TLDR: Radscorpions fuck my shit up six ways to Sunday, I grow closer to Capt. Ahab, I am saved by steps, and a legendary Radscorpion now serves as lunch.

So, I learned to my determent today, that Radscorpions in Fallout 76 are bullshit. Like their terrifying Fallout 4 brethren, they burrow to avoid damage, can pop up underneath you if you're standing on a surface like dirt, gravel or even pavement - however, unlike Fallout 4, their animations seem to be a little wonky. Their burrow/unborrow ones don't always play, can lunge what appears to be ten feet to hit you, and sometimes, straight up teleport. Long story short, vanilla Radscorpions are awful. What I discovered, to the detriment of my sanity, is that the diseased and legendary variants are complete and utter bullshit.

I had the pleasure of learning this, merrily wandering through the Northern part of the map, on my way to help a crazy robot mayor do amusingly petty tasks. I was, I thought, an appropriate level for the area - I had been running into things one or two levels above me, but I was well armed, well equipped, and had killed things bigger. It came as quite a surprise then, when wandering though a forest, that three radscorpions popped out of nowhere and killed me in about four seconds flat.

Horrified, confused, and more than a little miffed, I hauled my overburdened ass to where I died, taking as many drugs as my surprisingly tolerant liver could handle, and prepping for battle with these clacking bastards. They caught me off guard once, but now I knew where they were, it was payback time. Or so I thought before they fucked me up again in about the same amount of time, giving me a quick moment to identify my killers - a radscorpion my level, a diseased one five above me, and a goddamned two star legendary hunter radscorpion more than twice my level chilling there for no discernible reason.

Wising up, I decided to avoid these murder bugs for the time being. About twenty minutes later, restocked on supplies, a base built, and grenades stockpiled, I decided to finish what they started (and finished, twice). This time, I managed to kill the normal, and diseased, before succumbing to my wounds and diseases taken. At this point, it became apparent as to why I was taking so much damage - the hunter's attacks were applying a poison, that instead of the usual poison damage, were doing the damage of full attacks. In addition, the ticks of poison were stopping me from sprinting away, letting the scorpion attack again.

Feeling a little close to Capt. Ahab pursuing the white whale, I was now swearing on my physical grave I would make this overpowered asshole into an omelette. It was on this attempt I discovered the radscorpions weakness - stairs. Finally discovering a cheese that the improbable reach of radscorpions couldn't overcome, I proceeded to run a cycle of "bait and fire", sprinting across permeable surfaces to keep the bugs interest, then retreating to the sweet sweet safety of slight wooden elevation. This lasted for over twenty minutes, and about 15 stimpacks from where it was decided that I was in fact, in range of the very far away pincers.

With the creature defeated, I leaned my lesson - Radscorpions fucking suck.