nowhere to be found at Crater and the Vault Dwellers will need to find him first and convince him second. With the help of Weasel, he is found in a cave with various contraptions trying to kill himself, due to a fear of him becoming feral and hurting his lived ones. After being convinced he should live, he returns to Crater. Gail, a female super mutant who acts as Meg's muscle, is recommended for the task. However, Gail has lost Ra-Ra, a young girl who is her adoptive daughter of sorts. The Vault Dweller rescues Ra-Ra in an abandoned dam.
Johnny Weston, another recommended member for the heist, is dealing with his own problem. He will only agree on one condition: saving his old partner, Hal Gleeson, from slavers at the Watoga Civic Center arena. Since slaves are often forced to fight in the arena, Johnny passes the Vault Dweller off as his property, allowing them to participate in the competition. Johnny rigs the competition to allow the player to get close to Hal. After rescuing Hal, Johnny kills him anyway in anger because Hal previously betrayed Johnny.
Meg asks the Vault Dweller to check on Lou's progress with the Vault job. However, Lou is found tied up with a yao guai next to him. After the Vault Dweller kills the yao guai, Lou explains that Lev and other members of the gang sabotaged the heist by stealing his remote detonator and leaving him for dead. After Lev's betrayal is reported, Meg suspects that someone is acting as a mole for Lev, and she wants the Vault Dweller to find out who, and deal with them as they see fit. After an interrogation, it is revealed that Barb is the mole. Lev's location is revealed and he is killed by the Vault Dweller, along with Caleb Fisher and Surge.
After dealing with Lev's rebellion, the heist can now begin. The gang blasts their way into the Vault. While in the gold room, Johnny gets greedy and attempts to betray the Vault Dweller, threatening to kill them so he can have more of the gold for himself. Johnny is either talked out of it or killed in return. After, the raid is successful, although the Vault Dweller may betray Meg and take more of the gold for themselves.
===Steel Dawn and Steel Reign===
Steel Dawn and Steel Reign are a story revolving around a recent Brotherhood of Steel expedition arriving from California, the Brotherhood First Expeditionary Force, who were sent to re-establish contact with the original Appalachian Brotherhood. By the time of Steel Reign, the year is 2104.
This questline focuses on two members with conflicting ideals about where the Brotherhood should go; Knight Daniel Shin and Paladin Leila Rahmani, as well as the Scribe Odessa Valdez who acts as a mediator between the two. The story also focuses on some youth involved with the Brotherhood, such as young brothers named Colin Putnam and Marty Putnam who wish to join the Brotherhood to better humanity, an inexperienced member who lacks self-confidence named Erika Hewsen, as well as a young woman who blames the Brotherhood for her family's demise named Marcia Leone. To begin the Brotherhood questline, the player must be at least level 20 and will need to visit Fort Atlas and speak to Russell Dorsey.
Steel Dawn
The Vault Dweller checks out the Brotherhood of Steel and familiarizes themselves with Shin, Rahmani and Valdez. Shin's reluctance to accept newcomers into the Brotherhood is on full display when the Vault Dweller is tasked with interviewing with those who wish to speak to the Brotherhood, but he declines all their requests for various reasons. After helping Valdez check out the Brotherhood's new basement, as well as potentially recruiting either Colin or Marty, Rahmani immediately tasks the probationary initiate, the Vault Dweller, to assist Jennie Brown and her villagers known as the Retreat with their local problem: a Blood Eagles gang under one violent woman named Dagger. Dagger has threatened the Retreat with the launchers for supplies. Dagger must be killed, threatened or bribed in order for her to leave the Retreat alone.
Raider ambushes and theft have resulted in Brotherhood Hellstorm missile launchers falling into the hands of Crater warbands. Although Rahmani would like to find a way to coexist, Shin decides to head recovery efforts, and retake the Brotherhood's property by any means necessary. He goes with the Vault Dweller to the makeshift vault where a raider named Pierce is reluctant to give the weapons over. No matter how the situation is dealt with, Pierce remains alive. The Brotherhood has identified the source of the Hellstorm missile launchers in Appalachia, or at least another group of wastelanders who make use of them: Foundation. Rahmani wishes to reclaim the missile launchers and establishing trade relations with the Settlers.
At Foundation, the Vault Dweller meets Gloria and Tad Chance about the rocket launchers, although they are hesitant to give them over with a finders keepers attitude. They mention they might concede, but they are dealing with one problem: Mike Tiller, a young member of Foundation who was with the rocket launchers, has gone missing. It turns out that Mike accidentally slaughtered a group of the settlers in a freak accident. Harboring great guilt, Mike has fled to a mine. The Vault Dweller may convince Mike to forgive himself, or murder him. Whether or not Foundation respects the Brotherhood is also determined by actions taken by the Vault Dweller.
With the Brotherhood establishing itself as a benevolent force in Appalachia, Valdez discovers a lead that allows it to fulfill its primary directive: reestablishing contact with Lost Hills by installing a satelitte at an abandoned nearby Enclave facility. After dealing with its malicious AI SODUS, Shin and Rahmani prepare to set up the radio communicator. However, Rahmani has second thoughts; while Shin is in another room, she tells the Vault Dweller she plans on breaking it because views the Elders as a rigid force that will jeopardize her group's authority within the organization. Rahmani hints at a past mishap on their journey to Appalachia as being the reason why her authority will be stripped, and she wishes to make her Brotherhood branch independent instead, seeing it as an opportunity for her to remain leader and ensure her Brotherhood can truly help Appalachia. The Vault Dweller may agree with her, or choose not to encourage her decision. Regardless, an incredibly furious Shin discovers what happened and claims Rahmani is no longer a Paladin. The situation is put on hold upon hearing Fort Atlas' underground is being attacked by super mutants which the Vault Dweller helps clear out.
Steel Reign
The Brotherhood soon discovers that the super mutant attack on Fort Atlas was not coincidental and learns there are super mutant attacks taking place across the region. Additionally, people have begun disappearing around the region and common sense dictates there is a chance the super mutants and disappearances are linked. A lead has informed them that they may originate from the Uncanny Caverns. Shin takes Erika Hewsen and Norland to investigate, but Norland is soon killed. Shin is angered at himself for not being there to protect Norland. Erika gets caught in a trap and Shin injures himself trying to save her. Their investigation is not completely useless, however, as the Vault Dweller finds a damaged Pip-Boy.
The Pip-Boy is given to Valdez for a clue, but she places another problem on the Vault Dweller; their young refugee Marcia Leone has mysteriously disappeared. Her friend Luis Ramirez slips out the fact that she was considering joining a raider War Party. The Vault Dweller meets Pierce again, who has Marcia by his side. Marcia refuses to return to the Brotherhood because she views them as a group of pompous "assholes" partially responsible for killing her parents, and she deems the War Party, which also includes Sheena and Burke, as her new family. Burke and Sheena have gone missing while on a plan to investigate AMS corporate headquarters in Watoga, and Marcia plans to save them. Knowing Valdez and Ramirez care about Marcia's safety, the Vault Dweller and Marcia investigate the building, defeat a mercenary of the Hellcat Company called Kit, and rescue Sheena and Burke in the basement. Whether or not Marcia returns to the Brotherhood is left up to how the Vault Dweller treated her and her friends.
With the Marcia situation sorted out, Rahmani has encountered a farmer Art Knapp; he is concerned about the missing people himself as his niece Cassie Halloway has disappeared after setting out with the Blue Ridge Caravan Company to come to Appalachia, but the caravan says she never came with them to Appalachia. Rahmani decided to interview the boss of the Blue Ridge Caravan Company, Joanna Mayfield, about the disappearances. After being guided by Aries, Rahmani learns that a scientist Edgar Blackburn was among several of the Blue Ridge's caravans, especially one that holed up in the Harpers Ferry tunnel due to a radstorm. The Vault Dweller had previously interviewed Blackburn back when they originally began interacting with the Brotherhood. Valdez and the Vault Dweller head to Vault 96 where they rescue survivors, including Cassie, and capture Blackburn who has been using helpless victims as experiment subjects, many of whom have died. Blackburns tries to paint himself using "the end justifies the means" logic, claiming everything he has done has been in the name of science to help make a formula for humanity to survive the wasteland.
Back at Fort Atlas, Blackburn taunts the Brotherhood, saying he has associates going to test the formula, a modified Forced Evolutionary Virus (FEV) and release it into the atmosphere for a major science experiment. Rahmani and Shin take him to the West Tek research center, where his fellow scientists Farha, Jain and Nellie Wright were putting the final touches on the FEV to release into the water and air, which would lead to more people being turned into super mutants once exposed, a worst-case scenario even worse than Huntersville. In a bid to prove their research is for the betterment of humanity in the wasteland, Blackburn willingly volunteers to be exposed to the virus himself, but a miscalculation or malfunction in the process causes Blackburn to be turned into a violent super mutant behemoth, forcing Rahmani and Shin to kill him.
After, Shin erupts at Rahmani, scolding her that something like this was just what the elders wanted to prevent: People trying to play God with science. Though Rahmani agrees with him on that, when they confront Blackburn's associates, they plead for mercy and ask that their lives be spared, considering that their research is invaluable to the wasteland with the loss of schools and universities because of the Great War and the decay that followed. Though Rahmani wants to spare them because of how valuable human life is nowadays, Shin is adamant that they be slain after seeing firsthand just how dangerous their knowledge is should it fall into the wrong hands if they are allowed to live.
The Vault Dweller may slaughter the scientists or spare them, allowing them to become researchers for the Brotherhood. In the end, the conflict over Blackburn's associates results in Rahmani and Shin parting ways, unable to reach an agreement, with one either being killed or allowed to return to Maxson, while the other takes command of the Brotherhood to lead them on their new duty to Appalachia. 
If Rahmani is sided with, Shin mentions he and some Brotherhood members will walk all the way back to California to report Rahmani's actions to the council of Elders. If Shin is sided with, Rahmani sorrowfully leaves the room because she does not wish to witness the executions, and what happens to her after is unclear in this route. Back at Fort Atlas, either Shin or Rahmani holds a celebration for the Vault Dweller, promoting them to a Knight. Vernon Dodge, a member of the original Brotherhood, may join as well if he was found and encouraged to join the new Brotherhood.
Back at Foundation, Cassie may be informed of Blackburn's death. Cassie is glad to hear he has died, though admits she can not help but pity him a little. She reiterates that although Blackburn performed evil atrocities in the name of science and medicine, he ultimately did not take pleasure in his experiments. This coincides with Blackburn's claims in his holotapes that, in spite of his cruel acts, he genuinely loved and wanted to help humanity.
===Expeditions: The Pitt===
By 2104, the Responders have been revived due to the hard work of Rucker. She has struck a deal with Orlando to use the Whitespring Resort as a refuge. Skippy Roerich, a man from the nearby city of Pittsburgh, has come to the Whitespring sanctuary seeking help. Pittsburgh, now known as the Pitt, is in turmoil due to the uprising of a violent large group of raiders called the Fanatics. Opposing them is the Pittsburgh Union whom Skippy and many others belong to. The Vault Dwellers help the Responders and get a Vertibird lift to the Pitt from a pilot, Lennox.
In Union Dues, the Vault Dwellers meet Hex, the leader of one of the Union's major divisions known as the Local 42. She informs that the Union have recently lost one of the major bases, the Foundry, to the Fanatics. The Vault Dwellers sabotage the Foundry in an attempt to give the Union the upper hand. In From Ashes to Fire, the Vault Dwellers meet their contact Danilo who informs about trogs and plans an attack on the Sanctum, a cathedral transformed into a stronghold. The Dwellers clear the route of toxic waste and meet Ava Rose, a woman who witnessed the bombs of the Great War 27 years ago. Likening the Dwellers to guardian angels, Ava tasks them with removing the prisoner collars from the victims who perished due to the Fanatics. After infiltrating the Sanctum through the sewer system, a few hostages are set free. With the Fanatics cleared for now, Danilo wishes the Dwellers a safe travel back.
===Expeditions: Atlantic City===
The year is 2105 and Jeremiah Hopkins at the Whitespring Refuge is allowing Vault Dwellers to travel to Atlantic City for free. In Tax Evasion, Billy Beltbuckles is found being held hostage by a member of the Showmen. After being saved, he goes to the Neapolitan Casino where the Vault Dwellers may also choose to assist Sal Sticky Fingers.
In The Most Sensational Game, Veracio Cruz is met and he offers the Vault Dwellers the opportunity to play his game, with Jullian Batsuuri and her brother Juchi as assistants. Entering the Aquarium of the Atlantic, the Vault Dwellers meet the Showmen's leader Mother Charlotte.
Back in Appalachia, The Rose Room has been opened up and a family from Atlantic City, the Russos, are now living there. They consist of a father named Antonio who seems to be losing his mental capabilities, a mother named Evelyn who yearns for the life of fame she lost, a son named Vin (Vincenzo) who is trying to keep his family safe and together, and a daughter named Abbie who is dying from an addictive poison known as The Devil's Blood. Unfortunately, the Russos discover their past from Atlantic City has caught up with them. Their story may end in different ways depending on the actions of the Vault Dweller.
===Main characters===
This is a list of the game's main characters. Only those who are part of the main story quests are included:
* Vault Dwellers: The protagonists who leave Vault 76, having accidentally overslept and are potentially late to Reclamation Day.
* Vault 76 overseer (voice: Adrienne Barbeau): The former overseer located in a house in Sutton who devises a plan to inoculate Appalachians against the Scorched Plague.
* Duchess (voice: Paula Tiso): A former ER nurse before the Great War, she once made profits from illegally selling drugs. She claims to have put her lifestyle behind and runs a dram shop, although she finds herself being harassed by a gang called the Free Radicals.
* Rose (voice: Alex Cazares): A Miss Nanny located at the Top of the World who dishes out tasks to the Vault Dweller.
* Meg Groberg (voice: Mara Junot): The ambitious main leader of the Crater Raiders, she feels Appalachia belongs to her group and does not want anyone getting in her way.
* Johnny Weston (voice: Chris Parson): Meg's lover who may hurt other people in selfish acts.
* Lucky Lou (voice: Chris Ciulla): A suicidal ghoul, he is important in blasting open Vault 79 in the raiders storyline.
* Paige (voice: Beau Billingslea): The leader of the Foundation Settlers who came from another town in 2103.
* Jen (voice: Tiffany Wu): A member of Foundation who is important in getting past a hallway of lasers during the Settlers' raid on Vault 79.
* Penelope Hornwright (voice: Judy Alice Lee): A ghoul who uses a mining technology called the Motherlode to break into Vault 79 during the Settlers' raid on Vault 79.
* Leila Rahmani (voice: Artemis Pebdani): The paladin who leads the Brotherhood of Steel at Fort Atlas.
* Daniel Shin (voice: Tom Choi): A knight who may rise to lead the Brotherhood if the Vault Dweller believes Rahmani's leadership deserves to be usurped.
* Edgar Blackburn (voice: Keith Szarabajka): A mysterious scientist who once visits Fort Atlas, he has a role regarding recent super mutant attacks. His voice actor also voiced Joshua Graham from New Vegas.
* Abbie Russo: The daughter of the Russo Family, she is addicted to Devils Blood and is slowly dying.
* Vin Russo (voice: Griffin Burns): The son of the Russo Family, he is trying to keep his family safe.
* Evelyn Russo (voice: Katie Cofield): The mother of the Russo Family, she is arguably neglectful towards her family due to her search of fame.
* Antonio Russo: The father of the Russo Family who appears to be senile.
* Hugo Stolz: A ghoulified Vault-Tec employee who is the overseer of Vault 63.
==Development==
===Pre-launch===
thumb|250px
The idea for Fallout 76 arose out of a desire to implement multiplayer into the Fallout 4 engine. Todd Howard did not initially want a multiplayer Fallout to be made, thinking it would be a bad idea, but he changed his mind due to a portion of the Fallout fanbase wanting a multiplayer game.Bruce Nesmith interview Eventually, a decision was made to develop this as a standalone project because the developers felt a multiplayer mode was too grand of an idea at the time when Bethesda wanted to focus on the single-player Fallout 4 experience. Development commenced shortly before the release of Fallout 4, at Bethesda Game Studios Austin in Texas. The Austin studio was formerly known as BattleCry Studios at the time, and they began to implement Quake netcode into the Fallout 4 engine. Bethesda's studios in Maryland and Montreal have also assisted with the project, with the Maryland studio working on the world design. ZeniMax Online Studios, Arkane Studios and id Software provided developmental assistance for the pre-release of the game.The Making of Fallout 76 - Noclip Documentary
Fallout 76 uses new technological systems, including a new system to propagate woods, subsurface scattering and more complex animations for its creatures. Fallout 76 is the first Bethesda game to use tools for automatic bounced lights. Prior to this, all Bethesda games had their bounced lights manually placed by hand.Nate Purkeypile on Twitter: "Until 76 all of the bounced light was done by hand with manually placed lights. It's time consuming but the artistic control is nice. Good tools are key to covering this much space." Because the engine of Fallout 4 was tailored to only handle one player, the developers experienced difficulties modifying the engine to handle multiple players.
The rural West Virginia was decided as the setting, partially due to the state's amount of myths and conspiracies providing interesting and creepy lore. It is also where the United States National Radio Quiet Zone is located, allowing the developers to tap into the Cold War paranoia of the series, with Sugar Grove added as a location, as well as various satellite and communications towers. Lastly, the Greenbrier is also the site of an enormous underground bunker intended to serve as an emergency shelter for the United States Congress during the Cold War; this was adapted into the Whitespring Resort.
Whether or not the game should have human non-player characters was a large debate in the development team.Bethesda Fallout 76 Interview ~ QuakeCon At Home 2020:Ferret Baudoin: "It was talked about almost immediately, as soon as we started coming up with sort of the design for what this game would be. There were developers that didn't agree, that said, y'know, right out of the gate, we should make it to where there's talking NPCs and the more traditional fixtures of a Bethesda RPG. It would've added an enormous amount of technical challenge on something that was already...like, the Russian judge was giving us like 'oh, that's a 12/10 for technical difficulty' already. There were straight up logistical reasons, like 'you do wanna ship this, right?' But it was something that was...it was on our radar from a very early point." The developers agreed on a consensus to try an experimental approach in which other players took the role of non-player characters. According to Marc Tardif in June 2019, content containing living human characters was initially "not even on [the] radar" for Bethesda, and community feedback was the driving force behind the development of the Wastelanders update."Wastelanders wasn’t even on our radar": the Fallout 76 community is the reason we're getting human NPCs However, lead designer Ferret Baudoin stated that from the beginning of development, some developers disagreed with the idea of excluding human NPCs in the base game. Despite this, there were a number of logistical issues that prevented human NPCs from appearing at launch, as it would have further complicated an already difficult technical process. Baudoin said that it was actually on the radar "from a very early point."
Development of Fallout 76 was, at the start, largely done by Bethesda Game Studios Austin. Near the end of development for the initial release, the original Bethesda Game Studios team in Rockville came in to add some content and polish. The Wastelanders update, on the other hand, was described by Emil Pagliarulo as an "all-hands-on-deck" situation from the start.Writing the Worlds of Bethesda (reference starts at 57:42):Emil Pagliarulo: "So, 76 was interesting for us because most of the development had been done by the folks in Austin, at BGS Austin. And then we came in later to, y'know, add content, do some stuff. And then when the Wastelanders expansion came out, then it was more of an 'all-hands-on-deck' type of thing." Since Wastelanders, more studios have become involved with Fallout 76s development, including Double Eleven and Sperasoft providing new content. Their partnership with Bethesda on Fallout 76 was formally announced in 2022, though both companies had contributed to Fallout 76s development prior to 2022.Fallout 76 Has A New Co-Developer In Double ElevenSperasoft announces development support for Fallout 76 Art Bully Productions has also provided concept art on Fallout 76, though they have not appeared in the game's credits. Starting in 2022, The Multiplayer Group and SkyBox Labs began to provide developmental assistance and have been credited on Fallout 76 since the Mutation Invasion update (released in February 2023).Fallout 76 on skyboxlabs.com (meta-dated to August 9, 2022)Fallout 76 developers/Once in a Blue Moon
Despite the initial lack of human non-player characters, Fallout 76 has more voice lines than any previous game in the series,"Fallout 76 Actually Has More Voice Lines Than Any Previous Game" at VGR.com and this record was broken even before the Wastelanders update. It also has more holotapes and notes than all previously released Fallout games added together. Several voice actors for the game used Governor Jim Justice as reference for replicating a West Virginian accent; specifically, a YouTube video of Justice discussing the state's budget was highlighted by voice director Kal-El Bogdanove.Kal-El Bogdanove on Reddit: "Hi! Voice director from the game here. Little-known tidbit: lots of our voice actors used videos of gov Jim Justice as ref for the WV accent. This one in particular:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McSF_Va_kaYThanks for playing!" For the Wastelanders update, Bethesda Softworks actually went over their budget for voice actors, as human non-player characters were being added to the game."Fallout 76 Wastelanders Broke Bethesda's Voice Acting Budget" at GameSpot
According to Pete Hines, the developers and writers took the lore and canon of the Fallout series very seriously when developing the story, which is why there were no living Raiders before the Wastelanders update, with the Scorched taking the role of human-like enemies. He commented, "Why would there be super mutants, or the Brotherhood of Steel? How does that all fit and hold together? There’s absolutely reasons and explanations for how all that ties to Fallout 76."GameStop: Why Fallout 76 Changes Series' Lore (Including The Brotherhood Of Steel Another example in order to not break canon is the ranger armor outfit, which has CPD on it indiciating it is a pre-War outfit worn by the Charleston Police Department, and that the NCR would simply repurpose the outfit in the future.
===Bethesda's note to Fallout fans===
About a month before the game released, Bethesda released a statement in which they commented on how experimental and concerning development would be, with themselves wondering, "How the hell are we going to make this?" Bethesda asked for patience, warning players the first few months would be buggy and that improving stability would be a focus. They mentioned how the development of Fallout 76 was meant to be shaped by fans and how they considered the game to be a "starting line" at launch.
The statement read, "Usually after years of development, we finally finish, release the game, and take a break. With 76, we feel we have not finished, but reached a starting line where all new work begins. We all know with the scale of our games, and the systems we let you use, that unforeseen bugs and issues always come up. Given what we're doing with 76, we know we're opening everyone up to all new spectacular issues none of us have encountered. Some we're aware of... others, we surely don't. We need your help finding them, and advice on what's important to fix. We'll address all of it, now and after launch."Bethesda: A Note to Our Fans
===Bethesda's response===
Bethesda did not initially communicate about the controversial launch and the issues Fallout 76 had. Two weeks later, Bethesda issued a public apology on Reddit about the game's quality and the company's silence, mentioning, "We know you're frustrated and angry [...] We're sorry and understand this was not the right approach" and commented they would be working to improve the game.Reddit post
At E3 2019, Todd Howard commented on the disappointment with the launch, stating he and the team were caught off-guard by the number of issues. He claimed that much of the criticism was deserved and that the game should have had a longer beta test, which is one of his biggest regrets about the game's development. He appreciated the continuing constructive criticism from fans to help make the game better.GameSpot: After Bethesda E3 2019 Conference, Todd Howard Opens Up About Fallout 76's Struggles
In 2021, Todd stated, "We let people down and were able to learn and be better from it. We're fortunate 3 years later to have 76 be one of our most played games, and it's thanks to the 11 million players who have made it an incredible community. It's made us much better developers in the end."Todd Howard Reddit AMA
PC players now have access to the Public Test Server where they can play updates earlier and give feedback to Bethesda. Bethesda also opened up a "Fallout 76 suggestions" channel on their Discord where the players can give ideas on ways to improve the game.
===Future plans===
In June 2024, Fallout 76 will receive a map expansion to the south, allowing players to explore the Shenandoah area with the new region known as Skyline Valley. Vault 63 is also teased.
According to Jeff Gardiner, Fallout 76 has had technical issues related to hairstyles and facial hair, due to their impact on in-game performance, explaining why the game has had limited options for them, although Jeff expressed a desire to add more character customization into the game if the technical issues can be sorted out. When asked about new social features such as guilds, text chat and a mail system, he also said there would be more social features planned for the future.Fallout 76 developer AMA Instead of merely creature taming, a system that would allow players to customize and have their own pets (dogs and cats) was also planned to be released in 2021. However, there has been no communication as to what happened to the C.A.M.P. pets yet. A possible system for C.A.M.P. sharing was also mentioned to be in development in a stream, but updates on this are not available.
Bethesda has not announced what will happen to the game's servers someday, such as if the game will become peer-to-peer, converted into single-player, or if the entire game will no longer be accessible similar to the fate of many early-2000s MMOs. However, in 2018, Pete Hines said Fallout 76 will attempt to keep its servers online "forever" until the Sun burns out.GameSpot: How Long Will Fallout 76 Servers Be Online? "Forever," Bethesda Boss Says
==Production==
===Music===
The soundtrack of Fallout 76 was composed by Inon Zur, who created the soundtracks for the previous Fallout games. The base soundtrack was originally around three hours in length, a little shorter than Fallout 4. However, more music was added to the game with its updates; Fallout 76 now has the most original music in the series so far with over four hours.
While Fallout 4 contained a lot of piano because Zur wanted to convey the emotional theme of family, Zur wanted to focus on "hope" and "camaraderie" as the theme of Fallout 76 and due to the more rural country setting, he decided to include more guitar and solo strings. Drums were also used to evoke a feeling of rhythmical support. While Fallout 4 featured many melancholic tracks that evoked feelings of sorrow, loss and despair, Zur wanted a more upbeat and joyous musical identity instead for Fallout 76. According to Zur, "We don't want to talk about darkness. We don't want to talk about destruction. We really want to keep on harping on this warm feeling of camaraderie and adventure because this is what Fallout 76 is all about; people are working together to remedy the destroyed world."SoundIron: Crafting The Fallout 76 Main Theme With Inon Zur
thumb|200px
When composing the new music for the Wastelanders update, Zur wanted to approach the music of the expansion differently than the base game's music, wishing to evolve the original music in an organic fashion, having a more song-like and melodic form in order to enhance the new story. Zur adopted more of a classical approach, including more traditional instruments, and some of the original music cues of Fallout 76 were re-harmonized.Interview: Bringing Some Humanity to Fallout 76 with Composer Inon Zur
While Fallout 76 has a main instrumental theme, Take Me Home, Country Roads was used to promote the game as a vocal theme. This version is a cover by the group Spank.
===Developers===
Fallout 76 shares many developers with Fallout 3 and 4. For example, the project was headed by executive producer Todd Howard, directed by Jeff Gardiner, designed by Emil Pagliarulo, Bruce Nesmith and Alan Nanes, and written by Brian Chapin and Liam Collins. The game marked Jeff's departure from Bethesda who left in late 2021 after three years of working on Fallout 76 post-launch. Ferret Baudoin, who previously worked on Fallout 4 and Van Buren, worked on Fallout 76 as a writer and quest designer until he passed away in late 2022.
The team also has many newcomers; Chris Mayer was the game's development director brought on from Arkane. The game was produced by Kay Gilmore and designed by Mark Tucker, although Tucker left in May 2023. Ellys Tan was recruited shortly before the game's launch and was elevated to the role of senior quest designer and writer. Carl McKevitt is another major senior quest designer known for developing Aries and the Blue Ridge Caravan Company. Craig Bernardo and Steve Massey contributed to the game's level design, although Massey left in late 2022 to focus on a smaller indie project. In May 2024, Jonathan Rush announced he was the game's creative director.
After the game's release, one of the game's quality assurance testers, Sara Matthews, passed away. A character bearing her name was added as a tribute to her.
Around 2021-2022, Bethesda recruited Fallout 4 modders Ryan Johnson, Stephanie Zachariadis and Veronica Harbison who worked on mods such as Fallout: London and The Machine, and Her. Joseph Simpkin and Baden Gill, who were working on an unofficial Fallout 3 remake, were recruited as well. These modders worked on updates such as Expeditions: The Pitt and Nuka-World on Tour.
==Promotion==
The game was officially unveiled at E3 2018, although the game was hinted at three years earlier in Fallout 4 with Vault 76 mentioned by the newscaster at the beginning of the game. On September 15 and 16 in Point Pleasant, Bethesda collaborated with the annual Mothman Festival and welcomed Fallout cosplayers to join, also giving away Fallout merchandise. This promotion event was first pitched by the Mothman Festival to Bethesda.Point Pleasant Register: Mothman Festival welcomes Fallout, Bethesda Bethesda also held an event at The Greenbrier, which served as inspiration for the Whitespring Resort in Fallout 76, allowing players to play the game in a ballroom.Mountain Messenger: Bethesda holds event at The Greenbrier ahead of Fallout 76 release
A beta version, the B.E.T.A. (Break-it Early Test Application), was available to those who pre-ordered the game.Introducing the Fallout 76 Power Armor Edition | Bethesda.netFallout 76 | B.E.T.A. Update + Info The beta began on October 23 for Xbox One and on October 30 for PC and PS4. The game's servers were only up for a few hours at a time, in order to test large amounts of players online at the same time.Fallout 76 – Our Future Begins… Together in B.E.T.A! Player progress made during the beta was carried over into the full game.FALLOUT 76 B.E.T.A. 'WILL BE THE FULL GAME' AND PROGRESS WILL CARRY OVER Active periods for the beta were scheduled as followed.Windows Central - Fallout 76 BETA schedule: All times and dates
Fallout 76 BETA schedule
* October 23, from 7:00pm EDT to 11:00pm EDT (Xbox One)
* October 27, from 5:00pm EDT to 7:00pm EDT (Xbox One)
* October 28, from 12:00pm EDT to 2:00pm EDT (Xbox One)
* October 30, from 7:00pm EDT to 11:00pm EDT (all platforms)
* November 1, from 2:00pm EDT to 11:00pm EDT (all platforms)@BethesdaStudios: "We know some users have been forced to redownload the #Fallout76 B.E.T.A. and not everyone will be able to enjoy the game tonight. To make good, we’ll be extending the B.E.T.A. for everyone on Thursday, November 1, 2pm to 11pm ET. Thanks for your patience. #ExtendtheBeta"
* November 3, from 5:00pm EDT to 9:00pm EDT (all platforms)
* November 4, from 2:00pm EST to 9:00pm EST (all platforms)
* November 6, from 1:00pm EST to 3:00pm EST (all platforms)
* November 8, from 2:00pm EST to 8:00pm EST (all platforms)
==Updates==
Updates in Fallout 76 are different from the add-ons of previous games which are paywalled. With the online nature of the game, the content is free (excluding Fallout 1st exclusive season items) and is incorporated into the game for everyone. For example, all Fallout 76 players can go to the Pitt instead of having to buy Expeditions: The Pitt, as opposed to Fallout 3 where players will need to buy The Pitt.
Updates
==Reception==
===Launch reception===
Fallout 76 received negative reception at launch due to various reasons, and is considered as having one of the worst launches in video games by 2018.Wikipedia's list of video games notable for negative reception Fallout 76 received a Metacritic metascore of 52/100 on PC, 49/100 on Xbox One, and 53/100 on PS4 in 2018.Metascore for Fallout 76 on PCMetascore for Fallout 76 on PS4Metascore for Fallout 76 on Xbox One The game's user score on Metacritic was heavily review bombed and received plenty of 0/10s, giving it a 2.8/10.
Gaming Nexus gave the launch version a 6.5/10, stating, "There are many things to like. In addition to playing with friends, there's plentiful loot, the beautiful Appalachian countryside, and no shortage of points of interest. However, there are also just as many things to dislike, including the complete lack of storage both on your person and in your cache, the luck-of-the-draw perk system, and how the level scaling works in for pretty much everything."Gaming Nexus review
Common issues directed at the game was that it was boring to play and contained many bugs. The Atomic Shop received criticism due to many players feeling the offerings were overpriced. Bethesda also had to deal with hackers obtaining items they should not have, and at one point, there was a critical exploit which lets players steal other players' inventories.https://www.pcgamesn.com/fallout-76/inventory-exploit Many reviewers noted a plethora of technical performance issues, such as bugs and glitches and server instability. IGN commented, "By now this shouldn’t be news to anyone, but: a new Fallout game has bugs. Yet even by the notorious standards of a Bethesda open-world game, Fallout 76 is technically shaky."IGN review The amount of bugs caused players to create compilation videos, often with a voice clip of Todd Howard saying "16 times the detail" being for comedic effect, which became an anti-Bethesda meme along with "it just works."
The lack of living NPCs and moral decision making was a common complaint. GameStop's review felt, "The lack of inhabitants is also Fallout 76's biggest problem. The game goes to great efforts to paint a picture that includes towns and cities with different populations and cultures, survivors who have banded together to form factions, and stories of people who managed to survive against all odds. But without having any of those people present to tell their stories personally, 76's world is limited to being little more than just an environmental exhibit with things to kill."GameSpot review
Outside of the game, pre-order bonuses were criticized; a canvas bag was switched to nylon due to material shortages, although Bethesda sent out the real canvas bags and compensated players with 500 atoms later. Power armor helmets were recalled due to containing mold. Bethesda accidentally leaked private information of those who used issued support tickets due to the way their website was structured. Another issue, even before the game launched, was the game's controversial usage of nukes; promotional material hid the game's moral conundrum that the nukes are intended to be used to fight the scorchbeasts and their plague, leading one professor to remark "ICBMs are not fun. Or funny."Variety: ‘Fallout 76’ Nukes ‘Not Fun,’ Say Nuclear War Experts
===Post-launch reception===
Fallout 76 has been patched over 50 times since it was released to improve the player experience, such as by fixing bugs, increasing stashbox space by 800 pounds, and adding living human NPCs, more quests and events. Many of the Atomic Shop cosmetics received price drops. Currently, Fallout 76 has "Mostly Positive" reviews on Steam with about 75-80% of recent players giving the game "positive" instead of "negative". This has resulted in a Steam aggregate of 7.2 out of 10 based on over 50,000 reviews. In 2020, the Wastelanders update received a 69/100 for PC.Metascore for Wastelanders on PC
PCWorld.com reviewed the 2020 Wastelanders update, feeling it makes Fallout 76 worth a second chance, commenting, "Wastelanders is so much closer to what Fallout 76 should’ve been at launch. There are still problems, some of them fundamental design choices made to accommodate multiple players, but Wastelanders feels like a proper online Fallout and not an empty imitation. They hammered and hammered and hammered and finally forged Fallout 76 into not only a better game, but one that deserves a second chance—from me, from you, and from all the naysayers."PCWorld: Wastelanders review RPGsite.net, however, gave Wastelanders a more lukewarm review, commenting, "It's simply not enough of a marked improvement to wholesale change many people's minds. For those that left a sliver of a chance for redemption, however, it's one small, wobbly step in the right direction" and gave it a 6/10.RPGsite Wastelanders review
The 2022 Expeditions: The Pitt update received some mixed reviews. Twinfinite.net gave it a 2.5/5, commenting, "The Pitt itself is amazing, the shelled destroyed Pittsburg, and seeing it in current-gen Fallout was really exciting" but criticized it for being repetitive and having uninteresting bosses, saying, "The bosses were just a dude in power armor or a larger trog."Twinfinite.net: The Pitt review
Jeremy Peel of PCGamer gave an overview of the 2024 version with his own opinions. Jeremy advised newcomers to loosen up and try not to be too intimidated by Fallout 76, pointing out most players are friendly, players can readjust their builds, and that the game has a more relaxed vibe than what many people expect. He feels that the game deserves to be called a "full-fledged Fallout game" with NPC hubs and conversation-driven storylines, and said the game's massive amount of lore and worldbuilding is one of its strengths. He urges that players should be open-minded and recognize it has some limitations due to being multiplayer. He feels that older Fallout fans are robbing themselves of a good time by expecting the game to be too similar to past entries. Regardless, Jeremy argues that there is more role-playing in Fallout 76 than there was in Fallout 4, and that its newer questlines go harder on dialogue skillchecks and branching options than Fallout 4 did.PCGamer article
Travis Northup of IGN re-reviewed Fallout 76 in 2024, bumping its score from 5/10 to 7/10, feeling it is much more entertaining now, although also wished it had more fun end-game content, commenting, "A lot of the endgame seems to mostly be about repeating the same handful of activities indefinitely with no real purpose." They were also disappointed by Expeditions.IGN re-review
===Playerbase and popularity===
In 2021, Fallout 76 was once in danger of not being supported by updates any longer. The game's dedicated player community, as well as Sony allowing the game on PlayStation Plus, contributed to saving the game and convinced Bethesda and Microsoft that Fallout 76 had continued merit.https://www.playstationlifestyle.net/2023/09/26/playstation-saved-fallout-76-servers-shutdow/ The game was also quite popular in Japan.IGN: How Fallout 76 Became a Surprise Hit with Japanese Players To help promote the game in Japan, Bethesda developed a Japanese dub and released Japanese trailers such as a Steel Reign Japanese trailer.
By the end of 2022, Bethesda announced Fallout 76 had been played by 13.5 million players. In 2023, they mentioned it reached 15 million players, and 17 million players in 2024. Before the Fallout show, Fallout 76 usually had around 5,000 to 10,000 players playing it at any given moment on Steam.https://steamcharts.com/app/1151340#1m This is about twice as popular as New Vegas (2,000 to 5,000), although it still fell behind Fallout 4 (8,000 to 20,000). For comparison, the popular MMO Final Fantasy XIV has 10,000 to 25,000 on Steam.
Disappointment in another Bethesda game called Starfield led to some reappraisal of Fallout 76 near the end of 2023. While Fallout 76 is usually within the top-selling 100 games on Steam, the game received a huge popularity and jumped to the 38th top-selling game.PCGamesN: Starfield Steam sales are tumbling, as buyers flock to Fallout 76
On April 14th, 2024, the Fallout show combined with the game being given away with Amazon Prime, combined with a free trial and a Fallout franchise Steam sale, made Fallout 76 have an all-time peak of 39,455 players playing it at the same time on Steam. The record was previously 32,858 when the game launched on Steam in 2020. Having quadruple the usual players caused some of the game's servers to crash briefly, although they were soon brought back online. In comparison, on this day, New Vegas had a peak of 19,437 and Fallout 4 had a peak of 83,441. On this day, Fallout 76 became the third-top selling game on Steam, with Helldivers 2 in first place and Fallout 4 in second place; note that Counter-Strike 2 is excluded due to being free-to-play, as well as Steam Deck. Player count records were subsequently broken each passing day, with 73,368 players as the record on April 21st. Bethesda mentioned over a million people logged into Fallout 76 over the course of one of these days.https://www.ign.com/articles/boosted-by-the-fallout-tv-show-fallout-76-sees-over-one-million-players-in-a-single-day
Passing days show that much of the new playerbase is here to stay, with 25,000 to 50,000 being the average player count. Fallout 76 now seems to be around the 20th to 40th most played game on Steam depending on the time of day.https://steamcharts.com/top
==Behind the scenes==
* With updates, there are more named interactive named NPCs in Fallout 76 than Fallout, Fallout 2, Fallout 3 (which is said to have 319 of them) and Fallout: New Vegas (which has approximately 440). There are approximately about 450 in Fallout 76. However, it still falls behind Fallout 4, which has approximately over 500. For this comparison, in all the games, named animals and robots are included, random encounter characters as long as they are alive, as well as NPCs in the add-ons. Characters such as civilians are also counted, but are only considered one entry.
**While there are settlements like the Whitespring refuge, Foundation and Crater, Fallout 76 NPCs are often hidden in obscure places around the map. Fritz, for example, stays inside a booth. Many NPCs only appear in instanced interiors and thus require an active quest chain in order to be met; for example, Ronny can only be met if Thicker Than Water is active.
* Although a very rare occurrence, it is possible for scorchbeasts to fly and fight players outside the Wayward.
* In 2019, Timothy Cain, the original creator of the Fallout series, said he was disheartened by people who used his work on Fallout and Fallout 2 to put down the efforts of the developers on Fallout 76. Leonard Boyarsky of Interplay and Obsidian said that "Making games is very hard. No one sets out to make a bad game. People spend years of their lives..." and, "To have those games come out and not do well is a crushing experience."Obsidian Isn't Happy With Fans Bashing Bethesda And Fallout 76
* In 2023, during the Fallout 76 5th Anniversary, the voice of the Vault 76 overseer (Adrienne Barbeau) appeared to deliver a speech to begin the parade. She expressed gratitude for all former Vault Dwellers, mentioning, "I speak for us all when I say that you, ALL of you, have exceeded our every expectation and fulfilled our greatest hope. Appalachia as it is today stands as testament to the enduring faith of a community and the belief that this world could be so much more. No matter what country roads we walk tomorrow or in the years to come, Vault 76 will always be the place that brought us together." The full speech can be heard here.
* Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming who once considered shutting down Fallout 76, plays the game on Xbox. His username is P3. He was seen as a level 45 in early April 2024 and hit level 100 by the end of the month. However, in early May, Microsoft shut down Arkane Austin and Tango Gameworks. Some developers from Arkane worked on Fallout 76, and the closure meant Redfall was unable to continue post-launch development. Some players responded by nuking Spencer's C.A.M.P.Destructoid: Someone dropped a nuke on Xbox boss Phil Spencer’s Fallout 76 base
* John Carpenter, perhaps best known for his 1982 horror film The Thing, also plays the game and felt Fallout 76 is a great game. John Carpenter is also the ex-husband of Adrienne Barbeau, voice of the Vault 76 overseer.
* There were originally plans for a mutation system in which players could become infected and potentially transform into a super mutant or super mole rat. In the final game, however, players can only currently be human beings instead of ghouls and other species, although players can dress as werewolves or Dr. Zorbo. A wolf howl emote was also released for the werewolf cosplayers.
* Bobby pins were originally 0.1 pounds. In 2019, a fan sent Todd Howard a package of bobby pins and asked him to weigh them.A Fallout 76 fan sent Bobby Pins to Todd Howard and told him to weigh them The bobby pins were soon changed to weigh 0.001 pounds after.
* Due to the game taking place closer to the Great War, Fallout 76 features the most amount of corpses in any Fallout game. One misconception is that the petrified corpses around Appalachia were victims of the Great War. However, they are actually Scorched victims.
* Due to the Great War happening in late October, Fallout 76 has some Halloween elements as a result. For example, there is a Pumpkin House, the Watoga High School has Monster Mash, and the North Mountain lookout has Halloween decor.
* Before the game released, Bethesda teased the existence of a serial killer in Appalachia named Sickleman. The remains of Sickleman's apparent victims have been found under a house close to Vault 76; their heads have been cut off from their bodies. When Wastelanders released, graffiti saying "SICKLEMAN WAS HERE" was changed into "SICKLEMAN IS HERE" after the update. Players have been trying to uncover the mysterious identity of Sickleman, but the case remains unsolved.
*There is a random chance the player may encounter an observant radstag. If it is followed, it can lead the player to an item stash as seen here.
* The phrase "PIPE IS LIFE" became a meme within the Fallout 76 community because of a random encounter added in Wastelanders, in which a pipe with steam or some sort of chemical gas blowing out of it will spawn. Players may choose to sniff the pipe, which will make the screen distort with colors, and a note will say PIPE IS LIFE. Bethesda acknowledged the fondness for the pipe, referencing it with graffiti at the Metal Dome and making it an in-game outfit for Fallout 1st scoreboard players. Also, if a player names a weapon "pipe is life", it will automatically be re-named into uppercase.
* Near the game's launch, players were able to hack their way into the game's secret developer room where they took rare and powerful items, and also discovered an NPC known as w00by. Bethesda subsequently banned anyone they found out who entered the room.
==Gallery==
FO76 trailer mushroom cloud.png|The nuke of the Great War shown in the Fallout 76 intro
Fallout76 Teaser Atrium.png|Inside of Vault 76
Fallout76 Teaser Pip-Boy.png|Promotional image of the Pip-Boy 2000 Mark VI
Fallout76 E3 Relic.jpg|A screenshot from the trailer
Fallout76 E3 T51b.jpg|A power armor user in the trailer
Fallout76 E3 Vault76.jpg|Outside Vault 76
Fallout76 E3 Megasloth.jpg|A mega sloth
FO76 Party time diners 02.png|A reference to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
The Greenbrier.jpg|The front of The Whitespring Resort
F76 VT AgCenter 1.png|Vault-Tec Agricultural Research Center
FO76 Smiling Man aim.png|A player meets the Smiling Man in a rare random encounter
FO76 Wastelanders E3 dwellers.png|Two Vault Dwellers exploring Clarksburg
Fallout76 E3 Party.jpg|Several players entering the raider camp at Pleasant Valley cabins
Fallout76 E3 Road.jpg|The player exploring Flatwoods
Fallout76 E3 Tunnel.jpg|Players exploring The Burning Mine
Fallout76 E3 Vista.jpg|Four players overlooking Charleston
Fallout76 E3 Watoga.jpg|Watoga, a futuristic city
Fallout76 E3 Wendigo.png|A wendigo
FO76WL Crater Hub.jpg|The Crater, home of the Crater Raiders
FO76WL Foundation.jpg|Foundation, the Settlers settlement
FO76LR Fortifying ATLAS Dorsey.jpg|Fort Atlas, headquarters of the Brotherhood of Steel
Ruins-E3-Fallout76.png|Clarksburg Church
Church-E3-Fallout76.png|Haven Church
WatchTower-E3-Fallout76.png|A watchtower
Forest-E3-Fallout76.png|The Forest
Plane-E3-Fallout76.png|Anchor farm
AshHeap-E3-Fallout76.png|The Rockhound
CranberryBog-E3-Fallout76.png|Cranberry Bog, with Watoga and a scorchbeast in the distance
F76 The Mire 6.png|The Mire, a swampy region
SavageDivide-E3-Fallout76.png|Savage Divide, with the Top of the World seen in the upper left
FO76 Duchess gunpoint2.png|Duchess being held at gunpoint
FO76 Duchess shotgun.png|Duchess fighting back
FO76WL Mort hostage.png|Mordecai McCoy being held at gunpoint which only occurs if the player joins the Free Radicals
FO76 Sol Duchess.png|Sol and Duchess fighting the Free Radicals
FO76 Daniel Shin.png|Knight Shin of the Brotherhood
FO76WL Overseer fighting Scorched.png|The Vault 76 overseer fighting Scorched
FO76WL Buried Treasure trio.png|Ra-Ra, Gail and Johnny Weston breaking into Vault 79
FO76 Mochou.png|Agent Mochou, a ghoul of Chinese descent and Jen's mother
FO76 Mike Foundation.png|Mike Tiller, a teenager dealing with survivor's guilt and trauma
Concerta killed.png|Concerta Lombardi beheaded
FO76AP Evil Saltwater Sam.png|Saltwater Sam with a machete
FO76WL Barb fighting.png|Barb, a woman who killed a dog
Papermaphover scorchedearth.jpg|Scorchbeast queen
FO76 creature mothman Reconnoiter 03.png|Mothman
FO76 WL Colossus.png|Wendigo colossus
FO76 Earlefest 1.png|Earle Williams boss fight
FO76 The Pitt Industrial Area.png|The Pitt's industrial zone
FO76AC TGS 07.png|Atlantic City fireworks
FO76AC Aquarium Hub Exhibit.webp|An aquarium at the Aquarium of the Atlantic
FO76AC TGS 09.png|The Neapolitan Casino
FO76AC Russo family devil corpse.png|The Russo family staring at a Lesser Devil
FO76SV Fighting a Lost.png|Fighting a Lost in Skyline Valley
FO76SV Dark Hollow Manor 0.png|Dark Hollow Manor in Skyline Valley
FO76SV Neurological Warfare.png|Fighting giant robot bosses during Neurological Warfare
FO76 pre-order boxes.png|Pre-order copies
===Concept art===
FO76 Vault 76 door concept art.jpg|A Vault Dweller leaving Vault 76
Concept art 1 Fallout 76.jpg|Concept art from E3 trailer
CharlestonConceptArt-E3-Fallout76.png|Charleston
CranberryBog-Art2-Fallout76.png|Cranberry Bog
FO76 Crashed plane concept art.jpg|The crashed plane
Fo76 Frog concept art.jpg|Radtoad
FO76WL wendigo colossus concept art.jpg|Wendigo colossus
FO76 scorchbeast concept art 01.jpg|Scorchbeast
FO76 Chris Ortega concept (The SheepSquatch Monster) (11).jpg|Sheepsquatch
Fo76 power armor troopers lithograph.jpg|Harry Osborn lithograph
Mothman Museum lithograph.jpg|Harry Osborn lithograph of Mothman at the Mothman Museum
FO76 vault jumpsuit concept art.jpg|Vault 76 jumpsuit
==Videos==
===Trailers===
Fallout 76 – Official In-Game Intro
Fallout 76 – Official Teaser Trailer
Fallout 76 – Official E3 Trailer
Fallout 76 – Official Live Action Trailer
Fallout 76 - Official E3 2019 Wastelanders Gameplay Trailer
Fallout 76 Wastelanders - Official Trailer 1
Fallout 76- Steel Dawn – “Rahmani, Shin, and Valdez” Reveal Trailer
Fallout 76- Steel Dawn – “Fractured Steel” Reveal Trailer
Fallout 76- Steel Reign Reveal Trailer
Fallout 76- Steel Reign Launch Trailer
Fallout 76 - Expeditions- The Pitt - Story Trailer
Fallout 76- Nuka-World on Tour Official Launch Trailer
Fallout 76- Once in a Blue Moon Launch Trailer
Fallout 76-Atlantic City - Boardwalk Paradise Gameplay Trailer
Fallout 76- Atlantic City - America's Playground Launch Trailer
===Gameplay===
Fallout 76 – Welcome to West Virginia Gameplay Video
Fallout 76 – A New American Dream! An Intro to C.A.M.P. Gameplay Video
Fallout 76 – Wild Appalachia Official Gameplay Trailer
===Vault-Tec Presents: YOU WILL EMERGE!===
Fallout 76 – The Power of the Atom! Intro to Nukes Gameplay Video
Fallout 76 – Vault-Tec Presents Being a Better You! Perks Trailer
Fallout 76 – Vault-Tec Presents Let’s Work with Others! Multiplayer Video PEGI
Fallout 76 – Vault-Tec Presents Laying the Cornerstones! Crafting and Building Video-0
Fallout 76 – Vault-Tec Presents Atomics for Peace! Nukes Video
===Tales from the West Virginia Hills===
Fallout 76 – Tales from The West Virginia Hills The Best of Grafton Video
Fallout 76 – Tales from The West Virginia Hills Who Goes There%3F The Strange Encounter In Flatwoods
Fallout 76 – Tales from The West Virginia Hills Curse of the Wendigo! Video
Fallout 76 – Tales from The West Virginia Hills Sideshow Snallygaster Video
Fallout 76 – Tales from The West Virginia Hills The Mothman Cometh! Video
==External links==
* Fallout 76 official website (Bethesda.net)
* Fallout 76 on Steam
* Fallout 76 official reveal (archived)
==References==
 
cs:Fallout 76
de:Fallout 76
es:Fallout 76
fr:Fallout 76
hu:Fallout 76
it:Fallout 76
ja:Fallout 76
nl:Fallout 76
pl:Fallout 76
pt:Fallout 76
ru:Fallout 76
uk:Fallout 76
zh:Fallout 76