Yesterday I reached Level 96 with my newest character, Yordie. Things are going well but I haven’t rushed forward into all of the higher level quests even though I’m looking forward to more of the new content.

I’d heard that new weather was coming.

The Road Less Travelled

I’ve been taking a different path with this new character. I’ve maintained my CAMP for over 80 levels at a pre-built stand just below the Flatwoods Lookout. It’s a relatively safe location plus there are two seemingly permanent resident Scavengers that hangout there. I didn’t expect that the scavengers would stay once I built a shack, put in some workbenches, planted my crops, but they did. And when I started inviting in various Allies, the place began to feel homey. Here’s a couple pics from the camp where I’ve lived for about 90 levels. On Friday I moved but may return here someday.

That’s my shack which has been my CAMP home for 80 levels

This is the pre-existing platform that I built my CAMP next to.

These are my crops and I still rely on them for making adhesive.

No Longer Focused On Store

Another change I’ve made with the new character is that I’m no longer focused on my store. In the past, I’ve gotten a lot of enjoyment from having a really good store, but it almost became the focus of my game, and that wasn’t working for me. For one thing, keeping the store well stocked is a grind. So, I still have a store, but I only open it when I have some things to sell.

I’ve also been less concerned on a large caps income. SPOILER: You can only have 30,000 caps max, so once you reach 20,000 caps, you need to start looking for things to spend them on. If you have a bunch of stuff for sale in your store then someone might come along and buy over 10,000 and everything over 30k disappears. And here’s the thing, having built several characters now, I know what I need and more importantly, what I don’t need. I know the plans that I’ll probably find and the ones I’ll need to pay for. So, at level 96 I tend to travel the land with ~20,000 caps, so if I find a major item I can snap it up. Caps hunger is a real thing until you reach level 50 or thereabout, but the truth is, you should be able to build and maintain a large caps stash but it does take some effort. Heck, you can sell crops if you are desperate.

More Exploring New Areas

I’ve been doing a lot more exploring and taking on many challenges and dailies. There are some amazing landscapes in Fallout 76; for example, below is a photo of a place called Seneca Rocks. I’ve seen it in the past, but never tried to climb it. The other day I tried and even with the Marsupial Mutation I found it was too formidable. I suspect I’ll have better luck with Power Armor with a Jet Pack, so I’ll be trying that soon. Maybe there’s some quest that will take me in and up through some secret route; I don’t know yet.

This is a pic I took while on a quest. I tried to climb but no luck yet.

Some Thoughts

In my view, Fallout 76 Wastelanders is a huge success and portends to be even better in the future. HOWEVER, Bethesda seems to be oblivious to the bugs, defects, anomalies, and every other problem that plagues the game, especially GRIEFERS. They need to stop constantly delighting the power user. As with all software, the belief still exists that you need to satisfy the power users first and all that kind of thing. That mantra goes only so far. Okay, but they are a noisy bunch. Yeah, there’s that but I didn’t listen to those noisy guys when I took a chance on Fallout 76 in April last year. I stuck with the game because I saw the potential and was willing to take a chance because I really liked the gameplay.

Here is what Microsoft finally learned about Windows in the late 1990s: Good enough software is no longer acceptable. I’ve seen and heard other players make the observation that Bethesda developers don’t play the games they create, and I think that’s part of the problem, because if they did they’d become very annoyed with persistent problems that might be important to fix. Nonetheless, they’ve created an incredible game and I expect to continue playing for the remainder of this year and maybe beyond.

Coming soon: I plan to tryout the public teams in the not too distant future. If things go well I may move forward with Yordie’s Excellent Adventures team; it’s already setup but I haven’t tried to recruit anyone yet.