Carl's Fallout 4 Guide
for PC, Xbox One, and PS4

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See a full list of guides on the Nuka World page. I've written over a dozen in just a week and plan to continue. There is much more to this DLC, it will just take time to write it all. Check back for more. Comment on the appropriate page if you have a tip to share with other readers.

Fallout 4: Settlements Happiness

Getting the Benevolent Leader Achievement in Fallout 4

A maximum happiness Settlement in Fallout 4

A Settlement's Happiness is a good indicator of how things are going in that town. Many players will only care because it may impact the amount of caps available at their stores and Settler productivity when it comes to scavenging crafting materials, while also earning the Benevolent Leader Achievement. This is perhaps the most annoying achievement to get, because it takes time and you can't be sure you've met the requirements until you actually get it - Happiness creeps up slowly, it's not an instant. Worse, a bug may even cause happiness to fall when you leave. About every 30 minutes in-game happiness ticks up, so you may need to stay once you are SURE you've fulfilled the below requirements. For some, this means having to stick around until the achievement is acquired. I'd like to put a special thanks to a kind redditor who took the time to critique this page for me, helping with some of the happiness-boosting effects.

Happiness

Four Local Leader buildings are required to raise Happiness Four Buildings from the Local Leader, Cap Collector, and Medic Perk are required to raise Happiness above the 80s. Some players put a bunch of these buildings in and managed to get it. This is because each of them contribute happiness, even with duplicate buildings.

Raising Happiness
Settlers have rather low standards. Some people have suggested things like, "Put a TV in every home" in order to raise happiness. Not necessary. Electricity in general has 0 effect on the town's happiness, other than using it to provide water through purifiers (they'll happily drink it from pumps) or power advanced defensive systems like the Missile Turret, which are space-efficient. I haven't seen decorations or items in town help raise Happiness, either. Maybe some people see this impacting it when they're really just experiencing the slow crawl as happiness trends upward and confusing causation with correlation.

The following things DO absolutely affect happiness:

The Benevolent Leader Achievement to get maximum happiness in a large Settlement in Fallout 4

Benevolent Leader Requirements
The Trophy states, "Reach Max Happiness in a Large Settlement". Evidently, this requirement is to get the bar to yellow - making it 'large'. You can accomplish this by building walls, boxes, and things like that which do not take rare components until the size hits the yellow mark.

If you can't do it in Sanctuary...
Other things to try: Do this in a place OTHER than Sanctuary. You may find as others have that the story NPCs make it harder to achieve the 100 happiness. This means you can start over at a place like Jamaica Plain or Greentop Nursery, where there are 0 story NPCs. Build only for a few Settlers and stop the recruitment radio beacon after placing a few of each clinic/bar and maybe 1 each of the other stores. Try not to let population go to 20 or else it'll be harder to achieve. Make sure they have 1 food/water per Settler and over twice that in defense as well as a bed for everyone.

Hope this helps. Share your experiences with it at [email protected] if you learn something significant. I'll happily change the page for the benefit of future readers if something is discovered, but I cannot erase my achievement and get it again in order to experiment.

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