For those of you still on your first playthrough, if you only had one thing you would do differently what would it be? Are you looking forward to your second playthrough?

I for one wish I would have focused on building up no more than 3 settlements. I am level 29 with around 60 hours of playtime and I find myself fast traveling to all 12-13 of my settlements constantly because I need to build beds, assign people to work food, drop some more water pumps, and of course defend from attacks. Also, in order to build all these settlements I ended up splitting my early game resources that I got from scrapping all the original junk in the settlement. This prohibits me from swimming in the deep end of the settlement building pool as most of my settlements are just meeting the basic needs of my 10-20 settlers and I'm constantly running out of wood, steel, oil, gears, and cloth. This would be rectified if I spent more time scavenging and less time traveling between settlements for minor issues.

I think on my second playthrough I might focus heavily on building up Sanctuary Hills, Starlight Drive Inn, and The Castle as my three major settlements and use the rest as simple mutfruit farms for cap farming. Then as I get my resource collection over the hump start building up more settlements. Putting a radio in those three and just sending settlers to the other minor settlements as needed.

So what would you do differently?

I am alternating between four different characters so I can develop different settlements, join different factions and explore different locations with each of my characters, rather than doing it all with one character...

On console, being able to have a whole other set of saves. On XB1 they are all one big list, and will be a nightmare to navigate on 3rd - nth play through.

Focus less on damage modifiers.

The game quickly becomes a total walkover, and thus boring. (at least when using stealthy approach with a 5.3 - 6.3 modifier on silenced sneak attacks with a gauss rifle with damage of 550+) Everything becomes one shot = one kill as long as I hit from groin and up! So yeah, total godmode is not going to be allowed on my second playthrough, I need to restrain myself

Each character has a separate list.

I made a bunch of medium settlements without running out of stuff. Cram ten beds in a basic prefab shack or two, artillery, turrets water food. It wasn't until I made three large e,pty palaces that I ran out. I didn't even furnish the last one but moved the spawn point and put in some crafting stations if I wish to visit the fortress of solitude. At first I was thinking I'd get local leader next time then I got it now, I said I'll get big guns next time. I got it now. I did way too many Minutemen quests. I can't let them go. Maybe I'll focus on finishing the main quest early next time, avoiding concord, a large early settlement main base elsewhere, southwest or ne.

My first playthrough ended when the settlement stuff became so overwhelming it was literally all I was doing. No longer was there time to pick a direction and go. It was kidnappings, ghouls, and the people in x settlement have amnesia and forgot what job they're supposed to do and where they're supposed to sleep. And on and on and round and round I went until I decided I'd had enough.

I've since started a new character and will be building nothing except for a place for my followers to hang out. Once there have been some updates I'll build again. Until then I'll see just how much junk I can stuff into one workbench.

Well you could consolidate your settlers into 3-4 settlements and turn the radio beacons off. I may end up having to do that for awhile until I get my resource stock up. Much better option than starting over in the middle of a playthrough.

Was lvl 62 with over 10 max population settlements, good enough for a first run imo. Just wanted to wipe the slate clean and start over and I am having a lot more fun with this new character.

I wish I hadn't progressed the minutemen as fast as they wanted. I should have gotten each settlement fully established before getting a new one.

One thing differently? I wouldn't have told Hancock to stay at my settlement that ONE time. Now he will never return to Goodneighbour. His brother is a better mayor than he is.

Get Hancock to travel with you again, then when it asks where to put him press back (O on PS4) and he will go back to Goodneighbor

I would have stuck to building up 1 settlement up at a time and sort and equipped the settlers properly. It is a nightmare, to disassemble armor and guns and then mod them to a standard for 100 settlers in allmost one go.

I would also have gotten the memory den quest sooner, since it seems now I cannot interact with the characters, which are needed for a companion.

No, it really doesn't. Been over all this already in another thread about this very problem.

Cancel sends them to their LAST location, NOT THEIR FIRST. (It's just if you haven't set one yet, their last location IS their first.)

'Cancel' will now always send him to Red Rocket Truck Stop, and there's nothing I can do about it but send him to a different settlement, instead.

Next time I will try to avoid meeting preston garvey. Simple as that. I hope it works.

Apparently Trashcan Carla won't sell to bad elf who robbed her.

Luckily I realized I didn't need damage modifiers early on. I can see why it would svck for you. If you invest in weapons and armors, there's zero need for damage modifiers.

Yes, this is true. As soon as you assign a companion to a settlement, you can not send him back to his "home" ever again. Just started my second playthrough and I'm not making that mistake again. It was kind of sad seeing Valentine walk around Sanctuary with nothing to do, not fitting at all witht the surrounding. Same thing with Piper at the Castle. They belong in Diamond City.

@papercut_ninja That's the way to do it! No single play through is ever the same on here, always offers something new.

This ^