My workshop is filled with junk items that I constantly have to scroll through. How do I just break these items down, so they can be stored as their respective base materials, and not the actual item?

Well, just leave them in there and whenever you require their components it will break them down automatically and store the unused materials. I don't know why it really matters why you must break them down if they do it automatically. The parts you break them down into are still considered junk, so it won't make your list much smaller.

If you need specific materials, and they aren't at the workshop where you're building. Or, just collecting purified water, you have to scroll through more than half of your junk items. Also, the junk list would become considerably smaller. A few base materials (Wood, steel, cloth, etc.) compared to everything from a silver plate to baseballs...? Not to mention you have to scroll through the entire list, checking each item to see which materials it provides.

I'll just assume the answer is "no," and waste a point on the local leader perk.

"Waste?" Nah nah nah mane, use. Dude that perk is actually one of the few reasons to actually put points into charisma now. I personally find it a very great and helpful perk that does more than just share materials, it also can make a food surplus in one area go into a food shortage in another and you can build shops and workstations. I'm just saying that I've found it invaluable.

As for the original question, I think you can but I don't remember what the button may be and my brother is on now so I can't check, sorry.

To answer your first question: To break down each item you can drop it on the ground, enter workshop mode, and use the scrap button.

To my knowledge you can't actually see/manually take specific items out of a remote settlement's workshop even with your supply lines. What it will do is allow you to use resources from those remote settlements if your building/moding. I'm assuming it will share specific items when crafting (like baseball for baseball grenade), however I've never tested this myself.

If you just want to grab your purified water/veggies/flares.. cycle through your filters: Aid for water/veggies, weapons or ammo for flares (depending on the type), Misc. for your caps.

Like Delaradra said, you can filter though your list for specific items.... like Water will be in the aid tab of the workshop.

If you really want to just drop items to break them down to their base components, you can do that at a settlement. Just pick up all the stuff from your workshop and hit whatever button it is to drop it on the ground inside your settlement. Then go into workshop mode and hit whatever button it is to scrap the item. It'll be scrapped into its base components.

I will tell you that the above method is easier when transporting items between settlements until you get the local leader perk. This method like I said breaks them down into their base components which is a lot lighter than their item. Lets say you break a 180lb weight (located at the mr. handy galleria) into its lead components. instead of 1 piece weighing 180lbs it'll weight 0.1lbs for each piece of lead. I think it breaks down into something like 10-25 pieces of lead, not sure.

I haven't tried this yet (because it sounds pretty labor instensive) but it seems like you could:

1) take the items

2) drop them on the ground

3) enter workshop mode

4) highlight and scrap them.

Like I said I haven't actually tried it, but I can't imagine why it wouldn't work.

In an upcoming patch I'd love to see them introduce a "recycling bin". Put everything you want in there... weapons, armor, junk, whatever... and hit "scrap all".

Apparently there is a dialogue box that pops up for some users that has the scrap item button from the work bench. but like most things in the game it's bugged and doesn't work for the vast majority of players (myself included)

The only way I've found is to pick them up, drop them, and scrap them in building mode manually as if they were a tree or a tire.

Hope that helps.

Also, if you are running low on steel or wood or something, if you find something in the world you can pick up (i.e. barrels) you can pick them up and bring them back into the settlement and scrap them for extra materials.

I did this for a while and then just stopped. It is helpful if you just need to build some turrets at another settlement and just want to bring the base resources with you.

To be honest I'm beginning to think that the reason why we weren't given the obvious 'SCRAP ALL' option when viewing our workbench storage is that they wanted to force us to have to use that Perk. Well honestly I have better things to spend a perk on so I'll pass for now. Seriously need a mod that adds a scrap all option though.

It would be nice; say you needed 10 oil to for setellment X, so you go to the Castle and have to serarch though the inventry for stuff with oil to take to X,

It would be a lot easier if everything was split into components. But No.

If I took all the crap out of my workbench and dropped it on the floor I think my Xbox would explode.

I'm confused as to why you would want to break it all down when the game will do it for you when you build something requiring it? Is it because you are trying to make it weigh less when transporting it between settlements?

Edit: Nevermind, seems you just want a smaller list when scrolling though.

I have the same issue. If I need to transport a component, but it's still all stored in junk items, there's no component view within the workshop inventory.

Drop in settlement, go in settlement mode, scrap. Only way to do it if you want to be able to carry just what you need to build something in another settlement without the perks. There is a mod that makes it quicker on Nexus, haven't tried it yet though.

Just a small addition to this topic: There has been some question (here and elsewhere) that the auto scrap mechanism of the workbench somehow only provides the material you need and the excess materials the item would also generate get lost if the workbench scraps the item. I ran a series of tests over the weekend to disprove this theory and uncovered a "glitch" that is the reason this has been reported by some players. Note that I am on PC, but from the reports I have read, I must think this glitch exists on the consoles as well.

I ran about a dozen tests of have nothing but 4 or 5 items in the Workbench. The recipe for the crafted item would use materials from those items, but there would be leftover items if the auto scrapping of the workbench worked properly. I ran about 3 to 5 tests at weapons, armor and chemistry stations just to verify and here is what I found.

• Crafting an item and then looking at the Workbench storage did NOT show up the excess materials from auto scrapped items (but they ARE present...see below).
• Immediately going to craft another item DID show the excess resources available to craft with.
• Entering and Exiting settlement building mode caused the storage list to update and the excess materials do show up in the storage inventory. You do not need to fast travel away and back to the workbench in question (as I had seen mention in previous discussion so this "glitch").

TLDR: there is glitch where items that are auto-scrapped by the Workbench during crafting do not show up in workbench storage list (but are actually there). The list gets updated properly by entering and then exiting settlement building mode. Note that this glitch would never cause you to not be able to craft something you material for as it only effects the list of junk and materials you see in the workbench list, not the actual contents of the workbench inventory.

On another unrelated note, there are items that are not considered junk and cannot be scrapped at the workbenches. Most items that can be worn as armor but do not show up in the armor mod list fall into this category. I usually drop these items on the ground and scrap them in build mode, but doing a large number of them is tedious. One way is to get more than 6 in a stack and then they drop as one item (and can be scrapped like that). My question is that I saw a post where someone claimed there is a button that allows you to select multiple items at once but I have never found what this button is on the PC (and I've tried lots of them). Any idea what button allows for multiple items to be selected in build mode? Note that this would possibly allow for rather elaborate combination of objects to be moved without having to rebuild them from scratch, so it would potentially have more uses than scrapping.

Oh cool, we knew that it wasn't immediate for all the left over scrap, to show-up in the workbench, when you crafted things with items and not raw ressources. Now we know gong in and out of build mode refreshes the inventory list.

What do you mean by moving? Holding them up and walking with the bloody thing to another settlement or you linking them? I thought only raw ressources could be moved/accessed from linking settlements.

I believe he means that if there is a tire or something that you can pick up and move around (like when you move bodies) you can take it inside the area and then can scrap it. So moveable objects in the world could be brought into the zone that would allow you to scrap them.

Doesn't seem like that would be something to do normally as I would rather bring a gun or armor off a corpse and scrap them for metal, or board from Supermutant for wood, instead of dragging items back to a workshop area.

You're spot on about that glitch, BG - the short version is "you don't lose anything, so scrap away".

As for mass selection, on console you hold down the A button to Select the item, and after about a second it picks up anything attched to or near that item - I've lifted my entire base at Sanctuary (couldn't put it down anywhere due to size, but I could carry the whole thing around town). Anyway, so it could be a similar thing for PC? Whatever key you select with plus SHIFT/ALT/CTRL? Or maybe even just hold down the key (that doesn't seem right for KB, but throwing it out there anyway).

Bad news is you can't scrap it all at once - you can only move the group.

That said, the only inventory items you 'need' to scrap manually are clothing items - guns and armor can be done at workstations. Scrapping clothes is a tedious way to get cloth, but it works in a pinch.

To touch on some other points made ITT, the solution to this problem is Supply Lines - once a Settlement is linked, ALL Junk inventory will be shared between all linked Settlements. When we go into Workshop mode and go to build something, we see a list of the mats needed to build it along with a list of how much of each mat we have. This list includes all mats that are currently part of non-scrapped items in the Workshop inventory.

So, for example, you want to know how absolutely how much Wood you have - you link your Settlements with Supply Lines, go to build something made from Wood - the number you see there is how much Wood you have, total, in any of those linked Settlements and including any Junk that isn't already broken down.

TL;DR: You don't have to manually scrap anything - just link Settlements instead - solves issue, saves tons of time. There is a great post http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1555830-supply-line-hints-and-tips/ about setting up Supply Lines - I found it particularly helpful.

If you scrap say a footlocker with something in it does it not also scrap everything in the locker? I thought I have done this by accident and that is what happened. If that works you could then just build a box and put what you want in it then scrap the box. Again I have not tested it so I dont know if that works but it should.

What I meant was say you built a shack out of parts and even furnished it inside but you decide you need to move it 5 ft over (so you can fit something on the other side). If you can select all the parts of the shack (including interior items), you can possibly move everything at once, rather than storing it all and rebuilding it again.

That would be an interesting test. Ill put that on my to do list.

I'm nearly positive it just stores the items in the workbench but i haven't officially tested it. So if it is an item that could be scrapped that you wanted to keep it may be in danger after it gets transferred to the workbench. You could forget its there and building something that needs material from it.

There is one weird thing I notice with workshop. My settlers harvest food but only corn appears in the workshop... yet if I go to the campfire and go to make veg starch all the food and water is there to make lots of my adhesive.

I knew those *explative here" where hoarding shiet behind my back, I just knew it.

Oh yeah you can do that, at least I saw it happening a few time.