Fallout 76's Infestations update is one of the easiest ways to farm four-star legendaries

Fallout 76's Infestations update is live today alongside the new Appalachia Under Siege season. The headline addition is a new hostile encounter type where different factions seize up to 40 unique locations across the map, and it's on players to drive them out.

Up to five Infestations can spawn every five minutes, and if nobody clears them they simply vanish after five hours. Creative director Jon Rush describes watching the dots move around the map as the map constantly "sizzling" with activity. The encounters skew hard — lead designer Carl McKevitt is upfront that these bosses are end-game difficulty, and Rush advises lower-level players to wait until an Infestation has drawn a crowd before jumping in. Unlike Raids, though, you don't need a pre-formed group; you can just show up and let other players on the server fill in around you. McKevitt calls it "emergent social gameplay" that sits "somewhere between end-game and casual friendly." The payoff is real: four-star legendary drops from the bosses, and McKevitt puts it plainly — "It is one of the easiest ways to get a four star." New four-star legendary mods available from Infestations include Hauler's, Raging, Satiated, Tarnished, and Vector.

On the loot side, Infestations pull from a "common pool" — roughly half of what launched with Raids — plus an exclusive pool of mods introduced in this update. Bethesda is deliberately keeping Raids as the home of the most sought-after four-stars, but McKevitt says Infestations should help players who've been stuck in late-game gear hell finally build out a proper end-game arsenal. There are no new Xbox achievements or PlayStation trophies tied to the update, but senior systems designer Fahad Khan confirms there are dedicated rewards for both finding and completing Infestations, with more team-based and gameplay challenges planned down the line.

The update is out now, and Bethesda says the reward pool will keep growing. Whether four-stars really flow as freely as the devs suggest is something the community will find out fast.