After the war Sanctuary soon became populated with some of the early survivors.  Its elevated position with a good water supply meant it was as good a place as any to set up for those recovering from the aftermath.  After several years the old Vault, on the hill nearby, was discovered but after many attempts the settlers were never able to gain entry and abandoned the entrance.   Looking to the south they discovered the old Red Rocket fill station and started turning this into another settlement, and soon trade began between the two settlements.  Word got around and traders started to come by. So did the early raider gangs.  Soon, along with residents of nearby Concorde, they formed their own militia to defend the fledgling settlements against the raiders and also the emerging array of strange creatures wandering around the country side, many coming from the south west where the glow of the war could still be seen.  As the years passed, other settlements appeared and alongside this the militia continued to grow.  After many years the old Castle fort was discovered mostly intact and soon became the new headquarters for the militia - the Minutemen were born.

Then Quincy happened - the Minutemen all but disbanded, leaving a few isolated survivors to struggle on and keep the embers of the Minutemen alive.  Then Preston Garvey found a stranger - one from the past, with a steely determination to find their lost son, Sean, and along with it a fire to help the re-birth of the minutemen and ultimately the Commonwealth.

With the strangers help, Preston recovered the castle and it was rebuilt as the new Minutemen's headquarters.  But Preston had become fond of Sanctuary, and harking back to its earlier history, and with the help of the stranger, re-fortified it better than ever before.  The Vault was now open, and soon the settlers were able to borrow things from it......ahem......

They also found lots of spares and unused parts of the original vault construction dumped to the west, and rebuilt as much as they could.  To the east they expanded until the island was all part of Sanctuary.

On the west side the partially rebuilt scraps of vault was moved into by travelers, and as the population grew, more came until camps started springing up on the west back.  This led to the removal of the western wall to allow the town to expand further to the river - and soon a route was built to neighboring Abernathy Farm - ideal for trade, farming, and a bit of how's your father.......

At the same time Red Rocket was also re-populated and soon became one with Sanctuary, though the Red Rocket folk liked to keep a certain amount of individuality and decided that whilst Sanctuary liked to build outwards, they would build upwards.  No settlers were harmed in the building of the 7 story high bar......



Ok, so that's the back story.  Sanctuary isn't a beautifully clean settlement with super advanced buildings and a lot of organisation.....it is what it has become over 4 years of me building, changing, re-building, moving, improving, ooh more DLC...adding more...oohh some mods.....expanding....just like a real population would over time.  Planning permission isn't a thing no more, so its random, a bit higgledy piggeldy, with a few hints of some organisation here and there, but also a lot of "I'm just gonna build me something right here".  I've designed this as a 3 settlement pack along with Phanes Red Rocket and Phanes Abernathy Expanded.  They are all standalone, but they have shared build styles and there are lots of connections between the three of them.


Preston has converted the workshop house into his HQ, in theory it should import with a ton of weapons on the floor - you can then fit these to all the weapon display boards on the walls in the armory room.  

My original build was based on an extremely scrapped version of Sanctuary. I have spent the last month moving and tweaking things to fit around an almost un-scrapped Sanctuary - so if you are on a new play through - it will mostly just fit in - if you have already scrapped it heavily - you might find a few things in mid air where I placed them on original furniture.  In the Workshop house you will need to scrap the kitchen and a few bits of furniture - in the house with the robot painted outside (one of the ones overlooking the turning circle) you will need to scrap the crap out of this because the inside is just a mess.  Also in the other houses scrap the broken beds - but you should be able to leave most of the other stuff.  The last set of pictures have some shots of things you may need or want to scrap.


As with all my settlements, they are not Vanilla - apologies - but when you build this many, you need some help to speed things up, and also more choice of things to build and clutter with, otherwise they would all look a bit the same.  There are many more mods (Homemaker, Doit yourshelf etc) that I could use, but it would get to the point where I'm asking you to install 20 mods - some people are ok with that, for others it's a pain in the back side.  So I try and keep it to 10 or less - yes it will need a little bit of work, but once installed you will have covered most of what you need should you want to try any of my other settlements (there are a lot coming) plus you will also have more tools for building your own settlements, or modifying blueprints you have downloaded.  With the links and instructions below we have tested this - and it takes about 10  minutes to install the lot, and that is mostly download time.



You will of course need Transfer Settlements to import the file.   I have set this as Settlement  Blueprint number 71.  If you use Vortex it will automatically fill your 71 folder;  if you have your own settlement blueprint number 71 then you need to do a manual download, and rename the 71 folder in the zip file to a number that you have not used.

There are a few mods required but you don't necessarily need all of them, however they are good mods to have especially if you like your settlement building:-


Armor and Weapon Keywords Community Resource (AWKCR)This has some lights and workshop clutter - not essential

More Vault Rooms - this is used a lot for decorating the rooms - its a great mod that adds lots of lived in stuff. You could miss it out, but the place will seem a lot more bare.

Sim Settlements - Used a lot for houses and also components

Reginals Prefab Shackfest - uses some of his shacks

Not Your Average Neon


Workshop Turret Pack - this is a mod that you get from the Fallout 4 Mods menu (so very easy to load), adds lots of new turrets - if you don't use it you will have a few turrets missing and need to stick some new ones there.

Better Stores - also from the Fallout 4 Mods on the Main menu - lots of signs and some decorations used from this.

Junktown - also from the Fallout 4 Mods on the Main menu - this is made by Utuit, one of the team behind Sim Settlements - lots of building goodies.

Creative Clutter - you definitely need this or there will be lots of empty spaces - this is a fantastic mod that I use extensively for bringing a lived in feel to settlements.   The only caveat with this is that the author has removed it from Nexus due to assorted politics (issues with Automatron and wabberjack etc selling the mod without actually paying the mod author! - read more here)

Creative Clutter is an awesome mod and I have used it for years and ALL my settlements feature it heavily - if you want to do some settlement work of your own I highly recommend it anyway!

You can easily get it from bethesda.net here:

Yes this is going to take you a minute to sign up (if you haven't already) but then you just click on ADD TO LIBRARY on the mod page, open Fallout 4, on the main menu click on the Mods option, look in your Library section for  Creative Clutter and Download - its actually very easy.



Build High - Settlements Expanded - you don't actually need this at all, however if you want to do some work of your own in the expanded area of the settlement you will need this, but if you just want to work in the middle you don't.  This is a fantastic mod for letting you work outside Bethesda's original settlement areas and for me adds a lot of fun to settlement building.  Note: I have placed all the traders within the normal  area so they can be assigned if you don't use this mod.

I also recommend Settler SandBox Expansion - this massively improves the AI of your settlers allowing them to wander further and higher - especially useful in a large settlement.

My other Blueprints:

Phanes Home Plate
Phanes Jamaica Plain
Phanes Outpost Zimonja
Phanes Red Rocket
Phanes Abernathy Expanded
Phanes Lakeview Terrace
Phanes Dalton Farm
Phanes Hangman's Heights