Fallout 76 – Important Info and Mechanics the Game Doesn’t Tell You

Learn important things like; repairing armor and weapons with scrap, sharing perk cards with your teammates, unlocking weapon and armor mods, and the importance of grouping!

Important Info and Mechanics the Game Doesn’t Tell You

Opening

Fallout 76 has many extremely important mechanics that are easily missable or the game barely skims over. Most of this is due to how much there is in the game, while there are a few instances where I think it’s malice on the developer’s part. So, I’m here to make sure you understand all the easily missable things!

Special Point Limit

You probably see level 600 players and think to yourself “Man, I can’t wait to have 600 special points!” Well, I’ve got some bad news for you. You no longer gain special points after level 50. This means that the max number of points you can get is 56. Also special stats are capped at 15 points each to prevent a 56 point stack.

Starting at level 51, each time you level, you’ll be giving a choice between getting a perk card of your choice or transferring one skill point.

The Importance of Grouping

So you probably bought Fallout 76 and was like “Man, I’m not gonna group ever!” You should, every single time you login. The group you want to always join or start is a building group. With a full group of four, you will get +4 int which gives you a lot of bonus XP. The chances you’ll ever interact with these people is very little, but the bonus XP is worth it. People have crunched the numbers and discovered that the bonus int that the building group gives is better than the bonus XP from events that the events group gives. Bond is just a mechanic that prevents people from abusing joining and leaving. If you join a group or someone new joins, the bond bar will slowly fill until it’s maxed, then that person can benefit for the group and vice versa. You also get free perks and free fast travel locations from your teammates as well. To join or start a group, open your map and open the social interface.

Sharing Perk Cards

Have you ever been in a group and noticed a perk card you didn’t put on there with a chain on the cost?

That’s a perk that a groupmate is sharing with you.When you’re fully bonded with a groupmate, you will get whatever perk card they have chosen to share. You will keep these until they leave the group or you decide to leave the group.

Because of this mechanic and the fact that the game doesn’t tell you about it, it’s important that you go in and manually choose a perk to share. In order to share a perk, you need 3x the charisma level as the number of points a perk is worth. So a perk with a 1 point requirement to equip requires 3 charisma to share. A perk with a 4 point requirement to equip would require 12 charisma to share.

To share a perk, go into your perk cards and click Share at the bottom once you have the charisma requirement.

Important: It’s recommended that you share DR, grouping benefits, and damage perks and never weight perks. As soon as you leave a group, everyone else loses that perk. If you were say, sharing a perk like “Bear Arms lvl 3” which reduces the weight of heavy weapons by 90%, someone could’ve been packing their bags with junk since they now had 80 extra weight to use, and once you leave they’re suddenly over encumbered and in a bad spot.

Free Fast Travel

Just a small section. You can fast travel to any of the following places for 0 caps.

  • Vault 76.
  • Your C.A.M.P.
  • Your Groupmates’ C.A.M.P.
  • Your Survival Tent (P2W).
  • Your Groupmates’ Survival Tent (P2W).
  • Certain Events with a detailed window (See below pic).

You can sometimes jump around between free spots on your way to your destination to cheapen fast travel to your intended location as the cost goes off of distance.

Repairing Weapons and Armor for Scrap

This is the main thing in this guide that I feel like the game doesn’t explain for malice reasons (to get you to buy repair kits)

To repair armor and weapons:

  • Go to the respective repair bench and click Modify/Repair

  • Select Inspect/Repair on the item you want to repair

  • Select Workbench repair

  • Pay the fee. Note: Higher level gear requires rarer materials like Ballista Fiber.

Unlocking Weapons and Armor Mods without Plans

This is another one the game doesn’t explain. You’ll notice that throughout your travels, the weapons and armor plans you get are VERY specific. What you don’t know is that every time you scrap a piece of armor or a weapon at a bench, you’ll unlock a random new mod for that item.

  • Go to any bench and click Scrap Items

  • Use the Scrap option on the respective item

  • In the upper left corner, It’ll tell you what mod you just unlocked for that item in the future.

Storage Space and You!

Your stash is where you store all of your items and junk when they’re not in your inventory. Anytime you need to use junk to repair something, no matter where you are, it is taken from you stash. You can access your stash anywhere you get this prompt.

Note: If you see this anywhere on your travels, feel free to use it, even another person’s base as a stash is universal. Others can’t access your stash, and you can’t access theirs.

You’re limited to 800 Lbs of loot in your stash. This is why it’s important to do a few things to manage this limited space.

  1. Always scrap all junk at a workbench before depositing in your stash. The components weigh less than the items.
  2. Don’t store weapons and armor for too long as you will outlevel them.
  3. If you don’t need a legendary item, go to a train station and grind it up for Legendary Script.
  4. Some junk items like Deathclaw Hands, Bloodbug Proboscis, and Fiberglass Skis are just some of a few junk items used for crafting other items, so the Scrap All Junk button will not automatically destroy them for their components. Every once in a while, check your junk in your stash for items like these. If you don’t want them for crafting, you’ll need to manually break them down.
  5. Get rid of junk you don’t use. You don’t need 200 Raw Fertilizer or Acid for anything. The big stuff you need are screws, gears, adhesive, steel, wood, and aluminum just to name a few.

The Perk Card Shuffle

Unless you’re running a specific build or doing late-game stuff, you’ll want mostly weight reducing and survival perks.

Remember: You can swap in and out your perk cards at any time. You don’t need to have a perk equipped that increases the amount of ammo you craft at a workbench by 100% all the time. You should get it and upgrade it fully so that you can swap to it when you are crafting ammo. This goes for any crafting perk. Make sure you get them as double output on crafted items and high level modding is important for endgame, but don’t use them until you actually need them, then switch back when you’re done with them.

Upgrading Lockpicking and Hacking

The game doesn’t explain this, but to get higher versions of lockpicking and hacking, you need to put points in Perception and Intelligence, then the perk cards will start appearing.

Also to note, each level of hacking and lockpicking is its own card that can’t be ranked up, so you can upgrade and downgrade your level at anytime by adding and removing each card.

Item Worth and Selling Items

Selling items to other players isn’t very common nor easy. Most of the time, you’ll put items in your C.A.M.P vendor and they’ll sit for weeks. An important thing to note is that item worth is meaningless. The below plans aren’t worth 500 caps. It’s worth maybe 25 to a low level player just to unlock, maybe 50 to a higher level player. Meanwhile legendary items can be worth a lot more than it says. The key thing will legendary items is that the more stars it is, means it’s worth more, and it is only worth something if it has good perks on it. Expect expensive legendary items to sit for a long time. All junk legendary items should just be ground up for script.

Volodymyr Azimoff
About Volodymyr Azimoff 8048 Articles
I love games and I live games. Video games are my passion, my hobby and my job. My experience with games started back in 1994 with the Metal Mutant game on ZX Spectrum computer. And since then, I’ve been playing on anything from consoles, to mobile devices. My first official job in the game industry started back in 2005, and I'm still doing what I love to do.

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