Simplified Beginner's Guide for New Overseers!

[chefcook90]

full version here: https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198055448351/recommended/588430/

Basic pointers:
1. Do NOT fully upgrade your rooms!
Merging and expanding rooms is safe, but hitting that up-arrow and upgrading a room EXPONENTIALLY increases the strength of disasters that occur in that room with each successive upgrade, and the boost to production is typically negligible.
- this is extremely important, so be sure to check out the in-depth explanation in the next post.

2. Bigger rooms are better rooms! Increasing the size of rooms is a safe way of boosting production without having to upgrade; for example three small cafeterias will produce 8 food each, for 24 food total, whereas a single large cafeteria will produce 28 food.

3. You have save slots for 3 separate vaults, and are guaranteed 3 loot boxes at the start of every run, so re-rolling for good starting gear is a good idea.

4. THIS IS AN IDLE GAME. Dwellers inside the Vault are completely safe while the game is closed, AND they will continue to work on their assigned tasks. (note that dwellers who are outside exploring the wasteland can die if their health runs out while exploring even if the game is closed)

5. Be careful expanding your population above 30-40, as doing so will trigger mid-game threats.

6. Haven't tested this in the PC version yet, but in the Switch version, exiting to the main menu while a resource draining disaster is occurring and re-entering the vault will stop the resource drain. (great when dealing with Radscorpion attacks and Molerat infestations)

[chefcook90]

----Upgrading Rooms----
Upgrading a room from level 1 to level 2 increases the strength of incidents by at least 5x, and upgrading a room from level 2 to level 3 increases the danger by at least 5x THAT, for more than 25x total. For an example of how small the production increase is, a fully upgraded Power Plant will only produce 50% more electricity than a level 1 power plant.

Again, increasing the SIZE of rooms by expanding / merging is safe, as the threat level will increase linearly to match the increased maximum occupancy instead of raising the danger exponentially.

Exceptions to the "No Upgrades" rule:
- Non-production rooms, such as living quarters, storage rooms, and the Overseer's Office (since they're typically unmanned, you won't have to worry about dwellers getting killed if a disaster happens in one, and you can wait for said disaster to end on its own)
- Med bays and Science labs actually receive a solid x2 bonus to healing item production when upgraded to level 2. (I definitely would NOT recommend upgrading them to level 3 though, since the bonus is only x3, or 50% more than the level 2 room)
- Upgrading crafting rooms is necessary to craft higher tiers of equipment.
- If you're a masochist (or sadist?) who wants to watch as a squad of dwellers equipped with power armor and plasma rifles gets torn apart by freaking mole-rats, go ahead and upgrade rooms all you want xD

Exceptions to the "Bigger is Better" rule:
Medium sized medbays and science labs will produce 3 stimpacs / radaways per cycle, however large sized ones will only produce 4,
Note that the base production for a small med/science room is 1 per cycle, so to maximize efficiency it's best to have keep your medbays and science labs medium-sized.