Maybe you’ve seen Fasnacht masks around the Wasteland and wondered what they were all about. These masks, acquired by completing the parade included as part of the seasonal event, Fasnacht Day, stand out even in Fallout 76’s often strange and terrifying setting. They come in a variety of exciting designs, and they can be useful as either headwear or even decorative collectibles.
This rendition of Fasnacht introduces three new masks, each of which will be added to the rare tier of the reward pool for completing the parade. This means you now have a chance of winning a Fasnacht Loon mask, a Fasnacht Hag mask, and a Fasnacht Fiend mask. As cool as they are, the rare masks can be very difficult to roll. In order to get the best chances each parade, you’ll want to make sure you’re doing everything correctly to get the highest level of completion. This will give you the greatest odds of scoring one of the awesome new masks to romp around the Wasteland in or to hang up in your C.A.M.P.
Starting the Event
If you’ve been to the Appalachian Wasteland for Fasnacht before, then maybe you’ve found yourself reflexively returning to the game every hour or so. This is because Fasnacht starts at the beginning of every hour, and this will be happening from February 10 to February 22. This will give you plenty of opportunities to score one of the new rare masks that have been added.
To start the parade, travel to the town of Helvetia and locate the larger of the two bridges in the center of town. You’ll find a fancy Mr. Handy who’s serving as the Master of Ceremonies. Once the top of the hour comes, interacting with him and he’ll explain Fasnacht and provide several activities that need to be completed before starting the parade. Get started on these quickly to move right into the parade and towards getting one of the new Fasnacht masks!
Parade Preparations
There are several chores that must be completed to prepare for the festivities. While you’re unable to control or predict which activities will be required for preparation, you can still be prepared for all of them to increase your chances of getting through them quickly and getting off to an early start towards a rare mask.
Collect Beer Steins
The Convivial Historian, located in the NW area of the town by the gazebo, needs help gathering old beer steins for his museum. This is one of the easier tasks that can be quickly completed. Around town you’ll find several beer steins simply lying around. Pick up 10 of these and return them to the museum to complete the task. Once you’ve done this, the Convivial Historian will head towards the parade starting point.
Be mindful of any extra beer steins you pick up in excess of 10. They stay in your inventory after the event, which can give you a headstart on the next parade or a nice decoration for your C.A.M.P. On the other hand, they can add up quickly and have a history of leaving players mysteriously overencumbered. If you find yourself inexplicably overencumbered, try checking the Miscellaneous section of your inventory. You may find your inventory management pain is being caused by tons of unneeded beer steins.
Gather Wood
Another of the easier tasks to complete is providing wood to the Merry Woodsman, who you can find towards the western end of the town in front of the church. You’ll need to add 50 pieces of wood to the pile that will be used for the bonfire at the end of the parade. There’s some wood in the area, but honestly not a lot. Plus, if you run the parade multiple times, it won’t always be respawned for you. Fortunately, 50 pieces of wood is pretty common for people to have already in their inventory, so this task is usually taken care of easily. Just make sure to bring plenty of wood with you! It’s not Fasnacht without the ceremonial lighting of the Old Man Winter bonfire, so make you don’t miss this task!
Defeat the Honey Beasts
The Cheerful Beekeeper, located near the center of town in the Honey Haus near the smaller bridge, has an atypical bee problem and needs help to resolve it. After interacting with the beekeeper, there will be multiple honey beasts that attack in the area. These need to be eliminated before the Cheerful Beekeeper can participate in the parade, so make sure to account for this part. Sometimes the honey beasts can get stuck down in the stream causing them to be easily missed. If they don’t seem to be showing up, make sure to check down there, as that may be the problem.
Decorate the Barn
It’s not a festival without decorations, and the Jubilant Decorator needs assistance with setting them up. Go to the barn, located near the parade starting location, and help out with the decorations. You’ll need to simply help the decorator by selecting four types of decorations. Since this is one of the quicker tasks, it can easily be plugged anywhere into your strategy for completing the tasks.
Gather Radtoad Eggs
Pastries are a staple of Fasnacht both in real life and in Fallout 76, so it’s important to make sure the Jolly Baker is prepared for the event. To get ready, you’ll need to find and donate 20 Radtoad eggs to the baker. The bakery can be found in the back northeast corner of the two-story building on the eastern corner of town next to the stream. Down in this stream is where you’ll find the Radtoad eggs, so hop down there and look for tan clusters of eggs to gather. You’ll gain a handful from each batch, so trek up and down the stream and you should have all you need pretty quickly. Once you’ve got 20, return them to the bakery so the Jolly Baker can get to the parade.
Play Music
On the east edge of town south of the large bridge is where you’ll find the Joyous Musician who needs help playing music for the parade. This task simply requires players to play music, which will also give you the AP boost characteristic of playing music. It only takes a few moments for this task to be completed when the band is full, so be sure to hop in if you see an empty spot so the task can be completed quickly and the Joyous Musician can get started walking to the parade!
Fill the Butcher’s Cooler
Near the center of town by the main street next door to the barn is where you’ll find the Gleeful Butcher, who needs help gathering intestines to make the traditional Fasnacht sausage! To complete this task, you’ll need to take out critters in the surrounding area and loot them for their intestines. Once you’ve found 12 intestines, return to the butcher and put them in the cooler to complete this task and send the Gleeful Butcher to the start of the parade.
Gather Beeswax
The Happy Candlemaker, who can be found on the ground floor of the large house on the south side of the main street across from the barn, needs a hand finding beeswax to make candles. This task can be easily paired with the Defeat Honey Beasts task, as they both involve the Honey Haus near the center of Helvetia. Head over to the Honey Haus and search the beehives on the inside and outside walls but be prepared to fight a few swarms of bees after you check the hives. Once you’ve gathered 10 pieces of beeswax, bring them to the Happy Candlemaker. This robot is located right in the front near the parade start, so it’s not a problem, maybe even wise, to leave this task for the end of your preparation.
Parade Launch
Once the preparations are complete, it’s just a matter of waiting for the robots to all arrive at the starting point of the parade. This can be especially time consuming, so it can be helpful to strategize how you complete the preparation tasks. You may want to prioritize the robots whose starting locations are further from the parade start point, as this gives them plenty of time to make the trip to the starting location while everyone completes other tasks. If some robots, especially the Cheerful Beekeeper, are put off until the end of prep, there could be a terribly long wait as the robot makes its slow journey to the parade’s starting point.
Protecting the Parade
After the parade begins, the priority of the event is protecting the marching robots. Your level of success, and therefore which masks you have a chance of winning, will be affected by how many robots survive. This makes it imperative they all make it through the parade to ensure you have a chance at one of the new Fasnacht masks! A useful tip for when the parade robots are getting low on health is to use the Friendly Fire perk, which gives a healing bonus to teammates hit by your flame weapons. This can be paired with a flaming shiskebab to heal the parade marchers.
First Parade Stop
It won’t take long for the parade to be interrupted once it starts. After walking just a short distance from the starting point, the music being played by the Master of Ceremonies will wind down and the robots will stop marching. The area will be ambushed by Radtoads from all directions. This will be the first chance at losing a shot at a rare mask, so make sure the robots are protected!
This step seldom presents much of a challenge, but there is still a good way to ensure you have the best vantage point available. If you have the marsupial mutation (and you’re not truly playing the game if you don’t) or a jetpack, then you can easily hop onto the house on the corner. Running to the eastern corner of the roof allows you to see every direction by simply spinning without having to move your feet. This will allow you to either tag or kill all of the enemies as they approach to prevent them from reaching the robots.
After the the Radtoads are handled, remember to loot one (being sure to select “Loot Nearby Enemies”), as Radtoads are known to drop high-quality junk and lucrative loot!
Second Parade Stop
After dispatching the Radtoads, the Master of Ceremonies will restart the music and the parade will be marching away again. This time you will go up the path towards the back of the small town, then hook a left into the center of several cottages. The parade predictably stops agian, this time due to an onslaught of super mutants determined to wreck the good time.
This is the first point where your chances at a rare mask truly stand a chance of being ruined, so make sure to get this part right. You’ll be faced with several waves of super mutants, including suiciders who can detonate near your robots and rob you of a perfect run.
Your placement during this part will be critical to your ability to tag or eliminate all the aggressively approaching super mutants. One of the best places to do this is on top of the covered bench in the dead center of town near where the parade stops. It requires the marsupial mutation or a jetpack, but allows you to see in every direction by just spinning without having to move your feet. Combining this with strategic use of V.A.T.S. will allow you to quickly locate and destroy all the approaching enemies.
After a few waves of super mutants, the music will start up again and the parade will begin marching once more towards the final stop.
Third Parade Stop
This stop seamlessly blends into the final part of the parade, so you can essentially call yourself at the end by now. There’s no surprise to expect here – the robots are going to break down and be attacked while counting on everyone participating to save them.
While this stop, like the others, can be relatively straightforward, it can also easily go off the rails and mess up any chance at a rare mask. Of particular issue here is legendary Mega Sloth that spawns at this step along with a large mob of smaller enemies. Sometimes the Mega Sloth captures everyone’s attention, and the mob of smaller enemies easily destroys the robots along with any hope of getting a rare Fasnacht mask.
This problem will hopefully be resolved by the newly added Legendary Sharing mechanic that allows everyone in the area of a downed legendary enemy to share in the loot.
Therefore, don’t allow everyone’s hard work to go to waste by rushing with the crowd towards the Mega Sloth, and instead hang out by the robots to ensure they make it through this step safely. You’ll also be treated to a heap of experience for taking care of the attacking mob.
Parade Finale
You’ll hear the Master of Ceremonies announce your success and move nearby towards the Old Man Winter bonfire that will promptly be lit. Once this part is completed, you’ll get a notification the event has been completed and be rewarded a Fasnacht plan, a Fasnacht mask, and a legendary item, all dependent upon how well the event was completed.
If you didn’t get the mask you wanted, it’s common for there to be many players wanting to trade at the end of the parade. Make sure to hang around to see what you can get or to capture the moment with some pictures. And don’t go far, another parade will be starting in less than an hour, so make sure to be back in time!
These are the latest tips on how to get the rarest new Fasnacht masks for in Fallout 76. If you found this guide helpful, be sure to check out the Fallout 76 section of our website for more!
I’m pretty sure that the only people that get the rare masks are the ones who put the most money into fallout 76 so that leaves us poor folks out in the rain
I hear you on how hard it can be to roll one! They kept the old rare masks in the rare mask loot pool with the new ones they’ve added, so the odds of getting any rare mask are even lower than they were for previous Fasnacht events. A lot of people are hoping they fix this in the future. For Meat Week, I got the recently added Pepper Shaker plan on like my second event of the last Meat Week, yet I still haven’t gotten the base Tenderizer plan that’s been a reward since the very first Meat Week. The RNG can be a pain, but when you do finally get one, it will be all the more special (and more rare), so hang in there and keep trying! Being sure you have the highest level of completion is one of the best approaches we’ve found to have the best chances with each run. Please be sure to let us know if you find any other tips that others may find useful!
Assuming that obtaining a rare mask is based on putting money into FO76 is rather absurd. How does spending money benefit in the RNG of a rare item?