Fallout 4 special traders.

Learn how to properly develop your own business in Fallout 4. Read about the secrets of successfully investing in your personal store and developing a built settlement.

Fallout 4: Invest in a Store

Released late last year by Bethesda, Fallout 4 has a variety of gameplay options. Those who are not attracted to constant running around with incessant shooting can engage in peaceful construction. Any player can invest in a store in Fallout 4 and then develop their own retail network.

Investment opportunities depend on the level of leveling of your own character. The process is long, but exciting, because the profit received can be used to increase a wide variety of abilities.

Investment abilities

Let's look at the skills with which you can acquire good net worth. The “Cap Collector” ability is designed for this, assessing the player’s capabilities according to the so-called ranks or steps. Once you reach the highest rank in Fallout 4, you can invest in a store without much difficulty.

The first stage increases the cost of goods from the seller by 10%, the 2nd stage - by an additional 20%. This means that the total result of both levels will be cumulative. When used together, in case of sale, the cost of goods will increase by 32% ((1.1x1.2)x100%=32%), and when purchased, the savings will be 28% ((1-0.9x0.8)x100%= 28%). The second stage will be useful for the construction of large shopping centers in villages.

The third level of skill makes it possible to invest 500 caps in any store. This means that the reserve of caps of the businessman in whom the funds are invested will increase by 500 caps, without a time limit. In order to understand how to invest 500 caps in a store in Fallout 4, you need to use the trading menu, at the bottom of which there is a function for investment.

Investment in your own business

In Fallout 4, investing in your own store, built in a village, is possible using the “Local Leader” skill. In the case of such an investment, the cash reserve of caps will increase in all stores without exception in absolutely all player-owned settlements engaged in trading similar goods. Taking into account the fact that it is possible to build 6 types of stores, we find that with the help of an investment of only 3,000 caps it is possible to increase the well-being of all of our own merchants. At the same time, you don’t need to worry about who will have to sell the trophies.

In this small article I will try to explain in an accessible form how, using the simplest manipulations in the Creation Kit, anyone can make their own merchant. The article is intended for beginners, so our merchant will use only vanilla dialogues, there will be no need to write new ones.
Of course, we will need the Creation Kit to work. Let's assume that you already have it installed, and you know which buttons you need to press to load Fallout4.esm - the main game file. Let's do this simple procedure, and while the editor is thinking, let's decide what we want to get as a result.
Let's make a female retired gunslinger who sells guns (of course, you can choose any other option, but this is the character I like). Let's say our lady's name is Corporal Kendra Forester, her rank is retired corporal.
Let's think about the place where our Madame Forester will sell her deadly toys. If you wish, you can build a store or even a house for your merchant (if you know how), but I will use one of the nooks and crannies of Hydropolis, a city on the water from my mod “Dixieland”, as a “shopping point”. As you can see, there is a garden chair here, which means that our tradeswoman will not have to spend her entire working day standing on her feet. You can put a mattress nearby so that the trader has somewhere to sleep, but I probably won’t do this, because there is not enough space.

Let's move on to character creation. You can do this from scratch, or you can use one of the vanilla NPCs as a base, which is what we will do to save time and effort. Let our “base” be Ellie Fillmore, here she is (category Actor):

First of all, let's change the ID, for which in the corresponding line, instead of AllieFilmore, we will write something like a1VendorWeapon. We’ll immediately give our character a new name, but the SK does not adequately perceive the Cyrillic alphabet, so it’s better to do it in the Latin alphabet. You can “Russify” the name using Fo4edit or ESP/ESM Translator programs. In the Short Name window, if you want, you can write a short name, or you can do without it, but do not forget to delete the old one, if there is one:

Click OK and when asked by the program whether we want to create a new object, we will answer “Yes”. Now you can save our mod, to do this, click on the button with a floppy disk in the upper left corner.
Let's start setting up our future merchant. Let’s open it and, first of all, in the Traits tab, in the Voice type window, select a new voice (not all voices support special “trading” lines). Here you can experiment, but I’ll say right away that the FemaleRough or FemaleBoston options work, they’ve been tested. After this, you can check the checkboxes Essential (if you need to make the character immortal) or Protected (in this case, the character faces death only at the hands of the player). If you check the Respawn checkbox, the character will be updated at a certain frequency.

Let's go to the Templates tab. Here we can select a character or LeveledCharacter (level actor) and the specific parameters that our merchant will inherit from him. In our case, this has already been done, Ellie Fillmore, who became the basis for Kendra Forester, uses stats borrowed from LeveledCharacter LCharGunner, but you can change them, to do this, just uncheck the Use Stats checkbox.
Go to the Faction tab and delete everything that is there:

Now we need to do two things. First, let's go to the editor menu, find the DialogueMerchantsFaction faction in the Faction category and add it to our merchant (this is necessary for dialogues):

Next, right-click on the Faction category, select New from the drop-down menu and create a new faction (let's call it a1VendorWeaponFaction). Let's go to the Vendor tab in this faction and check the checkbox of the same name. In the Vendor Buy/Sell List window, we can select a “specialization” for the merchant, but if we don’t want to put him in a narrow framework, it’s better to check the Buy/sell everything not in list? checkbox instead.

Let's add the newly created faction to our merchant and move on to her other settings. We delete everything from the Keywords and AI Packages tabs, and after that we create a new AI package (right-click in the AI ​​Package List window, New option), tied to the garden chair that I mentioned above. I chose the Sandbox type with a radius of 256 to make the character look more natural, but other options are possible, such as the Sit pack.

It's time to change our lady's clothes, she shouldn't be walking around in Ellie Fillmore's college robe. Open the Inventory tab, click on the Default Outfit window and select, for example, Outfit_Gunner (I remind you that Madame Forester is a retired shooter). You, of course, can use other options or even create some new Default Outfit. It might make sense to replace other inventory items, but I won’t describe this process in detail, you’ll figure it out for yourself. As for her appearance, you can either work some magic on her in the UK, or use the Face Ripper program and make Ellie Fillmore’s ugly “daughter” Miss Universe.
The character is almost ready, you can place him in the game world. Let's simply drag our merchant with the mouse from the objects window into the rendering window and place it somewhere next to her garden chair.

Let's start creating a Merchant Container. If anyone doesn’t know, this is a special box that contains everything that our merchant offers for sale. It can be made from scratch, or you can use one of your existing containers as a base. The second method is much simpler, and we will use it. According to the original plan, our merchant specializes in weapons and ammunition, which means it would be logical if the basis for her Merchant Container would be the stash of one of the “gunsmiths”, for example, Arturo or CLEO. The CLEO container has the ID VendorGoodneighborKillorBeKilled, the Arturo container has the ID VendorDCCommonwealthWeaponry, so we will use it as a base. Open this box and rename it, for example, to a1VendorWeaponContainer. We agree to the creation of a new facility.

Next, you can work on the assortment, add or remove something, perhaps add more caps. When we are done with this, we drag the completed container into the game world and place it next to our merchant.
Now we will have to go back to setting up its faction, assigning a Merchant Container and specifying a place for trading. We open our faction on the Vendor tab and click on the Merchant Container window and aim the appeared crosshair at the box where Kendra Forester stores her wealth. We double-click with the left button, then, when the job is done, we hide the container in some place inaccessible to the player (this does not always need to be done, it all depends on the container). Click on the Location (Edit) window, and then there are two options. The simplest one is to select Near Editor Location and set an arbitrary radius in the corresponding window, for example, 1000. You can also select the Near reference option, click on the Select reference button, point the appeared sight at our garden chair and also double-click the left button. In the Start Hour and End Hour windows, you can select the time at which our merchant will serve customers; by default, work is set there without breaks and weekends.

The simplest merchant is ready, you can test it in the game. Of course, this is just the first step, it is much more interesting to create a unique character with unique dialogues and his own story, but the main thing is to start, right?

Everyone knows that the game has a fairly extensive and high-quality crafting system, which has been expanded over time and has now reached its apotheosis. This, of course, distracts a little from the main game, but those who are really interested in this kind of thing had a lot of fun. So, the question increasingly arises of how to build shops in settlements in Fallout 4. In fact, there is no secret here and everything is simpler than it might turn out to be.

To build, you will need to unlock an ability called “Local Leader” in your skills. It also makes it possible to conduct trade routes, that is, but for this case we are interested in the fact that it opens up the possibility of building shops.

As soon as you build a shop and assign an ordinary resident to it, you will begin to receive dividends from this investment, but first you need to attract enough settlers and do not forget about water, food and protection.

Shops in settlements in Fallout 4

About store levels and merchants

Of course, it is possible to get even more serious profits by appointing experienced merchants who will raise the store level to 4th. Naturally, you can also attract them only after discovering the ability described above.

Here is a list of merchants and where to find them:

• Anne Hargraves - located at the WRVR station and joins the player after a conversation on the topic of sales, and you need to already have a clothing store at level 3;
• Representative of Vault-Tec - can be found in Good Neighborhood in the hotel, but you must have a shop with general goods of level 3 and start a dialogue about the meeting before the explosion, cryochambers and sympathize with the fact that he has become a ghoul;
• Holt Combis - located in Vault 81, in the hotel, and to invite him you need to talk to his wife Alex (you need 20 units of charisma, the Black Widow skill and the location of the shelter residents) to attract;;
• Trader Riley - lives at the Big Lukwoski Cannery and will agree to trade with you if there is a level 3 trading post - just talk to her about the shelter costume after going out to pick her up after their argument with Theodore;
• Scriptor - will require a minimum of 20 settlers and a shop with level 3 armor, and can appear anywhere in the world, but most often near Cambridge Polymer;
• Jolly Larry - also appears anywhere and requires 30 settlers, as well as a weapons shop of the appropriate level;
• Doc Anderson is another character who walks around the world and requires 20 settlers, as well as a level 3 hospital (best to look for near Mass Fusion or between

Settlements are an integral part of the gameplay Fallout 4, but not all players develop them. This is justified, because their construction and support require manual work, and protection places a heavy burden on the player’s shoulders. But not everything is so simple, and in this guide we will explain how you can make money from settlements.

Let us immediately warn you that you need to have the full version of Fallout 4, the add-ons for the workshop will be especially useful - Contraptions, Vault-Tec and Wasteland. Even without one of them, the possibilities for arranging settlements will be significantly limited. With a stretch, you can do without Far Harbor and Nuka-World.

Game mechanics of settlements in Fallout 4

At the heart of any settlement are its inhabitants, and their maximum number does not depend on the size of the settlement or living conditions, but is determined by a simple formula - the character’s charisma level + 10. For example, a character with a charisma level of 8 will have 18 residents living in settlements.

To make money from settlements, it is better to have a character at least level 20, since you need the following characteristics and perks:

• you need to invest at least 6 points in “Charisma”, and preferably 8;
• The Cap Collector perk must be upgraded to 2 to get discounts in stores when purchasing and a higher price when selling;
• you need to collect all the “Tales of a Trader from Junktown” magazines in order to have a discount on the purchase of resources, you will need a lot of them and you can save a lot of money;
• the “Local Leader” perk must be pumped up to 2;
• The “Strong Ridge” perk needs to be upgraded to 3 in order to transfer more resources for building the next settlement.

Depending on the preferred type of income, the following perks may be required (a character of level 36 or higher is required):

• “Strong spine” by 4, so that fast movement becomes available when the maximum weight is exceeded;
• “Cap Collector” by 3 to increase the amount of money the seller has in the store;
• “Party Man” by 2, so that the effect of drinking alcohol is doubled;
• “Chemist” is also pumped up by 2, so that the effects of drugs last twice as long;
• "Science" of the first level, requiring 6 points in the "Intelligence" parameter, this perk will allow you to build Large water treatment plants that produce a lot of purified water.

If you don’t want to bother with settlements, but just make money from them, then 20 residents will be enough.

Those who wish can legally manipulate the gameplay to have settlements of 30 to 36 inhabitants. To do this, at the beginning of the game, pump up your charisma to 10, after the prologue, lower your charisma with “chic” and use the SPECIAL magazine! to raise it to 9. After a while, the effect of the drug will wear off, and the parameter will become equal to 11. Also find the bobblehead of the same name - and the character’s charisma is equal to 12.

Taking beer and drugs at the same time will sum up the charisma-increasing effect, while taking the same drugs or drinks will prolong the effect. Don’t forget about “addictol” or perks to protect against addictions.

Game mechanics of income and expenses from Fallout 4 settlements

Let's say right away that building and developing settlements in Fallout 4 is a long-term investment that will only pay off if you spend a lot of time in the game. For simplicity of calculation, we agree that each settlement has 20 inhabitants.

To answer the question of how to get rich from Fallout 4 settlements, you need to understand how the game mechanics of settlements and trading work in Fallout 4. There are different ways to earn income from a settlement:

• construction of several stores for the sake of daily receipt of caps as a tax and own trade with their sellers;
• farming watermelons with the help of settlers and selling them to Lucy from the Abernathy farm is a simple option without pitfalls, but requires additional time;
• farming purified water in large quantities for subsequent sale is a classic option, which is not as simple as it seems;
• waste collection by settlers at a special machine for its subsequent processing into basic resources;
• starting from level 60-70, you can sell surplus goods that you will create yourself, having the necessary perks.

Now let's talk about expenses. As such, maintaining the settlement costs nothing; you will incur the main expenses during construction, since the missing resources (timber, iron, concrete, bolts, oil and others) will have to be purchased from suppliers. You can familiarize yourself with their list.

The mechanics of settlements are such that residents don’t care where or how they live. They only need a basic set of resources, which should be 1-2 points higher than their number:

• Beds of any shape, but they must be under a roof;
• food from the farm: each resident brings 6 units of food, which means 3-4 people are enough for 18-24 units of food. Brahmins can be used to generate surplus;
• 20 points worth of water, which must be produced by a desalination plant or several large plants so that the excess can be sold;
• and “defense points”, which must be at least three times the number of inhabitants.

Another characteristic that affects income is happiness. The higher it is, the more caps or junk the settlers will pay or mine. Usually, if the basic resources produced are higher than those consumed, then happiness is at around 76-80 points. Raising it to 100 is already more difficult - build enclosures with gorillas, more bars and hospitals, slot machines (do not require people to maintain them!), soda machines or afterpotters.

In addition, the more robots in a settlement, the less happy it is, but the easier it is to create trade lines, because if a robot is killed, you feel sorry for it, but a dead settler-trader will greatly and permanently reduce the level of happiness. We do not recommend using more than two robots in each settlement.

Making money from Fallout 4 stores

With 100% satisfaction of residents, in order to get 50 caps, it is enough to supply one store each of general goods (16), armor (18) and weapons (18) in their large version. In fact, you should be credited with 16+18+18=52 caps, but will only be given 50. These three types of stores bring in the most money, while the bar and fashion store only have 15 caps each, and the clinic has the least at 13 caps regardless of version.

Each trade point increases the mood of the residents by 1, except for the large bar and clinic - they increase by 2. You can use this if the happiness of the residents falls. In other situations, you can build more shops for only one purpose - to sell them water or other expensive goods, which we will talk about later.

The generation of caps does not depend on how many free or occupied residents a settlement has, whether it is connected to other settlements, or where it is located. The main thing is that it has more than 5 inhabitants. A settlement with 3 shops and 6 settlers will give the same amount of caps as a settlement with 15 shops and 36 settlers. Caps can be picked up from the workshop, submenu “Miscellaneous”:

Now let's do the math. A large store of weapons and armor cost 3,000 caps each, a large clinic - 1,800 caps, a large bar and a regular trading post - 1,500, and clothes - 1,000. Therefore, 3 large stores will cost 7,800 caps, at 100% level They will bring only 50 caps per day, which means that the construction of stores will pay off only after 156 game days!

You can build a medium weapon and armor store for 1,000 caps each, a large clinic and a large bar - and that will cost 5,300 caps. Then, at 83% satisfaction level, you can get 50 caps per day and this investment will pay off in 126 days. This is unacceptable since this period is approximately equal to the transit time all Fallout 4

Therefore, you need to sell something in your stores. However, the developers from Bethesda understood that players would easily and simply break the balance of the Fallout 4 caps, and in this regard, they imposed a number of restrictions on trading, which can be briefly described as “It’s not as difficult to find water and other goods as to find a seller with lids”.

Firstly, all sellers of a given type of store have the same inventory. Shared inventory also means shared money. If you sold water to a weapons store for all the seller's money, then neither in a neighboring settlement, nor from a seller on the other side of the Commonwealth in exactly the same store there will be no money, moreover, it doesn’t matter whether it’s a small store or a large one - the level is ignored.

In this regard, it is unnecessary to build stores of all 6 types in each settlement; 3-4 of the most profitable ones will be enough. Only once you need to build 6 stores in one settlement - the most protected and strong one - in order to sell all the surplus collected resources at one point.

Keep in mind that the total inventory of sellers is restored in 48 game hours, and you can wait or sleep.

Secondly, the “Cap Collector” perk will allow you to invest 500 caps in any store, which in reality means a simple thing - the stock of caps in this store will increase by 500 forever. Simply put, by spending 3,000 caps to increase the cash in the pockets of the sellers of your 6 stores, the supply of caps will increase in all stores in all other settlements.

If a seller usually has 300-600 caps, then after investing you will get sellers with a stock of 800 - 1,100 caps. This action will save you from difficult searches for those sellers who still have money left.

Third, you can earn more caps when selling your goods with a high charisma score, pumped-up “Cap Collector” perks, the “Exchange” bobblehead and the “Tales of a Merchant from Junktown” magazine. Accordingly, more inventory can be saved for sellers in Diamond City, Vault 81, Good Neighbor, and Bunker Hill.

Fourth, merchant settlers give a friendship discount only after completing quests for the settlement, so complete such quests.

How to make money selling watermelons in Fallout 4

This option does not require any special perks or rare resources; it is simple and suitable for the very beginning of the game. Its disadvantage is the monotony of the farming process.

At the beginning of the game, Preston Garvey will send you to Abernethy Farm, where you need to complete five quests. As soon as possible, negotiate with Lucy Abernathy to sell her your watermelons, for each she will give 3 caps, but you can convince her to buy 5 caps.

The point is that Lucy can buy as many watermelons as you have, even 1,000, she is not limited in money. The deal is valid until you turn in the “Reciprocal Favor” quest, but it’s better not to take it at all. If you have already passed it, then when you meet Lucy she will remind you about watermelons, but the required option will not appear in the dialogue with her.

All you have to do is grow watermelons - Sanctuary Hills is best suited for this - there is a lot of land there and it's not far to go. Place a large farm with 100-120 watermelons (10 people are needed to process them) or more and harvest every day. There are 4 other settlements in the Abernethy Farm area that can also grow watermelons.

Unlike water, watermelons respawn every 24 hours, you can sleep through the game day, quickly move to another location and return back to collect them - it will take about 10 minutes. Having pumped up settlements, it will not be difficult to sell 1,000 caps worth of watermelons per day.

Making money from purified water in Fallout 4

Purified water is an option to get rich, which has already become a classic, but it cannot be called fast and here’s why. Each can of clean water costs 10-12 caps; to obtain it in sufficient quantities, it is necessary to build industrial water treatment plants and medium-sized energy generators.

This will require the Science perk and rare components such as copper (80), bolts (90), gears (30) and oil (40) for 10 elements. It’s not a fact that your character will have all this at the very beginning.

Water is generated once per game day, and you must spend this time playing - waiting, sleeping or fast travel do not count. In a day, 10 installations will produce 280-290 cans of water, and a game day is 72 minutes of real time.

They can be sold to your merchants for 3,000 - 3,500 caps, but we remember that they will update their inventory in two days, so the excess water will have to be sold to merchants from the Commonwealth the next day. Therefore, there is no need to build more than 10 water purification installations - there will simply be no one to sell the surplus to anyone.

How to make money by selling goods in Fallout 4

In addition to these two trading options, at higher levels new types of goods appear that can be profitably sold, albeit irregularly.

We earn basic resources through settlements

The last way to get rich, albeit intangible, is by collecting garbage and recycling it into basic resources. To do this, in each settlement you need to build garbage sorting stations and add a resident to them:

If there are 20 residents in a settlement, then 10 of them can work at a garbage station, generating, depending on the level of happiness, from 17 to 20 units of garbage per day, what exactly this will be is determined by the game randomly. Moreover, each settlement will have its own set of junk - somewhere there is more plastic, metal, rubber or concrete, and there is a high chance of getting rare components, such as optical fiber or gears.

The bottom line is that in Fallout 4 you can build about 30 settlements, if you connect them together using trade routes, then you will have up to 600 pieces of garbage per day, and you can take it to your inventory from anywhere. Garbage is generated once per game day, and you must spend this time playing - waiting, sleeping or fast travel are not taken into account.

If you pay enough attention to settlements, then per day you can get more than 1,600 units of wood, 1,400 steel, 800 concrete and 50-200 units of rare resources from them. Add in 1,500 caps in store taxes and 3,000 caps in water sold, and life in Fallout 4 doesn't seem so bleak anymore.

Fallout 4 Settlement Costs

We formulate earnings as the difference between income and expenses. We have sorted out the income, now we need to talk about what expenses will be on the settlements and how to minimize them.

Numbers are important to the game, but how you build your settlements is not really important to it. Consequently, you can and should save on settlement, especially if you are not one of the aesthetes who love ideal order and conditions close to reality.

What we propose is to build a large box of 3-4 floors of wood, 3 by 4 or 4 by 4 in size, which will fit all the residents, shops, generators, waste disposal stations, etc. Nearby, in a fenced perimeter with a separate entrance, place a vegetable garden and water installations.

Construction of a 3 by 3 box will cost approximately 600 wood and 150 steel:

The box is the easiest way to protect your settlers. The fact is that the settlement will be attacked periodically. This can happen no more than once a week with a probability of 2% multiplied by the amount of resources you contain in the settlement.

Free resources in the settlement workshop attract raiders, mutants, orcs and rust devils from the Automatron expansion. Even the Death Claw can look at the light. What you do with the surplus is up to you, sell it or hide it in a drawer, the game only takes into account what is in the workshop.

Usually around each settlement there are 2-3 enemy spawn points for attack, worse, in large settlements the game will spawn enemies right inside, between buildings and shops. Therefore, there is no need to build a defense and fence around the perimeter; it is easier to protect the main building.

Compact, high-altitude accommodation for residents, turrets that shoot through all key points and approaches, and the installation of only the most necessary - the house in the example is built from the most basic components, and all generators, a security post, shops, garbage collection stations and more are hidden inside, along with the beds .