So I am carrying tons of junk at the moment. I went to an armor bench and saw I could transfer to it - does this mean I can use that junk at any armor bench or any bench in general?

Or does it mean it's just stored at that particular place only?

Do I need to be picking up everything I find or is there a way to be more selective? I feel a bit overwhelmed by the crafting armor/weapons aspects of the game atm.

I don't plan to build settlements so will save those questions for another day and another play through.

I understand how to mod per se the weapons and armor but don't get how to know what I need w/o literally writing it down in notebook.......

I was hoping that someone that has actually played the game would reply to your question but no luck yet.

After ready through the forums, it seems that any junk that you store at a bench is accessible at any bench you visit in the game.

That is the only insight I can give. Good luck.

Yeah, you store it at a bench and you can you use it everywhere, also scrap weapons that you don't use for resources.

Rank 1 of Scrapper gives you access to less common components when you scrap weapons and armor, and rank 2 gives you access to rare components. Both worth taking if you plan on doing a lot of crafting.

Are you sure about that... Because I'm pretty sure it only affects that specific workstation. I think I tried it aswel. Plus there's a perk for lvl 6 charisma "local leader" that are suppose to make you able to connect the workstations.

I have my stuff everywhere, hmm maybe its a glitch or something.

Items stored at a craft station are stored in one giant central inventory per settlement. all craft stations in the settlement location share inventory. But do not cross over between different settlement locations.

So when you are at settlement location X, and has weapons, armor, etc stations - all supplies are accessible by all stations in that settlement location.

But when you go to another settlement location, the inventory is not shared, and that other settlement location has its own shared inventory pool for stations at that location.

Each settlement seems to have its own seperate workbench, I don't have access to the same materials at the red rocket station as I do in sanctuary.

After picking up the game guide last night, I can understand how you feel. Even with the guide, it's like, "Holy crap! Where do I start?" I'm starting to build up the Red Rocket Service Station as my base, as it is easily accessible at the beginning without fighting too many baddies. Was able to mod my 10mm pistol with a different barrel, but didn't have enough resources to do much else. If you're too impatient to wait for online game guides, go the weapon/armor benches and find the mods you want, and write down the resources they require. You can then check your Pip-Boy when you come across junk and be able to determine if you 'need' it or not (It lists the materials in each piece of junk). This can help especially if you don't want an inventory 75% filled with junk, or make frequent trips to the workbench to relieve yourself.

The local leader perk (level 6 charisma) allows you to establish supply lines between your workshop settlements so you can access stuff at all of them.

Thank god. Well, this will kindaa svck but first play is always learning one anyways. I just restarted my run to roll 6 char so i can start with local leader - the separate supply issue was driving me crazy.

The game is awesome. The UI is terrible.

Well, good news is with 6 char I am indeed able to unlock and get the local leader perk which says supply lines solves all my gripes re: huge supply of parts and poor UI to move em.

But um....every single NPC that is a settler at either of my settlements are all tagged by game as essential apparently - can't be assigned to supply line.

Have 8 settlers in 2 settlements. 0 eligible for supply line. Yay.

Yes. Once you unlock/own and/or gain the right to use a settlement workbench, you will automatically transfer any items you salvage and find in the wasteland there. And these will be available to use from any workbench you can access in the wasteland.

In regards to what to pick up: It really depends on what you want to do atm. Even if you don't plan to immediately build a settlement right after leaving the vault, consider building a small home/shack for your PC in Sanctuary Hills. Or claim the crafting station at the Red Rocket. Besides being the ideal location to store all the PA you'll find and craft, it also doubles as a base of operations. You can use Sanctuary and/or the Rocket as your home base HQ for all future trading settlement operations.

I'm currently turning the Sanctuary into a farming/crafting settlement to provide food and homes for trader NPCs. And the Rocket into a more industrial/advanced tech settlement to provide a base for making PAs, circuitry, electronics and the more advanced high tech. This means delaying doing any of the Minute Men quests ie. helping Preston G. Because if you help out the Militia Men faction, this will send many NPC settlers to your settlement. And this number DOES NOT include any random settlers you meet at campsites or on the road in the wasteland. The majority of non hostile settlers will attempt to travel to your settlements. So you'll also have to focus on building your turrents and other defenses early.

Since the crafting/workbench feature requires a high level of detail, I'd recommend that you invest in buying the game manual. Because it may be a while before someone uploads the game manual to the web. You can get a manual at Walmart now that the crazy midnight rush is over for $25 or so. Everything you need to know about what components go into building materials, armor, weapons etc. is listed there. But it may be more intuitive to use the ingame workshop menu. If you select the item (like a wall, door etc) that you wish to build, a list of picture icons for for the sub components making up the item you want to build will come up. You can use the tag feature to mark/highlight this item so that you'll better be able to salvage it while in the world.

BGS really helped out the crafters and builders when designing this feature. According to game manual (and verified from personal experience in game), when crafting in the workshop, you can also:

• setup a trade contract to have bulk junk shipments sent to your settlement! Traders will ship the components of stuff you need for your settlements directly to a settlement of your choice. Just have at least one other settlement you control then buy a shipment contract. The materials will be automatically delivered to your workshop/workstation. This will allow you to salvage for more rarer and exotic items that traders don't carry and/or do more quests/side quests. And yes, copper, steel, and fertilizer are the top 3 bulk items you'll need to build which traders thankfully ship to settlements.
• the game only uses the specific raw material in an item when building something. So if you salvaged a lead pencil (an EXCELLENT source of lead) or a telephone (an EXCELLENT source of Copper which you'll need tons of to build electronic circuits for your settlements), then the game will break the pencil down into it's wood and lead components. Or circuits, copper and fiberglass for the telephone. Now say you wanted to upgrade the RAD shielding on your PA which would require lead and some circuitry. The craft station would only use the pencil lead and telephone circuit materials for the armor upgrade. And it would store the unused raw material components of these 2 former items to the work bench. Which you would be able to access at any of your other settlements. So your scrap waste is minimized. Also if you don't want to use something you've constructed right away and don't care to destroy it, then you can also store it in the workbench for later.
• You can salvage most toys for their raw materials. However, these toys CANNOT be broken down into more base raw materials and can only be used for decor or resale:
  • Any robot toy model you encounter
  • all Buttercup toy horse models

Finally, on a partially related topic: stumbled across this special collectible at the East Boston prep school. Then looked it up in the guide which confirms it.

But do I need to "break" weapons/armors in those benchs? Or do they count as craft material (steel, leather) even when intact?

yes you would have to break the weapon/armor into their individual components. One way to tell if you need to do so, is to look at what it is you're trying to craft. e.g. is it a suit of PA that requires lead like the example I gave you above? If you're out of lead, don't have a trade route setup to deliver this commodity, and/or don't have time to salvage around the wasteland to find some, the you're stuck with breaking down what materials you see in the workbench. So if you have an awesome high tech wizardly weapon that's got the lead component you need to upgrade your suit, then it's time to make a hard, tactical, and irreversible decision. Sacrifice the weapon for a superior PA defense suit? Or keep your WMD weapon and existing inferior armor?

Alternatively, you could check out the neighboring settlements for merchants and vendors who might have the raw materials you're seeking to build whatever it is you're trying to craft. Not to be inquisitive, but may I ask what exactly it is that you're trying to craft at the workbench? I might be able to give you a suggestion or two as to where you could get the raw materials--without having to destroy your existing weapons and equipment

RTFM? No offense

Have you even bought / installed the game? There is no manual, it's learn as you go with some in game prompts and messages as tutorial, no manual.

And lot of the settlement stuif, in particular this thread topic is only vaguely or not covered in game tutorial messages.

Sorry call me stupid but I read all the posts here and don't have a complete straight answer.

So once you have access to a work bench and transfer your junk into it, the junk goes in to a communal crate (sort of speak) and that junk is accessible in all work benches you are granted to use. Is this correct? Yes or no?

Thanks

Both yes and no, sorry to start that way. Will take it explicitly at a time:

1. If you do NOT have local leader perk (charisma 6) AND not established supply line between settlements
A) all items you put into communal workstation inventory is ONLY shared in that ONE settlement location.
E.g. Sanctuary has armor, weapons, cooking, chemistry, etc stations all within the Sanctuary settlement zone (the green border you see when in build mode that stops around the river edge). ALL of those stations in Sanctuary share the same communal inventory - but if you then goto Red Rocket gas station settlement area, then none of the Sanctuary communal station inventory is shared

Communal workstation inventory is only shared between same settlement location stations unless above perk and supply line established

2. If you do have local leader perk + supply line between your settlements, then the ones with connected supply lines share all station inventory between all connected settlements.

Howeever this part i can only claim theory, i've yet to meet an npc i can actually designate as a supply line person. Restarted my run so will likely be awhile until i can actually find, recruit and try supply lines with npc i can enable to do so but this is what everyone else says so i'm going with it.

Quick question about transfered junk does it disapear after a while stored in the work stations?

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Thank you very much for your reply. I really appreciate it.

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Thank you very much for your reply. I really appreciate it.

Junk is key.You can store all of your junk in the "Cloud" storage of a settlement.This storage can be accessed by using the transfer option on one of the crafting stations.

Well damn. What about work stations that are not in any settlement, like in the basemant of some building. I've been 'transfering' all junk every time I find one of these. Are you saying that whatever I moved to storage at that particular workbench can not be accessed anywhere else? Dang if that's true that's another big reason for me to start all over.

You were just unloading your stuff in that specific container.They were not linked to the other storages.