Fallout 76 One Wasteland update makes it easier to explore and play with friends
You are (almost) free to move about the wasteland
Fallout 76 One Wasteland goes live on Tuesday, making Appalachia more welcoming for new players and tougher for post-apocalyptic veterans.
One Wasteland will go live as part of Fallout 76 Update 22, with the servers going offline for maintenance starting at 7am PDT / 10am EDT / 3pm BST. Once the update goes live, you won't notice any big changes to your character if you're already playing - but there will be some big changes for the hostile creatures you can encounter out in the wasteland.
Travel anywhere with any level character in #Fallout76 with One Wasteland! Coming with patch 22 tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/zNy9Olu7g6September 14, 2020
One Wasteland dynamically adjusts enemy levels, stats, and XP based on your own level: it will bring them up if you're way more powerful than their base level, and it will bring them down if they'd normally crush you into radioactive dust. Each creature will still have minimum and maximum levels, so their challenge will still vary based on what you're fighting, and they'll drop loot appropriate to whatever level they are when you're fighting them.
The key bit is that this happens for each player individually, even if multiple players are encountering the same monster. This means that if you have friends who have been playing Fallout 76 for years but you're all new, you'll be able to tag along with them and contribute something to combat. On the flip side, they can help out with your newbie quests while picking up some loot they might actually want.
Fallout 76 Update 22 will also mark the start of Season 2, bringing in Legendary Perks and Daily Ops to keep you busy in the endgame.
See what else is on the way with our guide to the best upcoming games of 2020 and beyond.
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I got a BA in journalism from Central Michigan University - though the best education I received there was from CM Life, its student-run newspaper. Long before that, I started pursuing my degree in video games by bugging my older brother to let me play Zelda on the Super Nintendo. I've previously been a news intern for GameSpot, a news writer for CVG, and now I'm a staff writer here at GamesRadar.