Welcome back to the Public Test Server! Today, we’re kicking off early testing of the upcoming Hideouts feature (currently planned to release Spring 2027) as well as some great updates that the team has made to World Pets and Return to Skyline Valley (coming Winter 2026).

Read all about today’s update below.

How to Participate in the PTS

All players who own a copy of Fallout 76 on Steam can participate in our PTS. To install the PTS, open your Steam library, and install “Fallout 76 Public Test Server”.

Console PTS Testers

Our current goal is to bring Hideouts and World Pets to the console PTS as soon as possible.

All PTS updates are required to be reviewed and approved by XBOX and PlayStation platforms before we can deliver the update. In general, due to this necessary approval process the console PTS will always be a bit delayed from the PC PTS.

As a general reminder, not all the content you see in the PTS is guaranteed to be released with the update that we’re testing.

Hideouts

This is a call to the bravest Bounty Hunters in Appalachia. Thanks to your dutiful work clearing out those villainous rapscallions, we’re starting to get a picture of where they’re all coming from.

These encampments can be found around Appalachia, and those that have made it out say they are filled with some of the biggest and baddest from the various factions around the region. It will be up to you to find leads that will direct you to where these Hideouts are and give you access you need to enter.

Arriving with four different difficulties (Basic, Challenging, Lethal, and Marked), Hideouts serve as a dynamic new challenge where you get to control the difficulty through the type of lead you craft. And of course, if you want the highest chance of getting some of the best rewards, you’ll want to clear these out on higher difficulties. Round up your posse, bring your favorite pet, and head over to Marshall Canton at the Trading Post in Skyline Valley. There are Hideouts that need to be cleaned out.

Please Note: For the purposes of this testing period, The Drifter will not appear in Hideouts. All rewards you obtain from completing Hideouts are TEMPORARY and don’t include any of the unique rewards we have planned for this content. The focus of this testing period remains on lead acquisition and difficulty.

Picking Up the Lead

Finding and crafting leads on the various Hideout locations is how you’ll be able to craft your entrance key to their encampment. It will also be how you control the level of challenge too.

Basic Leads can be obtained through Daily Quests, Activities, Grunt Hunts, and from various cabinets and safes in the world. Targeted for a team of Level 20 characters.

Challenging Leads can be crafted by exchanging 3 Basic Leads and some Caps at your Tinker’s Workbench. Or by participating and completing in Head Hunts, Seasonal Public Events, Infestations, and Public Events. Targeted for a team of Level 75-100 characters.

Like Challenging Leads, Lethal Leads can be crafted by exchanging 3 Challenging Leads and some Caps. This will be your primary way of accessing this harder difficulty. They can also be found on the final season repeatable page. Targeted for a team of Level 175+.

Marked Leads are the highest challenge and can only be obtained through crafting. Costing a mixture of Lethal Leads, Caps, and Drifter Intel. Once this update is released, these leads will guarantee The Drifter’s appearance but are also significantly more challenging to complete. Targeted for late game players with strong builds and coordination.

During this PTS, Drifter Intel is only obtainable as a rare crafting outcome when Lethal Leads are crafted from Challenging ones.

Locations and Factions

The two Hideout locations for this update will be The Forever Farm in Burning Springs and Vault 63’s Immortality Sector in Skyline Valley. Designed as non-linear spaces, you will have to determine which approach is the best to tackle the challenges in front of you.

Various environmental and enemy mutations ensure that no two Hideouts runs are the same. One time you could be facing The Lost and the next a Mutated Super Mutant gang. Maybe parts of the Hideout are bathed in irradiation? You won’t know until you get in there. There are things to discover in every run. Other potential Hideout inhabitants include Robots, Rust Raiders, and Mothman Cultists. Rust Raiders and The Lost will appear only in Hideouts within their respective regions.

These locations are not locked away from you outside of attempting them as Hideouts either. Feel free to enter either location to experience it as you would any other space. Get a feel for the layout or just run in there to defeat and loot anything foolish enough to be hanging around.

Bonus Objectives

Once you start a Hideout, you will have bonus objectives to complete. Each objective will award the team with a Fallen Deputy’s Pack which contains bonus loot (reminder, loot you obtain through this pack is placeholder for this PTS). The bonus objectives will be:

• Find a Fallen Deputy’s Badge inside one of the 4 hidden containers in the Hideout.
• • The reward for finding one of the 4 hidden containers will only be obtained if found before clearing out the Hideout gang leader.
• Defeating the Hideout gang leader within a time limit.
• • The time limit begins once you move past the prep area of the Hideout.

Known Issues

• The Hideout Caches are sometimes empty.
• Environment art and VFX is not final.
• Currently, the Rust Raiders will appear in the Immortality Sector and The Lost will appear in the Forever Farm. These factions are intended to exclusively appear in the Hideout that exists in their respective region.
• There are occasions where only the party leader will obtain the Fallen Deputy’s Badge.
• During the PTS, you will not be able to continue a Hideout after logging out or disconnection. This will not be the case upon release.
• Hideouts may take a little while to spawn enemies once they are started.
• While exploring a Hideout outside of the Quest, some enemies in the location may attack each other when they shouldn’t.
• If you leave a Hideout while the quest is active, you will be removed from the quest and unable to rejoin. The intended flow is that players will be able to be re-added to the quest if they return.
• Currently, death in a Hideout drops your loot like death in the open world. This is not intended.
• The Tesla trap in the Immortality Sector is not functioning as expected.
• Mutation names on enemies can sometimes be incorrect.
• The “Hold-to-Join” flyout is occasionally hidden.

Things to Know/Schedule

Because we’re testing this feature in an earlier than normal state, there are a few things we want to make sure you’re aware of.

• Rewards will be obtained once the quest is completed.
• Consuming a new Hideout Lead will abandon any current Hideout quest currently have active.
• A new Hideout quest cannot be started while you are inside of a Hideout location (Forever Farm or Immortality Sector). Please leave the Hideout before attempting to activate a new lead.
• You can only join your team leader’s Hideout. Any Hideout quests started while you’re in a team, but NOT the team leader can only be completed solo.

Schedule

For the first week, we would like you all to obtain your leads organically by playing the game and crafting more difficult leads. We have dedicated feedback threads in our Discord to get your thoughts on the acquisition rate/feel.

During the second week, Hideout Leads will become available in the PTS Locker.

World Pets

With World Pets back on PTS servers, we’re excited to announce that we’re opening Pet Passive Buffs to be applicable to any pet species after they have been earned.

What does this mean for your experience? It means that if you level up your pet Deathclaw enough to unlock the Fun-Festation 1 passive, you can have that buff be active while your Cat, Dog, or Radhog are traveling with you.

All you need to do after unlocking a passive is select the buff you want from your Pip-Boy. You can do this by navigating to the Pets page in your Pip-Boy and then press the button that appears on the bottom of your screen for “Pet Buffs”. This will take you to a list of unlocked Pet Buffs where you can choose which two buffs you would like to have activated. These can be changed at any time!

General

• Updated Pet XP notification UI and added a progress bar.
• Added a Pip-Boy UI notification when a pet reward is claimable.
• Visual improvements in the Pet Progression menu.
• Added available reward count to the Pet progression menu help button.
• Disabled pets triggering traps.
• Added existing standard button hints to the pets tab.
• Fixed an issue that could cause pet buffs to grant more items than intended.
• Fixed an issue where multiple pet emotes could display at once.
• Wounded emotes will no longer be displayed when selecting an injured pet.
• Fix visual bug with pet progression claims which caused them to appear unclaimed, the menu now refreshes correctly without having to close/open.
• Fixed an issue where the Cat's reaction animation was preventing attacks from occurring.
• Fixed an issue with legendaries granting via Bounty Sniffer.
• Fixed situations where the C.A.M.P. icon will disappear from the Pip-Boy.
• Fixed some pet rewards being craftable without having claimed the reward.

Known Issue

• Pet can start following a player very closely if they mistakenly believe they have a gift to deliver.
• If two legendaries of the same type are looted with Bounty Sniffer, only one will be given to the player.

Return to Skyline Valley

A quick reminder of what awaits you In Skyline Valley:

Bounty Hunting with Marshal Canton

“The Trading Post” is now your hub for Bounty Hunting in Skyline Valley! Find Marshal Canton and help him take care of a number of dangerous visitors who have arrived in the valley.

New Collectible Questline

Brains on the mind! If you stumble across a mysterious glass container filled with what looks like a brain you should probably... TOUCH IT! Doing so will kick off a new collectible questline where you’ll figure out what they’re being used for.

Skyline Valley Environment Refresh

Lighting and weather improvements, mountains and hillsides being reworked, new pathways being laid and trees being planted. Skyline Valley has gotten a makeover to go alongside all the new things to do in the region. Explore and let us know what you think!

Personal Terminal

• Fixed an issue causing the Mutation and Disease counters to increment every login.
• Added Perfectly Preserved Pie consumed stat.
• Add Mr. Fuzzy Tokens collected stat.
• Added Infestations Completed under Exploration.
• Added kill counters for Cats, Fireflies, and Owlets.

Perks

• Fixed Solar Powered not interacting correctly with Night Light.
• Nerd Rage no longer scales below 20% HP. The AP regen bonus at 20% HP has been increased from 15% to 25% and the damage bonus has been increased from 40% to 60%.

Gameplay

• Player backpack is now hidden automatically when in furniture.
• Added an option to ask before scrapping a Unique Item.
• Honey Beasts now have a chance to drop the correct version of Royal Jelly. The incorrect version of Royal Jelly no longer drops from any source.
• Mr. Fuzzy Tokens are now found in the Collection tab of the Pipboy.
• Fixed a case where cryo effects could become stuck.
• Cryo damage no longer immediately freezes targets.
• Fixed an issue causing split-type weapons such as Plasma to incorrectly adjust damage when certain mods are applied.
• Increased daily limit of Bobblehead Box purchases from 6 to 15.
• Lowered the weight of normal mod boxes from 1 to 0.25 and special mod boxes from 1 to 0.5.
• Standardized the caps value of normal mod boxes for weapons.
• Standardized and adjusted the scrap return of normal mod boxes for weapons.
• Ultracite Shotgun and Railway Spikes are now correctly unlocked when any related Prime Receiver is learned.
• The plans for the Prime Receivers for the Combat Shotgun and Railway Rifle no longer continue to drop after being learned.

Workbench

• Added 4 new Item Stat fields that can be viewed when the Advanced Mod Description setting is enabled.
• • Charge Time, Charge Bonus, Crit Bonus, Sneak Bonus.
• The Gutter weapon is now craftable again at the workbench. Learning the plan teaches both the weapon and the paint.

Power Armor

• Hellcat Power Armor has a new Set Bonus.
• • Gain 10% Damage Reduction and an Additional 5% per Teammate in Power Armor.

Legendary Mods

• Added 4 new 2-Star Legendary Mods for weapons: Cryologist's, Pyro-Technician's, Poisoner's, and HazMat. These are unlocked by the 2-Star armor mods of the same names and are available to all weapons. The effect increases the damage you do with the given type by 30%.
• Toxic, Burning, and Frozen can now be applied to weapons and add the respective damage type to the weapon. These effects also scale with the number of matching elemental armor mods equipped, creating strong synergies between weapons and armor. For example, equipping a Frozen weapon alongside five pieces of Frozen armor significantly boosts the damage on both the weapon and the armor.
• Increased the chance for Toxic, Burning, Electrified, and Frozen to proc from 5% to 30%.
• Rapid 2-Star mod now also reduces the Charge Time on Charging Weapons.
• Bloodied 1-Star mod no longer scales below 20% HP. The full damage bonus is now at 20% HP.
• Icemen’s mod now increases damage against frozen targets by 50% and can be attached to any weapon.

Gleaming Depths

• Added a reward cache that can be crafted from items found in the raid encounters. This is located in the Gift section at the Tinker workbench.
• Each raid encounter now drops a special item used to craft the cache once per day and rarely after the first daily drop.
• The cache rewards are:
• • 4 Legendary 4-Star items.
  • 4 to 16 mod boxes from the raid reward pool.
  • Approximately 5.5k caps.
  • A chance at an unknown plan from the raid reward pool.
• Replaced duplicate untradable plan drops with a small amount of Scrip.

Weapon Mods

PTS NOTE: New mods requiring plans to learn may not be released in the World Pets update.

50 Cal Machine Gun

Reworked the Standard Barrel into a Long Barrel and the Heavy Barrel into a Short Barrel. Added mod slots for Receivers, Magazines, and Grips.

Single Action Revolver

Added an assortment of Barrel, Grip, and Receiver mods.

Gauss Shotgun

Expanded selection of mods to be on par with other shotguns.

Gauss Pistol

Expanded selection of mods and added the Energy Barrel. Increased ammo capacity from the Drum Magazine.

M79 Grenade Launcher

Expanded selection of mods.

Crusader Pistol

Expanded selection of mods and moved the ammo converting mods to their own slot.

Melee Weapons

Added a standard selection of grip mods to all melee weapons.