Fallout 4 Guide on Building, Developing, and Defending Settlements, How to Earn from Trading and Establish Trade Routes

Got into settlement building in Fallout 4? In this guide, we'll answer all the basic questions related to not only building and defending settlements in Fallout 4 but also about the settlers, trade routes, and trading itself. Let's get started!

When building and developing your base, don't try to do everything at once. Initially, your settlement will need to have beds, food, and water — that's enough to attract the first settlers. Then, you can focus on defense and security, as well as trading. Speaking of defense — it should be at a high level, and you should periodically upgrade it. The severity of raider and mutant attacks will depend on how strong your base is and how long it can withstand a siege, so there should always be plenty of food and water.

The most sensible tactic is to fully upgrade one settlement to unlock capabilities related to building strong defenses and maximally productive buildings in other areas, such as large trading rows that will bring in much more income than a single trading stall. After unlocking everything, it makes sense to start building a second settlement and establishing trade routes between them so they can share resources with each other. You can fully upgrade the second settlement and then move on to the third.

A settlement in Fallout 4 can only be built in places where there is a workshop. It is with its help that you can build any building, but a full complex of buildings is only available in one place — at the Red Rocket truck stop. In other places, you may have to, although it is not at all necessary, build stations for modifying weapons, armor, and the like, and this can take up space.

As for gathering resources, you can collect them in the wasteland and around the settlement. Read our guide, and you'll learn how to easily and quickly turn collected materials and junk into useful items, and remember that all storage in workshops are interconnected, so when you store junk in the Red Rocket, you can go to another place and use it for construction.

Building a settlement is very simple — just start interacting with the workshop, and there you can choose the building you intend to construct.

It's quite simple — you need to have seeds of wheat, melons, razorgrain, or others. One plantation takes one seed, so collect seeds wherever you can.

You can take seeds from other settlements or buy them, and then use your own.

You will have to manually assign each settler in Fallout 4 a type of job because they will never figure out to start working on their own.

To do this, you need to enter the Workshop menu, select a settler, and immediately after that, assign them a task, such as harvesting crops or defense, by pointing with the mouse in the desired area. As soon as you select a settler, you should have the option to assign them.

After that, don't forget to give the command to start working, then you can stop them without removing them from work.

Initially, you don't need to spend a lot of resources on defense if you stay alert, as when enemies attack the settlement, you will receive a message (in the upper left corner of the screen). You can quickly move to the required location and manually eliminate the enemies.

The protection level is calculated based on the sum of the produced water and food — remember this when planning and developing a settlement.

However, in the later stages of the game, constantly running between settlements can become very tiring, so it's worth investing in guard posts, towers, traps, turrets, and putting more people on guard. If you have joined the Minutemen and are their general, then you can set up mortars and artillery.

In Fallout 4, there is also the possibility to arm settlers, so by giving them good weapons and ammunition, you make each settler a defender. We would not recommend arming them with grenades, mines, and other explosives, as they could easily blow up not only themselves but also their friends, and the entire settlement as well.

The basis for the appearance of new settlers is an excess of food and water. It has been mentioned before, but we will repeat it again, it's not enough to build two or three farms for food production, you will have to assign workers to each plantation who will produce the food. Keep in mind that each plantation produces 0.5 units of food, and the consumption of one person is 1 unit, so you will have to dedicate a significant part of the settlement to farms if you want to have a large population.

Water is simpler — one person consumes 1 unit of produced water, so you just need to maintain a positive balance, having a reserve of 3-4 units of water, so that newly arrived settlers do not create a deficit.

However, settlers will not start coming to you if you do not build them houses and beds. The layout here is the same as with water — 1 settler needs 1 bed and not outdoors, but inside a building. It will be good to have extra beds, so new people can join while you are off seeking adventures.

To attract settlers to your base, you also need to build a recruitment radio beacon. It operates in automatic mode and you don't need to monitor it, however, turn it off once you decide that there are enough residents in the settlement.

Of course, all this requires electricity, and we would recommend you to build the largest possible generators right away, to avoid cluttering the space and to have as much energy as possible. To make all your constructions work, you will have to connect them with connecting cables, power lines, and junction boxes.

Indeed, in Fallout 4, there is an opportunity to use artillery pieces, which are suitable not only for defending the population in settlements but also for striking any point in the Commonwealth (you can call it if you find yourself in a tough situation). Artillery can be placed in settlements. However, this opportunity can be completely missed if you do not take the right actions in your playthrough.

First, you need to be a general of the Minutemen. This happens quite early, after you do a few missions for the black character Preston, whom you meet in Concord. You can spoil your relationship with him if you feed Mama Murphy substances, so keep that in mind. Continue doing missions for Preston until he asks you to retake the location The Castle in the mission Taking Independence.

For its successful completion, it's better to use power armor, as you will encounter all types of enemies along the way — mutants, raiders, synths, gunners, mirelurks, mole rats, feral ghouls, and others, and at the end, you will face a boss battle. After victory, you will need to connect the radio tower with two generators, producing 5 units of energy, and the mission will be completed.

After that, after another 2-3 hours, when you complete a couple of missions for the Minutemen, you will be given the task Old Guns. You will need to return to The Castle, take the mission from Preston, and help a character named Ronnie with a couple of things, tell her you will help without any conditions. In that case, she will lead you to the armory located in The Castle. Use the Workshop game menu to remove the construction rubble and unlock the way. You will have to go through several mines with enemies and a powerful sentry bot at the end, so be ready.

If everything is successful, you will capture the arsenal and have the opportunity to take the schematics for the artillery piece and signal smoke grenades. Return to the settlement and construct your first piece. And what are the grenades for? They signal your location and by throwing just one, you will receive artillery support.

The artillery pieces have a large, but still limited range of action, so you will need to build them in several settlements. You can increase your supply of grenades using the weapons workbench.

It's quite simple — decorate the settlement with structures from the decorative section, place a television or at least a radio in each house, build various trading posts — let one shop sell items, another medical supplies, and a third be a restaurant.

Moreover, spend more time with people — it doesn't matter if you are the mayor of this part of the Wasteland, a general of the Minutemen, or a member of the Brotherhood of Steel — you can always tell a couple of interesting stories that the residents will enjoy listening to.

For this, you will need the Local Leader skill, with which you can build several trading posts in your settlement. They bring a small passive income, but the more people in your settlement — the higher the income from trade you will receive.

This requires a combination of the following factors — having two or more settlements (you cannot trade with other territories), 6 points invested in Charisma, and the Local Leader perk of the first level. Moreover, there must be one free person in the settlement who will handle the trade. You cannot send an already occupied character, as he will abandon his job.

Open the Workshop menu, select a free person, and if you have two or more settlements, the function to send will appear. By pressing the corresponding button, you can choose from the list where to send the person. This operation can be done for several free settlers, sending them to one or other settlements. Similarly, you can do it with other settlements, no matter whether routes come to them from other places or not.

With the help of trade routes, you can develop the potential of each Fallout 4 base to the maximum, as well as balance the excess and shortage of food or water.

The development of a settlement is directly related to whether you have copper, as it is used in electricity generators, radio stations, defense systems. Copper is a very scarce resource in Fallout 4 and it's not so easy to find.

To start, we would recommend clearing the entire settlement area of debris — it's quite possible that you will find enough copper to produce at least a couple of generators. Also, collect junk in the Wasteland, such as light bulbs, fans, magnets, pots, vacuum tubes, telephones, including broken and unbroken ones, since regardless of the condition, they contain copper.

Copper can also be purchased in Diamond City from Arturo, as well as from the female vendor at Drumlin Diner, however, copper will be quite expensive, and the restock time is 48 hours of real-time.

Gathering junk in the world of Fallout 4 is a difficult and tedious process, and it's not unlimited and will eventually run out. So, if you have some extra bottle caps, you can buy the necessary materials for building a settlement from the following vendors: