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Become a ‘Benevolent Leader’ in Fallout 4 and create a thriving, happy settlement with these tips and tricks.
Surviving in the wasteland is even more fun with friends. Starting in your first large settlement at Sanctuary, you’ll be able to craft new homes, build defenses, and gather other survivors. If you’ve dug into this new system, you might see a percentage in the top-right corner of the building menu. That stat that never seems to rise over 80%? That’s your settlement’s overall happiness. Getting it to 100% isn’t easy, but we’ve scrounged up a few handy tricks to make things easier.
Getting a happy settlement requires tons of caps. If you don’t mind using exploits, check out our tutorial explaining how to use the Fallout 4 Dogmeat item dupe glitch. Whether you’re on PC or consoles, you’ll be able to copy valuable items and sell them for an easy profit.
Settlers are a fickle bunch. If you want them to be happy and stay happy, here are the tips you’ll need for a perfectly content township.
These are general tips. You can get 100% happiness without following every suggestion, and you may discover other ways to improve your settlements.
Let us know if there’s something we missed in the comments!
Basic Settlement Happiness Tips
If you’re new to Settlements, these are the basic requirements to getting Sanctuary up off the ground.
- While in a Settlement, check the Workshop menu to see if there are warning signs next to any of the Settlement stats.
- To increase happiness, everyone in your settlement needs food, water, a bed, a job, and defense to ward off raiders.
- Plant plenty of food. Grab plants you find in the wasteland and plant them together in your settlement. Build a water purifier and hook it up to a general as soon as you can.
- Build enough beds for everyone in the Settlement. Make sure they’re inside buildings! Nobody wants to sleep outside.
- Put every Settler to work. While in the Workshop menu, walk over to Settlers and select them, then select food to put them to work.
Advanced 100% Happiness Tips
Have a thriving settlement but can’t quite reach 100% happiness? Here’s what you’ll need to do.
- It’s easiest to get 100% happiness in a large settlement. For simplicity’s sake, the following tips apply to your first settlement; Sanctuary.
- Get 20+ settlers as quickly as you can. Build a Radio Tower and hook it to a generator, then activate it. If you have high Charisma (10 or 11) you can draw in 20+ settlers this way.
- You can also visit small settlements you’ve acquired with settlers. Enter Workshop mode and select settlers to send them to different locations. Sent them to Sanctuary until you’ve got 20 or more.
- Food, water, and bed stat numbers must be higher than your number of settlers. Build 20+ beds, 20+ water, and 20+ food.
- Go nuts with defense. Build turrets until you’ve got 160-185 defense in your settlement. You can also build defense walls — make sure to assign settlers to these posts.
- Traders improve happiness. Get the Local Leader perk to rank 2 to unlock stores. Build 15-20 Level 3 Shops; Traders, Clinics, Restaurants and Clothing stores improve happiness. Make sure to assign settlers to run the stores.
- Clinics improve happiness the fastest. Building 20+ Surgery Centers will quickly increase happiness. It costs a lot, so come prepared with plenty of caps.
- If you’re waiting for 100% happiness, don’t leave the area! Settlers get sad when you’re not around. Stay inside the settlement, or use the bell to call everyone over. They’re happier the closer you are.
- Stay in town and sleep until the ‘Benevolent Leader’ achievement or trophy pops. Once everything is in place, it should take less that 24 in-game hours.
Source: [1]
Check out even more Fallout 4 Easter eggs and secrets on The Escapist:
- 8 Fallout 4 Easter Eggs and References You Should Go Find
- 8 Fallout 4 Mods to Enhance the Wasteland
- Fallout 4: X-01 Best Power Armor Location Guide
- Fallout 4: Alien Blaster Location Guide
- Fallout 4: How to Make an Infinite Adhesive Farm
Kevin Thielenhaus is a freelance writer for The Escapist. Find him on Twitter here.
Related: Fallout 4 Trophy Guide on Pro Game Guides
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FAQs
To increase happiness, everyone in your settlement needs food, water, a bed, a job, and defense to ward off raiders. Plant plenty of food. Grab plants you find in the wasteland and plant them together in your settlement. Build a water purifier and hook it up to a general as soon as you can.
How do you make a settlement 100% happy in Fallout 4? ›
Keeping settlers happy is as simple as keeping all the other settlement resources (food and water, beds, and defense) at sufficient levels. Each of these needs to be at least equal to the number of settlers; power itself does not affect happiness but is required to operate more efficient machinery.
How do you build a perfect settlement in Fallout 4? ›
Each settlement needs the numbers next to food and water to be higher than the number of settlers who live there. To increase your food supply, plant crops and assign settlers to manage them. For water, build a few water pumps or – if the settlement is on the coast or contains a large puddle – a water purifier.
How to get settlement to 100 happiness reddit? ›
How do I get my settlements happiness to 100%?
- Low population. The more settlers, the more variables. ...
- No robots. Their happiness is always 50% so they will always drag your average down.
- More than enough food and water. ...
- Enough defense. ...
- Entertainment, such as bench presses and dumbells.
- Sheltered beds for everyone.
- Cats.
Successfully rushing a room will increase the dwellers happiness. Spending time with the opposite sex in the barracks will also increase happiness depending on charisma stats and mating (getting laid) will achieve 100% happiness for both parties (note this does not work if the dwellers are directly related).
What happens if you fail to help a settlement Fallout 4? ›
If you don't defend a settlement in Fallout 4, the attackers might kill settlers and damage or steal resources. Your settlement happiness will also take a hit, and it may take some time and resources to repair everything and get that happiness back up.
Why can't I send people to Sanctuary Hills? ›
The population cap is 10+ your charisma score (boosts such as clothing and drugs appear to count). My guess is that the current population of Sanctuary is already at the cap. The only way to send more people there is to raise your charisma score. There are 10 types of people in the world.
What is the biggest settlement to build in Fallout 4? ›
Spectacle Island offers the biggest build area in Fallout, outside any modded content. It's a hidden location that appears off the coast of the main map, and unless players go exploring, it could end up being completely undiscovered.
What is the max population in a settlement Fallout 4? ›
Each settlement has a default max population of 10 settlers plus each point of Charisma the character has, which has a base max of 22 (10 from leveling and +1 from bobblehead and You're SPECIAL! magazine respectively ) before factoring in extra charisma from armor and consumables.
What are the best stats to start with in Fallout 4? ›
Having high Intelligence from the start will help you level up quicker and is great for earlier unlocks of perks in its tree – all of them proving useful. Strength and Endurance are good for a few points, too, as these increase your carrying capacity (vital throughout the game) and total amount of HP.
Use Berries
While holding the Soothe Bell, most Pokemon will reach max Happiness after consuming 20 of these berries.
What makes a large settlement in Fallout 4? ›
You can accomplish this task at any location, and you can have any number of settlers — so there is no need to worry if you have one of the best settlement locations in the game. This is because a large settlement is decided by the number of structures it has, not the population living there.
How do you make a settlement 100 happy in Fallout 4? ›
Fallout 4 - 100% Settlement Happiness
- clear out a settlement.
- Send a settler from another settlement there.
- Build them a bed with a roof.
- give them a bunch of food and water in the workshop.
- Build a lvl 2 bar and assign them to it.
A lack of food, water, or power will bring down their mood. Assign them to the correct job. Dwellers are happier in rooms which correspond to their highest SPECIAL stat. A successful rush raises happiness for everyone assigned to that room by 10%, but failing one does the exact opposite.
How to know if a dweller is in the right room? ›
You can check a dweller's stats to see what room they're best suited for, or simply drag them to the room in question to see what number they'll add to its overall production rating.
Why is my settlement unhappy in Fallout 4? ›
Happiness in your settlements in Fallout 4 can dip for a few reasons. 1) Not enough food, water, beds, or defense can all contribute. Make sure you've got enough of each for every settler. 2) Settlements need enough jobs for everyone, idle settlers are unhappy settlers.
How do you increase settlement attacks in Fallout 4? ›
build some traps for Gunners or Raiders. That tends to attract them. Any cage for hostile enemies (oxymoron) will attract enemies of that kind. They're attracted to full cages, so when you catch something leave it in there to invite an attack.
How to increase settlement population in Fallout 4? ›
If you have a recruitment beacon, settlers show up when they want to show up. Turrets, stores, recreation, any object that gives smiles in the workshop. You need a recruitment beacon connected to an energy source and turned on, to bring new settlers. They will arrive really slowly unless the settlement is happy.
How do you feed settlements in Fallout 4? ›
Right next to water, food is essential for a settlement. The usual method of generating food is planting crops using the crafting interface. To do so, just pick any of the food plants from the resources menu and plant them in the dirt (open ground).
