Fallout 4 is having a renaissance and I couldn’t be happier about it. My love for that game runs deep. It’s funny and exciting … but most importantly (for me, at least) it lets you rebuild the ruined world you find yourself in. Or some of it at least! Yep, by utilizing the game’s settlement system, you can create patches of glorious green in the desolate yellow wasteland.
Now personally, I use mods in order to get the most out of my settlements. Homemaker and Creative Clutter are two of my faves. You don’t have to, of course, but I recommend it! The base game has enough to get you started but mods really add to the experience.
But of course, you can’t do any of that until you know where to build. Here’s a guide to every settlement location in the game, ranked from worst to best, and what you can expect from them. Don’t forget to build doghouses for Dogmeat (or any other dogs you stumble across) in whichever ones you choose!
37. Home Plate
You can get the Home Plate settlement by purchasing it from Geneva in Diamond City. It has a great location (right in the middle of the market) but it’s rather small and pokey and you can’t bring other settlers to live there. Plus, you can’t harvest food for yourself, since it’s just one building. Good for use as a player base, though!
36. The Mechanist’s Lair
The Mechanist’s Lair settlement is another player base, and you can get it by playing through the “Automatron” DLC and completing the quest “Restoring Order.” You can’t plant food or summon settlers here either, but it is full of robots and other cool stuff.
35. Boston Airport
Whether or not you decide to claim the Boston Airport settlement will probably largely depend on how you feel about the Brotherhood of Steel. If you become their enemy, no Boston Airport for you. But if you become their ally, you can build yourself a base there. You won’t be able to plant crops, build water purifiers, or invite other settlers to the airport though.
34. Jamaica Plain
You have all the settlement options (food, water, settlers) in the Jamaica Plain settlement but there’s not a huge amount you can do with it, unfortunately. Mostly because you only actually get a small section of it to build on, rather than the whole thing, and in that section, there’s not much apart from a big building missing some walls.
33. Taffington Boathouse
The Taffington Boathouse settlement is a boathouse full of corpses! Hooray! Unfortunately, even after you claim this as a settlement the corpses can still randomly pop back into view which is very frustrating. You can get a mod to scrap them, but still. At least there’s a lot of water and a cooking station nearby?
32. Coastal Cottage
Well, the views at the Coastal Cottage settlement are nice, but that doesn’t change the fact that this settlement gives you one broken cottage and that’s pretty much it. Me, I expanded this area with the Conquest mod to give me more land to build on.
31. Hangman’s Alley
The Hangman’s Alley settlement is another teeny tiny settlement where you have to get creative if you want to get anything salvageable out of it. Most people, including me, choose to build upwards rather than outwards and create a floating settlement between the walls.
30. Croup Manor
The Croup Manor settlement is just one building and unfortunately all it really has is a basement full of ghouls and a depressing backstory. But kill all the ghouls and Croup Manor is yours. It’s a bit of a fixer-upper, to say the least, but good if you like a challenge.
29. Greentop Nursery
The Greentop Nursey settlement is basically a big greenhouse, which is great if you want to get your mutfruit-farming game on. But watch out for the hostile Super Mutants who live nearby!
28. Tenpines Bluff
The Tenpines Bluff settlement isn’t a bad settlement, but you may be disappointed to realize that you can’t scrap the ugly-looking shack at Tenpines Bluff without using mods. Still, as the Fallout franchise frequently teaches, looks aren’t everything.
27. Covenant
The Covenant settlement is full of paranoid Synth-haters who have been known to kidnap and kill innocent travelers. But it has a cat and a robot who gives you lemonade, so it’s all good. You can’t really do much with the tiny houses however (and the fact that they all look like they should have two floors but don’t always annoyed me.)
26. Outpost Zimonja
Now, the Outpost Zimonja settlement is rather small in width but you can build up to 12 stories there, which makes it the ideal location for those who like high-up living. Clear out Boomer and his Raiders in order to take it for yourself.
25. Bunker Hill
The walled and easily defensible Bunker Hill settlement is a great source of caps, but I personally found it tricky to build many new things here. Best to build upwards around the tower, I reckon, although you can’t build very high, which is a bit disappointing.
24. Warwick Homestead
The Warwick Homestead settlement is a grim-looking factory by the water, but it comes with lots of land that you can use to build new things. It also comes with its own settlers: the Warwick family and their farmhands Bill and Cedric. You need to do their side quest before you can start using the settlement.
23. Egret Tours Marina
Welcome to the Egret Tours Marina settlement, which is inhabited by a grumpy old woman named Phyllis. You have to go through her tragic side quest in order to unlock the settlement, which is a great one for water purifiers and fun to build on. Or you could just kill her, of course, if you’re that way inclined.
22. Dalton Farm
The Dalton Farm settlement is one of four settlements you can claim in the DLC land of Far Harbor. Do the quest given to you by Cassie Dalton and you’ll be able to claim the farm for yourself. The buildings are all ruined, but maybe you can rebuild them?
21. Finch Farm
The Finch Farm settlement is underneath what used to be the Boston Expressway, and you can actually build up on there if you want to. Finch Farm has one of the highest build limits in the game. (Make sure you have lots of railings so your settlers don’t fall off!)
20. Nuka-World Red Rocket
Rather disappointingly, the Nuka-World DLC only came with one settlement, the Nuka-World Red Rocket settlement. It does give you a fairly substantial piece of land to work with, though, and a nice view of King Cola’s Castle if you’re into that sort of thing.
19. Kingsport Lighthouse
The Kingsport Lighthouse settlement has, well, a lighthouse, and that immediately bumps it high up the list in terms of aesthetics. There are some radioactive barrels around, but you can scrap them easily and get to work creating whatever you wish. I built a hospital!
18. National Park Visitor’s Center
Another Far Harbor DLC settlement. (So watch out for those Fog Crawlers.) Once you’ve scrapped all the junk at the National Park Visitor’s Center settlement you should have quite a lot of good land to build on. There’s even a sheltered area that works very well as a marketplace.
17. Echo Lake Lumber Mill
The Echo Lake Lumber Hill settlement doesn’t look like much, and the weather is miserable like everywhere else in Far Harbor, but you get lots of land to build on and lots of wood to build with. Oh, and it also has its own resident cannibal, until you kill him. (Or you could let him live and continue to eat people, I’m not the boss of you.)
16. Murkwater Construction Site
One of my faves! The Murkwater Construction Site settlement looks terrible when you first encounter it. It seems tiny, it’s dark, and there’s a horrible Mirelurk Queen there. But the good news is, you can build upwards! I constructed a whole castle-like establishment there and I’m SO PROUD of it.
15. Oberland Station
The Oberland Station settlement is another settlement that forces you to get creative. I always keep the broken station box and build around it to create something truly unique.
14. Longfellow’s Cabin
This Far Harbor location looks a bit gloomy but it has much more build space than you might realize at first glance. The Longfellow’s Cabin settlement isn’t actually just one cabin, you see, it’s a whole island! And as for Longfellow himself, you can recruit him as a companion.
13. Nordhagen Beach
Time to create your own beach paradise! Well, as close as you can get on Fallout, anyway. A child and two parents live at the Nordhagen Beach settlement but (as is the case with all of Fallout) you can’t kill the child. Not that you would want to anyway … right?
12. County Crossing
The County Crossing settlement is unfortunately sandwiched between various dangerous areas but I had enormous fun with it. There’s a lot of land available so I created a living area with the Snap N’ Build mod!
11. Graygarden
The Greygarden settlement is filled with charming robots attending to their greenhouse, but it’s also another area where you can build on the overpass above. Why not invite some humans to mingle with the bots and give them human houses up on the road?
10. Somerville Place
The underrated location that is the Somerville Place settlement. It’s a good area to build a variety of small buildings on. Two kids live here, which might explain the rope swing in the middle of the settlement. Sadly, you can’t swing on it, I tried.
9. The Slog
The Slog is an all-ghoul tarberry farm built in an old swimming pool! This settlement is famous in-game, you might hear people talk about it before you even encounter it. It’s the only tarberry farm you can get, so you’ll definitely want to claim it. But don’t kill the ghouls! They’ve been through enough!
8. Starlight Drive-In
It’s all fun and games at the Starlight Drive-In settlement.Isn’t it everyone’s secret dream to live in a drive-in movie theater? You can achieve that dream by taking this big settlement near Sanctuary Hills. Sadly, you can’t actually use it as a movie theater. If you could, it’ll be #1 on this list without question.
7. Sunshine Tidings Co-op
The Sunshine Tidings Co-Op settlement was probably a lovely area before those feral ghouls showed up. Kill them and Sunshine Tidings is yours. It’s one of my favorite settlements in the game, there’s lots of space plus a Mr Handy bot with the terrific name of Professor Goodfeels.
6. Red Rocket Truck Stop
The Red Rocket settlement is a nice little area on its own, but to be honest it’s so high up on the list because this is where you meet DOGMEAT! The best dog in gaming hangs out here, just down the road from Sanctuary, waiting to meet you. And you can turn all of Red Rocket into a massive dog playground for him if you want.
5. Abernathy Farm
The humble Abernathy Farm settlement near to Red Rocket has, perhaps surprisingly, the tallest build limit in the game. You can create a 20-storey building here if you feel like it! Abernathy Farm is also home to the Abernathy family, and Connie Abernathy serves as a vendor. She’s one of only a handful of people in the game who sell shipments of cloth.
4. The Castle
Team up with the Minutemen and wipe out the Mirklurks at the Castle settlement, and then it becomes your very own. The Castle is one of my favorites because it’s already a fully-built building and you can just decorate it to your taste!
3. Vault 88
Personally, I don’t enjoy Vault building as much as I like creating buildings on land, but running the Vault 88 settlement is very fun indeed once you get the hang of it. And luckily, you don’t have to perform horrific experiments on whoever turns up to live there.
2. Sanctuary Hills
The second-best building location, the Sanctuary Hills settlement! You start the game in Sanctuary Hills and it’s a charming little suburb. Then you return to it after your encounter in the Vault and … oh dear. Sanctuary Hills is a wasteland. But it’s a wasteland you can fix! Some people use a mod to put Sanctuary back to how it was, but others work with what they have and create something new.
1. Spectacle Island
The greatest settlement location award goes to the fabulous Spectacle Island settlement! The biggest build area in the entire game! Spectacle Island is full of so much potential. I used mods (Aki’s Colorful Trees is a favorite) to put countless trees on mine but you can do pretty much whatever you want here. Build a shop, build a house, build your very own raider gladiator arena if you lean towards the evil, build anything!
You do have a building limit, bear in mind—but you can download a mod to get around it if you want to. It might slow the game a bit, or a lot, but sometimes to create the best post-apocalyptic island in the world, you have to bend the rules a little. So watch out for the Mirelurks (don’t you just hate those things?) and enjoy!
(featured image: Bethesda Game Studios)
