Can items in my workbench be stolen?

[Psychii]

Only barely started playing and am on level 10.
I barely touched the settlements aside from the tutorial in Sanctuary where you build 5 beds and a turret.
I mainly use Red Rocket as my sort of "personal area".
Though I don't know if a settlement with 0 people can still get "raided".

I've only read in some older forums how during settlement attacks, your settlers can take "better weapons" including legendaries or rare weapons including your ammo. Even worse is apparently raiders can steal stuff from the workbench?

I've just been a bit confused since I'm not too sure if my workbench stuff can be taken without me even knowing. I basically use it to dump all the stuff I can't carry even with a companion.

So can my items from the workbench actually get "stolen"?

[Gallifrey - CSSC Gaming Founder]

I think that the answer is yes but I'll leave those that know more to definitively answer the question.

However there's a property with a safe next door to your house (from pre-bomb) and that may be errrr safer.

S.x.

[steventirey]

Any NPC can take weapons and ammo from your workbench, or from any container or display rack in the settlement. Only armor mannequins are safe storage, as the game doesn't see those as containers. This will only happen when there is combat near by, and only if doing so would give the NPC a better weapon that what they currently have. You should not rely on this as a method of arming settlers, as it isn't a guarantee they will go for a better weapon, and when they do they tend to take an entire stack of weapons and ammo instead of just one weapon and a few rounds.

Power armor can be taken in the same way, if there is a fusion core nearby, either in the suit itself or stored.

In the event of an attack on the settlement, should the defense fail, some of the junk stored in the workshop will also be lost.

Food/water in the workshop are safe as long as the settlement (or any connected settlement, if using supply lines) has enough being produced. If for some reason you aren't producing enough food/water, those items in the workshop will start being consumed by your settlers.

Everything else, including normal armor, are totally safe and won't be stolen.

[SkunkPlaysGames]

I believe they consume stored food if they aren't getting enough from the settlement as well.

[Zekiran]

think of it this way, if you're not equipping your people with that stuff, and you're just leaving it in a bench somewhere not using it yourself, what good is it doing a settlement at all?

Let them have them! Arm your people! ;D

[Iron Knights]

If Raiders "win" an attack on the settlement, they get what they want from workbench.
Collector Items stash in a built container.
Do not store ammo and your weapons will not be touched.
Do not leave P.A. cores in Armor or in Workbench.

[Angry Squirl]

Yes settlers will take things from your workbench if they have a good reason to do so, particularly if there is an attack underway. They will jack your power armor with a core in it, even if you are there. Sometimes this is a good thing.
In my current playthrough, I was at one of my settlements when gunners came. One of my settlers apparently took the fatman and mininukes that were in my workbench. I heard the first mininuke go down range, so I decided to hide and watch rather than actively defend. Those minis will definitely blow me up too. At the end of it, I heard five mininukes go down range and found five gunner corpses.
You can also just give good weapons to your settlers rather than storing them. In this case, you must give them some ammo, but one round is enough, Settlers never run out of ammo.

[steventirey]

Originally posted by Angry Squirl:

You can also just give good weapons to your settlers rather than storing them. In this case, you must give them some ammo, but one round is enough, Settlers never run out of ammo.

In most cases, this is true. With some weapons however, they do use ammo.

[-={LG}=-]

They only use ammo with missile launchers and fat mans.

I put all my settlers in Road Leathers and Leather Armor in the beginning and switch over to Combat Armor as the game progresses.

I upgrade all their weapons to something better than pipe pistols, and eventually I have them using Combat Rifles, Combat Shotguns and whatever Legendaries I don't sell in Far Harbor for 45-70 ammo. All my provisioners use miniguns.

I've never had a settler take anything out of my workshops. Keep them geared up and they don't steal from you.

[DouglasGrave]

I note there's also a difference between your settlement workbench/workshop, and crafting benches. Crafting workbenches can't be directly looted, but are vulnerable in your settlements because they have a common inventory space shared with the main red workbench that you activate to enter build mode and which NPCs can loot.

Because they don't have that link to a vulnerable container, crafting benches found out in the wilderness are typically safe for storing things, as are the ones in Diamond City.