Early in Fallout 76, finding a steady supply of aid items should be your first priority. Later on, you’ll be so overloaded with stimpacks, you’ll just have to start dumping the things on the ground like trash. There’s a better way to manage your stockpile of healing items, one that doesn’t involve wasting those valuable supplies — and no, unfortunately selling extras (usually) isn’t worth the effort.
You can make your stash more efficient with these simple healing item tips and tricks — whether you’re diluting stimpacks to multiply your supplies, or grabbing junk to craft healing on-the-fly, there’s more than one way to stay alive in the West Virginia wasteland.
If you’re really feeling like you’re overburdened with aid items, try taking on a legendary cryptid, or explore an area that’s way higher level than you. That’s a good way to waste those aid items and earn a bunch of XP. When you’re running low on aid items again, or just want to know tricks you can use to stay stocked-up indefinitely, here’s a few tricks you can use.
More Fallout 76 guides on Gameranx:
- Fallout 76: 10 Things You Should Do First | Power Armor Location & More | Beginner’s Guide
- Fallout 76: How To PVP Without Becoming Wanted | Bonus PVP Modes Guide
- Fallout 76: Power Armor Frames, Core Farming & Unique Set Locations Guide
- Fallout 76: How To Join The Enclave & Get The Laser Minigun | Faction Guide
- Fallout 76: Where To Find The ‘Rose’s Syringer’ Gun | Unique Weapon Guide
- Fallout 76: Where To Find The ‘Perfect Storm’ SMG | Unique Weapon Guide
- Fallout 76: How To Find A Hazmat Suit For Perfect Radiation Protection | Location Guide
- Fallout 76: Save Ammo With These Melee Build Tips | Best Builds Guide
- Fallout 76: Nuke Everything With The CAMP Artillery Schematic | Best Weapons Guide
How To Never Run Out Of Healing | Aid Items Tips & Tricks
If you follow the main series of Fallout 76 quests, you’ll be swimming in stimpacks. Some quests straight-up give you 20+ stimpacks. They’re rare at the start, but completing quests will give you way more than just searching the wasteland. The problem is, stimpacks weigh you down. You’ll find it harder and harder to carry all those stimpacks around. You can drop stimpacks into your stash for later, or you can use a few simple tricks to lower the amount of stimpacks you’re carrying, and get way more uses out of them.
- NOTE: Make sure to complete the first Responders faction quests. You can return to this area / switch servers to collect lots of extra items. Find the Responders at Flatwoods, south of Vault 76.
Stimpacks heal instantly. Food only lets you recover slowly over time, so you don’t want to eat food during combat. There’s another item you can get early-on that is easy to craft, and will heal you instantly.
- Healing Salve: Restores 20% health. No animation on use. Heals instantly.
- Recipe available at most vendors.
- Requires: x1 Boiled Water, x1 Soot Flower, x1 Bloodleaf
Get the Green Thumb Perk to collect double ingredients when foraging. You’ll find plenty of water and Bloodleaf on the river bank outside Flatwoods. Travel far west of Flatwoods to Hillfolk Hotdogs for everything you need — there’s a ton of Bloodleaf, Soot Flower, and water. There’s a cooking station here, too.
To make life at your CAMP easier, you can purchase a purifier schematic for an unlimited supply of non-toxic water. Water is very easy to find in Appalachia, and liquids heal the player faster than other non-stimpack aid items.
- Purifier: Purifies water. Aid items that you drink (purified water) heal much faster than food items.
- Purchase the Purifier Schematic at any vendor. Sold for 200-300 caps.
Finally, you can multiply your healing item supply by diluting Stimpacks — and unlocking the valuable Chemist perk.
- Diluted Stimpack: Heals half as much as a standard stimpack. Also weights half as much. Requires a Stimpack to craft x2 Diluted Stimpacks — essentially, you split a single stimpack into two.
- Unlock the Chemist Perk to create x4 Diluted Stimpacks.
- With the Chemist Perk unlocked, you can craft x2 Stimpacks -> then craft x8 Diluted Stimpacks.
- You’ve just used the same amount of resources to craft a single stimpack, and essentially crafted x4 Stimpacks.
If you’re extremely lucky, you can also unlock / equip the Travelling Pharmacy perk. This lowers the weight of all stimpacks in your inventory.
Finally, let’s talk about Cannibalism. Get the Lead Belly Perk to lower the amount of rads you’ll get from eating / drinking irradiated aid items if you want to cannibalize. Take flesh off monsters you kill, and then cook it at a crafting station. With Cannibalism, you can eat ghoul flesh. But, there is an overabundance of animal meat you can acquire — and animal meat slowly goes bad in your inventory, unlike over aid items.
Cannibalism and Lead Belly are only useful early in the game. Later on, you’ll have plenty of options for aid items, and enough RadAway to deal with any poisoning you might have.
