So on my newest character (who is about level 26 right now), I've noticed that Sanctuary has had a dip in happiness level, putting it at the lowest level Sanctuary has been at in any of my playthroughs. I have 10 settlers and nothing is in the red, with 14 beds, 50 defense, 19 food, and probably 30-something water. I even have some lights in two buildings (the Sole Survivor's house and the house where my Power Armor is stationed) and a TV on in the SS house. I'm not sure what it is I need to do to raise the settlement's happiness, to keep it above 70. I don't yet have enough Charisma to put points into Local Leader 1 and 2.

Any advice?

There's a lot of things and a lot isn't really properly explained by the game. I'm fairly clueless most of the time whenever I take a happiness dip, however:

- It's easy to miss a mission pop-up. That has a heavy impact on happiness.

- Unemployment seems to make them unhappy.

- A synth infiltrator can hurt happiness.

- Etc.

Frankly, happiness seems to be VERY wonky to me. As you note, you can have tons of beds, food, water, even plenty of radios, wall decorations, and chairs for them to sit on, and bars for them to drink around and so on... and STILL the happiness dips. I've got ~all~ the achivements except, you guessed it, the one that requires 100 happiness in a large settlement. Just too much trouble for [censored] polishing.

Speaking of happiness, I can't wait to be able to do trade routes so that I can actually upgrade the nearby settlements of Abernathy Farm, Sunshine Coop, and Tenpines. Luckily, the drive-thru settlement had plenty of material to scrap so they have better food and defense than those other smaller ones in the NW quadrant.

TV's seem to make them unhappy

^This. TV's, jukeboxes, and occasionally radios have been noted to cause inexplicable drops in happiness. A friend of mine was able to resolve this by turning the TV off. I had to scrap my jukebox to fix it.

Interesting. I will try that out. I wonder if a pool table or basketball hoop would be more positive, even if people can't actually play it in the game.

Anyone hearing Travis for a while would star to contemplate suicide.

I've given up on happiness. Everything hovers around 80%. It goes up, it goes down, it goes up again and then down again without any rhyme or reason as far as I can tell. They have everything they need: beds, food, water, entertainment, shopping and dining and medical as well as weapons and defenses.

I give up. Let 'em be relatively happy. After 5 playthroughs with nary a 100%, I just plain give up.

Maybe I'll put power cores in all my spare power-armor sets and let them have at it.

I am trying on my second playthrough to keep Sanctuary as main town, with Abernathy as support for food only. Red Rocket and Taffington unoccupied as supply route for junk and water. so far, 16 settlers, 3 provisioners and 86% happy. added jukebox, no change. no TV's. only store is a bar.

we'll see!

You just need to build more high-level stuff to raise happiness, so wait till you level up enough to get the necessary perks (Local Leader, Caps Collector, etc.). I used to have quite a few settlements languishing at the 70s happiness for the longest time. But now I'm at level 66 and all my settlements are in the 80s (some in the high 80s), even those that have TVs, radios, and jukeboxes. You just have to build high-level turrets, stores, and beds.

Beds are probably what you build the most in every settlement, so building the best ones will give you a lot of happiness bonus points. That means you need to build houses large enough to accommodate the larger beds.

According to the http://www.amazon.com/Fallout-Dwellers-Survival-Collectors-Edition/dp/0744016312, the stores that give you happiness bonus points are trader stores, food & drink, clothing, and clinics, i.e. weapon and armor stores do not yield happiness (only income).

If you find all the issues of the "Picket Fences" magazines, you will be able to unlock more buildable items such as fancy lights, statues, patio tables and chairs, etc. And these (we assume) give extra happiness as well.

Now the tough part: CHECK IF ALL SETTLERS ARE ACTUALLY ASSIGNED BEDS. Sometimes, even if you have the right number of beds, they still have the "red icons" indicating they are unassigned. You just to have manually assign them, and it may be tough to find the unassigned settler if you have a large population. I've had to do this quite a few times, and each time it DID raise happiness (green arrow showing next to happiness).

Even tougher part: for settlements that have pre-existing beds for pre-existing settlers (e.g. the Abernathy family, the Finch family, the "Workers" in The Slog, etc.), sometimes you notice that those pre-existing beds cannot be moved, stored, or scrapped. And sometimes, they appear unassigned (red icon) too. If they are unassigned, you also need to manually assign them to raise happiness. The even more frustrating part is that sometimes each pre-existing settler HAS TO BE assigned to a PARTICULAR pre-existing bed for it to be successfully assigned (green icon, happiness raised). In The Slog, for instance, Holly has to sleep in one particular pre-existing bed, Jones has to sleep in one particular pre-existing bed, and so forth. If you don't assign them to the correct beds, you don't see the green icon, and you don't raise the happiness.

*Bed placement* also seems to be important. Sleeping bags (the lowest-level beds that supposedly yield the lowest happiness) can be put anywhere since they can be walked on. But for the other types of beds, make sure one side of the bed is completely open for a settler to get on and off it. Don't put them too close to walls. Some walls, you notice, are not entirely flat, and may obstruct a settler getting on and off the bed. Do not put two beds in an "L" shape; put them in "I _" instead. Do not put them in a "T" shape, where one bed is partially blocking another. Put them in "I" formation or the "I _" formation. E.g.:

I I I

I I I

I I I

I _ I _ I

If you have a lot of beds, make sure they can actually be accessed by the settlers: make sure there is a pathway to each and every bed without having to jump (NPCs don't jump).

If beds have placement problem, you may be able to catch a settler standing on a bed or near a bed, which is apparent indication that he or she is unable to get on the bed. And that may affect happiness too.

Like I said. I give up. I've got other things to do. No chasing the 100% for me. As long as they don't starve and have a roof over their heads, that's as far as I go anymore.

This helps but does not get rid of the problem. Same myth as not fast traveling within a settlements boundaries or storing the settlement beacon. Nothing will fix the mysterious dip in happiness that can happen in multiple settlements (I've posted in regards to this previously).

There are circumstances that will drop happiness ie: attacks, missed kidnapping deadlines (other radiant quests), lack of food/water. There is also the pip boy glitch/bug that shows resources at 'zero' (beds,defence, food etc) but when you get to the settlement in question everything is back to normal.

I've now done 5 play throughs of this game and each time the settlements bugged out and this has included no fast travel, no excess in resources, no equipment/crops were damaged - no attacks, no settler gave a radiant mission, no tv's radios juke boxes, no 'noisy' generators/turrets near beds or lights and still it bugs out. Talking of crops there seems to be a problem with Mutfruit and razor grain and not being able to pick them but still register as a food source (this also happened with crops spaced out and not crowded together) This happened in more than one settlement. I've also noted that when settlements bugged out (Oberland is one that springs to mind) the settlers were just standing about in a group doing nothing. Another myth is the assigning of beds to settlers - still doesn't stop a drop in happiness.

Ive also cleared the game off my xbox and re-downloaded it but the settlement bugs still continued.

I hope they can get this sorted as I actually enjoyed the settlement building but for now I am going to miss it out till it (hopefully) gets fixed.

Edit: I have also had stores, local leader 2 in effect and also an extra dog in another settlement - nothing worked - I even started getting rid of every possible item/thing when first starting up a settlement - basically a blank slate in regards to tv/seats/beds/crops and it still didn't work - last try was level 38.

That's why Bethesda made this part of the gameplay optional. But for those who like it, having a complex "happiness" system may not be a bad thing. It makes things interesting and challenging. The problem right now is that it is unclear whether some of the features are actually features or bugs (like bed placement and other bed situations).

What seems to happen is that after beds have been manually assigned, they may become UNassigned later. That may explain why after you have assigned the beds, your happiness still dropped later. You just have to assign again. This is most likely a bug, of course. But the actual assigning of an unassigned bed does raise happiness, which I have done and observed many times, thus not a myth. Every time I do that, I see a green arrow next to happiness within seconds. But of course, the settler has to be actually UNassigned for this to work. If a settler has already got a bed, assigning him or her to an unassigned bed only moves him or her to a different bed, thus not raising happiness at all.

SONNY!! Don't give up on us! Not at a time like this!

I got frustrated at the happiness situation at Sanctuary, so I basically just made very basic 'player homes' for settlers, with a number of basic prefabs getting two beds, a couple of chairs, a junk box and table and lights. That, plus the usual store builds and amenities, pretty much stabilised my happiness over 82. I did the same at Starlight, and it stabilised as well.

To do that, plus build your own shackmansion and pretty a place up, you need to use the build limit exploit, though...it chews up a lot of build capacity.

if bed assignment causes happiness issue, then I am gonna turn off my beacon. every new settler fouls up all assignments.

I gave up assigning beds once I reached 10 settlers. There is nothing worse than 27 settlers and a screwed up bed assignment roster. I am not going to spend another 2 or 3 hours reassigning everything AGAIN!

Let 'em sleep wherever they want. I'll show up while you're getting attacked and watch you kill the baddies. Beyond that, fend for yourselves. I've got another 12 settlements to manager.

For me assigning beds did not help. Only after I stored all the powered TVs did happpiness shoot from 20 and stay around 80 from that point forward.

Another bug, I imagine...

When that happens, I actually have to put a bell near the beds, ring it, and have all the settlers come in, so I can actually see if everyone has a bed or not.

My experience is that this problem seems to most likely occur in places that have pre-existing beds and pre-existing settlers, like Finch Farm and The Slog, which both have had beds becoming mysteriously unassigned, and repeatedly too. And it doesn't necessarily happen to newly arrived settlers. Settlers who already got beds may have beds suddenly unassigned. Sometimes I also see settlers, whether they have beds or not, sleeping in UNassigned beds. Whether a settler is sleeping or not doesn't matter, it seems. What seems to matter is that he or she is actually assigned a bed. Apparently, the game figures that if there are N settlers, there should be N assigned beds, otherwise you suffer a loss in happiness.

Adding to the confusion is that some settlers are designed to NEVER SLEEP, such as Arlen in The Slog (the "toy part" guy). You can't assign Arlen to anything, not even a bed, thus he never sleeps. And yet he counts as one of the settlers, so you need a bed for him so that the bed count equals the number of settlers. But since his bed is always unassigned, you will always suffer a loss in happiness, whatever amount it may be.

Pathfinding can influence happiness. If you have a bed placed somewhere weird and the AI has trouble getting to it, it can drop happiness. In Sanctuary I ignore all pre-existing buildings and build new ones on the empty foundations of scrapped houses. I leave an actual hole in the wall so the settlers can get in because they are literally too stupid to open doors and walk through doorways. I put extremely easy to reach beds in all of these and this has pretty much nuked my "happiness dropping for random, mystery reasons" problem.


Also, for some reason, the more people you have in a settlement, the harder it is to raise happiness. Happiness also rises if you are in the settlement so if you have been hanging out there a while and you leave, it will drop simply because you aren't around.


The only things I know that influence happiness are: beds, food, water, defense, stores, and your physical presence. They don't care about decorations. Oh, and junkyard dogs. Those actually provide a bonus as well.

I know getting rid of TVs is mentioned often as a workaround by many people, but that's one thing that never seems to happen to me. I have had and still do have TVs, radios, and jukeboxes in several settlements, and never have I seen any tell-tale sign of happiness droppage. Assigning unassigned beds do raise happiness for me time and time again. I'm just wondering why we are seeing these conflicting results. Maybe there are still aspects of the game we all have overlooked.

Bugs or not in the end it is a failure - plain and simple.

As I've mentioned I like the settlement aspect of the game. But why should I spend an age (depending on settler numbers) assigning beds again and again - if I want a tv or two or radios - I can't because it might 'possibly' bug out the system. Why are settlers and brahmin on roofs or all crowded together? If I want to fast travel - why can't I? I have to go outside the settlement 'area' and turn all electrical items off and store the settlement beacon before I leave. Not forgetting the pip boy glitch which tells you one thing but when you get back to 'x' settlement everything is ok! Why are the 'radiant' quest givers (settlers and/or NPCs) not marked so we can get them straight away - why is the notification of a settlement attack so damn small and fast? Why do fences not click together or float off the ground whenever they are placed on uneven ground (concrete floors withstanding). Why do some crops as I've mentioned seem to be unable to be picked - the pathing for NPCs or settlers can be glitchy to say the least - especially with gates/doors in fences or even the big fence gate - watched Preston bang his head for an age on a big fence gate time and time again. Need I continue??

Please don't misunderstand me everything about the game is fantastic apart from the settlement part - I've had no issues what so ever outside this area of the game. I understand that every players experience with the game is different and maybe the ' work-arounds' work for them and I am pleased if that is the case. I am not going to call out Bethesda - we all know the track record FO:3, Skyrim et all and to be honest there are enough angry keyboard warriors out there to fill this forum and more.

So for now I am not using settlements - told Preston to stick his settlement where the sun don't shine after I helped him in Concord and took up residence in Red Rocket just outside Sanctuary (will buy Homeplate soon) and I keep an eye of Sanctuary (through the scope of my hunting rifle - very tempted to pop a shot into Sturgess lol) and to be honest I am having a blast not having easy access to crops and materials (survivor difficulty) and scaving for what I can with Dogmeat by my side - I now understand why those scavengers go all hostile when I approach them lol.

I am on the Xbox One so unfortunately I don't have access to mods that the PC community have (yes I am jealous lol) but hopefully that might change once mods come to the XB1.

On a quick side note in regards to the settlement 'issues'. My 1st play through of the game (pre recently released official) patch I never had this issue at all with settlements - so could this be related? My memories a bit hazy as I've had a few drinks/sleeps since then lol

I'm completely convinced this is inaccurate. I have seen 0 evidence that TVs and radios change anything. Or that decorations generally change anything. Most mystery drops in happiness I have found are related to terrible pathfinding and settlers not getting into beds when I've actually tried to figure out what is going on. The only actual bug I've identified is that fast traveling from inside a settlement will *sometimes* cause some of your resources to drop to 0 and if you don't notice this for a while, it can make happiness plummet. This is fixed by just fast traveling back to the settlement.