First look at Fallout 76’s playable Ghouls, joining the game this year

The lovely Appalachian wasteland is about to get a little brighter. Announced in the middle of 2024, playable ghouls will be hitting Fallout 76 in the first major patch of 2025, currently projected sometime around March. The testing for this patch has begun, because being a ghoul isn’t simply a new — though somewhat rotten — skin, it is also its own new class, providing lots of new gameplay twists.

How to undergo Ghoulification — and the benefits for doing so

Becoming a ghoul will not be available first thing out of the Vault, instead it starts in the quest “A Leap of Faith” when you hit level 50. With a short quest chain that takes you to the Whitespring, Emmett Mountain, and the furthest reaches of the northern map into the long fabled ghoul settlement, you will find yourself being given the option of being born anew.

Ghoulification removes the need to eat or drink — though you still can in order to gain the buffs — as well as removes any risks of disease and, of course, radiation. Radiation instead buffs you with a new resource known as Glow that will increase your damage output, as well as interact with any of the 30 perks that just exist for ghouls, which can be mixed with most of the original in-game perks. Depending on your new card layouts, you can become a radioactive power house that passive heals other ghouls while harming the smooth skins in your party. Just remember to soak up the rads.

Do drugs or go feral? Decisions, decisions.

Besides balancing out the Glow, you also need to keep an eye on your feral meter.  Over time you slowly become more and more feral which reduces your endurance, max HP, and aiming skills. As a trade off it greatly enhances your melee abilities. It’s possible late in the game — thanks to legendary perks — to overcome the endurance reduction and have a viable feral melee build. If being feral is not for you, than you have to be like The Ghoul in the TV show and take chems. There is no specific chem that reduces your feral meter, so you can take your Jet, Buffout, or Psycho to keep you normal.

The downsides to being a ghoul

Being a ghoul does have its downsides. You can not interact with a few of the major factions, such as The Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave. These two differing factions seem have found one thing to agree on: no ghouls. Surprisingly you can’t interact with the faction of Raiders or Settlers, even though both groups have ghouls in their ranks. You can still interact with the Responders in the Whitespring and the Ghouls of Vault 63 have no issue with your new  found skin condition.  Should you want to talk to any group that is adverse to ghouls, there is an NPC you can speak to who will hook you up with a disguise that allows you to walk freely among them.

If being a ghoul just isn’t for you, you do have the option to revert back to human. While there is no cure for ghouls in the game — or in the Fallout universe in general — you do have an option in the character select screen in the main menu to undo being a ghoul. However, this is a one way street — you can not turn your vault dweller back into a ghoul should they revert to human. You should reflect on this before deciding to go ghoul, or if it’s better to just start a new character to ghoulify, instead of using your main.

When the Ghouls come to the game in March, it will be interesting to see all of the new builds when taking on world bosses and raids as well as all of the new ways people will be RPing the Revenant faction. It’s a welcome glow up to the West Virginia wastes.