hey folks, this is a re-upload, the backing soundtrack was flagged for copyright, which is wierd because I've used it several times before with no issues, and all of the checks after upload checked out, but that's youtube for you. it also gave me a chance to make a few minor corrections.
If you contact or watch videos from other people that regularly upload videos they also have gone on at certain points about how the way RUclips regulates videos makes no sense
My only complaint of F4 for Settlement building is the inability to clean up areas. From a lore perspective, people want to clean their living space. Even in a future dystopian post apocalypse people will inherently desire to remove garbage from their homes! 🤦♂️
I'd extend this complaint to more than just player settlements as many npc settlements and trading areas are also full of trash and sometimes even dead bodies (like the Drumlin Diner). So many npc places look like no one has occupied the location for more than a day or two. Sure some people irl may not care about living or working in a trash heap but most people are at least going to try to clean up a place by clearing out the junk, making it more sound and safer, and making it more visually appealing. It would have been nice if more settlements had done like The Castle where after a few days the settlement is cleaned up quite a bit- would also make it seem like the player isn't doing all the work.
@@darthbob88 There it would be nice if you could use supplies to "fix up" damaged buildings beyond shoving workshop walls, floors, and ceilings to cover holes. The preexisting buildings in Sanctuary are the biggest example as outside of mods it's really hard to make them look halfway decent.
I would have LOVED if settlement mode allowed you to repair structures that you couldn’t scrap. Even if they looked a little mismatched or scruffy, it would have been amazing to restore roofs, walls, and flat floors!
@@Ricardo_Rick You can stick together a couple of barns, big door to big door, for a decent-sized fairly waterproof barracks. Fill it full of beds and there y'go. If they're lucky I'll build them a TV, then laugh as they attempt to tune anything in, hundreds of years after civilisation was evaporated. Sometimes maybe they get a seat. I built Granny Drugs a nice little chapel to sit in, on the street in Sanctuary actually. Plop down her special seat and there she is like one of those gypsy fortune teller machines like you get in Futurama, except surlier and with better lies.
I always ranked the Red Rocket gas station pretty high just because it's so cozy and it's like a 'no Preston's allowed' club where I can just chill and let the jukebox play.
It's a horrible spot to build though because it's so small, and it's in the triangle of death. No matter the PC, you will encounter lag if you build in any of the 3.
It’s also pretty easy to find on the map when you want to Fast Travel. A rocket symbol in the Northwest corner of the map, just near Sanctuary & Vault 111
I discovered that scraping mods bring problems of their own. Some places don’t have a collision mesh under the junk. Also scraping normally unscrapable structures doesn’t necessarily get rid of npc interaction markers. I once scraped the stilted building in hangman’s alley. I returned to find a settler five feet above the ground hammering a wall that no longer existed. 😅
@@maggi98mw That's generally only a big problem (performance-wise, can't speak for subtler issues) in the urban settlements. The ones out in the sticks can usually get away with it because there's not nearly as many objects other than like, trees, but the buildings in the city are made out of SO MANY different parts that rely on being precombined to lower the poly/object count to something that won't turn your computer into an IED. Hangman's Alley and Bunker Hill become absolute nightmares...
Bunker Hill is really bad with these as well. Finally, you can scrap that damn wall and build something better. Oh, look... the game keeps crashing. Turns out you scrap the outer wall, it breaks something and will crash Bunker Hill every time you load that cell. God forbid you touch that water tank under the toilets. I've also had at least one game where something caused a hard reset of the cell (probably accidentally scrapping outer wall bits) and it made the entire original settlement respawn, merged into my settlement. And the "original" was unscrappable now. Argh!
@@doryna_sira The first thing sounds like it could be a broken precombine issue. Have you looked into if there's a mod fix for it? I've seen plenty of other mod fixes for precombine issues. Like the one that afflicts downtown Boston, making the game LITERALLY unplayable on Xbox One, cause of a 100% chance of game crashing if you so much as glance upon the Broken Skybridge. Seriously. If my character was facing that thing? Bye bye went the game.
Theres something ridiculously funny about the pathing of the settlers to go around in circles and not interact with anything in the settlement but somehow manage to walk around the rooftops
@@bustapou740 - stairs :) they will eventually walk down them. if not, use the game mechanic where you order them to get back to work. They will leave the roof and instantly teleport to their jobs. If they are unemployed, it takes them to a 'gathering' point that 'new' settlers use when they first enter the settlement.
I just wish more settlements could be established in the vanilla game. Many locations have great potential. Also the build ceiling in most settlements causes some eye twitch...
@@Sight-Beyond-Sight Why would anybody want to play a Crapthesda game vanilla? They suck completely without mods. Get Sim Settlements 2 with the add-ons, get Raze Everything and have fun building.
I've had a permanent glitch where the Fogcrawler at Dalton Farm is invincible and cannot be killed no matter what I try (even console commands, it still respawns whenever I return). It just adds to the fun of the settlement as I've had to restrict access to the ground floor for settlers. They pass the time listening to the permanent sound of dozens of turrets opening up on the crawler while they go about their business.
I have the same problem there too and at murkwater construction, I just set up concrete walls where the mirelurk queen spawns and turrets on top of the walls
Watching this video made me realize exactly how dependent I am on mods. I like a lot of the bad settlements you listed and it's all because I have a mod that lets me scrap way more stuff.
Right, I was a little offended when they listed hangman's alley so low, but then I have mods that open up the buildings around it so there's a much bigger area to work with.
'Scrap Everything' and 'Place Everywhere' are essential. I play in survival-mode as that makes most sense, so I added the 'Herbal Remedies' and the 'Console Enabler in survival-mode'-mod as well.
An important tip i learned too late, and caused me to go back and re-do settlements: If you have to kill people or creatures to obtain the settlement, do NOT engage the workshop once you've cleared the settlement, until AFTER you have left the area, and stayed away for 2 in-game weeks. That will allow the dead creatures to disappear. This only works for the ones you've killed, not for dead bodies baked into the terrain. But it does work, as it was the only thing that eliminated things like the dead mole rats from Starlight Drive-In.
I don’t think I’ve ever had that problem. I’ve been doing Fallout playthroughs over the last few months where I do as much as possible and get all the settlements. On my current character (level 54) I have the Lighthouse, and claimed the workshop right after, I just went back maybe 5 minutes ago and there’s no corpses, aside from the dead traders who I cast out to the ocean.
I just got a mod that lets you scrap dead bodies (and mole rat holes). This works for everything except Hangman's Alley. There, I just drag the bodies outside of the settlement and eventually they get cleared by the game over time.
@@hydra9627 not all settlements are the same. Red Rocket and Starlight have both given me issues in the past. I've had playthoughs that I scrapped after many hours, because the mole rat hills won't disappear. It's random, though.
@@tacticalmattress oh, I know. Luckily, I amost always just leave Abernathy Farm alone, except giving them a provisioner. I'll put about 8 settlers at Red Rocket, and basically leave the place alone. But I have 27 settlers over at Sanctuary, and I pretty much just build up the old homes and not build any massive bases. But way back when, I ALWAYS had issues with Abernathy Farm. That's not the case anymore, with only 4-6 settlers.
Just to add flavor. The battle of Bunker Hill was fought from Breeds Hill. The British from boston wanted Bunker Hill for high ground placement of armies and artillery. The patriots found out and loaded Breeds Hill with militiamen. The men on Breeds Hill were able to hold the British at bay till their ammo ran dry. The British, while technically winning by taking the hills after patriots could no longer fight, actually lost about 4 times as many men as the patriots did.
I’ve found that there’s functionality 3 types of settlements that exist in the game, and this has really colored my experience in both how I build and how favorable I am to certain places since what might be bad at one thing is perfect for another. The big three types are, safe house, settlement, and NPC home. Also should be stated I play in almost entirely in survival mode so take what with a grain of salt since I am playing a different game to the standard play through. For safe houses you have things like Hangman’s Alley, Jamaica Plains, and RedRocket. They are more designed to be rest stops for refilling needed resources, and dumping inventory as well as a safe and sanitary place to save. They are also never supposed to support more than say 1-2 people at any given time since the place is really only suppose to support the player with what they need, and not sustain a village. For these places it’s almost more important where they are than what they have. This is crucial for the vast majority of the game until you get to later stages where you have enough vertabirds grenades to consistently take you places. This is why hangman’s alley is so beloved. It is in the perfect location with the only problem being the vertabird drop point being on a random encounter. Also a settlement like Summerville Place works really well in this light since it’s the perfect rest stop before the glowing sea. Settlements are exactly that. Places like Sanctuary, the Slog, and Starlight Drive In where they are just a place for a village. They are exactly what people imagine when talking about settlement building so I don’t need to say anything else. Finally we have NPC homes. Places like Finch Farm, Grey Garden, and Abernathy Farm. Though these can be perfect examples of the above mentioned types. I find they’re main point of existence is to be the quest they have with just the reward being that you get a settlement, and sometimes a settlement with a quirk like grey garden. Not much to say, but I personally try to leave them more or less as intended, and just let them be what they were. There’s no reason in my mind to build here since these aren’t really my places.
This is useful to get into head, because even if it means less settlements where you truly try to make it amazing, it makes places like hangman’s feel better since then you’ll be designing it to fit YOUR accommodations, rather than trying to mix in water, food, and npc housing all in one place that can be more of a struggle in the less open and smaller ones
Um if a settlement doesn't have access to water, put down a farm plot and put one or two of those mechanical water pumps down on top of them. The tops of the plots count as dirt. You can put them anywhere you can put a plot down.
The mechanist’s layer has one purpose, it’s a really good settlement to make your “logistics hub” as it’s literally a settlement that you can just forget about and not have to walk in on only to find the place crowded by settlers assigned to resource transportation. If you really want to, you can also decorate the place to make it feel like a professional logistics hub and not like just a place to dump your settlers assigned to logistics.
@@jabezhaneThe problem with that is that Automatron bots have the potential to reset to default when they're in a cell that resets. There don't seem to be viable fixes for this afaik.
@@jabezhane Did you give them the M-SAT upgrade (the tracker device from the Automatron main quest) or take them as a companion before sending them off? I heard that has the potential to prevent them from breaking.
I'll have to check this but I'm almost positive that the light shines and the only thing I did was put a generator and broadcast beacon up there and the house lights work. I assumed the atom people established power
@@toddchubb3464 The light shines at first, after you take the settlement. Then after a few trips there and back, it shuts down. Personally, I just put a punch of those single hanging light bulb lights up, and a small generator.
Hangman's Alley is one of my most frequently used settlements because of its location. My main home is either Red Rocket or Sanctuary Hills but they're miles away from everything else
I have managed to make a nice place in Hangman's alley but as I play with head-canon in mind, I tend to build up Sanctuary but I always leave the starting home untouched, as a way of my character "leaving their last beind be cause it is too painful to revisit" blah, blah, blah so I use the Red Rocket station as my personal player home...with Cait of course.
A novel farming idea!! I always use the top for a nice spot to sit in the evening. Great views on all sides! But farming up there sounds great too. Frees up space below.
If you have the Vault 88 DLC, you can stick a nice mini-vault door between the concrete blocks, to provide a cool entrance. It's electric so you'll have to set up some sort of cool access mechanism.
I always build shorter crops on the wall and tall crops outside near the water (to keep them from getting damaged during fights). The middle I keep clean because someone who was in the military (Nate) would want a safe place for his men to do training drills and they can't do that with many things in the way. I put the merchants and the required beds in the alcoves instead of outside or in a player building.
I loved The Castle. I immediately repaired the wall when I arrived, shortly after had the first difficult raid on it, and from there I knew it would be my favorite settlement. I put a powered door on one side, but the little hallway entry point I left unblocked, because being the only entrance to the settlement, that became my choke point for turrets. For me, it was like Starlight, but with a pre-existing structure that looked like about as good as I could hope to make of a building on the land anyway. I loved the idea of Starlight. I wanted to build a tribute to Sol Tower from one of my favorite retro RPGs that, accurate to said title, would be essentially the entire settlement, but after clearing everything for parts and opting to leave it without a recruitment beacon until I had made the first couple floors of the structure, I just...never ended up building on it. Every time I would go to it I would see it and go "Ah, this is gonna be an awesome primary settlement eventually." and...that was it. Abernathy Farm I honestly dismissed as just another farm, but after watching your top settlements video I was tempted to go back a little. I never ended up doing so though, because it ended up being my most raided settlement by a very wide margin. The fact that it's run by Chuck Norris couldn't save it from me getting too frustrated by the fact that whether it was from misc. raids or Radio Freedom calls, its number got called roughly 1 in every 3 times I had to defend a settlement, even though it had next to no upgrades apart from having enough turrets that it should've never had any issues.
I spent far too much time building vault 88 for almost no pay out. That said, the solution I implemented for attacks was very simple for the investment it takes. I used concrete walls and windows to create a box trap at both alt entrances, and trail markers to help myself navigate. Now, I don't get lost and I know were every enemy is - clean up is a breeze.
Okay, Hangmans ally is best taken by dropping down from the adjacent roofs, dont unlock the doors at all and you keep it so much more secure, one guard will take out most enemies because they wont have a path to move, adding turrets to the adjacent fire escapes and roofs will help, you can get in from the roof on the east side from the ally and get out by jumping the guard tower.
I always loved turning Home Plate into my personal museum. I'd have most of my previous clothing sets, primary/secondary weapons, my bobbleheads, certain items like a nuke warhead a fusion core etc etc in little display cases. I'd build up a nice looking bedroom and really go HAM decorating the place. My settlements I'd just stick to developing for settlers, never really spending time building a player home there. Its a fun way to play. Thinking about it actually gives me the itch to go back and play Fallout 4 again!
I'm playing it myself for the first time :D building a house & demolishing the town with mods was sometimes the first thing I did ^^ I rebuilt the vanilla house opposite the starting house. Tore off the roof & kept the walls. now it's a small self-sustaining castle with an electronic gate. 1 more house is already built for the junkie granny. However, I can no longer move her chair, so she sits on the top floor in front of a desk with files & a radio transmitter in my HQ xD
I really enjoy the castle partially because of the free defenses you can get. All you have to do is wait a few days, complete the quest (that gives you some pretty cool armor imo) and boom you've got some mines and laser turrets. I'm not a huge settlement builder but having the castle come with defenses like that makes it feel like an actual castle. Plus the free water it comes with, and the ease of building crops, it's an awesome package that makes it my favorite settlement. The worst thing in my opinion is the guy with the radio blabbering on. It is kinda weird to see what's supposed to be a big militia in just rags and leather hats, though. I prefer downloading a mod that makes the minutemen more like a serious militia and less like a joke, with things like combat/power armor (depending on your level) and better guns
Exactly. One small thing Bethesda should’ve done that would’ve changed up the whole game: in the early game, the Minutemen you see are wearing rags. In the late game (or just after you get the castle) you start seeing a lot of Minutemen with blue-painted combat armor. Much like how you can make combat armor brotherhood of steel, and it has a more rusted red/brown/gray look, you should be able to make it minuteman themed, and give it a more bluish gray look.
@@pingurage2460 there's tons of minutemen mods, like minutemen buffed or minutemen militia. Be warned, the ones I've used give the dead Minuteman in Concord full combat gear. If that's a little unbalanced for you, might want to just not use that combat gear
In all fairness to outpost zimonja, it's not as hard to take it as you're making it out to be. There's a bridge just above that you can shoot from and can be used to soak up the mini nukes if you step back at the right time! I usually add a few crops and a water pump and pretend that it's a little safehouse for railroad agents ❤
I usually snipe him from that bridge before he even gets in his power armour. Though one time as I walked up to the edge to look over and start sniping I must have accidentally alerted him somehow because I immediately took a mininuke to the face. Literally. It happened so fast I had to save the recording and replay it frame by frame to see what happened 😂
Correct! If you look at the building limits you'll notice they did kind of extended the limits in a way to force that column and piece of water within the building limits. The entire overpass makes this a fun place to build a decent settlement.
There is a mod on console that can scrap dead bodies. If I remember correctly, it is called Scrap Everything. I also believe it can scrap the unscrapable houses in many places.
Fallout 4 is easily my favourite game and i have played a lot in my lifetime. I don't know what it is about the game, its very immersive and theres so many different companions and people you meet. Its the one game that makes me want to go back and play through again.
Ikr, it’s great for some reason; no other fallout has brought me back so much. Also, am I the only one who likes the graphics? It has this charm that blends with modded weather, and is not that bad on the eyes either.
Yeah, the premise is nonsensical. There would be whole communities living inside every industrial building that still has power, instead of them being vacant, or full of raiders.
If youre looking for easy to start building settlements i would recommend okie1682's series as many of his settlements are subtle great improvements but with Sanctuary being TheRealJenn's Sanctuary mod that repairs the original buildings, i would personally take the patched up look rather then prewar textured but thats personal i guess. Bunker Hill as example is done exactly as you describe the build area is expanded to expand the entire block of houses its in, with solid walls and a rebuilt main market structure with living space for its residents above it, furthermore all shacks are junked leaving loads of usable space. Similarly theres The Castle with walls repaired as it once was as sure you can patch up the walls but its a horror to do taking insane hours and it will never look as majestic as this version does. In short, the settlement mods are absolutely worth it and make Bethesda's extremely lacking system work quite well and pleasant.
Despite the downsides, I still think Hangman's alley should be near the top of this list because it is probably hands down the most important settlement in survival mode. Its location alone makes it so valuable as a settlement.
His argument is that as a settlement it has a lot of challenges but as a player home it's a great location. It can handle a few settlers but like with the Red Rocket it doesn't feel like it was designed to become a major settlement. I'm having a lot of fun building in Hangman's Alley in my current playthrough but I'm designing it more as the player home that I wasn't satisfied with in Home Plate.
@@jcohasset23home plate is really disappointing imo. The best you can make there is a small living room with maybe a disco light. I get why it isn't better but still, not the best
The problem with this is that you don’t have to play on survival and some people are looking to have fun, not a challenge and don’t play survival (or the just are terrible at gaming like me) Which means that your point, while important to mention, has little to do with a likely decent sized portion of the player base
@@SaidNoGaming Even on regular difficulty Hangman's Alley is highly useful because of its proximity to Diamond City and downtown Boston and because it's easily attainable as a low level character. It's probably the settlement that most players will use the most in the early to mid part of the game until they get access to BoS vertibirds or the Institute teleporter. That said trying to turn it into a large settlement is challenging due to the build restrictions and settler AI problems so it really works best as a small settlement and/or a base for the player.
The update didnt do anything to help on console but it expanded the list a little bit in terms of things to do. such as XO2 earlier than planned. personally im still tinkering with mods on console to see what i want and what i dont before committing to a playthrough
The one benefit he didn't mention is there is a trader just south of the settlement. It's not a great trading post and encounters tend to spawn on the road along it but it's fair to use until settlers can start being traders.
My go to settlements are: Starlight drive in Outpost zimonja Hangmans alley Jamaica plain Murkwater Finch Farm Some of the settlements ive built in those areas will blow your mind. Im even thinking about uploading a video just to show how cool and unique they are
I'm currently redoing sanctuary and the red rocket, which by using certain mods, can be fused into one giant town 😊 personally, my fav settlement is probably Abernaty farm, and least fav would be Jamaican plain. JP is just too much wasted potential. (seriously, what were they thinking in the studio)
Loved this video, inspired me to do another Brotherhood/Minutemen settlement playthrough! Edit: one of the things that always annoyed me is that i like to have a central hub that connects all the settlements with trade routes; I've just realized that pumping robots out of the mechanist lair to link everything up might be a great way to avoid the brahmin gridlock that messed up Sanctuary for me in my early playthroughs.
A better way would be just link each settlement to the next settlement on a route since they share all the resources along connected routes and doesnt clog any area up
I love Starlight. Its where I build my food factory, its my trading hub and where I have a lot of provisioners meet at. Murkwater is where I ship the Longs to if they annoy me too much and if I play evil in Nuka World, where I'll ship Preston to.
It's a good list and I agree with it based on the no mod or console commands premiss. You did a great job with it. Me, I cannot...cannot play this game without Scrap That Settlement. I got it initially for the trash because all the funk laying around made no sense to me and after awhile I was pretty certain my brain would explode. Then I got STS and it just got good to me. I don't find the repetition of scrapping tedious tho. I find it relaxing. And things are better after I'm done. Not being able to scrap many things in settlements makes zero sense. Folks would be tearing those crappy buildings down and picking up trash and dead shrubs and such to rebuild a home. STS is the only scrapping mod I will use though as I know it wont break anything.
Eh, STS will for sure break some things, but it's worth it. My argument is that anyone who ISN'T using a scrap mod, doesn't actually like building. You can't lovingly make a perfect settlement, and still leave a literal garbage pile under someone's bed.
I would argue that Outpost Zimonja is at least workable. Very mid, and definitely not the worst tier outside of settlements that physically can't function as settlements because they lack important things like ability to have food, water, or even call settlers there in the first place. Sure, God's Staircase can be annoying if you don't want to work around it, it is out of the way, provisioner pathing is weird, and there's an enemy spawn point smack dab in the center of the settlement, but it's definitely workable. There are ways to get around all these things. I've had 22 settlers, surplus of food and water, max happiness, all stores, all crafting stations, plus extra amenities. It's the settlement I finally got the benevolent leader trophy on, and it's my favourite place to build despite my recognition that it's not top tier. Way easier to work with than Hangman's Alley, I don't care if it's smack in the center of the Commonwealth right next to Diamond City making it a viable PLAYER BASE in survival mode, but for a section of land to build a settlement out of? Outpost Zimonja is one hundred percent better than Hangman's Alley in every way except for being in a convenient location. No stores nearby? You can just build stores and the caravan trading post in your settlement and the stores just come to you! I do also enjoy building at Croup Manor, but fun fact with the settler pathing: all my settlers end up spawning in the water off the cliff side at the back side of the Manor, and they can't path their way back up and you can't build stairs for them to build the path back up. I do love Nordhagen Beach, too, but I have issues in places where kids are pre existing settlers (like Somerville Place). If you delete what their job is, you cannot reassign them to literally anything and then your happiness tanks because they're unemployed. On the other hand, I absolutely despite building at Abernathy Farm, Finch Farm, Warwick Homestead, and Spectacle Island. The first three are because the pre existing structures at these places don't count as being roofed, so the unscrappable beds that they always default to even if you reassign them aren't counted as sheltered and they always find a way back to them even if you block the entire area off, so getting settler happiness to max is basically impossible. Warwick Homestead also suffers from settlers just spawning in the vats of water and being unable to get out. Really annoying when a radiant quest sends you there and you can't talk to the settler who wants to give you the quest because they're stuck swimming. I don't like Spectacle Island because it's too big. There's TOO much space to work with, it's an island that's not easy to get to (unlock Longfellow's Cabin) so not very practical for a settlement in a world where the only way to get to it is to swim, and settlers are hard to track down even with the bell. My absolute least favourite settlement to build at, though, is Covenant. It's basically impossible to build there. Not anything nice, at least. And good luck if you got it through the non bloodshed way because if it gets picked for a Minuteman radiant quest, Jacob Orden will bug out and just never give you the next step in the quest they need help for. Also, you mentioned having an issue getting Warwick Homestead as a settlement without doing the Institute quests, that's Somerville Place for me. It took me eight years to finally have a save file where I was sent to help Somerville Place with something. That's right, this year marks the year I started one of many new playthroughs and the dice rolled to give me Somerville Place! Not really worth it, but I wanted all the settlements in my main file and was unable to get them because Preston and Radio Freedom stopped giving me radiant quests to help settlements and Somerville Place just never asked for help.
FYI, you can just travel to each settlement, without the Minutemen directive, and they will still ask for help by default. There is a finite number of places the Minutemen will send you, so I find it best to unlock as many as you can on your own, to enable the tougher ones to show up as quests to help them. I have had Warwick ask me for help this way, but not always. Limiting the number of places the Minutemen CAN send you, should help you get Warwick every time. This is especially good for sites that have no default settlers. You can just unlock those, and leave them vacant, if you don't want them.
Great video! Agree on Nordhagen Beach, one of the most fun builds I have done. After getting a bit jaded on settlement building after 5 big builds I think you have inspired me to give Egret Tours or Dalton a shot to see what can be done. Thanks for taking the time in putting this video together.
I use the hole in the center to hide the water pumps, they never get destroyed down there and all I have to do is send a wire upwards to a generator (which can be shielded by the ruined cottage.
Favorite site: Spectacle Island. You just can't beat the size of it! Least favorite: Murkwater. Horrible location and weather, the most ugly and frustrating unscrapable structure anywhere, and that Mirelurk Queen that will occasionally respawn. Two sites that I wish were settlements: Fiddler's Green Trailer Estates, for its unique pre-built structures still in decent condition, and Fairline Hill Estates, a cozy cul-de-sac that would make for a lovely little community.
I made a radical tree house in the middle of Covenant. I added new Turrets on top of the old burning ones and it gave it a neat effect. Flaming turrets.
Small complaint about the ranking of finch farm. In the corner of the build area at the beach you do have enough room for a water purifier if you angle it allowing for easy water requirements. This gives you a nice build area and a highway for extra creativity.
While I totally understand your reason for rating Vault 88 so low, it is in my opinion the best settlement when you allow a couple mods. - Scrap Everything - Extended Light Range (3x) - Extended Power Conduit Range (3x) - No Settlement Budget I currently have 24 settlers here, and most of them live in the 3 story main chamber, but a good number of them work in the Northeast sector as farmers. Ive got a service corridor that runs from NE to East to the water station, and rn im building out the North section. It has the secondary atrium, and will have more shops and residential areas The Vault should be able to support 60+ settlers, but idk if the game will let that happen. I adore Vault 88 my least favorite settlement is Sanctuary, actually. Idk why, but i dont like it there.
what a great channel, a true hidden gem of YT. I will now spend the next week (hopefully you have many videos already) watching all your stuff. Thank you for this
Starlight is my favorite by far. I agree with most ratings except Finch Farm. Like Greygarden, you can build up on that raised highway. I’ve made some nice fortresses on that ridge. You can snipe The Forged in the foundry and Gunners in the junkyard. It’s near northeast coast of map so it’s a good springboard for that part of the map.
HEY MAN!, Glad i found you , I just started playing FO4 again after 6yrs (easily) , & I HONESTLY really do Appreciate your videos, your videos have made it fun & i realized i was building to much to quickly spreading myself thin on Build Materials, but a bunch of your other videos have helped me remember locations to farm build materials & items to Farm for caps. Enjoying the content Keep up the great work!
The one thing I really like about Jamaica Plain is how close its buildable area is to Hyde Park. Scutter's raiders are within reach of a scoped weapon from the roofs; and the area between the two is more or less flat and devoid of cover which lets turrets do particularly good work when the raiders aggro toward you. Situational, and not all that mechanically powerful in practice; but it's fun to have the opportunity for settlement defenses to actually do work in the world for you. Greygarden has a bit of that as well; the very edge of its buildable area has a solid overlook of a road that sometimes gets raider patrols.
The one point Coastal Cottage has in its favor, same as Hangman's Alley, is that you can put artillery there and summon Minuteman reinforcements. It's A Base, and that is all. Otherwise, I agree that they're the Worst of the Worst.
I never build at Murkwater construction site, Hangman's alley, or Jamaica Plain(at least not anymore) because every time I clear them out I just stand in the middle of them all, hating everything and then immediately fast travel away. Bad locations, bad aesthetics, and inconvenient enemies. I really started to love Outpost Zimonja and County Crossing more with each playthrough with the former being fun to build around but is cramped and the latter being more wide open with the surrounding roads and locations, but the two permanent fixtures i.e. the house and shack being noticeable eyesores. I do love what you did with CC, it's gorgeous. It reminds me of when I turned Red Rocket into a fortress just building around the gas station itself but making it a beast of a fortress with three floors, a lush garden on the rooftop, workout areas on the sides, shops on the second level, and barracks on the first with a dance floor under the canopy in the fueling area. All of it being guarded by wall to wall missle turrets and settlers armed to the fucking teeth with fully upgraded handmade rifles.
The triangle of death is not the player's fault. It is the developer's fault. They shouldn't have placed the three settlements so close together. While players do bypass the restrictions that Bethesda placed on settlement building in order to keep performance more acceptable, I find that these restrictions are too heavy. I can't enjoy building settlements without bypassing some of those restrictions. Unfortunately, that means I have to choose which of those three settlements I want to place attention on rather than letting all three flourish simultaneously. This could have been avoided with some alternative level design (not making Red Rocket a settlement, choosing another Red Rocket, or moving Red Rocket; and moving Abernathy Farm farther away).
I guess I just don't see much reason to build out Sanctuary, to the point it causes problems. I just use the existing houses, put up some lights, some water purifiers, and defenses, and call it a day. I have done about 10 playthroughs, and never had to drop weapons at Sanctuary, or Abernathy.
@@Tijuanabillsome of us just develop an attachment to the place and end up making it one of major settlements, whether due to the tiny prewar tutorial bit before you enter vault or due to the size of it with several cleanly pre split plot areas for stuff like boarding or shops along the cul de sac, and want to attempt to turn it into a shining beacon, just different strokes for people
21:05 - was listening to this while driving. The way you said the word "Wharf" so many times clued me in to what you were doing. Well... that AND I've been watching DS9.
The trader stalls at covenant actually CAN be assigned to settlers if you have the vault-Tec DLC! Using the vault-tec management terminal you can assign unemployed settlers to them. I’m not sure what tier they become when you assign them though
I remember hearing someone once (might have been oxhorn actually, I can’t recall) say that the traders in covenant were tier 4 traders. So I would assume the shops themselves are tier 3. But I also remember assigning settlers to them before and the stock wasn’t all that impressive… I assigned just regular settlers though, but still. So It’s possible they’re like tier 1, but the settlers that were in covenant were programmed to have tier 4 shops. Idk. But I was just happy to be able to assign them so I didn’t care too much.
I’ve played this game a dozen times and I’ve never heard of the Boston airport before. Neat. My favourite settlement is the alley, it’s a cozy haven away from the dangers of the city. Definitely not meant to house more than a half dozen people, but still.
I recently found out that attackers (like the Rust Devils) could take weapons out of the workshop and use them, that’s why you should probably put defenses in your player homes
Vault 88 is by far my favourite settlement.., so many possibilities (like building high structures around living deathclaws deep in the caves., as a tourist attraction or sacrificial pit)
I like Hangman's Alley but yeah, it's really only meant to have 5-6 settlers max, and two of those need to be provisioners, if not three of them. It's only use, aside from being a good player base, is really as a good settlement resource gathering node for places like Oberland Station once the provisioners are set up. I tend to give those provisioners Diamond City Guard gear, since they're essentially doing their job for them.
Lets be honest. Fallout 4 was an unfinished game that got released as a finished product on the surface but really was not a finished product and it shows. It really really shows. The building feature is so broken and incomplete in the vanilla game.
But if it was a bad game, we wouldn't even care. People forget the other side of the Bethesda coin, that they make you want to play their buggy games, because when they work....*chefs kiss*....
I have a sort of sandbox type of save where I experiment with ideas and builds for certain settlements. My two favorites I've made so far are outpost zimonja which I turned into a Boston minuteman radio station where traders and really anyone can travel to and make a request for a radio broadcast by way of a script they write. They'll be greeted with a sort of bunkhouse/restaurant/bar to just hang out at after making such a dangerous journey all the way up there. There's also a farm for the restaurant and some water pumps that are out of the way of everything so they don't cause any noise issues for patrons. My second favorite is my beloved Starlight City. I made it look more recently established with junk fences surrounding the city as well as the tall guard posts slyly engraved into the walls for certain high risk areas like the cliff side overlooking the city and the main gate where people are vetted to be let in or turned away. I used a glitch I think with a rug and concrete pillar to move the industrial water pumps away from the main city but they still produce water. I used the area behind the projector wall for farming and have it built like a scrappy greenhouse where they supply the city with food. the little room you can go into is where the greenhouse extends out of and it's used by the gardeners as a secret drug crafting den where the city gets most of its funding. The lore is the reason the city is so prosperous is because the founder's grandson who is a coward made a deal with some of the raider clans nearby and agreed to sell them as much drugs as they could afford so long as they leave the city alone. Of course being a bunch of strung out junkies they agreed and they continued to grow due to large influxes of money and resources being delivered to them suspiciously in a very safe manner but no one has looked into it cause there's no raiders attack and everyone is well fed and has a secure roof over their head. To end it off the city has 3 areas with their own purposes. Facing the main building, off to the left and wrapping around to the back of the building, there's a pseudo-strip mall with dedicated stores for clothes hand tailored by a woman and her son who run the store together, a general trading store that's used as more of a pawn shop ran by a sleazy doofus who's hoping to one day travel the whole U.S. to sell goods as a wandering merchant (his shop is mostly where people just trade some valuables for a few extra caps or a couple rolls of duct tape before heading back out on the road), and a weapons shop that an elderly blacksmith runs with his adopted son he'd found around 12 years before settling in Starlight City it's a long story we can move on. The smith is in the far back corner facing inward toward the projector wall, the pawn shop is a little further down the path facing into the city with a bright neon sign labeled "Patrick's Pawns" it's not a very creative name and his name isn't even Patrick he just found the sign somewhere. And right next to his place is the clothing store with a second story where the woman and her son sleep. They're a bit on the poor side and don't have much stuff besides their sewing equipment and a family heirloom (I've yet to decide what I want it to be) that they keep on display. On the opposite side of the city is the residential area where the houses are supported by the junk walls. Not much to talk about with the houses tho just the usual long house, small house, two story, and an apartment complex that's a 4x3 and 3 stories tall that can house up to 24 residents but no less than 12 with everyone getting a 1x2 apartment that's surprisingly spacious if you lay it out correctly. And finally the most recent thing I've been working on is a 3 story building built up against the projector wall that has a restaurant/bar on the ground floor, a front patio for outside eating, a roughly put together inn for temporary residents, and the top floor where there's a lounge area and a balcony over looking the city. That's as far as I've gotten with starlight city but I've been feeling inspired to continue working on it.
Great video, thanks for uploading. I largely agree, but Graygarden should be much higher on the list. It's easy to defend and it comes with a unique population of robots, including a trader. These robots have personalities and are a cool and unique addition to the settlement. Also, Graygarden comes set up with tons of food supply which can be useful for supplying other settlements, or starting your main build at Graygarden.
Also part of the nearby bridge is within the build area; and is a great place to build turrets overlooking the main spawn point near the railroad track.
There's a third power armor chassis near the National Guard Training Yard, just make a beeline for the Satellite Array and you'll come across some APCs and a trailer truck, typically guarded by a Mister Handy and sometimes and an Assaultron, fighting some random scavs or creatures. The power armor will be in the truck and have random pieces like the one locked in the workshop of the armory instead of a full set like the one locked behind an Expert lockpick/hack
I'm so happy there's actually settlement building content on YT. I always hear about how people hate settlements, it's really nice to get content I can relate to lol
@@Phoenix2312 Its one of my "Ok, but I'm not doing anything elaborate" locations, like The Castle, Sanctuary Hills, or Croup Manor, where I just put stuff in the existing structures, and move on.
I could think of a use for the worst of the worst, just a small outpost to rest and resupply, a small elevated house for one or two settlers. Nothing is entirely useless, just gotta figure out how to make use of what you got.
The tougher build locations are the most fun. You can build whatever you want at Abernathy, Starlight, or Spectacle Island, and few list those as their favorite places.
Hey this video was super helpful. I have over 1000 hours in the game and havent done much building. But in recent times ive noticed starlight drive in has 2 spawn locations for enemies. One is by the crashed train and the other is by the ceiling ramp of the dinner projector building. Also i really hope when the ps5 fallout 4 comes out we get more stuff like we did for skyrim. Keep up the great content!
@@hiiipowerbass2337I only use mods that add decor because housing is my favorite aspect in games that have that feature. I don’t do anything that changes the core gameplay and I quest/explore as the game was intended. I don’t consider that cheating. It depends on what mods a player is using.
Just got back into FO4 on PS4 recently and was looking at my old bases. I built a massive tower base in outpost Zimonja years ago. Had to flaten it out using foundations and half walls to cover up some of the immortal buildings. Used the walkway to hide generators. Had at least 8 floors with diifferent themes/purposes. Got about 18-20 settlers living there. Used pre walled settlements for protection without using up the build limit and put my turrets high enough that they wipe stuff out before it's a problem. Put a few balconies/holes in for jetpacking in and out. It went from being the worst to my best base after that. Main mods used were for the wall and clutter. Should be able to make a good base on vanilla too if you have workshop dlc.
Bro, I gotta say, your videos are great! They're very well done and comprehensive, detailed and understandable, and you're pretty funny to boot! I've been hooked the past few days. I've definitely been adding all that I've seen to my FO4 tips and tricks playlist. Thanks for the great content! Keep up the great work 👍
I really enjoyed this video and I appreciate your perspective a lot. I’ve been playing Fallout 4 for years but only just recently got into settlement building and it’s been a ton of fun. Definitely going to prioritize your list of top settlements though! (also thank you so much for warning me about the triangle of death; that could have been a huge problem for me haha)
I do enjoy building in Hangman Alley personally, and when I do, I intentionally leave the two other doors sealed, so enemies that want in get funnelled through concentrated defenses.
The issue is not whether the settlement location is to small or if it has difficult terrain but the inability to scrap everything and clean up the junk
i like hangman's ally as a mini base. a quick place to duck into away from enemies. i actually send danse there after his quest because it's a cool place to lay low. i only wish i knew how to build upwards and we could build inside the buildings too, it would definitely add to the space of it and make for an interesting area
My personal favorites include Zimonja, Jamaica Plains, Tenpines and Taffington. I play on PC and usually modded, so it makes these settlements MUCH more enjoyable and reusable. One of my usual "first big goals" is to restore the house at Tenpines. It's really fun if/when you allow yourself to be creative. JP is also wonderful and fun place for restoration project. Sure, you have no place for large population but it can easily support small trading post.
hey folks, this is a re-upload, the backing soundtrack was flagged for copyright, which is wierd because I've used it several times before with no issues, and all of the checks after upload checked out, but that's youtube for you. it also gave me a chance to make a few minor corrections.
Would explain my current mental breakdown, thanks. 👌
Watched it just before taken down. Fantastic takes on all settlements, great work, loved it alot
What I figured when I was in the middle of watching it and then say that the video was no longer available halfway through.
If you contact or watch videos from other people that regularly upload videos they also have gone on at certain points about how the way RUclips regulates videos makes no sense
All Red Rocket and Train Stations. Should be Settlements.
RR, for Faction Outposts.
TS, for Trading settlements.
My only complaint of F4 for Settlement building is the inability to clean up areas. From a lore perspective, people want to clean their living space. Even in a future dystopian post apocalypse people will inherently desire to remove garbage from their homes! 🤦♂️
I'd extend this complaint to more than just player settlements as many npc settlements and trading areas are also full of trash and sometimes even dead bodies (like the Drumlin Diner). So many npc places look like no one has occupied the location for more than a day or two. Sure some people irl may not care about living or working in a trash heap but most people are at least going to try to clean up a place by clearing out the junk, making it more sound and safer, and making it more visually appealing. It would have been nice if more settlements had done like The Castle where after a few days the settlement is cleaned up quite a bit- would also make it seem like the player isn't doing all the work.
Also that you can't rebuild a lot of places. Again, people don't just want to live in a room open to the sky, they want a roof.
@@darthbob88 There it would be nice if you could use supplies to "fix up" damaged buildings beyond shoving workshop walls, floors, and ceilings to cover holes. The preexisting buildings in Sanctuary are the biggest example as outside of mods it's really hard to make them look halfway decent.
Don't mind the skeleton. That's just Pa
I agree. That and I don't like how you can only build in a certain area. Like Jamaica Plains.
I would have LOVED if settlement mode allowed you to repair structures that you couldn’t scrap. Even if they looked a little mismatched or scruffy, it would have been amazing to restore roofs, walls, and flat floors!
Sounds like Place Everywhere mod and Snappy House Kit are your dream duo
@@ConeBones1532 I’ll have to see if they have those for console! Searching for mods on the Xbox is freaking miserable, though…
The Castle's walls :(((
@@F2PMegaGod you can put concrete in the walls of the castle to patch it up.
@@nubreed13 Concrete isn't available in the base game is it?
i wish we have more prebuilt houses (the ones we can build) that didn't look like they could colapse at any time
The ones at the co-op aren’t bad but are likely full of corpses
@@charlespfister6240 yeah, i meant more like a pre build house that you can build, or maybe give us the option of repair the houses in the settlements
@@Ricardo_Rick You can stick together a couple of barns, big door to big door, for a decent-sized fairly waterproof barracks. Fill it full of beds and there y'go. If they're lucky I'll build them a TV, then laugh as they attempt to tune anything in, hundreds of years after civilisation was evaporated.
Sometimes maybe they get a seat.
I built Granny Drugs a nice little chapel to sit in, on the street in Sanctuary actually. Plop down her special seat and there she is like one of those gypsy fortune teller machines like you get in Futurama, except surlier and with better lies.
@@greenaum better than nothing, still i would enjoy more if at least those weren't full of holes
Never really how absolutely no one knows how to build sound structures in the game, like, you'd think at least a few dozen people could
I always ranked the Red Rocket gas station pretty high just because it's so cozy and it's like a 'no Preston's allowed' club where I can just chill and let the jukebox play.
It's a horrible spot to build though because it's so small, and it's in the triangle of death. No matter the PC, you will encounter lag if you build in any of the 3.
@@tacticalmattressI built on top of the roof and only keep 4 settlers there and my 40+ power armors
@@derekg6857 I WAS ABLE TO MAKE A FORTRESS. with prison. a health clinic. shops. on the roof i have the vault solar generators and a look out tower.
It’s also pretty easy to find on the map when you want to Fast Travel. A rocket symbol in the Northwest corner of the map, just near Sanctuary & Vault 111
Thr only bad part of red rocket is it is small, and you can't place water purifiers
I discovered that scraping mods bring problems of their own. Some places don’t have a collision mesh under the junk. Also scraping normally unscrapable structures doesn’t necessarily get rid of npc interaction markers. I once scraped the stilted building in hangman’s alley. I returned to find a settler five feet above the ground hammering a wall that no longer existed. 😅
Also you break the precombined meshes, which can cause massive issues
@@maggi98mw That's generally only a big problem (performance-wise, can't speak for subtler issues) in the urban settlements. The ones out in the sticks can usually get away with it because there's not nearly as many objects other than like, trees, but the buildings in the city are made out of SO MANY different parts that rely on being precombined to lower the poly/object count to something that won't turn your computer into an IED.
Hangman's Alley and Bunker Hill become absolute nightmares...
That's when you know it's time to call an intervention, and cut said settler off of the Psycho-Jet!
Bunker Hill is really bad with these as well. Finally, you can scrap that damn wall and build something better. Oh, look... the game keeps crashing. Turns out you scrap the outer wall, it breaks something and will crash Bunker Hill every time you load that cell. God forbid you touch that water tank under the toilets.
I've also had at least one game where something caused a hard reset of the cell (probably accidentally scrapping outer wall bits) and it made the entire original settlement respawn, merged into my settlement. And the "original" was unscrappable now. Argh!
@@doryna_sira The first thing sounds like it could be a broken precombine issue. Have you looked into if there's a mod fix for it? I've seen plenty of other mod fixes for precombine issues. Like the one that afflicts downtown Boston, making the game LITERALLY unplayable on Xbox One, cause of a 100% chance of game crashing if you so much as glance upon the Broken Skybridge.
Seriously. If my character was facing that thing? Bye bye went the game.
Theres something ridiculously funny about the pathing of the settlers to go around in circles and not interact with anything in the settlement but somehow manage to walk around the rooftops
i have like 3 settlers trapped on the roof at jamaica planes right now
they just somehow wandered up there
@@bustapou740 - stairs :) they will eventually walk down them. if not, use the game mechanic where you order them to get back to work. They will leave the roof and instantly teleport to their jobs.
If they are unemployed, it takes them to a 'gathering' point that 'new' settlers use when they first enter the settlement.
I just wish more settlements could be established in the vanilla game. Many locations have great potential. Also the build ceiling in most settlements causes some eye twitch...
There's a mod for that
@@LokiLamont Yeah, but I wish it were in the vanilla game. Also, some areas have cell resets.
@@LokiLamontMods are bandages for an infected wound
@@Sight-Beyond-Sight Why would anybody want to play a Crapthesda game vanilla? They suck completely without mods. Get Sim Settlements 2 with the add-ons, get Raze Everything and have fun building.
I don’t really understand the build ceiling thing - I feel like big tall buildings kinda ruin the wasteland aesthetic
I've had a permanent glitch where the Fogcrawler at Dalton Farm is invincible and cannot be killed no matter what I try (even console commands, it still respawns whenever I return). It just adds to the fun of the settlement as I've had to restrict access to the ground floor for settlers. They pass the time listening to the permanent sound of dozens of turrets opening up on the crawler while they go about their business.
Just as Todd Howard intended
I have the same problem there too and at murkwater construction, I just set up concrete walls where the mirelurk queen spawns and turrets on top of the walls
@@glossamiree3194Blud spawncamping the children
Maybe try the disable command if you havent, Cuz It IS better than the kill one since It erase them for ever
Watching this video made me realize exactly how dependent I am on mods. I like a lot of the bad settlements you listed and it's all because I have a mod that lets me scrap way more stuff.
And a mod where enemies won't spawn inside the settlement built area
And a mod that let's me have the entire Jamaica plains
Right, I was a little offended when they listed hangman's alley so low, but then I have mods that open up the buildings around it so there's a much bigger area to work with.
With scrapping mods you can delete a lot of surrounding ground around the cave at Coastal Cottage - opens it up and I turn it into a secret bunker.
'Scrap Everything' and 'Place Everywhere' are essential. I play in survival-mode as that makes most sense, so I added the 'Herbal Remedies' and the 'Console Enabler in survival-mode'-mod as well.
It's kind of an interesting design choice to make everything half destroyed, but then to make it invulnerable.
""""""interesting"""""" indeed
After 200 years there really shouldn't be anything left at all. Pripyat Ukraine has been in decay for only 40 years and it's about a match.
@@MakerInMotion Classic fallout excuse they build things to last.
@@MakerInMotion in the fallout universe nokia makes houses
@@beathammer7420in sanctuary Nokia apparently bought the lustron company and built nuke resistant lustron homes
An important tip i learned too late, and caused me to go back and re-do settlements: If you have to kill people or creatures to obtain the settlement, do NOT engage the workshop once you've cleared the settlement, until AFTER you have left the area, and stayed away for 2 in-game weeks. That will allow the dead creatures to disappear. This only works for the ones you've killed, not for dead bodies baked into the terrain. But it does work, as it was the only thing that eliminated things like the dead mole rats from Starlight Drive-In.
I don’t think I’ve ever had that problem. I’ve been doing Fallout playthroughs over the last few months where I do as much as possible and get all the settlements. On my current character (level 54) I have the Lighthouse, and claimed the workshop right after, I just went back maybe 5 minutes ago and there’s no corpses, aside from the dead traders who I cast out to the ocean.
I just got a mod that lets you scrap dead bodies (and mole rat holes). This works for everything except Hangman's Alley. There, I just drag the bodies outside of the settlement and eventually they get cleared by the game over time.
@@hydra9627 not all settlements are the same. Red Rocket and Starlight have both given me issues in the past. I've had playthoughs that I scrapped after many hours, because the mole rat hills won't disappear. It's random, though.
@@duffborgwardt8512Red Rocket is a no build zone. Look up triangle of death.
@@tacticalmattress oh, I know. Luckily, I amost always just leave Abernathy Farm alone, except giving them a provisioner. I'll put about 8 settlers at Red Rocket, and basically leave the place alone. But I have 27 settlers over at Sanctuary, and I pretty much just build up the old homes and not build any massive bases.
But way back when, I ALWAYS had issues with Abernathy Farm. That's not the case anymore, with only 4-6 settlers.
Just to add flavor. The battle of Bunker Hill was fought from Breeds Hill. The British from boston wanted Bunker Hill for high ground placement of armies and artillery. The patriots found out and loaded Breeds Hill with militiamen. The men on Breeds Hill were able to hold the British at bay till their ammo ran dry. The British, while technically winning by taking the hills after patriots could no longer fight, actually lost about 4 times as many men as the patriots did.
I’ve found that there’s functionality 3 types of settlements that exist in the game, and this has really colored my experience in both how I build and how favorable I am to certain places since what might be bad at one thing is perfect for another. The big three types are, safe house, settlement, and NPC home. Also should be stated I play in almost entirely in survival mode so take what with a grain of salt since I am playing a different game to the standard play through.
For safe houses you have things like Hangman’s Alley, Jamaica Plains, and RedRocket. They are more designed to be rest stops for refilling needed resources, and dumping inventory as well as a safe and sanitary place to save. They are also never supposed to support more than say 1-2 people at any given time since the place is really only suppose to support the player with what they need, and not sustain a village. For these places it’s almost more important where they are than what they have. This is crucial for the vast majority of the game until you get to later stages where you have enough vertabirds grenades to consistently take you places. This is why hangman’s alley is so beloved. It is in the perfect location with the only problem being the vertabird drop point being on a random encounter. Also a settlement like Summerville Place works really well in this light since it’s the perfect rest stop before the glowing sea.
Settlements are exactly that. Places like Sanctuary, the Slog, and Starlight Drive In where they are just a place for a village. They are exactly what people imagine when talking about settlement building so I don’t need to say anything else.
Finally we have NPC homes. Places like Finch Farm, Grey Garden, and Abernathy Farm. Though these can be perfect examples of the above mentioned types. I find they’re main point of existence is to be the quest they have with just the reward being that you get a settlement, and sometimes a settlement with a quirk like grey garden. Not much to say, but I personally try to leave them more or less as intended, and just let them be what they were. There’s no reason in my mind to build here since these aren’t really my places.
If you Vertibird to fens street sewer you will land in a much better spot to get to hangmans.
This is useful to get into head, because even if it means less settlements where you truly try to make it amazing, it makes places like hangman’s feel better since then you’ll be designing it to fit YOUR accommodations, rather than trying to mix in water, food, and npc housing all in one place that can be more of a struggle in the less open and smaller ones
Um if a settlement doesn't have access to water, put down a farm plot and put one or two of those mechanical water pumps down on top of them. The tops of the plots count as dirt. You can put them anywhere you can put a plot down.
As an avid hangman's ally user; i see the error's in my way, but i refuse to change.
Thank you
Its one of my favorite settlements, but I don't have a mod phobia, so that shack gets deleted immediately every playthrough.
The mechanist’s layer has one purpose, it’s a really good settlement to make your “logistics hub” as it’s literally a settlement that you can just forget about and not have to walk in on only to find the place crowded by settlers assigned to resource transportation. If you really want to, you can also decorate the place to make it feel like a professional logistics hub and not like just a place to dump your settlers assigned to logistics.
Yeah, once I had it, I scrapped all my human trading links and just built an army of robots going from the lair to each settlement.
@@jabezhaneThe problem with that is that Automatron bots have the potential to reset to default when they're in a cell that resets. There don't seem to be viable fixes for this afaik.
@@alpacalover0 Been working fine for me since 2017.
@@jabezhane Did you give them the M-SAT upgrade (the tracker device from the Automatron main quest) or take them as a companion before sending them off? I heard that has the potential to prevent them from breaking.
@@alpacalover0 lol...its really not that important to me. It just worked for while I was playing. I wasn't doing performance reviews or anything.
You can get the lighthouse to shine if you wire up to the top
Really!? Where do you connect the wire?
I'll have to check this but I'm almost positive that the light shines and the only thing I did was put a generator and broadcast beacon up there and the house lights work. I assumed the atom people established power
@@toddchubb3464 The light shines at first, after you take the settlement. Then after a few trips there and back, it shuts down. Personally, I just put a punch of those single hanging light bulb lights up, and a small generator.
Hangman's Alley is one of my most frequently used settlements because of its location. My main home is either Red Rocket or Sanctuary Hills but they're miles away from everything else
Agreed
It's my main base during my survival playthrough. All of my companions + guards live there.
Hangman's is my go to
@@sabersroommate8293ditto. Best central survival base. I once turned it into a second diamond city. Nearly crashed the game it was so packed.
I have managed to make a nice place in Hangman's alley but as I play with head-canon in mind, I tend to build up Sanctuary but I always leave the starting home untouched, as a way of my character "leaving their last beind be cause it is too painful to revisit" blah, blah, blah so I use the Red Rocket station as my personal player home...with Cait of course.
I always build the castle. I think it works nicely trying to cram everything in the middle and growing crops on top
I never thought of growing crops on the top of the castle! Will be trying this... thank you😊
A novel farming idea!! I always use the top for a nice spot to sit in the evening. Great views on all sides! But farming up there sounds great too. Frees up space below.
And it's central location on the map
If you have the Vault 88 DLC, you can stick a nice mini-vault door between the concrete blocks, to provide a cool entrance. It's electric so you'll have to set up some sort of cool access mechanism.
I always build shorter crops on the wall and tall crops outside near the water (to keep them from getting damaged during fights). The middle I keep clean because someone who was in the military (Nate) would want a safe place for his men to do training drills and they can't do that with many things in the way. I put the merchants and the required beds in the alcoves instead of outside or in a player building.
I loved The Castle. I immediately repaired the wall when I arrived, shortly after had the first difficult raid on it, and from there I knew it would be my favorite settlement. I put a powered door on one side, but the little hallway entry point I left unblocked, because being the only entrance to the settlement, that became my choke point for turrets. For me, it was like Starlight, but with a pre-existing structure that looked like about as good as I could hope to make of a building on the land anyway.
I loved the idea of Starlight. I wanted to build a tribute to Sol Tower from one of my favorite retro RPGs that, accurate to said title, would be essentially the entire settlement, but after clearing everything for parts and opting to leave it without a recruitment beacon until I had made the first couple floors of the structure, I just...never ended up building on it.
Every time I would go to it I would see it and go "Ah, this is gonna be an awesome primary settlement eventually." and...that was it.
Abernathy Farm I honestly dismissed as just another farm, but after watching your top settlements video I was tempted to go back a little. I never ended up doing so though, because it ended up being my most raided settlement by a very wide margin. The fact that it's run by Chuck Norris couldn't save it from me getting too frustrated by the fact that whether it was from misc. raids or Radio Freedom calls, its number got called roughly 1 in every 3 times I had to defend a settlement, even though it had next to no upgrades apart from having enough turrets that it should've never had any issues.
I spent far too much time building vault 88 for almost no pay out. That said, the solution I implemented for attacks was very simple for the investment it takes. I used concrete walls and windows to create a box trap at both alt entrances, and trail markers to help myself navigate. Now, I don't get lost and I know were every enemy is - clean up is a breeze.
I've made some of my best settlements at Vault 88.
the trail markers lol
yeah 88 always winds up feeling like a dinky vault with highways attached to it
Using markers is a fantastic idea! It's best to not even clear out the alt entrances at all, that way enemies only spawn in the main entrance.
@@pat2rome Yep, lock the front door, and don't scrap the entire cave, and it just can't get attacked, as intended for a vault.
Okay, Hangmans ally is best taken by dropping down from the adjacent roofs, dont unlock the doors at all and you keep it so much more secure, one guard will take out most enemies because they wont have a path to move, adding turrets to the adjacent fire escapes and roofs will help, you can get in from the roof on the east side from the ally and get out by jumping the guard tower.
That had to be a frustrating re-edit & upload 😵💫
I always loved turning Home Plate into my personal museum. I'd have most of my previous clothing sets, primary/secondary weapons, my bobbleheads, certain items like a nuke warhead a fusion core etc etc in little display cases. I'd build up a nice looking bedroom and really go HAM decorating the place. My settlements I'd just stick to developing for settlers, never really spending time building a player home there. Its a fun way to play. Thinking about it actually gives me the itch to go back and play Fallout 4 again!
I'm playing it myself for the first time :D
building a house & demolishing the town with mods was sometimes the first thing I did ^^
I rebuilt the vanilla house opposite the starting house. Tore off the roof & kept the walls. now it's a small self-sustaining castle with an electronic gate. 1 more house is already built for the junkie granny. However, I can no longer move her chair, so she sits on the top floor in front of a desk with files & a radio transmitter in my HQ xD
I really enjoy the castle partially because of the free defenses you can get. All you have to do is wait a few days, complete the quest (that gives you some pretty cool armor imo) and boom you've got some mines and laser turrets. I'm not a huge settlement builder but having the castle come with defenses like that makes it feel like an actual castle. Plus the free water it comes with, and the ease of building crops, it's an awesome package that makes it my favorite settlement. The worst thing in my opinion is the guy with the radio blabbering on.
It is kinda weird to see what's supposed to be a big militia in just rags and leather hats, though. I prefer downloading a mod that makes the minutemen more like a serious militia and less like a joke, with things like combat/power armor (depending on your level) and better guns
Exactly. One small thing Bethesda should’ve done that would’ve changed up the whole game: in the early game, the Minutemen you see are wearing rags. In the late game (or just after you get the castle) you start seeing a lot of Minutemen with blue-painted combat armor. Much like how you can make combat armor brotherhood of steel, and it has a more rusted red/brown/gray look, you should be able to make it minuteman themed, and give it a more bluish gray look.
@@PurgPurg I completely agree. I always use a mod that makes them have better gear, like what they should actually have
@@Simply_better22343 What is mod name?
When I give people weapons manually, they seem to use them. Only armor does not.
@@pingurage2460 there's tons of minutemen mods, like minutemen buffed or minutemen militia. Be warned, the ones I've used give the dead Minuteman in Concord full combat gear. If that's a little unbalanced for you, might want to just not use that combat gear
In all fairness to outpost zimonja, it's not as hard to take it as you're making it out to be. There's a bridge just above that you can shoot from and can be used to soak up the mini nukes if you step back at the right time! I usually add a few crops and a water pump and pretend that it's a little safehouse for railroad agents ❤
I just came at night and pickpocketed everything. Including a certain fusion cell.
I usually snipe him from that bridge before he even gets in his power armour. Though one time as I walked up to the edge to look over and start sniping I must have accidentally alerted him somehow because I immediately took a mininuke to the face. Literally. It happened so fast I had to save the recording and replay it frame by frame to see what happened 😂
Finch farm has a small pool of water you can put a water purifier in near the support pillar at 29:30.
Correct! If you look at the building limits you'll notice they did kind of extended the limits in a way to force that column and piece of water within the building limits. The entire overpass makes this a fun place to build a decent settlement.
Yeah that’s what I thought, I managed to squeeze four of these bad boys in that chunk of water
There is a mod on console that can scrap dead bodies. If I remember correctly, it is called Scrap Everything. I also believe it can scrap the unscrapable houses in many places.
And if u get it don't use the scrap all command as it removed everything and it can't be undo
Hangman's Alley is probably the best settlement for a survival playthrough.
My hatred of murkwater stems from a glitch causing the queen to respawn. Nothing like having to repair most of the water/food/defense from that
That happened to me once,but when actually built stuff at it,it never happened again
I use Murkwater as a Marcy gulag.
@@nicoderfeuerloscher1684 I believe that ideal settlement will go to the Boston airport
@@godcow6211t but then she has B.O.S members to annoy, better to leave her somewhere completely alone
@@brendanboomhour7606 I was more think making the Boston airport into a Marcy gulag for her to most likely die in
Fallout 4 is easily my favourite game and i have played a lot in my lifetime. I don't know what it is about the game, its very immersive and theres so many different companions and people you meet. Its the one game that makes me want to go back and play through again.
Ikr, it’s great for some reason; no other fallout has brought me back so much.
Also, am I the only one who likes the graphics? It has this charm that blends with modded weather, and is not that bad on the eyes either.
The problem with this game Settlement is that not very far away from most Settlements are functioning save defencable buildings
Yeah, the premise is nonsensical. There would be whole communities living inside every industrial building that still has power, instead of them being vacant, or full of raiders.
I am very impressed with your improvement of quality. You’re quality has gotten so good over a short period of time! Props to you
You can also unlock Warwick immediately by going to the atom cats and doing the chores they have for you.
No the atom cats bring you to warrick but do not unlock it
You get a quest from roger to kill some mutants that unlocks it.@@molassesman4066
Hey! Nice profile icon! 🖖😀
@@molassesman4066After completing the quest, you can talk to them to get an unlock quest for the settlement.
That can happen, but not always. In my current playthrough, I have made multiple trips to check in on them, and they never offer a mission.
You CAN access water for a purifier at Finch Farm. Part of the river to the Northeast under the bridge is inside the settlement boundary.
Just FYI. 😉
I will be in a
Yep, it isn't large area of water compared to settlement size (kinda like with The Castle), but it is enough for at least a handful of big purifiers.
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
00:53 Ranking criteria
02:07 TIER 1: Not a real settlement
02:27 Mechanist's Lair (Automatron DLC)
03:26 Home Plate
03:52 Boston Airport
04:31 TIER 2: Worst of the worst
04:43 Coastal Cottage
05:50 Somerville Place
07:04 Hangman's Alley
09:11 Jamaica Plain
10:27 Outpost Zimonja
11:41 Covenant
12:59 Croup Manor
14:13 Tenpines Bluff
15:03 TIER 3: Not so bad
15:18 Vault 88 (Vault Tec Workshop DLC)
17:27 Longfellow's Cabin (Far Harbor DLC)
18:23 Greentop Nursery
19:15 Bunker Hill
20:08 Graygarden
20:55 Kingsport Lighthouse
22:08 Murkwater Construction Site
23:16 Oberland Station
24:01 TIER 4: Now we're getting somewhere
24:37 Taffington Boathouse
25:17 Sunshine Tidings Co-op
26:19 Red Rocket Truck Stop
27:49 The Slog
29:11 Finch Farm
29:33 County Crossing
30:07 Echo Lake Lumber Mill (Far Harbor DLC)
30:59 The Castle
31:40 Sanctuary
33:11 Warwick Homestead
34:09 TIER 5: Cream of the crop
34:28 Egret Tours Marina
35:00 National Park Visitor's Center (Far Harbor DLC)
35:27 Nordhagen Beach
36:26 Abernathy Farms
37:29 Dalton Farm (Far Harbor DLC)
38:04 Nukaworld Red Rocket (Nukaworld DLC)
39:28 Spectacle Island
40:48 Starlight Drive-in
42:37 Conclusion
(Grey, feel free to copy this into the description; the auto-generated chapters missed a lot of sections)
...there's an island i couldve built on?
Riiiight
It's huge but kinda horrible location
Yeah....sadly. It's huge but they could have done way better with it. I prefer sanctuary hills over it.
Almost useless on survival difficulty. Just because you need to swim to get there if you aren't aligned with the brotherhood.
Great video! I love Starlight Drive In too. I just wish Bedford Station was another settlement too because I like that area of the map.
If youre looking for easy to start building settlements i would recommend okie1682's series as many of his settlements are subtle great improvements but with Sanctuary being TheRealJenn's Sanctuary mod that repairs the original buildings, i would personally take the patched up look rather then prewar textured but thats personal i guess.
Bunker Hill as example is done exactly as you describe the build area is expanded to expand the entire block of houses its in, with solid walls and a rebuilt main market structure with living space for its residents above it, furthermore all shacks are junked leaving loads of usable space. Similarly theres The Castle with walls repaired as it once was as sure you can patch up the walls but its a horror to do taking insane hours and it will never look as majestic as this version does.
In short, the settlement mods are absolutely worth it and make Bethesda's extremely lacking system work quite well and pleasant.
Despite the downsides, I still think Hangman's alley should be near the top of this list because it is probably hands down the most important settlement in survival mode. Its location alone makes it so valuable as a settlement.
His argument is that as a settlement it has a lot of challenges but as a player home it's a great location. It can handle a few settlers but like with the Red Rocket it doesn't feel like it was designed to become a major settlement. I'm having a lot of fun building in Hangman's Alley in my current playthrough but I'm designing it more as the player home that I wasn't satisfied with in Home Plate.
@@jcohasset23home plate is really disappointing imo. The best you can make there is a small living room with maybe a disco light. I get why it isn't better but still, not the best
The problem with this is that you don’t have to play on survival and some people are looking to have fun, not a challenge and don’t play survival (or the just are terrible at gaming like me)
Which means that your point, while important to mention, has little to do with a likely decent sized portion of the player base
Essentially, not everyone uses survival mode, so survival mode importance is completely thrown out the window in those cases
@@SaidNoGaming Even on regular difficulty Hangman's Alley is highly useful because of its proximity to Diamond City and downtown Boston and because it's easily attainable as a low level character. It's probably the settlement that most players will use the most in the early to mid part of the game until they get access to BoS vertibirds or the Institute teleporter. That said trying to turn it into a large settlement is challenging due to the build restrictions and settler AI problems so it really works best as a small settlement and/or a base for the player.
I keep hearing about a next-gen version of FO4. I hope they take a good look at the pre-combines and the scrapping issues. Great video.
The update didnt do anything to help on console but it expanded the list a little bit in terms of things to do. such as XO2 earlier than planned. personally im still tinkering with mods on console to see what i want and what i dont before committing to a playthrough
I like Coastal Cottage, it’s definitely not great… I like making a large concrete domicile on the cliff.
The one benefit he didn't mention is there is a trader just south of the settlement. It's not a great trading post and encounters tend to spawn on the road along it but it's fair to use until settlers can start being traders.
My go to settlements are:
Starlight drive in
Outpost zimonja
Hangmans alley
Jamaica plain
Murkwater
Finch Farm
Some of the settlements ive built in those areas will blow your mind.
Im even thinking about uploading a video just to show how cool and unique they are
I'm currently redoing sanctuary and the red rocket, which by using certain mods, can be fused into one giant town 😊 personally, my fav settlement is probably Abernaty farm, and least fav would be Jamaican plain. JP is just too much wasted potential. (seriously, what were they thinking in the studio)
Could u tell me what mods u use I used to be ps4 player rn going to pc
They were thinking " It Just Works! "
Loved this video, inspired me to do another Brotherhood/Minutemen settlement playthrough!
Edit: one of the things that always annoyed me is that i like to have a central hub that connects all the settlements with trade routes; I've just realized that pumping robots out of the mechanist lair to link everything up might be a great way to avoid the brahmin gridlock that messed up Sanctuary for me in my early playthroughs.
A better way would be just link each settlement to the next settlement on a route since they share all the resources along connected routes and doesnt clog any area up
I love Starlight. Its where I build my food factory, its my trading hub and where I have a lot of provisioners meet at. Murkwater is where I ship the Longs to if they annoy me too much and if I play evil in Nuka World, where I'll ship Preston to.
My favorite thing about most of the useless settlements is that you can just steal all recourses and bring them to your main settlement
assigning one of the pre-spawned settlers to a supply line might be more efficient
So true
@@e33d90 uh what? Supply lines takes time bruh 😂
I just leave them unmanned, CC and Outpost Z for example, just leave them to wither and die
Yup, I made Sanctuary my main settlement and just abandoned all the other ones lmao
I love Sanctuary Hills. It was my first settlement the first time I've played and I've turned into a full functional town with walls and stuff
I LOVED settlement building and arming settlers. I just wish they had a better point.
It's a good list and I agree with it based on the no mod or console commands premiss. You did a great job with it.
Me, I cannot...cannot play this game without Scrap That Settlement. I got it initially for the trash because all the funk laying around made no sense to me and after awhile I was pretty certain my brain would explode. Then I got STS and it just got good to me. I don't find the repetition of scrapping tedious tho. I find it relaxing. And things are better after I'm done.
Not being able to scrap many things in settlements makes zero sense. Folks would be tearing those crappy buildings down and picking up trash and dead shrubs and such to rebuild a home. STS is the only scrapping mod I will use though as I know it wont break anything.
Exactly. I mean why could you not sweep up leaves. haha.
Eh, STS will for sure break some things, but it's worth it. My argument is that anyone who ISN'T using a scrap mod, doesn't actually like building. You can't lovingly make a perfect settlement, and still leave a literal garbage pile under someone's bed.
TIMESTAMPS…
Tier 1 - Not a real settlement…
Mechanists Lair 2:29
Home plate 3:28
Boston Airport 3:53
Tier 2 - Worst of the worst…
Coastal cottage - 4:45
Somerville place - 5:50
Hangman’s alley - 7:03
Jamaica plain - 9:10
Outpost Zimonja - 10:30
Covenant - 11:41
Croup Manor - 13:01
Tenpines bluff - 14:13
Tier 3 - Not so bad…
Vault 88 (vault tech)- 15:20
Longfellow’s cabin (far harbor)- 17:28
Greentop nursery - 18:26
Bunker hill - 19:15
Graygarden - 20:09
Kingsport lighthouse - 20:56
Murkwater construction site - 22:10
Oberland station - 23:17
Tier 4 - Now we’re getting somewhere…
Taffington boathouse - 24:37
Sunshine Tidings co-op - 25:17
Red rocket truck stop - 26:19
The slog - 27:50
Finch farm - 29:12
County crossing - 29:33
Echo lake lumber mill (far harbor)- 30:10
The castle - 31:02
Sanctuary hills - 31:41
Warwick homestead - 33:12
Tier 5 - cream of the crop…
Egret tours marina - 34:30
National park visitors center (far harbor) - 35:02
Nordhagen beach - 35:29
Abernathy farm - 36:28
Dalton farm (far harbor) - 37:31
Nukaworld red rocket (nukaworld) - 38:04
Spectacle island - 39:29
Starlight drive-in - 40:49
I would argue that Outpost Zimonja is at least workable. Very mid, and definitely not the worst tier outside of settlements that physically can't function as settlements because they lack important things like ability to have food, water, or even call settlers there in the first place. Sure, God's Staircase can be annoying if you don't want to work around it, it is out of the way, provisioner pathing is weird, and there's an enemy spawn point smack dab in the center of the settlement, but it's definitely workable. There are ways to get around all these things. I've had 22 settlers, surplus of food and water, max happiness, all stores, all crafting stations, plus extra amenities. It's the settlement I finally got the benevolent leader trophy on, and it's my favourite place to build despite my recognition that it's not top tier. Way easier to work with than Hangman's Alley, I don't care if it's smack in the center of the Commonwealth right next to Diamond City making it a viable PLAYER BASE in survival mode, but for a section of land to build a settlement out of? Outpost Zimonja is one hundred percent better than Hangman's Alley in every way except for being in a convenient location. No stores nearby? You can just build stores and the caravan trading post in your settlement and the stores just come to you!
I do also enjoy building at Croup Manor, but fun fact with the settler pathing: all my settlers end up spawning in the water off the cliff side at the back side of the Manor, and they can't path their way back up and you can't build stairs for them to build the path back up. I do love Nordhagen Beach, too, but I have issues in places where kids are pre existing settlers (like Somerville Place). If you delete what their job is, you cannot reassign them to literally anything and then your happiness tanks because they're unemployed.
On the other hand, I absolutely despite building at Abernathy Farm, Finch Farm, Warwick Homestead, and Spectacle Island. The first three are because the pre existing structures at these places don't count as being roofed, so the unscrappable beds that they always default to even if you reassign them aren't counted as sheltered and they always find a way back to them even if you block the entire area off, so getting settler happiness to max is basically impossible. Warwick Homestead also suffers from settlers just spawning in the vats of water and being unable to get out. Really annoying when a radiant quest sends you there and you can't talk to the settler who wants to give you the quest because they're stuck swimming. I don't like Spectacle Island because it's too big. There's TOO much space to work with, it's an island that's not easy to get to (unlock Longfellow's Cabin) so not very practical for a settlement in a world where the only way to get to it is to swim, and settlers are hard to track down even with the bell.
My absolute least favourite settlement to build at, though, is Covenant. It's basically impossible to build there. Not anything nice, at least. And good luck if you got it through the non bloodshed way because if it gets picked for a Minuteman radiant quest, Jacob Orden will bug out and just never give you the next step in the quest they need help for.
Also, you mentioned having an issue getting Warwick Homestead as a settlement without doing the Institute quests, that's Somerville Place for me. It took me eight years to finally have a save file where I was sent to help Somerville Place with something. That's right, this year marks the year I started one of many new playthroughs and the dice rolled to give me Somerville Place! Not really worth it, but I wanted all the settlements in my main file and was unable to get them because Preston and Radio Freedom stopped giving me radiant quests to help settlements and Somerville Place just never asked for help.
FYI, you can just travel to each settlement, without the Minutemen directive, and they will still ask for help by default. There is a finite number of places the Minutemen will send you, so I find it best to unlock as many as you can on your own, to enable the tougher ones to show up as quests to help them. I have had Warwick ask me for help this way, but not always. Limiting the number of places the Minutemen CAN send you, should help you get Warwick every time. This is especially good for sites that have no default settlers. You can just unlock those, and leave them vacant, if you don't want them.
Great video! Agree on Nordhagen Beach, one of the most fun builds I have done. After getting a bit jaded on settlement building after 5 big builds I think you have inspired me to give Egret Tours or Dalton a shot to see what can be done. Thanks for taking the time in putting this video together.
5:25 coastal cottage is actually quite fun to build a small bunker/hideout in
I use the hole in the center to hide the water pumps, they never get destroyed down there and all I have to do is send a wire upwards to a generator (which can be shielded by the ruined cottage.
I accidentally used a scrap everything mod and scrapped the dirt that made the roof of the cave so now you can see into the void... oops
@@Kanelle88 I make the hole in to a spooky Halloween cave, with the creation club stuff they gave us free with the next gen update.
Favorite site: Spectacle Island. You just can't beat the size of it!
Least favorite: Murkwater. Horrible location and weather, the most ugly and frustrating unscrapable structure anywhere, and that Mirelurk Queen that will occasionally respawn.
Two sites that I wish were settlements: Fiddler's Green Trailer Estates, for its unique pre-built structures still in decent condition, and Fairline Hill Estates, a cozy cul-de-sac that would make for a lovely little community.
Can't play the game without "Scrap dead things" mod. Solves the persistent corpse issue and grants you plenty of fertilizer.
Massive amounts of fertilizer is an under rated playstyle. Endless free bullets, grenades, and Jet, is pretty useful.
I made a radical tree house in the middle of Covenant. I added new Turrets on top of the old burning ones and it gave it a neat effect. Flaming turrets.
Small complaint about the ranking of finch farm. In the corner of the build area at the beach you do have enough room for a water purifier if you angle it allowing for easy water requirements. This gives you a nice build area and a highway for extra creativity.
You don't even need to be careful how you angle it. You can just put down like 6 of the smaller purifiers, and get more total water than one big one.
While I totally understand your reason for rating Vault 88 so low, it is in my opinion the best settlement when you allow a couple mods.
- Scrap Everything
- Extended Light Range (3x)
- Extended Power Conduit Range (3x)
- No Settlement Budget
I currently have 24 settlers here, and most of them live in the 3 story main chamber, but a good number of them work in the Northeast sector as farmers.
Ive got a service corridor that runs from NE to East to the water station, and rn im building out the North section. It has the secondary atrium, and will have more shops and residential areas
The Vault should be able to support 60+ settlers, but idk if the game will let that happen.
I adore Vault 88
my least favorite settlement is Sanctuary, actually.
Idk why, but i dont like it there.
what a great channel, a true hidden gem of YT. I will now spend the next week (hopefully you have many videos already) watching all your stuff. Thank you for this
Starlight is my favorite by far. I agree with most ratings except Finch Farm. Like Greygarden, you can build up on that raised highway. I’ve made some nice fortresses on that ridge. You can snipe The Forged in the foundry and Gunners in the junkyard. It’s near northeast coast of map so it’s a good springboard for that part of the map.
I think a lot of these settlements are meant as stopping off points in survival mode
not everyone plays survival mode. most people don't
@@miekamariehodson1731 plus this was like 2 years before survival mode was added
HEY MAN!, Glad i found you , I just started playing FO4 again after 6yrs (easily) , & I HONESTLY really do Appreciate your videos, your videos have made it fun & i realized i was building to much to quickly spreading myself thin on Build Materials, but a bunch of your other videos have helped me remember locations to farm build materials & items to Farm for caps. Enjoying the content Keep up the great work!
32:30 I kinda love close together settlements. wish there were more because of that
The one thing I really like about Jamaica Plain is how close its buildable area is to Hyde Park. Scutter's raiders are within reach of a scoped weapon from the roofs; and the area between the two is more or less flat and devoid of cover which lets turrets do particularly good work when the raiders aggro toward you.
Situational, and not all that mechanically powerful in practice; but it's fun to have the opportunity for settlement defenses to actually do work in the world for you.
Greygarden has a bit of that as well; the very edge of its buildable area has a solid overlook of a road that sometimes gets raider patrols.
Finch Farm as well. Both at the bridge, and at the Satellite Array. I like picking fights then having my missile and laser cannons just smoke NPCs.
The one point Coastal Cottage has in its favor, same as Hangman's Alley, is that you can put artillery there and summon Minuteman reinforcements. It's A Base, and that is all. Otherwise, I agree that they're the Worst of the Worst.
I made it in to Sheffield's Salvage, a junkyard. I found placing all the junk to be a new experience for building.
I never build at Murkwater construction site, Hangman's alley, or Jamaica Plain(at least not anymore) because every time I clear them out I just stand in the middle of them all, hating everything and then immediately fast travel away. Bad locations, bad aesthetics, and inconvenient enemies.
I really started to love Outpost Zimonja and County Crossing more with each playthrough with the former being fun to build around but is cramped and the latter being more wide open with the surrounding roads and locations, but the two permanent fixtures i.e. the house and shack being noticeable eyesores.
I do love what you did with CC, it's gorgeous. It reminds me of when I turned Red Rocket into a fortress just building around the gas station itself but making it a beast of a fortress with three floors, a lush garden on the rooftop, workout areas on the sides, shops on the second level, and barracks on the first with a dance floor under the canopy in the fueling area. All of it being guarded by wall to wall missle turrets and settlers armed to the fucking teeth with fully upgraded handmade rifles.
The triangle of death is not the player's fault. It is the developer's fault. They shouldn't have placed the three settlements so close together. While players do bypass the restrictions that Bethesda placed on settlement building in order to keep performance more acceptable, I find that these restrictions are too heavy. I can't enjoy building settlements without bypassing some of those restrictions. Unfortunately, that means I have to choose which of those three settlements I want to place attention on rather than letting all three flourish simultaneously. This could have been avoided with some alternative level design (not making Red Rocket a settlement, choosing another Red Rocket, or moving Red Rocket; and moving Abernathy Farm farther away).
On the other hand, would it be realistic to have three major settlements so close together?
I guess I just don't see much reason to build out Sanctuary, to the point it causes problems. I just use the existing houses, put up some lights, some water purifiers, and defenses, and call it a day. I have done about 10 playthroughs, and never had to drop weapons at Sanctuary, or Abernathy.
@@Tijuanabillsome of us just develop an attachment to the place and end up making it one of major settlements, whether due to the tiny prewar tutorial bit before you enter vault or due to the size of it with several cleanly pre split plot areas for stuff like boarding or shops along the cul de sac, and want to attempt to turn it into a shining beacon, just different strokes for people
21:05 - was listening to this while driving. The way you said the word "Wharf" so many times clued me in to what you were doing. Well... that AND I've been watching DS9.
The trader stalls at covenant actually CAN be assigned to settlers if you have the vault-Tec DLC! Using the vault-tec management terminal you can assign unemployed settlers to them. I’m not sure what tier they become when you assign them though
I remember hearing someone once (might have been oxhorn actually, I can’t recall) say that the traders in covenant were tier 4 traders. So I would assume the shops themselves are tier 3. But I also remember assigning settlers to them before and the stock wasn’t all that impressive… I assigned just regular settlers though, but still. So It’s possible they’re like tier 1, but the settlers that were in covenant were programmed to have tier 4 shops. Idk. But I was just happy to be able to assign them so I didn’t care too much.
Damn
I’ve played this game a dozen times and I’ve never heard of the Boston airport before. Neat.
My favourite settlement is the alley, it’s a cozy haven away from the dangers of the city. Definitely not meant to house more than a half dozen people, but still.
I recently found out that attackers (like the Rust Devils) could take weapons out of the workshop and use them, that’s why you should probably put defenses in your player homes
Lmao good to know. I have all my weapons in the open. Ill put em in houses with traps 😂
I always leave my valuables in Home Plate once I reach Diamond City.
Vault 88 is by far my favourite settlement.., so many possibilities (like building high structures around living deathclaws deep in the caves., as a tourist attraction or sacrificial pit)
The Warwick settlement gets opened through a quest from the Atom Cats.
no.. it gets opened from the family’s mission
I like Hangman's Alley but yeah, it's really only meant to have 5-6 settlers max, and two of those need to be provisioners, if not three of them. It's only use, aside from being a good player base, is really as a good settlement resource gathering node for places like Oberland Station once the provisioners are set up. I tend to give those provisioners Diamond City Guard gear, since they're essentially doing their job for them.
Lets be honest. Fallout 4 was an unfinished game that got released as a finished product on the surface but really was not a finished product and it shows. It really really shows. The building feature is so broken and incomplete in the vanilla game.
But if it was a bad game, we wouldn't even care. People forget the other side of the Bethesda coin, that they make you want to play their buggy games, because when they work....*chefs kiss*....
I have a sort of sandbox type of save where I experiment with ideas and builds for certain settlements.
My two favorites I've made so far are outpost zimonja which I turned into a Boston minuteman radio station where traders and really anyone can travel to and make a request for a radio broadcast by way of a script they write.
They'll be greeted with a sort of bunkhouse/restaurant/bar to just hang out at after making such a dangerous journey all the way up there. There's also a farm for the restaurant and some water pumps that are out of the way of everything so they don't cause any noise issues for patrons.
My second favorite is my beloved Starlight City. I made it look more recently established with junk fences surrounding the city as well as the tall guard posts slyly engraved into the walls for certain high risk areas like the cliff side overlooking the city and the main gate where people are vetted to be let in or turned away. I used a glitch I think with a rug and concrete pillar to move the industrial water pumps away from the main city but they still produce water. I used the area behind the projector wall for farming and have it built like a scrappy greenhouse where they supply the city with food. the little room you can go into is where the greenhouse extends out of and it's used by the gardeners as a secret drug crafting den where the city gets most of its funding. The lore is the reason the city is so prosperous is because the founder's grandson who is a coward made a deal with some of the raider clans nearby and agreed to sell them as much drugs as they could afford so long as they leave the city alone. Of course being a bunch of strung out junkies they agreed and they continued to grow due to large influxes of money and resources being delivered to them suspiciously in a very safe manner but no one has looked into it cause there's no raiders attack and everyone is well fed and has a secure roof over their head. To end it off the city has 3 areas with their own purposes. Facing the main building, off to the left and wrapping around to the back of the building, there's a pseudo-strip mall with dedicated stores for clothes hand tailored by a woman and her son who run the store together, a general trading store that's used as more of a pawn shop ran by a sleazy doofus who's hoping to one day travel the whole U.S. to sell goods as a wandering merchant (his shop is mostly where people just trade some valuables for a few extra caps or a couple rolls of duct tape before heading back out on the road), and a weapons shop that an elderly blacksmith runs with his adopted son he'd found around 12 years before settling in Starlight City it's a long story we can move on. The smith is in the far back corner facing inward toward the projector wall, the pawn shop is a little further down the path facing into the city with a bright neon sign labeled "Patrick's Pawns" it's not a very creative name and his name isn't even Patrick he just found the sign somewhere. And right next to his place is the clothing store with a second story where the woman and her son sleep. They're a bit on the poor side and don't have much stuff besides their sewing equipment and a family heirloom (I've yet to decide what I want it to be) that they keep on display. On the opposite side of the city is the residential area where the houses are supported by the junk walls. Not much to talk about with the houses tho just the usual long house, small house, two story, and an apartment complex that's a 4x3 and 3 stories tall that can house up to 24 residents but no less than 12 with everyone getting a 1x2 apartment that's surprisingly spacious if you lay it out correctly. And finally the most recent thing I've been working on is a 3 story building built up against the projector wall that has a restaurant/bar on the ground floor, a front patio for outside eating, a roughly put together inn for temporary residents, and the top floor where there's a lounge area and a balcony over looking the city. That's as far as I've gotten with starlight city but I've been feeling inspired to continue working on it.
This is not settlement .This Is A Settlement Look why have Crops.......
That's .A. crop
Great video, thanks for uploading. I largely agree, but Graygarden should be much higher on the list. It's easy to defend and it comes with a unique population of robots, including a trader. These robots have personalities and are a cool and unique addition to the settlement. Also, Graygarden comes set up with tons of food supply which can be useful for supplying other settlements, or starting your main build at Graygarden.
Also part of the nearby bridge is within the build area; and is a great place to build turrets overlooking the main spawn point near the railroad track.
There's a third power armor chassis near the National Guard Training Yard, just make a beeline for the Satellite Array and you'll come across some APCs and a trailer truck, typically guarded by a Mister Handy and sometimes and an Assaultron, fighting some random scavs or creatures. The power armor will be in the truck and have random pieces like the one locked in the workshop of the armory instead of a full set like the one locked behind an Expert lockpick/hack
I'm so happy there's actually settlement building content on YT. I always hear about how people hate settlements, it's really nice to get content I can relate to lol
Im confused, you were critical of a lot of settlements that were "player home esc" but then praised red rocket for just that?
What’s wrong with Covenant again? I just remember lots of talk about lemonade
LOL! I like Covenant... But as a Settlement it is BLOODY AWFUL!
@@Phoenix2312 Its one of my "Ok, but I'm not doing anything elaborate" locations, like The Castle, Sanctuary Hills, or Croup Manor, where I just put stuff in the existing structures, and move on.
@@Tijuanabill Yeah, There isn't much you can do there!
This is my first ever video from you AND settlement rating in fallout.
Earned a new sub lol
I could think of a use for the worst of the worst, just a small outpost to rest and resupply, a small elevated house for one or two settlers.
Nothing is entirely useless, just gotta figure out how to make use of what you got.
The tougher build locations are the most fun. You can build whatever you want at Abernathy, Starlight, or Spectacle Island, and few list those as their favorite places.
Hey this video was super helpful. I have over 1000 hours in the game and havent done much building. But in recent times ive noticed starlight drive in has 2 spawn locations for enemies. One is by the crashed train and the other is by the ceiling ramp of the dinner projector building.
Also i really hope when the ps5 fallout 4 comes out we get more stuff like we did for skyrim. Keep up the great content!
You should rate settlements based on their ability to be player homes.
calling people who use mods "cheaters" is the dumbest thing i have ever heard.
It's objectively true lol
@@hiiipowerbass2337literally how
@@hiiipowerbass2337not if it’s a bug fix or a graphics mod
@@hiiipowerbass2337I only use mods that add decor because housing is my favorite aspect in games that have that feature. I don’t do anything that changes the core gameplay and I quest/explore as the game was intended. I don’t consider that cheating. It depends on what mods a player is using.
@DanBonRP ok but yall have to realize the situations you describe are the extreme minority of mods lol
Just got back into FO4 on PS4 recently and was looking at my old bases.
I built a massive tower base in outpost Zimonja years ago. Had to flaten it out using foundations and half walls to cover up some of the immortal buildings. Used the walkway to hide generators. Had at least 8 floors with diifferent themes/purposes. Got about 18-20 settlers living there. Used pre walled settlements for protection without using up the build limit and put my turrets high enough that they wipe stuff out before it's a problem.
Put a few balconies/holes in for jetpacking in and out. It went from being the worst to my best base after that. Main mods used were for the wall and clutter. Should be able to make a good base on vanilla too if you have workshop dlc.
Subscribed. I like listening to relevant content while playing a game, amd i think ill be sticking with you.
thank you. it means a lot.
@@Theegreygaming you deserve it! It REALLY helps the content is also relatively new, months are MUCH better than years
Bro, I gotta say, your videos are great! They're very well done and comprehensive, detailed and understandable, and you're pretty funny to boot! I've been hooked the past few days. I've definitely been adding all that I've seen to my FO4 tips and tricks playlist. Thanks for the great content! Keep up the great work 👍
thanks for sticking around.
I really enjoyed this video and I appreciate your perspective a lot. I’ve been playing Fallout 4 for years but only just recently got into settlement building and it’s been a ton of fun. Definitely going to prioritize your list of top settlements though! (also thank you so much for warning me about the triangle of death; that could have been a huge problem for me haha)
I do enjoy building in Hangman Alley personally, and when I do, I intentionally leave the two other doors sealed, so enemies that want in get funnelled through concentrated defenses.
The issue is not whether the settlement location is to small or if it has difficult terrain but the inability to scrap everything and clean up the junk
You actually can place a water purifier at finch farm, its behind the pillar to hold up the overpass, its very little but you can get one large one.
"The super mutants aren't as supery!" --Grey Gaming's immortal words!
i like hangman's ally as a mini base. a quick place to duck into away from enemies. i actually send danse there after his quest because it's a cool place to lay low. i only wish i knew how to build upwards and we could build inside the buildings too, it would definitely add to the space of it and make for an interesting area
My personal favorites include Zimonja, Jamaica Plains, Tenpines and Taffington.
I play on PC and usually modded, so it makes these settlements MUCH more enjoyable and reusable.
One of my usual "first big goals" is to restore the house at Tenpines. It's really fun if/when you allow yourself to be creative.
JP is also wonderful and fun place for restoration project. Sure, you have no place for large population but it can easily support small trading post.
Just started the game myself and love this video. I started working with sanctuary and a couple of others and had no idea how good I had it.