In Fallout 4, aluminium is one of the materials that will be partially involved in most of the stuff you will create. Some mods for melee and ranged weapons will require it. Your Power Armor upgrades will be aluminum dependent and regular apparel may require it. Also, a portion of the stuff you will create through workshop will need aluminum.
What is the best way to get tons of the Material? There are items with aluminum scattered all over the commonwealth, but there are some locations that are rich in the stuff, such as Vault 95 and Mahkra Fishpacking. You can also buy shipments from certain vendors if you are in the mid or late game and swimming in caps. Lastly, you can also find it by scrapping larger items if you have the necessary perk.
Best Locations with Large Aluminum Deposits
In the vast map of Fallout 4, you will encounter dozens and dozens of locations. Aluminium will be found across all of them, but it is, for the most part, a scarce resource. There are, however, a couple locations in the map that offer a lot more aluminium finds than normal, and combing through them will yield you a significant even, even if these can be picked up just once every 30 in-game days.
That is an important caveat, if you find yourself needing aluminum and low on caps, you can exploit the respawn rate and sleep 30 days, which will respawn the aluminum sources and the enemies in each location. Next, we list them in order of how much aluminum you can find in them the first time around.
Vault 95
Vault 95 is one of the Vaults you can discover by questing. If you happen to acquire Cait as your companion, her companion quest will lead you to this Vault. The Vault is located to the far south from Sanctuary, almost at the end of the map and near the Glowing Sea. It is the richest source of Aluminium to be looted.
Vault 95’s location in the south-west
While you won’t find any unique or legendary items here, this vault will offer you a lot of Aluminium Cans, and all sorts of trays, all made of aluminum. If you are thorough with your search, you should come out with over 120 pieces of the resource. Some of it is coming from looting dead Assaultrons that were guarding the vault’s entrance. Be prepared for a fight, as this is a Gunner base.
I didn’t need to clear the vault until I was already way past level 40, so it wasn’t a challenge for me. But if you are in the early game or your level is far below, make sure you prepare accordingly for a tough fight. The Assaultrons at the entrance will likely pose the biggest challenge. Remember, you can always change the difficulty if you are struggling.
Entrance to Vault 95
Vault 95 offers not only a lot of aluminum, though. Inside you can also find the Big Guns Bobblehead. In the furthest right wing of the vault, you want to turn right, and you should find yourself in the main hall. Then take another right through the “sleeping place” and go to the farthest room. Look to the radio, and the Bobblehead will be waiting for you atop the radio in the middle of the room.
Lastly, Vault 95 is also a rich source of ceramic, which you should also consider gathering as you are also likely to run out of. The reason behind all the coffee mugs inside the vault is a clever environmental joke about the social experiment that was being carried inside the vault. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll get the joke.
Mahkra Fishpacking
Mahkra Fishpacking is a large processing plant on far north-east of the map, on the top peninsula. This is the second best location to loot aluminum in the game, measuring by yield volume. On your first visit, there will be no hostiles on the outside, but you will find synths once inside. Depending on your alignments and alliances, they may or may not be hostile to you.
Mahkra Fishpacking location
Once inside the plant, you’ll want to take the elevator behind the large fuel truck down. Be careful, though, there is a mine on the floor, close to the entrance.
The elevator brings you down to the bottom level, where you’ll see a conveyor belt loaded with fish. Follow the belt farther down and the fish will disappear and then it will be loaded with trays, easily over 80 of them. Each of them will yield aluminium. Here you can also find a Tesla Science Magazine right beneath the platform with the chained door.
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- Tons and tons…
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- …and tons of trays
Mahkra Fishpacking is probably the best passive location to farm aluminum by exploiting the 30 day respawn rate. If you are in good standing with The Institute, you can wait/sleep 30 days and come back, walk in, and grab the trays and rinse and repeat. If not, and you can take on the Synths, you might as well farm the exp points along the aluminum.
Corvega Assembly Plant
The Corvega Assembly Plant is located directly south-east from Vault 111 and Sactuary. It’s very likely you’ve already visited it as it is an early landmark when following the standard main quests. The factory is not as rich as the fishpacking plant or the vault, yielding less than 40 pieces, but it can get you out of an aluminum pinch.
The ideal access for an aluminum run into Corvega Assembly Plant is through the second floor door. From outside the plant, this door is the one located above the main entrance with the bit “Corvega” sign. There are other points of entry but this entrance brings you closer to where the aluminum is.
Corvega Assembly Plant Location
After entering the factory, turn left and go down the stairs. If it’s your first time around or enough time has passed for the respawn, you’ll have some raiders and a turret. Once dispatched, you can start looting. For aluminum purposes, you want to focus on the Coolant Caps, to be found beneath the stairs, on the conveyor belt and on the table.
Next, take the next flight of stairs, to the left of the first stairs you came down from, and get on the platform that takes you to the other part of the building, take the next staircase down until you see a metal locker that contains another 5 Coolant Caps.
Lastly, you’ll want to reach the top floor towards the location where Jared (who you have to kill on the original quest in this location) is/was to find the last of the aluminum. Go back to where you found all the coolant caps and go through the doors this time around. You should be in a small hall. To your left you’ll see stairs and an elevator. Take either one to go up.
Corvega Assembly Plant at night
After dealing with whatever raiders and Jared if he’s still around, you’ll want to go towards the blue car near the protectron and check behind it for 5 Hubcaps. When all is said and done you should have from 35 to 50 aluminum pieces from the Assembly Plant. The plant also has a Repair Bobblehead located on the outside of the plant, at the very top of the Corvega metal globe, you’ll find it there. The bobblehead will give you an additional 10% durability on your fusion cores.
Secondary Locations with Good Aluminum Yield
After the locations mentioned above, there are still some other few locations in the Commonwealth where is also possible to find a good amount of aluminum items. I’m calling the following spots “secondary” because I don’t consider the effort and complication around getting them to be always worth it.
They could, however, help get you out of a severe aluminum deficit, so they are worth mentioning. Do keep in mind that these locations have, in my opinion, a bad trade-off when you consider the amount of effort vs the reward.
Fort Hagen Command Center Exit Tunnel
If you’ve already completed the Kellog quest line, then you’ve already been to Fort Hagen and its command center. This location is a labyrinthian bunker, and through it, there is a good amount of junk with aluminum. This is particularly true if you are in the west exit tunnel that connects directly to the command center.
Fort Hagen location in the map
The command center and the west side exit do contain a lot of items, yes, but navigating the mess and finding them all, making sure to look in every nook and cranny is time consuming and a bit of a hazzle, reason why I didn’t include this location in the main section. If you are going through it, though, you could find around 100 or more pieces.
Federal Ration Stockpile
Next on the list is the Federal Ration Stockpile location. You can either enter the underground section through the main door inside the bunker indicated in the map, or you can go to nearby church, almost straight north from the bunker, and enter the hatch.
The main entrance brings you closer to the main room in the bunker, which is where you’ll find a healthy amount of aluminum cans. When you reach the slightly bigger room with several metal shelves, then you are right in the perfect spot. Go through the shelves and pick all the aluminum cans you can. There should be over 30 cans in this section alone.
The Federal Ration Stockpile will have aluminum cans on shelves
The bunker entrance is guarded by a raider faction with turrets, so be mindful about that. The alternative entrance through the church is clear, but then you’ll be fighting your way down through narrow corridors, and I don’t know if that’s better.
While I don’t necessarily recommend relying too heavily on either Fort Hagen or the Federal Ration Stockpile for your aluminum needs, considering the hazzle and the enemies, it is worth mentioning that these two locations are really close together, so if you are going to hit one, then you might as well hit them both and combine the aluminum yields.
Mass Pike Tunnel
Lastly, we have the Mass Pike Tunnel, which connects its eastern entrance to its western one, with an additional exit in the middle at Boston Police Rationing Site. Western entrance is overrun by feral ghouls and the eastern one is guarded by raiders. Middle entrance at the rationing site is clear but getting to the door is not straight-forward.
Inside, a few raiders and a good number of feral ghouls. Once you’ve dispatched them all, then you can start picking the aluminum items. Don’t forget to check the ghouls’ bodies, they can sometimes have an aluminum can.
A lot of the aluminum cans in the Mass Pike Tunnel will be hard to spot without the Scrapper Perk to highlight them
Speaking of aluminum cans, there is a good amount of them spread throughout the middle section of the tunnel, but they are underwater. If you don’t already have the Scrapper perk at level 2, then spotting them through the murky water surface is going to be challenging, reason why I don’t necessarily recommend this location either. If you do decide to scavenge it, you could walk away with more or less 50 aluminum pieces, best case scenario.
Easiest Aluminum Farming Method
With all of the above in consideration, I can share what I consider to be the easiest method is to get the most aluminum without having to buy the shipments from the merchants (see below). When weighing yields against risk and general effort, then it becomes clear, the easiest farming method is to visit Mahkra Fishpacking, exploiting the respawn after waiting/sleeping 30 days.
If you are in good or neutral terms with The Institute, the Synths that are patrolling Mahkra should not bother you, so you can simply go in the front door, minding the mine, take the elevator down, follow the conveyor belt to the left, and find all those beautiful trays, yours for the taking. Lowest risk, lesser work, and with a more than decent yield.
Aluminum Junk items and the Scrapper Perk
Aluminum items can be found all throughout the world in Fallout 4, you just need to know what you are looking for. This is made easy by the Scrapper perk, which allows you to tag an specific resource, and, once you’ve raised it to level 2, it will automatically highlight items with the element you have tagged. Level 3 will even yield you extras.
While you get the perk, we’ll list all the items that contain aluminum for you to pick. A quick note about some of these items. The applicator, cauterizer, ear examiner, spanner, sweeper, tri tool, tweezers, and recorder all seem to be exclusive to the Institute, so you may only be able to pick them up from here. If you get the chance to pick them up, I’d suggest doing so. There is one more item, the Unrusted Tin Can, that also contains aluminum. however, this one seems to be found only in the depths of Vault 114 and there are only a handful of them, if even.
| Alarm clock | Aluminum can | Aluminum cannister |
| Applicator | Cake pan | Carlisle typewriter |
| Cauterizer | Coolant cap | Ear examiner |
| Hubcap | Inactive distress pulser | Industrial oil cannister |
| Ring stand | Sensor | Spanner |
| Surgical tray | Sweeper | Toy rocketship |
| Tray | Tri tool | TV dinner tray |
| Tweezers | Wakemaster alarm clock | Recorder |
Keeping an eye out for these items since the early game will pay out. You are likely to run out of aluminum and other valuable elements at some point. Once you’ve started upgrading the Scrapper skill, the tag and highlight ability will come in handy for your aluminum farming. Remember that reaching level 3 on that skill will let you acquire more from each scrapping.
Scrapper perk
Buying Shipments from Merchants
There are two merchants you want to trade with to get Aluminium. First one is Arturo from Diamond City. He is located in the Diamond City Market, behind the bar with Japanese speaking Protectron Chief. He will sell you a shipment that contains 50 pieces of the Material.
Next merchant you might want to visit is Rufus Rubins from Goodneighbor. To find him, you want to find Hotel Rexford first, which is next to the Memory Den the storyline quests eventually bring you to. Once inside, you can typically find Rufus to the left, sitting near the window or on the couch in the lobby. He will have shipment of Aluminum that contains 25 pieces of the material and he sells them for exactly half of what Arturo sells you the larger shipment for.
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- Rufus, in Goodneighbor
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- Arturo, at Diamond City Marketplace
