Early on it's easy to get cloth. Prewar cash and cigarettes. They're everywhere.

unscrapped junk is 100% definitely shared between networks,

http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah71/osamaclees/Untitled-2_zpspqfhjdqg.jpg

in the above photo i am at taffington boathouse.

on the left you will see that the workbench is completely empty there. on the right im modding a gun and as you will note it is going to use these junk items: aluminium can (3), vegetable starch (2), adjustable wrench (4), soap (5)

all these items are unscrapped junk items stored at sanctuary, yet i can access them at taffington boathouse because all unscrapped junk items are shared between your supplied lined settlements

i can absolutely guarantee you 1000000000000000000000000000000000% that you can

They really need to implement an 'auto-scrap' function and a way to tag items that won't be auto scrapped due to previously stated requirements for intact junk items. I guess I can understand why only basic items are shared between settlements but the entire system needs a complete explanation from the devs. including happiness ratings and its effects.

Well, have you taken any Fortune Finder perks? (I have 3 out of 4.) That increases the frequency in which you find things in containers. If you don't have any, that may be why the program doesn't bother to load anything in containers that you go to open.

My wife just related to me that in Sanctuary she created a wall of footlockers, stacked three high. (Which seems to be the max for stacking things one on another.) And in this room with _36_ footlockers that she built she found a LOT of stuff that she never put in there. In fact, she's going to check out that room right now.... Waiting. She has to un-overburden so she can fast travel to Sanctuary.... Has to be at least a day since she was there last.... Just arrived, and.... ALL 36 had something in them. Money and/or apparel and/or ammo and/or junk. And she does NOT have Fortune Finder or Cap Collector.

So I really don't know why we keep finding stuff and you don't. Hmm. Her Luck is 5 and mine is 4 or 5. What's your Luck value?

From what I've seen, the stuff stored at other settlements won't get broken down if you're not at that settlement.

I have Local Leader maxed out, and I have a very extensive supply line network setup.

Suppose I'm at Sanctuary trying to build something that needs a gear. I don't have any component gears, but I have a desk fan stored that has two gears. The desk fan will get automatically broken down to provide the gears. If I have a supply line to Red Rocket and I'm trying to build something at Red Rocket that needs a gear, but I have no component gears OR objects that can break down to gears in the Red Rocket work bench, it'll draw a component gear from Sanctuary. However, if I don't have any component gears at Sanctuary, the supply line won't break down the desk fan at Sanctuary to provide the gears. I'd have to either go to Sanctuary and scrap the fan, or store the fan at Red Rocket.

Other people are saying otherwise, but this has been my experience. I have a couple of settlements that aren't connected to my supply line yet, so I might connect just those two and test this out a little later.

Regardless, I've been using Sanctuary as my supply hub. I bring all of my scrap there. I like having it in one place so I can look down the list and see how much I have. I've got a bunch of steamer trunks set up to keep it at least somewhat organized. I almost always use Combat Armor for myself and my companions, and I'm working on equipping my settlers with it as well. I have trunks for regular combat armor, sturdy combat armor, and heavy combat armor (that one currently just has a few pieces in it...haven't found a full suit yet), and I have another trunk for my own clothing and my different unique outfits like Kellogg's Outfit, Silver Shroud costume, the Minutemen outfit, BOS outfit, and a bunch of other outfits like that. Then I have a trunk for 'settler clothing' which is full of road leathers, military fatigues, and a few other outfits that I keep to equip them with. I've also got a trunk for the legendary/unique weapons, and another for legendary/unique armor.

I have a big workshop at Sanctuary too. I've got both of the weapon stations built there (just because it looks cooler), with a couple trunks full of the 'keeper' guns next to it. I've got an armor station there with trunks full of armor next to it. I've got both of the chem stations set up with another trunk full of all of my extra jet, mentats, etc. There's another trunk for dumping things that I only intend to sell. Stuff like the pre-war money and the cigarette cartons all go in there so they don't get lost in the workbench. There are 5 power armor stations set up. One each for X-01, T-60, T-51, T-45, and Raider Power armor. I've got fully modded sets of each (no fusion cores while being stored), with another steamer trunk next to each station for the spare components for each respective type of power armor.

I use the main workshop bench as the dumping point. The stuff that I'm going to keep eventually gets sorted into the different steamer trunks. The stuff that's just going to get scrapped stays in the workbench. I keep all of the junk armor and junk weapons in there, along with all of the random junk and the meds that I don't use. I've been periodically removing most of the junk from the workbench and manually scrapping it. I leave some items in there intact, such as Abraxo Cleaner for making Mentats and a few other things that need to be left whole.

I feel like the lack of a thorough organization system in the inventory is one of the biggest shortcomings in this game. I wish there was at the very least a slot in the inventory in which you could put "my items" like your main guns, your main outfit(s) and armor, the more essential meds like Stimpacks, Rad-X, and RadAway. Having to sort around this stuff when emptying the inventory into the workbench is a pain in the ass. I don't even know how many times I've accidentally deposited a piece of my armor or something like that into the workbench on accident and had to dig through the whole menu to find it. It would be great to have an 'empty all' option that cleared out all of your inventory aside from the stuff in this designated slot. The only work around is renaming your active guns and armor with a '-' at the beginning so that they automatically move to the top of the list.

I have a pretty complex organizational system, and it's still evolving. A lot of it is pretty rudimentary at this point, but I'm getting it hammered out a little at a time. I've read a couple posts about settlers swiping guns and armor and such out of the trunks at settlements. I don't want that to happen. I'll probably at least move my own personal clothing and armor, along with all of the legendary/unique guns and armor to Home Plate just to make sure that it's safe.

I kind of went off on a tangent, but there you have it lol

hmm thats weird, my luck is 8 and i dont have any of the fortune finder perks or cap collector perks

i have built a room of footlockers in which i store weapons (1 for 10mm pistols, 1 for combat rifles 1 for sniper rifles etc etc) and armour and have set up or used pre exsisting containers for kitchen/living/bathroom/medical just for overall aesthetics and put some med supplies/clothing/dinnerwware etc etc in all the pre war houses and the 3 story beast i built

the big safe in the "ledger" house i used that to store the gold bars you find in the root cellar they have been in there since the start of game?

so far i own sanctuary, red rocket, abernathy, tenpines, grey garden, sunshine tidings, star light drive in, outpost zimonja, hangmans alley, taffington boathouse and oberland station

not a single container, whether i built it or pre exsisting, has respawned/restocked or over written anything ive stored there?

yes it will, as an example above check out this photo http://i1377.photobucket.com/albums/ah71/osamaclees/Untitled-2_zpspqfhjdqg.jpg

on the left is my taffington boathouse workbench you can clearly see there is not a single item in there it is completely empty

on the right i am modding a gun

now look at the list you can clearly see it is going to use THESE JUNK ITEMS:

aluminium can (3), vegetable starch (2), adjustable wrench (4), soap (5)

now it has drawn these items for breakdown from other workbenches

i am not just saying this i have a photo as proof

as a test can you go to say your red rocket empty everything out of workbench (dont keep in your inventory, put into sanctuary or dump it or put it in some container etc) then try to mod something and have a look at the list of items it going to use, you should notice junk items being used

I've seen a lot of back and forth on here about this but did we ever reach a consensus as to whether or not there is any benefit to manual scrapping of junk items over mass storing them in the workbench?

I just restarted, so I'm doing a test. I hit level 2, and picked up Local Leader. I used console commands to get to Diamond City, where I hired Sheffield and sent him to Sanctuary. I then returned to Sanctuary and pulled all items from the Workbench, then moved to Red Rocket and cleared out the Workbench there. I then placed 1 Duct Tape, 1 Desk Fan, and 1 Shovel in the Workbench. Finally, I dumped everything except a 10mm Pistol in the duffel bag next to the statue outside Sanctuary (which is outside both the Red Rocket and Sanctuary build areas).

With all of this done, I headed to the Sanctuary Workbench, where I crafted the 10mm Pistol Comfort Grip. Despite the fact that the only items in either connected Workbench were junk items that needed to be broken down, I was able to craft the Comfort Grip with no problems. So the game can and does break down junk items in connected settlements.

Two things of note: first, the game won't break down armor or weapons for items. So if you're dropping a Raider armor piece and expecting to get materials from that, you won't. You have to break down weapons and armor manually to get materials from them.

Second, when I created the 10mm Comfort Grip, I entered and exited Build mode several times, then checked the workbench. The extra materials from the items I'd placed actually ended up in Sanctuary, not Red Rocket. No real conclusion to be drawn from this; I just thought it was interesting.

The main advantage would be that breaking down the junk that's only good for it's components and leaving the stuff that's dual use intact until needed means when you need cork, it'll pull form your pile of cork before scrapping your baseball that you might have wanted to save for making baseball grenades.

Personally though I'd probably put any "earmarked" salvage into a container to keep it safe rather than bothering to scrap everything I don't have special designs on.

Interesting. That's been my conclusion from the start of playing 200+ hours ago. No idea why people decide that isn't the case.

I have about 60 empty containers sitting in sanctuary. I will give them a week game time and see if anything spawns in them to clear up the other point.

Hmmm, that does sound like a pretty good test.

So why did you hire Sheffield exactly? Was that because he was doing your supply route between Sanctuary and Red Rocket?

Also just to clarify:

1. You emptied the Sanctuary Workbench.

2. You set up a supply route between Sanctuary and Red Rocket

3. You emptied the workbench in Red Rocket

4. You put everything from both those workbenches into the duffle (yep, makes sense) except for a 10mm pistol (which you kept on your person) and the ingredients to make the comfort grip (1 Duct Tape, 1 Desk Fan, and 1 Shovel in the Workbench), which you put into the Workbench at Red Rocket?

5. This is kind of an important point that you didn't specifically state: you had NOTHING else in your personal inventory? (well clothes or other weapons or armor wouldn't matter, but you had no junk in your personal inventory, right?)

So in sum: you had NO scrappable items in your inventory, NO scrappable items in the Workbench at Sanctuary (where you made the weapon mod), only one settlement in addition to Sanctuary (Red Rocket) which was linked by a supply line, and with unscrapped components in Red Rocket, you were able to make a comfort grip at the Weapons bench in Sanctuary?

If that all checks out, then yeah, sounds like we were wrong and it will auto-scrap stuff at remote spots in your network. Good job on that test!

I still prefer to cart all the stuff to one base and manually scrap for two reasons:

1. the settlement size boost from manual scrapping

2. By keeping the stockpile of certain things high enough, items I wouldn't want to get auto-scrapped are prevented from getting auto-scrapped.

I dump everything into my work bench and pull out the pre-war money and boxes of cigarettes to sell to traders.

I hired Sheffield because you need someone to actually man the supply line between Sanctuary and Red Rocket, and Sheffield was the only person I knew for a fact would do so while also always being in the same location. Any random settler would have done the job just as well, but I don't know where to get a guaranteed Settler.

Numbers 1-4 are correct. As for 5, to be safe, I did indeed dump everything except a 10mm Pistol in the duffel bag. I wanted to make sure that the game wasn't grabbing something from my inventory to make the mod. The easiest way to ensure that this didn't happen was to empty my inventory entirely, so I did.

Anyway, I'm not trying to stop people from scrapping manually. If you want to, go for it. I simply pointed out that there are some things that need unscrapped junk items, then did testing to make sure items at workbenches in other settlements could be scrapped via supply line. I have no interest in or right to tell you how to play your game. However, I can make sure that you are aware of all factors when deciding what to do, and that's all I was doing here.

Cool, good to know!

I think the game _will_ draw stuff from your personal inventory so that part of the test was critical.

Also, I'm skeptical of this claim that placed containers will respawn and cause loss of stuff you store in them. I had half dozen containers I stored stuff in in Sanctuary for greater than 100 hours and never saw any problems.

Course, once you guys said that I emptied them out, stored them and will wait a day and replace them, just to reset any "respawn timers" that might be working quietly in the background.

Likewise. I had stuff in one for 20 hours with no problem and now its been empty for about 25 without respawning. If any of my 60 test containers respawn I will then place items in a third, place and remove items in a third and leave the remaining third, then wait another week.

Hmm. Do all of your containers already have some stuff in them? That may be the key; the restock generally is done in empty containers. That's what led me and my wife to consolidating EMPTY containers at one location in each settlement. It makes it real obvious that a restock has occurred if you know for certain that on your last visit, you emptied every container.

I actually did my own virtually identical test late last night. I was coming here to check back in with my findings, and I see you guys have already covered it.

I have a supply line linking most of my settlements together, but the more southern settlements haven't been linked to it yet. I used Egret Tours Marina and Jamaica Plain for my test because I hadn't established anything at either one yet. Egret Tours Marina just has the one NPC, Kessel, that is there automatically. She was the only resident there though. Jamaica Plain picks up a couple settlers automatically because it's one of those quests where another settler says something along the lines of "I heard about this place that would make a great settlement for my friends to move into". Two settlers came there automatically, but I sent them away because I hadn't built anything there yet and didn't want to have to worry about defending them. Both of these settlements have been sitting empty (aside from Kessel) for a while now.

To be clear, neither of these settlements were connected to any supply lines. I scrapped all of the material that I could find at each settlement, and completely cleared out the workbenches at both. I sent one settler from a different settlement to Jamaica Plain, and once he got there I used him to establish a supply line between Jamaica Plain and Egret Tours Marina. I ditched all of my inventory in a trunk at Home Plate aside from a bone stock combat rifle and the junk for the mod. To test it I decided to build a light frame receiver for the combat rifle. This mod requires 1 adhesive, 4 aluminum, 2 gears, 2 screws, and 3 oil. In the workbench at Egret Tours Marina I placed 1 adhesive, 4 aluminum, and 3 oil. In the workbench at Jamaica Plain I placed 1 desk fan, which breaks down into 2 gears, 2 screws, and 2 steel. I then went back to Egret Tours Marina to build the mod.

It did indeed break down the desk fan that was stored at Jamaica Plain.The confirmation screen that popped up showed that it was using 1 adhesive, 4 aluminum, 3 oil, and 'desk fan: 2 gears, 2 screws'. The confirmation screen didn't mention anything about the 2 steel that was also in the desk fan, which is why many people have concluded that the unused supplies from broken down items were getting tossed. However, the 2 steel that was left over from the desk fan ended up getting stored at Egret Tours Marina, where I built the mod. So I guess the interpretation is basically that the provisioner brought me the desk fan so I could break it down.

I guess I was wrong. This is good to know. I may still stay in the habit of periodically transferring all of my stored supplies to one settlement simply so I can more easily look through my inventory to see what I have, but I'll be saving a lot of time that I'd been spending manually scrapping stuff.

I think it's still at least somewhat beneficial to store everything in one central location for simplicity and organization. An example of why I think this - I have several settlements that function primarily as farms, and some other settlements that basically serve as water purification facilities. I have several of the large water purifiers at Sanctuary, The Castle, and a couple other settlements with access to large bodies of water. Purified water is basically like free money in Fallout 4. Between these locations I produce so much purified water that I can simply use it as money. If I need to buy ammo or a shipment of one of the harder to find supplies, I can just buy it with purified water instead of spending my caps. I also like to withdraw a bunch of purified water every few days or so and fast travel around to all of the various merchants throughout the wasteland. With an ample supply of purified water I'm able to clean out all of the merchant's caps and get whatever other supplies I want from them without spending a single one of my own caps. Periodically moving all of my purified water to one settlement means that I can go there anytime that I want to, withdraw a few hundred purified waters, grab a few graqe mentats, and then go around and clear out all of the various merchant's caps whenever I want to. This is very convenient.

In either case though, it's good to have a definitive answer to this question.

no, plenty of them are empty and have remained empty since i first looted them after emerging from sanctuary for example the other big safe in sanc i never scrapped that and its been empty ever since i first looted it 130+ hours of real time ago

pretty much all other settlements other than sanctuary ive made the odd container to do the "store stuff for aesthetics thing" but mostly i just looted all the containers there and none of them have restocked either

i will check all the containers in all settlements again tonight, but so far not a single container at any settlement i own has ever restocked, which would make sense if its to be used as "player housing"

no offense intended, but why are you guys still debating whether junk items can be used through your supply lines?

did you not see the photo i posted? it clearly proves that they do

once again i was at taffington boathouse and the work bench was completely empty no items whatsoever in there, then i modded a gun in which it had to draw resources out of other workbenches in my supply line and it drew no less than 14 junk items to be broken down for their components

isnt that proof?????