5 Worst Settlement Build Sites in Fallout 4

I've been playing with the "place anywhere" and "scrap everything" mods so long I genuinely forgot how much of a pain settlement building is without them

You forgot the worst part about Vault 88: the AI pathfinding When the DLC first came out, I was super excited and finished the whole thing. I built a large enclosed vault in the main cave chamber, only to realize all my effort was wasted, because the settlers would constantly spawn outside the vault walls and get stuck in the cave. I built additional doors, scrapped entire walls, and they were too stupid to even find their beds. Eventually I just gave up and dismantled everything that was nonessential.

I always felt like the very small settlements are meant to act as player bases rather than a town

Hangmans Alley is a great site, super useful in Survival mode, super easy to defend Just DON'T scrap the chained door or far wall chained door - Easy access to everything. River travel, Diamond City, Greater Boston, you don't need to spend 2000 caps to buy home plate immediately for sleeping and x1 Settler which you can pick up for a nuka cola in DC makes it great for producing food and water too. It isn't going to ever be a massive location to rival DC, but that was never the intention. Safe storage, easy savepoint, this location is one of the best for a small scale retreat.

hangmans alley is quite useful during a survival playthrough- several chokepoints, close to diamond city/their traders and plot oriented locations. centrally located for exploration and trying not to die

I actually love Hangman's alley, its my favorite places to build, as if you accept its limitations and try to build within them, it creates an incredibly interesting challenge to overcome. One way in which I did this was by learning to construct half tile by 1 tile sized npc homes, as well as allocating the back half of the alley as literal farm area, rather than just where i stuck some crops, the NPC's cant path there, but By constructing a bar on the bottom center of the alley the path-confused npc's mill around the bar area. By limiting construction to to rim of the alley otherwise, I created a 4 level megaton-esque town, that's mostly open in the middle. Additionally by playing around with the build dimensions of concrete walls (since they have separate placements from other walls) as well as the ladders and wall sizes of barn and workshop wall, you can build a structure using pre-fabs ABOVE the build limit, that furniture and NPC's can be built on and have access to, because the floor of the 4th story is just below the build height limit. Its one of the most limited build spaces yes, but once filled in it feels INCREDIBLY fallout. do I wish there was a higher build hight, as well as the ability to build on the roofs of adjacent buildings? yes, I would have loved to make a Pitt style Up-Town area, but what I do have is tons of fun. And as a bonus, my personal home build above the farm, is spacious, and never suffers the threat of NPC's stealing my goodies since they can't reach it.

I’m glad someone else brought up Vault 88. It was meant to allow us to build our own vault but it’s designed so poorly that you have to pack everything into the main area or else you’ll be forced to go through the caves because connecting things sucks It’s almost impossible to build a nicely sized and fully connected vault

Honestly the tight inconvenient locations are my favorites. Anyone can build a 30 settler base at Sanctuary. Doing the same at Hangman's Ally takes fineness. But I started with mat glitching even before Place Anywhere was released, so I'm something of a masochist

Hangman's Alley is good if you don't want to spend hours building a giant base. It's easy to defend and can look decent with a minimal amount of effort. I just store the recruitment beacon after getting about 4-5 settlers since that's all you really need for that location.

Gray gaming: Hangman's alley is the worst settlement in Fallout 4 murk water construction site: am I a joke to you

Hangmans Alley definitely wasnt easy, but I have 38 settlers there and its a major hub for my settlement network consisting of 13 other settlements and 8 raider settlements. The key to success at Hangmans Alley is building a second floor and layering with garden plots for crops.

The Vault can actually be connected to all the caves, I've done it in vanilla. My vault had a five story atrium, a club, a dedicated science lab next to the water purifier, and a gun range and 3 story basketball court. It's not without its problems, like adequately lighting everything, but it's awesome when you put work into it.

To me, every settlement with a massive building area with no unique characteristics to it is a difficult settlement. Take Starlight Drive-in for example. Coming up with an interesting layout, and building designs to fill up all of that space is so much harder than fixing the broken house in Coastal Cottage.

I personally find the best use for the Mechanists Lair is to have it be a robot provisioner hub. It costs a fair amount of resources like you said, but it makes my settlements look better. Plus if all my Robots are based out of the Lair I'm not losing happiness in other settlements as a result.

There are spots in The Mechanists Lair that you can sink water pumps. There are small piles of dirt on the floor that will count. The problem is that when you scrap some of the junk on the floor, it also cleans up your dirt. I usually spin a water pump over some of those piles until I get a green place item prompt.

I often find the settlements with the most "challenges" are actually the easiest and most entertaining to build in because of the limitations they impose forcing you to both be creative but not have it be impossibly open ended so that you don't know where to begin

For me, it's Murkwater. All the swampy ground, the unscrapable trees and most of all the Mirelurk Queen that can spawn just outside means I never touch it. Of course, to be honest, in most of my playthroughs nowadays, the only settlement building I do is the stuff around Sanctuary that Sturges wants and fixing up the Castle if I'm going for a Minuteman ending.

Coastal Cottage would have been number 1 on my list. Not only is it a bad build area, but the site is so far north east that it might as well be in Far Harbor. I can only think they put it there because at the point in game that you get there, you should already have done a bunch of other settlements. Therefore you should have some kind of skill beyond beginner. But still, that place is horrible. I think I only ever built there like 3 times. & once was only because the Railroad made it their Mercer Safehouse.

I honestly love hangman's alley, it's been incredibly helpful in hardcore playthroughs, and on my latest playthrough where I build a themed settlement at every available site in the game, I chose to make a very vertical bustling town. Stairs and walkways galore, rooftop bars, bus homes, beds under boards, covered ground level walkway with all the food and trading stands, houses farther up, some drug dens. No electricity, all fire barrels, candles and torches lighting the community. Very comfortable

Tip for Vault 88: avoiding scrapping the two barricades (the one in the subway area, and the other in the pharmacy area) prevents attacks from the caves, as those two points are enemy spawn poinst who gets activated by removing said barricades. At that point, the only enemy spawn point will be the one at the front gate. Close the gate and watch raiders rant about it ^_^