Patch Notes - September 11

Can you hear that? It’s the heart of Shenandoah calling your name. It’s time to make your way back to Skyline Valley to experience our first quality of life update to one of our regional expansions! The team has been silently working hard on the Skyline Valley region. Preparing it with a suite of environmental improvements and preparing locations around the region to play hosts to Grunt and Head Hunts. Bounty Hunting is expanding to Skyline Valley alongside the World Pets update this Winter!

Skyline Valley – Environment Refresh

The Skyline Valley environment has received some love with the team doing some landscaping work to improve how it feels to travel around the region. In some cases, entire mountains and hillsides have been reworked, in others new pathways have been laid with extra trees and vegetation to give the region the extra environmental love it deserves. All this combined with the lighting and the weather improvements for the region really set the mood.

Local tour guides recommend the following locations:

• Three Ponds
• Grindstone Arch
• Hawksbill Weather Station
• Old Crimora Mines
• Rapidan Camp
• Dark Hollow Manor

Skyline Valley - Bounty Hunting

Head on over to “The Trading Post” which now acts as the hub for Bounty Hunting in Skyline Valley. There you will find Marshal Canton, a reprogrammed Robo-Brain who was probably left out in the storm for too long. Marshal Canton has been tracking a number of dangerous visitors who have arrived in the valley and is ready to reward you for taking them down. Bounty Hunting in Skyline Valley introduces new factions to the experience. Prepare to fight Super Mutants, Mothman Cultists, The Lost, and more.

Skyline Valley – New Collectible Questline

While you’re taking in the sights of the renovated Skyline Valley, you’ll likely stumble across mysterious glass cannisters. These canisters look like they’re filled with a live brain specimen, but surely that can’t be the case. Someone must know what they’re being used for. After collecting your first glass jar, you Pip-Boy will update with a location for you to take it to and there your adventure will begin.

World Pets

Before we dive into the updates for today, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for all the feedback on the Pets progression system so far! We hear your feedback on the passive buffs and are working on ways to address your concerns.

Gameplay Changes

• Updated Pet XP system
• • Pets bank XP every second (max 1 minute) and collect the XP every time Player earns XP. (+10% extra Pet XP on Kills)
  • Re-balanced Pet XP levels accordingly
• Pets now move to Ping location (when not in combat, including Stay command)
• Ping to attack now works when you're not actively in Combat (Protect and Attack command only)
• You can now Ping from within VATS!
• Added a game setting to set the Pet default Command
• Added a game setting to set the Pet Follow position (ahead/behind)
• UI pass on Pet progression Menu
• Fixed a bug to allow scrolling Pet rewards description text with a controller (scroll right-stick)
• Fixed a bug where player could claim rewards by selecting future rewards in the Pet progression Menu
• Fixed a bug where shortcuts to open the Pet Progression Menu or renaming your Pet with a controller was showing the wrong input.

Note: Pets can be healed by Medic weapons, so if you believe your Medic weapons are not healing your pets, please let us know!

Known issues

• Ping to move does not work when pinging far from player
• Pet XP not granting consistently
• Help pages do not reflect updated Pet XP system

Original Patch Notes

Welcome back!

We’re excited to bring Pets back to the PTS! Which means the PTS is now Pspsps-TS once more! This go around, we have some new features that bring more depth to the experience of adventuring with your furry or rough-skinned friends.

Before getting into what’s new, let’s recap the feature for those who might have missed out on the original announcement.

Pets takes your C.A.M.P. Pets and turns them into… just pets! CAMPanions who will travel and fight alongside you on almost any adventure you go on. Accessible through your Pip-Boy, you can summon a Dog, Cat, Radhog, or a Deathclaw to be your partner. Through direct interactions or the Command wheel, you can order them to Attack, Stay, Follow, or Protect and they will deal damage to any enemy foolish enough to cross your path.

Today, we’re introducing two new systems to the experience. Pet Leveling and Pet Passives.

How to Participate in the Pspsps-TS

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

Console PTS Testers

Thank you to everyone who has joined the PTS on Consoles. We’re seeing a lot of great data from your experience so far and that data will help the team further improve the experience for launch and in the future.

We plan on bringing Pets to XBOX Series and PlayStation 5 PTS in a couple of weeks. Right now, we’re focused on continuing to gather data from your experiences and preparing for the native XBOX Series and PlayStation update to launch with The Slasher update on September 15.

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.

Pet Leveling

The new Pet Leveling UI can be found by navigating to the Pets tab in your Pip-Boy and pressing the “Right Stick” on your controller, or “X” on keyboard, to open the Pet Leveling Progression menu.

Anytime that you earn XP with your pet summoned allows them to gain XP as well (1 min cooldown). They can reach a max level of 200, unlocking HP/DMG increases, increased player carry capacity, Pet Passive improvements (more on that below) as well as rewards such as Atoms, Caps, Player Titles, and more. Freshly rested Pets will earn more XP the first few hours everyday.

Don’t worry about having to level up each individual type of Dog you have though. Pets are leveled on a per species basis. Meaning that leveling your German Shepherd will bring all your dogs up to the same level. So, feel free to swap that German Shepherd out for the RoboPaw Steel Dog whenever the mood strikes.

Pet Passives

Each pet has two passives. One that grants you a useful item, and one that improves rewards in a specific type of activity/event.

After unlocking them, these serve as small buffs that you receive while your Pet is active. The passives are themed to the pet you’re currently adventuring with (for example, Cats can find Improved Bait for you).

Earned by leveling up, these passive buffs have multiple stages that improve the buff as your pet hits higher levels. Below, you’ll find a list of pet species and their passives. Pets earn their passives at Level 5 and 20, and see improvements to these buffs at Level 40, 60, 85, and 120.

Passive Buffs are displayed in your Pip-Boy under the Effects tab.

Dogs

• Passive: Stimpak Fetcher
• • Dogs find Stimpaks. The quality of Stimpaks improves as the passive is leveled up.
• Passive: Bounty Sniffer
• • Dog finds his owner an extra Legendary Item when completing a Grunt Hunt. Starts with 1★ and then increases to 3★ as the passive levels up.

Cats

• Passive: Baits Finder
• • Cats find Improved Bait. The amount of Improved Bait increases as the passive levels level up.
• Passive: Mega Bits
• • Cats grant their human extra Fish Bits after catching a fish. The number of Fish Bits gifted by the cat increases leveled.

Radhog

• Passive: Goo-Getter
• • Radhogs find Toxic-Goo. The amount of Toxic-Goo found increases as the passive levels up.
• Passive: Rad-Dration
• • Radhhogs find High-Radiation Fluids as they spend time in a Nuke Zone. The number of High-Radiation Fluids found increases as the passive levels up.

Deathclaw

• Passive: Dark Titan
• • Deathclaws find Black Titanium. The amount of Black Titanium found increases as the passive levels up.
• Passive: Fun-Festation
• • Deathclaws find extra Legendary Items when completing Infestations. Starts with 1★ and then increases to 3★ as the passive levels up.

Gameplay Changes

• Pets no longer block V.A.T.S.. All shots now pass through Pets with ZERO harm to the pet nor your chance to hit.
• While a Pet is active, you can now utilize the Ping System to tell your Pet what to attack.
• Pets no longer collide with players.

Known Issues

• The button icons for renaming your Pet and the new Pet Progression Menu are incorrect. R3 (push in right stick) opens Pet Progression, L3 (push in left stick) allows you to rename your pet.
• Pet Progression is currently behaving as account-based, not character based. Progress on a pet on one character on the same account will carry over to another, even though the UI doesn't display it as such.
• When you have an unlocked pet reward opened in the Pet Progression Menu, and you swap to another pet, it will show the reward as unlocked until you move your cursor off that space.
• Pets may be invisible for a few moments after fast traveling.
• Pet Passives are activating more frequently than anticipated.
• If you see your pet fall through the world, please tell us where!