Fallout 76 Just Gave Players a New Endgame Challenge to Try

Fallout 76 introduces a new endgame raid as part of the Gleaming Depths update.

Bethesda is now talking more about Fallout 76's upcoming Gleaming Depths update that's arriving later this year, and more than that, it's also allowing Fallout players to finally try out some more of that content. Part of the Gleaming Depths update includes a new type of endgame challenge in the form of a raid where you work with other players to take on bosses within the Gleaming Depths themselves. The Gleaming Depths raid and more features from the next major update are on the public test servers now for Fallout 76 players to try for themselves.

Raids have sort of been in Fallout 76 in the past after they were introduced as Vault Raids back around the Nuclear Winter days, but this raid is a different kind of experience. It's supposed to be much harder with some of the raid bosses specifically designed to "punish some types of character builds," according to Bethesda, so most players will pretty much have to work with others to complete the raid.

While some players will inevitably tackle these raids solo and boast of their victories afterwards, Bethesda is approaching this raid with a teamwork-focused approach, and as such, has added a few new featured to support players in their raids. First, Fallout 76 players will have to "take on unique roles" during the encounter which sounds almost like a class-based system so that everyone knows what their responsibility is. Another feature being added which should be beneficial to players overall -- not just those who are taking on the raid -- is a contextual ping system which is geared towards those who don't want to use voice comms as much. We've seen contextual pings in other games like Apex Legends and more used to great effect, so it's about time that Fallout 76 got a more robust system as well.

Seeing how all of these are new features for Fallout 76 players to get used to and also considering the fact that Bethesda didn't actually preview anything about the new bosses so that those could be surprises, players are probably going to fail a raid or two before they get the hang of it. The good news is that these raids aren't gated by time in anyway like they might be in other games, at least not on the public test server. There's no time restriction at all, so after you finish a raid whether you were victorious or not, you can hop right back into another one to try for more rewards.

To start the new quest to get you going in a raid in Fallout 76, you only have to head to the Gleaming Depths within the Ash Heap which will be denoted by a new raid marker. You can bring up to four people in a raid, Bethesda said, though since this is only on the test servers for now, be aware that things can and probably will change between now and the time the Gleaming Depths update actually goes live.