Fallout 76 players launch nuke and unleash massive Scorchbeast Queen

Thanks to a couple weeks of beta playtime, lots of Fallout 76 players are already high-level and decoding nuke launch codes just a day after the game officially arrived. And not only did one team manage to launch a nuke, but they aimed it at a fissure site, which are areas of Fallout 76's map where you'll typically encounter scorchbeasts. Dropping a nuke on a fissure site, as these players discovered, will create not just a huge explosion but a timed event called Scorched Earth that centers around a Scorchbeast Queen.

Scorchbeasts are already formidable bosses, level 50 creatures that look like immense, mutated bats as they circle overhead and attack with ranged sonic blasts, irradiated gas, and brutal melee attacks. Nuking their hives spawns a level 95 Scorchbeast Queen, plus tons of minions like high-level scorched deathclaws and ghouls. I guess maybe feeding a ton of radiation to irradiated monsters isn't the soundest idea?

On the other hand, the players managed to take down the queen before the 30 minute event ended, which rewarded them with Ultracite plans and loot—Ultracite being an extremely rare crafting material found at fissure sites. You can watch the entire video below, captured by Nickaroo93 on YouTube.

Thanks, The Verge.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.