February 14 saw a new Fallout 76 server downtime period and a game update of sorts.
Bethesda has now confirmed that maintenance has been completed and changes have been made to the game.
But the kind of changes made to the game doesn’t require a big long patch notes list.
Instead, Bethesda has revealed that today’s Fallout 76 update was all about removing duplicated items.
The dev team has confirmed that a very small proportion of players have been using exploits to rack up the best stuff in the game.
Certain items will now have been removed from those who used the exploit and Bethesda are thinking about a second day of action in the future.
A message from Bethesda on today Fallout 76 update, reads: “We’ve just completed some “Spring cleaning” to rid the Wasteland of many items that were created through the abuse of duplication exploits.
“These actions were highly-focused toward a list of over 400 weapon and armour items we identified as common duplication targets.
“Players who had multiple copies of any of these duped items, whether they obtained them using an exploit or by acquiring them from another player, will find that all but one of each of those items have been removed from their characters.
“Power Armor was exempt from today’s item removals, but we are actively discussing another wave of action to target these items in the future.
“Additionally, if a player had multiple copies of duped items removed as part of today’s actions, we also performed a follow-up search of their account for very large amounts of Nuka-Cola and removed those, as well.
“Finally, during our investigation leading up to these actions, we determined that less than 1% of all Fallout 76 accounts combined across all three platforms needed to have duped items removed. This means the vast majority of players did not possess multiple copies of these duped items, and have had zero items removed from their characters today.
“We are still taking aggressive action to eliminate exploits, duplication methods, and other bugs with every patch we release.”
While Bethesda didn’t need to share patch notes today for the February 14 update, they have confirmed what is coming next.
Patch 6 was confirmed in a new Bethesda blog, which posted a list of patch notes which will be attached to the new update.
The new Fallout 76 update will arrive next week and planned for simultaneous launch on Xbox One, PC, and PlayStation 4.
Here’s what we know will be included:
- Stash Limit Increase to 800 – We know this continues to be a big one. Next week, we are raising the Stash limit from 600 to 800 pounds. Like last time, we are constantly evaluating storage space and discussing ways we can make improvements, but not at the expense of server stability. We hope this additional increase to 800 pounds will help you store even more of the awesome item’s you’ve found in the Wasteland!
- The M79 Grenade Launcher and the Auto Grenade Launcher are now classified as Heavy Weapons – A fix is being made to properly label the M79 Grenade Launcher and Auto Grenade Launcher as Heavy Weapons. They will also now correctly benefit from all Heavy Weapons perks except for Heavy Gunner, as we believe it makes more sense for these weapons to benefit from the Demolitions Expert perk. Boom!
- Accidentally Damaging another player’s C.A.M.P. will no longer tag you as WANTED – From our Known Issues list, players who accidentally shoot, hit, or disturb another player’s C.A.M.P. will no longer become WANTED and viewed as engaging in PvP. Instead you must actively work to be malicious to another player and DESTROY their C.A.M.P. objects for it to be considered a PvP action and become marked as WANTED. We will closely monitor player feedback to this change.
- Player Icons now display in more areas throughout the game – Once Patch 6 arrives, hovering over a player on the map will now display their player icon, and Workshops will display their owners’ player icons, too. Additionally, when viewing a turret created by another player, you’ll now be able to see the owner’s name and player icon in the turret’s nameplate.
- Quest containers during the Feed the People and Path to Enlightenment events now only accept quest items – With this fix, players can no longer accidentally transfer items from their inventories into these quest containers. As a result, you should now be able to complete these events without fear of losing non-quest items.