There was bound to be an opposite, equal reaction after weeks of praise for how well things have gone for Fallout 76 since its major Wastelanders update. Nothing good lasts forever and a game like Fallout 76 with a track record for things exploding magnificently is a bomb on Megaton waiting to happen. Sadly, this time it involves the especially popular Fasnacht Parade event, originally scheduled to begin yesterday across all versions of the game. I say originally because a long-ignored bug involving the guts of Appalachia’s critters forced Bethesda to shut down the event, delayed until further notice while Bethesda looks at fixing yet another broken part of its game.
Confused? You should be, but here’s the short version. The Fasnacht Parade event is based on a real Appalachian tradition derived from a Swiss celebration that is akin to Mardi Gras, taking place the weekend before Shrove Tuesday. Think of it as a parade and celebration to usher in the end of winter and the coming of spring–hence the burning of an Old Man Winter effigy. Why does Appalachia celebrate it? It’s a mountain thing. Regardless, the parade is also an event in Fallout 76 that involves players helping a town of confused robots prepare and celebrate the parade. That preparation involves collecting supplies before the actual event that involves players protecting mask-wearing robots as they process. Think of it as a less depressing version of that other quest involving a parade of robots from NieR: Automata.
This is all a roundabout way of saying that a long-standing bug kept players from collecting the needed amount of supplies to even get the event going. What supply? Animal guts, of course. Found by murdering the tinier, less dangerous critters strewn across the post-apocalyptic hills of West Virginia, players on the server needed to turn in a certain amount of animal intestines to get the party started. However, critter spawns have been non-existent since Wastelanders, making the quest almost impossible. The only saving grace is that players on private servers–obtained by subscribing to the strange, broken Fallout 1st monthly service–weren’t experiencing the guts issue and could readily provide the otherwise useless vittles.
And so the parade couldn’t go along its merry way and Bethesda shut down the event, saying in a post to Reddit:
After activating Fasnacht Parade briefly today, we have discovered an issue that will prevent us from keeping it online this week. We are going to disable it for now while we investigate a fix. Once the issue is resolved, we will reschedule Fasnacht Parade for a later date. We apologize for this delay in bringing back Fasnacht, we know many of you were looking forward to its return. We will let you know as soon as we have info to share on the status of the fix, as well as our plans to reschedule the event.
Death, taxes, Bethesda bugs. Reliable as gravity.
