5 Best Legendary Perks in Fallout 76 (2024)

Image: Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks via HGG

Human Made

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

One of the most interesting new additions that came to Fallout 76 is legendary perks. These are special, highly sought-after perk cards that provide BIG bonuses to your player character. These bonuses can vary greatly in what they do, and they can be instrumental in making your build the best it can be.

But out of all the legendary perks in Fallout 76, which ones are the best? Which ones are must-haves, and which ones are just not worth getting? We will be going over all of this and much more in today’s article for the best legendary perks in Fallout 76.

Legendary Perks Overview

Legendary Perk Cards Slots in Fallout 76 — *Image: Bethesda Game Studios, Bethesda Softworks via HGG / Koby Gibson Ross*

Note: Legendary perk card and legendary perk mean the same thing and are interchangeable terms.

Before we dive right into our top picks, let’s go over exactly what legendary perks are and how they work in Fallout 76. A legendary perk card is a special type of perk card that is separate from the regular perks in the game. They are generally more powerful and offer more impressive bonuses than the standard perk cards you’d normally select.

Legendary perk cards are not tied to your SPECIAL stats, meaning that you can equip any one of them in the game regardless of your build. Each player has a limited number of slots that they can insert a legendary perk card into.

You will unlock your first slot to insert your first legendary perk card once you hit level 50. Then you will unlock another once you hit level 75. You will keep unlocking new slots at levels 100, 150, 200, and 300. This means you can have a maximum of six legendary perk cards in Fallout 76.

How to Upgrade Legendary Perks

Much like the regular perk cards, legendary perks can be ranked up. Each one has a max rank of 4, and you can level a card up using a currency called Perk Coins.

You will gain a small amount of Perk Coins each and every time you scrap one of your regular perk cards. Keep in mind that you do NOT need any Perk Coins to unlock the first rank of a legendary perk card. It is only when upgrading your chosen card that you’ll need Perk Coins.

Best Legendary Perk Cards in Fallout 76

We’ll be going over the 5 best legendary perks in Fallout 76, ranked from good to best.

5/5

Master Infiltrator

First one up on this list is Master Infiltrator. This is a really fantastic quality-of-life perk card that allows you to hack any terminal and pick any lock regardless of its rank. Additionally, you will gain the ability to automatically unlock terminals and locks, letting you bypass the mini-game altogether! This is a really handy perk that makes unlocking doors and chests much, much easier.

The hacking and lock-picking games in Fallout aren’t really my favorite part of the game. So being able to simply ignore them altogether is nice. One overlooked thing about this perk is that you will not need six perk cards to unlock every terminal and lock you come across. This means you don’t have to swap them in every time you need them. I recommend this perk card for all types of builds.

For a lot of players, they’ll often skip out on picking locks or hacking terminals because they just don’t think it’s worth the time. And sometimes, yes, the loot you find is pretty disappointing. But there are still benefits to unlocking locks and terminals. It gives you a nice boost of experience points, and sometimes hacking/lock-picking is needed in order to progress through a quest line in Fallout 76.

4/5

Follow Through

The next one on this ranking is a personal favorite of mine. With the legendary perk Follow Through, a target will take extra damage for a short period of time after being hit by a ranged sneak attack. At max rank, all enemies hit with a ranged sneak attack will take an additional 40% damage for the next 10 seconds! This allows you to quickly finish off an enemy before they even fully realize they’ve been shot.

Unsurprisingly, this is an amazing perk if you’re running a stealth character, especially a stealth sniper build. We cannot fully express just how useful the extra damage boost is on this build. I’ve been running this legendary perk on my sniper character for a while, and I have to say I’m pretty impressed with the results. While the effect only lasts for 10 seconds, you’ll be able to easily kill a majority of targets within that time frame.

I’ve found that this particular legendary perk card is most effective when you are facing off against boss-type enemies. Enemies with very low health will typically die in one shot, regardless of the perk, making it rather redundant in those cases. But if you’re facing something like the Scorched Beast Queen or any other type of late-game boss, this perk makes finishing the job a lot less difficult.

3/5

Electric Absorption

Taking spot number 3 on our list of the best legendary perks in Fallout 76 is Electric Absorption! While wearing power armor with this legendary card equipped, every time you’re hit by an energy attack you’ll have a chance to heal, recharge your fusion core, and ignore the damage done to you. At max rank, the chance of this effect occurring is 20% for each hit from an energy attack.

I would consider this perk a MUST-get if you are doing a power armor build. Being able to recharge your fusion core each and every time you take a hit from an enemy is a massive boost to your quality of life. You’ll rarely have to carry around any extra fusion cores! The health regeneration and damage negation is also quite nice and makes you even more unkillable than usual. Unsurprisingly, this perk is worthless without power armor, so don’t get it unless you are always wearing a suit of it.

It’s important to note that while most enemies will do ballistic damage or use melee attacks in Fallout 76, there are quite a few enemies that deal energy damage. This is especially true in the late game. Robots are a common enemy type found in high-level areas (such as the nuclear missile silos) that dish out energy damage. Additionally, when you do Daily Ops, enemies using energy weapons are fairly commonplace. Those situations alone make this legendary perk great for late-game builds.

2/5

Legendary Stats

For this next one, it isn’t really a specific perk card but a TYPE of perk card. I am referring to any of the 7 legendary perk cards that will boost one of your SPECIAL stats. There is a perk card for each SPECIAL stat that will increase it by up to five levels. Not only will this type of perk card allow you to gain certain statistic increases (ex. more XP gained with Legendary Intelligence), but it also allows you to equip more normal perk cards for its respective stat.

I built my character with high perception and agility, but as I played the game more I realized how beneficial it would be to build him around doing high critical hit damage. So I picked up Legendary Luck to increase his luck stat and allow me to equip more perk cards centered around doing critical damage. My character has become much stronger with the added boost to luck, and I’m now very satisfied with how he plays.

This type of legendary perk card is beneficial for nearly every type of build. You only have so many SPECIAL points you can allocate across your character so being able to lift up one of your neglected stats is really nice.

Note: Be aware that while this type of perk card can increase any of your SPECIAL stats beyond 15 points, you will not be able to get any additional perk cards once you’re past that level. With that in mind, I generally recommend against equipping one if it would push one of your stats beyond 15.

1/5

Taking One For The Team

And finally, at our number 1 spot on this ranking, we have the legendary perk Taking One For The Team! While you’re on a team with this legendary perk equipped, whenever you take damage from an enemy, that enemy will take more damage from everyone.

While only one player on your team needs to equip this perk for the team to benefit from it, we would like to point out that the effect can stack, as it’s treated as a debuff on the enemy. If you have a full team equipped with this legendary perk and can all activate it, you can output some truly insane amounts of damage to affected enemies.

It’s a really great perk card to use for doing Daily Ops, any other team-based events, and PvP. If you’re doing a heavy tank build, I strongly suggest getting this legendary perk card. Since you’ll be on the front lines tanking hits for your team, the debuff will be perpetually activated on the enemy.

This perk is better in most situations than Follow Through (see above), since it doesn’t require you to be in stealth, and you’ll gain increased damage on your first shot (assuming you’ve been hit by the enemy first).

Additionally, you don’t have to physically be around teammates to activate this perk. As long as you’re part of a team that has one other member, this legendary perk will activate and grant you bonus damage against affected enemies.

Join the High Ground

We hope that you found this article ranking the 5 best legendary perks in Fallout 76 useful. Do you agree with our list, or would you place a different legendary perk on it?

Be sure to let us know down below in the comments! And make sure to subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more regular content.

Happy gaming!