I wish I could figure out exactly how to claim those items. I've signed in to Bethesda, and in to my Fallout 76 game, but there seems to be no link to access any in-game items. It's a bit arcane, methinks.

Go to the link in my previous post and sign in at the top right corner. Under marketing preferences, check the box under "Get updates delivered to your inbox." Go to the link in my previous post again, click "Claim now," and you should see the message "Congratulations..." Go into the game, into camp-building mode. The miniature bowling machine should be under "Floor Decor." The pinball machine should be under "Misc. Structures." The new outfits can be crafted with the armor workbench.

Got it, thanks.

I'm still trying to work out what my best weapon should be, I've run into a couple of boss fights where I just could not win with what I have. Think I might have to up the ante and grab one of those grenade launchers!

The toughest bosses are meant for multiplayer, such as scorchbeast queen, Earle Williams, ultracite titan, and storm goliath (the new boss from the Shenandoah update). But "mini-bosses" can be fought solo with a good build, such as sheepsquatch, mirelurk queen (and the legendary version), super mutant behemoth, legendary scorchbeast, and the mini-bosses in expeditions and daily ops.

Bosses and mini-bosses burn through your ammo, naturally. So I usually fight them with melee. Here is my melee build: screenshot with perk cards, mutations, consumables, weapon, and power armor.

A power armor is almost a must in melee combat because you need to be close to the enemies, and a power armor has the hidden ability to block 42% incoming damage right off the bat, which regular armor doesn't do.

My melee weapon is auto axe, one of the most powerful weapons in the game -- so powerful that it was nerfed in this week's update. It's still pretty good. It's like a chainsaw, but deals 60% more damage per hit. Auto axe is currently sold in the atom store, I believe. It can also be bought from an NPC at Whitespring Refuge named Giuseppe; it costs 500 stamps.

Note that my auto axe has Vampire legendary effect, which regenerates my health as I attack, making me even tankier.

While I don't have anywhere near the powerful auto axe melee weapon, my Grognak's axe has served me well for ghouls in Fallout 4. I decided to go in and do the Institute. It was amazingly simply to kill the Courser, so I'm on my way!

Here is another major difference between Fallout 4 and 76: respawn time of enemies and items. In Fallout 4, after you cleared out, say, Corvega Assembly, it will take several in-game days for the location to fill with enemies and items again. Well, that can't happen in a multiplayer game like Fallout 76, obviously, because the game needs to keep supplying things for players to do. In Fallout 76, generally speaking, the respawn time is TEN MINUTES. For instance, if Player A kills or loots anything in an area, then 10 minutes later, when Player B comes to the same area, the enemies and loot that were killed or taken will be respawned. Sometimes if you are in a large dungeon that takes more than 10 minutes to explore, you may find enemies that you've killed earlier respawn before you even finish exploring the place.

Here is a nice video explaining how respawning works in Fallout 76. At 3:00, it shows an enemy respawn right in front of your eyes, like magic.

I have found a couple of Behemoths I killed earlier in the game - or whatever they are called - and was able to raid the bodies for more good loot! Now I'd like to know how to get rid of the ghoul bodies in my settlements! I move them, but they just come back.

There is no way to remove the dead bodies without mods. It has been that way since Fallout 4 was released. The dead bodies will stay at the very spots the very moment you activate your settlement. To prevent this, you have to lure the enemies outside your settlement zone, kill them, then activate your settlement. Some settlements are huge, like Spectacle Island, so this workaround isn't always practical.

This was especially annoying in places like Sunshine Tidings. You could haul the ghoul bodies away and they'd come right back.

The Fallout 4 mod called "Scrap Everything" allows you to scrap the bodies and that takes care of them permanently. It also allows you to scrap all the ugly stuff in settlement areas as long as you're careful not to scrap structures you want to keep. I won't play without it.


My Fallout 76 character is not a melee character. I've managed to take out regular Sheepsquatches and the odd Scorchbeast and even a few bosses with what I have, but I'm going to need more power for some of the other ones. I'm not really a group player so that may mean I never finish the game. I hop into the public events but I never join groups.

To increase weapon damage in a big way you need to do a lot of little things. Below is an example of how to triple the damage of a combat rifle. You don't have to do everything, of course. Every little bit helps. But this is just to show that your damage can reach sky high if you give it diligent effort.

Level 50 combat rifle base damage is 40.

Modding it with a powerful automatic receiver adds +6 damage.

Adding Aristocratic legendary effect adds +50% of base damage (+20 damage) when you carry 29000 caps or more.

Commando perk cards at rank 3: +60% of base damage = +24 damage.

Bloody Mess perk card rank 3: +15% of base damage = +6 damage.

Adrenal Reaction mutation at <=20% health: +50% of base damage = +20 damage.

Nerd Rage perk card adds 20% damage at <=20% health: +8 damage.

Total: 40+6+20+24+6+20+8 = 124 damage per hit, more than triple the base damage. And this is without sneak.

With sneak, you deal 2.5x the base damage = 2.5 x 40 = 100 damage, which is 60 extra damage. So a sneak attack deals 124 + 60 = 184 damage, over 4 times the base damage.

A head shot and critical hit each adds another 100% of base damage = 40 + 40 = 80. So a sneak head shot critical hit deals 184 + 40 + 40 = 264, almost 7 times the base damage.

Enemies have resistance too, and most can absorb half of whatever the final damage you deal. Bosses usually can absorb 75% of your damage.

I have most of that, but not the Adrenal Reaction mutation. I was worried about it with the reduction in health, but next time I see it at a player store I'll grab it.

I seem to have bad luck with rolling my legendary rolls. Aristocrat isn't good for me at the moment because I don't have a lot of caps (though that is changing).

I forgot about Nerd Rage. I'll add it if I have Perk room for it.

I almost always start combat from sneak and go for the head shot, unless it's a fast animal enemy, in which case I try to cripple one leg first and then go for the head. Nothing like watching a Queen Mirelurk struggle to walk towards you while you file your nails.

Having killed a few Queen Mirelurks with brute force, I laughed out loud at you filing your nails while she struggles to attack you!

Here is my build for a stealth commando character.

Under PER, Tank Killer adds armor penetration, which, in turn, increases the damage you deal.

Modding a gun with perforating magazine also adds armor penetration.

If you go for a low-health build, Fireproof (under END) increases fire resistance. Serendipity (under LCK) gains up to 45% chance to avoid damage at low health. Blocker (under STR) reduces enemies' melee damage by up to 45%. Dodgy (under AGI) lets you spend 30 AP to avoid up to 30% of any damage. These are the typical defenses for low health.

If you wear power armor at low health, a torso's emergency protocol mod reduces 50% incoming damage at 20% health or less.

A low-health build with a full set of Unyielding armor adds +15 to each of the SPCIAL stat (except E), which gives you tons of benefits: more carry weight due to +15 STR, better VATS % due to higher PER, better AP from higher AGI, etc. And you can easily pass NPC speech checks when you do quests. All these reasons are why low-health builds are very popular in this game.

Rolling for legendary effects is always the luck of the draw. There are 25 tier-1 effects, so you have 1/25 chance to get Aristocrat. There are 10 tier-2 effects, so you have 1/10 chance to get a good one like +25% fire rate. To get both, you only have 1/25 x 1/10 = 1 out of 250 chance. So you are expected to roll 250 times, spending 3 legendary modules each time = 750 modules total. So this is the kind of grinding you are up against.

More math: One legendary module costs 50 legendary scrips to buy at Rusty Pick. You get about 20 legendary scrips on average from each legendary item. So you need 2 1/2 legendary items to get one legendary module. To get 750 modules, you need 750 x 2.5 = 1875 legendary items. You get maybe 3 legendary items (~60 scrips) on average from each public event, expedition, daily op, etc. So you need to play these about 600+ times. All this effort is just for rolling one weapon with the exact tier 1 and 2 effects you want.

Knowing that the math is totally against you, you need to play it smart. Don't go for tier-2 or 3 intentionally. Just go for the tier-1 effect, which you have 1/25 chance to achieve, and you only expect to roll 25 times = only 50 modules needed. You can still roll for tier 2 and 3, but as soon as you get the tier-1 effect you want, stop, and take whatever tier-2 and 3 effects you get. This is how I've always done it.

This is why online games are not everyone's cup of tea, because they often make you feel like you're gambling in casinos instead of playing a video game.

Well, I finally got into the Institute. Man, I REALLY do not like these people at all - especially Shawn! I'm not so sure the Raiders at Nuka World after I defeated the boss there aren't better! And I'm really hoping I get the chance to blow up that reactor with the Atom idiots. I did get the Synth leader there, but they are still idiots!

Before you blow up the Institute, make sure you, um, pick up something for an NPC. If you haven't gone that far (have you met "Virgil" yet?), I don't want to spoil anything further.

Yes. I love Virgil! I'm trying to find what he wants me to get, but haven't found it yet.

HAH! Nabbed it and headed out to the Rocky Cave.

I've managed to roll a few decent Gauss Rifles, three of them. One is an anti-armour, and one is a two-shot, and one is a Mutation-based damage stat (I have six mutations). Two of them have suppressors, so they have some pretty impressive stealth damage. I haven't found anyone who sells the Gauss Suppressor crafting note yet. so I must have found two of the physical mods. The problem with the Gauss Rifle is that close-range they're utterly useless, so for that i have my Enclave auto rifle, but it's still not good enough for boss fights.

I did buy the Gauss crafting recipe so I'll spend some time and junk crafting and scrapping them. That's led me on a long tour looking for scrap to make screws.



Draclvr, have you worked out the settlement building yet? Over the years I found it to be so much fun, especially after adding mods. My next game will be vanilla, though, until the mod compatibility gets sorted out. A lot of my fave mods are pretty old and may never get updated, though.

I've been working on it. I got Sanctuary up to 100%, but I really want to rebuild all those ugly houses and clean up the streets! I've made progress in Sunshine Tidings and a few others. I don't have any mods because I'm afraid they will break the game since this new update.

After completing the side quest for Brian Virgil, I hate the Institute even more and have decided to annihilate it. Shawn is an arse.

I was mainly a sniper too in Fallout 4, but had to adjust for the horde fights in Fallout 76, because a lot of content in Fallout 76 is horde fight, especially when it involves major rewards.

Being a multiplayer game, the game has to increase the overall combat difficulty across the board to accommodate the possibility of multiple players in any given fight. If you are solo, sometimes the game scales enemy levels (and even the number of enemies) according to your level; but sometimes it doesn't.

Gauss rifle is damaging but slow. You need to find a gun that is damaging but FAST to handle incoming hordes. To many stealth shooters, The Fixer with an automatic receiver is that gun.

Some gun mods can only be learned by scrapping that gun, and gauss rifle suppressor is one of them. You cannot find those mods from containers, vendors, other players, event rewards, anywhere. Fallout 4 doesn't have this restriction, but a multiplayer game like Fallout 76 will make you do these things so that no player has advantages over others. When I found a gauss rifle with a suppressor, I would just keep that gun and add mods to it.

You probably know this already: weapons and armor are maxed at level 45 or 50. It doesn't matter if your character is level 100 or 10000, your gear will always have the same damage, defense, and stats as in level 45 or 50. So the only things you can gain from leveling up is via other things: perk cards, legendary perk cards, consumables, legendary effects, mutations, etc. The point is that at certain point, your focus is no longer your weapons and armor, but other things.

I just received the Fixer (from Encryptid?) yesterday and have it stashed for a good look later. I'll see what mods work best on it but yes, automatic works well. I have my Enclave Rifle on automatic and it's pretty darned fast but the damage isn't as high as some.


I'd been putting off doing Encryptid because the one and only time I tried it I was on my own and I got one-shot-killed immediately. This time as soon as I dropped in about ten other high-level players showed up and we destroyed that thing. I died about three times in the process but managed to get back into the fight in time to get the rewards.

I'm spending a lot more time jumping in to events. Even on some of the lower-level ones you get cores but also you get showered with Stimpacks, which means I never run out. I've observed that once one person joins an event, others pop in.


Draclvr, I plan on starting a new game of Fallout 4 soon ( I let all my game saves on the Cloud lapse because they're all from a long time ago). I'll be able to see what mods still work and which ones don't. Generally speaking I've found that if a mod messes things up just uninstalling it sets everything right again. Also you can tell from the comments whether the mod is still functional or not.

I just know that lots of people are complaining about their mods being messed up after this new update.

Actually, it would be fun to build at least one settlement without mods.

Although it's kind of big, I'm thinking of doing that with Sunshine Tidings.

Sunshine Tidings is a great location. You can let your imagination run wild.

The Fixer, the gun itself, is given in the "Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" side quest (one-time only quest). The plan of The Fixer has a 10% chance of being given in the Encryptid event, which is repeatable. Getting the plan is worthwhile because you may need to craft The Fixer more than once while you roll for the best legendary effects. Mods for The Fixer can be unlocked by scrapping combat rifles.

The Encryptid event have all robot enemies (the sheepsquatch boss is actually an assaultron). The weak spots on robots are their "combat inhibitors," which you can target with VATS if you have the Concentrated Fire perk card equipped. A sentry bot's weakest spot is its fusion core. Targetting the fusion core is almost instant death of the sentry bot, which is otherwise tough to fight.