has such twitchy and fussy controls, it drives me nuts. Every time I think I should really spend time working on my settlements, I end up giving up in frustration. I'm on PC; so I downloaded a bunch of mods so I'd have more variety and a couple to help with the controls issue, and it's still awful. Heck, it might be worse with mods that add items, because now the menus are huge. I'd like to go for the 100% happiness achievement, but ... So I'm asking: what solutions have people found to help with settlement building? I'd like to do something like some of the areas in the game with lots of bridges and things at different heights, but it really seems like you don't have the tools for that. Maybe I should just stick to slapping up prefabs? Kinda disappointing, but trying to build something multi-level that actually looks like it's physically possible (as opposed to floating in the air) is a real pain in the a--. Plus my settlers don't seem to use multistory buildings.

Agreed, I've put off any significant settlement building until Bethesda fixes the major issues like enemies spawning in your settlement if you wall it off and dead bodies staying within your settlement forever.

use the concrete foundation. brought my happiness up!

I know some folks enjoy the game play but for me, the settlements have been the most joy and headache.


I want my settlements to act like diamond city, where they work, socialize, sleep, etc. But all I get is work, stand like zombies, sleep. The radiant ai in oblivion was great but where is it now? I build bars and receive rooms that are just pieces of dust collectors.


Also for seeing a far range of body types,hairs, in the creator, why is it that most of my settlers look the same?


And Yes! Please remove bodies.

Is that part of the game or a mod add on?

It's not an add-on, it's part of the game.

The only thing is, you have to find a lot of concrete, and it's heavy. It takes a while to build up a stash of it. Power Armor helps, and carrying perks.

It's under Structures, Wood, Floors. It's the 3rd one from the left called "Shack Foundation (66)". It takes 12 wood and 3 concrete.

The concrete foundations are essential for leveling terrain and providing a solid base to build on. Big problem with them is they don't snap-stack on top of one another, which is frequently necessary (such as on Spectacle Island). But if you use the stairwell floor in the same menu and attach it to the side of a concrete block, you can get another block to stack on top (or below, if that's the situation).

I do a lot of building, and the learning curve was definitely steep. But I greatly enjoy it and can now put standard bunkhouses and things together pretty quickly for those settlements I'm not worried about getting elaborate with. At this point, I just can't wait for expanded workshop items, whether in the official DLC or whatever mods eventually make it to me on Xbox One.

The frustrating thing about settlement build is that there is no guide. Me personally, I love building and using my imagination. I have learned a lot over the many different ones I have built by trial and error. I actually need to go back to Sanctuary and redo it. What also helped has been watching YouTube videos.

There are tons of mods out there to help with positioning. Mod that lets you stack Foundation blocks on top of each other, mod that has half-size walls and roofs to fit the little half-size floor pieces, mod that lets you place items closer together than vanilla allows, etc.

It can still be frustrating ---- I'm placing a floor and there's a 2x2 spot and I keep getting the red warning that the piece won't fit, so I move my character's body around and tilt the camera at extreme angles and then finally it flashes blue and I lock it in place if I am lucky. I am not 100% sure if it's possible or not (I may have been reading theories or hopes someone had posted) but if we could turn OFF the snap-to-grid feature entirely, it looks like we could position things more easily. Of course, getting them to line up IS easier when the snapping works like it should.

I enjoy building settlements, but not so much the mechanics of scrounging every little component and then hauling it around so I feel very little guilt in granting myself the ability to carry 10,000 lbs of gear and then using console-command batch files to just give myself truckloads of components. Why get frustrated by running out of concrete and then run all over hell's half-acre trying to find it?

They certainly could use more in the way of tutorials, though. Not sure what form they would take (I already hate the hold-your-hand First Settlement "quests" that make me place a generator and then connect something to it, etc.

It was Jug on YouTube who opened my eyes to the possibilities with the concrete blocks. Forever in that dude's debt. The "snapping tool" he introduces in his Sanctuary Hills video is . .. it's genius. There's no other way to describe it.

It's also why I still don't really use it: I am NOT a genius.

There's several tricks and workarounds that you can find online, such as the rug glitch, which have opened up a lot of new possibilities in settlement building for me. A YouTube channel I've recently discovered is norespawns, he takes the time to show you these workarounds as well as cool ideas for building stuff. It takes time but its quite rewarding once you've figured out how to make the mechanics less clunky. I've just learnt how to fill in the roofs of the Sanctuary houses, and it's been a lot of fun building those.

The biggest issue I have is the settlers themselves. They're unnamed, bland and generic and they don't really do anything except work and walk around. My worry is that regardless of how great I can build a settlement structurally, the settlers will undermine the whole experience for me by just being boring. I don't know if Bethesda could implement some named settlers with quests, dialogue and backstories, but it would liven things up a bit and give me a reason to keep building.

There is a guide it is in the save screen under Help . There are like 4-5 sections in the guide just on settlements.

edit: May not be the most helpful though but there is a guide to help start people off.

See what I mean? Learn something new everyday