Vault 76 Handbook: Communication is Key!

Once you’ve left the friendly confines of Vault 76, you’ll quickly learn that effective communication can be one of your greatest assets on the road to restoring humanity’s greatness.

In fact, sharing your real-life charisma with others can lead to receiving a helping hand when you need it most, negotiating great trades or even forging new friendships.

Voice Chat

Voice chat will often be the fastest and most versatile way to communicate. It’s enabled by default and will allow you to easily speak to and hear nearby players. The volume of others’ voices will also sound softer or louder depending on their distance from you, so be sure to keep an ear out for other survivors as you explore the Wasteland.

When you join a team, you’ll be placed into a separate voice channel that you can use to communicate privately with your allies. You can also continue speaking with players who are not on your team by switching on the Voice Proximity Chat setting using the Audio Options menu. Of course, you can disable voice chat entirely as well. If you disable voice chat while playing on Xbox One or PlayStation 4, you will still be able to use your respective platform’s party chat feature to keep the discussion rolling with your friends.

Emotes

If you prefer a more animated approach to communication, you can use emotes to share a variety of expressive greetings and responses with others. Your character will play animations and sound effects specifically related to any emotes you use, and an icon for that emote will also appear overhead. This icon will be visible to players and teammates even if they aren’t standing directly in front of you, making it easier to communicate at a distance.

Bring up the Emote Wheel by pressing its assigned button, and then select an emote to wave to other survivors, beckon them to follow you, show some gratitude, or even share disgust for something — or, perhaps, someone!

Avoiding Jerks

If you encounter someone who’s not so nice, you can elect to block all communication with them permanently, or just for that play session. Once you’ve blocked another player, you will no longer be able to speak to or hear them in voice chat, and any trade or team invitations they send you will be ignored. Additionally, you will no longer appear on each other’s maps, which will make it extremely difficult for the offending dweller to follow or find you again in the future. If you’ve blocked someone by mistake, or decided to give them a second chance, you can unblock them using the in-game Social Menu, or your console’s menus.

Hungry for more Fallout 76? You can head to the official Fallout 76 General Discussion Forum to chat about this post, or any other game-related topics with other players. Also, be sure to keep an eye on Fallout.com and Bethesda.net for more features on Fallout 76’s multiplayer and PvP in the coming weeks.