You used to be able to carry around as many lock-picking bobby pins as you wanted in Fallout 4, but Bethesda’s newest game has assigned a weight to them. And they are way too heavy.
LukyJoeKokomo did the maths (via PcGamesN), and worked out that if a packet of 100 bobby pins on Amazon weighed 68.04g, then each pin would weigh slightly less than 0.57g each (because you’ve got to allow for the weight of the packaging).
In Fallout 76, though, ten bobby pins weighs a pound, making each individual digital pin over 60x heavier than an actual one. Indeed they’re so heavy it works out that 60 pins weigh the same as a mini nuke.
It’s easy to see why this is – the developers obviously wanted to put a carrying limit on the item – but still. (AU Editor’s Note: the smallest weight for something in Fallout 76 is the 5mm minigun ammo at 0.001 lbs, so it’s up to Bethesda to explain why a bobby pin weighs a hell of a lot more than actual bullets.)
Fallout 76 has tried many new things, but over-encumbering you with hairpins is the one I’ll be remembering.
Comments
29 responses to “Fallout 76’s Bobby Pins Are 60x Heavier Than Actual Bobby Pins”
After 12 hours I only have 4 bobby pins. So a way to go. The rest of the junk however does slow you down. You spend half the time wandering around the wasteland like a pack animal. So much stuff to pick up but only so many pockets!
Go for all the weight perks:
-% on weight of armour
-% on weight of junk
Jeez, I think there is a-% weight for every type of item, but those two are very handy.
Also, watch out for ammo. My first few hours I sucked up every bullet ZI could then found out the 1000 rounds of .38 ammo is pretty heavy (never mind missiles and fat man projectiles!).
There’s a caveat to the weight perks that I just posted below (didn’t see your post until after) – do use them, but don’t plan your SPECIAL around them. They’re a convenience in early to mid game, but they’ll hinder you in late game.
Oh and also, Pack Rat is generally better bang for buck than most of the weight reduction perks except Bear Arms, so grab them first. Each strength is +5 carry weight too.
There’s a perk for that too.
Also kind of helpful:
If you are a high enough level to use a type of power armour, then attach it to a frame. Individually those pieces weight 10-20 each. Once they’re on a frame, they weigh as much as the frame (10), and you can just pick the frame up and have it in your pocket.
Now if only there was a way to tell in the inventory which power frames have which pieces…
Be careful on % armour. How useful that is depends on what armour you’re using. I stopped using it for the straight up carry weight increase perk instead as I’m mainly in leather armour even at level 45…it’s just so hard to find better armour in this game without shelling out massive amounts of caps.
At your level you should start finding marine armour, which along with urban scout armour is the most protective non-power armour in the game currently. It’s heavy, but your Sturdy Frame perk should help a lot with that.
Yep, I’ve been eyeing the urban armour that the
enclavesells. I’m finding it really difficult to get enough caps to buy all the things I want though. Generally float around 1000 caps and I’m prioritizing weapon plans when I see them to try and farm mods. It means I’m at the mercy of RNG to give me decent armour drops. I do have 2 pieces of regular combat armour though I think but the rest is all still plain leather.Armour hasn’t been a big deal for me with my build (was using a level 5 piece in one slot until I hit 40) which is probably why I prioritize weapons. I generally don’t get hit much due to picking everything off at range or being able to do a quick VATS headshot to kill things that are closer.
I remember you mentioned in another thread you’re only about 12 hours in, so I’ll drop the two biggest pieces of unsolicited carry weight advice I have:
– Every time you see a crafting station, hit R to scrap and T to scrap all junk, then go through the scrappable list and scrap everything you don’t need in the short/medium term. Everything.
– When you’re storing stuff in your stash, beware that crafting materials do still add up. As a general rule, don’t craft bulk to save weight because it doesn’t, and don’t store more than 300 of anything other than lead and steel. That goes for gunpowder too – don’t store more than 300 unless you’re going to do a big ammo-making batch.
As a bonus tip, plan your SPECIAL around what combat build you’d like at 50 (use Nukes & Dragons, here’s mine) but don’t plan into your build anything that involves weight reduction unless you’re doing a Big Guns build (Bear Arms), or a power armour/energy weapons build (Batteries Included). That said, even if you don’t plan it in, do use them while you’re leveling to substitute for having a nice set of pocketed armour or the excavator power armour that gives +100 carry weight.
Just to add onto your points…I was initially limiting everything to 300 but have changed that to 150-200, and some junk no more than 100. A point for why less steel (I hover at 150-200) works for me is because I often take the ammo producing workshop. That way I don’t need gunpowder/steel/lead clogging up my inventory and just passively farm ammo while I’m doing other stuff.
300 worked fine when I just had an abundance of steel/leather/cloth/wood but now I’ve built up a lot more of the rare stuff too, I have over 200 screws, gears, nuclear material is over 100 and even adhesive is up over 150…also discovered I had 290 circuits clogging things up too because they don’t shop up in the bulk crafting menu. This is after about 20 levels worth of only picking up stuff that gives me the more rare materials too.
I expect this problem will resolve itself soon when I hit 50 and start hunting better end game weapons/armour and use my junk to mod it all.
Looking at the build you’re using compared to mine makes me see why we had different experiences in regards to overloading when out exploring. I’m running a non-auto rifle/Vats build, heavy focus on Perception/Luck.
Here’s mine (not sure how you hyperlinked on here so spoiler tags to keep it short):
https://nukesdragons.com/fallout76/perks?v=1&s=3f145df&d=p02pd2pk2pp1pr0pl2lr2l12lk2lu2lv2a72a80ar2a32a02sg0s61ek0c72i12ib1&w=&n=Rifle%20BuildNote some of those perks are subject to being swapped out as I play with the build more and figure out what works, also apparently master rifleman doesn’t work properly. My carry capacity is 165 from special, am at 190 currently with perks and pocketed gear. I seem to sit at around 120ish if I strip out weight down to my basic loadout of food/water/meds and that weight also includes 10 from carrying power armour. It’s a sneaky build so I generally just hold the power armour until I become over burdened or run into a pack of scorchbeasts.
I haven’t run into encumbrance issues in the last couple days though. I think it’s due to my playstyle changing, spending less time exploring between trips back to a stash, usually because im farming ammo.
Yeah, a low strength build means you’re missing out on about 60lb of just passive carry weight so that makes sense. I actually have points in stats I don’t want (like the 3 endurance) because I’d already spent some points before planning. It’s interesting to see a non-strength build though, since there’s so much good stuff in that stat and it covers by far the most weapon types (big guns, shotguns, 1H and 2H melee) but I always enjoy seeing what other people come up with.
It’s unfortunate that I had to pass up on a VATS build (Four Leaf Clover, Grim Reaper’s Sprint, Crit Savvy and Better Crits especially) just because I was out of budget already pushing a big gun/melee power armour build. I’ve had to revise my build so many times trying to swap out perks that ended up being just slightly sub-par for ones that were just slightly better, and things like only taking rank 1 in each level of weapon perks to get +10% per star instead of +5% for later levels, and all that.
If you want to link, by the way, just type it out in HTML: <a href=”your.url.com”>Text</a>
I got into the game a couple days late, waiting on shipping from Amazon so I used the time to plan out my build before I started playing. Started by choosing the type of weapon I wanted to use. I generally like non-auto rifles in Fallout games and find myself defaulting to them so was an easy choice.
From there I just looked through perks and read up on some of the highest recommended general ones. I found all the VATS bonuses in luck interesting and that’s how my rifle VATS build was born. The luck perks are the ones I’m likely going to play around with the most – I’m unsure what the chance on Four Leaf Clover to refill the crit meter is since it just straight out doesn’t say, so Psychopath may be better. Even with the build incomplete though (currently level 45) I have chained a second crit off of using a crit which was laughable.
I saw on reddit that Master Rifleman apparently decreases the weapon damage – at least in the pip boy so I’m unsure about taking it or not for now. There are plenty of other perception perks for me to play with though…feels like I’ll be farming perk cards until level 100 so I can try all the min-maxing variants I want.
I do like the look of the STR/Power Armour builds and will probably roll a second character at some point to try it….that said though there was also a crazy build that focuses on keeping hp under 20% to stack bonuses that I want to play with.
Thanks for the tip on hyperlinks.
Depleted uranium bobby pins imbue your hair with the vim and vitality it deserves!
Gives your hair that healthy glow!
lol!
DU is only about 2.4x as dense as the steel of your average bobby pin, so DU bobby pins would still have to be about 24x larger than normal (and thus, of questionable use for picking locks). Pretty sure there’s no metal on Earth even approaching the density of Fallout 76’s bobby pins…
So… clearly, these bobby pins must be of alien origin.
On the flipside, I kind of doubt 300+ .38 bullets weigh <1lb… Bethesda apparently doesn’t own any scales.
I get that ammo needs to be light enough that you can carry an adequate amount, but if Bethesda finally dropped that godawful mentality of “Enemy with stupidly high HP = harder enemy”, we wouldn’t need to carry so much freaking ammo. FO76 really makes me miss the 3x damage mod I was using in FO4.
0.02lb for a typical .38 round, so yeah the ammo’s definitely lighter. Ammo being fairly light is something I’m quite grateful for actually, it’s the one thing I need to pay the least attention to, unless we’re talking missiles and mini nukes.
I’d be happier with deadlier guns and rarer, heavier ammo myself. If 10 bullets could deal as much damage as 30 currently do, it would work out roughly the same in the end value-wise, but with shorter, more intense (and fun) fights. Having to shoot a super mutant or wendigo in the face with a shotgun 20+ times to kill it is tiring and dumb.
Interesting to hear your take on it…my build lends itself to high damage so super mutants are generally 2-3 shots to kill, sometimes 4 for the boss or over leveled ones that pop up. Wendigos I take more seriously and switch to a higher damage weapon – black powder rifle early on, gauss rifle lately and then it dies again within 2-3 shots…even managed to 2 shot a level 91 Albino Deathclaw which I found hilarious.
So for someone running a build like mine increasing our damage output would mean I’m 1 shotting more things. Ghouls/Scorched/animals generally already die in 1 hit.
Killing a level 62 super mutant overlord with three power swings from a super sledge is really satisfying, just gotta say 😀 Popping an enemy’s head off at max range is also right up there. I usually run stealth sniper builds in Fallout, so my power armour tank build is a new thing for me.
Could be a level thing where my damage output is severely nerfed against higher level enemies?
I’m still around level 30 but I keep coming across things anywhere between 35 and 50 that soak up a ridiculous amount of ammo. I only have basic +10% damage perk cards on the types of weapons I use so far, but when something takes some 20 odd shotgun or rifle blasts to the face at ~90 damage each, thats LOT of hp. What really did my head in was the boss of the Wendigo cave. I was doing hardly any damage to the damn thing until I switched to my spiked Ski Sword, which took it down in maybe 8 or 9 power swings. I have NO melee perks and it stats say it hits much softer than my guns so go figure.
I don’t seem to take all that much damage myself either though. With FO4 (and the 3x damage mod I mentioned), something firing a rocket at me is terrifying as a direct hit usually means death. In FO76 it’ll knock off maybe 15-20% of my hp. Granted I’ve been in full power armour 99% of the time since about level 20, trying to use up some fusion cores which inexplicably recharge themselves whenever I log out.
At level 30 I was 2-shotting enemies that were over twice my level, highest I did it to was a level 68 scorched. That’s what you get with a sneaky rifle build though.
I know melee is pretty OP right now, general consensus seems to be either it needs a nerf or everything else needs a buff. Although VATS rifle build, which by co-incidence is what I use apparently comes a close 2nd.
My sniper (that i get these 1 and 2 shot kills with) is somewhere in the 120-150 damage range but with sneak it gets multiplied by 2. Even without sneak though we’re only talking 4 shots to kill stuff. I know shotguns can get comparable damage numbers so it’s a bit odd that you’re having troubles with it. Without diving into them deeper and looking at it it’s hard for me to say if there’s anything else you can do.
Damage you take seems to be fairly low on most mobs but boss/legendaries/high level ones can beat the crap out of you. I had an assaultron kill me within seconds…luckily my auto-revive legendary kicked in, I came back to life and killed it. Deathclaws and even glowing ones hit pretty hard if they get close too, I had a glowing one deal 125 rad damage in a single hit which is a pretty sizeable chunk of my hp bar.
The fusion core thing I think is a bug. Any core in power armour replenishes to 100% when you log out, can cycle cores through to recharge them all if you feel like it. I don’t use that personally, I took over 3 power plants at one point when I was trying to unlock the fusion reactor plans so I still have a bit of a stockpile of 100% cores from that.
I have 4 or 5 cores in my stash and another 5 in my inventory, each between 50 and 100% charged. I’ve avoided looting another 10 or so because they’re so heavy and I’m not going through them… at all really.
There must be something wrong with my build then. The only time I seem to do decent damage is either against things under level 20 or with sneak attacks with my rifle… which still takes anywhere between 2 and 10 hits on higher level mobs… which isn’t terrible provided I can stay hidden long enough. When something gets in my face it becomes tedious because I can’t sneak attack and I often have to switch to my melee weapon which, on paper, is worse than my shotgun in every possible way, yet somehow kills things a hell of a lot faster. If not for that I wouldn’t even carry a melee weapon.
My main problem is the stash size. I think it’s the only survival game that only allows one stash box. I really think with the encouragement to place junk in your Stash then the wieght should be negated, I’m mean who doesn’t hoard in a fallout game.
Small spot of good news – they’re increasing it to 600 soon, they’ve announced some details on upcoming patches for 4th and 11th Dec, I forget which one has the stash increase. They also said the 600 is to test how it goes, likely increasing more at some later point.
For me that basically means 200lbs more of junk I’ll store….or maybe I’ll store a single weapon in my stash for an alternate loadout but I doubt it.
Really looking forward to the stash increase. I’d love to store a rocket launcher or gatling laser “for later” but I’ve had to scrap every single one I’ve found so far because I’m forced to choose between those or some pieces of power armour I’m not high enough to use yet.
I did discover last night though … you can put high level armour on a chassis and then wait until it gets automatically recalled to your inventory. You can’t pick it up manually because of the high level pieces but the auto recall still works. Then the whole set weighs only 10lb instead of 50+
Yep, I’ve been using that power armour trick since level 10 or so. Had 3 chassis in storage at one point.
There’s also a 90% weight reduction fatman you get from a quest at some point, weighs 6lbs. It’s literally the only weapon I have stored….and even then I should probably get rid of it cos I won’t use it.
There is always the carry glitch with pocketed armour effectively making your carry weight unlimited until the next level up or time you log in.