New ‘Fallout 76’ Update Is Huge for the Game’s Balance, Slashed Repair Costs

As promised, Bethesda is starting off the new year with a pretty heft patch to help balance Fallout 76 before the new content drops start rolling in. With new events, PvP play, and vaults on the horizon, it was important for the studio to make the game a much more stable affair.

The latest patch, available now on PC and coming next week to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, focuses primarily on balance and stability tweaks. As for more general changes, things like the Power Armor light being brighter, a major performance overhaul, and changing aspects to the crafting were key:

• Charging Barrels mod: Increased the Gatling Laser’s damage bonus from the Charging Barrels mod.
• Glowing Ones : Glowing Ones will no longer grant erroneous large amounts of XP. DevNote: Glowing Ones were granting Large Boss XP rewards, making them highly exploitable when combined with Nuke Zones.
• Crafting: Lowered chance of Power Generators of spawning fusion cores.
• Crafting: Set minimum component cost of workshop buildings requiring steel, wood or plastic to 2.
• Bobby Pins: Reduced the weight value of Bobby Pins from 0.1 to 0.001.

Some social aspects were improved as well, including alerting other players when someone couldn’t join their team due to being still inside of the vault. A plethora of other bug fixes were also included, all of which you can find below:

Stability

• [Xbox One] Performance: Blowing up the mainframe core stations will no longer cause a performance drop.
• [PC] Infinite Load: Fixed an infinite load screen that could occur when attempting to join a server on PC.
• Crash: Fixed a crash that can occur when opening the Pip-Boy.
• Performance: Improved client performance when viewing a nuke explode.
• Performance: Fixed an issue where reading a note would cause the background to freeze.
• Performance: Increased performance in areas with a lot of scorched statues.

General

• Systems: Fixed an issue where items could be duplicated.
• [PC] Controls: Resetting controls to default no longer causes most Activate prompts to become unusable.
• [PC] Controls: Fixed an issue when controls in the Settings menu aren’t updated when connecting/disconnecting a gamepad controller.
• Systems: Fixed an issue that allowed armor mods to reduce carry weight past intended values.
• Systems: Rads will no longer completely be removed when by dying repeatedly.
• Systems: Address an issue where players could load into geometry after fast travel.
• Systems: Fixed an issue where bashing an enemy with the Railway Rifle or Crossbow would add the projectile to the enemy’s inventory.

Graphics

• Animations: Lever-Action rifle now only reloads the correct number of ammo.
• Effects: Consumed Berry Mentats now correctly show purple glowing auras around players and creatures.

Crafting

• Crafting: Level 25 armor and above now requires ballistic fiber to craft.
• Repairing: Component quantities required to repair mid to high level armor and weapons have been reduced up to 20%. DevNote: – Repair costs scale with level, and there’s room to reduce costs at higher levels.
• Crafting: Ballistic Fiber becomes required for armor at level 25 instead of previously at level 20
• Crafting: Updated Bulk Acid crafting recipe to require 15 Acid.
• Crafting: Fixed an issue that prevented players with the correctly equipped perk cards from being able to craft Antibiotics and Disease Cure (Savage Divide).
• Crafting: “Hardened Mass” will no longer be scrapped when “Scrap All Junk” is selected.
• Repairing: Overall repair costs have been lowered for both weapons and armor.
• Crafting: Ballistic Fiber also is now required for repairing armor at level 25 and above instead of previously at level 20.
• Workshops: Fixed issues where enemies at some Workshop locations would spawn underground, making the Workshops unclaimable. Locations include: Charleston Landfill, Lakeside Cabins, and Sunshine Meadows.
• Workshops: Fixed an issue where objects in Workshops would sometimes float in the air when the Workshop menu was closed.
• Workshops: Destroying the hay feeder along with the fertilizer collector will no longer prevent them from being repaired.
• C.A.M.P./Workshops: Placing Power Armor workbenches on foundation will no longer cause them to place on the floor/ceiling above. Note: There is a fix for this issue coming, but it was erroneously added to these notes.
• C.A.M.P./Workshops: Fixed an issue that would cause a “not supported” error when attempting to place a tall or short post under a roof.
• Blueprints: Fixed an issue with the cost of wires not being factored in when storing blueprints.
• Crafting: Fixed an issue where certain objects aren’t able to be scrapped through the stored tab.
• Workshops: Fixed an issue where certain stored items obtained from claiming a Public Workshop can’t be placed again.
• Crafting: Fixed a visual issue with scrapping items in Crafting Menus.
• Crafting: Fixed an issue where mods cost less steel than what’s displayed in Crafting Menus.
• Crafting: Fixed a display issue where incorrect number of Junk items can appear in Crafting Menus.

Challenges

• Daily Challenges: Fixed several daily challenges that were not being offered on some days. Dev Note: These include “Pick Wild Flowers”, “Harvest Mutfruit Plants”, and “Harvest Wild Plants and Fungi”.
• Daily Challenge: Fixed an issue that prevented some wild flowers from incrementing in the “Pick Wild Flowers” Daily Challenge.
• Weekly Challenge: Fixed an issue that caused the weekly challenge “Complete Quests and Events in a Group while at Night” to work during the day and only recognize events. It will now look for quests and events that are completed at night.
• Weekly Challenge: Edited the description of a Weekly Challenge to correctly reflect the direction.
• Sub-Challenge: Fixed an issue that prevented certain photomode challenges from completing as expected.
• Sub-Challenge: Fixed an issue that prevented certain Bobblehead challenges from completing as expected.
• Sub-Challenge: Fixed an issue that caused a challenge to be marked as complete incorrectly.
• Lifetime Challenges: Fixed an issue where some lifetime challenges would revert progress after logging out.

Enemies

• Robots: Fixed an issue that would cause robots to respawn too frequently in Whitesprings.
• Scorched: Fixed an issue where Wasteland Whisperer could affect Scorched. Dev Note: Wasteland Whisperer can no longer be used to pacify Scorched.
• Scorched: Shooting a Scorched in the leg will no longer break their weapon causing them to not attack the player.
• Scorched: Fixed an issue where Scorched may be using invisible weapons or not appearing to fire their weapon correctly.
• Scorched: Fixed an issue that caused floating debris and disassembled guns to appear in Scorched hands when killed.

Items

• Weapons: Fixed an issue that would sometimes cause plasma weapons, flamers and flamer mods, and weapons with explosive bullet mods to not do damage to other players and creatures.
• Armor: Fixed an issue that would cause players exiting power armor to sometimes appear stretched and unable to reenter power armor.
• Armor: Addressed several issues that would prevent players from exiting power armor and at times cause the Pip-Boy to become unavailable.
• Weapons: Fixed an issue that prevented the Gauss Rifle from being identified as a rifle. Now rifle-related perks can be applied to the Gauss Rifle.
• Ammo Vending Machines: Fixed an issue where some Ammo Vending Machines were only selling repair components.
• Weapons: Legendary Hunting Rifles will now drop as loot.
• Weapons: Fixed an issue where the Walking Cane provided as many resources when scrapped as it costs to craft.
• Armor: Fixed an issue where some Pocketed Chest Pieces were resetting players back to their base carry weight upon logging back into the game.
• Armor: Fixed an issue where players can leave behind an unusable chassis after exiting Power Armor.
• Magazine: Consuming Scouts’ Life 6 magazine now correctly depletes food and water stats at a slower rate.
• Weapons: M79 Grenade Launcher is now considered an explosive weapon in perks instead of being incorrectly considered a shotgun.
• Fusion Cores: Fixed an issue where Fusion Core generators were producing cores at a slower rate than intended. They are now back to 8 cores/hr.
• Magazine: Fixed the Backwoodsman 2 magazine to appropriately boost Tomahawk damage.
• Mirelurk Eggs: Harvesting Mirelurk Eggs will not result in two separate eggs.
• Weapons: Fixed an issue where several combat rifle automatic receiver mods were prevented from receiving automatic rifle perk bonuses.
• Weapons: Fixed an issue where multiple weapons were able to be equipped at the same time.
• Weapons: The Vampire weapon mod effect now works only when hitting living targets as intended.
• Armor: Fixed an issue where Power Armor parts would display on top of previously equipped parts.
• Weapons: Fixed an issue where bashing an enemy with certain weapons would add the projectile to the enemy’s inventory.
• Armor: Fusion Cores will no longer replenish to full charge upon joining another world.

Quests/Events

• “Get the Supply Drop”: “Get the Supply Drop” Event now will remove holotape once used with supply crate belonging to the player that requested the Supply Drop.
• Quest: Daily Missile Silo quest rewards are now correctly obtainable only once per day.
• “Line in the Sand”: Fixed an issue with the quest, Line in the Sand where the Sonic Generator already being repaired prevented the player from completing the quest. The event will now progress to the next stage if the Sonic Generator is already repaired when the Event begins.
• “Recruitment Blues”: Fixed an issue with the objective, “find Junk Mail” that prevented players who switched worlds from completing the quest.
• “Second Helpings”: The following location map markers are now available after finishing “Second Helpings”: Slocum’s Joe, Gauley Mine, Morgantown Trainyard, and Morgantown Airport.

Perks

• All Night Long: All Night Long now decreases hunger and thirst growth at night.
• Overdrive: Fixed an issue where Overdrive was not increasing critical chance % properly.
• Quack Surgeon: Quack Surgeon no longer allows for reviving hostile players.
• Strange in Numbers: Strange in Numbers effects now scale properly with multiple teammates (with and without mutations).
• Refractor: Fixed an error where each rank of Refactor is doubling energy resistance instead of adding +20 as indicated on the Perk card description.
• Fireproof: Fireproof now reduces explosion and flame attack damage by 15% per rank.
• Happy Camper: Happy Camper now functions correctly whether the player is inside or outside of their C.A.M.P. when the perk conditions are refreshed.
• Butcher’s Bounty: Fixed an issue that allowed for the Butcher’s Bounty perk to trigger again on an already-searched creature.
• Homebody: The Homebody perk now works as intended when at a claimed Public Workshop.
• Party Boy/Girl: Party Boy/Girl now effects active alcohol effects on the player.

PvP

• Teams: Teamed players can no longer unfairly block an attacking player when that player attempts to overtake a workshop. Your teammate will enter PVP with the attacking player.
• Turrets: Turrets at Workshops will now attack players the Workshop owner is engaged in PvP with.

Social

• Systems: Blocking a player now also mutes their proximity chat.
• Trade: Fixed an issue where players could view another player’s inventory before they can respond to a trade invite.
• Trade: We no longer let trades occur before the requested player has consented to trade.
• Trade: Fixed an issue where the Stash transfer menu would appear empty after previously trading with another player.
• Trade: Stimpaks with a price value set to zero will no longer prompt “use” in the Trade Menu instead of “accept”.
• Trade: Changed caps limit for player-to-player trades from 5000 to 25000.

Sounds

• Chat: Fixed an issue where voice chat would not always function properly upon exiting the Atomic Shop.
• Atomic Shop: Fixed an issue where some Atomic Shop content was missing sound effects.
• Atomic Shop: “Waving Santa” sound effect will now only play when in “on” state.

UI

• General: Players no longer will receive a pop-up for the Atomic Shop when Respawning for the first time.
• [PC] Resolution: Perk Pack opening screen now extends to the edge on 21:9 monitors.
• Atomic Shop: Players in the Atomic Shop when the Atomic Shop is taken offline will now be notified and taken back to the Main Menu.
• [PC] FOV: Fixed an issue with scoped weapons zooming incorrectly when the default Field of View setting has been changed.
• PvP: Fixed an issue where the PVP prompt would appear repeatedly while the same players engaged in combat with each other.

Source: Bethesda