The wait between New Vegas and Fallout 4 seemed like an eternity for fans of this post-apocalyptic series, but thankfully the wait for the first segment of DLC wasn’t nearly as long!
Automatron is finally here, throwing your 200-year-old apocalypse survivor against an army of robotic fiends sent by the nefarious Mechanist. You can grab just this one piece of DLC for $9.99, or instead nab the season pass for $49.99. That will additionally include the Wasteland Workshop in April, the Far Harbor mission in May, and an extra expansion not yet announced.
While not everyone cares for the complexity of the crafting system in Fallout 4, I for one am glad to see it get expanded even further here with the addition of custom robotic builds, which is breathing new life into the game.
Kicking Off The Automatron Quests
Wondering how to start the Automatron quest line and get started building your own Fallout 4 custom robot companions? We’ve got you covered with a full rundown of what you need ahead of time and where to go to start the robotic revolution.
After installing the DLC, you first have to listen to the caravan distress signal found on the Radio tab of your pip-boy, which will start the “Mechanical Menace” quest line.
While the signal begs you to come save a caravan being attacked east of the Wattz Consumer Electronics building, for some reason the game doesn’t mark that location on your map – you have to find it yourself! Or you could just look at this map location since we’ve found it for you:
Wattz Consumer Electronics Location
Upon arrival, you will be thrust into the first of many large-scale robotic battles, facing off against swarmbots and servomech junkbots, which are just a few of the new mechanical enemies Automatron has to offer. Careful when targeting specific limbs on robots, as they will now charge at you and explode if you destroy their arms or weapons systems!
Be sure to scavenge every robot body you come across and pick up all their items. Body part-named items like “Assault Torso” unlock new mods for using different parts on your custom ‘bot companion. You can also scavenge robot repair kits – the equivalent of stimpacks for healing your custom built robot.
Battling Some New Robot Enemies
Building A Robot Crafting Station
After the battle you can talk to the robot named Ada, who will become your new companion, to unlock the robot crafting station. You don’t get one right off the bat though, as you need to head to a settlement and actually build the crafting station first. The robot station is found in the “special” options and requires that you have the following materials:
- Gear x 6
- Oil x 4
- Screw x 4
- Plastic x 4
- Aluminum x 12
- Fiberglass x 6
- Circuitry x 6
- Nuclear Material x 4
If you don’t already have the required materials, head on to the next segment of the quest, as plenty of items that include these materials will be found in the robotics facility.
Placing A New Crafting Station
Now that you finally have a fancy new robot crafting station, it’s time to get started building the perfect robotic friend / assassin. While you can modify Ada, its more fun to start off with your own base bot and build up from there. To build your own custom base bot, your wasteland wanderer needs:
- Rubber x 6
- Circuitry x 6
- Ceramic x 9
- Aluminum x 11
- Adhesive x 8
Building A New Companion
Automatron Robot Crafting Requirements
Just as with the other crafting options, your character needs certain perks for the more advance mods. Before jumping in, make sure you have at least an 8 in Intelligence and a 4 in Strength.
To get the best starting mods, you’ll want to make sure you have at least two points in the Science, Armorer, Blacksmith, and Robotics Expert perks.
Now its finally time to start mixing and matching parts — and honestly, this is the best part of the DLC. You can come up with some true mad science combinations here, with one assaultron arm, one protectron arm, a flying Mr. Handy torso, and even more outlandish combos.
Weapons mods will of course be your main focus, and there are a ton of them! You don’t have to just pick one, as each arm can use a different weapon (I recommended going with one melee and one ranged). Everything from skull maces to shock batons, shiskebabs, exploding gatling guns, and more are up for grabs.
Weaponry isn’t all that’s on display though, as you can add utility modules as well for your perfect companion. Got a low lock pick perk rank? Add on the lock picking module. Need someone to heal you? With the Science and Robot Expert perks at rank 2 you can add in a regeneration field.
Choosing Utility Mods
We’re still tracking down all the different mods, and will have a complete robot crafting guide up soon.
Fallout 4 Automatron Achievements
It wouldn’t be a new Fallout DLC without a handful of extra achievements to unlock! Here’s what you can grab to beef up your gamer score while playing through Automatron:
- The Most Toys (Build 10 Robot mods)
- Robot Hunter (Unlock 10 Robot mods)
- Restoring Order (Complete Restoring Order quest)
- Mechanical Menace (Complete Mechanical Menace quest)
- Headhunting (Complete Headhunting quest)
Custom Pink Robot With Shiskebab And Sniper Laser Arms!
Stay tuned as we cover the specifics of how to build every robot combination and complete all the quest lines!
