Fallout 76 Beginner’s Guide: Top 10 Tips & Tricks (2024)

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Penned by Gibson Vasela

My name is Gibson Vasela. I am a freelance writer who has been playing video games for almost 20 years now. I play all kinds of games, but I especially love immersive sims and RPGs.

Reviewed by Benjamin Barr

Fallout 76 is one of the most popular live-service games out right now. While it may have had a rough launch and still has a lot to be desired, there are still plenty of good reasons to play this most recent entry in the Fallout series. And there isn’t a better time than now to try this game out. So if you are one of those people who want to give this game a shot, you’ve come to the right place. Here in this article, we are going to be giving you 10 beginner tips and tricks for Fallout 76! We’ll give you advice on how to survive in the wasteland and how to make the most out of your playtime.

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Fallout 76 Beginner Tips & Tricks

Without further ado, let’s jump right into the article!

1/10

Scrap Weapons to Unlock Weapon Mods

If you first put a weapon into a weapons workbench at the start of your playthrough, you will see that there are no mods available for it at all. Getting new weapon mods in Fallout 76 works a bit differently than Fallout 4. In that game, all you needed to upgrade your weapon was a weapons workbench, the right materials, and for certain mods, the right perks.

While you still need all of these things to upgrade your weapons in Fallout 76, you also need to unlock each individual weapon mod as well. This can be done by simply scrapping a weapon at a weapons workbench. When you do this, the game will unlock a random weapon mod for that particular gun. So if you want to unlock a suppressor for your lever-action rifle, for example, you will need to keep collecting and scraping lever-action rifles until you randomly unlock the suppressor.

Due to the fact that you need to scrap a lot of weapons to unlock every mod for a gun — as well as how much RNG is involved — it’s a good idea to scrap as many weapons as you can early on. Even if you don’t think you’ll use a particular weapon, it’s a good idea to pick it up and then scrap it right away. You may not have enough resources to get all the mods you want early on. But you’ll be glad you did it later.

2/10

Spam VATS to Look for Enemies

As you are traveling through the wasteland, you are bound to encounter a wide variety of unique enemies. Many of these enemies are hidden from plain sight, jumping out at you to attack when you get close. And many more of them will blend into the terrain, making them difficult to see right away. This isn’t exactly unheard of for a Fallout game, and many players have encountered this sort of thing in the past.

So what was their solution? To spam the button that activates VATS! If there are any enemies nearby, the game will lock onto them and highlight them for you to see. What this does is allow players to quickly and easily spot any nearby enemies in an area. While VATS works very differently in Fallout 76, this neat little trick still works just as well. I recommend doing this whenever you go into a dimly lit area or into a place where you suspect there are enemies hiding or blending into the terrain.

3/10

Complete as Many Events as You Can

Throughout your adventures in the Appalachian wasteland, you are bound to be invited to one of several public events. These are interesting quests that can be completed either by yourself or with other players. After completing an objective as a team, you will be rewarded with XP and various other goods! This can include caps, stimpacks, and much much more.

Completing these events is generally pretty easy and they are a great way to get some rewards early on. They also allow you to meaningfully interact with other players, which can be a lot of fun if you love playing with other people. Because of all this, I highly recommend completing as many of them as you can! You can find them by looking for the yellow hexagon on your map.

Once you find one, you can select it to fast travel to that area. An event will also be added to your quest log automatically if you happen to be walking near one. One of the best events for you to complete is Feed the People! Completing this event will give you a total of five meat stews. This is a really great consumable item that never spoils and sates both your hunger and thirst bar!

4/10

Create Blueprints to Make Setting up CAMP Easier

Among many of the changes Fallout 76 brought to the table, without a doubt one of the best changes was the overhaul of the settlement system. Not only is the UI much better, but there are significant improvements made to how you build your homestead. One such way is through the use of blueprints. This system allows you to highlight any structure you’ve built and save it as a “blueprint.” With this blueprint, you use to quickly re-build the structure as many times as you’d like!

This is great if you are trying to build a homestead with multiple buildings and want to get it done fast. But if you are a new player still exploring the map who hasn’t decided to settle down in one particular place yet, there’s another great reason why you should use the blueprint system. You can quickly build yourself a basic shack with a bed, stash box, and all the crafting benches in the game.

Then you can save that as a blueprint. Next time you’re ready to set up camp somewhere, you can instantaneously place down the blueprint in order to get set up right away. This is especially useful if you have stuff that you need to scrap but haven’t been able to find a workbench. You can simply set one up right where you are standing and immediately store everything in your stash box!

5/10

Visit Other Players’ Camps to Trade

One of the best aspects of Fallout 76 in my opinion is the trading between players. Almost any item in the entire game can be bought and sold at a player-owned vendor! These vendors can be set up at any player’s CAMP. They are not operated by NPCs, but instead are vending machines. They can be used automatically just by interacting with them.

Here at these vendors, you can get rare items such as three-star legendary weapons, mutations, and crafting components. To find a CAMP that has a vendor, open your map and look for the icons on the map that symbolize another player’s CAMP. When you hover over one of the icons, a box will appear that informs you of what items are being sold at this camp. Then just fast travel there and find the vendor to start trading!

6/10

Fast Travel Wisely

For the next of our tips on this Fallout 76 beginner’s guide, let’s talk a bit about fast traveling. When you fast-travel in Fallout 76, you have the option of going to any location that you have previously visited. And when you select a location and fast travel to, you will pay a fee of caps. This fee increases the farther away you are from a given location.

Interestingly, there are certain locations in the game that you can fast-travel to completely free of charge, regardless of how far away you are from it. This includes Vault 76, Foundation, The Crater, Fort Atlas, your CAMP, and the CAMPS of your friends. Because of this, I recommend that if you are trying to fast travel to a faraway location, you first travel to a location close to it.

Then, when you spawn in at one of the previously mentioned locations, you can fast travel again to your actual destination. This will save you some caps! Veteran players won’t need to do this, as caps are pretty common in the late-game. But for those of you who are just starting out, saving every cap you can is going to be invaluable.

7/10

Keep Your Hunger & Thirst Sated

A returning feature from Fallout: New Vegas and Fallout 4’s survival mode, in Fallout 76, all players have a hunger and thirst bar. These meters will slowly go down over time, and they require players to stay well-fed and well-hydrated in order to stop them from getting too low. In the past, these meters staying too low would give the player various de-buffs. But this has since been reworked completely.

These de-buffs have been completely removed, meaning you will not be punished for ignoring your hunger and thirst bar. Instead, the game will give you various buffs if you manage to keep both these meters satisfied. These buffs include giving you more health, more SPECIAL stats, bonus AP regeneration, and more! All of this means it is very beneficial to keep your character sated at all times.

You can do this simply by eating and drinking regularly to keep the meters high. Food and water are pretty common in the wasteland. You can collect dirty water at a river or lake and hunt wild animals for their meat. Then you can boil the water and cook the meat using some wood at a cooking station. Do this often and your character will be happy and healthy!

8/10

Only Carry What You Need… Unless It’s Junk

Fallout 76 has a lot of items. Like, a lot of items. So much so that a lot of your time — especially late-game — will just be spent managing your inventory. Because of this, I recommend being mindful of the things that you are picking up. You should always take things like stimpacks, purified water, and any and all junk items if you are just starting out. And of course, weapons that you plan to scrap later (see the first tip).

But when it comes to certain items — chems, ammo for guns you don’t use, food that you don’t need, etc. — it’s best to leave it on the ground. Early game, you should definitely be picking up every junk item that you can find. This is because you will need the materials. And junk items can be easily scraped and stored in your stash box with just a few button presses.

For most other items in the game, you should not be picking it up unless you’re sure that you need it. Trust me, it will save you a lot of time and frustration later.

9/10

Meet Other Players on Forums

Fallout 76 was obviously designed as a multiplayer title. While it is true that much of the game’s content can be done entirely solo, there are certain parts of the game that were clearly designed with the intention of having other players help you out. Because of this, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to reach out to the forms every now and then when you are having difficulty with a certain enemy or quest.

I’ve found that it’s easiest to find other players on r/Fallout 76 and the Steam forms. You can describe what issues you are having and ask higher-leveled players to party up with you and help you out if you are stuck. Another great thing about meeting other players on the forms is that it’s a good way to purchase rare items.

There is another Fallout 76 subreddit called r/Fallout76Marketplace. It is different from the previously mentioned subreddit in that it specializes in trading with other players. Sellers will advertise items they have for sale, and buyers can comment so they can meet up in-game and make the deal. You can also leave a post asking if anyone has a specific item for sale.

This is a great way to get a hold of hard-to-obtain items easily. I was able to snag the Hunter’s Long Coat — one of the rarest apparel items in the game — in a very short amount of time by making a post asking around for it.

10/10

Complete Challenges to Earn SCORE and Atoms

Last but not least in our Fallout 76 beginner’s guide, we recommend that you complete as many challenges as you can! Challenges are in-game goals that can be completed for various rewards. You can earn SCORE. This is used to level up your scoreboard, helping you to earn special in-game cosmetics and rewards. You can also earn Atoms, a currency used to buy cosmetics in the Atomic Shop.

SCORE challenges can be completed daily, while Atomic Shop challenges are one-time only. These challenges will range from things like completing events, visiting another player’s cellar, killing specific enemies, etc. You can view all the challenges by going to the pause menu and selecting “Challenges” which is just under “Atomic Shop.”

I recommend completing at least one or two daily challenges every time you log on. These are normally very easy to do and are great for helping you to unlock some rare rewards. The one-time challenges that unlock Atom can usually be completed just by playing the game normally. So don’t worry too much about those if you are just starting out.

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We hope that you found our beginner tips and tricks for Fallout 76 informative! What are some of your own Fallout 76 tips? Be sure to let us know down in the comments, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more regular Fallout 76 guides, rankings, and other content.

Happy gaming!