Fallout 76's latest update nerfs one of its most powerful weapons, but don't worry, it buffs it too

Hot on the heels of a major uptick in players driven by the hit Fallout series on Amazon, Fallout 76 has been given a beefy new update that makes a number of bug fixes and quality of life changes that, among other things, will make life easier when making big trades with merchants. There's also a significant overhaul of the Cremator heavy weapon that manages to nerf and buff it at the same time.

All the Fallout games have benefitted from the popularity of the Fallout television series, even the old-time originals, but Fallout 76 arguably leads the way. It still lags behind Fallout 4 in terms of pure player numbers, but more than doubled its concurrent player count after the release of the Amazon series and hit a new all-time high on Steam, four years after it first launched there.

That's especially noteworthy given its relatively unimpressive start: We called it «a beautifully crafted but ultimately repetitive world, and a disappointment when it comes to options on PC» in our 60% review from 2018, and it took another two years before it finally started to feel like a proper Fallout game. 

Bethesda stuck with it despite those early troubles, releasing regular updates and new content throughout, and while the concurrent player count has tailed off since it hit the new peak earlier this month, it's still way above where it used to be: There are currently around 50,000 people playing via Steam, which is a huge increase over the pre-series average.

The big change in this update is the rework to the Cremator, which Bethesda said was kicking too much ass because of a bug related to damage calculations. «Players who had certain perks and mods on it did much higher damage than intended,» Bethesda said. «We’ve fixed that bug, which has decreased the damage for that specific setup, but we made multiple tweaks and changes to buff it in different ways. Now, the Damage Over Time (DoT) should be a force to be reckoned with.»

The addition of a «max» option when buying from and