During the Fallout Day broadcast, we got a substantial look at what to expect from Fallout 76's next major update, and there are a ton of new features, improvements, and even a new raid to look forward to.
The last substantial update saw Fallout 76's map expand down south into Skyline Valley. With new areas and quests to explore, there was a lot for players to sink their teeth into. Then there was the Blue Ridge Caravan escort mission, which saw players team up to help escort supplies across Skyline Valley. This was pretty simple, and as long as you had some decent weapons and good teamwork, you'd easily complete it, but this next raid takes things to a whole new level.
"The Gleaming Depths is sort of a traditional MMO-style dungeon that should really challenge our endgame players," Chris Marshall, senior quest designer, said during the broadcast. The upcoming raid is set in an abandoned enclave research lab where scientists have been investigating ultragenesis—the phenomenon where glowing green ultracite glass-like ore spreads through the earth.
Tackling the raid will be a lengthy task that won't pull any punches, and it's even recommended that players be around level 300 or higher before taking on the challenge. "Your team will have to fight through several incredibly demanding encounters, and once you start, there's no turning back," creative director Jon Rush said. "You win, or you die."
The first step in The Gleaming Depths raid is defeating the guardian. This is a giant robot who basically acts like a super-violent doorman, defending the entrance to the laboratory. After you beat that, you'll then have to navigate through dark tunnels lit by glowing green ultracite to find a drill. Before you can use this to dig your way deeper into the lab, you'll have to multitask, filling the machine with enough fuel while also fending off waves of mole miners who want to loot the drill for scrap.
But that's not all. Amid the hordes of mole miners, there's also something called the stalker, a mole miner on steroids that is sent into a wild fury after sniffing too much ultracite—this beast will really pack a punch. It's best to just try to avoid this guy and focus on getting the drill up and running.
After you complete that task, there's more running around in dark caves until you meet Enclave Squad Epsilon, a strong trio of fighters made up of agents Bloodhound, Vulture, and Lynx. This is where the difficulty takes another step up. The fight will "demand precise teamwork for players to overcome and deliver the final blow," Rush said. If you get past these guys, then you'll have to deal with the stalker one more time, and only then will you face the real challenge in this raid—the Ultracite Terror.
This monster is a giant green snake that's so powerful it's reserved for the best and highest-level players. "My favourite thing about The Gleaming Depths is the Ultracite Terror," producer Ryan Fox said. "When you first see this thing, it is very intimidating—it is huge, and you're going to feel like there's no way around it."
"This is going to be content that's really going to drive our endgame users," Bill LaCoste, lead producer, said. "The idea was born in a Bethesda Studios game jam but quickly amassed an inter-studio cult following through the magic and wonder of puppetry." Before the Ultracite Terror was envisioned in-game, Rush decided that a puppet show would be the best first step.
There's a short clip of the pint-sized Ultracite Terror shown during the broadcast, and I got to see it again during an interview with Jon Rush: "Rather than having to spend a lot of time making the VE model and getting it into engine and building a big set and doing the animations and all that stuff, months and months of work, we decided that [the puppet] is pretty straightforward," Rush told me. "Just record it on the iPhone and act it out, kind of like kids with action figures smashing them together. So that fight at the end in the game with the ultracite terror is about 90% what we had specced out just with puppets and adding figures."
"It's definetly the biggest boss in Fallout 76, and it might be the biggest boss in a Fallout game in general," environment artist Erin Bower said. But at the very least, if you manage to defeat this beast, the prizes will definitely be worth it. LaCoste mentioned during the broadcast that the rewards for this raid would be new four-star weaponry and armour. These will be a big step up from three-star items players are used to and reflect a need for more powerful armour and weapons in Fallout 76 to keep up with a creeping difficulty.
"People wanted that next step up in power, and they want that next challenge, something that really knocks them down," Rush told me. "I think it scratches a lot of what our elder game players have been asking for, for quite some time."
There's more to the December update than just The Gleaming Depths, though. Players can also expect C.A.M.P. pets to make an appearance, as well as new player titles. C.A.M.P. pets were first announced during the Xbox livestream at the Tokyo Game Show, which explained how players would be able to adopt a cat or a dog and fill their base with little trinkets to help make their new furry companions feel at home. "You'll be able to interact with your pets, dress them, and even place furniture like a cat scratch pole or a bonafide bone-filled dirt pile in your camp for them to enjoy," LaCoste said.
The last feature mentioned during the Fallout Day Broadcast is the upcoming player titles. These will include several options for a prefix and a suffix for players to choose from, such as Bossy/Dirty/Rotten and Dread/Beast/fool. But if you don't feel creative enough to match together something of your own, then you can always just take inspiration from the several dev creations like Midnight Bot-Beater, Gulper Technician, Gleaming Raid Rookie, Scorched Sightseer, and Bloodied Adventurer. You'll be able to unlock all of these options by completing quests and challenges.
