Top 5 Strategies for Collecting Building Materials in Fallout 4

Are you Struggling to collect the necessary resources to construct that dream settlement in Fallout 4? It happens to the best of us. That's why we're here to help with our top 5 strategies for gathering up those necessary materials for minimal effort.

[mailleweaver]

Pick up every pencil you can find. They weigh nothing but have both wood and lead. Build your house from the pencil sticks and line your armor with the lead. Totally makes sense.

[dragonggw]

Don't overlook the usefulness of Old World Money as a barter item either. It's completely weightless and worth as much as 6 caps each.

[stormcry]

Putting points into scrapper is also really nice, since you can then tag certain materials, like bone or my favorite cloth. When you tag them, they glow so all those lovely bones glow brightly, but so does cloth when you tag it, really helping you to find safes hidden away, since pre-war money is cloth!!! :)

[SulGhst]

You could have mentioned that the Corvega Assembly Plant has a lot of alluminum for such an early game location, because of the hubcaps.

[joshuadoll]

DO NOT combine drugs if you intend to sell them. They are significantly more valuable when kept in their separate drug forms. Also, using radium rifles are an easy way to get nuclear material from killing literally anything.

[solo-pro]

if you complete the cabbot house story line, you can take what you want from the house and it has an insanely fast refresh time and the widest variety of goods to collect in any one place in the game.

[Speed-Of-Light-By-Meter]

I know this isn't a "location" for resources, but it helped me a LOT. I'm a hardcore weapon/armor modder, so the lack of adhesive was getting to be really annoying. If you go to a cooking station, you can combine tato, mutfruit, corn, and purified water to create vegetable starch which I believe gives you 5 adhesive.

[bryanohara]

The secret ingredient for separating oil-based paint into oil and pigment is time. 200 years is a long time that allows for settling out even colloidal particles (the aforementioned pigment in paints for example.)

[edendoesfallout]

I'm an absolute hoarder in this game, I always want to lug everything I see with me! Amazing video as always!

[NoForksGiven]

I always loot dead creatures for parts to cook. You can make a lot of money from clearing out mirelurk or molerat nests, especially if you get the magazine from Sunshine Tiding's Co-op that doubles anything you loot from creatures

[stephancoetzee]

Scrapper perk, maxed, is essential. Scrapping highly modded weapons and armor is a great way to get Copper, Rubber, Crystal and Aluminum.

[MikeForce]

For Nuclear Material, another potential source is if you happen to have a Plasma weapon or use a Plasma-Infused legendary weapon, then once you gooify an enemy they will drop some. It's a small source that isn't significant on it's own, but every little bit counts!

[stormcry]

If you are looking for telephones. The police stations is a great place to search for them. There are always phones for the taking. Honestly, most office buildings are great for phones, and ceramic coffee cups(for power armor).

[cjimmersive]

For making cutting fluid (oil), mole rat teeth provide bone, and bloodbug proboscis provides acid. Heading east from Starlight Drive-in, you could hit that scrap yard for mole rats, then wildwood cemetery for bone, then Taffington Boathouse and the ravine nearby for bloodbugs, then Medford Hospital for bone and probably some abraxo cleaner.

[Generalphoenix]

I did some of these for my minutemen settlements. I turned spectacle island into a massive production line for farms and water. I just used robots mostly for labour to save on beds and made a private office for myself with a view of the production. I rarely went to it but it was a challenge to get done when planning but was worth it.

[geraldlamb]

Also, once you clear the gauntlet in the Nuka World DLC and visit the arcade, there is an exploit that lets you create Nuka World Arcade basketballs for 2 rubber...and then scrap them for 3 rubber. This is a great way to build XP and quickly generate more rubber than you will ever need for vault style settlements.

[ethanhafford]

I don't know if it respawns, but there is an unmarked boxing gym next to the old north church that has a good amount of lead (in the form of weights) and no enemies inside. This is great for an ammo factory if you have the dlc required. Pencils also contain 1 lead and are not only common but near weightless.
Edit: the best places to find pencils would be in schools like the Suffolk County charter school, though it might not be enough to make the trip worth it.

[robertaylor]

The oil in oil based paints naturally separates if left to settle. If you don’t mix the paint you can pull the oil off of the top easily. Don’t know that I’d try to lubricate my auto turret or salvaged power armor with it, but it might due in a pinch.

[geraldlamb]

I always set up Coastal Cottage and Outpost Zimonja as water farming colonies. I don't ever bring settlers in to those locations. I just build a personal residence and load the places up with water pumps. I also put storage containers next to the fast travel point to collect water and store them.

The other thing I usually do is put Trader Rylee alone in a location like Hangman's Alley, and just build her a residence, shop, and a healthy amount of defense. Rylee is the best resource trader in the game by far (with the Vault-Tec rep being a distant second), selling more junk than any other merchant and offering triple the shipments of the usual resources that the Vault-Tec rep and other normal traders provide. Clean out her stock of junk and shipments, wait or sleep 2 days, then repeat...preferably after harvesting a few thousand purified water from the water farms.

[StillJustBob]

I like your style, no unnecessary BS, just the facts. Keep up the good work.