Over the weekend, a group of Fallout 76 players encountered a glitch that transported them inside the otherwise inaccessible Vault 63, one of the three locked vaults scattered throughout the game’s world.
They didn’t find much inside, but took pictures anyway before reaching out to Bethesda Support to explain what happened, for fear the game’s continued glitchiness might get them banned. The good news is that Bethesda says they won’t be.
In a thread posted on the Fallout 76 subreddit on Sunday, user McStaken explained that they and some other players fast-travelled to participate in a Rad-Rat Horde event that showed up on their map.
Somehow, they wound up inside Vault 63, which is located in the southwest corner of the game’s map. Like Vaults 94 and 96, Vault 63 is visible from the outside but impossible to enter normally.
McStaken and his crew were at first worried that they might be banned for the glitch, but in a statement to Polygon, Bethesda said that the players who entered Vault 63 will likely be fine. “They shouldn’t have to worry about a ban,” a representative for the company said.
“Sounds like they weren’t abusing an exploit, and letting us know is a good thing we definitely appreciate.”
McStaken said once they realised where they were they took some screenshots to share online. The images show off a fully modelled vault interior complete with Vault-Tec equipment littered about and the number 63 painted on all the doors. There are also pictures of a cave-in in the kitchen area and an opening into what looks like an abandoned mineshaft.
All signs, including a skeleton wearing a Vault 63 jumpsuit, seem to point to there being no survivors, but since Vault 63 isn’t officially part of the game yet, that could change.
Some of the other players commenting on McStaken’s thread reported that they too had experienced this glitch before, although they weren’t sure what caused it. Fallout 76 released in such a broken state, with weird glitches that persist even after months of updates, that it can sometimes be hard to tell when players are trying to break the game on purpose or are simply the victims of bugs.
Last month, Fallout 76 players figured out how to break into a “developer’s room” that contained copies of every item and a non-player character, all of which appeared to exist for the purposes of testing out new additions and balance changes to the game.
Bethesda cracked down on those players with a wave of account bans, saying they had been using cheat software in order to get into the room.
In one of the comments on McStaken’s original thread, a community manager for Bethesda said they were glad the player was eventually able to escape Vault 63 by fast-travelling back out and emphasised that the location is still “under construction.”
Last November when the game launched, Bethesda announced that “new Vaults opening” would be part of future updates to the game, but so far there hasn’t been any more news about them.
At the moment, Fallout 76 is very much in need of some more story-based content, something players have speculated might arrive whenever the game’s three other Vaults eventually unlock. Instead, the company has said that the game will be getting a new player vs. player mode in March.
On the bright side, players who are being hunted now know they can take refuge in Vault 63 if a Rad-Rat Horde event mysteriously pops up on their map.
Comments
5 responses to “Fallout 76 Players Accidentally Glitch Into An Unopened Vault”
Is this the buggiest Bethesda game?
More than a couple have been quite buggy. It does seem like, another day another FO76 bug!
Maybe a better question might be, does the good (ambition, gameplay, whatever) outweigh the bad (buggy-ness). Can’t comment on that for FO76 as I haven’t played it, but I’d say (for example) the other recent FOs and Skyrim (as released) were worthwhile despite numerous bugs, and fixed along the way.
The people I know that play FO76 have generally said that yes, the bugs are worth putting up with. They generally aren’t game breaking, so tend to be just an inconvenience, which is much the same as FO4 and Skyrim at launch. They were annoying, but not deal breakers for most.
Whether FO76 improves to their level or not, only time will tell. Its different enough that there may not be the structure needed to get to those games level, or it may be that it gets there for different reasons. Because the structure of the game is different, it may mean they can hang other features off the game and make it work. Like they tried to do with nukes for example.
But I expect bugs will always be there regardless. Its the fault of the engine moreso than the game, and if they haven’t sorted them by now it probably aint happening.
Starfield will have the same bugs if/when it comes out.
So buggy it still had bugs reported on day one of Fallout 4
I think the big difference is that this is a multi-player game.
With previous Bethesda RPGs, some members of the community saw bugs and glitches as challenges to overcome with third party mods. Or if the game became unwinnable due to bugs, then it was okay to go outside of the game’s rules to continue, in the form of glitches, console commands, save game editing, etc.
With this game, those actions put you at an advantage over other players so have the potential to get you banned. Worse still they run the risk of undermining the microtransaction economy in the game, so Bethesda has even more reason to police the game. In contrast, no one has been banned from playing Skyrim due to mods.
And the survey says, ‘Yes.’