Fallout 4 Workshop Guide: How to Establish Supply Lines and Assign Workers

Fallout 4’s Workshop is extremely deep and complex. Figuring out its inner workings is probably tougher than tackling the raiders, super mutants, and deathclaws of the wasteland. You may even be searching for where to get aluminum for the Workshop. However, with some help to learn about the inner systems of the workshop more, you should be able to take it on and become the leader of a nice community. We have a full guide on the mode, but one aspect was especially confusing, while still being extremely important to the experience. So, here’s how to establish supply lines in Fallout 4’s Workshop.

Establishing Supply Lines and Assigning Workers in Fallout 4

First, what are supply lines? Essentially, supply lines let you create a shared inventory between your settlements. Food and water won’t necessarily be shared, but if you have copper in one settlement and need it in another, having a supply line will make it so you don’t have to go and get it to build that new generator. This becomes increasingly important as you gather a huge inventory of resources and other items that you might need in your more out-of-the-way settlements.

So, how do you link up your Fallout 4 settlements with supply lines? First you need to activate the Local Leader perk, which takes a Charisma of six to unlock. Once you have that you can establish them, but Fallout 4 doesn’t go out of its way to say how. Essentially, you need a spare settler in your town.

One trick, if you don’t have a settler to spare, is to send one of your companions to the necessary town. Some won’t work as couriers, such as Codsworth, but many will. Send Strong the super mutant to a settlement and he can quickly establish the supply line you need, for example.

To do this, go into Workshop mode and walk up to whomever you have to spare, hit RB or R1 on consoles, the button is displayed on the bottom if you’re on PC or changed up the control scheme, and a new menu will pop up. This lets you pick what settlement to set the supply route to. You’ll want it to be close by, most likely the closest other settlement you have. However, your goal is to link them all, so forming a circle or chain is the best idea here.

Once you pick the other settlement your main job is done. You’ll notice immediately that your inventory from all the other linked settlements is available here, allowing you to tap into everything you own if you do this right.

This info is also useful if you simply want to assign workers. Though we go into greater detail in our comprehensive Workshop Guide, essentially you do the same steps here, but instead of hitting RB or R1, you hit A/X. This sets that settler into the assign mode. Now you just find whatever you want them to work, such as a guard post, or farm, and select it with A/X. They’ll start working on it immediately.

Benefits of Keeping Your Settlement Population Happy in Fallout 4

There are many benefits when you have a higher happiness level for the many settlers that are within your villages, farms, and various other locations. There will be lots more junk that you can gain when deciding to scavenge, many more settlers will arrive at a quicker pace, food will be made for the settlement even faster, and you won’t go broke at stores anymore as they will have more caps in your settlement’s stores.

Taking advantage of supply lines and the process of assigning workers is going to massively increase your resources and make sure you can keep your settlers happy at all times.

Fallout 4 is available now on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.