Tip Guide 7: Claiming Workshops 1 - Gorge Junkyard

Gorge Junkyard from the North Side

Many players probably feel its a waste of time (and caps) to claim most Workshops. Although Workshops may produce valuable resources, such as lead, aluminum, black titanium, ammunition, pre-war food, or miscellaneous junk, the rate of production is very slow and a player cannot hold a Workshop any longer than a single play session. And unless you are playing on a Fallout 1st private server, getting booted from a server will result in losing any effort or resources that you have put into building up a Workshop. With Fallout 1st, you have a few minutes to get back on the private server before it resets, so investing time into building up a Workshop might be more worth it, but you still only get access for one play session. Workshops also cost a minimum of 25 caps to claim, though there is usually a reward of 20 caps after you kill all enemies lurking around the Workshop site, and some of the enemies you kill may also provide caps.

Workshops do have some benefits, though, that may be particularly important for those interested in role-playing of the sort advocated here. First of all, if you are away from your CAMP on a mission, taking over a Workshop allows you to build crafting stations and stash boxes without having to spend your own resources. You can store any junk or items you have accumulated on the road, repair or mod armor and weapons, craft ammo or cook up food, and so on. Some Workshops already have one or more crafting stations present, but all of them should come with enough resources in reserve to build at least four crafting stations. The main limiting resource for crafting benches seems to be Aluminum. 

As a test, I took over Gorge Junkyard and then built all of the crafting stations. I could build the cooking station, the chemistry workbench, and two other crafting stations that require Aluminum without needing to use any of my own resources. The weapon workbench, armor workbench, and brewing station each require six Aluminum. The Tinker's bench needs eight, and the power armor station needs 12. It looks like you have access to 16 Aluminum for free, so two of these workbenches could be built without dipping into your stash. At Gorge junkyard, there is already a power armor station, so the total cost to build all of the others would only be four Aluminum. But building all of them is probably overkill.

Gorge Junkyard Garage from the Main House

A second benefit of Workshops is the rewards that come from taking over and defending the Workshop, especially in the early game. The first time you take over a Workshop, you automatically learn how to make certain items that can be useful in your CAMP. For example, you will learn how to make a small water purifier and a medium power generator to run it. Purified Water is important in the early game for crafting Adhesive. 

You will also receive a random plan that will unlock an item you can make for a CAMP or Workshop. For example, I got a plan for a mattress the first time I took over Gorge Junkyard, a plan for metal tables another time, and a plan for a backyard grill a third time. These are accompanied by some random resources, such as circuits, leather, fertilizer, adhesive, black titanium, and etc. There are also additional plans and resources, along with a caps reward, each time you defend the Workshop against a new group of attackers.

Another benefit of a Workshop is that you can use it as a free fast-travel point throughout the remainder of the play session, so long as you don't change servers, or the Workshop isn't overrun for too long by attackers, or taken from you by another player. Barring these issues, if you plan to play for several hours and want to return periodically to use the workbenches you've built, or to store items in your stash box or scrap box, you can get there for free. You can also return periodically when the Workshop is under attack to complete a defend-the-workshop Event and earn the rewards that come with doing that, including more plans for useful or decorative CAMP items.

Water Purifier - Requires Eight Power

Some resources may be worth farming at these Workshops, especially if they are rare, or if you have a long play-session in mind and plan to return to harvest the resources periodically. Most of the time, the production of resources is too slow and it is too easy to get distracted by other activities and not get back to the Workshop as often as you might like. There are probably faster ways to farm specific resources, though for role-players who don't fast-travel all over the map for resources, a Workshop might be the best bet. Note that other players can harvest your resources as well, unless you put locks on the collectors.

In the early game, I have used Workshops mostly to farm Purified Water and specific foods, and to extract junk from junkpiles or by using a Collectron. If you have Corn, Tatos, and Mutfruit, it is possible to set up an adhesive farm at a Workshop and then fast-travel between your CAMP and Workshop to harvest and create adhesive at both places. 

The best way to do this is to have an adhesive farm already going at your CAMP, harvest everything, and then take it to your claimed Workshop for planting. You should also build one or two Water Purifiers at the Workshop. Water Purifiers require 8 power each, so at a Workshop like Gorge Junkyard, you would need to build one medium-size and one small generator per Water Purifier. If you try to set up two purifiers to get four (4) purified water every ten minutes or so, you will end up having to use four screws from your own inventory to get them both up and running, although you will likely find enough junk around the Workshop to make up for the loss. I usually find 8 or 9 screws at Gorge Junkyard. However, a single purifier can be built (with generators) at no resource costs to your stash.

Water Purifiers are supposed to generate 12 water per hour, or two every 10 minutes. Two is the maximum capacity of a purifier, and you need to empty it in order to make more. I did a test and they seemed to follow the expectations pretty well. 

The plants, though, showed quite a lot of variability in the timing between harvests. As a test, I planted three each of Mutfruit, Corn, and Tatos.  I planted a row containing one of each, then a second row the same way, then a third. The first time around, all three Mutfruit were ready to harvest when only one each of the other two were ready (after maybe two minutes). I had to wait nearly four-and-a-half minutes for all nine plants to be ready. After the harvest, the next round had the Corn all finished first (inside the first three minutes), and it took nearly six minutes total for all of the rest to be finished. So the timing can vary quite a bit, but if you harvest your water and food every ten minutes or so (and don't forget your Green Thumb Perk Card to double the plant production) it should work pretty well.

Gorge Junkyard, Garage (right) and Shed (far center)

Gorge Junkyard is likely to be one of the first Workshops encountered by new players. It is located north of the Wayward and Slocum's Joe along Interstate 59, and is usually overrun by Robots or Ghouls, as well as four or so Giant Ticks. It has a lot going for it as a Workshop. It has a rare resource (black titanium) that can be harvested, it has three crafting stations (Cooking Station, Chemistry Workbench, Power Armor Station), and quite a bit of scrap and other useful aid items.

The orange and yellow bus in the SE corner has the Cooking Station, some food items, and a pump shotgun with ammo. It also has a first aid box, as does one of the ruined boats along the southern boundary. The garage near the main house holds the Chemistry Bench and contains a lot of miscellaneous junk. I found a plan in the tool chest and the Nuka Cola machine out back often has Nuka Cherry or Nuka Quantum. There is a concrete extraction point right in front of the station where you claim the workshop, and a junkpile that can be harvested behind the small shed on the eastern side of the junkyard. If you don't want to set up an extractor, small amounts of titanium and a few junk pieces can be harvested directly from the extraction points. 

Resource extractors are cheap in terms of resource cost. The concrete extractor takes only one each of circuitry, copper, gear, and steel, while the titanium and junk extractors require the same resources plus two additional steel. The bigger cost is the two medium generators needed to power each resource extractor. Each generator takes ceramic (1), copper (3), gears (3) rubber (3), screws (3) and steel (7). To give you an idea how much you can extract from one of these, I harvested 12 concrete in 20 minutes, and seven black titanium over the same period. Note that black titanium must be smelted on a chemistry bench, and three pieces of ore produce only two units of black titanium scrap. So based on the production I got in 20 minutes, you would get about 14 black titanium scrap in one hour of production. The concrete comes out directly as scrap, so should produce about 30-36 per hour, if you empty it once.  

The junk extractor over a 45 minute period produced 1-2 pieces of eight different scrap items - fiber optic bundles, fiberglass spools, loose screws, aluminum scrap, ceramic scrap, loose gears, raw cloth and raw rubber. A Collectron brought in about half as much. The exact items produced vary. When I directly harvested the junk pile without the extractor, I got a bottle of Pickaxe Pilsner in addition to three pieces of junk.

I did a test to see what kinds of scrap I could pick up around Gorge Junkyard (not counting loot from enemies). This will vary somewhat depending on the random loot tables that determine what items end up where. But when I scrapped the junk items collected around the Gorge Junkyard, I netted the following:  Aluminum (1), asbestos (3), ballistic fiber (3), ceramic scrap (4), copper scrap (3), cork (2), crystal (1), excess adhesive (13), glass (25), gold (1), lead (5), gears (10), screws (9), springs (12), plastic (12), cloth (19), fertilizer (1), rubber (3), silver (4), steel (34), oil (13), and wood (23). 

Nuka Cola Machine Behind the Garage at Gorge Junkyard

As for other useful items, I found three bottles of beer, two bottles of purified water, pre-war food, including two hot dogs on the grill on the back porch of the main house, two different chems, two Stimpaks, a Nuka Cola and a Nuka Cherry, gunpowder, a bobby pin, technical data, and a recipe for Bloodleaf Tea. I also found three items of clothing. Weapons included a 10 mm pistol, a combat knife, and two pump shotguns.

The combination of scrap and other useful items, along with the ability to harvest food, purified water, and resources, makes it worthwhile to consider taking over Gorge Junkyard. The Workshop is located just up the interstate from the Wayward, which is visited often during the first 10-20 levels of advancement. If you have 2-3 hours to devote to exploiting this resource, it could put your character in a good position to carry out the Wastelanders quests effectively.