For too long, Walton Goggins has been out in the Hollywood hills living my dream: wandering the wasteland as a rotting, irradiated zombie with a beer in one hand and a shotgun in the other. That finally ends today thanks to Fallout 76’s new Ghoul Within update, which adds a whole host of ghoul-related features and rewards.
The headlining feature is, as you might guess, ghoulification: a new questline will allow players to become a feral ghoul for the first time in the series’ history, though you’ll want to subdue any urges to devour your fellow vault dweller with a cocktail of consumable drugs. The bright side is you’ll be immune to disease and mutations, and in fact, radiation will give you increased max health and interact with your new ghoul perks (which the patch notes call gherks).
They are pretty intense from the sounds of it, allowing players to instantly reload their empty magazines, sprint 20% faster, and absorb triple the radiation from food and water; it’s good now, remember? A "Feral" meter replaces the old hunger and thirst stats and grants buffs if you keep it filled, but there's actually a fun reason to let it drop to 0%:
- At 0%: you gain +150% Melee Damage, and lose -5 Endurance, -99 Charisma, -30 Max HP, -20 Max AP, -300% Hip-fire Gun Accuracy & V.A.T.S. Accuracy.
The patch also brings with it a level 50 character boost if you want to dive right into the endgame content, including the new ghoul questline, but that’ll cost you some Atoms as well.
On the free side of things, there are a bunch of bug fixes and balance tweaks to pave the way for the new season, including some buffs to pistol damage and added effects to various perk cards. Barbarian, for instance, now grants damage resistance based on strength—an effect which doubles if you forgo armor.
Considering Fallout 76 was largely agreed to be a dumpster fire when it released, it’s nice to see the game trucking along with novelties like this to spare in-between bug fixes and major reworks. Season 20’s trailer shows off a bunch of appropriately ghoulish cosmetic items and decorations sure to please fans of the world's mutant monsters.
If you’ve half a mind to give Fallout 76 another shot while you wait for the TV show’s second season, check out Jeremy Peel’s guide to having fun in post-apocalyptic Appalachia. The game is currently $9.99 (75% off) on Steam.
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