Fallout 76’s new NPCs keep stealing all the good loot from players

With the launch of the Wastelander’s update for Fallout 76, plenty of people have been commenting on how much better the game is to play. See, Fallout 76 always had NPCs but the addition of actual humans and characters that players can chat and interact with is exactly what the game needed to elevate it to feel at least a little like an actual Fallout game. Yet the addition of human NPCs hasn’t been all that smooth and, as we’ve all come to expect at this point, something appears to have gone horribly wrong with their behaviour. In fact, they’re all acting very naughty right now as players are reporting that the new NPCs are stealing their best loot and refusing to return it to them.

Reported by the fine folks over at PC Gamer, several players have been airing complaints that during world events, NPCs have become more than a little greedy and have been looting players of their best gear. Players that die during the event would respawn only to discover that their objectively most powerful weapon and all the ammo it uses (if it’s a gun) has disappeared from their inventory. While it would be easy to assume this was a bug in the game (what isn’t?), finding the NPC that fought against you reveals that they’re equipped with your missing weapon. Cool, well let me just take that back then. Problem solved, annoying as it may be.

Except it’s not “problem solved” because NPCs refuse to return the items they stole. While this might be funny for a while it becomes more annoying when you realise that many of those players that have lost gear had to play Fallout 76 for hours to get the good stuff. A fate that we wouldn’t want to wish on anyone. In Fallout 4, enemies could loot better weapons in the heat of the moment and even use an unequipped suit of power armour that belonged to the player but you could always get it back when you killed them. Bethesda has confirmed that this bizarre circumstance is actually a bug that they’re looking into but still, at least it’s kind of realistic, right?

Last Updated: April 22, 2020