Inside the Vault – Return to Skyline Valley and World Pets Testing Server

Patch Notes - September 11

Can you hear that? It’s the heart of Shenandoah calling your name. It’s time to make your way back to Skyline Valley to experience our first quality of life update to one of our regional expansions! The team has been silently working hard on the Skyline Valley region. Preparing it with a suite of environmental improvements and preparing locations around the region to play hosts to Grunt and Head Hunts. Bounty Hunting is expanding to Skyline Valley alongside the World Pets update this Winter!

Skyline Valley – Environment Refresh

The Skyline Valley environment has received some love with the team doing some landscaping work to improve how it feels to travel around the region. In some cases, entire mountains and hillsides have been reworked, in others new pathways have been laid with extra trees and vegetation to give the region the extra environmental love it deserves. All this combined with the lighting and the weather improvements for the region really set the mood.

Local tour guides recommend the following locations:

• Three Ponds

• Grindstone Arch

• Hawksbill Weather Station

• Old Crimora Mines

• Rapidan Camp

• Dark Hollow Manor

Skyline Valley - Bounty Hunting

Head on over to “The Trading Post” which now acts as the hub for Bounty Hunting in Skyline Valley. There you will find Marshal Canton, a reprogrammed Robo-Brain who was probably left out in the storm for too long. Marshal Canton has been tracking a number of dangerous visitors who have arrived in the valley and is ready to reward you for taking them down. Bounty Hunting in Skyline Valley introduces new factions to the experience. Prepare to fight Super Mutants, Mothman Cultists, The Lost, and more.

Skyline Valley – New Collectible Questline

While you’re taking in the sights of the renovated Skyline Valley, you’ll likely stumble across mysterious glass cannisters. These canisters look like they’re filled with a live brain specimen, but surely that can’t be the case. Someone must know what they’re being used for. After collecting your first glass jar, you Pip-Boy will update with a location for you to take it to and there your adventure will begin.

World Pets

Before we dive into the updates for today, we wanted to take a moment to thank you for all the feedback on the Pets progression system so far! We hear your feedback on the passive buffs and are working on ways to address your concerns.

Gameplay Changes

• Updated Pet XP system

• Pets bank XP every second (max 1 minute) and collect the XP every time Player earns XP. (+10% extra Pet XP on Kills)

  • Re-balanced Pet XP levels accordingly

• Pets now move to Ping location (when not in combat, including Stay command)

• Ping to attack now works when you're not actively in Combat (Protect and Attack command only)

• You can now Ping from within VATS!

• Added a game setting to set the Pet default Command

• Added a game setting to set the Pet Follow position (ahead/behind)

• UI pass on Pet progression Menu

• Fixed a bug to allow scrolling Pet rewards description text with a controller (scroll right-stick)

• Fixed a bug where player could claim rewards by selecting future rewards in the Pet progression Menu

• Fixed a bug where shortcuts to open the Pet Progression Menu or renaming your Pet with a controller was showing the wrong input.

Note: Pets can be healed by Medic weapons, so if you believe your Medic weapons are not healing your pets, please let us know!

Known issues

• Ping to move does not work when pinging far from player

• Pet XP not granting consistently

• Help pages do not reflect updated Pet XP system