Fallout 4 mod lets you export and share your settlements with other players

Are you the type of player who spends countless hours in Fallout 4 designing and building the perfect settlement? Or are you (like me) the type of player who spends those same hours working tirelessly but only winds up with a few crummy, uninspired, lopsided buildings and wishes they could enjoy the fruits of a more talented laborer's labor? Either way, here's some good news: there's a mod that lets you upload your awesome settlement for others to enjoy, or download someone else's superior settlement and make it your own.

Here's how the Transfer Settlements mod works. After you install the mod, you'll find a holotape in your inventory (you can also craft the tape at a chemistry station, if you prefer a little DIY). Load the tape while in one of your settlements, and you'll be able to create a blueprint of your entire settlement. You can choose how extensive this blueprint is: it can even collect tamed animals and creatures or items from DLC and other settlement mods. The only thing your blueprint can't grab (at least not yet) are power lines.

Close your Pip-boy and it'll export your settlement into a blueprint file. There's a bit more to it: make sure you carefully read the installation instructions on the mod's Nexus page. If you've done it correctly, you can now share these blueprints with a friend, or upload somewhere for anyone to use.

The mod is still in beta, but it certainly sounds promising. I, for one, look forward to importing some slick, well-designed settlements to replace the collection of dingy, cruddy buildings I half-heartedly clumped together and then gave up on. As an added bonus, when you import a new settlement, the mod will nuke the crap out of your existing one. Sounds cathartic. You can have a look at what players have already uploaded by visiting the 'Transfer Settlement Blueprints' category on Nexus Mods.

You'll need the Fallout 4 Script Extender and HUDFramework to get it running.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.