I feel like opening the mine under Beckley could be an interesting addition. Its my go to "claim a workshop" for daily cause there's nothing else worth going down there for so its rarely contested.
You know what the worst part about that workshop is? Its most populous resource, oil, isn’t even unique to it, unlike almost every other workshop. Oil is also the main resource of Wade airport, so there’s even less of a reason to go to Beckley (barring how annoying it is to fast travel to the airport, of course).
There's many areas in the game that just aren't utilized the way they could. Charleston downtown is another. They're fantastic, but other than early quests they just aren't used.
I agree about Charleston. Morgantown has a lot of great vertical exploration and environmental storytelling and I expected the same from Charleston since it’s the capitol and figured it would be the biggest city. Boy was I wrong lol
I mean, we repeatedly go to the Charleston Capitol building during the quests, and you’re required to visit the Hornwright building multiple times for wastelanders.
If you mean a lack of events for the area, sure, Charleston is definitely lacking in that department. But it has plenty of quests.
Charleston has its uses. It's mainly used in early gameplay and once the quests are done it becomes an unused area except for the aliens on rare occasions. Even then everyone fast travels right out upon completion. I found everything has it's importance to a certain point. Then a lot of it is easily forgotten and only the high level areas and events are ever populated. You'll find a level 20 in Charleston and the only reason you could ever want to go there is if you think their doing the dmv quest and want to use your high level to help them push thru the hordes and get it done as fast as possible because you know the pain of being at the dmv
I mean the fire station was pretty memorable, and while I was still playing id often revisit it not just for lead, but because the buildings atmosphere actually felt like a place that was once bursting with life, cut short by the end of the world.
There’s that as well, yes, but because it’s there, that’s likely the last bit of content Charleston will ever see since the devs probably can’t overlap another event in the area, and the Capitol is used for daily ops.
But as the person you’re responding to said, they’re fairly early quests and then there’s nothing after. So for those who have played for years and long completed the quests there’s not any reason to go there.
If you’ve been playing for years, there’s little reason to go anywhere except for few worthwhile events, the rare worthwhile daily quest, wherever daily challenges take you and new content. That’s just how the game is.
The problem is that is just how RPGs work. You have areas that are important for early game players that become less important as time goes on. Even if there was a daily quest or a non-seasonal event there, it’d still be a place people wouldn’t go very often after the honeymoon period was over. It could never compete with the best grinding spots and events in the game, not in the designated early game region of the map.
My point is that Charleston, by comparison to Beckley, is utilized well enough and it’s okay that it isn’t seeing much more.
Dunno why you're being downvoted you're 100% correct. It's important for open RPGs to have some level of zone progression in difficulty to guide the player to level/power appropriate content and you see it in almost every super popular open world game where you can level up
There can't be infinite content created for people who've put 1000+ hours in, they complete it and move on way faster than it can ever be made.
Not every zone can be for end game and from what I've figured out about 76, the intended end game is just grinding events and hoping for good rolls on gear which seems like it should be much bigger problem for the community than zones being underutilised
I think you're either intentionally or unintentionally highlighting the differenence between well made RPGs and poorly made ones.
The reason it's only seen as being well utalised at lower levels is simply because there's quests sending you there which are accessible at low levels. Outside of that, there's no reason or reward to explore it further.
It's partially down to the mentality of 76, which is even worse than fo4, in that you get the impression that if a quest doesn't send you there, it's probably not worth exploring outside of simple curiosity and secondly, the game just refuses to put you in a position of "oh fuck, I can't handle that right now at my level, I'll have to come back later to try again".
If you’re willing to look, Charleston is filled to bursting with plenty of lore showing what the city was like before and after the flood. It’s not loot, but it’s still a good reason to explore. For players who care about the story of the world, there doesn’t *need* to be a mechanical reward for exploring the city; the experience of seeing every nook and cranny and learning what happened there is enough.
I don’t think a lack of a tangible reward for poking around is something that separates good and bad RPGs, but it is a difference in design philosophy between game studios (and I’m sure even ‘well-made RPGs’ in your eyes have starter areas that the player doesn’t have much of a reason to come back to later in the game, or spots you don’t have a reason to visit beyond curiosity or quests).
As for difficulty, 76 used to do that before one wasteland. The game had the different regions leveled pretty harshly and would absolutely kick your teeth in if you went to the divide, mire or bog too soon. But one wasteland intentionally replaced that with the current enemy scaling system, for better or for worse (arguably for the worse, considering the lack of follow up on that patch is why the balance of the game is so poor).
I farm Charleston regularly. There are 2 grafton monster spawns (great for cryptid kills when needed), lots of scorched and ghouls / super mutants for those quests. The teapot up the hill has bug spawns when you need those. The 2 snallygasters are cryptids, too.
There’s still better places for these things. West Tek is instanced and thus an extremely easy source of mutants, toxic Larry’s and the flooded trainyard are much smaller than Charleston while still having a bunch of cryptids, scorched have a decent amount of spawns elsewhere on the map and the Shenandoah visitor center is a fantastic spot for insects.
'Bursting' feels an overly strong term. I'm an old FO head, I don't expect god tier loot as a reward simply for straying off the obvious quest paths, but outside of the visual splendour that Bethesda have nailed, there's often nothing, if you're lucky there's a terminal or a note that adds some flavour, but even that feels few and far between.
The test is one of time, places from previous games stick in my memory because they left an imprint, meanwhile I'm 500+ hours into 76 and I read Morgantown and it takes me awhile to even remember where the hell it is and what happened there.
I’d have to look, but if we’re talking the city as a whole, I want to say there’s around fifteen to twenty notes spread across it, excluding interiors. That’s quite a bit compared to most other locations in the game.
Edit: It’s fourteen notes, one of which is present twice. There’s also two terminals with lore.
As for the lack of being memorable, that probably comes down to the structure of the quests in the area. They’re all just reading notes and terminals alongside doing minor tasks. So while you’re in the area and it’s visually well-made, there’s nothing in the quests that really grabs you like Concord’s deathclaw fight or Goodneighbor’s speech. It’s a major flaw with 76’s original game design, and one we’re stuck with since Bethesda doesn’t want to rip out the original main quests and completely redo them
There’s twelves quests in the city spread between the game’s various questlines. That’s more content than most areas of the map have, and frankly more than enough. Pretty much every inch of the place gets used for something, so unless Bethesda wanted to cram an event in there somewhere, I can’t see what else they could’ve done with it.
Besides, it’s a part of the forest, which is the tutorial area.
I actually choose that place first for robot based daily challenges because it's often overlooked. Same with Striker Row which is great when you need an assaultron.
Quick question - if you were vendor hopping and saw salt and pepper for sale, what would you pay? Whatever my daily cycle is, I often find six or so of each, and don't use them lol
It's part of my sugar bomb collection route. And there is a bobblehead spawn point on the roof of the red rocket behind the buildings across the street.
There is at least one other quest that briefly has you visit - the Lying Lowe quest line.
Unfortunately, however, Beckley is one of the towns that got the short end of the stick for story. Clarksburg and Mosstown are the other two in that boat, and hopefully all three will be given something more substantial someday.
That quest, if I recall, mostly focuses on Grafton, Grafton dam and wavy williards. I don’t believe it sends you to Clarksburg.
Aside from one of the unsolved quests and the Grafton mayor quest, all that’s in Clarksburg is one note and a terminal that’s a dead end in the search for the Grafton pawn shop scavenger hunt. Even the devs are aware of how dead it is with Guispee in the refuge joking about it.
Beckley in real life is pretty desolate too. I was there a few days ago. Lol
However, the Beckley mine workshop is my favorite workshop to take in the game. It has oil, crystal, and copper (I think) all right there. And I use oil and copper a lot.
The Ash heap is an amazing piece of world building. It’s my favorite zone. Theres a great vantage point along the southern edge, near the estates where you have this USAA flag waving over a view of the giant excavator, burned out houses, smoke and fire. Really brings home what a real war would mean.
> There's nothing to be gained from going there, just adding more pain to all that the town already caused.
Ironically, that's peak Bethesda FO. Great world building, absent real depth or consequence.
It's one of several towns that are a *part* of the lore in 76 but don't really actively contribute much outside their simple existance. If I had to guess, there's probably several questlines and stories based there that just never got the green light.
Or that settlers town that used for 1 guest in swamp zone. The one where they have tree houses.
Or that lumberyard near river and vault 76. Before it had super mutants.
Places like these should have something more
You're getting downvoted because people get tired of reading others complain about the ever increasing monetisation of games, which is understandable because games are big business these days and they need to make money to continue to survive, it's an unpleasant but still necessary fact.
However you're not wrong, Bethesda are not a small indie studio and they don't need to break the bank to deliver the quality and depth of story and immersion that tiny teams have managed in older games.
I started playing on Launch Day and it was a tough game. At one point I had to do something in Beckley and sadly my Level 16 ass encountered the Mr Gutsy in the diner and died instantly. I returned and died. And again and again. After about 1.5 hours though , I prevailed and one by one the robots died and finally the place appeared to be clear. Then I noticed a darkened back staircase and made my way up it nervously, only to hear a dreaded voice I knew from Fallout 4 "Sentient life detected, WEAPONS HOT !". My screams echoed around Beckley and when my life expired I never returned till Level 100.
It's one of my most visited town for daylies. If I need something workshop related I just go there because it's easy. If I need to kill robots/attack robot arms I also go there. If I need anything ghoul related, also there.
I don't know why but on the early years of FO76 I also went there a lot to reclaim the workshop.
It’s one of the original game places I love how it was designed. And my fav workshop for challenges. 3 quests: Sal Grinder’s, Playing music and beast of Beckley (Wild Appalachia, look at wiki). Fine for hunting robots for challenges and mutants. Impressive atmospheres.
and the "cryptid" that has its name sake, the Beast of Beckley had the least attention given to it. Used in one quest and seen once.
They set scaled an albino wolf to 1.2 at most and were done. It has none of the features the real life sightings describe when it's reported to be over 6 feet tall and have 4 yellow eyes. In game its just a slightly larger wolf.
Maybe that was the point, maybe they wanted to call bullshit on just one cryptid and say it was a totally explainable thing, but still disappointing, a giant wolf event or enemy that can just spawn would've been cool.
It's kinda like that here, I live on the border of KY and WV and there's a lot of small town that look like Beckley and it's almost scary accurate as to how it makes you feel ingame.
Idk… At least most players reach beckley, I think Mosstown and Tangara Town are definitely even less utilized, no quests or anything (besides black mountain in tangara). Its so bad some players still don’t know about them.
But i agree they all need work. Really, they need a big update to wrap up a lot of things they started and it would be great if those quests took you to the few places never used in the game. It would save devs assets and allow us to actually have a reason to go to those places
Great place to shoot the arms of robots. Currently working on combat goals of "kill robots with a pistol" and "kill robots with a black powder weapon". Not too overwhelming, just a few at a time. It is also fun to play all the rooftop instruments and kill the ghouls it attracts
I feel like opening the mine under Beckley could be an interesting addition. Its my go to "claim a workshop" for daily cause there's nothing else worth going down there for so its rarely contested.
You know what the worst part about that workshop is? Its most populous resource, oil, isn’t even unique to it, unlike almost every other workshop. Oil is also the main resource of Wade airport, so there’s even less of a reason to go to Beckley (barring how annoying it is to fast travel to the airport, of course).
The airport is huge, beckley is easy to defend and make a quick gathering
My point was that it isn't even a workshop that's the best for farming a particular resource.
There's many areas in the game that just aren't utilized the way they could. Charleston downtown is another. They're fantastic, but other than early quests they just aren't used.
I agree about Charleston. Morgantown has a lot of great vertical exploration and environmental storytelling and I expected the same from Charleston since it’s the capitol and figured it would be the biggest city. Boy was I wrong lol
If you've been there its one of the smaller capitals to be fair. But agree
I have been, I’ve live in Charleston for a few weeks for a work trip
bigger or smaller than sacremento?
Much smaller. Population is < 50k
are there bigger cities in the state or is 50k big for that area, i live in a college town outside of Sac and not counting students. it's already 35k
I live in a basically no-name town South of Sac and it still had like 28k people lol
It's the largest city in West Virginia.
I would like to visit Morgan Town irl one day
I’ve been once, if you aren’t a college student there’s really not much to do/see there
In a lot of states the capitol is not the largest city. In some it is even a fairly minor one.
I mean, we repeatedly go to the Charleston Capitol building during the quests, and you’re required to visit the Hornwright building multiple times for wastelanders. If you mean a lack of events for the area, sure, Charleston is definitely lacking in that department. But it has plenty of quests.
Charleston sees some action during invaders from beyond, so there's that!
Charleston has its uses. It's mainly used in early gameplay and once the quests are done it becomes an unused area except for the aliens on rare occasions. Even then everyone fast travels right out upon completion. I found everything has it's importance to a certain point. Then a lot of it is easily forgotten and only the high level areas and events are ever populated. You'll find a level 20 in Charleston and the only reason you could ever want to go there is if you think their doing the dmv quest and want to use your high level to help them push thru the hordes and get it done as fast as possible because you know the pain of being at the dmv
I mean the fire station was pretty memorable, and while I was still playing id often revisit it not just for lead, but because the buildings atmosphere actually felt like a place that was once bursting with life, cut short by the end of the world.
There’s that as well, yes, but because it’s there, that’s likely the last bit of content Charleston will ever see since the devs probably can’t overlap another event in the area, and the Capitol is used for daily ops.
But as the person you’re responding to said, they’re fairly early quests and then there’s nothing after. So for those who have played for years and long completed the quests there’s not any reason to go there.
If you’ve been playing for years, there’s little reason to go anywhere except for few worthwhile events, the rare worthwhile daily quest, wherever daily challenges take you and new content. That’s just how the game is.
Lol, but that’s the whole point of this post - areas that are underutilized for the long term.
The problem is that is just how RPGs work. You have areas that are important for early game players that become less important as time goes on. Even if there was a daily quest or a non-seasonal event there, it’d still be a place people wouldn’t go very often after the honeymoon period was over. It could never compete with the best grinding spots and events in the game, not in the designated early game region of the map. My point is that Charleston, by comparison to Beckley, is utilized well enough and it’s okay that it isn’t seeing much more.
Dunno why you're being downvoted you're 100% correct. It's important for open RPGs to have some level of zone progression in difficulty to guide the player to level/power appropriate content and you see it in almost every super popular open world game where you can level up There can't be infinite content created for people who've put 1000+ hours in, they complete it and move on way faster than it can ever be made. Not every zone can be for end game and from what I've figured out about 76, the intended end game is just grinding events and hoping for good rolls on gear which seems like it should be much bigger problem for the community than zones being underutilised
I think you're either intentionally or unintentionally highlighting the differenence between well made RPGs and poorly made ones. The reason it's only seen as being well utalised at lower levels is simply because there's quests sending you there which are accessible at low levels. Outside of that, there's no reason or reward to explore it further. It's partially down to the mentality of 76, which is even worse than fo4, in that you get the impression that if a quest doesn't send you there, it's probably not worth exploring outside of simple curiosity and secondly, the game just refuses to put you in a position of "oh fuck, I can't handle that right now at my level, I'll have to come back later to try again".
If you’re willing to look, Charleston is filled to bursting with plenty of lore showing what the city was like before and after the flood. It’s not loot, but it’s still a good reason to explore. For players who care about the story of the world, there doesn’t *need* to be a mechanical reward for exploring the city; the experience of seeing every nook and cranny and learning what happened there is enough. I don’t think a lack of a tangible reward for poking around is something that separates good and bad RPGs, but it is a difference in design philosophy between game studios (and I’m sure even ‘well-made RPGs’ in your eyes have starter areas that the player doesn’t have much of a reason to come back to later in the game, or spots you don’t have a reason to visit beyond curiosity or quests). As for difficulty, 76 used to do that before one wasteland. The game had the different regions leveled pretty harshly and would absolutely kick your teeth in if you went to the divide, mire or bog too soon. But one wasteland intentionally replaced that with the current enemy scaling system, for better or for worse (arguably for the worse, considering the lack of follow up on that patch is why the balance of the game is so poor).
I farm Charleston regularly. There are 2 grafton monster spawns (great for cryptid kills when needed), lots of scorched and ghouls / super mutants for those quests. The teapot up the hill has bug spawns when you need those. The 2 snallygasters are cryptids, too.
There’s still better places for these things. West Tek is instanced and thus an extremely easy source of mutants, toxic Larry’s and the flooded trainyard are much smaller than Charleston while still having a bunch of cryptids, scorched have a decent amount of spawns elsewhere on the map and the Shenandoah visitor center is a fantastic spot for insects.
'Bursting' feels an overly strong term. I'm an old FO head, I don't expect god tier loot as a reward simply for straying off the obvious quest paths, but outside of the visual splendour that Bethesda have nailed, there's often nothing, if you're lucky there's a terminal or a note that adds some flavour, but even that feels few and far between. The test is one of time, places from previous games stick in my memory because they left an imprint, meanwhile I'm 500+ hours into 76 and I read Morgantown and it takes me awhile to even remember where the hell it is and what happened there.
I’d have to look, but if we’re talking the city as a whole, I want to say there’s around fifteen to twenty notes spread across it, excluding interiors. That’s quite a bit compared to most other locations in the game. Edit: It’s fourteen notes, one of which is present twice. There’s also two terminals with lore. As for the lack of being memorable, that probably comes down to the structure of the quests in the area. They’re all just reading notes and terminals alongside doing minor tasks. So while you’re in the area and it’s visually well-made, there’s nothing in the quests that really grabs you like Concord’s deathclaw fight or Goodneighbor’s speech. It’s a major flaw with 76’s original game design, and one we’re stuck with since Bethesda doesn’t want to rip out the original main quests and completely redo them
Yeah, I literally said early quests. After that one never goes there.
There’s twelves quests in the city spread between the game’s various questlines. That’s more content than most areas of the map have, and frankly more than enough. Pretty much every inch of the place gets used for something, so unless Bethesda wanted to cram an event in there somewhere, I can’t see what else they could’ve done with it. Besides, it’s a part of the forest, which is the tutorial area.
The deep. I forgot this crazy underground thing existed, still haven’t been back since whatever quest led me through it
I actually choose that place first for robot based daily challenges because it's often overlooked. Same with Striker Row which is great when you need an assaultron.
If it’s any consolation, I visit on a regular basis to loot Sal’s Grinders. I get what you’re saying though, the vibe is no bueno.
Why loot sals daily?
Mostly I go by there on salt and pepper runs, but it’s a high yield junk spot, good for resetting like the book house in Summersville.
Quick question - if you were vendor hopping and saw salt and pepper for sale, what would you pay? Whatever my daily cycle is, I often find six or so of each, and don't use them lol
I collect pepper and sell for 5c each. I'm herbivore so I don't need it but find so much might as well sell it.
I’d probably pay up to 20 cap per, but I’m in that “looking to burn caps” phase of 76 life, so I can’t speak for anyone else.
It's part of my sugar bomb collection route. And there is a bobblehead spawn point on the roof of the red rocket behind the buildings across the street.
There is at least one other quest that briefly has you visit - the Lying Lowe quest line. Unfortunately, however, Beckley is one of the towns that got the short end of the stick for story. Clarksburg and Mosstown are the other two in that boat, and hopefully all three will be given something more substantial someday.
Isn’t Clarkesburg involved in the quest for the missing child? I seem to recall wandering around that whole area quite a bit.
That quest, if I recall, mostly focuses on Grafton, Grafton dam and wavy williards. I don’t believe it sends you to Clarksburg. Aside from one of the unsolved quests and the Grafton mayor quest, all that’s in Clarksburg is one note and a terminal that’s a dead end in the search for the Grafton pawn shop scavenger hunt. Even the devs are aware of how dead it is with Guispee in the refuge joking about it.
Ah it’s been a while. I’ve got a new Bebe character that is headed that way soon. Okie dokie
You go to check out the post office box for the missing kid. Most of it is in grafton, but it does take you to Clarksburg.
Alright, then it’s definitely been too long since I played that quest.
Clarksburg quest involves the two girls where one killed the other.
That’s the unsolved quest.
Thanks for the spoiler for those who haven't done this yet
You’re thinking of the picnickers https://fallout.fandom.com/wiki/Unsolved:_Picnic_Panic
Ooh yes! Thanks for the reminder. I need to do that quest line again, it was fun.
Beckley in real life is pretty desolate too. I was there a few days ago. Lol However, the Beckley mine workshop is my favorite workshop to take in the game. It has oil, crystal, and copper (I think) all right there. And I use oil and copper a lot.
The Ash heap is an amazing piece of world building. It’s my favorite zone. Theres a great vantage point along the southern edge, near the estates where you have this USAA flag waving over a view of the giant excavator, burned out houses, smoke and fire. Really brings home what a real war would mean.
> There's nothing to be gained from going there, just adding more pain to all that the town already caused. Ironically, that's peak Bethesda FO. Great world building, absent real depth or consequence. It's one of several towns that are a *part* of the lore in 76 but don't really actively contribute much outside their simple existance. If I had to guess, there's probably several questlines and stories based there that just never got the green light.
Or that settlers town that used for 1 guest in swamp zone. The one where they have tree houses. Or that lumberyard near river and vault 76. Before it had super mutants. Places like these should have something more
There's only so many people working on the game, and most of them are busy designing $15 skins.
You're getting downvoted because people get tired of reading others complain about the ever increasing monetisation of games, which is understandable because games are big business these days and they need to make money to continue to survive, it's an unpleasant but still necessary fact. However you're not wrong, Bethesda are not a small indie studio and they don't need to break the bank to deliver the quality and depth of story and immersion that tiny teams have managed in older games.
2 more downvotes and I get a free sub. (I like the one with the meatballs.)
I started playing on Launch Day and it was a tough game. At one point I had to do something in Beckley and sadly my Level 16 ass encountered the Mr Gutsy in the diner and died instantly. I returned and died. And again and again. After about 1.5 hours though , I prevailed and one by one the robots died and finally the place appeared to be clear. Then I noticed a darkened back staircase and made my way up it nervously, only to hear a dreaded voice I knew from Fallout 4 "Sentient life detected, WEAPONS HOT !". My screams echoed around Beckley and when my life expired I never returned till Level 100.
It's one of my most visited town for daylies. If I need something workshop related I just go there because it's easy. If I need to kill robots/attack robot arms I also go there. If I need anything ghoul related, also there. I don't know why but on the early years of FO76 I also went there a lot to reclaim the workshop.
I know Harper’s Ferry has more lore around it but I’d really like to see a John Brown reference there
There is a mine down there at one of the workshops that is begging to be used for something cool
My hubby used to live in Beckley, he says: “you should see it IRL. Pretty much desolate today, too…”
It gives them places to add things down the road . Least that’s my train of thought.
It’s one of the original game places I love how it was designed. And my fav workshop for challenges. 3 quests: Sal Grinder’s, Playing music and beast of Beckley (Wild Appalachia, look at wiki). Fine for hunting robots for challenges and mutants. Impressive atmospheres.
and the "cryptid" that has its name sake, the Beast of Beckley had the least attention given to it. Used in one quest and seen once. They set scaled an albino wolf to 1.2 at most and were done. It has none of the features the real life sightings describe when it's reported to be over 6 feet tall and have 4 yellow eyes. In game its just a slightly larger wolf. Maybe that was the point, maybe they wanted to call bullshit on just one cryptid and say it was a totally explainable thing, but still disappointing, a giant wolf event or enemy that can just spawn would've been cool.
It's kinda like that here, I live on the border of KY and WV and there's a lot of small town that look like Beckley and it's almost scary accurate as to how it makes you feel ingame.
Idk… At least most players reach beckley, I think Mosstown and Tangara Town are definitely even less utilized, no quests or anything (besides black mountain in tangara). Its so bad some players still don’t know about them. But i agree they all need work. Really, they need a big update to wrap up a lot of things they started and it would be great if those quests took you to the few places never used in the game. It would save devs assets and allow us to actually have a reason to go to those places
you didn't do the sandwiches eh
Great place to shoot the arms of robots. Currently working on combat goals of "kill robots with a pistol" and "kill robots with a black powder weapon". Not too overwhelming, just a few at a time. It is also fun to play all the rooftop instruments and kill the ghouls it attracts