Reviews

• 

  Limewire

  Sep 29, 2021

  This should have been free DLC
• 

  mowmow

  May 27, 2022

  "Mostly Negative" is fair but harsh. Its a welcome addition to the game but shouldn't cost money tbh This dlc has an extremely specific target audience, only aimed at people who like settlement building. If you dont like building then jsut dont get the dlc. If you do like building then its actually a really fun thing to mess around with, i like making funny little factories :)))
• 

  lobo2010

  Jan 9, 2022

  you can build your own factory if you want to
• 

  blorb gombus

  Jul 28, 2022

  Crafting ammo is nice, but I shouldn't need a DLC to do it. That should be in the base game.
• 

  Mathellian

  Jun 21, 2016

  Fun little DLC. It does not change anything in the gameplay but adds some small new things to your workshop. I love to have elevators for my tall settlements and think this is a good dlc. Is it worth the money? If you got a seasonpass, who cares . . . But if you don't, Well look at the dlc and see for yourself, i would only reccomend it if you want more constructionoptions for moving parts in your settlement. If you do not build that much, don't get this one. Otherwise, i believe this dlc will give some nice new things for the modders to deal with.
• 

  Tec

  Jun 21, 2016

  (UPDATED) - (turns out you can use a vaccum hopper on a workshop bench to take items out of it, so you can dedicate a settlement to scavenger and production lines) In all seriousness, a lot of people just disliked off the bat, but if you actually look into it, took 4 hours to really understand what was actually added and how it worked, there is actually quite a bit, essentially gives you the ability to make your own factory, producing, weapons, armour, ammo, explosives, food, clothing etc in an automated way. Not only that but a bunch of cosmetic and extra build sets were added, there is new stuff all over the place, i probably missed some (you really ahve to look in the nooks and crannys of the catergories). Id say if you were a fan of factorio or rube goldenburg machines in garrys mod, you'll loved this :P Overall, its a really nice addition, even for people that dont like making settlements, if you want custom armour and want to make your own ammo (in a rather cool way) then you may like this too. A lot of the things added in the mod have not been created in free mods (people dont know what they are talking about), creation of ammo and maybe weapons and armour? yes, but, not everything else and not an automated system. Now, my only quirk is that there isnt something that can grab specific objects so it doesnt empty your workshop bench :P or a tutorial for all the random goldburg contraptions or conduits...., its pretty complicated, if you liked redstone in minecraft you may like this too., as it seems it could get pretty complicated. But honestly, compared to the previous workshop DLC, this one is amazing. :)
• 

  volfin

  Jun 22, 2016

  I don't often write reviews, but after seeing all the stupid reviews on here, I felt I had to help set the record straight. Some thing alleged in other reviews: "This DLC, which adds things that modders can, and some have done, for free." False. Nobody has done anything like this. Of coure it's 'things modders can', since bethesda gave modders the same tools they used to make the game. Duh. But nobody did it. "Make this crafting meme end. Stop focusing on the worst part of the game." Just because you don't like part of the game, doesn't mean nobody does. So stop whining. "not even 50 mb!!! lol thanks todd!.........." DLC is 190 mb. Learn to count. "Aye thanks bethesda. you ♥♥♥♥ed my mods up again!" Doesn't break any mods. "Another Rip-Off DLC! It adds like 2-3 useless Items (Elevators and some minor Stuff)" Mod adds 143 constructible objects. "This should be a free DLC. It's good, fun, but should be totaly free." No. "Wow, Bethesda is literally ripping off mods from Nexusmods. " Nope. For people who love settlements and constucting things, this is a great DLC that adds fun, original content to the game. All for less than an overpriced coffee at Starbucks. (you know the whiners are Starbucks drinkers). So don't be a lemming, find out the facts before beliving the loser hype. Enjoy the mod. :) EDIT: by way of info, this DLC adds some other items besides workshop items. New Weapons: Paintball Gun New Power Armor paint jobs: Sugar Bombs, Abraxo
• 

  Longsok

  Jun 23, 2016

  Contraptions is exactly what you think when you see the trailer, pointless contraptions. It adds ball machines designed to make neat youtube videos, manufacturing that would be better off being crafting, Armor and weapon stands that should have been in the base game, as well as logic gates and other decor. Manufacturing is the first thing I want to address, because ball machines are pretty simple as to whether you like it or not. Manufacturing, on the other hand, is almost completly useless. The objects you can make with the machines are not worth the considerable amount of resources that it costs to produce the machines and the objects themselves. The only forge that is worth the cost is the ammo forge, and it would have been better to make it a crafting bench. The main point is to have pretty conveyor belts make items that you wouldn't even bother to drag home from the wasteland. Water purifiers make more money, if for some reason you have none, and trying to clear out enough area to produce the junk you can is extremely time consuming. Elevators and Logic gates are good additions, as the elevators work quite well, and logic gates will allow you to build actually complex machines. I for one am looking forward to playing with these gadgets. The dlc also adds lit up posters, which are another good addition, and a new building set. Honestly, unless you want ball machines, stocks, or manufacturing, don't buy this and just use the mods that are out there for posters, logic gates, and elevators.
• 

  Simon Petrikov

  Jul 2, 2016

  I got this as part of the Season Pass, which I bought before the price increase. I would not have purchased this DLC in the first place based on interest without having recieved it in the Season Pass. I still tried it out since I got it to see if it was any good. Long story short most of this DLC is highly flashy and not very functional Manufacturing: This DLC adds a number of machines that can be programmed with a terminal to create different base items, like weapons, ammo, and food. The machines spit out their products onto a conveyor belt allowing you to create networks of belts moving components into the building machines and then away into separate containers, if you want. That sounded pretty cool on paper but in execution it's frustrating and not very useful. Machines can be fed with conveyor belts by setting up containers with the items you want to feed, having them taken out and sorted by a "sorter" machine, and then fed into the building machines to make for example a weapon. The vacuum machine that takes things from containers takes them one item at a time, so it would take a stack of steel one piece at a time, then screws once piece at a time, which makes creating any item take ridiculously long. It's much much better just to store all of your items in the building machine and let it have its components come from there, so the entire conveyor belt system is largely pointless and a frustrating waste of time. Not only that, but the building machines must be supplied with scrap in their own personal inventory, meaning that supply lines cannot be utilized to provide the scrap needed. That means that you'll have to go around to each of your settlements hauling items that have screws, adhesive, steel, wood, and whatever else you need to make a gun so that those items can physically be present in the building machine. Crafting from a normal work bench pulls components from every work bench connected to your supply lines, while manufacturing with the machines is restricted to that single locations work bench, forever. This DLC also adds some strucutres, such as elevators, warehouses, and ball tracks. If you really like building, those might be nice but as for me they did not provide any new functionality that would make them have any value to me. The elevators and warehouses lack navmaps, so Settler NPCs will never walk on them or use the elevators, so they can only be used for structures intended solely for the player. The elevators only come in heights compatible with the new warehouse pieces so they can only be used with one type of building material. As for ball tracks, they seem very asinine. This DLC really has no place in Fallout and does not fit the atmosphere or lore and does not add anything worthwhile or of particular use. The only reason you might like this DLC is if you take extensive satisfaction from the settlement mechanics and perhaps have cheated to give yourself a massive amount of resources.
• 

  Apocalypse Noodle

  Jul 3, 2016

  Bethesda Presents: Half Baked Ideas II - Electric Boogaloo An awesome concept, the factory components allowing you to manufacture items en-mass is great for standardizing your settler's kits however it's really lacking in what you can make. For example if you use ballistic weapons your set, you can make all the bullets you'll ever want. But if you use plasma, or laser weapons, your out of luck. (Check the Nexus, there's a mod.) There are a handful of assorted cosmetic-ish items that are, frankly underwhelming. But that isn't the best part of this DLC. It's probably the buggiest thing I've ever played since the release version of STALKER Clear Sky. Honestly, five bucks is way, way too much to be asking for this steaming pile of crap. But rest assured, we'll all come back when the next DLC comes out, hopes so high we can't possible be let down again, right? ...Right?
• 

  georgeanovak

  Jul 14, 2016

  As entertaining as it might seem, this expansion is more a waste of time than anything. Why would they make parts that do not mesh with already existing things? No snap-to, sizes different. It's just sloppy, as so many things in this game have been. Bethesda needs to stop relying on the gaming community to fix their mistakes and take some pride in their work again.
• 

  Crunchi

  Jul 18, 2016

  I wasn't expecting much in this workshop if I'm honest, but I was pleasantly surprised. 8/10 If you like the new crafting/settlement/building system then you will have fun with this. It does what it says on the tin and surprised me with the amount of content which wasn't focused on ball tracks and conveyor belts. Even without making use of those this still provides you with more flexability and fill in a few of the gaps left by the wasteland workshop. New content is as follows: - boxcar structures - scaffolding (surprisingly useful, proper walkways included) - ramps (under scaffolding) - warehouse structures - greenhouse structures (under warehouse) - weapons and armour displays (including power armour displays for your collection) - mortars that can change the weather (or just make the sky pretty with sparkles) - more complex switches (incuding ones you can shoot) - elevators (good once you understand the complexities) Then we get to the machinery (conveyer belts and production structures) and ball tracks. Which, to me, are more a fun footnote than the primary reason you would want this workshop. Although great, they wouldn't justify the workshop by themselves. Unfortunately a lot of people have given this a negative review, which I feel is largely unjustified. Yes, there are a few glitches with the moving parts on occasion, but nothing game breaking, at most mildly annoying. By and large it works as you would expect.
• 

  Noelle

  Mar 12, 2017

  Making ammunition? Fantastic. Elevators? About time. If this were a free dlc, I'd be singing its praises - about time we had this. I always wanted to be a workhouse master. But it should've been part of the main game.
• 

  enfo

  Aug 31, 2017

  Settlements were one of my favorite aspects of Fallout 4, and I was excited when I heard about this add-on. But this add-on just fills me with sadness. There is no practical application of any of the new contraptions offered by this add-on. How is it that unpaid (Modded Minecraft) and indie (factorio) devs could make such great assembly line mods, yet a game dev, who probably is paid a salary, at one of the best gaming companies out there could fall so short in designing these machines? There was so much potential here, and I feel whoever designed these machines did not have experience in deep settlement gameplay in FO4, or understand what made modded Minecraft machines great. Let's talk about the glaring design issues: 1. None of the machines make anything useful. It is simply more practical to buy stuff like ammo from Commonwealth Vendors. For the rare ammo types... this add-on cannot make them. And even when it can make the stuff, the raw material cost does not justify it. For example, most ammo requires fertilizer... a resource that is very scarce in the base game's settlement production loop because it is consumed for Jet production. 2. There is no production loop that produces anything at a practical profit. Another example, making potato chips costs 2 tatos, but then one each of Aluminum and oil... some of the most useful and high-demand resources for settlements. You can't sell this at a profit because chips have a base value of 7. This mod offers nothing competitive to just selling water, jet, or jet fuel. 3. The add-on does not let you automatically break down components. It would have been nice to come back after a mission, and dump junk into some machine that would automatically scrap stuff for you so your inventory would be nice and neat. Such a scrapping machine does not exist in the official add-on, although a player-made mod offer this. 4. The add-on does not practically increase the productivity of raw material production of your base in anyway. For those unfamiliar with how FO4 generates raw materials: stuff like excess purified water, food, and junk are added to your Workshop inventory once a day. If the material already exists in your inventory up to a certain amount, no new material is added. The add-on features a machine called a Vacuum Hopper. It would have been nice to set up a system where the Hopper automatically pulls stuff out of your workshop to either turn it into other materials, or store into another container-- so your settlement has room to input new stuff. The problem is that the Hopper machine only works if you are standing in your settlement. So if you're off doing something else in the world, it's not pulling anything. Even if you are standing in your settlement, the majority of the time it's doing nothing-- because resources are generated and deposited in a lump sum at long time intervals. There are a lot of minor lots of issues that indicate that these machines were slapped together for the sake of a DLC, and not created out of love and passion like past Bethseda titles. Some items are too big to fit in the space on the conveyer system, and gets stuck when it gets pulled out. There is no way to selectively sort which items you will pull from the vacuum hopper. There is no way to deposit items into a container or the workshop inventory. The vacuum hopper must pull from the settlement Workshop bench-- all other settlement inventory containers do not work. This makes it impractical to use at other settlements (the most annoying for me is Vault 88, really wanted to try a factory there with the space we were given). The player-created mods that are based off this add-on may fix some of these glaring issues, but achievements will be disabled or if you're on a console... you won't have access to these things. It just seems that random player modders have a lot more thought into their creations than the actual add-on designer working at Bethseda. Maybe that's why the company is focusing on the Creation Club content and stopped producing original content.
• 

  The Violence of Tyrants

  Sep 25, 2017

  Usually, when a Bethesda DLC is "bad", there's usually a couple of redeeming factors. Maybe the items are bad, but it comes with a couple of okay quests, or maybe the quests are bad but there's a couple of neat crafting recipes that spice things up. Contraptions, on the other hand, is legitimately terrible. There's very, VERY little reason to pick this up if you don't own the Season Pass. Let's get this out the way first-- if you're someone who hated the Settlement feature in Fallout 4, you have virtually no reason to even be looking at this DLC. Unlike Vault-Tec Workshop, there's no quests or loot tied to Contraptions. It's literally JUST more stuff to build and a couple of Achievements that can literally be completed in about half an hour. The only worthwhile thing that isn't entirely Settlement based is the ability to craft items-- and they managed to screw that up, despite New Vegas having a decent ammo crafting system. You place a couple of conveyor belts, a couple of automated crafting stations, manually fill them with materials, and then wait pretty much forever for the machine to actually make the stuff. Do you want to make ammo? It literally takes a second for every single bullet. A single belt of Minigun ammo takes nearly nine minutes, on top of the materials. For reference, I could make the same amount of ammo in about ten seconds in New Vegas. If, like me, you loved Settlements, then Contraptions goes from "near useless" to just "massively underwhelming". You get some boxcars and scaffolding to build, the ability to build elevators (which is pretty much useless considering how big staircases can be in the core game and how strict the height limit is in most Settlements), and, of all things, the ability to basically play Mousetrap. You can move a little metal ball down a track, and make it trigger motion detectors. Truly, innovation knows no bounds. You can also make display cases for weapons, armour, and power armour, but in a single-player game, that's about as thrilling as it sounds. Contraptions is easily the worst of Fallout 4's DLC. It might actually be the second-worst DLC Bethesda has ever released, behind... well, you know. Horse armour. There's very little here that isn't just a novelty, and worst of all, most of the remotely decent stuff was available as mods long before this DLC game out. Unless you desperately want those achievements, there's just no point in going out of your way to pick this one up. Also I made it this far without calling it "Concraptions", I'll assume my medal is in the mail.
• 

  TheresNoGhost

  May 19, 2018

  The elevators were useful, sort of. Saves space on staircases, anyway. On the other hand, you can't use the elevator while in build mode so you have to switch that off, take the elevator, switch it on again (switching build mode on is super slow on my computer, I don't know if thats the same for everyone, but annoyed me). And it doesn't tell you if you can even build three or four stories up. I put in a four story elevator in a few places and the third floor wouldn't allow me to place anything. Doesn't say you're out of bounds or what the height limit is, just doesn't let you place an item. The only other semi-useful thing is the displays. You can put armor on a mannequin, or all of your extra armor that you saved on ten mannequins. Or a bunch of outfits on thirty mannequins and make some weird nightmare settlement. Theres also weapons displays for the walls and one large one for the ground. These look kind of stupid, since theres a lot of empty space on them but you can only put one weapon on each one. The floor one was fine cause you put giant mean looking weapons on them, but the wall ones should take two daggers or two pistols so there isn't a foot of extra plywood sticking out to one side. Theres also display cases that you can't put anything inside of. Great job. Lastly, there's the machines that make things. Sounds great, except they are slightly too large to be built in the vault, which would make a cool looking factory, and building and using them is way more cumbersome than just buying what you need. This is... okay. Settlers don't care about anyting you build so you would literally just do this for yourself. Honestly this whole game would have been a lot better if the settlers cared at all what was around them and interacted with things. If you're going to throw in a city builder, don't make it feel like such a waste of time.
• 

  Brokeback Morgan

  Aug 2, 2020

  [h1] Fallout 4 - Contraptions Workshop [/h1] Essentially, this add-on allows the player (you!) to have new items, machines, and objects to build in your settlements. Allows for a little bit of industry and building to take place so the player can benefit from it. Its pretty cool, if base building is your thing
• 

  SMAWGdawg

  Aug 2, 2020

  Still better than fallout 76
• 

  steely

  Aug 9, 2020

  be honest the only reason you have this is because of the season pass
• 

  isador

  Nov 23, 2020

  Not recommending because this is one of those things that I feel should've been in the base game or should've cost like 1 dollar. But let me start by saying why you -should- get this DLC. Ammo crafting. That's pretty much it. Some weapons use ammunition so rare you can't reasonable meet the demand through merchants or looting (such as the Minigun or Gauss Rifle, the first of which eats through ammo like a fat guy through a bag of doritos and the second of which has ammo so rare you'll run out dispite the low firing rate) so being able to make your own is pretty great. Why shouldn't you get this DLC? Setting up your own manufactory is a huge chore for very little benefit. Allow me to explain by describing my setup for an ammo maker: First, I need to make any random container (i chose a cabinet). Then I have to put a vacuum attached to it so it will suck items out of the cabinet one at a time. Then I have to put up a properly setup sorter attached to the vacuum, which will sort items that contain any of the 4 resources I told it to sort for to pass them down the line, whilst other items get sent down a separate track. Now I need to tell my ammo builder what to make. I tell it to make Gauss rifle ammunition. It begins scrapping items in its inventory (sent there by the sorter) and using the components to make ammo. The ammo gets sent down the line into a storage container. Voila, automated ammo production!... or is it? Here's the list of problems: First, the vacuum only takes items out of your container one at a time. That includes junk items, weapons, ammo, misc items, etcetera. You cannot tell it to only take junk items (the only items you'd reasonably be interested in, since you cannot automate disassembling weaponry) which means that if you attach it to your workshop (you know, that thing you usually dump ALL your trash into?) it will take out everything one at a time, send it to the sorter, then pick another item and so on and so forth. The best part? The vacuum will NOT just send entire stacks of items down the line. If you (like me) have like tens of thousands of individual bullets in your workshop that you never use, the vacuum will randomly pick between all the items in your workshop, which includes your bullets, and then send them down the conveyor... One... Bullet... At... A... Time. So for things to run smoothly, you pretty much have to set up a separate container and fill it up manually with stuff you want sorted. Next, the ammo builder will automatically produce ammo and send it down the conveyor belt, but what if it has an excess of certain materials (IE: you're giving it more steel than fertilizer, resulting in a buildup of steel)? What if the items it scraps also give back components it can't use? Answer: It just stockpiles them! Indefinitely! You can hypothetically fix this by setting up another vacuum + sorter and sending stuff that it isn't going to use down the conveyor belt and stuff that it still needs back into the ammo builder, but this requires yet more setup to fix a really simple problem. Thirdly, what to do with the finished product? Well, whilst the developers were smart enough to let you extract stuff from your workshop (which you really don't want to do) they didn't give you an option to put stuff back into the workshop! This is a huge inconvenience, since that means that junk items your sorter rejects end up in a container, not your workshop, as does your finished goods and your excess components. Which means you have to manually empty out your factory storage bins whenever the machine runs. And finally, the time it takes to produce stuff. Like I already said, vacuums only take out one item at a time, no more, no less. Builders produce one item (or in the case of ammo, stacks of 10) per build attempt. So watching the machine work is fun... For about 2 minutes. Then it gets boring and you're wondering what's taking the thing so long? But that's not the worst part, oh no. The worst part is that like so many things in this game, your new factory has a proximity sensor that detects whether or not you're around, and if not, it freezes time to prevent anything from happening without your presence. This is the final nail in the coffin for the manufactory system, because it means that you have to physically stand around it and WAIT (not use the wait action, mind you) for the thing to do its job. Now, I don't mind the fact that the factories take so long to set up. Doing so was actually kind of fun. But in a Fallout game, you CAN'T have a fully set up factory be less convenient than typing a command in the command line that gives you 10.000 bullets immediately. At least, not to this degree. If for some reason you didn't get the season pass (in which case you got this as part of the package) don't get this DLC. It's just not worth it.