Trying out a character focused on mostly AGI and LCK (a gunslinger) and have found it rather difficult to run with a low CHR. I have CHR at 3 so I can get the Lone Wanderer perk and that is it. The real problem is not being able to have Local Leader. While I was not going to focus much at all on settlements I did a little early because it is really easy EXP, but not having LL means no supply lines which makes managing the few I have difficult.

Also it means I cannot just make workbenches anywhere I want so that really limits my Home Base to the few places that have all the available workbenches. Right now that is just Sanctuary, Red Rocket and Home Plate (if I use those in the Market and Science Center but I have to carry my LOOT with me which is a pain). Trying to avoid using RR as every SS I have played as used the place and I want to try something different. Any suggestions?

So I am curious if anyone else has tried a low CHR SS and how they got it to work. Also do you think that CHR is just a little too important this time around? It used to be the dump stat, but in FO4 it is hard to run without some of those perks. LL just seems way too important to require a high CHR to me.

PS – Fun fact. While I had unlocked Sanctuary I never visited after Concord. I went back recently and the Happiness was a 4. Yes a 4. So I went ahead and got some easy EXP by doing the settlement setup quests. Honestly though I have never had a happiness score that low with any of my prior SS and I would have thought the settlers would have left, but since these are all named settlers I guess they were forced to stay regardless. Marcy finally had real reason to complain.

Carrying loot is the real issue when you don't have local leader. I got through that with increased carry weight through console on my first playthrough. Then on my second character (melee) I had 11 str + lone wanderer witch gives you plenty of carryweight to move materials from one settlement to another. So I never took local leader. Still, I see on the forums that it's a must if you're planning on having more than 1 settlement.

For you it's only 4 points to invest to get it. So not that much of a compromise in the end.

I've already have a 6 STR and have been using Strong Back perk, so I've seen that issue also but this seems to work around it for me. Still a pain though.

My current character has only 3 CHR, so obviously, no Local Leader. Even though she's level 32, she has not been to Concord, thus has not started MQ. As a matter of fact, she hasn't contacted ANY of the factions: no Minutemen, no Railroad and no BoS. Yet, she has managed to unlock 26 of the 30 settlements simply by going there and doing whatever was necessary. The only reason she hasn't unlocked the other 4 is that they require faction and/or specific quest involvement.

For the record, the 4 she hasn't been able to crack yet are:

She han't built out any of the settlements yet, but when she does, I plan on having her simply carry enough supplies to build the basics. She has a few points in Lone Wanderer and 5 sets of Deep Pockets, but only 3 STR, so no Strong Back. Still, that's more than enough to carry ample supplies to build out a settlement.

((ETA: I'm on PS4, so I cannot use console to increase carrying weight. She currently has around 400. She also doesn't use any chems ever, so no boosting carrying weight with drugs.))

I see no compelling reason for her to invest in Local Leader anytime soon. My first character spent points in LL and built up supply lines and, frankly, for my playstyle, I found it to be fairly worthless. They don't share EVERYthing, which is what I wanted. They only share limited things and those things are only shared when one is in building mode.

There was one thing I wasn't able to figure out -- perhaps someone can enlighten me. Does every settlement have to be connected to every other settlement in order for them all to share supplies? If A is connected to B and also to C, does that mean B and C are automatically connected? Or do I have to draw a separate line from B to C? It wouldn't be quite so bad if I could just have all settlements connected to a single hub, but I get the impression that each settlement has be connected to ALL the other ones, creating a spaghetti mess of criss-crossing lines.

To me it seems like a low Charisma character is one who doesn't rely on anyone: no companions (because of the benefits from at least having Lone Wanderer), no extensive involvement in settlements. They look out for themselves, as their skills are more focused on combat-related perks. Yes, settlements are great for getting resources, modding, and dumping off junk, but that's about it. They want as little to do with the rest of the Commonwealth beyond getting paid for the services wastelanders request of the Sole Survivor.

That's how I'd head canon it, anyway.

My current character started with 1 CHR, as the intention was to hit midgame before worrying about extensive settlement building. With low charisma, it's not so much supply lines you're missing out on as it is the building of stores (to get the caps train rolling faster) and the low sell price of items (unless you get insanely gamey and top up using drugs/alcohol and outfits). As long as you can still produce water/drugs early on and find ways to sell them at max profit, you can pretty much get around the lack of supply lines just by buying the shipments of crap you need. By time you want to explore settlements fully, you should be high enough level that getting your CHR to 6 isn't a huge deal.

TLDR; Get water and drugs. Take scrounger. Take drugs. Drink. Wear pretty clothes. Sell water, drugs and bullets. Buy shipments.

In that situation they would all be connected through A.

This guy is a loner, it's just some basic settlement work is good for some easy EXP and I do need a base. Thinking of just using Home Plate but I also can't see a loner wanting to live in the city. But the lack of Workbenches really limits where I could hang my hat other that RR which I'm just tired of.

Gonna go out on a limb here and assume you're playing on a console?

Limb broke. PC only for me. And no, I'm not adding any mods until the official mod kit is released and I don't use the console to cheat. So just a vanilla game for now.

Not sure if it came out yet for ps4/Xbox One yet but the new patch apparently lets you build workbenches in Home plate, unsure if it requires local leader or not to make them.

You could also use the combat zone, don't know if respawns or not but the place has almost every work bench

Yeah you have to have LL to build workbenches. So for someone with no LL you can only use those that are already at the settlement, but very few have all the benches I want.

My first character started with charisma 1.

For a first playthrough, the extra running around is okay. Annoying, definitely, but you have the benefit of exploring areas for the first time while grabbing all those supplies. Plus, you don't really know any better, since you've never experienced how easy it is to manage settlements with Local Leader.

My second character started with Charisma 4, spent the SPECIAL book on Charisma, and immediately went after the charisma bobblehead, because once I had experienced Local Leader, I no longer had the patience to go back to doing it the long, tedious grind-y way. >8l

In addition to using no chems whatsoever (not even stimpaks or radaway), my Low CHR character uses very little money. She heals with food or sleep only (as I said, no chems). She visits doctors for rad removal (100% removal for only 40c -- cheap!). She uses only the ammo, weapons and gear she finds and/or makes and/or upgrades, so no expenditures needed. Other than that, her one big expenditure was for Home Plate. Ok, and a visit to the Plastic Surgeon (she HAD to have those lips fixed).

In other words, she has no compelling reason to build settlements in order to get the caps train rolling. Honestly,for my playstyle, caps are pretty much not needed. Nor is scrounger. I doubt she's spent more than 1500 caps (not including Home Plate). I don't see that changing. It's challenging living on such a low budget, but I find it fun.

That is frustrating for me, too. I prefer to have the stove and the Chem station with the sink that looks like high school teacher's chem table, and not use a cook fire. LL is always on my list for that reason alone. So CH6 seems to be a must for me, too.

Unless there is a place that has the stove, and chem lab that I like... can't think of one at the moment.

I started with 3 Charisma and 3 Strength and didn't have a big problem with creating settlements. They weren't the nicest, but I got by. Had Dogmeat as a companion and used his 150 carry weight. Most sites have plenty of wood. When I set out (generally after a directive from Preston), I carried enough components to make a couple of machine gun turrets, water pumps, small generator and radio beacon. Depending on the settlement, I set it up for typically 3 to 6 settlers in the beginning and expanded as time and resources allowed. Steel and concrete were often in short supply and caused the biggest problems. It was probably level 50 before I increased Charisma to take local leader and now I've gone back and beefed up those settlements.

My focus was on Agility, Intelligence and Perception; however knowing what I know now, I'd probably focus on Agility and Charisma next time.

Not sure what you'd consider cheating (I occasionally use console commands like tcl during settlement building and tfc/tm for screenshots personally), but if you're bored of red rocket and want a change of scenery, there's always the 'player.placeatme c1aeb' command to spawn a workbench. Just means you'd be able to plop a workbench down in a location your find interesting (ranger cabin for example) and make a small settlement for yourself.

I can appreciate that. My reply was more aimed at the OP in regards to getting around settlement building without LL. You're not wrong though, the only real caps sink in this game is the settlement building (I prefer leaving a majority of trees in place when building, which means buying a lot of wood) due to shipment costs/investing in stores/etc. I think the only time I spent caps was to grab a gun I could pull the silencer off of for my early pipe rifle.

Charisma is indeed more important than before. In FO3 and NV, speech challenges can depend on not just CHR, but practically all other attributes and skills. Now, CHR is the only requirement.

Wow that's a lot like the character I was playing. She was a trial run for this new character I'm starting. No crafting perks (Gun Nut, Armorer, Blacksmith, Science), get all gun/armor mods from loot, cook all healing items (no Stimpaks or Radaways), and no Local Leader. Honestly my favorite part about this build is that it finally made looting interesting. I actually get excited now when I find that gun with the mod I was looking for.

I spend a majority of my first playthrough with 1 or 2 CHR. Only started to increase it at level 70 for Lone Wanderer and Local Leader.


Speech checks took a while to get past, but nothing a little save scumming can't fix. The only real trouble was without Local Leader I couldn't set up shop in most settlements because they lacked the crafting tables I needed. For the longest time I had to haul everything back to Red Rocket.


An annoyance, but overall a sacrifice I don't regret compared to other attributes.

Come on Burnsy!!! Mods are fine...

Depends. Even after 1500+ hours in Skryim the only mods I've used are unofficial patches and some graphic mods. I'll add realistic graphic mods, not those that make the women look like Barbies. Near the end I did add a mod that added 'interesting NPC's' which was still very lore friendly. But generally speaking I like to play the game as the designers intended as much as possible. This unfortunately leaves me with crap for my base settlement. I'll try to figure out something though.

Well i am doing a gunslinger build right now 1,1,1,6,1,8,10. I used the special point on agility. I'm doing a lone wanderer. No settlements, but i might put 2 perks in local leader for workbenches. Now if you want LL just for the benches, the just type "tgm" and build them and then again tgm. Buit if you want supply lines then i cannot help. To be honest, Carisma kinda fits the gunslinger/cowboy, if you ask me. Also once you put perks in luck, you can snipe tough enemies with criticals, and then finish the rest Also if you play on pc i suggest using the "scrounger fix" mod. It fixes so you get 44. ammo with the perk

I have 11 Charisma, Everything is cheap, looting and selling it better and I always got caps for bullets and armor. And I romanced piper so I get 2x xp for passing speech checks which is 100% of the time.

With a low charisma character you have to be more strategic. I usually open a settlement in the area I am exploring, then store all the junk there. After a while I go get power armor, dog and a companion. Then haul all the junk back to Sanactuary. A PIA for sure. But not too bad.

And I think Local Leader is too important. Not Charisma overall. But it is a single player game, so nothing wrong with sneaking in a player.addperk command

But even with local leader I tend to haul most of my junk to two or three settlements. Every other settlement gets stripped of junk. Then I periodically make a circuit of the settlements collecting excess food, water and the salvage the settlers picked. Gives you a good idea for the salvage stations work.

With regard to my question about how settlements are connected via supply lines (basically, is it sufficient to have all settlements connected to one central hub), LeBurns wrote...

Thanks, LeBurns. On my character that dabbled in settlement building, I was always curious about that. When this character is ready to delve more into settlements, I'll keep that in mind.