So I am in the process of mass producing crops and purified waters at all my settlements and using them to barter for shipments and junk from all the in-game vendors. I have just been buying wood, steel, cloth, oil, gears, copper, cement, and circuitry shipments as those are the one's I commonly run out of or will need to build massive settlements. On top of that I buy all the vendor's random junk and take it back to my settlements to scrap (and consiquently lower my build limit bar). I was wondering if I would be getting more for my money by just buyung the junk instead of buying shipments? Or if buying both is better. I generally fast travel to all my 11 settlements and then to Diamond City, Goodneighbor, and Bunker Hill in a repeating rotation. I also buy junk from my traders at my settlements.

Don't buy shipments, waste of caps...just keep looting places and given enough time...places you have cleared will respawn enemies and loot will respawn.

In my experience, buying junk is more cost-effective than buying shipments. 25 Adhesive's worth in Duct Tape/Wonderglue is a lot less than what a shipment of 25 adhesive costs in my experience. Shipments can be good for buying bulk amounts of resources you're hard up on, though. Like, I was always agonizing over finding concrete in the game so I could build more Artillery and concrete foundations, then I found out I could buy a shipment of 50 concrete from Connie Abernathy. That's way more convenient, especially when you have tons of caps from selling off excess crops and water.

Shipments are good if you're doing the shipment duplication glitch

If not, I would think purchasing the individual junk items based on your needs could be cheaper.

Wood and Copper seem to be the only items I'll buy junk for.

I buy mostly only Wood, Steel, and Concrete Shipments.

Really its just cause I want to build up different kinds of structures, doesn't have anything to do with the game but I'm enjoying it and always liked those player made homes but now I don't even have to fire up the CK, I just build it in real time.

Everything else it just seems like I get enough just running a quest or the settlers find enough.

Thing is with settlements these start to accumulate a lot of caps with a Bar in each one, plus the water purification sites bring a lot in...I just trade like 100 waters at a time.

I have been keeping my charisma high at all time on my character and I've been buying a lot of shipments because price is meaningless when you have 16 Charisma and the ammo perk in luck but I also buy a bunch of junk to go with them because junk is just more cost effective.

I've been buying as many shipments of wood as I can while building my large towns and I find that I still never have enough wood.

When I buy junk though I leave with maybe 14 wood on a lucky shopping trip but I'll get 50-100 wood. Nether is enough for my needs but there is a definite difference in speed when you need a lot of a resource.

On a side note I avoid fast travel and I only tend to sleep once a day and I play on timescale of 5 instead of 20 so my economy works different then a normally game. (normally you could just pass a day again and again for new stuff and in that situation junk is better.)

With ammo being weightless and a good thousand caps of trade ready each time you go into town, might as well do both. Scavenge when out in the wild, come home, purchase all the scrap and shipments you can. Nearing 100,000 caps, and not losing any profit in clearing out junk vendors and buying wood shipments. Keep yourself to four ammo types, and that's more money you can make.

Doesn't really answer your question of which is more efficient, but, with a broken economy, might as well spend your caps where you can.

Right, that's why I am on an endless loop of gathering crops and water and buying wood from Abernathy and Goodneighbor. Only two wood venders in the game. At least the robot trader in Diamond City sells 4x100 steel. They need a 4x wood vender.

I seriously agree. I've am in an extreme need for the extra wood and it caused me to go with metal walls and roofs whenever possible but just lining the ground with no clip cement block ground so it's level still eats all my wood.

Apparently you get like 4k wood from clearing out the island settlement. Still, not enough for my ambitions. Not when everything from chairs to counters cost wood. It should be the most excessible resource in the game. They need a lumber yard with a vendor that sells 100x4 wood.

I usually buy adhesive and oil when I see it, as well as any stray items and loot them all on sight, because you can't have enough adhesive and oil. Other than that I might buy fertiliser when its cheap and make Jet to sell to junkies.

The thing is, _25_ of something is A LOT more than the <10 that any trader is likely to have on hand at any given time. And for stuff that I burn through rapidly -- steel, circuitry, adhesives, etc. -- I would most likely buy BOTH the shipments and any Junk they have that breaks down to the components that I want/need.

As a rule of thumb, if I can buy Junk that costs less than 5 per resource unit that I need, I'll buy it. Even if I didn't need it now, I know I would definitely be needing it later.

I indiscriminately buy all their junk. I am more picky as to which shipments I buy. Usually just the one's I commonly need for settlement building. Even with the cap collector perk, some shipments are way overpriced imo. Plus most venders have a TON of low-priced junk that should translate into double digits of most resources.

Some shipments are fine, steel and wood are relatively cheap, that aside junk is always better unless your truly hit up for a material

You should never buy the adhesive shipment it is way overpriced. Have your settlement growing tatos, corn, multifruit and have a water purifier and you can make adhesive at a cooking station.

Moe in Diamond City sells shipments of 100 wood

Buying shipments is the fastest way to get rare materials like copper and oil in quantity, but is the least cost-effective.

Buying junk is more cost-effective, but you may have a hard time getting quantity.

Scavenging is free, but it can be dangerous, and can incur other costs (mostly in the form of ammo expended).

I've used all 3 methods, depending on the situation.

You would be surprised what you can get off some of weapons & armors when scrapped at the corresponding workbench scrapper rank 2 needed for the rare stuff I was running low on copper & found mid level pipe guns yield 1 copper each

Base pipe guns give just steel but by "mid" ((we'll say over 20) level you'll probably mostly find them with mods and then level 1 scrapper is what allows you to get the copper which can be gotten from most of those mod parts. It isn't always enough though.

Only buy shipments if you have very little of that material left...

I buy shipments of ballistic fiber to make uniforms for my settlers. Everything else I buy via miscellaneous ingredients.

Breaking the build limit and any caps is one thing, but straight up duping is just