Is it better to sell or scrap your items?

Assuming:

Your Scrapper perk is maxed.

Cap Collector perk is maxed.

You are not breaking down anything that has a rare component or is hard to come by.

You do NOT have a depletion of money or components.

As a general rule of thumb, is it better to sell or scrap your items?

3 Answers

It depends on how you're choosing to play the game. If you're building dense settlements that are well protected then components will likely be required for all of the nice things you're making. On the other hand, caps do have a couple of uses beyond currency - you can use them to "invest" in trading posts to increase their buying power and they're a required component when building trade stores.

If you're at the end and have your settlements built apart then caps will allow you to further expand your trade posts through investment, if you're before this stage then you'll probably want the component parts for building your settlement and upgrading your gear.

Eat mentats, scrap everything and then build stuff.

You can get a lot of xp this way.

Do you need caps, or do you need crafting components?

I personally always scrap, because my settlements produce enough purified to sell for tens of thousands of caps every 24 in-game hours. (One of the big water purifiers will generate 40 purified water, which have a "base" value of 20 caps, so each one creates 800 caps worth a day... though your settlers will drink some of that.)

Which isn't to say I need (most) crafting components either... after scrapping all the things, I've got more of most crafting components than I'll ever need too, but it does make things easier. There's usually at least one thing I could use more of (maybe screws for weapon mods, gears for Machine Gun turrets, or whatever), so just scrapping all the things makes sure I don't accidentally sell off some piece of junk which contains components I need.