Happiness (Fallout 4)

Happiness is a metric of how content settlers are with a settlement in Fallout 4. Reaching 100% happiness in any settlement will reward the Benevolent Leader achievement/trophy.



Overview
Other than making one feel like a good leader, a high happiness rating results in more efficient working settlers. Higher happiness results in higher food production, more junk from scavenging, and more caps available from from stores. The recruitment beacon will draw settlers faster with high happiness. The game leaves it up to the player to decide how important happiness is, although there is an achievement for getting a settlement up to 100 Happiness.

Happiness primarily correlates with providing for the needs of the settlers. Keeping settlers happy is as simple as keeping all the other settlement resources (food and water, beds, and defense) at sufficient levels. Each of these needs to be at least equal to the number of settlers; power itself does not affect happiness, but is required to operate more efficient machinery.

Going further than that, coming to a settlement's aid when they are under attack and completing quests that settlers provide for the player character will temporarily improve morale (happiness).

Information
Each need (food, water, beds, and defense) accounts for 20 happiness. Meeting the needs of a settlement's population will allow a maximum of 80 happiness. Increasing happiness further requires stores that increase happiness, as well as pets. The maximum possible happiness is 100.

Having beds outdoors will provide a happiness penalty.
 * Testing indicates that game determines this based on the floor, not the roof as one might expect.
 * The three non-movable beds at Abernathy farm are bugged, in that the game thinks they are outdoors, so they have a happiness penalty.

All of the stores except the weapon and armor store provide bonus happiness. The food stall/bar/restaurant provides the most. Higher level stores have a greater effect.

Wasteland Workshop
The Wasteland Workshop add-on added the ability to acquire pets for settlements by building certain cages. Domestic cats will provide a happiness bonus. More dangerous creatures will provide a defense bonus. A few, such as the rare gorilla, provide both defense and happiness bonuses. However, the construction of a beta wave emitter is required in order to keep combat capable pets from turning hostile.

Automatron
The Automatron add-on added the ability to create robots using the robot workbench. These robots do add to a settlement's population count. They do not require any amenities.
 * One important note the game does not mention is that these robots have their happiness locked at 50. Their happiness will never go lower or higher. Their happiness is included in the settlement's average happiness calculation. As a result, having them around lowers the average happiness of a settlement. Robot companions do not have this effect.

How it works
Each settlement object provides some certain happiness bonus.

The system sums all bonuses and divides the sum by the number of settlers in one's settlement. The result is added to the base 80% happiness.

For example, for making 100% happy 2 settlers, the player character will need total 40 bonus for their settlement (2×20=40). So for two settlers, one can use one tier-3 bar (bonus 40), or one tier-3 clinic and one junkyard dog (30+10), or one tier-2 bar and one tier-2 clinic (20+20), or four junkyard dogs (10×4), or one tier-3 clinic and one tier-1 general store (30+10), etc.

It is recommended that, if one is having troubles reaching 100% happiness, one should dismiss any companions to another settlement, as an issue with companions counting as a settler can arise.

Happiness sources

 * Barber chair
 * Overseer's desk
 * Phoropter
 * Pommel horse
 * Weight bench

Stores
The table below lists the happiness given by stores at a given rank. For further details on how to craft these stores, see the settlements article.

Animals
The table below lists the increase in happiness in a settlement by having a given animal live there.