Bethesda’s long-awaited Fallout 76 hasn’t even been out for a full two days, and players have already found a way to cheat the system when it comes to obtaining nuke codes.
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This report from Kotaku notes that, usually, finding nuke codes can be a complicated process — and then there’s decrypting them as well. However, players that have managed to crack these codes without decrypting have begun offering special release programs to do the ciphering, so players can obtain the right codes and get straight to nuking.
One in particular is called NukaCrypt, which can be found here. Created by a person who’s only known as Waffle_cop, the program “takes the partial nuclear codes players have collected and spits out the possible decrypted one,” according to the article. “Nuclear codes in Fallout 76 use a keyword cipher, which means the letters are coded using an alphabet based on a unique word that changes every week.
“While the keyword is slowly revealed over the course of each week inside a surveillance room in the Enclave Bunker, tools like NukaCrypt only need a few letters to successfully brute-force the problem by bringing conventional code breaking methods to bear on Fallout 76‘s unique setup.”
But with this, “it’s also taken some of the magic out of the game’s nukes in the process,” author Ethan Gach warns. “Collecting fragments of nuke codes can be an ordeal in itself, since they can only be found on the bodies of Feral Ghoul Officers that randomly appear throughout the map. Since there are three different missile silos in the game and each uses unique codes, you can end up needing to collect a lot of codes before getting a full set. Accessing the silo terminals to input the codes also requires keycards that need to be collected separately from downed Enclave dropships. But with the bulk of the decryption out of the way, the process has become a lot more streamlined, so much so that some players are worried Fallout 76‘s end game won’t be as long-lived as they’d hoped.”
Some fans are even commenting that this is breaking the game, pointing them directly at Waffle_cop.
The article has more details on how nukes have been unleashed, including one that was fired at the fissures, creating an interesting scenario as a result. You can watch that video below, located at Nickaroo93’s YouTube channel.
You can read more of the article here. Do you think this “cheat” system goes too far when it comes to nukes?
Fallout 76 is available now for Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC.
