Fallout 76 Story Explained: Plot and Endings

Fallout 76 came out in November 2018, made by Bethesda Game Studios. It's an online prequel set in Appalachia, the ruins of West Virginia, starting in 2102, just 25 years after the Great War. That makes it the earliest game in the Fallout timeline, 59 years before the first Fallout. Its story has grown through years of free updates, so this page covers the original main quest, then the major update stories in brief. It has full spoilers. (Fallout 76)

Before the story begins#

Vault 76 was one of Vault-Tec's control vaults, built without a hidden experiment. It was meant to mark America's 300th birthday in 2076, and it was filled with what Vault-Tec called the best and brightest. The plan was to open it after the war and send its people out to rebuild. (Fallout 76)

In the 25 years before it opened, a lot went wrong outside. Survivors formed groups, and one by one they died. Most of the reasons trace back to the Scorched Plague, which turned people into the Scorched, crusted, half-mindless creatures who still used weapons and spread the disease. (Fallout 76)

Reclamation Day#

The dwellers overslept their own party. When they came out of Vault 76 in 2102, the Overseer had already gone ahead. She left holotapes along the way, and the dwellers followed them across Appalachia. Through her recordings, they saw what had become of her old home, and of her fiancé, Evan, who could be found as one of the Scorched. (Fallout 76)

The first faction they learned about was the Responders, a relief group made from firefighters, police and medics after the war, led by Maria Chavez. They had dissolved in 2096. A Responder named Claire Hudson had left a way to vaccinate against the plague, and her trail led to the Fire Breathers and a man named Hank Madigan, who had gone hunting the Scorched. (Fallout 76)

Hank's trail ended at the Top of the World, where a robot named Rose took over. She was built in the image of Rosalynn Jeffries, the partner of the raider David Thorpe. In 2082, believing the Responders had killed Rosalynn, David blew up the Summersville Dam. The flood drowned Charleston on Christmas morning, along with Rosalynn, who had been alive in a Responder cell all along. (Fallout 76)

The Free States and the Brotherhood#

Rose sent the dwellers to the bunker of Abbie Singh. Abbie belonged to the Free States, a group of anarchists who had distrusted the government and built their own bunkers in the Mire. Her father had been building a detection system for the Scorched, and the dwellers finished it using codes from another Free Stater, Sam Blackwell. (Fallout 76)

Abbie's notes pointed to the Brotherhood of Steel's Appalachian chapter at Fort Defiance. It was led by Elizabeth Taggerdy, a friend of the Brotherhood's founder, Roger Maxson, who talked to her by radio from California. She begged him to let her use nuclear weapons against the scorchbeasts. He refused. In 2095 her people tried a final assault, Operation Touchdown, and died in a cavern in the scorchbeasts' territory. Their records made it clear nukes were the only answer. (Fallout 76)

The Enclave and the nukes#

Taggerdy's notes led to Sam Blackwell, and from him to a bunker under the Whitespring Resort. It belonged to the Enclave, the secret government that, in later games, tries to wipe out the mutated people of the wasteland. Its people were long gone, but its AI, MODUS, was still running. (Fallout 76)

MODUS revealed the truth. The Enclave's leader in Appalachia, Thomas Eckhart, had released the scorchbeasts, first created by accident in Enclave experiments on bats, as part of a scheme to raise the military alert level so he could take control of the nukes. With MODUS's help, the dwellers gained access to Appalachia's missile silos and launched a nuke into the scorchbeasts' nest, the Fissure Site Prime, to destroy them and stop the plague spreading beyond Appalachia. (Fallout 76)

The original game has no ending slides. The Overseer's last holotape is the closest thing to an ending: she is frustrated with dwellers who launched nukes for any reason other than killing the scorchbeasts. (Fallout 76)

Wastelanders#

The Wastelanders update in 2020 brought human characters back. In October 2103, a year after Reclamation Day, new arrivals came looking for rumoured treasure. At the Wayward bar, run by a woman called Duchess, the dwellers met two groups: the friendly Settlers of Foundation, led by Paige, and the Raiders of the Crater, led by Meg Groberg. (Fallout 76: Wastelanders)

The Overseer came back, living in her old house, and helped spread a vaccine against the Scorched Plague. She also wanted to build a working economy, and the treasure was the way to do it. It was Vault 79, said to hold the country's gold reserves. The dweller had to choose one faction to break in with. With the Settlers, they used a giant drilling robot. With the Raiders, they dealt with a traitor named Lev and blasted their way in. Either way the heist succeeded, and the dweller could double-cross their partners and keep more gold. (Fallout 76: Wastelanders)

Steel Dawn and Steel Reign#

In Steel Dawn and Steel Reign, a Brotherhood expedition from California, the First Expeditionary Force, reached Appalachia to find the lost chapter. Its leaders, Paladin Leila Rahmani and Knight Daniel Shin, disagreed about almost everything, with Scribe Odessa Valdez caught between them. Rahmani wanted to help the locals and, when it came to it, cut off contact with the Elders in California. Shin wanted to follow the rules. (Fallout 76: Steel Dawn)

In 2104, the expedition hunted a scientist named Edgar Blackburn, who had been experimenting on kidnapped people at Vault 96. He wanted to release a modified Forced Evolutionary Virus, tested it on himself and turned into a super mutant behemoth. His colleagues begged for their lives. Rahmani wanted them spared, Shin wanted them dead, and the dweller's choice decided which leader took command of the Brotherhood in Appalachia. The other was killed or left. (Fallout 76: Steel Reign)

Later updates#

• In Expeditions: The Pitt, the dwellers fly to Pittsburgh in 2104 to help the Union of steelworkers against a raider army called the Fanatics. (Fallout 76: Expeditions: The Pitt)
• In Expeditions: Atlantic City, they travel to the ruins of Atlantic City in 2105, a city run by casino bosses and a strange group called the Showmen. (Fallout 76: Expeditions: Atlantic City)
• Skyline Valley, in 2105, opens Shenandoah National Park in Virginia. Vault 63's ghoul overseer, Hugo Stolz, turns out to have created a new kind of feral ghoul, the Lost, with an experimental weather machine, and he wants to control them. The dwellers defeat him and decide whether to let him go, capture him or kill him. (Fallout 76: Skyline Valley)
• Milepost Zero has the dwellers help the Blue Ridge Caravan Company build a new trading post along Skyline Drive. (Fallout 76: Milepost Zero)
• Ghoul Within introduces the Revenants of Radiant Hills, ghouls who offer to turn a sick man named Leamon Price, and any dweller who wants it, into a ghoul. (Fallout 76: Ghoul Within)
• Burning Springs, in December 2025, takes the dwellers to southeastern Ohio, where they work with the Ghoul from the TV series as a bounty hunter and fight a warlord called the Rust King. (Fallout 76: Burning Springs)

The endings explained#

Fallout 76 doesn't have one ending. The original main quest ends with the first nuke launched against the scorchbeasts, and the updates each close their own stories. The choices that matter most are in Wastelanders, where the dweller picks the Settlers or the Raiders for the Vault 79 heist and can betray them, and Steel Reign, where they choose between Shin and Rahmani. The game doesn't pick a canon side in either case, and no later story has said which one happened. (Fallout 76: Wastelanders; Fallout 76: Steel Reign)

What later games treat as canon#

Fallout 76 is canon, but it was made after the games it leads into, so it fills in earlier history rather than following up. Vault 76 was first mentioned in a Vault-Tec terminal in Fallout 3 as a control vault. The game's ties to the rest of the timeline run through the Brotherhood, whose founder Roger Maxson appears in Taggerdy's story, and the Enclave, which later tries to poison the wasteland in Fallout 2 and Fallout 3. (Fallout 3; Fallout 76)

What it sets up#

The Brotherhood expedition, the vaccine and the Settlers all take place long before any other game, so none of them carry forward directly. What carries forward is the Brotherhood, the Enclave and Vault-Tec. For the order of events, see the timeline, the Fallout games in order and the Fallout story explained. (Fallout 76)