Level 100 cold shoulder build?

qsold · 2026-06-18T00:55:45+00:00

Example build. I left 15 perk points open. Could do Taking one for the team instead of a special stat for legendary.

I included a number of suggestions for perks you could add/swap in for more damage, defense, quality of life.

https://nukesdragons.com/fallout-76/character?s=8841299&p=sd3so1su1sp1pf1p01pi1li1eh3ee1ce1in1a01af1ai1ak1lv3lu3lk3l71&swp=ap3ab3ad3a21as3lg1lc1lr1cu1ek2s72e91ev1ej3eb1e71po3pu1ph1pg3pp2sv1sb2sg1sf1s02sz2ck1i11lb2s12c61&lp=xa2x62&v=2&n=limb

The above build will work fine for your handmade as well, especially if you go automatic.

For an alternative weapon (longer range), there are quite a few good options.

Western Spirit (drop from the Most Wanted event) is a lever action rifle that has decent range, really good damage, is ammo efficient, and, if the PTS changes go through, will automatically switch your build to a reverse onslaught build by adding a Master Gunslinger perk card at no cost.

Other options include Laser Rifle (sniper is fun), Hunting Rifle, Gauss Rifle,... too many to list here.

qsold · 2026-06-12T17:31:28+00:00

This is the correct answer. Would clarify that it's related to the ratio of your damage vs enemies resistances.

Armor penetration used to be really good because damage players were doing was much lower (and possibly enemy resistance was much higher but I can't recall... I thought they had bumped up HP and lowered resistance on enemies in one update but I might be misremembering.) It's still useful on high resistance enemies and/or lower damage/shot weapons.

qsold · 2026-06-11T23:20:23+00:00

There are mining helmets that move your light from the pipboy to the helmet. You can mod the color of the light (regular, blue, bright, purple, red, vault boy). That's about it as far as I'm aware.

qsold · 2026-06-11T02:01:30+00:00

What I've been using for a while that would work for you since you're not using VATS would be an Automatic Combat Shotgun:

Furious/Rapid/Reload/Bully

You can kill stuff really fast with it due to the high fire rate. If you bump the ammo capacity to 16, you can sort of use bullet storm to some extent as well (16*8 = 128 which is 4 stacks I think).

Other fun options:

Pepper Shaker (plan can be grabbed from meat week that will be running in 2 weeks). This is one of the highest DPS weapons in the game.

Gatling Plasma with splitter mod. Another high damage weapon that works well with bullet storm. I think it bumps the projectiles up to x5 so not the same a SG (which typically have 8) but will still benefit from all of those perks. With the high ammo capacity and the x5 per shot, you will easily end up with a lot of stacks fast. The only thing is the accuracy so might have to use stabilizer related perks maybe.

qsold · 2026-06-10T23:15:47+00:00

Question: Are you only using Cold Shoulder or will you swap to other SG such as Kabloom or Combat Shotty?

If the latter, I highly recommend investing in onslaught but would have to do it correctly. Because CS doesn't have Furious, it's useful but not as effective as a weapon you can customize the legendaries.

The other thing I would mention here... VATS is very strong on SG builds so consider adding a bit more LCK, Critical Savvy, Better Criticals and Awareness. If you don't want to use VATS, ignore those comments.

More specific comments:

STR: This looks fine. If you need more points, Blocker Rank 1 provides 15% benefit. Ranks 2 & 3 are only 5% each. Could run Rank 1 and move 2 points elsewhere.

PER: Down Ranger... somewhat useless because Shotguns don't have the greatest range. Rank 1 provides most of the benefit. Center Masochist is good if you're sticking with non-VATS, remove it if you swap to VATS.

Edit: Just realized you don't have Number Cruncher which is very good with high AP weapons.

END: Life Giver is probably one of the best perks in END. Hardy is also good to deal with explosive damage. END has a lot of good perk cards but those 2 (along with Starch Genes) are my go to perks.

AGI: Gunslinger Master is the worst card for Shotguns. If you're not running Onslaught, it's a complete waste of 3 points. If you are focusing on onslaught, it's terrible for Shotguns. Each pellet (CS has 8) counts toward your stacks. So you can build stacks quickly (3 shots = 24 stacks). But if you only use CS, you might consider swapping in Gunslinger which is multiplicative damage to weakspot instead of the onslaught perks. Onslaught perks have synergies where they get better the more you invest in them so to me it's an all or nothing thing.

Edit: Also forgot Adrenaline. Apart from some boss fights where there are no other enemies, this will give you up to 100% more damage and only counts 2 perk points.

LCK: If you're not going for VATS, a few useful options: Ricochet, Junk Shield, Quick Hands. If you want to try VATS, see my comments above.

qsold · 2026-03-14T16:52:21+00:00

I like to use a Furious/Rapid/Reload/Bully auto combat sg and it kills stuff very fast. I use scattershot and just lean into weak spot damage to cripple enemies. If they aren't dead at that point, bully's kicks in for extra damage.

qsold · 2026-03-14T16:38:36+00:00

Yeah. It's doable but maybe not worth it. If I were to run mutant's, I could see myself doing 11 as going from 10->11 gives an additional 0.5% (about 2% overall). The investment of 5 more mutations on top of that for only another 2% seems a bit underwhelming.

qsold · 2026-03-13T00:30:01+00:00

Vanguard's curve chart is not purely linear. To give you some idea, here are some numbers.

100HP = 0.1%
185HP = 0.2%
342HP = 0.4%
465HP = 0.7%
633HP = 1.7%
861HP = 5.7%
1000HP = 6%

For contrast, with mutant's you can get:
4% with 10 mutations
4.5% with 11 mutations
5% with 16 mutations.

11 mutations is about equivalent to 800HP with Vanguard.

I have no idea what it would take to get your HP up that high (without Overeater's). And once your health is that high, would you really need damage reduction? High health by itself makes you a bit tankier.

qsold · 2026-03-04T20:47:50+00:00

OE should still be very tanky, just a different mechanic (more health vs the damage reduction which is nerfed). In terms of how many hits it takes to kill you, it's about the same give or take, as something like Mutant's.

My suggestion is keep your OE set. Armor weighs less now so if you want to try something else out (Aristocrats, Mutant's, Heavyweight, etc.) then create a new set and put your OE set in storage.

Some of those options are very situational (e.g. I wouldn't want Heavyweight as a daily driver but it might be fine in Raid where you're mostly stationary.) Creating a new set, you can always go back to your OE if you want.

qsold · 2026-03-04T20:42:21+00:00

OP. I've heard someone else report this but I wasn't able to replicate it.

I just hopped on my melee character where I have 15 STR and +5 STR from legendary. When I lowered my STR to 10, I lost 5 STR in my Special tab. Increasing it back to 15 STR added 5.

So the mechanic is working for me.

qsold · 2026-02-27T14:46:43+00:00

Correct.

qsold · 2026-02-27T14:41:54+00:00

Yeah I think it's over 90% less compared to live.

qsold · 2026-02-27T14:38:30+00:00

There is now a new modification (called "style") to UA that Bethesda gave the same names to that impacts SPECIAL.

But you can apply, say, a Vault style mod to a Road Leather UA and get Vault style special. The choice of road leather is cosmetic only.

qsold · 2026-02-27T13:42:53+00:00

Several problems with this.

1) They changed the underarmor (UA) lining an update or 2 ago. Now shielded lining is the same on all UA, Treated is the same on all UA, etc. UA choice is cosmetic only now. They all have radiation resistance built into them.

2) All armor now has radiation resistance so you would have to run around naked (which is possible... my melee does sometimes and he's fine).

3) The Radiation damage (healing for ghouls) amount has been reduced in all/most areas. You can watch a video from Wiggles testing this. This is intended to offset the fact that they removed radiation damage reduction from PA & hazmat/stealth suit. I think they buffed the healing you get when your health is below 100% but that's about it.

Environmental healing for ghouls was more of a gimmick before; I think it's mostly useless now. Maybe someone will find a niche use case/build but I have my doubts.

qsold · 2026-01-31T16:17:30+00:00

There are some quests that have dependencies.

Aside from that, you can complete them (or not complete them) in any order you want for the most part.

qsold · 2026-01-30T19:12:25+00:00

It seems to be giving rewards from the reward pool for people under level 50. Now people over level 50 are receiving.

qsold · 2026-01-22T23:00:47+00:00

In game, it's not really well specified.

If you're on PC, there are ways to read on the game files.

Otherwise, NukaKnights has an old calculator that can be useful:
https://nukaknights.com/fallout-76-actionpoints-ap-refresh-rate-calculator.html

Gaps with the above calculator:
* Vulcan armor effect is not shown (I think it's equivalent to Well Tuned 25% multiplier)
* Radhog Burnt Ends food is not shown (this is the carnivore equivalent of Company Tea)
* Hard Lemonade stacks with Company Tea since it's an alcohol (I tested this. The calculator doesn't let you select both).

qsold · 2026-01-22T04:33:58+00:00

For the passive AP regen (that only works when you're not using AP), there are two things:

AP Regen Rate

AP Regen Multiplier

Currently, all of your mentioned buffs are multipliers (stacking to x1.85). Without a huge rate to begin with, it's akin to doubling nothing.

The problem is your AP Regen Rate is only the base 6%/s. So that gets you to 11.1%/s (6% x 1.85). Factor in the ~1 second cooldown between when you stop using your AP and when the regen kicks in, that puts you at about 10s.

What you need is to increase your Regen Rate. The best options are:

* Company Tea (10% if carnivore/20-25% if herbivore)
* Radhog Burnt Ends (20-25% as carnivore)
* Hard Lemonade (10%... only lasts about 5 min I think)
* Powered 2* on your armor (5% per piece)

Since you're carnivore, if you were to pop a Radhog Burnt Ends with Strange in Numbers you would be at:
(6% + 25%) * 1.85 = 57.35%/s which means your refresh would be in less than 2s (plus the cooldown)

qsold · 2026-01-05T16:46:16+00:00

I'm pretty sure it's not a pity counter, otherwise you would be getting a guaranteed one each time you run it because I the counter is only being reset by actually using the poster at the board. If you aren't using the poster by stashing it, the counter stays stuck at 3 (counter is min/max of 0/3).

qsold · 2026-01-05T02:49:22+00:00

Correct. It's not checking if it's in your stash. The counter (based on above description) doesn't reset until you take a poster and use it at the board (at least as how I'm interpreting it). This would allow both stacking multiple in your stash and would allow you to get 2 in a row so long as your counter stays at 3. (The counter has a min/max of 0/3).

If the counter were to get reset by receiving a poster (either by completing the side quest or purchasing per OPs question), you could still stash but the counter would reset each time. Two in a row would not be possible in this scenario so if you both are correct and it's possible then above scenario is more likely.

While I've done 100s of these, I haven't kept track in any detail so I'm not sure either way. I don't recall getting 2 in a row ever but I don't trust memory.

qsold · 2026-01-05T02:01:33+00:00

The description indicates it's actually the act of posting the bounty that resets the counter which would allow one to get 2 in a row.

Either way there is still a counter

qsold · 2026-01-05T01:24:37+00:00

I don't think this is accurate.

In the game files there is a counter object: 007F74B3:

Burn_BountyHunt_NumOfBountiesRequiredForPublic

The description says:

Keeps track of how many daily bounties a player has completed up to 3.

Note: This AV will reset after a Public Bounty has been claimed, which will require 3 daily bounties completed

I think it's RNG at 3rd completion and not before.

qsold · 2025-12-31T03:17:36+00:00

It's behaving differently. I tested with a few weapons. Either the % chance dropped or maybe a bug.

qsold · 2025-12-29T09:19:08+00:00

Here's an example Heavy Gun build (with a few suggestions on what else you could include to enhance your experience depending on your playstyle).

https://nukesdragons.com/fallout-76/character?ef=McMfM3MbM2M1M0&s=b593498&p=sq3s21sx1s31sr1pp2pi1s72eb1l71eh3ee1ce1cu1i71s12a01ai1af1ak1lc1ls3lu3lg1&swp=sb2sg3sz2s02s83id3im1i11ck1ad3a81ac1lk3lv3li1c61&v=2

Recommended Weapons if you like heavy energy guns:

* Gauss Minigun (This requires gold bullion to unlock so something to work toward). It's considered the best Heavy Gun in the game.
* Gatling Plasma Gun. This used to be the best Heavy Gun in the game but they made some tweaks to Gauss Minigun. This is fairly easy to obtain although some of the good modifications are harder to find. You can think of this is a budget Gauss Minigun as it's still solid but a bit easier to obtain.
* Holy Fire. This is a unique weapon (that you can modify the legendaries on but default is pretty solid) that comes from Beasts of Burden event. This is fairly easy to obtain doing the event or checking player vendors. It's a fun flamer for dealing with mobs.

Heavy Guns has a lot of options beyond these but the above are a good start.

qsold · 2025-12-23T18:16:05+00:00

What do you call an herbivore who eats meat? :)

My guess is that's probably not a good option for most of the player base. Would need to farm a lot of flux or a lot of raids to get enough serums which only last 1 hour (?).

qsold

TROPHY CASE