Huge new Fallout 76 Ghoul update doubles the RPG’s Steam player count

The Fallout 76 ghoul update just enabled its players to become irradiated scum for the first time in franchise history. The ghouls have existed as both friends and foes across Fallout’s many games from its CRPG origins until now. Walton Goggins even played a ghoul in the Fallout Amazon Prime show. Until this update, radiation has always meant certain death for the all-too-weak player characters. Now, you can embrace humankind’s nuclear fate and thousands of players have logged on to do so. Since the ghoul update’s release, Fallout 76’s player count has doubled. Monday, March 17’s concurrent user count was 8,479. Tuesday, March 18 hit 16,421, corresponding directly with the patch’s launch.

With this update, Fallout 76 players can now complete a questline which will transform them into a ghoul. Don’t worry, if you ever regret their transformation, you can always change back. Becoming a ghoul will unlock a suite of exclusive perks and abilities. Radiation won’t hurt you. In fact, when sufficiently irradiated, you gain “glow” which increases your max health. Several perks interact with this feature. For example, “Jaguar Speed” grants 20% higher sprint speed when glowing. In other words, becoming a ghoul totally alters how you interact with the game world. While human characters must protect themselves from irradiated places, ghouls can run through them with abandon.

This has implications for the RPG game systems of Fallout 76 as well. Certain factions, like the Brotherhood of Steel, won’t let ghouls into their ranks, blocking their progression with those groups. However, you can talk to new NPC Jaye and she can give you a human disguise, unlocking quests forbidden to ghoul-kind.

If you are still waiting on the Fallout 5 release date, you can check out the best games like Fallout to bid your time. Otherwise, if the irradiated wastes have you craving resource management, try our list of the best survival games.

You can follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides. We’ve also got a vibrant community Discord server, where you can chat about this story with members of the team and fellow readers.