**** Official Fallout 76 Thread ****
Man of Honour
The gameworld is very well made. You'll notice it more when you move into the different zones. For example, go over the high ridge at the south of the forest zone (where you start) and the landscape changes from a thriving rolling forest and field environment into a harsh, blasted, grimy and mostly dead environment. It was an open strip mining area, mostly coal and now much of it is burning inefficiently underground and giving out toxic smoke. You'll want breathing gear in some parts of it because the pollution is bad enough to cause diseases and lung damage (temporary, but inconvenient). The flora and fauna change, both in type and in frequency. The landscape changes too, with pits and towering scree dumps from the strip mining. Even the decaying technology changes, reflecting ethically devoid mining rather than farming. The makers of the gameworld did a fine job of the different zones and plausibly explaining their existence in terms of geography and history.
For new players, I'd suggest not going out of the forest zone for a while. The other zones are inherently harder and, more importantly, the mobs in them scale to whatever players have been in that area recently. You could encounter high level mobs in other zones, whatever your own level, and they will often be much harder mobs too. The mobs in the forest area do not scale, so it's a much more predictable area. Also, food and water and medicine is much more plentiful in the forest zone than in other zones. Especially water. If you're ever short of water, teleport to Flatwood (the small town you'll be guided to right at the start, immediately after the Overseer's camp). There's a river right next to it, a cooking area just outside the cafe opposite the church and plenty of logs around the area to scav wood from if you don't have enough on you. Gather dirty water from the river, boil it in the cooking area and you have drinkable water in abundance.
I used a mixture of leather and metal armour until I reached L25 and could use the T-45 power armour I'd been scavving in the forest zone (there are a few places where power armour can spawn in that zone). Leather and metal pieces are commonly found on mobs in the forest zone, so you should be able to scrap oodles of them and learn useful mods, then craft your own armour at progressively higher levels (you can craft items at different levels, dependent on your own level, e.g. a L5 leather armour piece is better than a L1 leather armour piece of the same type, etc).
As for the power armour, the method goes like this: Find a frame, remove any pieces from it, enter the frame. The frame is now yours. Exit the frame, put the pieces on it, collect the frame. You now have a PA frame in your inventory with pieces on it and the whole lot weighs only 10 units so it's no problem to stash it or carry it around until you're a high enough level to use it.
For weapons, my initial weapons were pistol and rifle, then shotgun and rifle. Melee is more effective later (the game is currently unbalanced in favour of melee), but melee is probably not the best way to start as you won't be able to run through bullets and lasers and go toe to toe with mobs while being shot by other mobs. Pipe revolvers are extremely common right from the start, so you will be able to scrap loads of them and thus have a good chance of quickly learning a stock, hardened receiver and scope for pipe revolvers. With those, you can mod a pipe revolver into an effective rifle. It's on a par with a hunting rifle, but much easier to learn mods for and uses a more common ammo type. It's a good weapon for early on.
Man of Honour
A quick question:
One of the current weekly challenges is to kill some mobs with simple weapons. What counts as a simple weapon? I tried two types of sword, which were the only simple weapons I had on me, but neither counted.
A tangential question:
Has anyone played Atom RPG? It's set in Russia and made by a Russian dev (but available with what looks like an excellent English translation) and clearly strongly influenced by Fallout 1 and 2. A completely new game - new engine, new story, new setting, not the same gameworld - but it's a post nuclear war survival/exploration/adventuring game like Fallout games and it's a turn-based game like FO1 and FO2 but with modern graphics. It looks tempting, but I'm not a big fan of turn-based games so I'm unsure.
One of the current weekly challenges is to kill some mobs with simple weapons. What counts as a simple weapon? I tried two types of sword, which were the only simple weapons I had on me, but neither counted.
A tangential question:
Has anyone played Atom RPG? It's set in Russia and made by a Russian dev (but available with what looks like an excellent English translation) and clearly strongly influenced by Fallout 1 and 2. A completely new game - new engine, new story, new setting, not the same gameworld - but it's a post nuclear war survival/exploration/adventuring game like Fallout games and it's a turn-based game like FO1 and FO2 but with modern graphics. It looks tempting, but I'm not a big fan of turn-based games so I'm unsure.
The first issue I have is I do not understand the 'Move Camp' challenge which us pretty much the first one and one I gave not done. Google has not helped much.
Second issue I always seem to be overweight, do you need to stire allmyiur scrap/ resources in work benches?
I seem to have acquired lots if guns, do you scrap the surplus or store?
Second issue I always seem to be overweight, do you need to stire allmyiur scrap/ resources in work benches?
I seem to have acquired lots if guns, do you scrap the surplus or store?
Soldato
Scrap guns, all of them when you are low level, any Pipe gun, pipe revolver and hunting rifle just scrap. There are loads everywhere so there is no need to store them. Also scrap junk when you are near or come across workbenches in the world, simply visit it, scrap all junk, done. Don carry heavy melee weapons or heavy guns they weigh loads and when low level dont really offer anything other than limitations.
Store you junk in your stash as its available whenever you visit a workbench, it does not need to be on your person. To build up carryweight get the the strong back perk to the highest level, use Buffout and Alcholic drinks (make sure you have Addictol as well) and equip Pocketed (+5 for each piece) or Deep Pocketed (+10 for each piece) armor pieces if you find them or build them if you have the plans.
The area around Pleasant Valley Cabins and Pleasant Valley Ski resort often spawns Pocketed and Deep Pocketed plans for various armor pieces so its a good place to server hop around.
Dont carry loads of guns or ammo though, at low level I would recommend melee with maybe a long range rifle .308 calibre. I then re-specced my build later on for Heavy Guns. Dont waste resources on building a big CAMP early on, use it on making Armor and Weapons instead and level up quicker by doing the quests as well as the events.
At Level 25 you can do the mission which allows you to build and equip the Excavator Power Armor which adds +100 carryweight and then add Calibrated Shocks for another 100 but the plan for that cost a bomb and the materials to make them a pain then rear.
Cheers mate very useful.
As I have just built a camp this info is invaluable.
Soldato
No probs, another tip is to use the 'Tag for Search' feature for important items. This will place a magnifying glass next to the junk that contains a component that you have tagged. I would recommend tagging Screws and Springs for sure, you'll use loads when crafting just about anything so its good to track what has and has not got them in.
Man of Honour
From your main pip-boy screen, you get the option to place your camp. It's Z by default on PC. That will bring up the CAMP device, which you can move around and place like you do with items you build in your camp or a workshop. That moves your camp to that location, with the CAMP device being the centre of the camp. You can pick up and move the CAMP device itself in building mode, like any other item in your camp. Done that way, it will not move your camp. Moving your camp only occurs if you choose to place your camp from within the main pip-boy screen. There are some restrictions on where you can place a camp - it can't be too close to another camp or in some areas of the map. The CAMP device will show red if you can't place it there, green if you can.
If you place a camp and then place a camp again somewhere else, you have moved the camp. Note that you have to pay every time you place a camp and the cost increases depending on the number of times you have moved the camp. It costs about 10,000 caps to move a camp 76 times.
Not in work benches. You have a stash, but it's only 800 units. You can access your stash from any train station, any red rocket station or from any stash container built in your own camp or from any stash container built in anyone else's camp (it will link to the stash of the player using it, not the stash of the player who owns the camp). The default is a Vault-Tec stash box, but there are other stash boxes that can be built in a camp. Wooden chests, lockers, all sorts of containers.
Another thing you can do to reduce weight is to bulk scrap at a tinker's workbench. That uses a small amount of plastic and reduces the storage space requirements by a small amount. It's well worth doing, especially for denser scrap like lead and steel. Note that the bulked scrap will be moved to your inventory, even if the loose scrap was in your stash. So you'll have to do a bit of management to transfer stuff between the stash and your inventory. Bulked scrap of any type can also be sold to vendors, whereas only some types of loose scrap can be sold to vendors. The reasoning is presumably that what's usually called the weight of stuff is actually a combination of weight, volume and general encumbrance, so loose stuff has a higher "weight" than neatly packaged stuff.
Scrap except in the following circumstances:
1) It's an equipment item that I might want to use in the future. For example, if I found a L10 weapon of a type I wanted to use when I was under L10, I would have kept that.
2) It's a saleable item that is worth more whole than its scrap value and I don't need the scrap material and the weight isn't important. For example, a silver fork sells for more than the silver scrap you get from scrapping the fork. The fork doesn't weigh much. I have more silver scrap than I need and it's quite common anyway. So I usually keep silver forks (and knives and bowls, etc) to sell them to vendors rather than scrapping them and selling the silver scrap to vendors for less money).
3) It's something I'll just drop instead because I'm encumbered and want to fast travel.
Otherwise, scrap. Scrapping is especially important early on because that's how you learn most mods. Every time you scrap an item, you have a chance to learn one of the mods for that item. For items I used a lot, e.g. hand made gun, I crafted dozens or hundreds of them solely for the purpose of immediately scrapping them to learn mods. Even if it's not a gun you have any intention of using, it's still worth learning mods for it partly just in case and partly because there's at least one challenge for learning plans related to weapons.
Err...I think it was in a farm to the west of the forest zone. Silvia holding? There's a Mr Handy there and an event to protect it while it sprays toxic chemicals over parts of the farm. There's a barn with a power armour spawn point in it. Or maybe it was Point Pleasant. There's a PA spawn point on a rooftop there, by the bridge.
The way power armour works is that there are various places where a power armour frame spawns and semi-random parts will spawn on it. However, if another player has been there recently and taken the frame, it won't be there until it respawns. That's probably what happened to you. If you really want to find a PA, you can go to a PA spawn point and repeatedly quit to main menu and reload, i.e. server hop, until you get the PA and all the PA pieces you want. FO76 strongly encourages server hopping and makes it essential for some things. It's an odd design choice, IMO. It's boring to players and makes no money for Bethesda, so why make it that way?
There are maps available online showing known PA spawn points.
As an aside, it's almost always a bad idea to have PA parts in your inventory or your stash. They're very heavy. It's far better to store them on a PA frame, where they magically weigh nothing.
To quote myself:
"As for the power armour, the method goes like this: Find a frame, remove any pieces from it, enter the frame. The frame is now yours. Exit the frame, put the pieces on it, collect the frame. You now have a PA frame in your inventory with pieces on it and the whole lot weighs only 10 units so it's no problem to stash it or carry it around until you're a high enough level to use it."
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After moving it only 21 times it now tells me I have to pay 160 Caps every time I want to move it. For the Atoms I am never going to move it & pay that much its just so
That question you asked earlier about the hits with the weapon for the Simple Weapon weekly challenge Grognak Axes counted for me.
This is a wonderful response, very detailed and very comprehensive. Thanks for taking the time it must have taken you to type all this out.
Will have it to hand when I go back into the game later.
Thanks again.
Next patch contains a lot of Power Armour related stuff (not quite sure why there are not many fixes it actually requires vs ALL of the other fixes the game needs urgently!). If you have a few PA frames (like me & a few other long term players) be afraid be very afraid as it sounds like there could be some major duplication issues when this patch drops as Bethesda do not usually do any noticeable QA
https://bethesda.net/community/topi...-11-maintenance-and-power-armor?language[]=en
" Hi everyone,
We’re currently planning to begin Patch 11 maintenance on Tuesday, July 16 at 10:00 a.m. EDT. This update is going to contain some significant “under the hood” improvements for the Power Armor system, which will resolve many Power Armor related bugs and make for smoother experiences with Power Armor overall.
However, as a one-time side effect of this change, some players may notice the following after maintenance concludes:
Thank you!"
https://bethesda.net/community/topi...-11-maintenance-and-power-armor?language[]=en
" Hi everyone,
We’re currently planning to begin Patch 11 maintenance on Tuesday, July 16 at 10:00 a.m. EDT. This update is going to contain some significant “under the hood” improvements for the Power Armor system, which will resolve many Power Armor related bugs and make for smoother experiences with Power Armor overall.
However, as a one-time side effect of this change, some players may notice the following after maintenance concludes:
- Power Armor pieces may have been unequipped from Power Armor Chassis you own and moved from your Stash to your inventory, or vice versa.
- Some players may receive an extra Power Armor chassis or extra Power Armor pieces in their inventory or Stash that weren’t present prior to Patch 11. These are items that didn’t save correctly when you originally collected them, and the Power Armor improvements mentioned above have restored them.
Thank you!"
Man of Honour
After moving it only 21 times it now tells me I have to pay 160 Caps every time I want to move it. For the Atoms I am never going to move it & pay that much its just so
Yes. I wasn't exaggerating when I said it cost about 10,000 caps to move a camp 76 times to do the "challenge" and get the 40 atom points. I did it because it's now much easier for me to get caps than atom points. I've done almost all of the sanely doable "challenges".
Guess I'll try a few more melee weapons then, when I go on tomorrow.
No worries. Feel free to ask any more questions as and when they occur to you. I've played FO76 for about 350 hours now so I'm a fairly good source of answers.
Next patch contains a lot of Power Armour related stuff (not quite sure why there are not many fixes it actually requires vs ALL of the other fixes the game needs urgently!). If you have a few PA frames (like me & a few other long term players) be afraid be very afraid as it sounds like there could be some major duplication issues when this patch drops as Bethesda do not usually do any noticeable QA
Ain't that the truth!
Fortunately, I only have two PA frames and I'm wearing one of them. So I'll probably only end up with 5 empty frames and 76 spare parts clogging up my inventory
So I have got my hands on my first power armour and got it back to camp, which I discovered yesterday can be damaged by enemies shooting at my storage chest, poor placement was at fault and not expecting a bunch of enemies to respawn after I had cleard the dam.
Anyway what should be my plan now that I have a power armour?
Anyway what should be my plan now that I have a power armour?
Man of Honour
They will respawn repeatedly. They can also be spawned by you visiting your camp or by any other player visiting your camp.
If it's a problem, you have two main options:
1) Move your camp to a different location, preferably one away from a spawn point (difficult to know) or in a relatively inaccessible position. My first enduring camp was on a ledge partway up the mountainous area to the south of the forest zone, not far south from the southern end of Flatwood. There was only one access point and that was up a steep track from the forest zone or down from the top of the ridge. That camp was almost never attacked. Very rarely, a protectron would take useless shots from below and once or twice a supermutant would shoot a corn plant from above.
2) Build turrets to kill attacking mobs. Machinegun turrets will probably do the job in the forest zone. If possible, elevate them so they're not accessible to melee attacks. That way, most mobs won't be able to harm them and the mobs with ranged weapons won't be able to do much damage to the turrets before the turrets kill them. Placement is key - you want at least 1 covering all possible lines of attack and it's useful to put up barricades with a turrent covering them so attackers will get shot repeatedly while trying to break through the barricade. Or you can abuse the nonsensical ingame physics and build your entire camp above the ground with a stairway ending a few feet above the ground so you can jump onto it. Mobs can't jump, so that style of camp is immune to mobs that don't have ranged weapons and can't fly.
Later on, missile turrets are the thing to have. They are far more powerful than the other turrets and will mince most mobs. I have 8 in my camp, with every line of attack covered by at least 3. It's sometimes attacked by a group of L68 supermutants, which do minor damage with their ranged weapons. Only a scorchbeast is any significant threat and those are very rare in the area of the savage divide where I have my camp.
Try to gather a complete set of L25 T45 parts before you reach L25, stashing them on your frame as you get them. Also, gather a few fusion cores. Perhaps get another frame or 2 to hold other PA parts. The frame itself, without armour parts, isn't much use. Some, but not much. At L25, with a L25 T45 PA set, you will probably be able to do the quest to learn how to make Excavator power armour. I forget the details, but you start it by reading a poster about the armour. You can find a few in the Ash Heap area for sure. Since the quest starts at Garrahan Mining HQ and there's an excavator PA poster there, it's a good place to go for the quest. You can find more details online, of course. Many players, myself included, use Excavator PA exclusively despite the fact that most other PA gives more protection against ballistic and energy attacks. A full set of Excavator PA gives +100 carry weight and that's useful. Also, it gives a lot of protection and some players (myself included) consider it enough and consider the extra carry weight more useful than the extra protection. It's also by far the easiest and cheapest (it's free) PA to learn to craft yourself, so you don't have to rely on finding parts. You can craft new, significantly better, Excavator PA at L35 and L45. I am still using L45 Excavator PA (with calibrated shocks for another +100 carry weight) exclusively, despite having a full set of L50 X-01. I scrapped my full set of L50 T-60. You'll need some Black Titanium to make it - that can be mined by claiming a workshop with a black titanium deposit or scavenged from killing mole miners and scrapping loot from them. Welch is probably the best early location to do that. Excavator PA is also very durable and so rarely needs repairing.
Some players don't use PA at all. Heavily modded max level legendary unpowered armour can provide enough protection and it's much nicer to move in it. Without the right legendary effects, though, it's pants compared to PA, even Excavator PA.
Bottom line is, do what you find fun. It might not be the most efficient method, but having fun is the point. Run around in your underpants with a fancy hat if that gives you a laugh.
Soldato
Power Armor Frame, you need one to stick Power Armor pieces to. You get inside the frame to operate within the Power Armor.
Man of Honour
Sure. The way PA works in Fallout lore is that there's a powered exoskeleton with the motors, power supply and all the basic stuff to make PA work. That's the frame. Pieces of armour are attached to the frame to provide the actual armour.
A PA frame without any armour pieces attached looks something like this:
In FO76, when you find PA at a PA spawn point, it will be the frame in a PA workstation and it might or might not have any armour pieces attached to it.
As for my earlier silly comment about running around in your underpants, here's a photo from early in my game I took because it gave me a laugh at the time:
Some more...shortly after I reached L25 and started wearing power armour, I was exploring, found this and thought "a long road ahead", so I took a photo:
There are some disturbing little bits of environmental storytelling in the game, like this one. Which I encountered at night by the eerie glow of my pip-bot light, which made it extra creepy.
My first camp. This kind of very simple structure is what's expected in FO76:
But if you're very determined and willing to wrestle with the abysmal building in FO76 you can make more elaborate structures:
Excavator PA with the coal black skin looks badass IMO:
And it's the famous musician, Pantsman!
I think I still need a plan/blueprint for a frame as it has a lock icon in my workshop thing, cheers.
Man of Honour
You've misunderstood a bit, which is understandable because the naming of the things is rather less than ideal for people who aren't already familiar with PA in Fallout.
There are 3 things specifically related to PA in Fallout 76 (and, directly or indirectly, other Fallout games):
1) PA workstation. This is the thing you see in your workshop build menu, the thing that's locked. It's not the PA itself. It's the workstation used to make, repair or modify PA. It's the same sort of thing as the armor, weapon, tinker and chemistry workbenches. The reason I say the naming is rather less than ideal is because the PA workstation is in the shape of a frame and a suit of PA visually fits inside it so in that sense it is a frame. But it's not called a frame. It's a PA workstation or workbench. It's obviously not a bench, but the othe workstations are benches so the word is sometimes used for all workstations in Fallout. Not great naming, but that's how it is.
If you look at the 3rd of the photos I just posted of my old camp, you can see my workstation area with a PA workstation in the left foreground. Mine has a fancy paint job because I liked it that way. There are a couple of designs you can choose from.
You're right in thinking that you need a plan for it. You'll get one by completing the quest to get the Excavator PA. Until then (and after then, if you like), you can use any of the fairly numerous PA workstations scattered throughout the gameworld.
Unsurprisingly, the game doesn't explain how you use a PA workstation. You have to get into your PA, walk to close to the PA workstation, get out of your PA, look at the PA workstation and select the "craft/modify" option (or maybe it's "make/modify", something alone those lines).
2) PA frame. This is part of the PA itself. The first picture I posted above, the small one not in spoiler tags, shows a PA frame. From FO4, IIRC, but it shows the general idea. It's the thing you get into, the powered exoskeleton, the things that make PA work.
3) PA pieces. These are the armour pieces that you attach to the PA frame and which provide the armour itself.
Since PA is essentially a vehicle, your personal tank, I'll use a car as an analogy:
PA frame --> car chassis, engine, transmission, wiring, wheels, etc. The parts that make the vehicle work.
PA pieces --> car body panels (but heavily armoured ones).
PA workstation --> vehicle lift in a garage, in that it positions and holds the vehicle for you to work on it.
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