The Gleaming Depths update has landed in Fallout 76, bringing heaps of new content to the massively multiplayer online (MMO) game. Its namesake, the brand-new Gleaming Depths raid, looks like a seriously meaty challenge and should put long-time vault hunters to the test. Those able to overcome the odds will be rewarded with resources for the all-new 4-Star legendary crafting system, which lets you transform your already powerful 3-Star items into even more effective gear.
This is on top of additional public events, plus loads of major changes to a handful of existing Perk Cards. Everything is available completely for free and is just one of the many substantial updates that developer Bethesda Game Studios has put out since launch in 2018.
I went hands-on with an early build of the update ahead of release and, as a bit of a lapsed Fallout 76 player myself, really enjoyed my time venturing back into the virtual world of post-apocalyptic Appalachia. I also had a chance to sit down with the developer to find out why fans should be excited about this update.
Teaming up
The Gleaming Depths is “a raid that I think players will find the mechanics to be somewhat familiar, especially if they've played World of Warcraft or they've played Final Fantasy 14, or they've played any other typical major MMO,” explains Fallout 76 production director Bill LaCoste.
He points to the Guardian Bot, a powerful robotic enemy that you encounter right at the start of the raid, as something that MMO die-hards will recognize: “They'll notice that the Guardian Bot, for example, is pretty much your DPS [damage per second] check. It asks ‘Do you have a team that's good enough to actually make it through the rest of the raid?’ That Guardian Bot is very aptly named, it lets you know that this is how the rest of the raid is likely to go.”
“There's a lot of different mechanics that are actually involved with the raid, but players are going to be able to figure that out pretty quickly I think,” he continues. “Even players who are not looking at YouTube, if they go in, they're going to fail a few times, but they'll be able to figure those mechanics out. There's also a few hidden mechanics that we've not shown players either.”
This is content that has been designed for the most dedicated players, so I’m eager to find out exactly what the developers think it takes to beat. “You're gonna have to have a character that's at least level 300, maybe 200 is the base, but certainly level 300 above, because you'll have all your legendary perks available to you,” he replies.
“You'll probably have those legendary perks at a relatively good level, so you've got a good loadout. You're gonna want to have your full complement of (you don't have to be min-maxed, but you certainly want a really good loadout) armor, power armor, and weapons to take on each of these encounters.”
The Gleaming Depths is not a challenge that you can beat alone, however, so players are also going to need a well-coordinated team if they hope to survive. “It's going to be more than just jumping into a public team and just expecting to go through it,” LaCoste begins. “There are a lot of mechanics that are going to take a good amount of cooperation between the team and that's something I think is new to the series and I think players have been wanting it for a while too.”
The Guardian Bot is easiest to beat if you have a teammate dedicated to keeping it distracted and tanking the bulk of its damage output. “You're also going to come across mole miners, as well as the Stalker when you're actually in the mining facility,” explains LaCoste. The Stalker is a particularly interesting enemy, as it’s completely impervious to damage by default but can take you down in seconds with its ultra-powerful hits. As the name would suggest, you should expect to butt heads with it frequently as it follows you throughout the early stages of the raid.
You also have to fight Squad Epsilon, a forgotten Conclave unit kitted out in high-end armor that long-time series fans might recognize as inspired by the look of the character on the box art of Fallout 2. “When you get down to Squad Epsilon, there's going to be shield generators that you have to power down, because that's how the bosses are actually shielded from damage,” he outlines. “So you have to turn those down and then go attack them.”
The fight with Squad Epsilon is followed by a research lab that has been overrun by irradiated creatures. You have to work as a team to lure them close to bright glowing crystals, which can be detonated with gunfire for massive amounts of damage. This is also where you get a chance to finally take down the Stalker, which then leads you into the raid’s final and biggest challenge - a fight against the Ultracite Terror.
Size matters
The Ultracite Terror is the largest enemy in any Fallout game to date, an absolute behemoth boss lizard that towers over your squad as you fight from a small island suspended over a lethal green ooze. “The Ultracite Terror spits out toxic spit, it puts pools on the ground that players are going to have to avoid,” LaCoste says. “Unless you're a Ghoul, in which case you don't have to avoid them. Then there are the tails that come up at set points in time, which actually hit the island, and it causes it to shrink and shrink and shrink. There will be a point where, if you don't take down the tails or the snake in time, it's going to destroy the island. People are going to wipe and you’re going to have to come and do it again.”
Creating an encounter where you fight such a massive foe has been a particular challenge for the developer, after all there’s been nothing else quite like it in any other Fallout games. “When you're dealing with something that big obviously, there's a lot of textures and there are a lot of elements that didn't exist,” LaCoste outlines. “Even in VATS, actually making sure that all the different panels across the neck were actually taken into account in VATS, so you can aim at them and destroy them. There's a stumble mechanic, then there's the spit, there's the tail.
“We're talking about adding mechanics to the game that didn't exist before, and so getting those implemented, and working with the animation crew as well as the character crew to get all this stuff working and actually looking right, was a pretty big challenge. Also, just because you have this massive monster, we need to make sure that with the camera views that players are playing in, they can actually see the encounter. It has to be far enough back, but you still have to be able to hit it.”
Jamming out
The Gleaming Depths raid actually started life as part of a game jam - an internal contest where developers are free to try out new ideas on various Bethesda properties. “Every year, the company shuts down for a week. We cancel all meetings. Everybody's expected across production, art, QA, whatever it is, to join in with a group of people or by themselves,” says LaCoste. “They can work on Fallout 76, they can work on Starfield, they can work on any other game that we have going on, and develop those things across the week, and then show them off.”
“For [creative director] Jon Rush and that team, we wanted to create something that was just new and unique and challenging for players within Fallout 76 and they came up with this idea, and everybody loved it and they're like, ‘we want to see more of that!’” reveals LaCoste. “So they started expanding on the creatures and the design and how many encounters there would be.”
The Gleaming Depths is far from the first addition to the game that started life this way. “The photo mode was part of a game jam,” LaCoste says. “We also have the fly cam when you're doing camp building, that was part of a game jam. There are many other features that have actually started out as a game jam. It's a really good defining moment, you know, not only for our game but for the studio because everybody's committed to it.”
It might take a bit of time to reach level 300 and get enough good gear to take on the Gleaming Depths, but if you’re a new player who wants to try out Fallout 76 for yourself the game is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. This is in addition to Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and PlayStation 5 via backwards compatibility.
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