Fallout 76 has a new update called Backwoods that went live on Tuesday March 3. Bethesda brought cryptids into the spotlight and added a new class of late-arrival threats that can spawn when a public event finishes.
Bigfoot is one of the new party crashers that can appear after a public event concludes. These guests are optional. You can finish the main objective and decide whether to take them on. Party crashers are meant to be dangerous and fast. They come with tight timers and heavy rewards. Three-star party crashers drop a pair of three-star items. Bigfoot is a four-star guest and he guarantees a four-star legendary. This is the first time that four-star legendaries of that type have been obtainable outside of the Gleaming Depths raid.
Not all cryptids are global spawns. Some are tied to particular public events so each invader feels thematic to the activity being interrupted. After the launch-week boosts, cryptids will not be extremely common, but the team expects players to encounter at least one per hour as events cycle through the world. Backwoods also adjusts the structure of open-world tasks to make them feel less like busywork. Bethesda now separates smaller “activities,” which are aimed at roughly one to four players, from larger-scale “public events.” Several events that tended to drag have been tightened. Moonshine Jamboree and the Wild West themed Most Wanted have had timers shortened and pacing improved.
Expect NPC patrols to move faster and for new enemy types to appear. One new enemy class is ranged Floaters. These are designed to counter rooftop camping and other stationary strategies. Hostile forces can scale more closely with the strength and number of players involved, with scaling that can ramp up to a cap of 125. All events and activities now draw from global loot tables and rewards have been boosted to match the increased challenge.
The update also adds more valuable U-Mine-It maps that can be earned through public events or purchased from vending machines. Other world changes include adjusted lockbox loot that scales with cracking difficulty, responsiveness improvements to sluggish Pip-Boy menus, and new vanity lights added to photo mode. If you hunt Bigfoot for the Thrill Seeker’s mod or want to test the faster event pacing, tell us what you find and whether the launch-week hourly playlist helped you track him down. Follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, Instagram for more!
Fallout 76
Developed by Bethesda Game Studios
Bethesda Game Studios welcome you to Fallout 76. Twenty-five years after the bombs fall you and your fellow Vault Dwellers, chosen from the nation’s best and brightest, emerge into post-nuclear America on Reclamation Day, 2102. Play solo or join together as you explore, quest, build, and triumph against the wasteland’s greatest threats. Explore a vast wasteland, devastated by nuclear war, in this open-world multiplayer addition to the Fallout story. Experience the largest, most dynamic world ever created in the legendary Fallout universe.
- Genre: Shooter, Role-playing (RPG)
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Xbox One
- Modes: Multiplayer, Co-operative, Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO)
- Release: 2018-11-14
- Publisher: Bethesda Softworks
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Age Rating:
CLASS_IND 16 / PEGI 18 / USK 18 / ACB MA 15+ / GRAC 19+ / CERO Z / ESRB M
- IGDB Rating: 60.8/100
