Fallout 4: Water, & Food

Purified Water & Vegetable Workshop Deposits

As with Scavenging Stations, food and water are regularly deposited into your Settlement's Workshop inventory and can be shared among Settlements for building/survival purposes via Supply Lines. This guide will teach you a bit about these two desireable item types and how you can efficiently get purified water as well as food in abundance for cooking, chemistry, and selling for caps. Excess food can also be used to make Adhesive, required for many weapon and armor mods.

Getting Purified Water

Requirements
In order to get deposits of purified water, you must have a surplus of water in Sanctuary (or other Settlement), best done with a water purifier connected to a generator that is placed near the water to be material-efficient, along with a few normal pumps. I've had 3 purifiers and 8 pumps. You will get purified water in a Settlement's reserves based on the amount of excess. You can get the water from any settlement, I assume the villagers just boil the water to purify it if you don't have an actual 'purifier'. This means regular pumps work fine, but the large purifiers take up less space.

You will begin receiving surplus water in the Settlement's inventory (found at any crafting station in that Settlement). I did a lot of testing and this takes time to generate, and seems totally random. Deposits take place ever 30 minutes to 1 hour of play. Just check each time you visit by using the transfer menu at a crafting station. You will waste a lot of time if you just sleep to get the next stockpile, while also sometimes losing opportunities for timed quests (rescue x).

Water Surplus
The larger the water surplus, the more purified water you'll get whenever the game adds it to the inventory. You can get more 'purified' water than you probably should receive simply by making many water pumps - the normal kind - in an area in the village. The Settlers' required water and some randomness determine what you'll get on each 'shipment'.

It is possible to get dozens of Purified Water each time you visit Sanctuary and other Settlements, so long as enough time has passed for it to spawn and you have made adequate water pumps. It comes in one large shipment, it does not 'trickle' in. Over the long-run, try to get your Settlement's stat to 50-75 Water or more to get large amounts when you visit. This is a wonderful healing item for in-between battles.

I've found it's necessary to remove the purified water from the settlement's crafting storage in order to have more stockpiled. Since it can be heavy, put it in a normal container so that it's not taking up weight in your inventory, while not blocking more from being saved up. If you find you're no longer getting excess purified water, this may be the problem. Otherwise, USE IT! Craft Vegetable Starch or take it to another Settlement entirely and store it so that it might again produce in the first Settlement. Purified Water can also be sold for a decent rate, making this a viable money-making tactic in Fallout 4.

Getting Excess Food

Surplus Food
Food, like water, is stockpiled in the Settlement's crafting stations. You'll most often make use of this at a Cooking Station so that the vegetables can be consumed without radiation poisoning. In the case of vegetables stockpiling, it's a bit more random. If you want more of a particular type of food, you must plant an abundance of that type.

Thankfully, you can get around this. The Settlement's food rating has nothing to do with you picking the food from the vine. You can't make your Settlers starve by taking their food. Therefore, if you need the veggies for Vegetable Starch in abundance, you can simply harvest them from the plant and replant more of them - in a few days, you'll have a constant source of those in order to make adhesive from starch.

Growing Vegetables
Following the main quest to restore the Minutemen, you'll find a few small Settlements that have food already planted. Pick these, so that you can return to Sanctuary and plant them by selecting the Resources > Food menu. As you advance in the game, these other settlements will possibly join you so that you can have many sources of crafting and cooking materials. A variety of foods are useful, though any you want stockpiled in abudance should be planted in abundance!

Farming
Settlers must be assigned to food in order for it to accumulate and contribute to your Settlement. It won't even grow without a Settler working the land. Each Settler can work up to 6 units of Food. Note that many plants are 0.5 (or half a unit), therefore this could mean up to 12 plants worked by one settler. Fortunately, you only need assign them to one plant and they will attempt to work as many in the area as possible. You may want to plant things in 12s so as to ensure efficiency among your farmers. Laying them out in rows makes it easier on you to pick them clean and reap the reward!

If you need to know more about managing Settlements, see my guide.