Are you guys playing on PC or a console? I'm on PC, maybe we could play if you are also on PC.
Again, if you are on PC send me a friend invite, my tag is Pz38t. Let me know what your tags are.
There were two big changes I made which really changed the way I played the game.
1. Mutations. All my toons over L50 run Class Freak and Starched Genes and are heavily mutated. Marsupial gives you a lot of mobility and the others all help in some way or another. Class Freak makes the downside a lot less. Strange in Numbers is also good because it makes your mutations 25% stronger if you are on a team with someone who is also mutated. Pick Carnivore or Herbivore. I run Herbivore because Cranberry Relish and Brain Fungus Soup give you 20-35% more XP and are relatively easy to make.
2. Unyielding/Bloodied build. When you are at 20% health, your weapons do 80% more damage. That is huge. Unyielding armor gives you +3 to all stats except END when you are 20% health. That's +15 STR (75 lbs more carry weight), +15 INT (30% more XPs). +15 AGI gives you 150 APs, etc. You need to use perks like Serendipity, Nerd Rage, etc. to not die as much. But you will die more often, but less than you think, and death means nothing in F76.
Unfortunately, there is no Unyielding power armor. A lot of PA players run Overeater's PA and run on 20% health with bloodied weapons. You don't get the stat bonuses, but you do get the weapon damage, and an Emergency Protocols mod on the torso really reduces the amount of damage you take.
Adding Mutations + a Bloodied build kept me playing F76. Before that I was thinking of abandoning the game because all the enemies are such bullet sponges.
As for equipment, the easiest way to get reasonably good gear is to have a list of the items you want, surf the player vendors, and pick up cheap gear or serums when you find them. Then, when you have a basic set of gear, look for improvements to the pieces you have. It took a while to pick up a full set of unyielding armor, but once I did and switched to a bloodied build, I never looked back.
All my L50 toons have a full set of unyielding armor, at least a Bloodied Fixer and a Bloodied Handmade, and a full set of Overeater's T45 PA with decent resistances. All this gear was picked up over time when I found something cheap that I didn't have or that was better than what I currently had. It just takes time and patience.
If you are into PA, this is old, but still useful:
https://www.reddit.com/r/fo76/comments/ ... uide_v_20/
Basically all PA is good. The difference between Excavators PA (the weakest) and T-65 PA or Ultracite is pretty minor. That's why a T-45 legendary set is fine, and since legendary T-45 pieces drop frequently, you can pick up them up cheaply if you shop around. Overeater's is the best legendary effect.
My main crafted a set of Overeater's Union PA. That is widely considered to be the best overall because of the set bonuses: +75 carry weight and +150 poison resistance. It took a lot of rolling to get a full set of Overeater's: 97 rolls, 485 Legendary Cores and 388 Legendary Modules. So that took me several hundred events to get the cores and scrap enough gear to get the modules. That's why all my alts run T-45 Overeaters. No poison resistance, no carry weight bonus, but at a 1K-5K caps a piece it's so much cheaper.
Ultracite armor is good, but the mods you really want for it are extremely rare. Most long-time players have tons of ultracite plans and you can buy them cheap, but the Emergency Protocols plan and the Calibrated Shocks plan are very rare. Jetpack plans are cheap so if you aren't running low-health then the only tricky one is Calibrated Shocks. It has a 0.081% chance to be dropped by the SBQ. I've never seen one, even in a player vendor.
Finally, you want a jetpack. Sept 14-18 is a Minerva sale where you can get Secret Service torso plans and the jetpack plans (you need both). This will cost 2438 gold, but it's totally worth it if you have the gold.