"Fallout 76" just got better with the arrival of the "Wastelanders" expansion. These new NPCs are a welcome change, and it is pure joy to see friendly faces in Appalachia.

While friendly, however, some of these new NPCs exhibit a disturbing habit of stealing. Several players have reported NPCs stealing from them during events such as Riding Shotgun and Radiation Rumble. Specifically, many times players who were killed during an event would respawn to find that all of their best weapons and their ammunition (sometimes thousands of rounds worth) were in the hands of NPCs.

That's right. When you die, the NPCs can take the guns and ammunition from your corpse and use them themselves.

Such amazing AI behavior is usually pretty cool in games, but unfortunately these NPCs don't return your weapons when you're done using them. This is a big problem for players who have spent hours acquiring legendary gear that is not easy to replace.

In the following video by Dani Garcia, you can actually see it happening: at 1:00, a player dies while participating in the event. After respawning, the player looks at his inventory and weapon wheel and notices that his Gatling plasma gun is missing. Then, at 2:25 in the video, the player catches up with an allied NPC, Marion Copeland, who is using the exact same Gatling plasma gun that was taken from the player's corpse.

That's cold, Marion. Cold as ice.

And what's especially unfair is that Copeland herself never dies during the mission. So there is no way to loot her corpse and get your own back; once the NPCs loot your corpse, your equipment seems to be gone forever.

This is not entirely new behavior; in Fallout games, enemies often pick up and use better weapons than they are equipped with when they find them. I also recall NPCs in Fallout 4 jumping on power armor not equipped by the player to defend their settlements. But they would at least return it when they were done using it and not keep it forever. (Editor: In fact, we have been informed that they do not return the armor; they only return it when they are done using it.)

Bethesda is investigating this bug, but in the meantime, if you're headed to the event, you might want to avoid taking your most important weapon. It could end up in the pockets of the new residents of Appalachia.