Long story short, I learned two things from my shelter experience: I don’t like shelters, but I do like building! I’ll spare you the gory details, but suffice to say, I have two big issues with shelters: (1) you can’t put “allies” (friends found and helped in the wasteland) in them, and (2) loading into them is a pain. A sad attempt, but I was going from a two-sided vault, with an office/bedroom on one side… …and a workshop on the other.

After finding a nice spot in which to stick my C.A.M.P., I placed my shelter entrance, and I started building. So, before I sought out the BoS, I ran through the motions to get my own shelter – the free one given out unilaterally. But something in my brain clicked when I read that shelters were private interiors in which the game’s wonky building mechanics didn’t necessarily apply. Because I didn’t find the process of building all that appealing in Fallout 4, I figured I wouldn’t like it in Fallout 76. around as needed (for a cost), and it was interesting browsing forums and Bethesda’s site for images of players’ own varied and sometimes amazing C.A.M.P. It was nice that I could move my C.A.M.P. That’s because up to Steel Dawn, I held zero interest in building anything at my Construction and Assembly Mobile Platform (C.A.M.P.). One thing I’ve not spoken much about in my Fallout 76 posts is the game’s building system. The new update not only included the BoS, it also came with new building modules called “shelters.” While the BoS story populated my queue not too long after logging in, I actually had to go out and activate the shelters quest. I left The Witcher 3 in as settled a state as possible, and I made my way back to the West Virginia wilds. Besides, new content was new content, Brotherhood of Steel or no, and double XP made things more palatable. My solo character, Bianca, sat just shy of level 60, and we had had some good times together in the recent past, what with me finally paying some attention to the game’s perk system and turning her into a melee weapon whiz. That said, my own steely exterior couldn’t pass up Fallout 76’s final double XP weekend of 2020. So in thinking about the choice to fight monsters with the handsomely wry Geralt or trounce around a battled and bruised West Virginia with a bunch of pseudo-religious-techno zealots, well…Geralt was the clear winner. As far as Fallout lore goes, I’m not the world’s biggest fan of Steel Dawn’s central characters – the Brotherhood of Steel. I was interested in it, sure, but not overly so.

At the time, the release of Fallout 76’s latest expansion, “Steel Dawn,” was just a few weeks away. When I decided to bid adieu to roaming Fallout 76’s Appalachian wilderness last November in order to spend more quality time with Geralt of Rivia, I didn’t really think much about returning to the wastes.

Brotherhood of steel build