Fallout 76's drinky update for boozehounds detailed

The roadmap (opens in new tab) for Fallout 76's updates included a "brewing and distilling" update for March 12 and on Bethesda's Inside the Vault blog (opens in new tab) there's a preview of what we can expect from it. It begins with a quest called Wasted On Nukashine handed out by a new character called Biv ("Appalachia’s tipsiest robot"), and which involves crafting a new variety of workbench called the Brewing Station as well as the Fermenter. 

There players will be able to concoct our own alcoholic beverages with various buffs, and associated hangover debuffs. For example, Hoppy Hunter beer improves scope stability but also reduces VATS accuracy. Some drinks can be improved via fermentation, adding "vintage effects"—firecracker whiskey normally sets you and your enemies on fire, but if it's aged your attacks will only burn enemies. To learn the recipes for new drinks players will have to do Biv's repeatable daily quests.

The subsequent update on March 19 will add a new event called the "Fasnacht Parade".

Jody Macgregor
Weekend/AU Editor

Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games (opens in new tab). He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun (opens in new tab), The Big Issue, GamesRadar (opens in new tab), Zam (opens in new tab), Glixel (opens in new tab), Five Out of Ten Magazine (opens in new tab), and Playboy.com (opens in new tab), whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.