It took nearly two years, but Fallout 76 has finally reached a minimum level of quality that most expected at launch with the release of the Wastelanders update, bringing quality of life improvements and bug fixes that plagued users for years. Whether one considers this all as brand new content, or Fallout 76 2.0, it is a great idea to aim for at least a character level of 20 to take advantage of everything that has been added.

The main reason for using a character that is at least level 20 is the unmentioned content gating that occurs for lower level players. There are now several NPCs that give the world a more populated, realistic feel, but speaking to most of them at low levels results in being turned away. The message that is repeated to players is to go out and explore, only to return once stronger.

Unfortunately, this means that players below level 20 are effectively limited to the vanilla, pre-Wastelanders content only. It would have been nice to know this beforehand so as not to waste so much time planning a new character, only to be blocked from the update. Worse still is that players who go this route discover the content gating after trying to access new quests in different locations, only to receive the same answer from different NPCs.

Another reason to use higher level characters is because there are a surprising number of dialogue options from the beginning that can leverage a players Strength, Charisma, or Intelligence scores for an alternate resolution to a problem. Much like the previous games in the series, some options are simply not available or will fail when not equipped with the right stats.

The upside however is that, despite is terrible launch, buggy updates, and money-grabs, Fallout 76 finally feels like a true game in the series, but it might be too late. Bethesda’s treatment of the game and its long-time fans probably burned too many bridges for the game to be any kind of a major player in today’s video game market.

Right now, the current player count on Steam for Fallout 76 is around 19,000 players, meaning that more people are playing Fallout 4, with 23,000 users. It’s also well below the top ten games, which start at around 100,000 players. While Wastelanders feels like a great update, it is probably about two years too late.

Source: store.steampowered.com, ign.com

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