Fallout 76 takes the series in a new direction, but it still has an open world – in fact, it’s the largest in the series yet – so you’ll want to know what all the Fallout 76 locations are as you enter the beta. Locations are map markers that, once visited, let you freely fast-travel between them, enabling you to cover entire regions of post-apocalyptic West Virginia with ease. Thanks to some dedicated Reddit users, a few glimpses of the game, and our knowledge of the state, we’ve created a list of all known and possible Fallout 76 locations so you know where to start adventuring when you wake up a day after the Reclamation Day celebrations. This rundown of Fallout 76 locations plot out the various confirmed locations and where you’ll find them on the Fallout 76 map. But we’ll also recount as many of the unconfirmed locations that have been spotted in trailers as possible. So, whether you want to visit the Mothman Museum or take a stroll through the treacherous Cranberry Bogs, here are all known Fallout 76 locations. Fallout 76 locations Locations are effectively the little map markers you unlock by exploring the Fallout 76 map. In previous Fallout games you can find locations at any notable map point, which makes fast-travelling around the map a lot easier, so it helps to unlock as many of these as possible. Here are all the Fallout 76 locations: Vault 76 We’ve already seen Vault 76 in its entirety thanks to various gameplay snippets from Bethesda. This is the very starting point for every new Fallout 76 player, so don’t expect to find any enemies within. Morgantown Trainyard We haven’t seen Morgantown Trainyard in-game yet, but from the map it looks like it’ll consist of two large storage buildings and will be separated from the rest of the city by a river. Vault-Tec University In the centre of Morgantown you’ll find the Vault-Tec University, which is modeled on the real-life West Virginia University. Bolton Greens You can spot the sign for Bolton Greens on the Fallout 76 map, but we’re still not sure what’s actually there. The only real-life Bolton Green that we’re aware of is in Connecticut, so it’s unlikely that the two are linked in anyway. Moma Dolce’s Food Processing Fallout fans will be aware of the ramifications of this Fallout 76 location. There was a Moma Dolce’s Food Processing plant in Fallout 3 that housed a number of ghoulified Chinese soldiers. If you do a little digging you’ll discover that the company was actually infiltrated by sleeper agents shortly before the bombs fell. Does this means we’ll come across some Chinese soldiers at the West Virginia plant? Top of the World Ski Resort This retro-futuristic version of the real Top of the World resort sits atop West Virginia’s Snowshoe Mountain. Mothman Museum Bethesda has been keen to celebrate this quirky museum in its marketing for the game. In reality, this is a museum dedicated to a creature from West Virginia folklore, the Mothman. It looks like we’ll actually be able to fight this creature in Fallout 76, but it doesn’t look like that encounter will actually take place at the Mothman Museum. Morgantown Municipal Airport You can find this Fallout 76 location to the north-east of Morgantown – if it’s anything like its real-life counterpart then expect a small airstrip with one large building. Grafton Home of the Grafton Monster, one of the many creatures from West Virginia folklore to make an appearance in Fallout 76. The town itself is quite small but might prove difficult to conquer if the Grafton Monster is around. MOUNDSVILLE PENITENTIARY This prison has been shown off a few times across different Fallout 76 trailers and even had a Grafton Monster patrolling outside it in one instance. Moundsville Penitentiary boasts plenty of ghost stories in real-life, so hopefully some of them make their way into Fallout 76. Helvetia Originally settled by Swiss and German immigrants, Helvetia is known for its cheese and food festivals where paper maché masks are sometimes worn. Bethesda has included ten of these masks in the game for players to collect and wear, including an owl, jester, and skull mask. Flatwoods Another small West Virginia town that can claim a folkloric monster, Flatwoods won’t offer much in terms of buildings to loot, but hopefully the Flatwoods Monster will provide challenge and reward in equal measure. Green Country Lodge This Fallout 76 location has only been glimpsed, but appears to be a small golf resort with a pool. Greenbriar Hotel Prominently featured in the reveal trailer for Fallout 76, the Greenbriar has been a real-life resort since 1778, and there’s even a government bunker below it. The Greenbriar appears in pristine condition in the reveal trailer, with robots patrolling its gardens, so expect plenty of pre-war loot inside. Summersville Lake We are yet to see this location in-game, but the Fallout 76 map shows a number of large buildings around the lake’s perimeter. Gorge Bridge The New River Gorge Bridge is a massive steel bridge that’s nearly a kilometre in length and was once the world’s longest single-span arch bridges. This iconic West Virginia landmark appears in the background of the Fallout 76 reveal trailer and is still standing, albeit missing a good portion of the road surface. Nuka Cola Quantum Plant To the west of Charleston you’ll find a Nuka Cola Quantum Plant. This site hasn’t been shown off in-game yet, but as it’s right next to a large river, you can probably expect some bright blue water and hideously mutated creatures nearby. Charleston Charleston is the capital city of West Virginia, so there will be plenty of Fallout 76 locations in and around the city. Yeager Airport, Charleston Capitol Building, a large trainyard, and a hospital are among some of the landmarks you’ll find around this city. Uncanny Caverns A sign for this location can be spotted on the Fallout 76 map and appears to be based on the real-world Lost World Caverns cave network near Lewisburg, West Virginia. This could be a great spot to set up your C.A.M.P. Mount Blair The site of a large-scale mining operation, Mount Blair is dominated by a huge bucket-wheel excavator that is still functional. Camden Park This local amusement park has enjoyed a huge amount of publicity after being shown off in the Fallout 76 gameplay reveal. In Fallout 76 it appears to be overrun by Super Mutants rather than thrillseekers. Lewisburg A small city with a population of 4,000, Lewisburg can be found east of Mount Blair. Nothing is known about the location as it appears in Fallout 76, but the town has a rich history for Bethesda to draw from. Vault 63 We don’t know anything about Vault 63 yet, but as Vault 76 was the first to open, we can assume that either Vault 63 is sealed and merely a landmark, or was breached when the bombs fell. If the latter is true then we’ll have a lot of ghouls to clear out. Watoga Watoga is a state park in West Virginia, but in Fallout 76 it also appears to be a major settlement with tower, monorail system, and a housing estate. It’s also worth noting that Brotherhood of Steel logos can be spotted in the town centre. Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum This infamous building can be spotted on the Fallout 76 map, but hasn’t been seen in-game. Harpers Ferry This location was moved from its real-life position on the border between Maryland and West Virginia so that it could be included in Fallout 76. This tiny, historic town is positioned where the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers meet, but it’s unclear if the location move has changed this. Crashed Space Station While we don’t precisely what kind of space station it is, the crashed structure has been featured in a number of Fallout 76 gameplay trailers. Aliens have featured in almost all Fallout games, so perhaps there are some nods to the Zetans or even an Alien Blaster to be found among the wreckage. FALLOUT 76 REGIONS<doc-sep>Fallout 76 is a huge game — four times bigger than Fallout 4, according to Bethesda. The game takes place in West Virginia, and act as a prequel for the entire series. There’s apparently a reason so much of the imagery from the trailer shown during Microsoft’s press conference echoed the original Fallout game. A Reddit user went through the trailer and mapped the locations in the game to the real-world equivalents on an actual map of West Virginia, and yeah. This looks like a massive game. While Fallout 76’s locations jump around the entire state, it’s unlikely that West Virginia is being mapped on a one-to-one basis. Other Reddit users have tried to figure out the scale of Fallout games in the past, with one player estimating Fallout 4 to measure 3.82 square miles. That would mean Fallout 76 is about 15.28 square miles in size. The state is actually 24,038 square miles in real life, which would be ... challenging for a game to match. But those who know West Virginia are likely to see landmarks they recognize when playing the game. We’ve already written about the Greenbrier, the actual nuclear fallout shelter for Congress in West Virginia that was outed by the Washington Post in 1992. Related Breaking down the Fallout 76 teaser trailer “The purpose of the facility was to function as the seat of power for the American legislative branch in the event of nuclear war,” our own Charlie Hall wrote. “According to the official website, the 112,544-square-foot bunker is situated some 70 feet below the Greenbrier resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. It features a 25-ton blast door and a decontamination chamber. Situated a modest four-hour drive away from Washington, D.C., the facility was built to house both the Senate and the House of Representatives, as well as a full complement of aides.” Nuclear war, my friends. It’s not a fun subject.<doc-sep>Fallout 76 may not be out yet, but there’s already a documentary that details how Bethesda came up with and designed the online survival game. YouTube channel Noclip has a 40-minute deep dive into Fallout 76, and it’s packed with information about what you can expect from the game. According to the documentary, Bethesda started conceptualizing Fallout with multiplayer around 2013, during the creation of Fallout 4, but it ended up shelving the idea to focus on the single-player experience. Around 2015, the studio picked the idea up once more and found that configuring Fallout to support multiplayer was a painstaking process, turning even simple elements like “how do quests work” into puzzles for the development team. Things got particularly interesting once development started rolling and the studio could focus more on what was going to be in the game, however. Below, I’ll summarize some of the most noteworthy tidbits from Noclip’s investigation, though the documentary is worth watching in full. Bethesda started Fallout 76 by making the map. The development studio decided that it would have to be way bigger than anything in the mainline games to support multiple players, and it eventually settled on West Virginia for the setting. This locale was picked because it was a more rural area unlikely to get nuked in a war, giving Bethesda room to create a natural landscape that was less barren and flat than players are used to seeing in Fallout games. Bethesda did warn players not to expect a 1:1 re-creation of the state, however, as it has taken some creative liberties to make for a better map. Fallout 76 is full of all sorts of monsters, some of which have historical or paranormal significance. These include the Grafton monster, the Flatwood monster, Snallygaster, and yes, Mothman. (Mothman will apparently be involved in multiple “stages,” one of which might feature it stalking the player.) There are also intelligent plants and unusual versions of familiar monsters. The game takes place not long after the bombs dropped in the Fallout universe, so Bethesda reasoned that all sorts of mutations might have cropped up and then died out before the events of the main games. While the game couldn’t support raiders at this point in the story — the only people around are vault survivors — there will be “scorchers.” It sounds like these might be the poor souls who didn’t manage to get to safety once the bombs dropped. The location of Fallout 76 also allows for more varied landscapes and biomes, including huge mountain ranges and extensive greenery. The game also has a number of big landmarks meant to help players situate themselves, like watchtowers. Although it isn’t a 1:1 version of West Virginia, its map still sounds big enough to get lost in. Many fans are worried about if Fallout 76 will feel like a “real” Fallout game, but based on this documentary, Bethesda has given it a lot of thought. The trick for the studio was balancing what players expect versus making a fun game that went somewhere new. Already, though, we know there are some elements included in the game that seem to lend themselves to Fallout-esque stories: West Virginia has a radio quiet zone for military intelligence, and it is also home to the presidential bunker. Radiation will cause you to mutate in Fallout 76, and these special abilities will function similarly to traits in Fallout 1 and 2. You can cure mutations if you want, or you can make them permanent. And yes, the SPECIAL character-building system makes a return, too. Bethesda is aware that online survival games can be prone to griefing, but the game has systems built in place to make sure it doesn’t go too far, like wanted levels. You can still expect some drama, though — part of the appeal of the game is deciding how you’ll interact with other people, if at all. You can apparently see where other people are on the map, which should help anyone who wants to steer clear of other players. Also, when you die, you won’t lose all of your gear. There will be microtransactions Good news for people who were worried that Fallout 76 would be full of people going wild with nuclear detonations: nuclear bunkers are a part of Fallout 76’s end game. They are a gameplay mechanic meant for people who are high level and have run out of things to do, not a toy that anyone can pick up. If you launch a nuke, the point of impact will change and make the enemies stronger. The things that pop up in nuked areas will depend on where you are launching the bomb, so it sounds like there will be some variation. Over time, these radiated areas will start to clear up. There will be microtransactions, but Bethesda assures players that they will only be for cosmetic elements. Fallout 76 will have free updates “for years to come.” Bethesda also sounds committed to tweaking the game depending on how things go, as the company considers it a “live” title. Beyond this, there are a few more tidbits that have come out since Bethesda’s E3 presentation. We already know that there will be private servers, and mod support will eventually come to Fallout 76. There will still be VATS (Vault-Tec Assisted Targeting System), but it will work in real time, rather than allowing players to slow battles down to a standstill as in previous games. And while there are no human NPCs, there will be robots and holodecks that can dole out stories for the player.<doc-sep>
Fallout 76 was released with a catchy trailer that no one can get out of their heads and an eerily beautiful rendition of post-apocalyptic West Virginia. While fan reactions about the online-only gameplay and the differences between Fallout 76 and the other Fallout titles are mixed, Fallout fans in West Virginia are pretty darn stoked to see their state in the game. The game is going to be four times bigger than Fallout 4, according to Bethesda, and fans are already identifying real life locations. But the fact that the game is set in a state rarely recognized in media has struck deep in the hearts of West Virginians. Honestly if ur not from West Virginia U’ll NEVER and I mean NEVER understand how fucking exhilarating fallout 76’s intro is the first time u see it. — big ps4 gamer boy who rocks (@CMReginald) June 11, 2018 West Virginia doesn’t get noticed for cool shit ever so to see everyone losing their minds about the new fallout game taking place here is very wholesome — dylan (@dancedad420) June 11, 2018 West Virginia residents are tweeting about roaming the locations they know well and finding their hometowns to settle in. No sarcasm, I’m really, really excited. When I discovered fallout 3 I didn’t leave my house for months. I want to become that person again. — Manda (@AhManDuh_) June 11, 2018 all of us west virginians playing fo76 are gonna be setting up settlements in our towns even if it's an irradiated crater (ya'll BETTER include Parkersburg in the game or I will personally fight Todd) #BE3 #Fallout76 — Skelletiddies (@poeticpromise) June 11, 2018 One time me and my dad hosted a Halloween Spooktacular at Camden Park. Like eleven people showed up. I snuck off to eat two corn dogs and ride the Big Dipper. Now thousands of Online Gamers will gather there to kill a near infinite number of Ghouls looking for rare digi-gun parts — Griffin's Cool 2018 Tweets (@griffinmcelroy) June 11, 2018 Seriously though, I wish y’all had a facebook wall full of Huntington natives, it’s just that image of Camden Park over and over again, this Fallout story is MASSIVE, it really means a lot to the locals. — Justin McElroy (@JustinMcElroy) June 12, 2018 Dr. Jess Morrissette of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia is particularly excited to see West Virginia in a Fallout game. Morrissette is a professor of political science and pop culture and, more importantly, a longtime Fallout fan whose last conference presentation was titled “I’d Like to Buy the World a Nuka-Cola: The Purposes and Meanings of Video Game Soda Machines.” He says that seeing West Virginians’ reactions on social media and local news — even among people who don’t know much about the Fallout series or video games — has been the best part of the reveal. “West Virginia is a state that’s overlooked in pop culture, and when it does appear, it’s often portrayed in a negative light,” said Morrissette. “I think a lot of people here rightly feel burned when the entire state is reduced down to a bunch of hurtful Appalachian stereotypes in pop culture.” But the gameplay trailer has Morrisette hopeful for a new outlook on West Virginia. “Seeing landmarks like the New River Gorge Bridge, the Greenbrier Resort, and Camden Park — along with bits of West Virginian lore like the Mothman — suggests that Bethesda has done its homework,” he said. “I hope the end result is a game that’s not only fun to play, but also does the region and its people justice.” Morrissette shared a redesign of the state seal, which incorporates elements of the Fallout series. Though fan reaction is still mixed on other aspects of the game, it’s heartwarming to see West Virginians everywhere bonded by seeing their state in the limelight. Fallout 76 will be released Nov. 14 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One.