Fallout 76 Guide: How to make an Adhesive farm

In Fallout 76, Adhesive is a critical component of weapon and armor crafting, modding and repair. It’s also in very short supply, with few reliable spawn points for scavenging. To effectively upgrade and keep gear in good condition, players should plant an “Adhesive farm.”

This involves setting up a CAMP (the player’s home base) and then planting and harvesting three foods — Corn, Mutfruit and Tatos — then combining them with Purified Water at a Cooking Station to create Vegetable Starch. When scrapped, that becomes 4 Adhesive.

This guide will tell you where to find these crops, what you need to plant them, and how to construct a Water Purifier at your CAMP.

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First things first: Plans

You’re going to need plans for a Small Water Purifier, a Small Generator and a Medium Generator. All of these will be unlocked after you claim and defend your first Workshop. An easy one to take by yourself is the Gorge Junkyard between Flatwoods and the Morgantown Trainyard (head north out of Flatwoods on the road by the Overseer’s Camp). Another one is Sunshine Meadows Industrial Farm, which is on Route 86 west of Flatwoods well past the river and the Vault-Tec Agricultural Research Center.

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Step 1: The plants

Mutfruit and Tatos can easily be found in Flatwoods, which is usually the first town players reach when beginning the game. There is a community garden along the road headed out of town (Route 86 going west across the creek) where Mutfruit can be harvested. Across the street from that garden, in a dirt lot behind a home, are Tatos which also can be harvested.

Corn is rarer, but a surefire location is a garden outside Morgantown Airport, another low-level area accessed early in the game. It’s here (the bracketed arrow pointing down in the screenshot below). Tatos plus Razorgrain and Pumpkins are also found here.

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You will also need Fertilizer. This can easily be found in the barn and shed buildings around the Wixon Homestead (directly south of Vault 76) or inside the Vault-Tec Agricultural Research Center west of Flatwoods (where enemy resistance is stronger).

When you have just one of each vegetable, plus just 1 Fertilizer, you can plant it at your CAMP. It will take 17 in-game hours (not real time) for a plant to be ready to harvest. Any food harvested can be replanted to make more crops, but you can usually get six Corn, Mutfruit and Tatos in the trips to the Airport and Flatwoods.

Build up as large an adhesive garden as you like, but realize that excess crops left over in will spoil over time, even stored in your Stash Box. (Although 10 Spoiled Vegetables, or 10 Spoiled Meat, can be smelted at a chemistry table to create Fertilizer; Fertilizer can be broken down into Acid, which is necessary to craft Gunpowder and therefore ammunition.)

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Step 2: The Water Purifier

It takes 1 Purified Water to make Vegetable Starch. Purified water can only be found or made by a water purifier at your CAMP, and, fortunately, the plans for a small purifier are already unlocked. You just need the material components to make one. They are:

• 2 Ceramic
• 4 Copper
• 4 Oil
• 4 Rubber
• 4 Screw
• 15 Steel

Ceramic, Rubber, Oil and Steel are all commonly-found scrap items (oil as waste in the bottom of Gas Cans and Oil Cans — they don’t just scrap to metal only).

Screws and Copper may give you trouble. Screws are found in Desk Fans, Toy Cars, Globes, Pepper Mills and Hot Plates. Copper is found in Hot Plates, Stew Pots, Light Bulbs, Lamps, Fuses and Telephones.

Once you have those materials, build a Small Water Purifier at your CAMP. It will produce 2 Purified Water in 12 in-game hours, but it must be emptied to produce more. That’s after you build a power supply for it, of course.

Step 4: Build Two Generators

As you may have noticed, the Water Purifier requires 8 Power. That is more than either the Small Generator (3 Power) or Medium Generator (5 Power) provide on their own. You can either build one of each or two Medium Generators, but you have to build two. Their components:

Medium Generator:

• 1 Ceramic
• 3 Copper
• 3 Gears
• 3 Rubber
• 3 Screw
• 7 Steel

Small Generator:

• 1 Ceramic
• 2 Copper
• 2 Gears
• 2 Rubber
• 2 Steel

Gears are also found in Typewriters, Cameras, Desk Fans, Fishing Rods, Pocket Watches and Adjustable Wrenches.

Step 3: Harvest, cook and break it down

After the Water Purifier has been built and is active, and the plants are producing enough crops, this is just a simple process of gathering the ingredients, taking them to a Cooking Station (built for just 2 Steel and 2 Wood, plans unlocked at the start), preparing Vegetable Starch, then taking that to any workbench and scrapping that item for 4 Adhesive. It can then be stored indefinitely in your Stash box.

Step 4: Use it!

Adhesive is necessary for any kind of weapon and armor maintenance, for creating weapons and armor from scratch, and for most mods. The amount of Adhesive you’ll need to repair a weapon or piece of armor will depend on several factors, including its condition and how sophisticated the implement is. Some repairs will take up to 3 Adhesive. It may be useful to take Perks that reduce the wear on your weapons (Licensed Plumber and Gunsmith, for example) to help save your Adhesive for mods and crafting weapons.

It can take a long time but building up a solid reserve of Adhesive will soon come as you spend time adventuring and then return to your CAMP to harvest your vegetables and prepare your Vegetable Starch. Just be sure to routinely store Purified Water, which will never go bad, so that plenty is on hand when the Corn, Tatos and Mutfruit come in.