The Strangler Heart Power Armor is something special in Fallout 76. Unfortunately, it causes the online game to crash.
What kind of armor is this? The Strangler Heart Power Armor is extremely powerful. You cannot find it directly in the game, but you need to craft it yourself. However, you need the plans, which you can find as loot in the Raid Vault 94. It is one of the most challenging contents of Fallout 76, which is why the Strangler Heart Power Armor should be something special.
A buggy armor
Here’s why there was trouble: Players discovered an exploit that allowed them to duplicate the armor without having to complete the raid.
A player exited their armor and abandoned it. Another player quickly jumped in. Afterwards, the server was crashed. This can be achieved by stacking an excessive number of metal walls on top of each other.
Upon the next login to the game, Fallout 76 believed both players were in possession of a Strangler Heart Power Armor. This led to an unexpected surplus of these armors in Fallout 76.
Here’s why there was another problem: The Strangler Heart Power Armor has been known for months to also crash the game. For instance, when wearing the armor and fighting enemies that deal heavy acid damage. Especially in the boss fight against the Queen of the Scorchbeast, the armor is a significant problem. This seems to be due to its visual effect.
This has already been fixed: Bethesda quickly addressed the exploit and has already implemented a hotfix.
It is no longer possible to duplicate the Strangler Heart Power Armor. However, the previously duplicated armors remain in the game.
Fix or removal of the armor?
Why is this problematic? As mentioned above, the Strangler Heart Power Armor is problematic due to a bug, especially during the boss fight with the Scorchbeast Queen. Now that so many of these armors are present in the game, crashes occur regularly. Players are increasingly annoyed by the situation.
What are players demanding? There are two camps. Some want the armor completely removed from Fallout 76, while others are demanding a patch for the underlying problem.
- drtekrox writes on reddit, though his suggestion is not well received: “Strangler Heart should be removed from the game. It is known to crash servers and the people wearing it feel entitled to cause server crashes. It should be removed – not fixed, but permanently removed from the game.”
- desertdaze86 suggests instead: “Now, after the dupes of Strangler Heart and with the armor showing up in almost every fight against the Queen, could you please remove the visual effect that leads to the glitches and disconnects?”
We have accordingly asked Bethesda for a statement on this matter.
However, a fix should follow soon. The developers are addressing bugs and issues, as they have proven in the past:
