Worth dying in wasteland?

[Xodan Rot]

I read it's best to have your dwellers in the wasteland until they die, because that way you find the best items and the caps they earned out there are enough for the revival. Is that true?

[JPMcMillen]

You can't use the caps of an exploring dweller to revive them. Trust me, I've had to raid my stores to sell stuff to revive a dweller with lots of good loot.

[Xodan Rot]

But the cost will never be more than 1000 caps, right? So as long as I have those caps I should not have any problems?

[Monkey Magic]

With a max of 25 stim per explorer, thats well over a day of survival for an unequipped level 1 noob. Why would you let them die when you can just call back with good loot?

[Xodan Rot]

I have a huge lack of stimpacks. I need them to keep the people in my vault alive...

[JPMcMillen]

Even 5-10 stim packs can keep a dweller with a decent weapon going for hours. You just have to check on them from time to time and recall them when they get low if you aren't going to be available for a while (work, sleep, etc...).

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by Xodan Rot:

I read it's best to have your dwellers in the wasteland until they die, because that way you find the best items and the caps they earned out there are enough for the revival. Is that true?

Basically, no.

By the time the answer is different, you will know.

WHY it is no -

at the beginning of the game, you want caps in hand immediately to help with building and upgrades. dwellers don't give you the stuff they found until they return. so if you're spending hundreds of caps on reviving dead dwellers in the wasteland, you have no caps on hand, and you can't build anything. then when your dweller comes back loaded down with stuff, you have to sell most of it, and maybe you can't even afford storage space for what they have. But you don't even want to sell it, because a garbage common weapon that does 6-8 damage (for example) is still way better than anything you have on hand ,the garbage common clothing they have is similarly way better than anything you have, so if you just sold it all, you're slowing your progress even further.

as some point you can train your dwellers to be super powerful and have super weapons, and send them out with 25 stimpacks and 25 radaway at 1st level and they just keep going and going and going. If they have maxed luck and stats, then paying resurrection costs in the Wasteland *can* (well I suppose maybe never tried it) be cost-efficient by giving them more time to explore. But I'd guess you want some huge Luck on those dwellers, like maybe 15? which is hardly unattainable with clothes bonus and training, but pretty much you're not going to get there with your first few forays into the wasteland.

But it's pretty much out of the question at the beginning.

(edit - if you don't have enough stimpacks, probably just dismiss a few dwellers; drag them out like you're sending them to explore the wasteland but click the red button lower right instead. then they leave the vault forever. Dismissing dwellers, especially higher level dwellers, lowers the danger of the external encounters you will face. (But internal encounters like radroaches, fires, and mole rats will still be strong based on room upgrade level and room size -

Your economy at the beginning is like - you start with three really good dwellers that have high stats in Strength, Perception, and Agility respectively. These help you with power, water, and food, respectively. But most of the rest of your dwellers will have like 1-2 in those stats. If you keep building and populating your vault, those dwellers can't provide for themselves. They just can't produce enough food / water / power to keep themselves going.

So to run your economy, you really need to have some clothes bonuses - you can find clothes in the wasteland, and I think when you hit 45 you can craft them too. The clothes make your dwellers more productive, then they can actually support themselves, and even have some left over.

You then have surplus dwellers that you can stick in your medbays or whatever, then you'll have loads of stimpacks.

I'd say it's best to stick to basics - food, water, power, a bit of storage, medbays, science labs, then weapon crafting and clothes crafting rooms. Don't mess around with building training rooms until you're pretty comfortable (i.e. not running out of stuff all the time)