Fallout 76's latest update, Skyline Valley, may add a whole new section of the map for players to explore with new quests and points of interest to experience. But later this year, the Milepost Zero update will introduce escort missions with the chance to build a new customisable outpost and raise brahmin.
Set in the new location of Shenandoah National Park, you'll join the Blue Ridge Caravan Company, which has been running routes up and down Blue Ridge Drive, and help them escort a brahmin carrying important supplies.
I'm actually strangely excited about another Fallout 76 escort mission, as it's a good chance for Bethesda to iron out the issues present in previous missions. I found the escort job in The Most Sensational Game to be slightly overwhelming as it's set inside the cramped and confusing Showman's Pier, and there were also a couple of problems with buggy NPCs blocking doorways or simply freezing in one spot.
But instead of being shut away in a building guiding someone who almost always gets in your way, you'll be outside in the wild with a slow-moving brahmin. However, in typical Fallout fashion, it won't be completely smooth sailing as the mutated cow will have a mind of its own. "There's a lot of typical Fallout humour in all of this," lead producer Bill LaCoste says. "It's something we have to keep in mind a lot of the time. So, I think that we're also going to have distractions for the brahmin. We'll see how that goes, but that would be very Fallout if you're escorting something and all of a sudden you turn around, and the brahmin is off grazing."
No escort mission is pain-free—that's part of the twisted fun—but one aspect that'll help ease the frustration of guiding a slow and stubborn brahmin is the chance to customise your own outpost: "Successfully running missions for the Blue Ridge Caravan Company will unlock a Caravan outpost of your own," creative director Jon Rush says.
Once you have a new spot away from your main camp, you can keep on expanding it and adding to it after each successful escort mission. Eventually, you'll also be able to host specialised vendors from the far corners of Fallout 76: "You can unlock a whole host of vendors that sell you things that you can only get through here to decorate your camp, decorate your person, and you get brahmin," Rush says. "I'm not sure if you'll be able to milk them, but I'm going to say you can milk them."
"There's a lot of opportunity here for people to build up something within their outpost," LaCoste says. "It's kind of like building your house in Skyrim, there's that level of detail that you're going to have there to make it your own place. It's gonna be really neat."
From what I saw, the outpost looks less like an actual house and more like a cave full of trinkets and doohickies, which honestly is exactly what I'd go for in the apocalypse. Who needs a comfy home when you can pretend to be Gollum hiding away in the Misty Mountains, scaring off all the locals with heaps of raw fish and a Wendigo colossus vocal sac?
But seriously, building a camp is one of my favourite parts of Fallout 76 as there's just so much you can do to make it unique to yourself, and I think each one ends up saying quite a lot about what kind of player you are. So, getting the chance to have another home in the new section of the map without having to buy an extra camp spot is a pretty sweet deal and one that'll make exploring Shenandoah that much more enjoyable.
