Local Leader Explained

Every guide and every forum post about the Local Leader perk says that it creates a “shared inventory” between settlements.

This is not 100% true. I want to explain how it works, but for the sake of clarity, I’m going to explain everything I know about this perk.

Requirements:

At least 6 Charisma
At least 2 settlements
At least 1 spare settler. Named characters (e.g. Preston) will not work.

Rank 1 of this perk allows you to link one settlement to another with a supply line.

To do this:

Enter workshop mode
Approach the settler you want to use to establish a supply line.
While facing them, press Q (rather than E like normal commands)
A list of settlements will appear, click the settlement you want to have a supply line with then confirm with E.

Instead of “Settler”, this character will now be called a “Provisioner”. Assigning a new task to this character will cancel the supply line, so this character is pretty much locked up for as long as you want the supply line active.

Settlements linked via supply line technically DO NOT share a workshop inventory. This confused the hell out of me at first. If you put a 10mm pistol in your workshop at Sanctuary and link it to Red Rocket, you will NOT have that 10mm pistol in your Red Rocket workshop inventory. If this is what you want to do, Local Leader will not help you.

Okay so what exactly does this do?

This perk allows you to split your junk/building materials between linked settlements. So if you scrap 100 steel from the houses around Sanctuary, then try to build something that costs 100 steel at Red Rocket. You will be able to afford it. It will take the steel from the Sanctuary inventory.

NOTE: The steel itself ALSO will not appear in your actual workshop inventory at Red Rocket. There is no way to “teleport” items through the workshop. It just spends the resources as though you were building in Sanctuary.

The other thing that Rank 1 of Local Leader does is distribute water and food among connected settlements.

Any extra food and water a settlement produces will be distributed among other connected settlements. There is, as far as I know, no way to see this surplus amount, but it does affect the red/green status of food and water.

For example:

Your 2 settlements (Sanctuary and Red Rocket let’s say) each require 10 food and 10 water.
Sanctuary is producing 20 food and 0 water. The water is red in workshop mode and if you check workshops under the ‘data’ tab on your pipboy, Sanctuary has an exclamation point by water
Red Rocket is producing 0 food and 20 water. Food is red (etc)
Linking these settlements with Local Leader will not change the number whatsoever. It will only change the color/warning status. Sanctuary’s water will be green and have no exclamation point and Red Rocket’s food will be green with no exclamation point. The food/water is distributed, but if a settlement is producing 0 food it will still display “0 food” in workshop mode.

Other info about Rank 1 of Local Leader:

You will need a new settler for every settlement you want to connect to your network

Connecting settlements is a lot easier than it seems. If you want to connect all of your settlements, they just have to be connected ANYWHERE in the network.

For example:

If you connect A to B and then connect B to C. Then A and C are connected as well.
In other words you have Sanctuary connected to Red Rocket and Red Rocket connected to Tenpines Bluff. If you only ever scrap weapons and armor at Sanctuary, you can still craft new mods at Tenpines Bluff.
Just make sure you have 1 Provisioner every settlement linking you to your “network” anywhere. To keep this simple, I just linked everything (with the exception of some later ones) to Sanctuary. Sanctuary was the place I was scrapping all my trash and depositing all my junk so it seemed like a good hub. Now all my settlements are just sending a Provisioner to Sanctuary. It creates a “star” shape of supply lines

Non-junk items that are used in crafting recipes (e.g. Purified water) will be usable through a supply line. Basically anything that you can use to build a weapon or armor mod, cook food or chems, or build in workshop mode will be accessible between settlements.

To see the supply lines you have active, open your pipboy and press C. This will hide all other locations so you can just see your settlements. Any settlements with a supply line between them will have a line between them. It looks like this after a while.

I have heard that creating overlapping supply lines (two provisioners bridging the same two settlements) will cause problems with displaying how much food/water each settlement has. I haven’t experienced this and anyone is welcome to elaborate on this bug in the comments and I’ll update this post.

Provisioners actually walk the distance between the settlements. They are susceptible to enemies attacking them, but they apparently can only die to mines that YOU (the player) place. Again, I haven’t experienced this yet so I cannot confirm. I have had supply lines for probably about 70 hours of normal gameplay and have never experienced a single one stopping or failing for any reason.

Since they do travel, if you want to cancel a supply line they are almost never actually home to reassign them but, waiting for a few hours will sometimes cause your provisioner to show up at your settlement.

They are followed around by a Brahmin like the traders in all the Fallout games so my Sanctuary is a little obnoxious since a thousand Brahmin are there every time I fast travel there. There is a Brahmin trough item in the build mode though that says Brahmin will stay by it. I haven’t tested it, but it’s just something to think about.

Rank 2 of Local Leader is a separate thing entirely that I haven’t even touched yet. I know for sure it is not necessary in creating supply lines though.

If I left anything out let me know, I’ll try to fix it. If there’s anything you’re still not sure about, don’t hesitate to ask. I was insanely frustrated by the lack of info about this perk and I don’t want anyone else to waste valuable Fallout time being pissed off and confused.

EDIT: First of all, thank you for all the replies, I’m learning even more about this horribly confusing perk from you guys and I’m glad to see this guide helped some people. A lot of you are chiming in with some good info and instead of copy/pasting it all and making this novel even longer, I’m going to add some screenshots. Also thanks to whomever “gilded me gold”. I don’t know what that means, but it seems like a good thing.

Secondly… OKAY I know I should not have made my supply lines look like shit! I messed up hahaha. Don’t listen to me when it comes to designing your lines.

Thirdly: people are letting me know that you can use companions for supply lines. I didn’t try this because those guys are my friends and I’m not a complete monster like some of you guys. You guys are slave drivers just out to make a quick cap. I guess it’s any “starter settler”. For example, I couldn’t use the guys named “Minuteman” at the castle. I can’t use the guys with the last name “Finch” at Finch Farm.

Original Link – Continuation of discussion

GTAmes