What happens when you die in Fallout 76?

Most MMOs don’t punish players heavily for dying, and Fallout 76 isn’t an exception. When you die, you turn up in a nearby location ready to roll with full HP and AP. There will be some junk gear missing from your backpack, but you can retrieve it by taking a trip to the place of death. Keep in mind that whatever killed you might still be there hoping to take another life.

Before going to a dangerous zone, you might want to move the most valuable items from your backpack to the vault stash. This way you can mitigate death punishment completely.

We imagine that game designers had to work around the low cost of death to avoid players commenting strategic suicide, for example, to quickly leave a certain area, or to replenish HP.

Why death isn’t punished more heavily?

Fallout 76 is an online-only game, meaning every player is subjected to lag spikes which can occur if any of the network nodes connecting you and Bethesda servers fail even for half a second. Developers didn’t want to destroy players’ experience by uncontrolled factors.

If you want to feel hard ramifications for a character’s death, we recommend hardcore mode in Diablo 3. Once you die in the mode, the character and unstashed gear die with him.