Bethesda just can’t catch a break. It seems the studio has continuously found problems with its latest game, Fallout 76. By that, we mean their players find the problems. The developers just end up creating them.
This time the problem has to do with Legendary armor sets within the game. It seems that under certain circumstances, reloading your weapon in-game will cause Legendary armor to break. The bug was first noticed in a YouTube video by Jas Thompson. In the video, the player, who is wearing legendary armor with defensive stats equaling up to 519, reloads their weapon. Immediately after, the armor’s defense drops all the way down to 414.
https://youtu.be/M9FGaan35s0
The video eventually made its way to Reddit, where a group of gamers started playing with the bug. It turns out that it doesn’t happen to all Legendary armor sets within the game. And it doesn’t happen every time either.
So far, nobody has been able to figure out the precise conditions for what triggers the bug. But it definitely happened after the latest patch for the game came out, update 16. The only thing that’s clear now is that sometimes reloading can damage certain legendary armor sets.
On its own, this bug probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal, even if it is rather annoying. Games have bugs. This is just something everyone has come to expect. And yet, on the other hand, with the history of Bethesda’s problems and the timing of this weekend’s Halloween redux, this bug looks extremely bad. (Bethesda is redoing the Halloween event this month because last time it was available, the event ended up ending earlier than expected. Bugs, bugs, bugs.)
Fallout 76 has been having difficulties ever since its initial release. The first warning sign was the flimsy plastic bags that came out with the pre-ordered special edition of the game. The flimsy plastic didn’t match the depiction of the canvas bag pictured in screenshots and the original trailers for the special edition. Bethesda eventually had to offer a refund or a new bag to those unlucky gamers who had purchased the collector’s edition.
What’s strange about Fallout 76 is that it is a neverending cautionary tale on the dangers of rushing projects to completion. At some point, you’d expect things to balance out and get back to normal. But for Fallout 76, this never seems to be the case. Developers beware! If you push something out too early, you’ll never stop playing catch-up.
