This week Bethesda’s Fallout 76 is FREE to Play, including the (50 player sudden death) new player vs player “king of the hill” Nuclear Winter contest to be the sole Overseer.
https://fallout.bethesda.net/en/freeplay
FO76 plays a little different than prior single player Fallouts, but has the expected great backstory, huge number of quests, and building weapons and structures. The C.A.M.P. form the Fallout 4 mod is there also, although it works slightly differently you will find it mostly familiar.
The download took me 5 hours on my 30/30 FiOS connection. Starting the game is straight forward – click the Bethesda launcher and click Fallout 76, then select one of three available play modes: Adventure alone or party up, Survival mode which is PvP, or the new Nuclear Winter tournament mode.
Leaving the game is less obvious. Press ESC to bring up the map (I know, I know) and in the top left corner there is a Z for menu. Right. Menu starts with a Z.
There are several new crafting workbenches in FO76: Your Stash, which works like a trunk in prior Fallouts, however it works from *anywhere* you encounter any of these. So if you are loaded full of salvage, and come across a train station, there will be a trunk in there in which you can empty out your inventory. Or pick up that favorite gun you forgot to grab before you left.
Tinkers (for ammo and other basics) and Fermenting (for booze). Also, when you harvest food or meat, it starts rotting, and there is always a small chance you will get a disease from eating uncooked meat or veggies, or sleeping on a bedroll that is on the ground. The vending machine lets you sell your stuff for caps.
All the workbenches let you SCRAP your salvage, which is important because it reduces the weight. Also, you can capture any of several “locations” with workbenches stocked with supplies and allow you to build automatic harvesting machines for resources. Of course, if someone else wants it they can try to take it away from you too, this is a multi-player environment.
It’s all good. Just download it today, log in, and give it a shot.