[Bethesda] Fallout 76

[Max Peck]

I got talked into (that's my story and I'm sticking to it) firing up F76 for the first time in 2 or 3 years. By the time I was done I had a shiny new Lucy MacLean character and a 12-month Fallout 1st subscription (because playing without a scrapbox is an exercise in futility).

One thing I noticed is that they've revamped the onboarding of new characters. There is now an option to start with either a level 2 or level 20 character, with a small selection of builds to choose from with appropriate SPECIAL allocation, perk cards and some starting equipment. I need to relearn how to play the game so I went the level 2 option, but it's nice to see an option for players who want to hit the ground running.

Does that level 20 thing still let you follow the stories or does it marked a bunch of them done?
Also do you get extra resources or gear or start as a newb?

I didn't take the level 20 option, but I expect that you start at the beginning of the quest lines, just with a more capable character. Even with the level 2 option, I started with some gear, so I'd expect the level 20 option comes with some level/build appropriate weapons and armor.

[Max Peck]

You can play with Fallout 1st for free for the next week. They're also offering a 50% off deal for new subscribers.

[Daehawk]

They offered a stash and a ammo box for a week from Fallout First back when I played. Those things are damn handy. I really missed them when I couldn't put stuff in them any longer. All my stuff was still able to be taken out though so no problems. But I still wouldn't pay for that. Tempted though as I was.

[Daehawk]

This Atlantic City stuff is larger than I first thought. Also Whitesprings has come alive with quests.

Games seems to have developed some crashing issues since I was here last.

[Punisher]

This Atlantic City stuff is larger than I first thought. Also Whitesprings has come alive with quests.

Games seems to have developed some crashing issues since I was here last.

Does it have the Taj or any other big name casinos?

[Daehawk]

I haven't been back and only been once. I have a quest to go back. The first time it loaded me into a run down area where I was attacked by waved of enemies until I killed enough. Im not sure where the next quest will take me. I dont think its a big open new area. I think its just quests that load you into them. Like maybe Ill be in a town or maybe a casino next time. Not sure until I go.

[Punisher]

I haven't been back and only been once. I have a quest to go back. The first time it loaded me into a run down area where I was attacked by waved of enemies until I killed enough. Im not sure where the next quest will take me. I dont think its a big open new area. I think its just quests that load you into them. Like maybe Ill be in a town or maybe a casino next time. Not sure until I go.

Oh yeah. I think thats downtown AC. we made that wrong turn too..

[Daehawk]

I grabbed that free week of Fallout 1st last night. Today I plan to move all my scrap and ammo to their respective FO1st boxes to make room in my stash. If Bethesda weren't so damn money starved they'd make ammo and scrap not take up room or weigh anything in your normal stash. But NOOoooOooooooo.

[Max Peck]

Does that level 20 thing still let you follow the stories or does it marked a bunch of them done?
Also do you get extra resources or gear or start as a newb?

I just ran across this article...

Don't worry, you're not missing out by boosting straight to level 20 in Fallout 76

Ah, so you watched the Fallout show and caught the Bethesda bug too. Instead of starting another Fallout 4 playthrough like half of my friends list, I've opted to give Fallout 76 a fair shake after noping out of it six years ago. If you're doing the same, then you'll notice a lot has changed. The main quest has been completely reworked with new branching storylines starring NPCs and factions, but one of the bigger changes comes as soon as you leave the vault.

Before you've taken your first step in Appalachia, Fallout 76 asks you to make a big choice: Start as a fresh level 2 vault dweller, or boost immediately up to level 20 as a "battle ready" dweller. I was really hesitant to take the boost at first—I was worried skipping ahead was an option intended for long-time players making a second character, and that going down that road would mean skipping introductory quests. Turns out that's not the case at all. Choosing the level 20 option doesn't lock you out of any quests whatsoever, or even meaningfully change your challenge level, since enemies generally scale to your level no matter what.

What a battle ready loadout does get you is a big headstart on perk cards, Fallout 76's primary progression path. You can choose between five presets that immediately set you up with some pretty great beginner perks and gear:

• Commando: Automatic rifles
• Slugger: Two-handed melee
• Gunslinger: Pistols
• Shotgunner: Shotguns
• Specialist: V.A.T.S.

[Daehawk]

Cant even remember if I ever had a good shotgun. Usually shotguns are what I lean to in shooters. I do like pistols though. Automatics tend to waste precious ammo early on when ammo is more scarce. I like energy weps but again ammo for them is few and far between and harder to come by in general. Early on I loaded up on 10mm and 5mm . Even at lvl 150 or so I usually run around with just a named bow and fire arrow , a gatlin gun, and some named sniper rifle and a melee. I dont play much at all now as theres nothing to do. I log in to get the free stuff and run some publics I like if they are going on or I want a particular item from them. Im considering dropping all weps except that bow for picking off ghouls and humanoid and a gatlin gun for robots and muties and damage. I can get tons of ammo for my weps now days simply by killing stuff with the weps I want ammo for. I get more back than I use unless its a full auto gun on a hard to kill enemy.

[Blackhawk]

I played quite a bit last year. I'm going to quote a few of my posts from then (with apologies to Daehawk for all of the notifications), as a few people seem to be starting for some reason I can't quite figure out. Some quick biggies:

~Always have food buffs
~Sell booze and high priced 'stuff', but save the armor and weapons to scrap. You need the materials, and it's only be scrapping that you learn recipes. Don't sell all the time - hoard stuff and do it en masse. Equip the sales card only when selling, and drink something *hic* that gives a +Charisma bonus. Then sell all your crap and unequip the sales perk card.
~Plan on having multiple loadouts (skill sets) that you can switch between. There's a buildable CAMP item that lets you save multiple loadouts. At the very least you are going to want an adventuring build and a separate crafting/CAMP build. The CAMP build will give you bonuses for crafting, harvesting, scrapping, etc.
~Unlike the other Fallout games, FO76 is not designed to make multiple weapon types on the same character viable. It takes too many cards (perks) to make a weapon do enough damage to keep up with the damage you need to do. Pick a type, and stick with it.
~Once you hit the level cap, it's all about gathering carefully chosen mutations. I think I go into more detail in one of the posts I'll quote, but there is a specific process for being able to choose exactly the mutations that you want and, more importantly, keep exactly those and no others.

[Blackhawk]

Ive read that I can ignore eating and drinking. Is that true? Ive been eating and drinking as Im always finding that stuff anyways. But if it really does nothing Id be happy to ignore it.

Sort of. They removed the penalties for not eating and drinking, but they still have benefits if you do eat and drink. If you're fully fed and fully hydrated you will get a nice buff. In addition, various foods will give you additional buffs. Early on I'd recommend grabbing all of the soot flowers you see, then mixing it with boiled water for tea. A good early option food is to grab a few corn while you're out, and then plant it in your camp. When you start, pick some corn, grab some water, and make corn soup. It fills both the food and water bars.

Later on you'll find some better recipes. The best thing to do is usually to fill your food and water bars up with multiple foods, so that you're stacking multiple buffs.

Be aware that food does spoil over time. And be on the lookout for spoiled food in your food/drink inventory - it can weigh you down. Stick it in your stash, then use a chemistry bench to turn it into fertilizer.

Two other free (and substantial) buffs that I mentioned earlier are the one for sleeping and the one for playing an instrument. Just sleep/play until you hear a sound and get a Vault Boy pop-up.

Some other quick early tips:

~Concerning perks: Don't actively spend your choices on the 'Find Extra' perks. If you get them and have extra points feel free to equip them, but you'll generally find more than enough of everything without them.
~Don't plan on having the lockpicking/hacking perks equipped on your actual build. That would take 6 SPECIAL points. What most people do is get the perks, but leave them unequipped (or only equip one) until they actually need it, as you can change your perks on the fly. In other words, you come up on a lock/terminal, unequip one of your combat perks, and equip lockpicking. You pick said lock, then put your combat perk back on. (Personally, I dumped my first legendary perk on the one that gives you 3/3 so that I don't have to worry about it anymore.)
~Particularly good perks: Blocker, Concentrated Fire, Fireproof, Lone Wanderer (a must if you're solo), Scrapper, Gunsmith (keep it equipped for the reduced wear and tear), Action Boy (unless you're avoid VATS entirely.) At the end game, Starched Genes and Class Freak are a must.
~Until you max Starched Genes and Class Freak, don't keep any mutations (RadAway removes them.) The downsides are pretty heavy. Once you have those perks, though, you can keep the mutations without the penalties.
~You'll generally want to specialize in a single weapon. You can carry as many as you want, and you can fire them, but you'll only have enough perks to really make one of them fully effective (in my current build, I have 12 perk points out of a max of 15 in Perception dedicated just to rifles.)
~At level 25 you'll get access to a card machine that will let you save multiple builds and change your SPECIALs at will. I have separate builds for combat and a generic 'crafting' build that's for both CAMP building and crafting. If I make another, it will either be a farming build or a power armor build.
~The soft cap is level 50. After that you'll keep leveling, but you'll only get perks, not SPECIALS. You also gain access to an alternate 'Legendary Perks' set, one choice every 25 levels starting at 50.
~An excellent build planner. Once you have a build, the leveling roadmap button on there is invaluable.
~My current build. Note that this is a single shot weapon/stealth/no power armor build. It isn't the most effective build in the game (if you wanted to make it more effective, you'd switch the single shot perks for Commando.) I find the game easy enough that I don't feel the need to optimize, however.
~My crafting build. Yes, it's got more perks than points. I swap the perks I'm not using for the ones I am using (IE - if I'm working on energy weapons, I swap out something else for the energy weapon perks.)
~Keep your eye out for train stations. They have vendor NPCs (whose stock is almost always over-priced), they always have a crafting bench and a legendary exchange. It's a machine that lets you turn old legendaries into a special scrip. Save that scrip until the endgame - you can turn it in for new, on-level legendaries then.
~You learn attachments for weapons by scrapping the same sort of weapon. What you get is random, and what you get slows down over time (it doesn't remove what you already learn from the pool of options, and getting one you already know just results in not learning anything.)
~A convoluted, but very useful tool for determining prices and rarity for items you find.
~If you do set up a shop, note that most legendaries do not sell unless they're priced low and people are buying them for turning into scrip. Pretty much all ammo sells for 1 cap per.
~Weapons and armor have levels, rounded to 5 (IE - you can find level 5 pipe pistols, level 20s, level 35s, level 50s, etc.) You'll want to make sure that you don't let your gear fall behind - it's easy to have a weapon that you love, say a combat rifle, keep scrapping the combat rifles you find later, only to realize that you're level 40, the combat rifle you're using is level 15, and you've been scrapping the level 40s. Or that you're wearing an armor piece that's 20 levels below you. During the leveling, it's expected that you'll recreate the same gun every few levels.
~You start with a low-level backpack with +5 carry weight. You can craft new backpacks at an armor bench every 10 levels (10, 20, etc), all the way up to a level 50 backpack. Each upgrade increases the carry weight by +5.
~You can craft with the materials in your stash. Store all junk.
~Weight warning: Scrap your junk before you store it. Unscrapped junk takes up a ton of Stash space. You might want to check to make sure you haven't deposited any junk already. Scrapping it is easy - any workbench (except a brewing station) will have an option for 'scrap.' Once you hit it, you'll have an option for 'scrap all junk.' Just hit that, walk up to your stash, and you'll have a button for 'deposit all junk.'

[Blackhawk]

Quick tip on what not to ignore when looting. The stuff you always want to grab (or the things that scrap into these):

~Aluminum
~Screws
~Adhesive
~Lead
~Acid
~Ballistic Fiber
~Springs

[Blackhawk]

(Note: Because I'm an inconsiderate bastard, I keep using 'skill', 'perk' and 'card' interchangeably. They all mean the same thing.)

A collector eh? I always collect one item in these Fallout games. Not decided on what yet. The little Red Rocket toy is cool and the Alien. Not sure yet though.

Nope. I keep a few for myself, but most of them I stick on my vendor to sell to other players (at a below-market price that's more about making it available than making a profit.) Take a look here. I don't have everything (or even close to it), but I have a lot of the more common stuff. If you see some stuff you like and I have it, I'll gladly pass it on.

Also I feel its coming time I decided on one weapon type to make ammo carrying easier. Im not really happy with the 3 I use now. Its why I carry three. Shotgun is powerful but a little slow and has no range. The 10mm I love and have always used one in these games but it lacks power and isn';t totally accurate. The laser pistol is the best as its powerful and accurate. But that sound it makes really gets repetitive after a bit.

The basic weapon types are (with only minor variations):

Melee
Pistols
Rifles (semi-auto)
Rifles (auto)
Heavy Weapons
Bows/Crossbows

You want to specialize in one. Semi-auto really only works with stealth builds (as with what I'm running.) Auto and heavy are considered the 'go to' builds.

But you do not want to limit yourself to one gun. I am built for semi-auto rifles, and I carry four: Two short range (reflex sights, some hipfire accuracy, fire rate), and two long range (high damage, sighted accuracy, etc.) Why two of each? Because there are two main damage types: Energy and ballistic. Each is good against different enemies.

The trick is that energy and ballistic weapons are the same skill, and most weapons can be modded to any of the weapon types.

So, say I find a laser pistol. It is a pistol (pistol skill applies) that does energy damage.
I mod it with a longer stock. It is now a single shot rifle that does energy damage.
I mod it with an automatic barrel. It is now an automatic rifle that does energy damage.
I mod it with a beam splitter. It is now a shotgun that does energy damage.

So I carry two ballistic weapons (up close, long range) and two energy weapons (up close, long range.) That's also three ammo types (cells for the up-close laser rifle, 2mm for the gauss long range energy rifle, and .45 for my two ballistic weapons. It's easier to carry fewer ammo types, but it screws you if you run low. It's best two plan on at least two or three ammo types, especially early on when getting large amounts ammo is a challenge (doubly so if you go automatic.)

If you're going auto, it can be worth it to grab the star's worth of the Ammosmith perk, which lets you craft more ammo for the resources.

If you do buy ammo, buy it only from player camps (they're visible on the map), and never, ever pay more than one cap per round. Even missiles normally sell for a cap.

tl;dr - most weapons can be used with multiple skill types depending on how you mod them, and it's best to carry both energy and ballistic.

I think what I need is an assault rifle. Something not semi automatic and has power and range. Not seen one yet. Maybe a sniper rifle for range.

For the prior, keep your eye out for a Handmade, although a Fixer isn't bad. For the latter, a lever action is great, but anything will work. But be careful - the assault rifle will use one skill set (the Commando line), while a sniper rifle will use a different skill (the Rifleman line.) Early on you can get away with it. But later on you won't be able to effectively use both, as you won't be able to equip the perks to use both.

----------------------------

Short version of the card/perk/stat system in case you missed the nuances:

Every card has stars on it. They all start at one star. If you get two of the same card, you can merge them to create a much stronger two-star version. Each additional card you merge adds one star, up to the card's limit (most cap at 1-3 stars, but some go as high as 5.)

The cost in perk points to equip a card is the number of stars on that card. (There are a very few that cost a little more, but I'm ignoring those for now for simplicity.) So a one-star Charisma skill requires one Charisma to equip. A one star Strength card and a two star Strength card require 3 Strength to equip both.

Every time you level up, you gain one stat point and one card that you get to pick from those available at your level (access to the card is based on player level, not stats.) Every five levels (5, 10, 15, etc) you get an additional pack of cards. (Tip: When you level up and pick a stat, you can pick any card from your level or below from any stat. Look at the bottom of the screen for the buttons to change the filter. It defaults to the stat you just picked, but you can choose anything, so you can add one Perception, then pick an Agility card.)

When you hit level 50, you stop gaining stat points, but continue to gain cards forever (I've seen level 2000+ characters running around.) (Side note - there is another perk mechanic that kicks in at 50 that will give you a use for your unneeded cards.)

Also, each stat is capped at 15. You will only ever be able to put 15 points worth of cards onto any stat, regardless of your level.

-------------------------

So, back to the weapon thing. My single-shot build requires two general rifle perks (Concentrated Fire and Tank Killer) that cost 6 Perception, and apply to any rifle (semi- or full-auto.) The semi-auto specific perks are three cards (Rifleman, Expert Rifleman, and Master Rifleman), all of which are three stars. 3+3+3+3+3=15. Just equipping my weapon skills takes 15 points of Perception, the max I can have. If I wanted to fire a full-auto rifle, I would be doing without any of the associated perks, unless I unequipped all of my semi-auto perks. Bows, crossbows, explosives, and shotguns also all have perks that require Perception. That means that I can't run a semi-auto build and also carry any of those without running them without perks (which makes a big difference.)

I could probably come up with some way of having a second weapon half-viable, but it would be at the cost of any utility perks.

I posted this earlier, but here is my current build. It's a non-power armor stealth based build (which isn't your thing), but if you take off the stealth perks and swap the three Rifleman cards for the three Commando cards, it would be a solid start (Something like this.)

As for action points is there a use without VATS? Do they affect my stam regen or something?

They don't affect your stamina regen - they are your stamina. It was that way in FO3/NV and 4, too. The bar on screen that drains when you run is your Action Points, used for running, jumping, and VATS.

[Daehawk]

I dont mind. Its neat looking back on what I was worried about when starting and how it helped me.

[Daehawk]

I got another nice bow from a elite in a public even yesterday. I usually run with Burning Love. Its 100 damage and set stuff on fire. Has extra damage against ghouls I think and such. Its great for humanoids. I cant recall off hand the name of the bow I got but its 10 points less damage at 90 but its a vampire bow that heals me a 2% or so per damage or something. Not tried it yet.