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Become a ‘Benevolent Leader’ in Fallout 4 and create a thriving, happy settlement with these tips and tricks.

Surviving in the wasteland is even more fun with friends. Starting in your first large settlement at Sanctuary, you’ll be able to craft new homes, build defenses, and gather other survivors. If you’ve dug into this new system, you might see a percentage in the top-right corner of the building menu. That stat that never seems to rise over 80%? That’s your settlement’s overall happiness. Getting it to 100% isn’t easy, but we’ve scrounged up a few handy tricks to make things easier.

Getting a happy settlement requires tons of caps. If you don’t mind using exploits, check out our tutorial explaining how to use the Fallout 4 Dogmeat item dupe glitch. Whether you’re on PC or consoles, you’ll be able to copy valuable items and sell them for an easy profit.

How to Get 100% Happiness Settlements

Settlers are a fickle bunch. If you want them to be happy and stay happy, here are the tips you’ll need for a perfectly content township.

These are general tips. You can get 100% happiness without following every suggestion, and you may discover other ways to improve your settlements.

Let us know if there’s something we missed in the comments!

Basic Settlement Happiness Tips

If you’re new to Settlements, these are the basic requirements to getting Sanctuary up off the ground.

• While in a Settlement, check the Workshop menu to see if there are warning signs next to any of the Settlement stats.
• To increase happiness, everyone in your settlement needs food, water, a bed, a job, and defense to ward off raiders.
• Plant plenty of food. Grab plants you find in the wasteland and plant them together in your settlement. Build a water purifier and hook it up to a general as soon as you can.
• Build enough beds for everyone in the Settlement. Make sure they’re inside buildings! Nobody wants to sleep outside.
• Put every Settler to work. While in the Workshop menu, walk over to Settlers and select them, then select food to put them to work.

Advanced 100% Happiness Tips

Have a thriving settlement but can’t quite reach 100% happiness? Here’s what you’ll need to do.

• It’s easiest to get 100% happiness in a large settlement. For simplicity’s sake, the following tips apply to your first settlement; Sanctuary.
• Get 20+ settlers as quickly as you can. Build a Radio Tower and hook it to a generator, then activate it. If you have high Charisma (10 or 11) you can draw in 20+ settlers this way.
• You can also visit small settlements you’ve acquired with settlers. Enter Workshop mode and select settlers to send them to different locations. Sent them to Sanctuary until you’ve got 20 or more.
• Food, water, and bed stat numbers must be higher than your number of settlers. Build 20+ beds, 20+ water, and 20+ food.
• Go nuts with defense. Build turrets until you’ve got 160-185 defense in your settlement. You can also build defense walls — make sure to assign settlers to these posts.
• Traders improve happiness. Get the Local Leader perk to rank 2 to unlock stores. Build 15-20 Level 3 Shops; Traders, Clinics, Restaurants and Clothing stores improve happiness. Make sure to assign settlers to run the stores.
• Clinics improve happiness the fastest. Building 20+ Surgery Centers will quickly increase happiness. It costs a lot, so come prepared with plenty of caps.
• If you’re waiting for 100% happiness, don’t leave the area! Settlers get sad when you’re not around. Stay inside the settlement, or use the bell to call everyone over. They’re happier the closer you are.
• Stay in town and sleep until the ‘Benevolent Leader’ achievement or trophy pops. Once everything is in place, it should take less that 24 in-game hours.

Source: [1]

Check out even more Fallout 4 Easter eggs and secrets on The Escapist:

• 8 Fallout 4 Easter Eggs and References You Should Go Find
• 8 Fallout 4 Mods to Enhance the Wasteland
• Fallout 4: X-01 Best Power Armor Location Guide
• Fallout 4: Alien Blaster Location Guide
• Fallout 4: How to Make an Infinite Adhesive Farm

Kevin Thielenhaus is a freelance writer for The Escapist. Find him on Twitter here.

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