Fallout 4: Wasteland Workshop Review

Wasteland Workshop is the second DLC for Fallout 4 and the cheapest of the three announced add-on packs. At the standalone price of $4.99, it carries with it the expectation of having more content than the famous Horse Armor DLC and less content than the fairly mediocre Automatron DLC from last month. This holds true—Wasteland Workshop is essentially a collection of items for settlement construction. The new objects include traps, lights, concrete walls and animal cages.

Concrete blocks are better than the wooden or metal variety

The main inclusion for builders is the new group of concrete blocks—walls, floors, roofs, stairs—that operate like the existing wooden or metal ones. Unlike the vanilla construction items, the concrete blocks have no annoying visual holes and they will make previous buildings look like derelict shacks. Concrete walls can be lowered into the ground and both sides will snap to floor tiles because they are thicker than the wooden and metal varieties. You will need lots of concrete and steel to build large structures; fortunately concrete is cheap at most traders.

Several new decorative items appear in the DLC; the best of which are the lights. The lighting options were limited in the main game, forcing some PC gamers to install mods. Now you can create streetlamps, down lights, string lights and even fire barrels and this freshens up the standard accommodation. You can even create signs with neon-lit letters that snap together. These new illumination options bring the settlement lighting up to a standard it should have been at launch.

New neon lettering can be used for anything

Some additions are more practical for adventurers. A decontamination spray will remove any radiation poisoning, handy to have around your frequently-visited settlements. There is a powered water pump that collects ground water instead of that on the surface. Power hungry settlements will be satiated with a new fusion reactor, supplying 100 units of power and being quieter than those providing much less. For nefarious types, there are a bunch of new traps that can hurt any foes attacking your settlements.

Animal cages are probably the most obvious new addition because they form a new main group in the workshop menu. Creating a cage is not as easy as other settlement items because they have non-standard prerequisites. To capture Radstag animals you will need carrot bait, and to ensnare a Deathclaw you will need Yao Guai meat. The bait process is somewhat tiered, so you can build a menagerie by killing some of the trapped animals. Most captured animals will become friendly under the influence of a new beta wave emitter, although it requires animal perks and does not stop them from attacking other creatures. Cages must be repaired with bait once emptied and it may take several in-game days before a creature (or human) is captured.

Caught animals can be set lose to fight each other or just used as target practice. You can even make settlers battle it out, and possibly break their path-finding in the process. New traps can make this more entertaining, but you need plenty of room in your settlements to accommodate the large cages and keep the battles contained.

Capture animals and let them fight in an arena of your creation

Wasteland Workshop is a minor DLC that may appeal to players who already enjoy creating settlements. It doesn’t add anything memorable and the content is fairly generic. If you are already familiar with user mods on the PC that add content to settlements, such as Homemaker, then this second add-on will appear grossly inferior. It is good to have extra items in the official game, and some are useful, but it is not quite enough. Wasteland Workshop is just a limited extension of settlement construction, and Fallout 4 is such a massive game that it needs more substantial add-ons and hopefully the next DLC, Far Harbor, will offer just that.