Living in a post-apocalyptic nuclear hellscape is hard work. Put aside the gross two-headed cows, the constant threat of death-by-[insert gun-toting faction here], the simple fact that drinking water gives you radiation poisoning. Just figuring out what to do is a challenge.
At least, that’s the way of things in Fallout 4. The game gives you all the tools you need to build then nurture a settlement in the nuke-blasted ruins of Boston, but it doesn’t give a clear sense of how to use them.
That’s why you’re here. Maybe it’s been a struggle to snap pieces of buildings together. Maybe you have no idea how to set up supply lines. You want to do your part in rebuilding society and you have the tools. You just don’t know how to use them. Read on to fix that.
Start from the beginning
Sanctuary Hills is the first settlement you unlock for development. This means you can use the Workshop to enter “build mode,” at which point a green border pops up and encircles the settlement, indicating where you can build.
You’ve got a great starting point in Sanctuary Hills. It has a large area to build in and multiple intact houses (relatively speaking) make it easy to give settlers a comfortable place to live without forcing you to dive in immediately with the construction tools.
The first thing you should do, both in Sanctuary Hills and in all subsequent settlements, is go into build mode and scrap as much debris as you can. Sometimes you’ll see a yellow or green outline when you hover your crosshairs over certain objects. The yellow stuff is pure garbage; scrap it indiscriminately (look at the bottom of the screen for the right button prompt). Green-outlined items, like undamaged chairs, beds, bathtubs and more, have some utility, but they can also be turned into scrap.
The more you scrap, the more materials you have to work with when you start to really build.
The more you scrap, the more materials you have to work with when you start to really build. Running around Sanctuary Hills should get you enough materials to make a few things, but you can also add to your parts heap by dumping the junk you collect out in the world into your Workshop. Just walk up to your Workshop, choose the “Transfer” option and then press Y (Xbox One controller) to dump your crap.
Following the early story is the best way to learn the basics of settlement building. When you first arrive in Sanctuary Hills, you get a quest that involves heading out to a nearby city. Go there and do what needs to be done (no spoilers). Once that’s over, you’ll have a few settlers in Sanctuary Hills. One of them gives you a series of simple quests that walks you through addressing a settlement’s basic needs.
Be a provider
Every settlement in Fallout 4 has ratings in multiple categories: People, Food, Water, Power, Defense and Beds. All of those can be directly influenced by building the appropriate items. Keeping them all out of the red (they’re literally marked with red text) maintains and raises the settlement’s overall Happiness stat.
Settlements are self-sufficient to a limited extent, but you’ve got to give them the things they need to survive. Settlers know enough to gather water and harvest crops, but you’ve got to build the water source and plant the seeds.
So do that. Basic life-giving settlement tools are available to build from moment one, provided you have the materials. Everything other than food requires scrap, both broken down from the debris inside your settlement and gathered from the wider world. Food is a special case in that the only thing you need to plant a crop is the thing you’d harvest from it. Want a cornfield? Go find some corn.
One of your first concerns in a new settlement after the basic needs of life have been squared away should be growing your population.
One of your first concerns in a new settlement after the basic needs of life have been squared away should be growing your population. The quickest way to do that is with a Recruitment Radio Beacon, found in the Miscellaneous section of the Workshop’s Power menu.
Building a beacon isn’t cheap from a scrap perspective, as it requires some less-common materials for both the tower and the generator/wiring you’ll need to power it. Telephones and hot plates are both relatively easy to find, and they provide the all-important copper and circuitry you’ll need. Also watch for cameras and microscopes, both of which provide crystal components.
Once you’ve got a healthy supply of those materials, plus steel, ceramic and rubber (all of which are easy to find), build the radio beacon and then a small generator to live next to it. Finally, run a wire by highlighting the generator and pressing Y then highlighting the beacon and pressing Y again (you’ll know the wire’s in a connectable location when the beacon isn’t highlighted in red).
The beacon is turned on automatically, but you can tell it’s on if you see a green light on its activation panel. A live beacon should also transmit a recruitment signal that you can access from your Pip-Boy’s radio.
Break ground
Once you’ve got a handle on the basics of settlement growth, try your hand at putting a structure together. Again, this is very easy in Sanctuary Hills. Several of the houses there are ruined beyond repair; scrap them and use the foundation they rested on for your own buildings.
There are two options here. Fallout 4 offers a limited selection of prefab buildings that you can put down without having to worry about snapping walls, floors ad ceilings together. If you don’t want to be bothered with construction work — it’s kind of a pain — there’s no penalty for using prefabs, save for the size and layout limitations.
If you’d rather go with custom dwellings, playing around with the building tools is the best way to learn. Pieces snap together automatically, but they don’t always cooperate the way you want them too (especially when it comes to corners). It’s less of an issue in Sanctuary Hills due to the amount of space you have, but don’t forget to build up.
Multi-story buildings are a great way to save space in the tighter confines of small settlements.
Multi-story buildings are a great way to save space in the tighter confines of small settlements.
When you’re starting on uneven terrain (more of an issue in future settlements), it’s a good idea to lay down some foundation before you start building. Placed objects adhere to an invisible grid that doesn’t always take the ground into account. Without a foundation in place, you’ll often notice that placed objects have empty spaces running beneath them where the ground falls away.
There’s no trick to building. You just need a lot of patience, as the building tools in Fallout 4aren’t that great. If you’re a perfectionist who won’t be happy unless every floor, wall and ceiling is perfectly lined up with no gaps, you’re not going to have a pleasant experience and should just stick to prefabs.
Continued growth
Once you have a few settlements under your control you’ll probably start running into supply issues. If you’ve been using Sanctuary Hills as a home base and dumping your scavenged materials in that workshop exclusively, then the only materials you have to work with in new locations are what you scrap there and whatever you’re carrying.
This is where supply lines come in, though you’ll need a Charisma rating of at least 6 plus the Local Leader perk to create them. Once you’ve got that squared away, go to either settlement that you want to connect via supply line, find a random settler (i.e. someone who doesn’t have a proper name) and press RB when you have them highlighted. A menu should pop up with a list of your settlements; the one you choose is the one you connect with.
Supply lines share all materials stored in either settlement’s workshop. That’s why it’s good to dump all your junk into one Workshop. Just connect all your other settlements to that home base and you’ll never have a problem building the basics of life. 