Special survivors

[Lars]

Are the special survivors anything special apart from their clothes and weapons? Guys like Preston Garvey. Seems they are mostly useful in the beginning before you train your own dwellers but i`m not sure if they have hidden bonuses somehow?

[Mardoin69]

No, they just have higher stats than regular dwellers. And, yes... this can be helpful in the early game. Later however, this is actually a drawback... cuz they are usually of higher level when you get them but still don't have high endurance numbers. This leads to them having less total (max) Hit Points in the long run. For example, if you trained up a regular dweller to have a max Endurance of 10 and then equipped them with some outfit having a bonus to Endurance, they will get more total HP's gained each time they level up. I think the Max is something like 500? at level 50. Meanwhile, the dweller that came to your vault already at level 10 with only a 3 or 4 endurance that then levels out at the lvl 50 cap (max) will only end up with a total HP's around the 400 ish range. That extra 100 ish HP's can be the difference between instant death from a critical strike by a boss level monster on a quest or surviving it so you can dose them and not lose them on the quest.

Aside from that.... there's nothing special about them other than the story tidbits they 'might' introduce and some wpn or gear they have when you get them.

[NBmadYT]

basically if you raise a dweller with 17 endurance from lvl 1, it will have max hp possible. The special ones come with higher lvl so they would be worst at lvl 50

[Jackie Daytona]

Preston is one of my best guys. I put him in power armor. he does work.

[Handoiron]

Originally posted by Jackie Daytona:

Preston is one of my best guys. I put him in power armor. he does work.

The point is that any random level 1 dweller that you can train endurance on before gaining any levels is better because they have more health. This is because the "unique" dwellers have absolutely nothing unique about them. You can even make your regular dwellers have their appearance (or close) and name.

Because the "unique" dwellers start at a higher level, you don't get to gain as many hit points with them as you do with regular level 1 dwellers that you can have high endurance on for leveling 49 times.

This means that in the end, the unique dwellers are actually weaker than random dwellers that you've leveled appropriately no matter what you do with the unique dwellers.

Obviously, you "can" make them work and in early game they're stronger than your undeveloped random dwellers.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Handoiron:

The point is that any random level 1 dweller that you get 17 endurance on before gaining any levels is better because they have more health.

Doesn't make much of an actual difference in reality though, unless you want to use them for high-end quests.

[Handoiron]

Originally posted by Ryika:

Doesn't make much of an actual difference in reality though, unless you want to use them for high-end quests.

Or for your Vault defense team... or for not tanking happiness and costing caps to revive then reassign to a room after they die to a random incident...

Even if it seems there isn't much of a difference, the basic idea remains the same. "Unique" dwellers are only good early on before you develop your vault to where you can train dwellers up from level 1 and then they become inferior.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Handoiron:

Or for your Vault defense team... or for not tanking happiness and costing caps to revive then reassign to a room after they die to a random incident...

There is no random incident that will kill your dwellers in a room stacked with level 50 dwellers with high end weapons, even if they're all 1 endurance.

Originally posted by Handoiron:

Even if it seems there isn't much of a difference, the basic idea remains the same. "Unique" dwellers are only good early on before you develop your vault to where you can train dwellers up from level 1 and then they become inferior.

Sure, I'm not denying that. But the way in which they're inferior is meaningless for most situations, and they do still start with great stats, and a decent amount of starting Experience.

For all but the most perfectionist players, they're just fine.

[Mardoin69]

Yeah, for basic vault use, special dwellers are a great addition cuz you don't really need to worry about their stats (much) and they'll excel at some productions in the vault. This is great for the early game especially. And, most the quests in the early game aren't going to be too difficult... which means the specials will be better for them. However, in the long run, you'll want 3 (at least one team) dwellers that have maxed Endurance right from the beginning and leveled up with that max endurance... to get the most total Hit Points. Cuz, like I said earlier, that 100 or so extra HP's can mean the difference between failing a quest / losing a team member during a quest... when it comes to the high level quests with high level bosses. I've been one shot killed by Radscorps and DeathClaws on some of those quests... back when I was using inferior quest teams.

[Handoiron]

Originally posted by Ryika:

There is no random incident that will kill your dwellers in a room stacked with level 50 dwellers with high end weapons, even if they're all 1 endurance.

I've had rad scorpions kill lvl 50 dwellers that have been in production rooms leveling with base endurance my entire run... so yes it makes a difference even if just to give you a bit of extra time to find where the rad scorpion randomly moved to.

In any event, the OPs question was whether "special" dwellers had anything really special about them and the answer is clear.

The only thing about them that is special is that they have lower max health. They are effectively just normal dwellers with a unique name / look and higher starting level which limits their ending health.

Use them early on when their higher start level is of benefit and then replace them with more developed dwellers. You can try to match their appearance and change name to theirs if you really want that unique dweller in your vault and the "normal" version will have an edge over the "special" one.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Handoiron:

I've had rad scorpions kill lvl 50 dwellers that have been in production rooms leveling with base endurance my entire run... so yes it makes a difference even if just to give you a bit of extra time to find where the rad scorpion randomly moved to.

You were talking about an endgame scenario where you have access to +7 Endurance equipment, so your "entire run" is irrelevant. If you have that type of equipment, you also have high end weapons on all of your dwellers, and they melt rad scorpions before they can do real damage.

Originally posted by Handoiron:

In any event, the OPs question was whether "special" dwellers had anything really special about them and the answer is clear.

Sure, and once again, I didn't disagree with it. Just put it in perspective - the way in which they're inferior does not really matter for most jobs, and the way they are superior is mostly only useful early on.

Originally posted by Handoiron:

and then replace them with more developed dwellers.

...or don't, since it's largely unnecessary. Those are indeed the choices.

[Handoiron]

Originally posted by Ryika:

You were talking about an endgame scenario where you have access to +7 Endurance equipment, so your "entire run" is irrelevant. If you have that type of equipment, you also have high end weapons on all of your dwellers, and they melt rad scorpions before they can do real damage.

Uh.. no I was not talking about an end game scenario with every single dweller having the best weapons and gear....

My entire comment stream here has been about the differences between "special" and regular dwellers at any stage of play. I've said that in early game, unique dwellers starting with higher level than normal ones can be a benefit. It's after you gain the ability to train normal dwellers starting at level 1 that normal dwellers are clearly superior.

That doesn't need to be "end game". It can be as soon as you build your first endurance training room because that's where you can get a dweller to max endurance before gear at level 1. And that's when they can surpass any "special" dweller for health.


Further, to address your cherry-picked "entire run" comment, I only said that to highlight the differences between any dweller that leveled without high endurance and one who does. Simply put, your comment that any level 50 dweller can easily survive any incident without maximizing health is proven incorrect.

In fact, immediately after posting my last comment, I logged in and had a rad scorpion incident in my vault. It initially popped up in a storage room at the bottom of my vault where I keep my training rooms. I moved some training dwellers to fight it, kept them alive till it moved to another storage room 2 floors up. I repeated the process with more training dwellers until it moved again.

At that point, it chose to move to my diner all the way at the top of my vault that is full of level 50 dwellers that leveled to 50 there ever since I built it during the "tutorial". By the time I found where the rad scorpion had gone, they were all already in spam stim/radaway mode and 2 of them were dead before the rad scorpion died simply because I couldn't click to double apply them fast enough. All of them are level 50 with agility outfits (haven't bothered updating their gear in awhile) and at least flamer level weapons (still don't have enough crafted leg weapons to outfit ALL 100+ dwellers).

Other rooms where I've got developed dwellers that leveled from 1-50 with even just +3 or +5 endurance gear CAN survive long enough vs. rad scorpions in similar instances.


It's fairly obvious that the effect from fully developing dwellers from level 1 to 50 with even just 10 endurance DOES have a significant benefit. Unique dwellers that start at higher levels are at a disadvantage for max level health simply because they don't have access to all the level up health boosts. This means, in the long run, unique dwellers are clearly inferior to normal dwellers.

In short, use your "special" unique dwellers in early game for the short time they're actually better and then develop your normal dwellers to the point where the special ones can be replaced.


The barber shop and ability to rename any dweller means you can usually make your normal dwellers, with superior capabilities, close to the unique dwellers' looks if that's what you want.

[Ryika]

Originally posted by Handoiron:

Uh.. no I was not talking about an end game scenario with every single dweller having the best weapons and gear....

Scroll up to post #5. That's where the part of the discussion began. I responded specifically to your comment about having 17 Endurance dwellers.

Originally posted by Handoiron:

Simply put, your comment that any level 50 dweller can easily survive any incident without maximizing health is proven incorrect.

I didn't make that claim. I claimed that there is no incident that will randomly kill a team of level 50 dwellers with high-end weapons, even if they're all 1 endurance. And that's correct, they'll kill anything before it can kill them.

Originally posted by Handoiron:

At that point, it chose to move to my diner all the way at the top of my vault that is full of level 50 dwellers that leveled to 50 there ever since I built it during the "tutorial". By the time I found where the rad scorpion had gone, they were all already in spam stim/radaway mode and 2 of them were dead before the rad scorpion died simply because I couldn't click to double apply them fast enough. All of them are level 50 with agility outfits (haven't bothered updating their gear in awhile) and at least flamer level weapons (still don't have enough crafted leg weapons to outfit ALL 100+ dwellers).

By the time I found where the rad scorpion had gone, they were all already in spam stim/radaway mode and 2 of them were dead before the rad scorpion died simply because I couldn't click to double apply them fast enough.

That's a terrible way of handling rad scorpions. By the time it moves to a new room, you want to already be zoomed out to see where it jumps to, and to be able to react immediately if it jumps into a room with vulnerable dwellers. If you watch it crawl into the ground and then look around to find the next room, you're doing it wrong.

Hell, if you're having trouble with them, just ignore whenever they spawn or jump into an empty room and zoom out immediately to get ready for their next jump. It'll take longer to kill them, but if they start in an empty room, you're not going to be able to kill them before they drain all the energy they can anyway. You can make your life so much easier by not spending your time dragging in dwellers that'll take a ton of damage while doing very little, especially when it makes you miss the timing to prepare for its next jump.

Originally posted by Handoiron:

In short, use your "special" unique dwellers in early game for the short time they're actually better and then develop your normal dwellers to the point where the special ones can be replaced.

Kind of funny how you give this advice, even though you admit that you're not at the point of the game where you can even follow it yourself. If you were at that point, you'd realize that the weapons you have access to kill incidents quickly enough that the problem you're trying to avoid with the advice you're giving isn't actually a problem anymore.

That's why while legendary dwellers end up with fewer hp technically makes them weaker than the ones you can train yourself, the difference does not actually matter in the real game - by the time you have enough +7 outfits to have only high end dwellers in your vault, you also have access to enough high end weapons that solve the problem in a much simpler way. If you're a perfectionist, you'll still want to replace them, but otherwise they'll do any non-quest jobs just fine. And that's really what it boils down to, so I'll leave it at that.

[Mardoin69]

That's the keyword here.... between your all's argument... 'NON-quest' jobs. That's something I kept repeating... it's been my experience that the high level quests with high level enemy bosses are the only time it really matters if you have as much HP's as possible. Even then, it doesn't have to be maxed... it just can't be the minimum. But, you don't want your vault guys / gals to have minimal HP's / Endurance either really. Makes them too susceptible.

I don't always get my dwellers endurance way up right from level 1. And, I almost never have a +7 endurance outfits. So, I never actually 'Max' their HP's... just have them higher than typical play-thru where someone might neglect Endurance training at the early levels for the dweller. If you take the high level quests out of the equation... it don't matter 'TOO' much about min/max...ing HP's / Endurance. As long as your dwellers are somewhat built up with decent levels of Agility (or Strength for melee wpns) and Endurance plus having good weapons, they can survive vault life. Granted, this is on 'NORMAL' difficulty mode. The hard mode may require a little more min/max...ing and better gear. If they have good enough weapons, they SHOULD be able to kill the enemy before too long.

As for Radscorps... little side note... when they leave one room and are going to pop up in another room, that room should have a flashing red highlight on it. So, you can figure out where they will be next. Unless I'm remembering this wrong--it's been a while since I played last.

[Handoiron]

Originally posted by Ryika:

legendary dwellers end up with fewer hp technically makes them weaker than the ones you can train yourself,

I can cherry pick too... good to see you agree that "special" dwellers are weaker than normal dwellers after a very short time because there is nothing "special" about them. They're just normal dwellers with a higher starting level that limits their health.

That's the answer to OPs's question.


But hey if you're so fixated on my having said 17 endurance at one point I'll fix that to more accurately reflect the reality of the discussion.

Originally posted by Handoiron:

The point is that any random level 1 dweller that you can train endurance on before gaining any levels is better because they have more health. This is because the "unique" dwellers have absolutely nothing unique about them. You can even make your regular dwellers have their appearance (or close) and name.

Because the "unique" dwellers start at a higher level, you don't get to gain as many hit points with them as you do with regular level 1 dwellers that you can have high endurance on for leveling 49 times.

This means that in the end, the unique dwellers are actually weaker than random dwellers that you've leveled appropriately no matter what you do with the unique dwellers.

Obviously, you "can" make them work and in early game they're stronger than your undeveloped random dwellers.