So, does scrap weigh anything? Still only a couple of hours in so not sure if I need to carry around 6 of the same guns or armor. And if I break it down into scrap, will it retain the weight?

I never even knew this was a thing in Fallout 3. Damn! That would have been useful.

@poveren: Yes, even if you scrap items into it's base materials, those still weigh something. (Weight is generally reduced to 0.1 lb, though per scrap item, instead of the weight of the original item.)

@sessh: I was trying to build large "junk" fences all the way around the settlement, with the idea that I could then create a single point of entry and put a ton of turrets there. I feel like that is basic apolocalypse 101 -- build a wall so that you don't have zombies or whatever (raiders, feral ghouls or super mutants here) just waltzing up to your town. Basically it would resemble "Big Town" in fallout 3, except on a smaller scale.

Srsly?! Aw DAMNIT!

Reading the description made it sound like my minimap on my iPad Pipboy would have the quest objective marked. And I think that's what happened after I got it, but now I'm second-guessing myself!

It was the first perk I got because with games like these I'm the kind of person that really needs specific direction on where to go next. Sometimes my life gets too busy and I might put a game down for a few days or more and it's hard for me to remember the context of what I was supposed to be doing when I come back to the game.I thought Skyrim did this well for the most part.

Are you saying that this perk only works in VATS? I thought you could only activate VATS if an enemy was nearby...

@nevergameover: Oh, I get what you were trying to do and it should certainly make sense gameplay wise too, I just don't think it works well right now. Maybe this stuff will get better with a patch or two.

@fitzgerald I'm with you, since I also tend to forget just what the heck it is I was supposed to do a lot and just have a terrible sense of directions (not only in games), so I also took that perk very early. It's crap.

The minimap quest points are there from the get go and this really is a VATS only thing. Well, you are able to activate VATS all the time if you are travelling with a companion, since you can target them, so there's that. Perk's still useless, though.

@sessh: I wouldn't say it's useless. I got stuck in a factory looking for the last fucking guy to shoot for this quest and I really coulda used it then

And you can activate VATS any time by holding the VATS button

@itwongo: Okay, sure, it might help out on occasion, but generally I just think it's a waste of a level up point.

Do you have to assign a settler at each settlement, or just one?

So how exactly do I find/setup food production in my settlement? Everything else I seem to get but I can't find a plant or seeds to save my life.

Is there any reason not to just scrap all your junk? I've had a situation where I was trying to build something and it said I needed copper. So I said, guess I'll find some of that later. Then I went to my stash and had like 4 things in there that could be broken down into copper. I thought it was supposed to do that automatically? Or is that not how it works for stuff in your stash?

So I just finished the quest where (really minor spoilers, only about 1-2 hours in) as a result of completing it some people are gonna go to Sanctuary, and I assume the next step is to go to Sanctuary. Earlier, I was at the Rocket gas station, and I did some scrapping and general cleanup. I like the simple, no-nonsense layout of the gas station.

Is it possible to tell the new settlers to just live in Rocket instead of Sanctuary so that I can build/develop just one location?

@e30bmw: One settler in each settlement has to be assigned to any one other settlement.

It should work with junk items, weapons/armour are different. Don't know what happened there.

@mrmazz Once you get a farm as another settlement (or find a farm where you can easily pick up/steal vegetables) you are good, since the overproduction (I assume it's just that) lands in your workbenches. Soon enough you'll have dozens of tatos etc.

@fitzgerald I haven't seen a way to move settlers to different locations. Sanctuary is the best starting area anyway, though.

@fitzgerald: I'm only ten hours in myself, but having them go where they want isn't such a big deal. It's really close, and you don't really need to develop the gas station much. Not even sure if you can develop it in such a way that people move in there. I just use the station as my own base, and Sanctuary as the main settlement. Built myself a nice little hut on top of the station, with a bed, a rack for my magazines (which after reading this thread might seem like a bad idea, as it seems you need them in your inventory to get the bonus they provide?) and a container for stuff I want to keep. I guess that will be my tip. You can build containers to keep your shit in.

Also, just a heads up if your mouse feels really sluggish and none of the acceleration fixes are helping with it try running the game in a borderless window, Not sure why but my mouse felt like it was in mud before i did this.

I feel like an idiot asking this, but how do you cook?

@j3ffro919: At a cooking station. It's just like any other type of crafting.

Two questions:

How do you scrap stuff already in your inventory?

How do you check your radiation level? Don't see the notation in pip boy stats.

Thanks in advance!

So I ran into this thing where I've planted a massive amount of food, but it hasn't risen about 7 on the counter. Which, it should be like 15 or something. I have a massive garden setup. With all sorts of stuff. Do I have to assign someone per food type and not just to one thing in the garden?

So found out this janky ass tip last night.

When you're crafting things the system will automatically break down items to build the thing you want, problem is though if the item it's breaking down has multiple uses (gold Pocket watch is a good example, chances are you won't use the gold), you will actually lose the un-used resources. The only way it seems to get 100% out of your junk is to go into a settlement, throw all the junk on the ground and begin mass scrapping.

Settlement tips:

• When you plant items to generate food, you need to assign people to farm them. Each person can farm up to 6 plants simultaneously.
• If you have already assigned a person to farm a plant, they will automatically farm any other plants you have planted up until they reach their cap of 6 plants. At that point, you will need to assign more workers to farm to get the benefit of additional plants.

General Random Tips:

1. Don't get rid of your original Vault Suit...Vault Suits are IMO (at least so far at level 40) the best "underskin" armor available. With how armor changed from fallout 3 to 4, its about the pieces now while a lot of armor items, sadly, like suits etc are a combination of underskin and the armor pieces (basically a tuxedo replaces your underskin and armor whereas you can wear armor on vault suits and the basic raider wasteland clothes stuff). I didn't know this and just wore...bad armor for so long (stats wise).

2. Medic Perk: Maybe the best perk in the game or at least the most efficient, almost certainly the best radiation/defensive perk in the game and probably better then even double the equivalent perk points put anywhere in the endurance tree. Stimpacks/rad-away are quite common and this perk solves all rad problems and just makes stims soo much better. I think all future characters I will make in the game will always have 2 int just because this perk is so good.

3. Mods in General: Adhesive is the biggest limiter.

4. Mods in General: Weapons are generally based off a basic config. Example: A laser/plasma pistol can literally become ANY pistol/rifle/shotgun/sniper rifle based on the mods used.

5. Armor Mods: Pockets are awesome.

6. Charisma Tree: Only get the first perk of the following: Animal Friend, Wasteland Whisperer, Intimidation. If you plan to get the second level of any of these save before hand and test it out...I have found it underwhelming for the perk points. Lady killer is a complete waste of perk points. From my point of view (starting with 10 charisma and 40 hours in) the main benefit of the charisma tree is either Rank 2 Local Leader + Rank 2 Cap Collector as they are needed for settlement shops(so far literally worthless for me) OR Lone Wanderer which is poor on higher difficulties. From a dialogue standpoint Charisma basically just gets you more caps, at the cost of your companions disliking you for being so demanding. In general I thought this tree would be awesome, but its...not so far?

7. Power Armor is amazingly fun after you get out of the starting area(just so expensive early), 0 fall damage...from ANY height along with insane rad resistance and protection. I have found myself throwing more points into int just to get the Rank 9 perk for the fusion cores as I literally only walk around in my Power Armor now.

To scrap things that are in your inventory, you need to visit a workstation, hit the transfer button and one of the button prompts on the bottom will say "store all junk." Hit that button and then whenever you try to build something in that settlement, it will automatically scrap the underlying resources from any junk items you have stored there and use them on the item you are building.

Your radiation level is reflected on a meter on the right side of the pipboy interface. It's not on the pipboy screen. It's embedded on the right side of the pipboy

Does anyone have any numbers on what exactly each SPECIAL stat does ? Like how much more xp/ap/hp/weight you get.

Does anyone know a more effective way to throw gernades than holding down the melee button? Also is there a gernade launcher like there was in NV?

I the QL I saw Jeff had two power armors, I have found a 2nd set, but it does not stand there like a complete set like it did for Jeff. How do i do this?

@redroach: Yes there is. I found a barber last night for 15 caps

I'll throw out some keyboard shortcuts that make the UI much easier to navigate. It took me a while to realize these and I'm actually quite fond of how it all flows now.

• Dialogue options can be handled using 1-4, reading from top, left, right, bottom
• You can navigate the Pip Boy sections using WASD. WS is for the top level categories (Stats, Inv, etc) and AD are for the subcategory (Weapons, Apparel, etc)
• You can use Shift+WASD to navigate the settlement build menu - left, right, up category, down category etc
• E can be used to accept any prompt in addition to "Enter" to accept. Ex. Scrapping an item would be "R E" instead or "R Enter"
• Scroll wheel moves objects in and out when placing in build mode. E+Scroll wheel moves them up and down

Also if you're picky with your mouse aiming, this game has a couple of things "wrong". Most notably that its x and y scaling are off. After changing that, turning off mouse accel, and upping my ADS sensitivity I thought it all felt much better.

@paulkemp: If you just "park" the power armor in the stand and then interact with the stand itself, the armor will pop into that standard location.

Can you kick people out of your settlements for being assholes? Or do you just have to leave them undefended and wait for raiders to come?

@llamaegg: if that is the only way that this works, that is suuuuper poor.

@donmfjohnson: You can't kick people out, but if you assign them to a supply line you'll not see them often any more,

@sessh: Man, I wanted to be a real wasteland warlord and rule with an iron fist.

Use VATS and standard shooting together, you will do more damage for less ammo.

You can tell settlers to move to a different settlement by going into "workshop" mode, highlighting them, and then pressing X/Square/whatever key prompt it says at the bottom of the screen. You can (and should) also manually assign settlers to a particular task through essentially the same process.

Okay, so after putting some more time into the game, I've determined the VANS perk is not as useless as I feared.

Now that I know you can enter VATS without an enemy present, it helps me understand how to navigate my way through "dungeons" to get to the "objective" in the most direct (although not always the most safe) route. Overall, I'm using it all the time, if only to erase any uncertainty that I'm going the right way.

Edit: on a 2nd play through, it would be worthless.

Thank you! I was losing my mind hitting R and having to click accept or move my hand to Enter. Took so damn long to scrap the first area.

Thanks, I assume this is also how you set up workshop junk supply chains? I just picked up the Local Leader perk...

@fitzgerald: Yep. Highlight a settler, press a button (RB on 360 controller), and then you can select the other location you want to connect a supply chain to. You can also view all of your established supply chains on your Pip-Boy's map screen (LB on 360 controller).

@llamaegg said:

If that's true that sounds super messed up and has me paranoid. How did you find out and can we get additional confirmation? Agh.

@paulkemp said:

You can build additional power armour stations, and to get them to sit on them just dismount near it and then press modify on the station and the set will snap in to place. Then just exit out, you dont have to modify anything.

I saw a post on reddit about this yesterday. Apparently you do get all the parts even when you use the auto-breakdown with crafting, but there's some jank to it (suprisingly...). Something about having to exit the crafting bench or waiting a bit before it appears in your storage.

@ares42: Yeah I think I just found that. They say it takes a while but that sounds vague and not informative. Very plausible though.

Here is a great tips thread of reddit for everyone to look at: https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3shl9i/fallout_4_tips_everyone_should_know/

So at some point I pressed the search button on one of the items so now some of the junk has a magnifying glass next to it. How do I reset that? I don't even remember which item I'm searching for at this point.

@poveren: If you go into a work bench, armor or guns, and look at the upgrades, it will show the icon next to those resources. Just hit the search button on them again to turn them off.

One settler can handle up to 6 plants. It tells you this in the tutorial. If you hover over a settler in workshop mode it'll high-lite which things they are assigned to

@jeremyspittle: There was a tutorial?

Remember to use the environment to destroy your enemies. I was having some trouble with some raiders in really good armour so I ran away for a bit and Kited them then triggered a Mirelurk Queen while the raiders were following me. Then I went into hiding. The Queen killed the Raiders while losing most of her health. Turrets and Robots are also useful for the same thing.

I have not played the game yet, I see a lot of stuff in this thread about settlement management.

My question is: do you need to do the settlement stuff? What does it get you, do you get bonuses for it? How important is it to the story?

I don't really like base management in these games, it always feels like a tedious way to extend the playtime of the game. I feel the same way about MGSV. Can I ignore it without suffering significant penalties?

@thatfrood: As far as I can tell it's completely optional. I've barely touched the system and nothing bad has happened except for a "failed to defend outpost" message once. I don't think you get any bonuses out of it either or than some really really minor benefits. I guess at best if you're playing without fast travel it allows you to always have a "home" nearby where you can unload and sell stuff.