Fallout 76 - First Impressions #5 - Crafting & Building

Channel:

Thyworm

Subscribers:

13,700

Published on November 11, 2018 7:32:41 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuBAhr_JtpI

Game:

Fallout 76 (2018)

Category:

First Impressions

Duration: 4:30

40 views

1

Hey Everyone, this is Thyworm with some initial thought on Bethesda's latest masterpiece. Or, is it?
We're continuing the Fallout76 first impressions series with the next topic: Crafting and Building.

Let me start with Building. For those who've played Fallout 4, this feature should be very familiar tot eh settlement builder. This time however, you don't have workstations anymore, but these CAMPS, that you can deploy anywhere you like. Clicking on a CAMP, brings up the building menu and from there you can place items within the vicinity of the camp.

Looking at the menu itself, it's of course absolutely horrible for PC Gamers. Once again, the fact that this is just a lazy PC port really ends up hurting the game, because swapping through menus, structures and building blocks is an absolute pain. You need to use Z and C to go from left to right, and then the up and down arrows on the right side of your keyboard to go up and down. That means, unless you have three arms, that you're not using the mouse at that point. Placing an item however, requires the mouse of course. This is one of the worst UIs in the entire franchise.

Before you can construct new structures however, you first need to unlock them. By doing quests, exploring and looting, blueprints can be found that allow more construction work. There is a good sense of progression here, and the building itself, apart from the horrendous menu, is well done. If you replace your camp to another part of the world, all structures that you already built are stored. However, if you place the camp again, whatever you had previously isn't there anymore. All individual items exist, but you will have to rebuild, which kinda sucks.

Fortunately, Crafting is a lot more intuitive than building and if you ask me, a lot more fun as well. Crafting follows the same concept as before, with minor changes. This time, you can craft items based on whether you have the schematics for that item, but also based on your level. At level 10, you can craft a lvl 10 leather chest piece. So even if you only know a few schematics, you can still keep up pretty well with the curve and enemies won't outright kill you.

weapon and armor Mods are discovered by scrapping items. If you scrap enough 10 mm pistols, you will learn mods for the 10 mm pistol. The same goes for armor. It seemed to me that scrapping junk doesn't really get you anything, apart from crafting materials. It's nice to see that junk item still turn into the same materials as before, so go hunting for those desk fans and alarm clocks.

Crafting will be something I'm going to spend a lot of time on. I found it very rewarding, because you're constantly discovering new things and the new crafting machanics keep this part of the game fresh and interesting. Because of it, I was decked out pretty well, with full leather armor, some girded leather upgrades, a decent sledgehammer and some guns with longer barrels, for increased range. Ammo can also be produced, using gunpowder and lead, and I never had any issues with ammo shortages.










A major issue that already a lot of people complained about, are the weight and stashing issues. I personally didn't have a lot of issues in this regard, to be honest. I countered it by spending some points in strength, allowing me to carry more. But I also invested in several perk cards that reduce the weight of items, by up to 90%. Inventory management really breaks immersion for me, so I'm fine spending points on those perks, so I can explore and loot all I want. Also, ammo actually has weight in this game.

In your camp, you can build a stash which holds up to 400 weight. If you're a heavy builder, you will fill this up rather quickly and Bethesda has already hinted that stash size will be increased in the future, or maybe even removed altogether.

If you think these video's are useful and helpful, consider subscribing! Ask your questions in the comments, I'm happy to respond to them and I'll see you in the next episode of my first impressions for Fallout76. That one will be about Combat and VATS.

Thanks for watching everyone,
bye bye

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