You can now play Fallout 76 solo (for $100 a year)

Fallout 1st is a premium subscription for Fallout 76 with various benefits, including private servers.

Since the release of Fallout 76, Bethesda has been inundated with requests to give players a way they can explore the online world alone or with friends without letting griefers ruin the experience. They now seem to be ready to offer that with Fallout 1st, but only if you pay up.

Fallout 1st is a membership subscription service for the apocalyptic online RPG which gives you a number of currencies and benefits, including a Private World for you and up to seven friends. The service costs $12.99 a month, or $99.99 for a yearly subscription (that's a 36% discount, Bethesda proudly claims).

The membership also guarantees you 1,650 Atoms per month, the premium currency to spend on Fallout 76's outfits and other cosmetic dealies in the Atomic Shop. You'll also be given a Survival Tent, which gives you a new placeable fast travel point including a stash, sleeping bag and other camp essentials, and a Scrapbox which extends your crafting component storage to "unlimited".

There's also an exclusive Ranger Armor outfit and some icons and emotes that you can't get unless you pay $12.99 a month, or $99.99 a year, for a game that you already bought for $60.

"The community has been asking for the ability to play in private worlds since before the launch of Fallout 76, and we’re very excited to announce that they are coming to the game with Fallout 1st," Bethesda says in the announcement of the subscription service. "If you’re a Fallout 1st member, how you use your private world is completely up to you: Invite up to seven of your friends at a time (eight total people per private world) to join you in taking on the dangers of post-apocalyptic West Virginia, or play completely solo."

It's worth mentioning here that nowhere in the sales pitch for Fallout 1st does it say that subscribing to the service also nets you a base copy of the game, so this will be on top of what is currently a $25 purchase. That seems, to us, a little steep to let fans of the RPG finally get the solo experience they were expecting when Fallout 76 was announced – but only for twice the cost of the original release, per year. However if you did want to set up a shared world with a few close friends, only the host of the Private World is required to be a Fallout 1st member, meaning you could all pitch in $12 each and have a year of not having your creations destroyed by nuke-happy randoms every few days.

Well, will you be paying for Fallout 1st in order to play Fallout 76 solo or privately with friends?

Editor-in-Chief

Chris is the captain of the good ship AllGamers, which would explain everything you're seeing here. Get in touch to talk about work or the $6 million Echo Slam by emailing chris.higgins@allgamers.com or finding him on Twitter. 

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