You're standing at a weapon workbench in Sanctuary, staring at your favorite combat rifle, and then you see it. That little magnifying glass icon next to Gears. You need three more to finish that powerful receiver, but your inventory is a desert of useless tin cans and burnt magazines. It’s annoying. Honestly, gears are the silent gatekeeper of Fallout 4’s mid-game progression, holding back your turrets, your water purifiers, and your best gun mods.
Most players just wander around ruins hoping to stumble onto a desk fan. That’s a slow way to play. If you want to stop scavenging like a desperate radroach and start building a real empire, you have to understand exactly where the Commonwealth hides its mechanical guts.
The Hunt for Gears in Fallout 4: It’s All About the Junk
Look, not every mechanical-looking item actually gives you gears. It’s weird, but a lot of heavy machinery in the game just breaks down into steel. You have to be picky. If you’re wondering how to get gears in Fallout 4 without spending ten hours crawling through every basement in Boston, you need to memorize a very specific shopping list.
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The holy grail of gear-hunting is the Desk Fan. They are everywhere. Offices, ruined houses, and even the occasional raider camp will have them sitting on desks or tucked under debris. Each one gives you two gears. That might not sound like much, but a single run through a place like the CORVEGA Assembly Plant can net you dozens of them. Don't just look for the fans, though. Look for Adjustable Wrenches. They’re light, common, and consistent.
Then there are the high-value items most people walk right past. Typewriters are heavy—weighing in at five pounds—but they’re a goldmine for gears and screws. If you see a typewriter in a ruin, drop that extra pipe pistol and pick up the machine instead. Microscopes are another big one. You’ll find these in any lab or medical facility, like Med-Tek Research or the basement of the Cambridge Polymer Labs. They offer two gears and some fiber optics, making them one of the most valuable single-slot items in the game for a crafter.
The Best Locations to Raid Right Now
If your settlement is under attack and you need turrets yesterday, don't just wander. Go where the machines are. The Wilson Atomatoys Corporate HQ is a gear-lover’s dream. Why? Giddyup Buttercup parts. The toy horses are basically made of springs and gears. It’s a bit of a trek, and the Super Mutants there aren't exactly welcoming, but the sheer volume of mechanical scrap is unmatched.
Another sleeper hit is the General Atomics Galleria. It’s a pre-war shopping mall run by robots. While it can be a bit of a combat gauntlet if you trigger the wrong dialogue or security protocols, the back rooms and maintenance sheds are packed with industrial junk. You can also check Vault 81 or any of the active vaults. Vault-Tec loved their machinery, and you’ll find plenty of high-quality scrap tucked away in the living quarters and maintenance bays.
Why Buying Your Way Out is Sometimes Smarter
Sometimes you just don't have the carrying capacity to haul forty desk fans across the wasteland. I get it. This is where your caps come in handy. In Fallout 4, "Shipments" are the secret weapon of the wealthy Sole Survivor. You aren't buying the physical gears; you're buying a piece of paper that magically adds 25 gears to your workbench. No weight. No hassle.
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Arturo Rodriguez in Diamond City is your best friend here. He almost always has a Shipment of Gears (25) for sale. It’s expensive—prices vary based on your Charisma and "Cap Collector" perks—but it saves you hours of looting. If Arturo is out, head over to Goodneighbor and talk to KL-E-0. She’s an assaultron with a personality, and she frequently carries the same shipments.
There's also Cricket, the wandering weapons merchant. You’ll usually find her outside Diamond City or hanging around Vault 81. She’s a bit twitchy, sure, but she carries a lot of mechanical components. Buying from her is a great way to top off your supplies while you're out exploring the southern part of the map.
The Scrapper Perk: A Literal Game Changer
If you haven't taken the Scrapper perk yet, you’re playing on hard mode. Seriously.
With the first rank of Scrapper (Intelligence 5 required), you get uncommon components like screws, aluminum, and copper when you scrap weapons and armor. But when you hit Rank 2, it gets much better. You start getting rare components like Gears and nuclear material. Instead of selling those hundreds of raider armor pieces for a few measly caps, haul them back to your settlement and scrap them. You’ll get a steady stream of gears just by playing the game and looting your enemies.
It also adds a "tag for search" feature. When you’re looking at a crafting recipe and you're missing gears, you can tag them. Now, when you're out in the world, any item containing gears will literally glow when you look at it. It turns a boring scavenger hunt into a high-speed loot run.
Misconceptions About Gathering Gears
A lot of people think they can just scrap the cars sitting in their settlements for gears. You can't. Scrapping those rusted hulks mostly just gives you a mountain of steel. It’s a huge letdown. The same goes for most of the structural debris in Sanctuary. If you want gears from your own backyard, you have to look for the smaller "loose" items, not the big scrapable objects.
Another mistake? Ignoring Watches. Silver pocket watches and gold pocket watches are tiny. They weigh almost nothing. They are easy to miss on a shelf next to a pile of folders. But they are essentially condensed gears and precious metals. If you see something shiny on a nightstand, grab it. It’s probably a gear in disguise.
Building a Gear Farm (Sort Of)
While you can't "grow" gears like tatos, you can set up a system that brings them to you. Once you have the Local Leader perk and can set up Stores in your settlements, do it. Building a General Trader or a Weapons Emporium inside your own base means you have a vendor who refreshes their inventory every couple of days.
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You can literally wake up, walk over to your resident merchant, buy all their junk and shipments, and then go back to building. If you link your settlements with supply lines, it doesn't even matter which workbench you put them in. The components will be available everywhere.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Session
To maximize your gear count immediately, follow this workflow:
- Fast Travel to Diamond City: Buy the shipment from Arturo. If you have the caps, buy his junk fans and typewriters too.
- Clear the CORVEGA Plant: Don't just kill the raiders. Methodically sweep the office rooms. There are at least 15 desk fans scattered across the desks and upper catwalks.
- Check Every Tool Chest: People often look at the big items but ignore the red toolboxes. These are high-probability spawn points for adjustable wrenches and ball-peen hammers (though wrenches are the ones you want for gears).
- Invest in Intelligence: If you're close to a level-up, put a point into Intelligence to reach the Scrapper perk requirement. It pays for itself within an hour of looting.
- Empty Your Pockets: Before heading to a gear-heavy location like the Atomatoys factory, dump all your heavy weapons and extra armor at home. You need every bit of carry weight for those bulky Giddyup Buttercup parts.
Focusing on these specific items and locations transforms the grind into a targeted operation. Gears aren't rare because they don't exist; they're rare because most players don't know which trash is actually treasure. Stop looking for "gears" and start looking for the machines that contain them.