Fallout 76: Patch 16 and its reload bug

Patch 16 was Fallout 76's holiday update for 2019, bringing about all sorts of new goodies, bugfixes, and an event to boot. However, a bug was found rather quickly that required Bethesda to roll back one such bugfix. With Patch 16 came a bugfix for the infamous +250DR while reloading legendary attribute, which hadn't been working for quite some time. However, this bugfix made it so that reloading weapons nullified the legendary effects on your armor, until said armor was re-equipped. So, I decided to run some tests to attempt to figure out what exactly might be happening.

My build and how it helps the tests

Some of the following information won’t be relevant to the experiments themselves, but including it for clarity. I run a bloodied/bolstering build, which I feel will be helpful in testing out what is going on after a reload since my stats will change drastically, both on my armor and on my weapon. Both legendary types have to be calculated/scaled according to my current HP and applied both when you equip the gear, making it easy to see huge changes. The lower my HP, the higher both of these values are. Especially damage, since Adrenal Reaction and Bloodied increase damage as HP decreases.

Mutations: ADRENAL REACTION and SPEED DEMON

Relevant Perks: Evasive Rank 2 (15 AGI for +30 DR), and +30% Damage from three rank 1 Gunslinger perks

Relevant Current Gear Stats: All equipment is repaired and equipped. The following stats were modified to reflect my HP, which is 28/200. This table does not include SPECIAL increases since I don’t feel they’re relevant at all to the tests. Further, I am not well fed or well hydrated (nor am I in real life... for consistency's sake of course). Further, I was going to include the Bloodied 10mm SMG since it has a secondary attribute that increases reload speed, but I didn't test it before Bethesda rolled back the update.

BLOODIED BLACK POWDER PISTOL

I chose this one since the window for the animation is large, and it’s easy to see when, during the reload animation, the stats are modified. Firing the gun and seeing that Bloodied is actually removed and reapplied during the reload animation. However, the clip’s ammo seems to be restored at the very end of the animation, so I see they’re not tied together. At least, not at the same keyframe. 

Also, I noticed an interesting bug I hadn’t noticed before. In the bottom right of the pip-boy, my damage reads 599, an incorrect, outdated value (it was 599 before I adjusted my HP back to 28/200). After reload, it’s refreshed to almost the correct value, but is one unit off. Not super relevant, but figured I’d point out the UI updating/rounding bug anyhow.

Here, we see the Bloodied effect of the weapon be removed and reapplied.

Here, we see that my armor is giving my character the incorrect DR because the Bolstering effect has been nullified.

THE DRAGON

I chose this one since the window for the animation is large too, but I also wanted to see if non-legendary weapons had an effect on the armor. I assumed not, because my hypothesis was that only legendaries were given a special reload callback/event to get the 250DR legendary effect to work by granting them a set of stats, which was cleared at the end of the reload animation. I also hypothesized that’s why legendary effects were removed on reload; I wondered if this “stat set” being removed is taking the legendary effects with it. I was wrong about it being on legendaries only. I wonder if the aforementioned process is experiencing a run-time error, requiring the gear still needs to be equipped to reapply the stats.

Non-legendaries are also removing legendary effects on reload.

TWO SHOT RIFLE, +250DR FLAMER

Wanted to see how other legendary weapon effects were handled when reloading. To my understanding, two shot damage is reflected in the damage of the weapon when looking at its stats in the Pip-Boy. I saw no difference when reloading like I did when examining Bloodied, where the effect was removed and reapplied.

In the flamer's case, I believe Bethesda when they say they fixed this attribute. Since I saw no change reflected in the Pip-Boy when examining my DR, I feel this supports my claim for a run-time error. Such an error would prevent me from seeing if the 250DR attribute is working, but would explain why Bethesda felt it worked on their end before pushing the fix.

ConCLUSION

What did I gather from this? Well, the following is probably a hot take, but is my best guess.

Without being able to look “under the hood”, I believe there’s a run-time error occurring when checking/calculating a player’s DR, and that this check is happening EVERY reload.

This run-time error is likely scrapping the primary legendary effect of the armor, and preserving those of the primary weapon.