The new Burning Springs update for Fallout 76 has been out for a couple of weeks now, giving fans a chance to play through that additional content before dipping into the second season of Fallout on Prime Video, which is out now.
Despite servers crashing for nearly a full day when the update was applied, Burning Springs is one of the best updates to the game in its seven-year history, rivaling even the Wastelanders expansion that added NPCs to the game. The update adds a new location to the map — the Burning Springs region of Ohio, which is a New Vegas-like dustbowl — full of new points of interest, NPCs to meet, quests to go on, and, of course, mutated people, animals, and bugs to kill. Oh yeah, and The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) has moved in, doling out bounties for you to track down.
All told, it adds hours upon hours of new content for fans of Fallout 76. For the most part, it’s all great. On its own, the Burning Springs locale offers plenty of exploring and wandering to do, if that’s the way you Fallout. It’s also full of missions that both explain the region a bit more and add to the overall Fallout story.
A perfect example is a long-lasting quest involving briefcases filled with confidential information about the Abraxodyne chemical company, a long-standing part of Fallout lore. While it’s essentially a fetch quest, each briefcase you find in Burning Springs offers a bit of information about the company, along with rewards for turning them over to a mysterious man looking into the company. This is a long-lasting quest with over 100 briefcases to be found — the perfect sort of mission to have in the background while you complete other central pieces of the game.
The update includes two brand-new factions: the Ash Cavers and the Rust King’s Army. The Rust King is a super mutant that lords over wastelanders in Burning Springs who have chosen to follow his bloody, violent ways. He’s a central figure in the new Blood X Rust season that debuted alongside the update. The quests in this particular storyline see you spilling lots of blood to earn the king’s loyalty. Right now, I’ve completed the primary story and really enjoyed it. It does a good job of introducing you to new locations in Burning Springs, helping to fill out your map along the way. It’s also a simple, yet well-told story that reinforces the idea that nobody can be trusted in the wasteland.
Perhaps the most important piece of the Burning Springs update is the central hub of the new section of the map. Highway Town is a shanty town built on top of a freeway overpass, requiring an elevator for entrance. It’s here that you can shop for supplies, take on a mission or two, and, most importantly, get bounty assignments from The Ghoul.
The arrival of The Ghoul was easily the thing touted the most about this new update, and he does seemingly have an endless supply of bounties for you to take on. There are two options for bounties. The first, grunt hunts, are the sort of smaller bounties you can likely take care of all yourself. They’re free, offering a lower level of rewards than the other bounties, head hunts.
Head hunts cost caps to take on and should definitely be completed in a team. My character, currently level 65, is definitely nowhere near strong enough to take a head hunt on alone. However, I’ve done a number of head hunts with other players and had a blast obliterating ghouls, the Scorched, raiders in power armor, and whatever else they can throw at you.
While the addition of bounties is an excellent one, I can’t say the same for the arrival of The Ghoul, primarily because he does almost nothing. When Bethesda touted he was coming to the game, it was hard not to get hyped. And even though the studio made it clear that he was there to serve up bounties to players, I at least hoped he would move a bit.
The Ghoul never leaves his spot, perched next to a messy table in Highway Town’s pub, Last Resort. He doesn’t move his arms or even change his stance. Seriously, check out the photos below. He’s practically a statue and one without much dialogue. In fact, if I had to guess, Goggins might have spent as little as a half hour recording his lines.
The Ghoul playing such a wooden role hurts the expansion. While Bethesda never promised we’d be wandering the Wasteland alongside him, I can’t be the only one who hoped he’d at least be a bit animated. I mean, it’s Walton Goggins in the role. Subtlety has never been his thing, and the characters he creates are so much better for it. Even just having him shuffle his feet now and then would be an improvement.
That said, the bounty missions he hands out are fun to play and help generate XP, caps, and new items. And head hunts appear on the map as game-wide events, so you don’t even have to be part of the team taking it to join in on the chaos.
All told, Burning Springs is an excellent addition to Fallout 76. The Rust King storyline is entertaining, the bounties keep you engaged and upgrading your loot, and the map expansion is both massive and full of future potential. There are a number of areas on the map that simply cannot be reached right now, which could potentially be unlocked in future updates.
Even in its current state, though, Fallout 76‘s Burning Springs update is the sort of thing that will keep players busy for a long time to come. The only thing holding it back is the criminal underuse of The Ghoul. Luckily, the second season of Prime Video’s Fallout is airing right now and is full of Goggins chewing scenery in the extensive Ghoul makeup to keep you satiated.
