Any downside to not building settlements?

[RexEasily(xGunner)]

I'm not really into or just can't seem to enjoy this whole settlement building in this game. Is there some end benefit to the story progression or better gear I could craft with it or it's just a stapled on mechanic and doesn't really affect anything in the end. If I don't is all I get is whiny hungry survivors sitting in the dark the whole game.

[Včelí medvídek]

Not much in normal game you can consider it completely optional.

But in Survival mode to have nearby safe place with fresh food, water, bed to sleep, doctor cure your radiation and illness and store your stuff is almost mandatory.

Beside building settlements is closely related to crafting (like making farms for free adhesive, building robots, some extra caps from trade and so on)

[Nite69]

yea on Very Hard or lower difficulty they aren't required except on a few missions, but on survival mode I recommend using them to setup traders and a place to drop/sell uneeded gear cause you can't fast travel

If you aren't into settlement building as much, At least check out Vault 88 if you have the Vaultec Workshop DLC though, its the most fun of all the settlements

[Captain Toast]

You don't need to build any settlements, other than maybe 3 quests that have you build something. It's useful at times since you can build weapon/armor workshops, shops, or other stuff. But if you don't enjoy it you don't need to use it.

[Flippy]

Originally posted by =EGC= _Nite_:

yea on Very Hard or lower difficulty they aren't required except on a few missions, but on survival mode I recommend using them to setup traders and a place to drop/sell uneeded gear cause you can't fast travel

If you aren't into settlement building as much, At least check out Vault 88 if you have the Vaultec Workshop DLC though, its the most fun of all the settlements

Best DLC for me so far.

[Kareekoe]

yea i agree same logic here with me... survival mode is a must for the settlements.. unless you wanna like challenge yourself or something in a unessisary and annoying way by doing the "no settlements" challenge in survival mode... which i garentee that is a thing somewhere on youtube or the internet.

[leem]

For some quests there are just a few simple very easy tasks involving building. You can skip it or do bare minimum. You could kill settlers or ignore them. Fallout 4 you can do anything you want pretty much. Difficulty can be altered by rules that you add.

[Vinnie Mack]

in survival mode, settlements are a necessity, though building them is not. Once you clear the settlement, you can lay down water pump, bed, and storage. Without settlers, the crops will not grow, and the water will not collect. But actual settlement building is not really needed. Settlement clearing is good enough.

[sdack]

Settlements get attacked, which means you can get some XPs from fighting those off. Building settlements also yields XP just from setting up the structures. Of course can you do something else in that time and get XPs from clearing locations.
But since you can set up a settlement in any way you like does it allow you to create your own personal work- and storage spaces. This lets you play around more easily with mods. I've seen players build themselves weapon ranges for example.
I personally keep using the decontamination arc a lot. And some settlements are build very close to some interesting locations where one can trigger an attack from the neighbors and one can farm them with the help of the entire settlement.
And there is the moment when you get bored with quests and explorations and just want to do something different instead. That's probably what I like the most about it, the diversity.

[SpawnCap]

You can play entire game hardly touching settlement building, or spend hours on end playing with settlement building. It is not required though in game.

[Vinnie Mack]

regarding the xp mentioned by sdack: settlement building is a great way to add levels quickly and easily. Sure, you can get xp by killing things, discovering areas, clearing areas, and doing quests. But if you want to level up fast, clear sactuary of all its wood and then build a ton of fence posts, bust up fence posts, build some more fence posts. You can easily gain 5 to 10 levels in and hour or two if you know what you are doing. Of course you can do the same thing with a console command. It just feels less like cheating if you use game mechanics.

And by the way, xp from building can bite you in the ass if you are looking for a harder and lower character leveled game. I got a mod that stopped crafting xp because my character was becoming too powerful too quickly since i always do a lot of settlement building.

[Kalsu]

You don't need them.

[Los.Injurus.Bob.Blunderton]

Originally posted by Vinnie Mack:

snip snip

And by the way, xp from building can bite you in the ass if you are looking for a harder and lower character leveled game. I got a mod that stopped crafting xp because my character was becoming too powerful too quickly since i always do a lot of settlement building.

There's a mod for NPC scaling on the nexus, I suggest you get it! Adds nice challenge back to the game.
NON STEAM LINK BELOW (safe for work):
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15961/?

I have been using it for a few days, now cannot live without it. I have a level 167 character.
Challenge is great but not too much (on medium) with no power armor. I know I won't get clobbered but If I fast travel and end up in a group of enemies, I could die pretty quick.

[Scharny]

Downsides not to build settlements:
1. Less income
2. Harder to upgrade weapons, armor and robots.

1.
Considering you can set up a mellon farm in about 60 real life min. Which gives instant money/caps on demand. Harvest melons, go sell them to lady at Abernathy Farm who pays 5 caps per melon. Wait/sleep 24 hours. fast travel back to melon farm. Harvest melons go sell. Repeat. (remember to set up a recruitment becon, melons will not grow back if they dont have a NPC assigned to them)
Normaly build 1 melon farm
and the rest of your settlements should be water farms. (Water farms give tons purified water every 24 hours - if your settlement produce about 400 water you get around 290 purified water bottles per day (sadly with water farms you can not use wait or sleep 24 hours to spawn the purified water. It has to be 24 in game time played (so around 70 real life min.)
Water farms are good because it gets tedious to keep harvesing at your melon farm.

Water farms are smart because you can just play like normaly and then every now and then you can go pick up the purified water at your settlements and get tons of money.

Normaly i build a melon farm at the very begining. Then i use the money from melon farming to buy the materials to build water farms. Then when i have build 2-3 water farms i just go play and pick up the water everynow and then.

2.
And other good reason to build at your settlements are Adhesive farms "_".
Adhesive is a rare hard to come by material used for gun smith, armor smith and robot smith.

Also its very important to go for scrapper early on so when you dismandel weapons you get screws which are also very rare!.

[Vinnie Mack]

Originally posted by Beamng.drive Cyka Blyatt:

Originally posted by Vinnie Mack:

snip snip

And by the way, xp from building can bite you in the ass if you are looking for a harder and lower character leveled game. I got a mod that stopped crafting xp because my character was becoming too powerful too quickly since i always do a lot of settlement building.

There's a mod for NPC scaling on the nexus, I suggest you get it! Adds nice challenge back to the game.
NON STEAM LINK BELOW (safe for work):
http://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/15961/?

I have been using it for a few days, now cannot live without it. I have a level 167 character.
Challenge is great but not too much (on medium) with no power armor. I know I won't get clobbered but If I fast travel and end up in a group of enemies, I could die pretty quick.

i know this is going to sound ironic, but i prefer a static world and loaded TIFA partly for this reason. What TIFA also does is makes it so your health and that of the npcs do not go up with increase in level. Weapons and armor go up. So if i meet a raider at level 25, we both have about the same health. But that raider will have armor that will stop cheap weapons, and have weapons that do massive damage. And i got a mod that allows me to give the game a much needed level cap. And another mod that takes cap levels out of perks. If you can only get to level 30, the game should continue to be challenging.

[Vinnie Mack]

Originally posted by |Sith|Scharny:

Downsides not to build settlements:
1. Less income
2. Harder to upgrade weapons, armor and robots.

1.
Considering you can set up a mellon farm in about 60 real life min. Which gives instant money/caps on demand. Harvest melons, go sell them to lady at Abernathy Farm who pays 5 caps per melon. Wait/sleep 24 hours. fast travel back to melon farm. Harvest melons go sell. Repeat. (remember to set up a recruitment becon, melons will not grow back if they dont have a NPC assigned to them)
Normaly build 1 melon farm
and the rest of your settlements should be water farms. (Water farms give tons purified water every 24 hours - if your settlement produce about 400 water you get around 290 purified water bottles per day (sadly with water farms you can not use wait or sleep 24 hours to spawn the purified water. It has to be 24 in game time played (so around 70 real life min.)
Water farms are good because it gets tedious to keep harvesing at your melon farm.

Water farms are smart because you can just play like normaly and then every now and then you can go pick up the purified water at your settlements and get tons of money.

Normaly i build a melon farm at the very begining. Then i use the money from melon farming to buy the materials to build water farms. Then when i have build 2-3 water farms i just go play and pick up the water everynow and then.

2.
And other good reason to build at your settlements are Adhesive farms "_".
Adhesive is a rare hard to come by material used for gun smith, armor smith and robot smith.

Also its very important to go for scrapper early on so when you dismandel weapons you get screws which are also very rare!.

farming is the biggest reason to get into settlement building. It can be used to enhance the game in multiple ways. The only problem is the attacks. I hate most of the attacks, though i had a few in Hangman that were exciting. For the most part, they distract. And for the most part, you can ignore the attacks with little real loss. Or get a mod that eliminates the attacks.