Super mutants (Fallout 76)

 are creatures found in Fallout 76.

Background
The first Super Mutants in Appalachia were created right before the Great War, when West Tek poisoned the drinking water of Huntersville with the FEV Virus, in a sinister, secret experiment gone horribly wrong. The FEV project headed by West Tek called for testing the virus in small, isolated towns across the United States. Although plans were formalized in October 2076, in the wake of successful precision tests on fifteen chimpanzees, Huntersville was subjected to testing as early as February 2076, after the Greenhouse project was shuttered and the assets were redirected towards the Super Mutant project, pushing the virus to its limits. While the Californian facility focused on precision and slow, methodical research, Huntersville and other quarantined, remote cities focused on large scale testing and rapidly iterating on the various strains of the virus. After the Great War, the Enclave seized control of the facility and secured the virus. President Thomas Eckhart later deliberately unleashed them on Appalachia, in an attempt to trick the DEFCON system into raising the alert status.

Characteristics
Super mutants employ crude armor, fashioned out of junk. While it appears flimsy, the super mutants have inherent resistance to ballistic, energy, and poison damage, on top of total immunity to radiation. In combat, they rely on simpler weapons - melee implements, frag grenades, lower grade rifles (pipe rifles, assault rifles, laser rifles), and even miniguns and missile launchers among higher level mutants. They also employ mutated dogs as pets and guard dogs.

As such, super mutants can be a considerable threat if engaged in the open and without scouting the area, especially in places like the Revere Satellite Array, where missile launcher mutants occupy the high ground and can hit their targets pretty much anywhere. The best way to counter the threat would be to scout the area beforehand and prioritize high threat targets, like those with heavy weapons. Super mutants have a bit more variety in looks than in previous game, using improvised armor and gear, like propane tanks cut up as helmets or wheelbarrows as backpacks. They also work well together and can be very effective combatants.

The situation is complicated further by the way the spawning lists are structured. Super mutants do not follow any specific loadout and their armor is always randomly selected from a generous list of outfits and possible helmets. As such, it's possible to encounter a fully armor skirmisher and a half-naked warlord. Caution is advised.

Loot

 * Various explosives
 * Various amounts of caps
 * Various weapons

Variants

 * Super mutant
 * Super mutant skirmisher
 * Super mutant fighter
 * Super mutant brute
 * Super mutant enforcer
 * Super mutant butcher
 * Super mutant master
 * Super mutant overlord
 * Super mutant primus
 * Super mutant warlord
 * Super mutant behemoth