Bethesda nukes Fallout 76 weight bench Strength glitch

It was only a matter of time

The West Virginia Wasteland has had a sudden inflex of bodybuilder-type survivors who look more keen to fight off body fat than radiation sickness. Alas, Bethesda has squashed all their sweet gains.

The last couple weeks of Fallout 76 has seen an easily-repeatable glitch at the weight bench that has left everyone completely jacked. Using the weight bench grants a temporary +2 to Strength. The problem is that Bethesda accidentally allowed for the perk to stack. 

It stacked a lot, too. The Strength would stack up to 8 times (for +16 STR), and the duration would effectively stack for how many ever extra reps you performed. When seeing those kinds of immediate gains, it’s easy to keep pumping iron. (Although, to be fair, Bethesda disabled use of the weight bench a while ago; so it hasn’t been easy to keep pumping iron.)

However, after the newest patch, it’s now capped at the intended +2 STR and will only buff once from the most recent use of the weight bench. It was nice while it lasted. You can safely go back to ignoring your physical fitness.

The other major part of the update concerns the new One Wasteland feature that scales enemy level to player level. In short, a lot of the mid-level creatures were too tough. So, Bethesda has “smoothed out the difficulty curve.”

Here are the full patch notes for Fallout 76 Update 1.4.0.23: 

• Creature Balance: Based on community feedback, we’ve implemented some balance tuning adjustments for a variety of mid-level creatures to help smooth out the difficulty curve on the path to reaching character level 50.
• PVP: Fixed an issue that could allow players to bypass the rules of PVP to kill neutral players.
• Weight Bench: The +2 Strength bonus offered by the Weight Bench no longer stacks repeatedly, and subsequent uses of the Weight Bench correctly refresh the buff’s duration. The Weight Bench has now been re-enabled, and you can once again use it to pump some iron.
• Scoreboard: Implemented additional preview images for the Armor Ace Bundle, which can be viewed by selecting Rank 100 on the Armor Ace Scoreboard.

Fallout 76 Hotfix Notes — September 29, 2020 [Fallout]