If you’re not necessarily playing Bethesda’s Fallout themed MMO, Fallout 76, you’ve surely at least heard of it and the struggles that the title experienced on its original release on the Bethesda store. Plagued with problems that ranged from users having their loot unceremoniously deleted, and sending in support tickets to Bethesda en masse, have been intertwined with other errors of various size and shape as Bethesda dips their feet into the fertile pools of subscription-based MMOs running on top of their lore-filled worlds.
Bugs, by and large, are simply a side effect of development. Some titles struggle mightily against bugs, while others can seemingly offer a bug-free experience; it is based on a multitude of factors that can all twist and contort the end product, from development cycle pacing to the crunch time developers are submitted to, and almost everything in between. Bethesda is certainly known for its bizarre assortment of bugs that the modding community typically bands together to hammer out some unofficial patches.
The newest bug that is being reported has many frightened to log into the title on Steam and play, lest they lose a prized possession.
The bug revolves around the new in-game player versus environment event (PvE) in the Wastelands update that has done well in bringing players back to West Virginia to experience a bit of the post-apocalyptic sensation.
Players that are being killed by NPCs are finding that the NPCs are looting the players afgter killing them; a bizarre new notion that has not been in the title as a mechanic. As NPCs cannot be killed, only knocked out, players are then unable to retrieve their prized weapons from the NPCs after they are lost. Legendary weapons are simply going missing as players succumb to NPCs, from the Riding Shotgun to gatling guns, and the NPCs then use those weapons, in a mildly humorous manner, in front of the players that has just lost them.
There are currently no fixes; simply don’t bring weapons that you aren’t comfortable with the idea of permanently losing.
A Bethesda community manager responded to the written thread on Reddit, saying that developers are going to look into the bug immediately; players can expect a hotfix to be available sooner, rather than later. Unfortunately for those that have already experienced the bug, it appears that you may have simply lost that part of your arsenal forever, but it’s wise to wait for an official statement before we all despair.