My Fallout Shelter Vault Layout - Sucessful Survival (So far@100 Pop.) & On Normal (@100+ Pop.)

Very time/caps consuming to make but limits molerat attacks to where you want them if you want them at all and makes defense a little easier. But gets easier as you get Mr. Handys from Quests as they can halt the progress of incidents giving time to get Dwellers down there.

Vault - Will update as progress is made.

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*Updated Pic w/ fully merged and upgraded Nuclear reactors on the 2nd floor power plants 3rd floor diners, Farm/Hydroponics and water plants/Purification 4th, 5th floors and 6th floors.

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Room Layout

Floors are mostly in a 3 Wide>>>2 Wide>>>3 Wide format. Except the top where the Vault door is 2 Wide. And the single sized training rooms in the middle.

1st: Vault door>>>Storage room>>>Radio room

2nd: Storage rooms *til I get the Garden & Nuka-cola factory

3rd: Diners

4th: Power Plants *Will be turned into Nuke Reactors and relocated as Progress is made.

5th: Power Plants

6th: Water Plants

7th: Med Bay>>>Science Lab>>>Med Bay

8th: Science Lab>>>MedBay>>>Science Lab

9th:Weapon workshop>>>Training room>>>Training room>>>Outfit Workshop

10th:Theme WorkShop>>>Training room>>>Training room>>>3-wide Training room

11th:Bunch of Elevators>>>Training room>>>Training room>>>Bunch of Elevators *to close off the inhabited section and keep molerats going in through the one room only for the Molerat Objectives.

12th: Dirt>>>>More elevators>>>Dirt *to finish closing off the inhabited section and keep molerats going in through the one room only for the Molerat Objectives.

13th: Dirt *to keep the Rad Roaches and Fires from jumping past the elevators into the next level of elevators and rooms.

14th: Elevators *Mole Rat barrier all the way across.

15th-21st: Storages

22nd: Storage>>>Overseers Office>>>Storage

23rd: Power Plant>>>Barber Shop>>>Power Plant *Temporarily located PPs to store extra power til I get more people to negate the rad Scorpions and make space for future Living Quarters as the need arises.

24th: Temporary Elevators to hold space for future Living Quarters>>>Living quarters>>>Living Quarters

25th: Elevators all the way across *May be converted to Storages later or Stim-pak/Radaway rooms.

At first All power rooms were maxed and I had 2 of the 3-wide rooms on the far right fully staffed with dwellers in the best STR gear I have at the moment and with maxed STR trained. The middle power plants have 2 people each and the left power plants have 1 person each just to keep them producing and have the rooms occupied in case of fires/rad roaches so other dwellers can be dragged in to help as needed to combat the incidents. As I get more people trained and freed up I send people to the power plants first. then Once thats done I start sending them to fully staff one of the diners, then water plants and finally med bays. I then just back fill from there.

All other rooms are level ones and have 1 person each in the inhabited section except for the Workshops, they tend to be empty unless I am needing to craft for objective completions or I found a good item upgrade that needs crafting. The Mister Handys really help with keeping the incidents from spreading while I grab dwellers and drag them into the affected room(s). I thinbk I have 6 by now from quests.

Once I get to 200 people then the empty rooms/storages wont be a problem and the Vault SHOULD be able to be rejoined. *Crosses fingers* Heres hoping at any rate.

Walkthrough - Goals/Milestones

My first goal was to get my population up to do the Med-bay/Stim paks and then stopped for a bit to hoard caps from clicking on rooms when they were ready, people leveled up, or by clicking on the mysterious stranger in the brown trench coat & hat that appears randomly in the vault and from the raiders that randomly attacked.

Then I Increased population to get the radaways.

Then the radio room which can be handy in emergencies for quick Pop boosts, if you happen to lose a bunch of people due to bad luck, by putting someone in there and have enough power to keep everyone alive long enough to log out for the timer to tick down and hope that they found someone to guide in when you log in again (2:30 is my timer at the moment I forget what the new vault timer starts at) instead of waiting 3 hours to go from pregnant to child and another 3 hours to go from child to interactable adult followed by the time it takes to train them all the way back up again.

My next goal was the Weight/STR training room. I stayed at that population long enough to train everyone to 10 STR starting with the people I was going to keep in the power room. I should say I TRIED to stay at that level, unless I receieved someone from a weekly lunch box or found someone on very brief wasteland excursions since I had a bunch of radaways and stim paks by that point to spare and I got lucky to find an explorable location a couple times at the 10 minute marker that had people in the last room. (Wes Englund for example. LOL)

Once everyone was trained in STR I would then aim for the population to get the Athletics/AGI training room and sit once again to get everyone trained to 10 in AGI.

Then rinse and repeat thorugh Armory/Perception and Classroom/Intelligence for the ultimate goal of the Fitness/Endurance training room. Where I sat for alot longer since by this point I had alot of people to train up.

I did it this way so that the Maxed STR would let them do max damage, and the AGI would make them attack faster, and the END would give them the most HPs as they leveled up as early as possible to minimize thier chances of dying. Admittedly many were 50 by this point if not all and the endurance may not have been necessary for the founders of the vault by that point but I did it anyway.

Once I had that done I also had gotten lucky with finding "Sturdy Wasteland Gear" That gives +5 Endurance off of one of the raiders by this point. So I took the first person that wasnt 50 yet but had Endurance, STR and AGI 10 through the training rooms and sent them out to explore the wasteland with my best weapon and maxed(25) Stimpaks&Radaways and left them out there to level up to 50 (One guy took 3 real days). I did recall him/her if s/he was low on Stim-paks or Radaways though. Or if s/he found a lunch box, a person, better weapon or a piece of armor that would benefit the vault ASAP while s/he was out.

Another goal I had was the weapon room level 2 that required 45 people(I think). Once I reached that I used what ever junks I had accumulated through exploring or scrapping uneeded weapons and armors by this point to make the 17-18 damage Rare Plasma Rifle. Most of my dwellers are still using this weapon actually while the rest, the people at the top of my vault/the ones that were maxed END earliest and leveled that way are using the better stuff Ive found on quests/explorations.

After this I only increased deliberately to get to 55 people to be able to craft the 3 baseball jerseys for the 'Rackie Jobinsons Jersey' Questline since in my Survival game I didnt get lucky enough to find them during the previous quests in the chain/wasteland explorations like I did in my Normal mode game =/.

55 or 60 for the upgraded Armor room to start making the +5 Endurance gear.

75 for the upgraded Weapons room for the making of the Vengeances.

Aiming for the level 3 Armor crafting room now, but only when people are given to me via reward/weekly Lunchboxes or people found during Quests/Explorations.

- While I was stopping in between each goal I started building the elevators downwards to cover the inhabited section of the base to keep the mole rat spawns in a controlled area. Then even further, if I felt like it at that time or not and didnt. but always in preparation for the future expansions downwards since dwellers cant be revived in Survival mode and the caps were just sitting there from the Mysterious Stranger or while fighting off the raiders and taking whatever they had weapon/outfit wise to gear my dwellers up.

Questing/Exploration-Leveling Gear -

I didnt start allowing Questing til I had a +5 Endurance armor and trained 3 people to 50 with it. The first one I got was from a Weekly lunchbox, the second was off of a raider and the third was a reward for a Random searchable place when one of my dwellers was levelling and found the 'Super Duper Mart' I believe. And the weapon was what ever was highest damage at the time that wasnt AoE.

For Leveling via Exploration -
Armor - Sturdy Wasteland Gear: +5 Endurance, Til I was given a +7 Endurance Armor.
Weapon - Plasma Rifle: 17-18 Damage
Pet: Any of the Red Parrots since they seem to have Damage reduction modifiers on them.

***TIP*** Leveling In-Vault Carefully mouse over dweller till s/he highlights in a green outline, then click the dweller, click the armor spot and switch them to the +7 Endurance Wasteland Gear then click out say on another room then click the 'Arrow Level up' icon over thier head and they will receieve the +7 Bonus at level up. Then continue to play musical Endurance gear between your Dwellers so they all get the benefit of the +7 gear as they too level up. I even put +5 Endurance on all my non-50s incase I misclick when trying to switch thier armor and they will still get the +5 at least.

For Questing -

- Armor: If I didnt have them in Endurance gear then I had High AGI and STR Armors
But after Finishing the storyline Quests: Death's Jacket, The Rackie Jobinsons Jersey and The Military armor that has the STR & AGI on it. Then I started looking for the Armors that had Some combination of STR, AGI, END. But at the moment its still an evovling scenario as I continue to test armors out. A current Favorite is the Deaths Jacket and the +7 AGI Jumpsuits on the other two members of the questing team.

- Weapons: Started at what ever was highest Damage but then went exclusively Plasma Rifles and for a bit I had one of my people in the questing group with a Rocket launcher to do AoE damage while the other two would whittle Single targets down as I made them attack the same target. The bosses first then the adds.

After one of the quests though I was given a Vengeance gatling Laser. So one would weild that while the other two would have the Rocket launcher/Plasma Rifle combo. And even later just the Vengeance and The gatling guns that were rewards for other quests.

Currently Im making Vengeance Lasers since at 75 I was able to upgrade my Weapon Factory to access the Legendary weapon Recipes Id been receiving all this time. Those are the Yellow gatling looking Laser gun that does 21-26 damage I think. So Im probably going to have my Questing team decked out in them. But with +5 STR armors on and the Crafting time reduction pets Ive gotten it the crafting time to make them down to 1 day 10 hours I think. (Ill have to double check that next time Im on.)

For Leveling through Exploring:

411 - TL:DR

TL:DR - Works in Survival or Normal

I cut my base in 1/2 so that most fire/radroach incidents can rage unchecked in the uninhabited section without fear someone will die or waste Stimpaks. Rad scorpions are another matter and Ive had my power dropped to 1/3 of the bar several times along the way. but I do have mister handys now collecting in the inhabited section to help supply during them til the scorps hit the occupied section and are killed. I designed it this way so theres only one way in and out so the dangers that come in from outside the vault door are easier to plan a defense for when people are low on health or low population.

It also cuts down on random room molerat attacks and limits how far fires/roaches spread but be careful when the rad scorpions do arrive at like 35 people(I think). I very rarely chase them down when they are in the uninhabited half unless I happen to have someone nearby, like in the barber shop completing an objective to change dweller appreances or in the living quarters for the have "insert number here" children objectives.

Just be patient and have a couple extra power rooms down below just for the increased power storage capacity to blunt the effects of the rad scorpions roaming of the uninhabited section. Even if you lose power to rooms its not a disaster persay unless you were already critically low on Food/water then it can be a problem. Just have the best/highest STR dwellers (Via equipment or already high in points alone) in the power rooms to bring the power back online and maybe use the 'Rush mode' if you have plenty of stimpaks and are feeling lucky, though I tend to not do it unless the risk is only at 10-15% of triggering an incident more often than not. Or Im desperate with criritcally low stim paks that I need to be able to log out/back in later for and the outage happens to have affected those rooms plus the dweller happiness is also a factor.

At the beginning of the game there are different rooms at the top, just use the given elevator shaft next to the vault door to go one level down and replace the rooms from the right side when you have spare caps and delete the elevator thta you used to reach the next level down. Besides with this lay out its not that hard to preplan and get the rooms started in that direction even witout access to the radio room yet (Or use elevators across that section). I originally had a small living quarters and storage up there before changing it to the Storage/Radio room format. once I got the elevators all the way down on one side, since I knew the living quarters was going to be empty 99% of the time due to my pre-planned method of slow going, I relocated it down there.

I left the elevators open at the Luck training room/level so the mole rats can still enter the Vault and I can complete the objective to do so when it happens to appear in the Objectives List. I also left it that way once the objective was completed to give people in that room a chance at xp while training thier luck up. Since anyone in that room is already 10 endurance by that point because Id planned when I first started the game and got access to the rooms one by one to follow that order. So preventing leveling doesnt matter to them and every bit of xp helps. But Once I reached the Fitness/ENDURANCE room It went END>STR>AGI>PERC>INT. Then later LUCK and CHARISMA whennthose rooms became available. Which is why my Luck room is 3 wide right now & in the pic due to the fact that thats the last room I got access to and most of my dwellers need to train it still and my new people are in the other single wide training rooms since I only picked them up/allowed them in just to unlock the other rooms recently.

This build takes patience and ALOT of caps at first, but since you cant revive dwellers with caps in survival anyway they arent that critical until you get Mr Handys that need repairs or youre ready to expand. By leaving the dirt gap between the two sections, yet surrounded by elevators, the other incidents do not spread upwards and unless you have objectives that require fires or roaches to be stopped then it doesnt matter if they rage unchecked/burn themselves out down below. But when you do have those objectives crop up just send a rooms worth of dwellers that already maxed thier END from the training rooms or send from the stim-pak/radaway room to one of the soon to be infested rooms, wait for the fire/roaches to reach said rooom, heal your dwellers and voila easy peasy objective completions and cap rewards w/out the waste of Stim-paks from uncontrolled spreading.

Observations

I could move the 3 workshops out and down since they are empty more often than not but as of yet I havent needed the space, plus my dwellers are right next to them and can absorb the roaches as they spill out of those empty rooms into occupied rooms if they dont make it far enough into the room to contain it there (Some times the rad roaches are too fast and spread before they get far enough inside to the point where they can start shooting at them). But when I get access to the Nuke Reactor, Garden & Water Purification rooms and the Cola Factory they will move as the base then shifts downwards. So as time goes by the rooms levels/locations will change as I increase my population.

The Medbay/Radaway levels only have 1 person in each room at first. But later as people became available from training I did put four people in the little medbay/stimpak room for fastest productions. I did the flip-flop of the middle Medbay&Science Lab so if I needed an extra body somewhere to boost production of somehting i could just take out the Science lab guy and not compromise the level with having no one on it that could absorb any incidents that may start there since I tend to only have the little radaway room occupied for production purposes and the two big one just to increase storage and the Medbay guy in the little medbay room would still be on that level between the two Science/Radaway Labs.

I do have a ton of storages but thats to hold all the stuff Ive found so far by sending out my dwellers to level to 50 with the endurance gear, and is my first attempt on survival. so I Erred on the side of caution since I didnt need the space for anything else yet. But if I started a new save then Id scrap/sell alot more weapons and armors earlier. The green junks would be sold, while only saving all the yellow, but only the blue or green junks needed to craft the 17-18 damage Plasma Rifles and the ones for the Endurance gears once I got the blueprints.

Again you will need to go real slow though on population til people get trained up or else you will get wiped out. So if you are impatient and want it "FEET-STOMPING TANTRUM-THROWING ME-ME-ME MINE-MINE-MINE NOW-NOW-NOW!!!"... then I do NOT recommend trying this. Because it took many-many-many log-ins/log-outs early on in the beginning to avoid any incident triggering just to harvest Stim paks or quickly click people that had training needing to be completed. BUT in my oppinion it was worth the wait of the early on 15 or 20-30min crafting/wait times of the paks to have maxed out storage of stim paks available on hand for a little bit longer sessions to expand or rearrange things as population milestones were reached or enough caps were accumulated.

Also I waited before building the Overseers office so I wouldnt lose the chance to get the 'Bottle and Cappy' Limited time quest since I also knew I wouldnt be sending anyone out on quests for a long time at the rate I planned to go. I wanted to have dwellers with some kind of defense and weapon and training before sending them off in my survival game. But once you complete that chain Bottle&Cappy will then periodically visit your vault and wander around inside randomly for a few minutes before leaving and coming back later. When they are dancing if you click on them like you do to the Mysterious Stranger they will give you caps and the bottle will sometimes give you Nuka-Colas. So there is more chances at getting caps for expansion.

In conclusion & Sorry for the repetition of some aspects.

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In conclusion: *UPDATED Population*
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Im currently at 100 people in survival mode.

But if you are careful/go slowly you wont have many/if any deaths that arent Quest related. Just log-in/out and wait for the med bay rooms to finish to restock up your Stim-pak supply when ever necessary. So far my deaths were because of the stupid Zoom feature, I was trying to click the Stim-pak icon when two people had it flashing but it decided to zoom instead. Another was because I was trying to move a low level out of a room but the drag-and-drop didnt register to the new room and he died before I could try again and another time was a glitch that I clicked the Stim pak Icon but it didnt heal him and he died.

Also in the beginning you may have to play 'Musical Rooms' during incidents to keep people from dying by moving them from room to room thats already been infested or scorched and the wave already moved on to keep them out of fires or back track them behind the raiders after theyve left a room. You wont lose anything except maybe caps and Food/power/water which is easier/quicker to replace than it would be getting another dweller and then getting that new person re-leveled/re-trained. I move people quite often on the Death claw raids. In the pic I move anyone on the first 3 floors to the upper right diner and then back fill any room past/lower than that so that the deathclaws will have to drop to the next level while Mister Handy damges them before the occupied diner. If Mister Handy dies just pay 2000 caps and fix him and hes good as new and ready to take on the next deathclaw raid. By making them go to the end of a level and have to drop down to the next occupied room they wont be able to back track and rehit those in a previous room like theyve done to me a couple times and managed to kill a couple wounded dwellers on seperate occaisions once.

[CynDee]

Well I cant get into my save it keeps crashing or locking up sticking on the loading screen. So I guess this was it and the final tally was 150 Pop on survival with 10 more people outside waiting to come in. I suppose I could restart from scratch and see how well the idea holds up since I did change the layout a little and could use this as a blueprint from the beginning. Til then ta-ta for now. *Waves*

[CynDee]

Preston Garvey is now freed in my new 34 pop survival save. So Ill be leveling him next to take the place of Three Dog Or Eulogy, who ever had the lower of the twos END Since Sara has nice END too. Well til I get the Endurance room unlocked and can level everyones endurance and then let those low levels that Ive just left sitting in the outfit, weapons rooms and the vault doorway not doing anything to gain experience since thier ENDs are like 4's and below. I only let them in cause I could bring Sara and the boys in if they had just rescued someone. So 7 waiting in line is the max now it seems and you will have to let soemone in in order to even bring your questing group back in if they found someone onn the journey.

[CynDee]

Yeah I restarted to see how things would go recently and thats what I put there. I ended up also reversing the layout so when the death claw raids start they will have to go through a bunch of empty storages til they get down to the inhabiting rooms at the bottom this time. Gonna see how well it works. XD

The new save has only 34 population at the moment with 7 guys outside still. Ive only levelled up about 25 of that population to 50 with a 7END Wasteland gear outfit. I managed to do enough quests though to Get Sara Lyons and Three Dog. So thier END should help lots. I wound up getting a Eulogy Jones in a box too so theyve been my questing group. XD Ill see if I can get new screen shots of the new layout.

[Le_BarnOwl]

For the First 2 wide room you could of put an overseers office as that would take up the wide space, storage works too though!

[CynDee]

*UPDATE* Hit 100 Populations with a dweller from the lunch box from the 'Mass Chemical' Halloween Quest. The "Stats" Tab says Its been 621 hours and 29 mins Not sure thats just that vault alone though or not. But its been fun either way. =D

[CynDee]

*UPDATE* FInished all the single stage quests showing up, might have missed a couple fo the ones triggered by finding the "Clue" Bits in other missions, but looks like aside from Holiday ones upcoming then Rubarb was the last quest related dweller. I did do the S.O.S. Daily and picked up a random dweller today though and the halloween one gave me another Mr. Handy so looks like the pop increases will slow down greatly from here unless I use the radio room or havign them hook up from here on out or get lucky in lunch boxes or the S.O.S. signal dailes. But Im at 99 now and i know the Thanksgiving ones and the Xmas ones give dwellers in a couple if Im remembering right.

[CynDee]

*UPDATE* Picked up Rhubarb from the Labor Limited Questline a couple weeks ago. And Just got another dweller from a weekly Lunchbox, Plus Stuart Monaghan from the "Pale Imitation" Single stage quest. So Im at 97 or 98 when they return from thier quest.

[CynDee]

Wow another dweller from the shotgun wedding Single stage quest. Ruth Hale. So at 95 now.

[CynDee]

*UPDATE* 2 More dwellers. 1 From the Game of Vaults Sngle stage quest named Johnathan and another from a weekly lunch box that was wearing a Mayors Outfit.

[CynDee]

2 More dwellers: Sally Switchblade from a single stage quest to break up a raiders wedding. And another from a lunch box.