After much waiting and several weeks on the public test server, the Fallout 76 Gleaming Depths raid is finally upon us. The challenging endgame dungeon winds through the depths of an abandoned Enclave research lab, and is home to numerous difficult encounters and boss fights that require careful teamwork to overcome. Ahead of its release, I sat down with Fallout 76 lead producer Bill LaCoste to discuss the mode, which also sets a new record for the series.
The Gleaming Depths raid is a feature I’ve been wanting in Fallout 76 for years. It actually started life as part of an internal Bethesda game jam at the start of 2024 to try and come up with new ideas for potential features. Quickly gaining popularity among the team, it went into development and has since morphed into the survival game‘s toughest multiplayer challenge yet.
Every single encounter in Gleaming Depths requires you to work together, which LaCoste says was very much by design. “The whole goal that we had for this was that we wanted it to be challenging. There’s a good power difference between somebody who’s at [level] 50 and somebody who’s at level 1500 that has all of their legendary perks; everything is maxed out for them. We wanted it to be challenging for those players – we didn’t want anybody to be able to solo the raid.”
Successfully clearing encounters in the Gleaming Depths unlocks a new tier of four-star legendary gear, which includes some particularly powerful ways to amplify your builds. So does that change the equation at all? “There may be a chance at the very end where somebody’s got all four-star stuff that’s really, really decked out, but I still don’t think they’re going to be able to solo,” LaCoste says.
He points to the Epsilon Squad fight, which he says is also his personal favorite to watch players tackle. In it, you must take down three powerful foes – a long-range sniper, a grenadier that slows you, and a melee fighter that pursues you with a chainsaw. All of them are protected by separate shield generators, and after breaking them you’ll need to ensure repair bots don’t bring them back online, all while dealing with the three members of Epsilon Squad.
If you don’t already have a group to hand, however, you can always match up with other players. LaCoste says “I think it’s very achievable [this way] – the first boss will give you a really good indicator of whether or not your team is good enough to tackle it. The strategy really isn’t that hard to understand – it’s just, ‘we need to DPS down the guardian bot, make sure that someone’s tanking, and that we’re hitting the shield generators from behind.’”
Helping you to coordinate even if you aren’t on voice chat is a new-look smart ping system. “We felt that was important,” LaCoste explains, “because we have players who just may not want to get on voice chat or communicate that way.” He says the team didn’t want markers to get as complicated as those used by raid leaders in games like WoW or FF14, “but we wanted you to be able to say, ‘hey, go here, go here.’” One key example is in that first encounter, where your whole team must periodically duck behind blast doors one-by-one to avoid room-cleansing blasts of flame.
Your journey through the Gleaming Depths culminates in a spacious cavern, home to a showdown against the colossal Ultracite Terror. This giant, toxic-green serpent actually sets a new series record – it’s “the biggest creature to ever grace a Fallout title – by far,” creative director Jon Rush remarks. “Actually, you could fit a Scorchbeast Queen in this thing’s mouth,” he adds, “that’s how big it is. It’s huge.”
Of course, while it might not let you fully solo proceedings, your life will undoubtedly become easier as you start stacking up four-star legendary gear; “That’s kind of the expectation,” LaCoste says. Don’t expect anything quite as powerful as the Slayers mod offering 50% damage against raid enemies that we caught a glimpse of during the initial reveal, however. “We may have nerfed that a little bit, which is funny because I’m sitting there talking about it being my favorite mod, and… yeah, it goes away,” LaCoste laughs.
Overall, however, he hopes players will give the Gleaming Depths a shot, even if raid-style content isn’t typically their thing. “I think they’ll warm up to it a little bit – they’ll find it to be a fun and engaging experience.” If you really don’t take to it, LaCoste says he won’t rule out the option for four-star legendaries to show up in some other event or from a different activity in the future. For now, however, you’ll have to brave the Gleaming Depths – and I for one can’t wait.
The Fallout 76 Gleaming Depths update is out now, kicking off Season 19: The Scientific Forge. You can check in on the full Fallout 76 Season 19 roadmap to see what else lies ahead as we build towards the playable ghouls update in March 2025.
That should give you plenty to take your mind off the wait for news on the Fallout 5 release date – but if you’re still feeling that rumble under your skin, we’ve picked out the best games like Fallout to fill the gap.
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