Fallout 76 is the first time Bethesda has taken its RPG formula multiplayer, and while the jury is out on how well (or not) it works, there is no denying that millions of players around the world are trying to take on each other and survive out in the post-nuclear wilderness at this moment.
There’s a multitude of mechanics going on in Fallout 76–it is, after all, a descendant of RPGs. In this guide, we walk you through leveraging some of them to your advantage.
LEVELING UP
Fallout 76 has a surprisingly complicated leveling up system (I would argue it’s more complex than the one used in Fallout 4). You, of course, need to level up to be able to hold your own in the world. And while it might be tempting to follow quests to get XP, I recommend you not do that. XP payout from quests isn’t the best, so unless you specifically want to follow the story, you’re better off doing one of the following things:
DON’T BOTHER WITH RIFF-RAFF. While you will have to take on low level enemies when you are fresh out of Vault 76, once you’re reasonably leveled up, don’t bother with low level enemies at all. It’s way too much of a time investment, and you never get enough XP for it to be worth it.
GROUP UP. As a group, take on high level enemies, or enter high level areas. This nets you a lot more XP than you would get from trying to do the story quests or grunt monsters, and as a group, you have a better chance of actually succeeding.
USE THE INSPIRATION PERK CARD. The Inspiration Perk card nets you bonus XP, so make sure to find it and equip it.
EXPLORE THE WORLD. All these things in the world can’t be found if you won’t explore. Explore, come across events and high level monsters, get XP simply for wandering around the world.
CRAFT AND BUILD. While crafting and building get you minuscule amounts of XP per action, you can perform a lot of actions in one go, which can all add up
PUBLIC EVENTS: There are public events that you can participate in, which also show up as quests. These end up giving you a fair bit of XP, so it’s best to actually keep an eye out for these, and try to farm some for yourself this way.
HOW TO GET MONEY QUICKLY
While XP is needed to survive, Bottle Caps are needed to do, well, anything else. They’re the in game currency, much like in previous Fallout games, and you need to have them to be able to get your hands on stuff. Unfortunately, getting them isn’t always so easy…
- COMPLETE QUESTS. Yes, I know I said you should ignore quests when it comes to trying to farm XP, and you should, but on the other hand, they pay out a lot of money. So if it’s money you want, yes, focus on completing them.
- CAP STASHES. The map of Fallout 76 has a lot for you to see and find, and nothing will be as valuable as Cap Stashes, which will give you a whole lot of Bottle Caps at once for stumbling upon them.
- SELL USELESS ITEMS. Offload what you don’t want for cash. You may not always get a lot, but every little bit counts.
- PARTICIPATE IN EVENTS. Self explanatory, like with XP, you get Bottle Caps for completing these.
GAINING AND LOSING A BOUNTY
Fallout 76 has an elaborate system meant to ensure players don’t go around griefing one another without there being any consequences in place. And there are consequences. Namely, you becoming Wanted.
First, let’s talk about how this happens. There are multiple ways to gain the Wanted Status:
- Attack a player, and kill them, with them not having dealt any damage to you at all before they died. Once you attack a player, if they attack you back, then it’s fair game PvP, and you won’t get any Wanted penalty for killing them (or they, you). If they are clearly not interested in fighting and you keep trying to aggro them, then yeah, you killing them gets you the Wanted penalty.
- Steal from other players’ camps from locked stashes. This only works with locked stashes. If players don’t lock their stuff and you steal it, you don’t have to worry.
- Destroy stuff other players have built.
Once you get the Wanted status, you show up as a bright red “WANTED” on every other player’s map and compass. At this point, every other player knows you are hostile. You also have a number next to your name, which is a bounty placed on you. This bounty goes up as you keep committing crimes after becoming Wanted first. If a player kills you, they claim this bounty, and it comes directly from your inventory, so make sure it’s something you can actually afford, especially since…
You can’t lose the bounty once you have. Once you are wanted, you are wanted. The only way to lose that Wanted status is to be killed and for someone to claim that bounty. That’s it. So be very careful before you go around griefing others, okay?