Fallout 4 Automatron Robot Workbench Guide: Parts and Companion Builds

Automatron was the first add-on for Fallout 4, and it hands you a whole robot factory. You rescue a souped-up assaultron named Ada, chase down a villain called the Mechanist, and pick up the Robot Workbench along the way. That bench lets you bolt your own machines together from spare parts, everything from pack mules to a rolling tank with a gatling laser for a hand. The DLC opens up at level 15, and it's still some of the most fun crafting in the game.

Starting Automatron

Automatron starts on its own once you hit level 15 with the DLC installed. A caravan distress call shows up on your Pip-Boy radio. Tune in and the quest Mechanical Menace begins, pointing you at a wrecked caravan just east of Wattz Consumer Electronics. When you arrive, a lone robot is fighting for her life under the highway. That's Ada, a customized assaultron with protectron legs and a sentry bot's right arm. Clear out the attackers, talk to her, and you'll walk away with 250+ XP, the Robot Workbench schematics, and Ada as a companion.

Ada, your first moddable bot

Ada's worth keeping around. She can't be permanently killed, she hauls 140 pounds of loot, and her health scales with your level (195 HP at player level 10, plus 5 for every level past that). She skips the affinity system entirely, like Dogmeat, so she'll never judge you for picking locks or eating corpses. You can even order her to steal. Chat with her while she follows you and she'll periodically hand over two or three junk items, a nice little parts trickle you'll appreciate later.

The quest chain at a glance

| Quest | What you do | XP | |---|---|---| | Mechanical Menace | Save Ada at the caravan site | 250+ | | A New Threat | Grab the Mechanist Device, build the workbench, install the radar beacon | 300+ | | Headhunting | Collect radar beacons, rescue Jezebel, build her a body | 400+ | | Restoring Order | Raid the Mechanist's Lair | 300+ |

A New Threat fires the moment the first quest ends. Ada sends you into the General Atomics Factory, where you fight your way to the far end and kill a Quantum robobrain carrying the Mechanist Device. Hand it over and she'll ask you to build a Robot Workbench and wire the device into her as a radar beacon. That part is covered in the next section, because the bench is the whole point of this DLC.

The road to the Mechanist

Headhunting comes next. Ada detects two more robobrain signals. You hunt a second robobrain at a marked location, then chase the third to the Fort Hagen Satellite Array, home base of the Rust Devils. They're raiders who dress in scrap robot armor and drag reprogrammed war machines into every fight. Their boss Ivey wears a modified suit of T-60 power armor. Work your way up the array, use the terminal to unlock the security door, and you'll drop into the Fort Hagen Hangar, where a robobrain head named Jezebel is wired into a computer. She'll trade what she knows for a new body. Grabbing her head wakes up Ahab, a heavily modified sentry bot, so be ready for that. There's also a steamer trunk near the exit holding the Salvaged Assaultron Head, the Assaultron Blade, and the Mr. Handy Buzz Blade. Don't leave without them.

Back at your bench you build Jezebel a body. She complains about whatever you give her, even a full robobrain shell, so don't stress the quality. In return she uploads the plans for an M-SAT module, the key that opens the Mechanist's Lair beneath the RobCo Sales and Service Center. Inside, your M-SAT robot unlocks the blast doors as you go. You can brawl through the war room waves, which end with a Duelbot, or collect the three supervisor holotapes scattered through the lair and use them to override an elevator, which skips the fight and opens a speech check instead. Dress as the Silver Shroud for the confrontation and you get special dialogue, because of course you do.

However it ends, the Mechanist turns out to be a woman named Isabel Cruz. She hands over her armor and helmet, the lair becomes one of your settlements, and every locked robot mod unlocks at your workbench. That last reward matters more than anything else in the DLC.

Unlocking the Robot Workbench

The schematics come from finishing Mechanical Menace, so there's no skipping the caravan fight. Once you have them, the Robot Workbench sits in the Special category of your workshop menu. No Local Leader perk needed either, which makes it one of the few crafting stations in the game with no perk gate at all.

What it costs

| Component | Amount | |---|---| | Aluminum | 12 | | Circuitry | 3 | | Fiberglass | 6 | | Gears | 6 | | Nuclear material | 4 | | Oil | 4 | | Plastic | 4 | | Screws | 4 |

The aluminum is the big ticket, with a side of tech parts. It's also physically the largest crafting station in the game, wide and tall, so put it outside or somewhere with headroom. You can't use it while wearing power armor, which trips up more people than you'd think.

One timing warning. Build the bench fresh when A New Threat actually asks for it. If you already built one before Ada gives the objective, the quest can stall until you store or scrap that bench and place a new one. Plenty of players have burned an hour on that.

Building your first automatron

Once the bench is standing, it does two jobs. It mods robot companions, and it builds new machines from scratch. A fresh robot costs Adhesive 8, Aluminum 11, Ceramic 9, Circuitry 6, and Rubber 6, and it pops out as a bare, unarmored protectron with a name like Automatron-274. Rename it the same way you'd rename a weapon.

Not every part is available right away. More unlock as the quest chain progresses, and everything opens up once Restoring Order is done. Perks gate a lot of parts too. To craft every single mod you'd need Science! 4, Robotics Expert 2, Armorer 4, Blacksmith 3, and Gun Nut 1. You don't need anywhere near that spread for a useful bot, though. A protectron torso, protectron legs, and basic hand lasers carry no perk requirements at all.

Modding Codsworth and Curie

Two base-game robots can use the bench: Codsworth, and Curie while she's still in her Miss Nanny body. Two caveats. Once a robot goes through the bench it can never wear apparel again, so Codsworth's bowler hat is gone for good, and an old save is the only way back. Neither of them can take the lockpick or hacking modules either. Curie also reverts to her factory look during her Emergent Behavior quest, so rebuild her after that's done if you care about her loadout.

Farming Robot Parts

So what actually drops from all those robots you're shooting? Not whole parts, mostly. The bench fabricates everything from raw components, so farming robot parts really means farming circuitry, nuclear material, gears, and friends. Robots do drop tech junk you can scrap, like biometric scanners and assaultron circuit boards, and that junk is where the good stuff hides.

What to grab

| Component | Best sources | |---|---| | Circuitry | Telephones (2 each), hot plates (2), enhanced targeting cards (2), military-grade circuit boards (5), assaultron circuit boards (5). Destroyed turrets are the single best source. | | Nuclear material | Biometric scanners (2), radioactive glands (2), alarm clocks (1), high-powered magnets, Blast Radius board games. Glowing creatures and dead Suiciders are full of it. |

Steel, ceramic, and rubber are basically everywhere in any junk pile, so those never really pinch. Circuitry and nuclear material are the two that stall builds.

Buying beats grinding

Shopping wins once you have caps. Shipments of 25 circuitry come from Daisy in Goodneighbor, Alexis Combes in Vault 81, Tinker Tom at Railroad HQ, Trashcan Carla on her rounds, and Isabel Cruz in the Mechanist's Lair. Yes, the Mechanist sells robot parts out of the base you took from her. Alexis also stocks nuclear material shipments from time to time.

Where to hunt

For raw hunting, the DLC's own locations are densest. The Rust Devils start patrolling the Commonwealth the moment Mechanical Menace ends, and every patrol drags robot escorts along, so machine corpses are never in short supply. The General Atomics Factory, Fort Hagen Satellite Array, and the Mechanist's Lair itself are all stuffed with robots and their leavings. And don't sleep on turrets anywhere in the game. A cleared turret field is close to free circuitry.

Know what you're saving toward, because the flashy weapons eat rare components. A single minigun hand runs 16 gears, 13 steel, 10 screws, 10 springs, 8 oil, and 8 adhesive. The gatling laser hand wants 10 fiber optics and 10 silver on top of a pile of crystal and circuitry. Stockpile before you fall in love with a design, or you'll stall halfway through a build hunting springs.

One freebie worth remembering: automatrons you've built will gift you two or three junk items when you talk to them while they follow you. It's a trickle, not a flood, but it adds up over a long walk.

Building a Support Robot

Every robot gets built across the same slots: head, torso, left and right arms, hands, and legs, with voice and paint on top. The torso carries three armor slots (front, top, rear) plus one utility slot. A sentry torso adds shoulder weapon mounts, and a Mr. Handy torso swaps arms out for thrusters. Heads and arms are technically optional, but a robot without arms can't shoot, pick locks, or hack, so leave them off only if you want a weird statue.

Picking a chassis

| Torso | Perks | HP | Notes | |---|---|---|---| | Protectron | None | - | Cheap baseline | | Mr. Handy | Science! 1 | +14 | Fast, gets three thruster arms | | Assaultron | Armorer 1, Science! 1 | +25 | Light and quick | | Robobrain | Armorer 1, Science! 2 | +50 | Never overheats | | Sentry | Robotics Expert 1, Science! 3 | +100 | Most health, overheats in long fights |

| Legs | Carry | HP | Speed | |---|---|---|---| | Mr. Handy thruster | - | - | Fastest | | Assaultron | - | +25 | Superior | | Robobrain treads | +20 | +50 | Better | | Protectron | +100 | - | Standard | | Sentry | +150 | +100 | Improved, but clunky indoors |

Arms mostly tweak carry weight. Protectron arms add +50 carry each, sentry arms +60 each plus 20 HP, robobrain arms +10 with improved melee, and assaultron arms trade 20 carry for the best melee damage in the lineup.

The support kit

The torso's utility slot is where a support build earns its keep. You only get one, so pick carefully.

| Mod | Perks | Effect | |---|---|---| | Regeneration field | Robotics Expert 2, Science! 2 | Heals nearby human allies out of combat, you included | | Resistance field | Robotics Expert 1, Science! 1 | Boosts damage resistance for nearby allies | | Sensor array | Robotics Expert 1 | Raises Perception for nearby allies | | Stealth field | Robotics Expert 1 | Makes nearby allies sneakier | | Tesla coils | Robotics Expert 2, Science! 1 | Zaps nearby enemies | | Lockpick module | None | Robot opens locks for you | | Hacking module | None | Robot hacks terminals for you |

The regeneration field is the crowd favorite. It quietly tops off your health after every fight, so your stimpack budget gets a lot lighter. The lockpick and hacking modules turn any bot into a Nick or Cait stand-in that never bickers about your morals.

For weapons, protectron hand lasers hit for 24 energy damage with no perk requirement, automatic lasers bump that to 30, and a gatling laser hand does 34 if you've got Science! 3. On armor, factory plating gives +4 damage and +2 energy resistance per slot, actuated frames jump to +16/+16, and hydraulic frames hit +25/+25 once you have Armorer 3. Storage variants trade nothing for +20 carry per slot, which the pack mule below abuses happily.

Two builds that work

The pack mule. Protectron torso, protectron legs for +100 carry, two sentry arms for +60 apiece, then factory storage armor in all three torso slots for +20 each (that needs Armorer 1). That's better than +250 carry from parts alone, before the frame's own allowance. Give it a cheap hand laser per side so it can defend itself and keep it on a supply line. Just know the sentry arms want Robotics Expert 1 and Science! 3, so this one's a mid-game project.

The walking medic. Robobrain torso for +50 HP without the sentry's overheat problem, regeneration field in the utility slot, hydraulic frames on every armor slot you can afford, and protectron hand lasers for guns. It fights fine, hauls a bit, and patches you up after every scrap. Rename it something smug.

One trap to know about: parts tagged "unstable" hit harder but can break mid-fight. Broken weapons fix themselves once combat ends, so it's usually just an inconvenience. But a robot whose only weapons are unstable miniguns or unstable gatling lasers will charge the nearest enemy and detonate itself when they break. That's hilarious exactly once.

Voices are cosmetic, mostly. The male, female, and processed voices take personality subroutines and follow orders, including a self destruct command. Assaultron voices, sentry voices, and the three beep options all refuse to self destruct, so choose accordingly if you like living dangerously. Last thing: if you mount Jezebel's head on a bot during Headhunting, it never comes off. Decent head, but it's forever, so don't spend it on a body you'll want to rework later.

Repairing and Assigning Robots

Stimpaks don't work on machines. The robot equivalent is the Robot Repair Kit, crafted at any chemistry station from Circuitry 2, Fusion Cell 4, Spring 2, and Steel 1. It restores 30% of a robot's health and brings a downed follower back on its feet, the same way a stimpak revives a human companion. Each one weighs 0.1, so there's no excuse not to carry three or four. They drop off the Mechanist's robots and the Rust Devils' machines too.

Keeping them alive

Broken unstable weapons repair themselves between fights, so save your kits for hull damage. In Survival mode the stakes jump, because an automatron that goes down while you're elsewhere gets destroyed outright. Keep kits on your belt out there.

Putting them to work

Built automatrons are settlers with treads. Hop into workshop mode and assign them to anything a human can do: crops, guard posts, stores, supply lines. They occupy settler slots like anyone else, with one nice twist. They'll take jobs even at a settlement that's already at max population. You can even pick them up and move them in workshop mode like a couch.

They shine as provisioners. A robot provisioner fights everything it meets on the route and doesn't spook, which makes it the safe pick for supply lines through ugly territory. Small oddity: robot provisioners can get picked for the Kidnapped Trader quest, where they'll go mysteriously silent. The quest still works. It's just weird.

The fine print

Now the catches. Any settlement holding at least one automatron starts drawing Rust Devil raiding parties, and those raids bring serious robot muscle at high level. Worse, automatrons that aren't currently following you aren't protected from death. A farm bot can be destroyed permanently in a raid, and a dead automatron leaves no salvage behind. The wiki puts it bluntly: dedicated defense bots are a poor investment, because what they cost dwarfs what they guard. Keep one or two workhorse bots per settlement and don't get sentimental about the shopkeeper.

Two last quirks. Robots can't board vertibirds unless they have a Mr. Handy torso, and sentry-legged robots visibly shrink to fit inside a guard post's radius. Bethesda physics at its finest.

The bench pays for itself fast. A couple of junk runs, a chemistry station stocked with repair kits, and a circuitry shipment from the Mechanist herself, and you've got a workforce that never sleeps. Talk to your bots while you wander, too. Those little junk gifts add up, and every telephone they hand you is two circuitry closer to your next minigun arm.