United Dwellers of Appalachia (UDA) Fallout 76 Wastelanders Guide

This guide is story spoiler-free. For those who want to do this truly blind, stop reading and go do your thing. To others who would like to have a general guide and get the most out of the new content, read on.

Since a lot of people are having issues: DISABLE YOUR MODS. They can prevent you from opening doors. This means things like Better Inventory, health bar mods, perk load-out manager, etc. Eventually updates will be released, but you’re going to have to rough-it until then.

Bethesda officially recommends creating a new character and playing through the game from scratch. For people with a lot of time on their hands and no rush to consume the new content, this is a great suggestion. However, a lot of people forget just how tough the first 30 levels or so are to grind out through normal play. We’re obviously not talking about speed leveling.

Our recommendation is to first create a new character and play for approximately 5-10 hours and then hop over to your main and do it all on that character. This will allow you to experience the new start of the game as a low-level character, unable to pass most speech checks. A lot of the NPC responses to your ‘dumb’ answers are some of the best in the game. But then do those few quests again on your main, picking the best options, and then continuing on with the new WL main quest and not having to worry about grinding weapons, armor, ammo, supplies, and XP.

Regardless of what you choose, here are our suggestions as to the order in which we recommend you play the new content. When referring to new quests, events, and dailies, we use initials only to not spoil any content. Same will be true for character names.

It’s important to note that you CANNOT be locked out of any WL content permanently. All new plans are obtainable on a single character regardless of the faction you side with. Items that may seem locked out due to some choices can be gotten on another character and transferred over if desired. However, end-game plans for new WL weapons and armor cannot be player-traded nor can most of the crafted gear be traded either. It all functions the same way as the Vault 94 armor. So keep this info in mind when deciding which character to use to complete the WL main quest.

Starting Wastelanders with a new character

  1. If you have pre-created a character and left Vault 76 before WL released, you may want to create another new character temporarily just to see if there have been any changes in the vault. Be sure to listen to the announcement audio and talk to all the robots inside the vault.
  2. Talk to Pennington, the Mr Handy outside the vault, and then follow the story from there. You’ll be directed towards the Overseer’s Camp.
  3. Continue to follow your objectives and eventually you’ll be told to construct something at your camp. Do this and you will be given a holotape.
  4. At this point, head to Flatwoods and do the first leg of the Responder’s quest line until it sends you to Morgantown. Put Morgantown on hold for now.
  5. Now do the next objective with the holotape you got in step 3.
  6. Follow that quest line through until completion. So you know you’re on the right track, some of the quests will be: W.S., H.f.H., S.i.N., T.E.C.
  7. UPDATE: Getting a lot of questions about a certain legendary mask from these early quests. When given the option, you need to join a group of people instead of killing or intimidating them.
  8. At this point you can decide to continue the story (and grind) with this new character or switch over to your main character for an easier time. This is what we’d recommend unless you are committed to a 100% new playthrough. To do this, load into your main character and then skip down to the ‘Starting Wastelanders with an Existing Character’ section.
  9. Head to Morgantown and do the next leg of the Responder’s questline.
  10. Go to Charleston for the last leg of the Responder’s quest.
  11. Go over to the Hornwright HQ and do the Motherlode quest.
  12. Do the Firebreather’s quest starting at Charleston Fire Station. When you get near to the Ash Heap, you may get a radio broadcast. Turn off the quest to listen to it until much, much later. This is an ally quest that will send you all over the map..
  13. If you are at or beyond level 20, then you will get a radio broadcast from a familiar name and it may activate a quest called T.N.A.. Resist the urge to listen to it and continue questing for a bit.
  14. The next thing you are going to want to do is Rose’s Quest line. If you aren’t up for tackling the Savage Divide and Top of the World areas yet, here are some side quests we recommend doing to level up:
  1. Powering up Poseidon - Triggers near the Poseidon Power Plant in Charleston.
  2. Bureau of Tourism - Listen to the Grafton Radio broadcast.
  3. Cold Case - Talk to the Nanny Bot, Miss Annie, at Wavy Williard’s.
  4. The Nukashine - Read the Frat Party poster at any train station.
  5. Mistaken Identity - Visit Camden Park.
  6. Lying Lowe - Read the Sheepsquach Ate My Brother poster at any train station.
  7. Miner Miracles - Only if you’re over level 25. Read a Garrahan excavator poster.
  1. After you have completed Signal Strength, Flavors of Mayhem, and Key to the Past for Rose, leave The Missing Link on hold for right now and deactivate it in your pipboy.
  2. Skip down to ‘Completing the Wastelanders Main Story.

Starting Wastelanders with an Existing Character

  1. Turn off all active quests, dailies, events, and radio stations on your map/pipboy. Ignore and turn off anything new that pops up when you first log into WL. You may get a quest called T.N.A. Turn that off for now, no matter how much you want to do it.
  2. Fast travel to Vault 76.
  3. Head towards the overseer’s camp like you normally would, talking to everyone you meet along the way.
  4. For best results, don’t fast travel for the first 4 quests or so. That will let you experience the new random encounters and revamped locations you may discover along the way. Eventually everything will spread out and you’ll have to FT, but try to avoid it as long as possible. Almost every existing location has had some visual and/or content tweaks.
  5. After you have completed T.E.C., you’re ready to complete the Wastelanders Main Story in the next section.

Completing the Wastelanders Main Story

  1. You should be at level 20 or beyond by now. Listen to the radio broadcast from a familiar name. This will start the quest T.N.A. Do that quest.
  2. While doing that, you will also get the quests S.B. and H.t.S. Do those as well.
  3. The first time you visit Crater and Foundation, daily quests for those two factions will pop up. If you anticipate completing the entire main quest today, then wait to do those dailies until after the main quest is finished. But if you’re taking your time, go ahead and do the dailies as you wish to get the reputation gains. They may send you to very hard parts of the map though so be careful if this is a new character.
  4. After those quests are done, you’ll get O.O. Do that.
  5. At this point you can make a faction choice if you want to for role play purposes but it’s not required. You can continue to play both sides which is what we’d strongly recommend. It allows you to get the best rewards and you’ll be able to see the majority of the WL new content. Eventually you will have to make a choice, but it’s much later.
  6. Continue following one or both faction’s quests until you get the warning from one/both that you are picking a side. You’ll then get either ‘S.w.C’ or ‘S.w.F’ quests.
  7. Continue that quest line until you get to the end of ‘S.R.’ You will have one final choice to make here. I recommend you take the most selfish option, regardless of faction. Either way you choose, you only lose about 3 days worth of grinding/farming so it’s not a big penalty either way. Click and drag to select for spoilers and more explicit instructions: Take all the gold. Gold is much harder and time consuming to grind than reputation and reputation is all you will lose by taking the gold. There’s a vendor (Regs) that’s not even faction rep based that has all the best gear and taking the gold will let you buy more of it immediately. Then complete S.R.
  8. When you get here, the following won’t be a spoiler, but will be before then so I’ve hidden it to keep from spoiling it accidentally. Click and drag to select to reveal: You will now be done with the main WL quest and have unlocked 3 more vendors and the ability to earn Treasury Notes and Gold Bullion. Be sure to do the daily at the Overseer’s House and the Raiders and/or Foundation dailies to earn reputation and gold bullion while you do all the WL side quests below..
  9. At this point, you may have picked up a radio broadcast in the Ash Heap and one in the Mire. Listen to those to start one or both of the main Ally quests. You may have also met other minor, generically-named allies in your travels. You can do those now at this point. There are 5 allies total.
  10. If this is a new character, you can continue on with the original quests by turning back on The Missing Link to do the Free States quest line. Then continue on to the Brotherhood of Steel and Enclave quest lines. Also, there are a lot of side quests that can be done, such as Mayor for a Day, Mistress of Mystery, and Pioneer Scouts as well as starting all the dailies.

Tips

  • If you get a quest/objective and can’t find it quickly on the map, toggle the quest off/on in your pipboy. If that doesn’t fix it, try fast traveling or server hopping.
  • If an NPC won’t talk to you when you’re trying to finish a quest or daily, FT somewhere else, do an event or explore for a bit, and then come back. Or server hop. Or load into an interior cell and then go back out.
  • The aid tab of the pip-boy will NOT sort by spoiled correctly due to a known bug that will be fixed in a future update. If you need to see what’s closest to spoiling, go to a container, your stash, or a vendor and do a transfer or a trade. You can sort the aid tab by spoiled in that screen and then make a note of what you need to eat first.
  • Chems, food, drinks, and unyielding armor will all work for skill checks. You can often back out of a dialog with an NPC, buff your perks, and then start over with them. If you see ‘Checkpointed’ on the screen, then you can’t go back prior to that.
  • Almost all the new weapons and armor cannot be obtained until you have completed the main new WL questline. So you will want to make this a priority. Plans also unlock at different reputation levels, so after the main quest, check the vendors after reputation increases.
  • All the new weapons and armor can drop from the Purveyor and legendary enemies ONLY if you’ve learned the plans.
  • If you find yourself with legendary scrip to burn, if you’re pretty happy with the equipment you have, spend the excess scrip on legendary modules. You will be able to craft legendary versions of most of the new weapons/armor and they will need these modules. And there’s no sense in rolling for weapons/armor until you’ve learned a good chunk of the new plans.
  • If your goal is to obtain everything that’s obtainable, you will definitely want to play both factions until the last minute. Even after you choose, you cannot get locked out of any content with the other faction. There will be unique outfit rewards but these can be player-traded so you can do the opposite quest line on an alt if you want the other rewards.
  • The best rewards come from being nice to everyone and keeping people alive. If you have a choice of killing someone or keeping them alive, keep them alive. Don’t over-think the Raider dialog choices in the main quest line. Give the nice answers and suck up at every opportunity.
  • Named characters are generally unkillable unless the quest tells you to kill them or you have an [Attack] dialog option. So don’t worry about someone messing up your quest. For random encounters, all bets are off. Better make that purchase or dialog choice quick. Treat them as you would the traveling responder vendorbot.
  • Do optional objectives for extra caps, XP, and reputation.
  • People are going to be nuking random locations to see what happens. Try to always log out wearing a hazmat suit or power armor so you don’t get a deathly surprise on next login.
  • Hang onto any 2mm EC and Plasma Cartridge ammo you find. These will be useful for new weapons and are expensive to craft.
  • After you’ve completed the main WL questline, there will be a new character upstairs in The Wayward that will sell you Gold Bullion once a week in exchange for caps.
  • There is a daily quest a lot of people miss. You can find it at Ohio River Adventures.
  • There are random encounters of raiders or settlers fighting creatures. If you kill the creatures and then go talk to the NPCs, you will gain reputation with that faction.
  • The new, non-human enemies hit hard. Don’t underestimate them.
  • Regarding the big, scary Wendigo Colossus seen in the trailers, spoiler: it is a random event that’s only triggered by a nuke in certain locations. You’re not going to just run into one while exploring.

Notable changes from the pre-wastelanders version

  • ‘Search’ perks trigger automatically. Things like Butcher’s Bounty, Can Do!, Pharma Farma, and Scrounger. So you no longer have to hit a button to search to find extra loot. The downside comes for Butcher’s Bounty in that you have to have it equipped when you first loot a body or else it doesn’t work. You can’t just throw it on and loot previously killed corpses anymore.
  • Junk used in crafting and quests no longer auto scraps. This includes cooking oil and bug parts for Stings and Things. You can still accidently cook ingredients that quests require so be mindful of that. (example: radroach meat)
  • Almost every location has had something changed. Some it’s just visual, others it’s dramatic new design and content. You should make an effort to explore the whole map. There are also several dozen new map locations to explore.
  • New Random Encounter type called ‘Camp’. This seems to be random NPCs that set up a tent or other temporary structure and may be selling things, fighting with random enemies, etc. Hopefully map76.com will get an update showing these new locations.
  • Over 80 new random encounter scenes and over 60 new random encounter locations
  • Only four new perk cards, all related to bows.
  • Crossbow is no longer considered a rifle so it doesn’t take rifle perks. It takes the bow perks mentioned above.
  • Many enemy fixed-spawns have been changed to different enemies or random spawns. Same goes for what you expect to encounter in certain regions. As an example, at my camp in the Savage Divide, I’ve almost always been attacked by Scorched, Super Mutants, rad rats, wolves, and mole rats. In Wastelanders I got attacked by rad scorpions. That’s never happened before in 1,000 hours of play. Expect the unexpected.
  • Meat hook no longer double-dips with unarmed and 1h perks/buffs.
  • Killing robots at The Whitespring no longer gives you loot.
  • The dead robots around Watoga Station no longer have loot on their bodies.
  • You may find you have a little extra CAMP budget space. This is not a budget increase, but several items had their required budget decreased. Don’t be too quick to max it out again as you’ll need some budget space for some quests.
  • 2mm EC ammo has been dramatically reduced in weight.
  • A few of the introductory quests have had their final rewards swapped around. Nothing major; healing salve and hunting rifle and the responder outfits.
  • The Purveyor has been moved to The Rusty Pick just south of Charleston.
  • The Purveyor now sells Vault 94 steel for crafting V94 armor.
  • All the Vault 94 armor plans will be sold by Regs. You’ll need to complete the WL questline to have access to him.
  • After you complete the main WL quest, public events now award Treasury Notes in addition to the normal loot, XP, caps, and scrip.
  • Some quests/events/dailies will award Nuclear Winter perk card packs.
  • The Savage Divide daily quest ‘Someone to Talk To’ more reliably triggers when you enter the Savage Divide.
  • Electrician Possum Badge requirement to power up a power plant is no longer stuck.
  • A handful of existing interior cell locations have now become instanced locations for the purposes of new quest content inside.
  • Many locations have buildings/houses that now have interior content where they were just boarded up before.
  • There are a few less resource nodes mainly related to Spruce Knob no longer being a workshop.
  • The Scorch Beast Queen can no longer have her limbs crippled. So there is no way to force her to land anymore.
  • Vault 94 armor can now be crafted with the Unyielding effect. All the other disabled legendary effects remain disabled.
  • Most mods will probably not work. Especially ones that modify the user interface like Better Inventory. They may prevent you from entering instanced areas due to this code being missing.
  • The handmade rifle stinging magazine capacity was fixed and now holds 25 rounds instead of 35.
  • Scorched and ghouls now have a 1% chance to drop Pleasant Valley Claim tickets.  You can turn these in to the bellhop protectron in the secure basement area of Pleasant Valley Ski Resort for rewards that can include the rare western outfits.
  • Unyielding armor’s buff to Charisma can no longer be used to share perks beyond your base charisma stat.
  • Shovel is now a 2H melee weapon and takes the appropriate perks
  • Power Armor will no longer use Ultracite Fusion Cores

What hasn’t changed

  • Other than the meat hook getting a nerf due to keyword fixes, no other perks, weapons, armor, or builds have been nerfed or buffed. Everything else should work as before.
  • Nuclear Winter smaller circles change from months ago is back per Bethesda article.
  • Existing vendor inventories are the same.
  • Plan and recipe random spawns do not include any of the new plans or recipes.
  • Existing events and dailies drop the same loot as before.
  • Perk loadouts, legendary players, weapon balancing, One Wasteland, map expansion, legendary perks, persistent or instanced CAMPs and other promised/theorized future gameplay changes are NOT included in the current WL release.
  • No fundamental changes in gameplay or functionality.
  • Treasure maps still reward the same loot as before.
  • No new legendary effects.

Credits/Links

  • This guide was written by Gilpo (Reddit: /u/gilpo1, Discord: gilpo#7156).
  • Special thanks to contributors KATheHuman, Thaang, EliShffrn, and Mr. Spawn.
  • This guide was created by the United Dwellers of Appalachia for the use of anyone who might find it helpful. Please do not share any of this info without credit and a link to this document.
  • The UDA is a group of PC players who play very casually. Most of us have lives and families and playing the game takes backseat to that. We are not a guild or faction with required attendance and activities. We all mostly play on our own but will team up if people need help or want to be social. New players are always welcome and we’re happy to help you learn and get up to speed without judgement. You can find the UDA on Discord at https://discord.gg/HsZ8mwM
  • If you collect plans and mods, please check out my master Plan and Mod Spreadsheet/checklist that lists everything obtainable in the game. It will be updated to include Wastelanders content this week: Fallout 76 Plan & Mod Database

Other discords that helped with the creation of this guide

Useful sites

Quality Youtube Channels

All the info here is subject to re-verification. This guide will be updated if any of the info changes, so please bookmark this link as opposed to saving a copy.