Camp building is at the center of Fallout 76 and the game’s April 27 update will finally let players create, store, and manage multiple campsites, a massive boon to the game’s more industrious architects.
Called “Locked and Loaded,” the April update, which also includes a new loadout manager to quickly swap between character builds, will help reduce some of the major sources of friction that still exist in the over two year old online game. Currently, players can only build one campsite at a time. If they want to build a new one somewhere else, or completely change the look, design, and theme, they need to scrap it and start over from scratch.
Camp slots change that by letting players store existing camps and then bring them back as needed. You’ll still only be able to have one campsite active at a time, but in theory you could rotate between your main penthouse, crafting outpost, and mountain get-away as needed, adding more variety to exploration and helping reward Fallout 76's more creative players by encouraging them to try out new ideas. For the uninitiated, Bethesda’s Fallout MMO is home to some really cool creations.
Special Loadouts, meanwhile, is a new feature that will let players manage their character builds more easily. In Fallout 76 these revolve around perk cards that you collect like baseball cards, upgrading them and equipping them based on your total stat for the corresponding type of card. It’s a unique system, but also a mess to deal with and frankly something I never want to see in another Fallout game. Being able to swap quickly between different builds will be a good reason to actually play with all of the different perks in the game, rather than just sticking to the ones that make you a tanky DPS hose and only occasionally switching to get crafting buffs while making new weapons back at camp.
The Locked and Loaded update will also expand on the game’s existing and much beleaguered special ops grind, as well as finally bring back the PTS so PC players can experiment with upcoming changes to the game ahead of time and do free QA for Bethesda in the process. But April 27 is still a ways away at this point after what’s already been quite a slow winter for the live-service game. Last year, Fallout 76 switched to a seasonal model focused on grinding out battle pass-style rewards.
The third season, The Scribe of Avalon, got underway last December a couple weeks after a new questline called Steel Dawn went live. Unlike some other live games, Fallout 76's seasons have been heavy on the grind but light on the new content so far, and some players are desperate to get a look at what the game’s 2021 roadmap will look like. Camp slots and loadout managers are nice improvements, but not new content to play. Fallout 76's fourth season is expected to start when the new update drops in late April.