Top 5 Ways to Improve Settler Happiness in Fallout 4 

The settlers should just be happy they're not living in a van down by the river 😤

I think that settlement happiness in particular player playthroughs should be a litmus test for all of our world leaders

Automatrons having a set happiness of 50 means that automatrons can also be used to increase the happiness of a settlement so that it remains allied.

Chairs... the secret to happiness is chairs. "My back hurts, my feet hurt, everything hurts" is the games subtle way of telling you. Craft two chairs per settler n see. Mama Murphied

20 people with 10 bars sounds like a small town in Wisconsin.

I love it when settlers tell me they are full and ate too much or that they start whistling. I'm pretty sure that means you are doing it right.

In my current play through I never rescued Preston and the others and it's soooooooo relaxing.

scrap any beds and rebuild them when you take a fresh settlement, some are bugged, they say there's a bed, but counts them as not under a roof, abernathy and county crossings are regular culprits of this.

Thank you for compiling this list, it’s very helpful! Also, I find it interesting that the phantom weight lifting occurred on your bench press as well.

Thank You. the achievement for 100% has been causing me issues for years

I feel fortunate that I've never cared about getting happiness to 100%. To me, there are two happiness values, 0% and good enough. That said, I usually end up with most of my settlements at around 80%, because meeting basic needs of food, water, shelter, and defense is so easy.

Currently doing a never leave sanctuary challenge where I would like to finish with 100% happiness if I can help it, this guide is very useful thank you grey gaming :)

Sim Settlements. Problem solved and I can't even imagine replaying Fallout 4 without it.

So basically leaving codsworth at sanctuary is bringing down the happiness rating as his can't chance? Probably makes sense to put all robots at grey garden with other robots

Just make a small settlement with 2-4 people and have them assigned to task have plenty of food and water electricity defense cover beda and traders coming around and you will get 100% happiness unlock the achievement and then you never need to worry about your happiness meter as there’s a bug that was never fixed where your settlement will show no beds or food water ect even when you know for a fact that it has everything cause you are standing there

Nice overview appreciate it. Didn't know for example that the potted plants or animals helped happiness

i love the videos you make they help me with my playthroughs and what i “should” or should not get

i been binge watching all your videos. you're super entertaining : D

always happy to see a new video!

A helpful hint about brahmin, for those that don't know: They will help the speed of crops growing. This is especially helpful to making your own adhesive. Grow mutfruit, corn, and tatos, which you can then use at a cooking station (with purified water) to create adhesive.

Dude I love how you blend your work together with the little fallout story time on load screen if you let it sit for an extra minute or two, Also your intuitive, engaging and respectful. Oooh!! what Great Seditious material you have created and spewed forth!! Nay keep it Grey so the people of the commonwealth will someday know what to trust!!!

I absolutely love this game I've been playing it since it came out and I can not stop. I love the settlement building and I hope it's in the next game.

For an easy 100 Happyness for the achievement Go to Red Rocket, call1 settler or send them here. Give them a bar (basic one will do) and harvist the crops from Finch and put them into the workbench. Finally drop a water pump. If you want to speed it up add the workout machines (+2 happy), a cat (+1 happy) and a dog (+1 happy). Unlike what they say in the video only the weightbench and pommel horse is vanilla. If you get the 88 quest items do not take options what can kill your settlers. This quest gives you the exercise bike, the Soda Fountain, and the eye machine. Since you need to 'work' at the Eye Mach and Soda Fountain they wont work well for this. But they are good. Get the Drugged Water / Caffinated Water option for the soda machine. The drugs make them happy but lazy. The gambling machine is the final reward - settlers will use it in their free time to increase happyness like the barbell and pommel horse. You get the Drug vending machine from the Raider quests. Their shops are treated like normal ones - so a booze stall in a settlement run by the Minute Men will become a bar. Their incredibly valuable as they slowly generate drugs you can collect. I like running 10 of them in my home base. They also have Booze stills that make money - and Nuka raiders dont mind working to make booze (It is deposited in your workbench). Finally there is a tribute chest. One of your settlers must guard the chest and it makes rewards every so often with a chance of a legendary. It a little weird but I say their donations. :) Oh also Sim Settlements 2 has an option to turn off your settlements leaving. In fact you can spend a few minutes setting up then wander off and your settlers will build themselves a home.

Interesting , Thank You. So many good ideas

Unless you like zipping back/forth across the map all the time its much easier to pick 3-4 hubs that has more tenants and just use the other locations as barren pass throughs to link your supply lines. Made my life a lot easier by not having to maintain happiness let alone defend settlements in late game. It also saves you time/resources to focus on a few settlements versus them all.

Nice soundtrack rolling in the background on this one.

I watched this video 3 times and I’m still lost, great video I’m just not as fallout savy as I thought I was. I’m made of questions

Hmm. My only real nod to "Immersion" when it comes to settlers is to try and at least leave an access space between the beds I pack into the multi level stilted 3x3 block of open plan flats (Apartments) I habitually slap in every settlement. They take very little ground space away for crops, can have 10+ beds per level, and with a band of 1/4 sized floor panels around the outside of one of the floors I've got a convenient shelf to fill up with gun turrets so they can cover a good amount of the surrounding land. If a settlement ends up getting really big, these buildings also lend themselves pretty well to getting the walls of the top couple levels knocking out and being "Mushroomed" into 5x5 spaces up there. As some may have gathered, for me, the main point of the game is about exploring, and shooting up any area where I hear someone say anything along the lines of "Hey..... I hear something....... Who's there?". I'm not much into the whole logistical management side of things.

1:40 you don’t need more to know about life than those 5 seconds

another way to gain happiness is by doing defense quest as you get the message of one of your settlements being attacked, in my case a scary load of Mutant Bombers and Mama Deathclaws, thankfully not together. If you quickly fast travel to the location of the attack, you can give the people hope and happiness of squishing the invaders. If the counter-invasion is successful, you can gain a permanent 40 points to your happiness factor and could stay there if you had the Unofficial patch, without the mod, the 40 points will reset any time another attack happens on the same settlement. Forcing you to do the defense quest again! A trick is learning the spawn directions of the attacks and making a death-box contraption to funnel the attacks while using either turrets or zapp-beacons in that death-box, i.e. concrete 4 x 5 x 3. make concrete windows FIRST if using turrets!

Btw, when happiness suddenly starts decreasing for no apparent reason, theres a good chance 1 or more synths have infiltrated, removing the synths from the settlement will cause happiness to increase.

Great video

Get this man some Annie’s 4-cheese M&C… stat!

good video man!

Thanks to the happymaker 9000 mod, I never have to worry about settler happiness 😀

Well done.

Great stuff.

Take a drink everytime Grey says "Settlement" lol 5:45 fffffffffk! Cheers though.. I think you may have just about potentially solved a problem of mine......maybe.

Yoo where is that first spot you showed? That dam looks sick! Side note I’ve been going around to all the settlements I had thought I’d built up all nice…my builds were terrible back in the day 😂 just finished starlight drive in and I’ve made that spot look like a legit fallout shanty town 💪🏼

just in case: water purification, i put five plants in the river at sanctuary fairly early in my game, and soon i was selling enough water to have ten and as many as i could fit in nearby streams in other settlements, i actually found this easier, quicker and less XP involved than other suggestions i've seen for manufacturing stuff. it's got to the point where i make more water than i can spend and i have limited but unlimited ammo.

I never actually had a settlement defect. I didn't even know that was a thing.

Good video 👍

I found trying to improve happiness through the vanilla system, makes it a pain in the butt. Personally, I found a mod called "ReVamped Lighting and Colors and a Bonus." It comes with a lot of different colered lights and so on, but the real awesome item it comes with is a Happiness Radio. Place one of these down, its tuned to Diamond City Radio, wait 2 in game days, and boom happiness is at 100.

Yeah right. its all true, but, the system is even more complex. You made it look easy to get a 100% happiness. Mostly not even possible if you stack up with settlers in a settlement. The lower the amount of settlers the easier it gets to have 100%. Just one settler asigned to a bar and a Junkyard guard dog. Will bring your settlement to 100% (almost) immediately. Note that this settlement needs a suplyline from another setlement. The most of already occupied settlements will never reach a 100% happiness. Sanctuary; As long you do not have Marcy and Jun Lung it is possible to get 100% even with 20+ settlers. If you have them, you cant have 100% or just for a second or so. Potplants and rugs, yeah they give some happiness. You need a mountain of those items to create just 1%. The use of pummelhorses, liftbenches and animals is capped. (sorry I don't know the exact amount). You can have unlimmited amounts, but they won't count if you've reached the cap. The kicker; you don't need 100% or just for a second to have the trophy. Keep your settlements above 80% though.

Very good video thank you. I was wondering, would a synth spy in your settlement count as a robot? Might make tracking one down easier.

"Adding Victoriam" If you thought Common Core math was bad...

No matter how many food and drink stations you build, the settlers will always flock to the weight benches for some reason.

I wonder what will Starfield will have regarding settlements, if any and what other interesting mechanics the game will have. Also I wonder if Grey Gaming will include that game in his content, I hope so cuz I really enjoy the way he does his tutorials. Fallout Shelter has the radio room boost happiness, I wish radios in F4 would at last give a few extra points. Maybe there is a mod. Anyway as a newish player I had no idea what would happen if happiness went too low, I am a bit ocd and don't want to see that stat go below 75, unless its a robot only settlement. I guess I better build a few merchants asap.

I've been playing for about a week now and I'm considering quitting because it's so involved. I don't mind that usually but there are systems mentioned here that I haven't even come across yet and I'm still learning how to manipulate the ones I've already discovered. Seems daunting to say the least

The Mac n cheese comment made me chuckle

Guaranteed Happiness Increase: Watch Mama Murphy bench press with ease *side effects may include abject terror*

I’m not sure if you mentioned this already because I’m only halfway through but I managed to reach 100 happiness on a settlement with cats .. yes, cats Lots and lots of cats I wanted to make a cat town so I turned sanctuary into ‘catuary’ and apparently having like 30 cats roaming around made everyone really happy The only problem I had however is all the cats migrated to one specific spot in the settlement which was funny enough the Bar I had made The barkeep probably had milk hidden back there somewhere

If in doubt Monke

Alternatively, build one robot for every 10 settlers and let them all go mad from starvation, dehydration, and insomnia and never question their life choices as the happiness will bottom out at around 5%. Mwahahaha.

I love the settlement system I wish it was deeper.

80% Happy --- In your dreams !

I didn’t even have to listen 5 seconds in to subscribe. The title just shows who you are. Idk why people are greedy with subbing anyway🤷‍♂️

When I add tier-3 restaurants I don't personally view them as bars, I view it as opening up restaurants and stuff. Sure they might all look the same, but in my head one guy is selling tacos, another has a fried fish stand, that chick there sells ramen, etc.

"If you would kindly..."

Personally recommendation get Cracker Barrel Mac and cheese

I've been playing pretty consistently since release, and I had no idea you could lose a settlement. I've never lost one it's very easy to keep the people of the waste happy they really don't need much 😂😂😂

Robot Guards at every post keeps things civil. They also make great Supply Caravan Guards. I only focus on a couple settlmenets anyway. To many Settlements, and most of them are just junk piles. And they don't seem to like my Autobots. I might only try to get 1 Settlement to 100. But that means No Bots, 😞

I like the Creation Club, though I know that's an unpopular opinion. I got a few of the doggos but I wanna get more. Also got the arcane cabinets, the nuka cola stuff, and a few other things.

Bro you better be getting the Cracker Barrel MAC 😢

I could not work out why my settlements were going down in happiness even though I provided everything. Thanks

Ah, a man who knows that not all mac and cheese is made equal. Classy

6:50 "The like bu-uhn"

Pool tables should add happiness.

Annie Mac and cheese is my recommendation. ;)

I was not aware that beds had to be covered.

I never can get out of the 80s. Then there is THE SLOG can’t get them out of low 60s. They have 4 food, tons defense, all stores and beds in buildings. Tried to make all ghouls.

I have only reached 100 Happiness when I have more food and more beds and defense than I have settlers, plus a bunch of stores (i.e. Starlight, Sunshine Tidings, and Sanctuary, in other words, large build areas.) I also do not have a settler beacon installed so I can control the number of settlers.

There was this person on the PSN community who said that if we just got rid of all the women from the settlement, it would instantly become a much happier place.

I definitely understand procrastinating video making😅

many important details weren't mentioned. Most extra happiness is a fix number divided by the population. So if you have 1 settler 1 dog gives a lot. For 10 10 times less. So for 10+CHA max population settlement you need tons of everything, since every bonus is divided. Cats and dogs shall rule! But there is also max limit one type can give, having 100 cats won't work.

Oddly enough I got a raider settlement to 100 ok check it...raiders at the red rocket in nukaworld idk if it matters but I had the operators there and then I put probably 7 pick-me-up stations (makes chems free over time) and booze stills one for each raider about 5 and one yes just one robot for farming 6 mutfruit and after awhile I got it without realizing I hit 100 because I didn't know raiders counted as a settlement

Stoeffers frozen Mac and cheese is the shit

1:36 Story of my life

Next can you make an episode on how to attract settlers to your settlement

Hmmm my main settlement base is Sanctuary hills and i have all the adequate beds, food, defence, water etc ect but it drops between 82-83 happiness....never getting higher or lower but i am thinking one or two of my settlers are stuck on 50 of their own happiness. Maybe. Every settler has a job so has to be one or 2 settlers with max cap of 50 happiness or something.....

Well that means Grey Garden is now a solid choice for keeping Ada and Codsworth

Honest Todd 😂

Manually assign the beds

I never ever got over the happiness level of 88. I don't know why it never gets better. But probably I've spoiled them to much and boredom got the better of them. 🤣🤣🤣

I'm having this problem when I fully set up a settlement, and they have everything they need. The happiness drops to like 60-70 percent. From like 90-95. Do I need more chairs, radios, or tvs?

What are good ways to get a bunch of materials to build stuff with?

My guide to getting 100% happiness: do absolutely nothing to any settlement beyond what's required for the "Sanctuary" quest, do literally anything else in the game, get the Benevolent Leader achievement notification, get confused as hell and check your Pip-Boy, see that Graygarden allegedly has 24 settlers, food, water, and beds. Tada!

I have never built a beta-wave emitter, and I have never had a hostile gorilla in a settlement.

Im hitting the like button so the op can afford the good Mac N Cheese.

Random question for you. I been finding and collecting these statue figurines of robots that are in the game etc. I thought they would be displayed by the same place that you display the vault tec bubble heads. But they wont go on that display. Is there a display that you can put down that these different robot figurines mount on to >?.

Automatron Robots acually cap the happiness levels to 50% FOREVER, so it's a good way for it no never reach 0% lol

2:10 "I think I was robbed."

Missing: Level 4 stores/merchants as an additional boost over Level 3 built stores with random NPC merchants.

Recently tanken on the task of playing Fallout 4 and found your videos More than helpful. Thank you.... However you fail to mention in every video regarding "Shops for happiness" or money....is that's a "Perk" that need to be unlocked 🙄😔 all set to go with 11 ppl and they're ALL in the greenhouse because that perk and the "Leadership perk" are not yet unlocked 🔓

Settlement

This seems more like work then fun

You have to try Fallout 4 in VR

Thanks !! :-)) 🤔🤔🖖🖖👍👍✌✌☮☮❤❤😊😊

Does a Provisioner continue to count towards happiness? Because all of my provisers are Mr Handy death bots.

Happiness Rating +1