MAJOR SPOILER WARNINGS FOR THE FALLOUT 4: AUTOMATRON DLC
Just before I start, I’ll give you a quick overview of the article; the first section of this article will be discussing the entire questline for this DLC, afterwards I will be talking about the highlight of this DLC – the robot creation system and how they could have improved. Let’s go. (DISCLAIMER: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD).
The main focus of the Automatron DLC is the robots, specifically fighting, making and modifying robots throughout the game. The questline goes like this: you get a distress signal from a trader caravan, when you get there a bunch of robots are attacking a group of people and you have to defeat the robots and this is all normal right? NO. Turns out none of the people survived the attack except for the robot companion, ADA. Now, ADA wants revenge and she knows who did this: THE MECHANIST.
The Mechanist lives in a secret underground bunker and no-one knows where it is. But there is one thing you can do which is to find a the Rust Devils, a raider gang centered on robots. The raider gang find robots and reprogram them so they can turn them into killing machines. You can sneak into their hideout (and by sneak in, I mean murder them all in cold blood) to get a robobrain – a robot with a functioning human brain suspended in green juice (weird). It just so happens that the Rust Devils have a pretty nice one, named Jezebel, that can track down the Mechanist’s lair.
Now, Jezebel will help you but you have to give her a more mobile robot body in exchange, which you will need to build yourself. After a short trip to the robot station, a million fancy doors and a billion robots, finally you can now enter the Mechanists lair. Now this boss fight is hard really hard.
Once you go into the boss room you can’t get out until it’s done, so be prepared. I recommend going into this fight with an explosive weapon like the Gainer or Spray and Pray. (You can find the Gainer or you can buy the Spray and Pray from Cricket in Bunker Hill). Even better, you could use a flamethrower (such as the legendary heavy incinerator inside the Saugus Ironworks), but watch out because it’s really cramped at the top of the boss arena and this mightn’t be the best choice for close combat in tight spaces.
Miniguns and machine guns are definitely recommended, personally I recommend going into this fight with the Gainer (200-300 bullets) and a machine gun like an auto combat rifle (300-450 bullets) or even better a mini gun(700-800 bullets), preferably modded, and a companion like Codsworth because the robots drop robot repair kits so you can heal him throughout the fight if he gets stunned. Codsworth is also essential to the main story, so he can’t die (and with the Automatron DLC, you can now mod Codsworth if you’re not satisfied with his base damage and health).
You will get instant-killed by an Assaultron if you go to the lower area but, before the fight, you can grab Nuka Cola Quantums from various places which are each full heals.
Now for the boss fight: fighting off waves of different robots sent by the Mechanist. In the boss arena, there are two levels – one lower and one upper. The lower level is good for melee combat and heavy guns but not good for snipers and pistols. The lower level is defended by Assaultrons, which have a really strong laser attack that kills you instantly. The top level has a bunch of interconnected scaffolding walkways good for picking off the robots one by one or throwing grenades and other explosives but robots can also spawn up there and most have very good melee damage, so watch out! There are also Eye Bots to contend with. Eye Bots have low HP and damage but appear in a swarm (this is where the minigun would come in handy).
Stay on the ground until the first Assaultron spawns. Keeping a safe distance from Assaultrons is the most important thing because if one gets too close, then you’re already dead and most of these robots are very fast. Once you’re on the scaffolding, you can kinda pick them off. Make sure your staying close to your companion if not you going to get overwhelmed and make sure that you’re managing your health and all should be well. Once you finish the boss fight, the Mechanist will come out to talk. In your conversation, you will find out that the Mechanist thought that her robots had been helping people in the Commonwealth, but it turns out that the robots thought that “helping” means “killing”. With the story complete, you now have access to all of the robot parts and you have a legendary armour set which is pretty good for intelligence builds because of the 1+ int and 1+ charisma and it looks very cool.
Now let’s talk about the robots. I’ve created a useful chart for you to use below.
As you can see each robot has a strong suite of skills so each is good for a different type of playstyle. With the amount of options for building and modifying, this is why I think the Fallout 4: Automatron DLC is one of the best DLCs to come out of the Fallout franchise. But it is good if you need a companion to accompany you. Robot companions from the main game, such as Codsworth or Curie, also have more unique dialogue and can now be edited with the robot workshop.
There are some downsides here. The story is very linear (especially in comparison to Far Harbor which was only released a few months later), so it’s not the best for players looking for very replayable content. If you want to have a robot companion for your main game playthrough, you’ll need to have reached Level 15 and you need to have completed the entire Automatron DLC.
There are mods out there to change things like that if you play on PC, but console players might get frustrated with the legwork it takes to find a cool new robot friend. Thank you for reading through my article. Goodbye.