In Fallout 76, power armor can keep you safe, or it can become a horrible tomb entrapping unsuspecting players until the end of time (or until they reset their game). That’s what happened to one group of players attempting Fallout 76’s brand new raid.
Added today as part of patch 12, Vault 94 is the game’s first raid, inviting up to four players to wander inside and discover what befell the vault’s past inhabitants. Like raids in other games, Vault 94 ebbs and flows between intense combat, small puzzles, and the occasional platforming section, requiring good teamwork and communication between high level players in order to successfully complete it.
Twitch streamer Kevduit’s team was livestreaming the raid earlier today. Unfortunately, no amount of good comms work was going to prevent one of their players, AvxAustral, from getting trapped inside her power armor midway through the group’s attempt to beat the raid on the hardest difficulty. The glitch makes it impossible for a player wearing power armor to move or do anything else, rendering the person useless until they load back into the game. “Are you fucking kiding me?!” AvxAustral said when it happened. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
”Why did you try to get out of your power armor?” asked one frustrated teammate, referring to the main way players avoid Fallout 76’s power armor glitch, which is by staying inside the armor. “Because I needed to make ammo,” AvxAustral replied. One teammate suggested she try to leave and rejoin game, but another teammate noted there’s no way to join a raid that’s in progress. Re-opening the vault would reset everyone’s progress.
The group ultimately decided to leave AvxAustral behind and attempt to finish the run down a person, only to get their asses kicked in the next room by large swarms of enemies and having to navigate a complex maze of key cards, terminals, and cooling vents in a precise and coordinated manner.
Fallout 76 has long had issues with power armor. When the game launched, players would occasionally become glitched when trying to exit their suits. In July Bethesda released a big update to the game, part of which was geared around overhauling the power armor animations and associated bugs. It ended up causing a host of new power armor issues, including players occasionally getting trapped inside. More than a few players were discouraged to see the bug hadn’t been addressed in today’s update, even as the game’s battle royale mode received a bunch of new balance tweaks and design changes.
“‘Fixed bug that caused game to lock up when exiting power armor’ should be the only note for Patch 13,” wrote one player in response to the latest set of patch notes. Given Fallout 76’s mixed track record, it’s only fitting that someone running the game’s much-anticipated raid would succumb to it.