Video Details
In this video, I’ll show you where to find Fusion Cores, one of Fallout 76’s most sought-after resources. While they may not be considered a resource in the traditional sense, they can be farmed nonetheless, so today, I’ll be showing you where to do that via workshops, looting, crafting, and events. I’ll also go over the relevant perk cards and provide some tips that you can use to make your existing supply of cores last a little longer. Fusion cores are vital to any player using power armor or yielding a gatling laser, and there are few worse feelings than realizing that you’ve suddenly run out.
Updated at 4:13PM CST (8/14) to include vending notes and consumables graphic.
Workshops
When it comes to farming fusion cores, your best option is going to be generating them through workshops, especially if you have access to a private world and don’t have to constantly worry about other players contesting your ownership. There are only three workshops that allow you to generate cores, those being the Poseidon Energy Plant Yard, the Monongah Plant Yard, and the Thunder Mt. Power Plant Yard. At each of these locations, you’ll find a single prebuilt fusion core generator, which, once powered, which generate eight fusion cores per hour, or one core every seven and a half minutes. That means that if you take over all three workshops, you can generate up to 24 fusion cores per hour. There are a few important things to keep in mind, however.
First off, fusion core generators have a capacity limit of three. With this in mind, you’ll need to visit each workshop a few times every hour to get the highest possible yield.
Secondly, as with other workshops, a defense event will trigger for the workshop shortly after you’ve taken it over, and will continue to occasionally trigger throughout your ownership of the workshop. Because the enemy type for these events are randomized and can potentially be a scorchbeast attack, which, unlike other enemy types will immediately begin as soon as the event triggers, I would recommend not placing any turrets near the fusion core generator itself. These turrets will quickly be attacked, resulting in collateral damage if not the destruction of both the fusion core generator and attached power generator if built. Repairs to either piece of equipment are costly in terms of required materials, so keeping scorchbeast attacks directed at other parts of the workshop will save you a lot of frustration. Along the same lines, while clearing out enemies to take each worship, also try not to aim at the fusion core generator when clearing out the inhabiting enemies, as you are capable of causing damage to it until you’ve completed the workshop’s takeover.
Finally, unlike other resource collectors which require relatively low amounts of power to operate, fusion core generators require 100 power each. This means that you’ll need to build a dedicated fusion generator for each fusion core generator, or power up the workshop’s attached nuclear power plant. While I almost always opt to just build a dedicated fusion generator, powering up one or more of the nuclear power plants may be a viable route to take if you plan on taking over other workshops, as not only will doing so provide the attached plant yard with 400 power, but will also provide 100 power each to select workshops.
More specifically, powering up the Poseidon Energy Plant will provide 400 power to the Poseidon Energy Plant Yard, and 100 power each to the Billings Homestead, Grafton Steel Yard, Lakeside Cabins, Sunshine Meadows Industrial Farm, and Wade Airport. Powering up the Monogah Power Plant will provide 400 power to the Monongah Plant Yard, and 100 power each to the Converted Munitions Factory, Federal Disposal Field HZ-21, and Red Rocket Mega Stop. And finally, powering up the Thunder Mountain Plant will provide 400 power to the Thunder Mt. Power Plant Yard, and 100 power each to Abandoned Bog Town and Berkley Springs West.
To power up one of the plants, simply complete that plant’s Powering Up event, which will automatically begin when approaching the plant if not already in progress. The event will not trigger if the plant is already back online, which will be visually indicated by steam rising from the plant’s cooling towers. While a detailed rundown of the Powering Up event is beyond the scope of this video, each of the three variants of this event will require you to make repairs to the given plant’s reactor system, generator system, and cooling system, ultimately ending with the restart of the plant, as long as you do so before the event’s one hour timer runs out. While initial research indicated that only one Powering Up event could be active at a time, I was able to trigger all three events so that they ran simultaneously on both public and private worlds, so that restriction appears to no longer be in place.
On a final note regarding the workshops, it’s worth noting that each of the plant yards can also be a good source of other resources. Specifically, the Poseidon yard provides nodes for collecting aluminum, concrete, lead, and uranium ore, which can be smelted into nuclear material. The Monongah yard contains nodes for uranium ore and acid. And finally, the Thunder Mountain yard contains nodes for crystal, uranium ore, steel, and wood.
Looting
Several fusion cores may be found across Appalachia, with varying degrees of charge. Fully-charged cores may be found tucked away at various locations across the map as loose items. Cores with a 50% charge may sometimes be found as loose items, but will most often be found socketed into one of the many fusion generators found throughout Appalachia, excluding the ones built by players. Finally, any power armor chasis that you come across that was spawned in by the game will contain a core with a 25% charge, unless the core has already been looted by another player. Fusion cores and power armor chasis have set spawn points, but not a 100% spawn chance, so you may have to check a few locations before finding any cores, especially when playing on a public world.
In addition to the spawn locations just mentioned, fusion cores have a chance of being found in any container at military locations across the map as well as in Steamer trunks. If you have the Scrounger perk equipped, you’ll have an increased chance of finding fusion cores in any ammo box that the perk kicks in for, as the type of the extra ammunition provided by the perk is randomized. In terms of enemy drops, fusion cores may be dropped by downed sentry bots, radtoads, anglers, and feral ghouls.
While research indicates that the Brotherhood of Steel Collectron has a chance of generating fusion cores, this is an Enclave channel and I am unwilling to welcome such heresy into my CAMP to verify.
In terms of interior cells, two locations stand out, those being Vault 94, where you can find up to eight fully-charged cores, and Watoga Underground, where you can find up to six. In an overwhelming majority of runs, only some of the possible cores will spawn in, and the footage about to be shown was recorded over several different runs. In most cases, you can expect to find around half of the possible cores each time you visit one of these locations.
In Vault 94, half of the possible cores are located in the southwestern corner of the Atrium, on the ground floor, under the walkway. One will be on a bottom shelf to the left of the doorway leading towards the staircase to the greenhouses, and up to three cores may be clustered together on a shelf behind the staircase. Another core can be found in the second-level maintenance room at the west end of the reactor room. Next up, an additional core may be found sitting on the northwest corner of the west reactor. And finally, up to two cores may be clustered together on a shelf in the hallway leading the door to access the GECK Wing.
In Watoga Underground, the first core that you have the potential to find will be at the northern end of Garage 12, on the bottom level and near the staircase leading up to the junction. Next, on the northern wall of the junction, there may be a fusion core sitting on top of a piece of equipment between the doors leading to Detailing Depots 7 and 8. From there, the next possible core may be found at the northern end of Detailing Depot 7, on the lower level, sitting on top of a crate. From there, you’ll pass through an automotive maintenance area and come to a point where a terminal can be seen in an office to the right, overlooking another office with a locked door to the left, with view of the first silo dead ahead. Enter the office on the right and unlock the terminal, which conveniently does not require any hacking perks to attempt, and select the option to unlock the door once you’ve guessed the correct password. Now, you can cross over into the other office and use the previously locked door to enter a large storage room, where you may find two fusion cores on the conveyer belt in the section of the room overlooking the maintenance bays. If the last few sentences sounded familiar, I totally didn’t copy and paste them from the Nuclear Material script. Things were tweaked. It doesn’t count. Finally, the last possible core may be found just past the second silo, inside Garage A, sitting on a desk next to a terminal.
Events
While an overwhelming majority of events do not provide fusion cores as a reward, there are two notable exceptions:
- The Line In The Sand public event provides two fully-charged fusion cores upon successful event completion
- Fully-charged cores will be rewarded for successfully completing a daily-op if the event was completed with a weapon equipped that utilizes fusion cores for ammo
Crafting
As a last resort, fusion cores can be crafted from any chemistry workbench by opening the craft menu and navigating to the Energy Ammo tab.
As with ultracite fusion cores, Ammo Smith and Ammo Factory will provide extra ammunition at no additional resource cost when crafting. If both perks are equipped and fully leveled, you’ll receive four cores instead of just one for every core you craft. Depending on you character’s intelligence, crafted cores may be overcharged by up to an extra 20%. I recommend acquiring cores via workshops and looting first, however, as crafting a core require a piece of each type of flux in pure, stabilized form. Given the scarcity of these materials and their usage in crafting ultracite ammo, this cost isn’t justified in my opinion, even with ammo crafting perks equipped. The only exception to this would cases in which you’ve fully exhausted your supply of on-hand cores and need a few to facilitate farming more.
In addition to crafting fusion cores directly, one core will be included with every gatling laser and ultracite gatling laser that you craft.
Vending
While fusion cores can be purchased from some in-game vendors, such as traveling merchants and the Whitespring Bunker’s Military wing, I would not recommend purchasing from them unless absolutely necessary. As with any other type of ammunition, you’ll be getting the worst possible price. Player vending, however, may be a different story, as prices will differ from player to player. While you won’t be able to tell if a vending CAMP is selling fusion cores by looking at the map, they are classified under ammunition, so you can rule out camps with no ammo in stock if cores are the only thing you’re looking for. If you do end up having to purchase from an in-game vendor, make sure to first take a chem to temporarily boost your charisma to receive a lower prices. Wearing 4 pieces of unyielding armor and taking a dose of Formula P brought the vendor price down to 288 caps, which is arguably justifiable given the amount of flux that it would take to craft cores, but still not optimal in my opinion.
Perk Cards
When it comes to perk cards, you have several options to aid you in getting the most out of your fusion cores:
Power User
Equipping a fully-leveled Power User card will make your fusion cores last twice as long when inserted into power armor, and will increase the 500-round per core clip size for gatling and ultracite gatling lasers to 999. This increased clip size is also applied to ultracite fusion cores used in gatlings that have been modded with prime receivers. One thing to note is that when used as ammo, any core overcharge is ignored, as the clip size is capped at 999. Overall, this is a great card to have equipped if you use fusion cores period, regardless of whether you’re using them as an energy source for power armor or as ammunition.
Batteries Included
Next up, a fully-leveled Batteries Included card will make all of your energy ammo weight 90% less, reducing the weight of any standard or ultracite fusion cores being carried to just 0.3 pounds. While I tend to avoid weight reduction perks if possible, the benefits of this perk outweigh the point costs if you frequently use power armor or gatling lasers, as it will allow you to keep a large number of cores on hand, which is especially beneficial when using fusion cores as ammunition, as even with increased clip sizes, you’ll quickly eat through cores.
Full Charge
To further increase the lifespan of fusion cores inserted into power armor, equipping a fully-leveled Full Charge perk card will eliminate the additional core consumption experienced when sprinting in power armor. While I normally don’t use this card, it can be useful to have on hand to temporarily equip if you find yourself running dangerously low on fusion cores and need to make every bit of remaining energy count.
Electric Absorption
To greatly reduce the number of fusion cores consumed by your power armor, especially if frequently in combat, equipping a fully-leveled Electric Absorption card as one of your character’s legendary perks will provide you with a 20% change of having your fusion core recharged each time you are hit by an energy attack. If you regularly run silos that still have laser turrets in place, this perk will almost entirely eliminate the need to provide new cores for power armor, as a single run will fully recharge your current core in most cases.
Scrounger
Equipping the Scrounger perk card, which provides up to an 80% chance of finding extra ammo of a random type in ammo boxes, will increase the likelihood of finding fusion cores in said ammo boxes.
When crafting standard or ultracite fusion cores, I would highly recommend equipping fully-leveled Super Duper, Ammosmith, and Ammo Factory cards, as their combined impact will significantly increase your overall yield.
A fully-leveled Super Duper card provides a 30% chance of doubling the yield received for any item you craft, and is a good perk to have equipped when crafting in general.
In terms of the ammo-specific perks, equipping a fully-leveled Ammosmith card will provide you with 80% more rounds when crafting ammunition…
While equipping a fully-leveled Ammo Factory card as one of your character’s legendary perks will provide 150% more rounds when, you guessed it, also crafting ammunition. If both Ammosmith and Ammo Factory are equipped, you’ll receive 150% more rounds of the yield provided by ammosmith. For example, the normal yield for crafting 5mm rounds is 100, increased to 180 by ammosmith, and to 450 when both ammosmith and ammo factory are equipped. Add in the Super Duper perk, and the amount of extra ammo received is absolutely insane.
Tips
To end, I’ve got two final tips that you can use to extend the mileage of your fusion core supply out, particularly if you use fusion cores as ammunition.
First off, I would highly recommend equipping your gatling and ultracite gatling lasers with prime receivers if you’ve learned the plans to craft them or have obtained them in mod form, which will change the ammo type to ultracite fusion cores and unlock the ability to craft said cores at a Tinkerer’s Workbench if not already unlocked. While you will need two pieces of pure violet flux as well as two pieces of pure crimson to equip a prime receiver unless using a packaged weapon mod, plus one piece of pure violet and a scrap of ultracite each time you convert two fusion cores to ultracite fusion cores, the benefits strongly outweigh the cons, at least when using the ammo crafting perks that were previously mentioned. While a normal conversion to ultracite fusion cores is 1-to-1, with two fusion cores yielding two ultracite cores, stacking Ammosmith and Ammo Factory increases the yield of each conversion to 9 cores, meaning that for every two fusion cores you convert, you’ll receive four and a half times that in ultracite fusion cores, not even accounting for extra cores provided by Super Duper if also equipped. Changing to a prime receiver and ultracite fusion cores substantially extends your ammo supply if you frequently use gatling lasers, and will greatly reduce the number of fusion cores required for ammo. If you frequently use gatling lasers and use power armor, an additional benefit of this change is that you’ll be separating out the fusion cores used as ammunition from the ones being used for your power armor. While primed gatling lasers tend to still generate a number of partially used cores, those cores will be ultracite fusion cores and not the same type of core utilized by your power armor, allowing you to more accurately gauge how many fusion cores you actually have left for power armor and ammo conversions, as, unless you’re frequently swapping between different suits of power armor, separating out the ammo cores will greatly reduce the number of partial fusion cores in your inventory. While this change will ultimately make you somewhat reliant on maintaining a supply of pure violet flux, violet is arguably the easiest type of flux to farm thanks to areas like the fields north of Grafton and around Cranberry Bog. For more on farming flux in particular, check out my previous video on strategically nuking Grafton for farming flux.
Secondly, if you do make the jump to a prime receiver and ultracite ammo type, keep in mind that the two fusion cores you provide can be converted to fully charged ultracite fusion cores, regardless of their charge. That means that any partially-drained or even nearly-empty fusion cores can be used to generate fully-charged ultracite cores, so in a way, the conversion also offers a way to recycle your fusion cores into a very sustainable ammo type.