Settlements in Fallout 4 are an elaborate mechanic that lets you feel like a lord of a small town. The settlements provide all sorts of benefits to the player and can be expanded and customized to your liking. There are many activities to perform in a settlement and for that, you need an army of Settlers to take up key positions so that the settlement could prosper.
The whole settler and settlement mechanic is a bit convoluted and to get more settlers in Fallout 4, you can employ different types of techniques which we will get into in this article.
Ways To Get More Settlers in Fallout 4
- You need to have a high level of Charisma to increase the settlement population limit.
- Your settlement needs to have a Radio Beacon to attract random settlers.
- Your settlement needs to have the basic necessities like food, water, and beds to create a hospitable environment for new and existing settlers.
- There is an exploit for getting unlimited settlers by repeatedly completing the Rogue Robot quest at the end of the Automatron DLC.
We will go into much detail about all of the ways mentioned above. So scroll down to get the answer for your own bustling little settlement!
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How many Settlers can you have in a Fallout 4 Settlement?
Settlers are basically the population of the settlement. These people are required to collect from resource units and man objects that you have built. Each settlement has a default max population of 10 settlers plus each point of Charisma the character has, which has a base max of 22 (10 from leveling and +1 from bobblehead and You’re SPECIAL! magazine respectively ) before factoring in extra charisma from armor, and consumables.
Things to Consider When Attracting Settlers
There are some basic things that you need to know when you are attracting settlers to your settlements:
- A Radio Beacon is generally required to attract more settlers directly to a settlement.
- You can send companions to settlements and can recruit a few non-companion characters to join.
- Settlers can be told to “move” from an already populated settlement to another.
- Increasing populations and lower happiness scores will increase the time for new settlers to arrive using the radio beacon.
- If more than four settlers are either unassigned or assigned to provisioner jobs then no more settlers will arrive on their own.
- Attracting settlers will depend on water, food, beds, and defense apart from the Radio Beacon previously mentioned.
Speaking of Settler dependencies, below are some foundational things that your settlement should have for your existing and upcoming settlers:
- The settlement needs one unit of food per settler to keep the settlers happy.
- The settlement needs one unit of water per settler to keep the settlers happy.
- The settlement needs one unit of defense per settler to keep the settlers happy.
- The settlement needs one bed per settler to keep the settlers happy; ideally, the bed should be safe from rainfall.
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Increasing Charisma and Settler Limit
The number of settlers you can have in any one settlement is directly determined by your Charisma level. The higher your charisma the more settlers you can have. You can both permanently and temporarily boost your Charisma by equipping certain items.
By wearing Charisma-enhancing clothes you can boost charisma for the time you have them on. If you remove the clothing then the limit will go down however if you have already sent or attracted new settlers to the point of the new limit and then remove the clothes then you won’t lose them. So a good tip is to equip Charisma-enhancing pieces of clothing to increase the limit then get new settlers to fill the settlement and then change the clothing to your preferred items.
There are consumables in the game too that temporarily increase Charisma. You can pop these items and quickly send settlers to your desired settlement before the effect wears off.
Below we will list down all the items in the game that boost Charisma with the level of Charisma you will get from equipping/using them:
- Armor and clothing
- Agatha’s dress (only female character) (+3)
- Casual outfit (only female character) (+1)
- Covert sweater vest (+1)
- Cowhide western outfit (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Destroyer’s helmet (+1)
- Fancy plaid suit & string tie (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Fancy suit (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Fancy suit & tie (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Geneva’s ensemble (+1)
- Green shirt and combat boots (+1)
- Laundered loungewear (+1)
- Magician’s tuxedo (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Minutemen general’s uniform (+1)
- Nuka-Girl rocketsuit (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Operators armored dress (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Operators armored skirt (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Orange shirt Western outfit (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Pack shawl (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Padded blue jacket (+1)
- Pastor’s vestments (+1)
- Patched three-piece suit (+1)
- Postman uniform (uniform + hat) (+1)
- Red frock coat (+1)
- Red leather trench coat (+1)
- Trench coat (all variants) (+1)
- Tuxedo (+1)
- Western duster (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Western outfit (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Western outfit & chaps (Nuka-World add-on) (+1)
- Zeke’s jacket and jeans (+1)
- Bathrobe (+2)
- Checkered shirt and slacks (+2)
- Black suit (dirty and clean) (+2)
- Blue suit (dirty and clean) (+2)
- Fancy plaid suit & tie (Nuka-World add-on) (+2)
- Feathered dress (+2)
- Graphic T-shirts (Creation Club) (+2)
- Grey suit (dirty and clean) (+2)
- Hubologist outfit (Nuka-World add-on) (+2)
- Laundered dress (all variants) (+2)
- Lorenzo’s suit (+2)
- Patched suit (+2)
- Ratty skirt (+2)
- Red dress (+2)
- Reginald’s suit (Male) (+3)
- Sequin dress (+2)
- Striped suit (dirty and clean) (+2)
- Summer shorts (+2)
- Sweater vest and slacks (+2)
- T-shirt and slacks (+2)
- The Dapper Gent (Far Harbor add-on) (+2)
- Sharp Legendary Armor – each piece of this armor set adds +1 Charisma
- Consumables
- Beer (regular & ice-cold) (+1)
- Bobrov’s Best moonshine (+1)
- Dirty Wastelander (+1)
- Gwinnett ale (regular & ice-cold) (+1)
- Gwinnett brew (regular & ice-cold) (+1)
- Gwinnett lager (regular & ice-cold) (+1)
- Gwinnett pale (regular & ice-cold) (+1)
- Gwinnett pilsner (regular & ice-cold) (+1)
- Gwinnett stout (regular & ice-cold) (+1)
- X-cell (+2)
- Day Tripper (+3)
- Smooth Operator (+3)
- Grape Mentats (+5)
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Unlimited Settler – Exploit
With all the right combination of Charisma boosting items equipped and/or consumed, you will still reach a population cap for the settlement but there is a glitch or workaround in Fallout 4 that allows you to essentially send endless numbers of settlers to any settlement. Although be warned, stuffing too many settlers in one place will impact system performance and you might face lags so do not go crazy!
In certain situations, the game does allow you to send new settlers to full settlements. This happens during a rare random encounter in the open world in which you can save a group of settlers from an enemy attack. Once the enemies are dead and if the settlers are still alive, you can talk to them and to offer them a place to live at any of your settlements regardless of that settlement’s current population.
However, this encounter is rare and you may encounter it only once or twice in your entire playthrough which is not exactly a reliable way to get unlimited settlers.
This is where the Automatron DLC comes in, as there is a glitch at the end of it which you can exploit. At the end of the DLC questline, the Mechanist aka Isabela Cruz will give you a quest called Rogue Robot where you have to hunt down the remaining robots that are still roaming the Commonwealth. This quest will take place in a random location with a random number of robots usually attacking a random group of NPCs from Brotherhood of Steel, Minutemen, Scavengers, or even Settlers.
First, you need to have completed the Automatron DLC then go to the Mechanist lair and talk to Isabella Cruz. You will immediately ask her if she’s been scanning for any more robots to which she will most likely reply that she has been scanning but hasn’t picked up any new signals. Don’t believe her though as she’s lying. Immediately talk to her again and she’ll change her mind and give you a location to go hunt down some robots.
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Let it be known that the location usually dictates which type of NPCs will be there under attack by the robots, it’s not always settlers. Settlers usually spawn in the location/mission (as seen in the picture above) near a café just north of the Chestnut Hillock reservoir and slightly northeast of Vault 81. Fast travelling to Vault 81 and then running down the dirt road is the fastest and most direct way to get there.
Be sure to come in fast and come in hard. Destroy the robots as quickly as you can before they kill the Settlers. There will be three settlers and anywhere from one to four robots sometimes legendary ones. Most of the time when you will do this, at least one of the settlers is likely to get killed. It’s very hard to avoid because settlers are squishy idiots.
Once the robots are dead, speak to one of the Settlers. There will be a dialog option to ask them if they’re looking for a new home then an option to ask them to join you. Once you choose that option you will be able to choose which settlement to send them to and all settlements will be available even the ones that are completely filled to their limit.
Talking to one Settler will send the entire group to your settlement. Sending one settler and then talking to the other surviving ones will grant access to their inventory rather than dialog options just as if you were in a settlement. It will take two or three days for them to find their way to the settlement but the settler count there will already reflect their addition. Don’t worry about the number shown on your map as it can be very wrong. To see your true seller count you have to travel to the settlement and open up your build menu to see the correct population.
The best part about this exploit is that you can go straight back to Isabella Cruz and get another quest to kill more robots. They may or may not be attacking settlers but just keep going back and getting the quest again until they do.
Bonus Tips
An important tip for this exploit is if the very next quest you get takes you right back to the last place you were then wait a day or two in-game before going there to give the settlers you just rescued a chance to leave the area otherwise they might be killed by the new robots that will spawn right next to them.
Another tip is to quick save right before you go to the location. Just in case the settlers are all killed, you can reload and try again to save them all.
As long as you have a little time and patience then this is a surefire way to get unlimited settlers.
If you want to stay within the confines of the game then using the Charisma boosting items and consumables will push the population limit a bit so that you can increase the settlers and change your items back to what you want. But if you want to go crazy then keep repeating the Rogue Robot quest and you will never run out of settlers in Fallout 4 ever again, although it will take some time as you won’t be getting settlers each time you start this mission.