Fallout 76 crafting

Characteristics
Crafting is one of the pillars of Fallout 76 ' s gameplay. With a limited number automated vendors and fixed loot spawns few and far in between, each player will have to scavenge for supplies, scrap them at any of the crafting stations, then create what they need - if they have the necessary recipes.

Compared to Fallout 4, the crafting system feeds back into exploration. In the previous title, the player could view all the crafting recipes with perks gating the ability to create these items. In Fallout 76, however, the player begins the game with a very basic set of recipes and further ones have to be unlocked by exploring and collecting them, buying them from vendors, gathering items, or scrapping equipment.

Scrapping weapons, armor, and power armor components has a varying chance (5% to 85%) to yield a recipe on top of the scrapped components.

Components
Components come in varying degrees of rarity, from super common to very rare.

Weapons and weapon modifications
Weapons have an extensive array of modifications and slots to install them in, inheriting them from Fallout 4 and expanding the offer widely. Unlike Fallout 4, installing a new modification will always scrap the one installed, rather than depositing the mod in inventory. Most weapon plans are available at level-appropriate vendors.

Armor modification
Like with weapons, armor has a large number of upgrades, which tend to vary between items.

Power armor modification
Power armor modifications are expensive and rare, but they provide large bonuses to performance. Learning new mods is difficult, as the chance to learn a mod recipe while scrapping starts at a measly 5% and caps out at 50%. Most power armor plans are available at Vendor Bot Phoenix.

Brewing and distilling
Introduced in the Wild Appalachia update on March 12, 2019, brewing and distilling allows players to create and mix alcoholic beverages. Crafted beverages can also be aged (limited to wines and spirits), adding new effects to these consumables. To unlock the new crafting stations, players need to complete Wasted on Nukashine, started at a speakeasy near Vault-Tec University. Completing the quest will unlock the brewing station (self-explanatory) and the fermenter (for accelerated aging of qualifying consumables).

Cooking
Cooking makes a return and unlike other types of crafting, collecting basic ingredients will automatically unlock simple crafting recipes for these items. More complex meals require the player to collect them. Flatwoods is an excellent source to start, since Reverend Winters' recipes are scattered all over the town. Most recipes are available for purchase form the chef in Whitespring Hotel.

Chemistry
Chemistry, like cooking, allows the player to create potent stimulants. The chemistry bench also allows for processing raw ores mined from the earth into usable raw materials by the use of acid.

History

 * After patch 1.0.5.10 (PC), 1.0.5.9 (PS4), and 1.0.5.7 (Xbox), almost all plans a vendor can sell are always available. This change was implemented to reduce server "hopping" by players looking for plans and encourage consistent replaying.