No, You Can’t Actually Save in Fallout 76, But Don’t Worry!
Since the launch of Fallout 76, some players have been confused about how the Fallout 76 save mechanics actually work in practice. The reality of things is actually much simpler than they appear. To put it simply, you don’t ever need to save in Fallout 76. This is very different from any previous Bethesda game, but it’s due to the fact that Fallout 76 is always online.
How the Fallout 76 Save Mechanics Actually Work
The reason why you never need to save in Fallout 76 is that the game does so itself automatically. The Fallout 76 servers are constantly saving the state of everybody’s game in real-time; as a result, there’s no risk of you losing progress if you lose connection or your game otherwise crashes. Some players may find it frustrating that there is no way to reload old saves, as many have done in previous Bethesda games. However, there is less reason to do this in Fallout 76 than in those games.
The way that death works in Fallout 76 is different than in other Bethesda titles in that you don’t lose any progress. When you die, you choose a location to respawn and you drop any junk items you were carrying in a paper bag. This is left wherever you died. As such, you don’t lose any game progress, including XP or significant items. You can return to wherever you died to recover your junk items, although other players will be able to pick these up too. If you’re worried about losing your junk, be sure to frequently deposit junk items into your C.A.M.P. Stash.
So in conclusion, you needn’t worry about saving or loading in Fallout 76. The game’s servers will do all of that for you, and there is no great loss of progress whenever you die. Of course, it would be impossible to save or load in the game, because you share your game world with a number of other players at any given time.