Evening folks,

If you take a glance down the forums, you can generally see a trend of posts, either about DLC, or unhappiness about one thing or another, and finally... settlements.

Last night, I found, in my desperate attempt to figure out how to get three of my settlement's happiness above 80%, I found a reddit post. In this post, it explained some of the settlement inner workings. I really wish (and the first purpose of my post) that an actual collection of information on settlements was somewhere to be found. This would include glitches, such as the TV and Jukebox glitch reducing settlement resources to zero), if pictures and furniture actually help, ect... I mean look at how many posts inquire about settlements. The wiki is of little help in its current form.

What I do know:

1. TV and Jukebox bug is REAL (on PC). I have deleted all of mine and I can fast travel with no issues

2. Basic needs must be matched (Def>food+water). Settlers beds must be covered

So this comes to my second point of my post:

In my extensive research to find a solution why I cannot get the happiness of Graygarden, Covenant, and Greentop Nursery above 80%, I have found so much conflicting information and not a real solution to my problem. So in my three settlements are set up, for the most part, mirroring my other settlements. Each settlement has +1 bed, 30 Foods, 24 water, 200 defense (due to conflicting information that more will help), and finally, they all have all the shops with two clinics and general traders. All of my other settlements range from 85% to 88%, and they usually fluctuate but are mostly at 85%. Due to role-playing reasons.. I don't want to have a settlement with 16 clinics (poor design) so I just say high 80% is good enough for the wasteland ( I mean look at all the holes they have in the buildings.. I wouldn't be happy either living in a tin can).

But I digress, last night, I experimented for 3 hours in attempting to raise Graygarden happiness from 78% to a higher value and this is what my research on the interwebs found and a list of my experiences:

1. Found a post that said noise raises unhappiness... so I moved all my turrets and generators away... (no change). Reread the post and the OP missed the fact that he put down 2 jukeboxes... which I assume would lead to increase to happiness.

2. Made sure all persons were assigned to work. Had no effect

3. Start to place decorations (including radios) to fill item cap. It actually decreased to 77% so I took pictures and surrounded the building for experiment sake. I got excited as it raised to 79% and then proceeded to go back to 78%.

4. I made sure that all the garbage was cleared up (to see if even that helped ((at this point I am desperate)). No effect

5. Added guard dog. No change

What I still need to try... Try different lighting (floor lamps maybe?). Check to see if I need to assign beds (is that an issue since they raise no complaints). I also don't know if I actually have EVERY settler assigned nor if it matters. I don't know what else... I just don't understand how my settlements are basically mirrors of themselves but these 3 I cannot figure out.

TLDR: Help?

P.S. I also read in that reddit post that settlements can fill up with junk and then not collect it anymore. So now, Bethesda, you are telling me I have to take all my mats from the 12 settlements and deposit it in one so the scavenging benches work again??!! That sounds like a riveting 2 to 3 hours of gameplay, walking around very slow from one settlement. Looks like my main base will now be Covenant.