The 5 Most Important Items from Fallout 4‘s Wasteland Workshop DLC

By Holly Green | April 21, 2016 | 12:00pm

Video Games Lists Fallout 4

The 5 Most Important Items from Fallout 4‘s Wasteland Workshop DLC

Should I get the Wasteland Workshop for Fallout 4? If you find yourself asking that question, this rundown is for you. The DLC adds a number of new items to the settlement workshops, which join those brought in during update 1.4 to give a dash of Sims to your Fallout 4 experience. Is it worth your $5? Check out the top five additions to the settlement workshops before you decide.

5. Garden Plot

Probably one of the bigger issues with spacing in Fallout 4 settlements is crop placement. It is very hard to establish uniform spacing between plants, making it difficult to maximize every square foot of a settlement. On top of that, some settlements have very little dirt for planting crops, leading to a shortage of both food and jobs for your settlers. The garden plot, a small patch of earth that can be put over concrete or uneven land, will solve that problem by providing more places for you to plant.

4. Neon Lettering

Neon lettering is mostly an aesthetic addition to Fallout 4, but it’s a nice one nonetheless. I use it to label rooms and buildings, spruce up a decorative area, or name some of the bars and pubs I’ve created across the Commonwealth, like The Party Bus, a top level concessions area at a settlement I call Spectacle Stadium, which you can see below. Your settlers of course will pay no attention to the signs, but they’re still fun.

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3. New Lighting Items

Count this among the many “no-brainer” additions to the Wasteland Workshop. Along with the update issued just prior to Wasteland Workshop, a number of reused assets finally made their way to the settlement workshop menu. Did you see a lamp or painting in a building somewhere in the Commonwealth and wonder why you can’t use it? Well now you can. And if you’re one of those folks that likes to decorate, you’ll love the variety of new options. My favorite is the table lamp seen below.

2. Fusion Generator

In your bigger, more power-hungry settlements, energy may be an issue. That is, having enough energy to light and defend your settlement without taking up too much space. The new Fusion Generator, likely added to help fuel the new battle arenas, can replace up to 5 Large Generators, bringing in a hefty 100 Energy per unit.

Below are two pictures illustrating the difference in consumed space. My Starlight Drive-In settlement, a mega-structure affectionately nicknamed Starlight Bazaar, needs about 400 Energy to power its many lights and turrets. The first picture shows the many Large and Medium Generators I needed before Wasteland Workshop. The second shows what that area looks like now, consolidated down to three or four. The improvement is astounding.

1. Arena Items

Ultimately the purpose of Wasteland Workshop is to add the ability to capture enemies and creatures, then pit them against each other. To facilitate this you’ll find all new concrete flooring, walls, and pillars, team platforms that can be assigned to settlers, automatic doors, and cages. Planned properly, you can create a whole new recreation center for the citizens of the Commonwealth and turn it into a gladiator-style arena. To that end, I created Spectacle Stadium, a sports facility on Spectacle Island that includes a bar, concessions, and luxury box seating. The island is big enough to hold almost the entire structure without using the gun scrapping exploit, so go hog wild and make one for yourself. It’ll give your settlers something to do now that the robots handle all their farm work.

Holly Green is a reporter, editor, and semiprofessional photographer living in Seattle, WA. She is also the author of Fry Scores: An Unofficial Guide To Video Game Grub. You can find her work at Gameranx, Polygon, Unwinnable, and other videogame news publications.