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Fallout 4

Resources Overview

By
Nathan Garvin

General information about settlement resources in Fallout 4. How your settlement resources define your settlement, how they interact with each other, and how to manage them.

The wellbeing and production capabilities of your settlements are described by eight resources: [People], [Food], [Water], [Power], [Defense], [Beds], [Happiness] and [Size]. Most of these resources are, either directly or indirectly, used to determine Happiness, which is the one metric that represents the wellbeing of your settlement, and even then, only at the absolute extremes (if your Happiness is too low, the settlement may revolt). As a rule of thumb, you need one Food, Water, Defense and Bed for each settler at your settlement (one settler = one People), with Power only being necessary if you need it to provide electricity to some other resource-providing object like a Water Purifier or Laser Turret.

While Happiness rates the average contentment of your settlers, you need settlers to generate some of the resources that in turn keep them happy. Namely, one settler can cultivate a number of crops amounting to up to six Food, and while it’s not very efficient, some objects that create Defense require settlers assigned. Aside from Food, however, your settlers are generally free to be assigned as you see fit - expect to assign the first two settlers in every settlement to Food, after which you can diversify. People are the production factor in your settlement, and their number determines and assignments determine what, and how much a settlement produces.

Food, Water and Beds all contribute directly to your settlement’s Happiness rating - as mentioned earlier, you need one for each settler a settlement has. Any excess Food and Water production will result in said resources being stored in your Workbench, where they’ll be used as reserves for your settlement in lean times, or, better yet, you can harvest them for your own personal use.

You also need one Defense per settler in your settlement, but this is merely the soft minimum to avoid losing Happiness - excess Defense will reduce the frequency of raids on your settlement, and, depending on the actual source of the Defense, contribute directly to combat.

Finally, there’s Size. Size isn’t a descriptive rating, it’s a proscriptive one: the fuller the Size meter, the less you can build at that settlement.

All of these resources will be discussed in further detail on their own pages, but generally as long as you have one Food, Water and Bed per settler (People), and as much Defense as you can fit (Size) in a settlement, you should be fine. Anything exceeding that is pure profit.

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Guide Information
  • Publisher
    Bethesda Softworks
  • Platforms,
    PC, PS4, XB One
  • Genre
    RPG
  • Guide Release
    16 December 2015
  • Last Updated
    11 May 2024
    Version History
  • Guide Author
    Nathan Garvin, Greg Wright

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It’s just another day. Having just been accepted into Vault 111, you spend the morning with your family going about your daily routine. That is until alarms blare out, signalling a nuclear attack. You and your family sprint towards the Vault along with everyone else in the neighborhood just as a bomb explodes nearby. After surviving the blast, you are lowered into the Vault and enter cryosleep. Two hundred years pass and you awake to a world ravaged by nuclear war. You are the Sole Survivor and what awaits you is a mystery as you set out to conquer the Wasteland.

Our guide will be a complete companion while you journey through the wilds of Fallout 4. You can find a plethora of information including the following:

  • A start to finish walkthrough with every area in between covered.
  • Combat details, SPECIAL explanation and general gameplay information.
  • VATS And You!: Getting to know your PIPBOY.
  • All faction quests explained including the consequences of favoring one over the others.
  • Information on Settlements and items for construction.
  • Bobblehead locations, collectibles and full Trophy/Achievement guide.
  • Settlement Guide complete with how to set up and manage settlements, what perks are beneficial etc.
  • Companion chapter detailing each companion character, where to acquire them and the pros/cons of each.
  • A detailed Character Creation guide fully examining the best builds and what each perk does.
  • Automatron and Wasteland Workshop DLC information provided, including a full walkthrough for Automatron.
  • A complete walkthrough of the “Far Harbor” DLC complete with information on every side quest.

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