A new Fallout 76 raid is set to transform the survival shooter dramatically in December, as Bethesda continues to build out the endgame variety. The new MMO-style dungeon has been revealed as part of the Fallout Day celebrations, and it’s got me more excited to come back to the Appalachian wasteland than I’ve been in some time. Offering a series of encounters including a final showdown against the game’s biggest boss yet, the Gleaming Depths will also unlock a new tier of legendary weapons to completely transform your best builds.
Fallout 76 is in a great place nowadays – a far cry from its shambled launch, the open-world RPG is now a bustling hub of activity filled with players and absolutely packed with things to do. If you’re eager to explore the wasteland following the success of the Fallout show on Prime, I would honestly recommend Fallout 76 as the most approachable and fun the series has been, with a thriving and (mostly) helpful community of players ready to welcome you in.
In its Fallout Day broadcast (tied to the in-canon date of October 23, 2077, the day the bombs fell in the Fallout universe), senior community director Jess Finster thanks players for reaching an incredible milestone of 20 million Fallout 76 players. She acknowledges how kind the community is to newcomers, and adds, “Most of all, we’ve seen your feedback, and we feel your support, so as both developers and fans, we thank you.”
Lead producer Bill Lacoste and creative director Jon Rush then arrive to show off the new mode. The Gleaming Depths takes you underground to an abandoned Enclave research lab that was being used to study Ultragenesis – the process of spreading Ultracite through the earth.
If you were around during the game’s Nuclear Winter era, you might remember the now-defunct Vault raids, and while The Gleaming Depths certainly resembles those it feels even more dramatic and fleshed out, described as “high-difficulty content that’s going to really drive endgame players.” It features a lengthy run through numerous encounters and boss fights that you’ll need to team up with your fellow survivors in order to overcome.
First comes the guardian, a powerful defensive emplacement described by Rush as “a mechanized doorman that is maybe a little too good at its job.” Defeat that, and your next job is for some players to defend a giant drill from mole miners while others rush through the lab’s halls to gather fuel, pursued by an Ultracite-infused monstrosity known as the Stalker.
Get the drill up and running and you’ll come face-to-face with Enclave Squad Epsilon; the trio of Vulture, Lynx, and Bloodhound promise a terrifying battle. Bringing them down only leads to the return of the Stalker, demanding that you find a way to stop it in its tracks for good. Manage to do so, and your reward is the final encounter, a gargantuan snake-like creature known as the Ultracite Terror. “It’s definitely the biggest boss in Fallout 76,” environment artist Erin Bower teases, “and it might be the biggest boss in a Fallout game in general.”
Of course, with so much in your way, you’re probably wondering why you’ll bother. “With high risk comes high reward,” LaCoste says, “and these rewards are legendary.” Specifically, four-star legendary. That’s right, there’s now a new tier of Fallout 76 legendary gear, transforming the look of endgame builds forever.
These new four-star legendaries include a fresh range of perks. We get a look at Slayer, which boosts your damage against legendary and raid enemies by 50%, and Electrician, which emits a shockwave when you reload that stuns nearby foes for five seconds. Combine that with the recently reworked Fallout 76 legendary crafting system and you should be able to make some impressive upgrades to your loadout.
The Gleaming Depths arrive in December, but they’re not the only addition coming before the end of the year. Also arriving in the same month are Fallout 76 camp pets (just cats and dogs for now, although Rush promises “more furry additions in the future, and maybe some that are not so furry”) and player titles. These will give you a selection of prefixes and suffixes to let people know exactly what kind of player you are.
Beyond that, the team looks to 2025, when we’ll see the introduction of playable ghouls in Fallout 76. Immune to radiation damage, as a ghoul you’ll instead be healed by rad exposure, and can even unlock some new abilities with it. Your hunger and thirst meters are replaced with a new ‘feral’ gauge; try to maintain your humanity, or embrace your animalistic side for additional combat benefits.
We also get to see some of the new ghoul-specific perks. You can reduce your rad resistance, gain more rads from food and drink, become immune to stagger, heal gradually while in combat, or even boost your SPECIAL stats when partied with other ghoul players. Invest enough points and you can become a Glowing One that passively provides Glows to your nearby party members, which they can spend on other perks for effects such as damage boosts.
Becoming a ghoul isn’t all good news, naturally. Many NPC factions will treat you differently – some, such as the Brotherhood of Steel, might be especially antagonistic to your chosen way of life. More details on the ghoul will arrive in the coming months, alongside seeming news of another long-requested addition teased by Rush, who ends the presentation by picking up a fishing rod. Exciting times lie ahead, then – and with an ongoing Fallout 76 free week, now’s a great time to jump in.
If you can’t wait until December, there are always the best games like Fallout to keep you busy. Or jump into another of the best open-world games instead.
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