Before you can get to crafting your ideal ‘bot, you must first complete the “Mechanical Menace” quest and build a robot crafting station at any settlement (see our guide on getting started here).
While the crafting station is primarily for upgrading your new companion Ada or building a custom robot, you can also bring Codsworth or Curie to your crafting station and seriously modify them as well!
Getting New Robot Parts
Although there are multiple voices and paint jobs offered at the crafting station, only those standard base options are available with no additional mods to be discovered (although hopefully that changes with future DLC). There are loads of extra building options for every other part of the ‘bot, however.
Unfortunately not all those robotic mods are available when you first build a crafting station. To earn more, you can pick up individual mods off the robots you destroy during the three main quests in Automatron. That’s a slow and inefficient way to go about it though, as the mod drops seem to be fairly random.
After completing the “Restoring Order” quest (either by killing the Mechanist or resolving the situation peacefully) you get ALL the mods at once, without any searching at all.
I recommend taking this route before spending too much time modding robots, as the Automatron DLC is quite short, and there are many mods you’ll want to use that are hard to find in random loot drops.
Robot Part Types
There are five main robot types to choose from, with various body parts available for each type:
Assaultron Protectron Mister Handy Robobrain Sentry Bot
After picking a specific type for a body part (such as an assaultron head, robobrain legs, etc.), don’t forget to add armor for each location! Simply picking a new part doesn’t add armor – you have to use additional materials to craft armor for every location.
Unlike the hero of Fallout 4, your robots aren’t restricted to using one weapon at a time. By combining the assaultron head laser with one melee arm, one ranged arm, and two sentry shoulder launchers, its possible to create an absolute killing machine with a huge number of attacks that can clear out entire areas for you.
Below is a full listing of every single mod available for each body segment, along with a listing of what perk requirements must be met before you can build them.
Special Mods
Both of these are quest-specific items needed to advance the Automatron storyline and don’t otherwise have any effect or need to be used for combat purposes.
Radar Beacon M-SAT
Head Mods
No Head (yep, heads are optional!) Jezebel’s Head (only available once after picking up Jezebel’s brain in “The Headhunter” quest) Assaultron Head Assaultron Head Laser – Adds short range laser attack (Requires Science 2, Robotics Expert 1) Protectron Head Robobrain Head - Adds long range mesmetron attack (Requires Science 2, Robotics Expert 1) Sentry Head Sentry Factory Head (Requires Science 2, Armorer 1)
Robobrain Head
Head Armor
Factory Armor Joker Helm Lament Helm – adds explosive limb damage, but may break over time (Requires Armorer 1) Grim Helm (Requires Armorer 1) Crusher Helm (Requires Armorer 1) Butcher Helm – adds limb damage, but may break over time (Requires Armorer 3) Carnage Helm – adds explosive limb damage, but may break over time (Requires Armorer 3) Reaper Helm – chance to decapitate enemy instantly, but may break over time (Requires Armorer 3) Ahab’s Helm – adds bonus fire damage, but may break over time (Requires Armorer 4) Hydraulic Frame Plush Head Helm – adds chance to frenzy targets (Requires Armorer 4) Space Helm (Requires Armorer 4)
Ahab’s Helm
Front / Rear Torso Armor
Factory Armor Factory Storage Armor (Requires Armorer 1) Primal Plate Cruel Spiked Plate Wicked Spiked Plate (Requires Armorer 1) Sinister Plate Barbaric Plate Brutal Storage Plate Barbaric Toxic Plate (Requires Armorer 3) Merciless Serrated Plate – causes bleed when using melee attacks (Requires Armorer 3) Warmonger Serrated Plate – causes bleed when using melee attacks (Requires Armorer 4) Warmonger Serrated Storage Plate – causes bleed when using melee attacks (Requires Armorer 4) Actuated Frame Voltaic Frame (Requires Armorer 2) Hydraulic Frame – chance to stagger when using melee attacks (Requires Armorer 3)
Front Actuated Frame
Torso Misc Mods
Hacking Module Lockpick Module Sensor Array (Requires Robotics Expert 1) Recon Sensors (Requires Robotics Expert 1) Radiation Coils – deals damage to nearby enemies (Requires Robotics Expert 1) Stealth Field (Requires Robotics Expert 1) Tesla Coils – deals damage to nearby enemies (Requires Robotics Expert 2, Science 1) Resistance Field – adds damage resistance to allies (Requires Robotics Expert 1, Science 1) Regeneration Field – heals allies outside of combat (Requires Robotics Expert 2, Science 2)
Regeneration Field
Torso Shoulder Slots
These slots only become available when using the sentry torso:
Shoulder Launcher – launches cluster bombs (Requires Science 3) Unstable Gas Launcher – launches gas to frenzy enemies, may break when used (Requires Science 4, Robotics Expert 1) Unstable Fat Man Launcher – launches mini nukes, may break when used Requires Science 4, Robotics Expert 1)
Unstable Fat Man Launcher
Left / Right Arm
Both the left and right arm can be customized with any of the standard five robot parts, as well as further customized with all the same armor options listed under “Front / Rear Torso Armor” above.
Additionally, you can use any of these weapons for either arm (resulting in quite a few possible mix and match weaponry combos):
Hand Claw Hand Baton Hand Vice Clip Hand Flamer Hand Laser Stun Mod (Requires Blacksmith 1, Science 1) Hook (Requires Blacksmith 1) Skull Mace (Requires Blacksmith 1) Hand Shock (Requires Blacksmith 1, Science 1) Axe (Requires Blacksmith 1) Smoke Claw – fires short range poisonous smoke bomb (Requires Blacksmith 1, Science 1) Cryojet (Requires Science 1) Automatic Laser (Requires Science 1) Hammer (Requires Blacksmith 2) Assaultron Claw (Requires Blacksmith 2) Construction Claw (Requires Blacksmith 2) Hand Drill (Requires Blacksmith 2) Assaultron Shock Claw (Requires Blacksmith 2, Science 1) Nailgun (Requires Science 2, Gun Nut 1) Automatic Laser (Requires Science 2) Scattered Laser (Requires Science 2) Sniper Laser (Requires Science 2) Stealth Blade (Requires Blacksmith 2) Shishkebab (Requires Blacksmith 3) Hammer Saw (Requires Blacksmith 3) Gamma Gun (Requires Science 3) Lightning Gun (Requires Science 3) Mini Gun (Requires Science 3, Gun Nut 1) Gatling Laser Gun (Requires Science 3) Unstable Laser Gatling – deals extra damage but may break when used (Requires Science 4, Robotics Expert 1) Explosive Minigun Requires Science 4, Robotics Expert 1)
Scattered Laser
Legs
Although there are no extra weaponry options for legs, you can still add each of the armor types listed under the “Front / Rear Torso Armor” section above. In addition, each type of leg grants these different bonuses:
Mr. Handy Thruster – doesn’t touch the ground and provides better mobility Protectron Legs – extra carrying capacity Assaultron Legs – increased speed over other models Robobrain Treads – increased speed and carrying capacity Sentry Legs – best speed and carrying capacity, but reduced mobility in tight spaces
Sentry Legs
Let us know what insane robotic combinations you came up with and share your ultimate mechanical killing companion with us in the comments below!
