Fallout Shelter, The FULL guide

Welcome to the Fallout Shelter FAQ! There are a lot of common questions that get asked over and over, and there are also many hidden and unintuitive mechanics in the game, so I've put together a guide/FAQ. If you're brand new to the game I would strongly recommend reading through the help section in-game first. It covers a lot of the basics which I don't bother covering here for that reason.

**All credits goes to therabidsquirel, who originally posted this faq at: https://github.com/therabidsquirel/The-Fallout-Shelter-FAQ/wiki

Home

This is a therabidssquirel faq im just reposting it, go check him out at: https://github.com/therabidsquirel/The-Fallout-Shelter-FAQ/wiki

If you notice any typos, or more importantly any incorrect information, please let me know so I can rectify the problem. As I imagine most traffic here will be from reddit, you can message me there. If you feel a question should be added or you've done some testing and found out something useful, also feel free to let me know so I can make an addition. I'll make any additions at the end of a section (or if a new section at the end of the FAQ), that way the numbering system and any references to them won't get messed up. I will do my best to keep this updated.

There's also a Fallout Shelter Discord that everyone is welcome to join. Whether you've got a question you want answered, you want to show off your vault, or you want to be a part of a community around the game then come on over.

A huge shoutout to DanK___ who wrote the original FAQ that was stickied on r/foshelter. I copied a lot of stuff that hadn't changed from them. Another big shoutout to ShardisWolfe, SlowbroGGOP, and GOD-WAS-A-MUFFIN, all who have been huge contributors on r/foshelter and who I borrowed a lot of stuff from to write this. Thank you as well to anyone who I linked to that did testing and/or wrote content. I credited everyone where I could when I linked to anything. A bunch of screenshots don't have names, as I copied them from DanK___'s FAQ where they were uncredited, though I assume they were their own. There's no way I'd have all the content in this FAQ without all the help from many different people.

Section 1: Important Information | part 1

1.1
Q: Why aren't my explorers finding anything? OR: Should I change my device/computer time to speed things up in my vault?

A: Do not mess with your device time. The game calculates everything when you load it up based on the current device time and the time recorded from when you exited last. If you move your device time forward the game will just think a lot of time has passed, but if you ever move your device time back (such as resetting it to the correct time after moving it forward), the game will think a negative amount of time has passed, and that will break things. Do not mess with your device time. Known side effects of messing with device time include:

• Explorers not finding anything.
  
  
• Room timers being broken in the way of taking hundreds of hours to finish instead of several minutes.
  
  
• Anything else in the game involving a timer potentially being broken (training dwellers, explorer time, etc.)

If you've done this already and are looking for a way to fix it, check out 15.4.

Note though that you have to open a vault while a negative amount of time has passed for it to break; if you move time forward then backward without opening a vault it won't know what happened. If you also "catch up" to however far forward you went that should resolve the issues as well. This is why travelling across time zones shouldn't break things (for long at least) since it's a short time difference.

1.2
Q: I haven't logged in for weeks and my dweller(s) in the wasteland have all this good gear and are still alive. Are they superhuman?

A: As said in 1.1 the game generates everything when you load it up based on the current and last played times, and this includes wasteland encounters and loot drops. The game does not handle absences more than 24 days properly though. If you've been away for 24+ days, then it generates encounters and loot drops only from around the current time and not from when they started exploring. This can result in tonnes of legendary (junk and recipes) and rare loot drops. They may have also been killed by the encounters generated out that far, so you may have to revive them. If you don't want to wait however many days, weeks, or more it will take them to return, check out 15.3 on how to return them quickly.

Example 1 (Murdock07)

Example 2 (janhyua)

Example 3 (tsocx)

Example 4 (rjrsa)

Example 5 (Rinneeeee)

Example 6 (clutchhomerun)

Example 7 (GMan129)

Example 8 (MystJake)

Example 9 (Bluescope99)

1.3
Q: Are there other good sources of information for this game?

A: That depends on what you're looking for. The Fallout wiki[fallout.wikia.com] is good for lists of things, like lists of weapons, outfits, rooms, cap costs, population requirements, etc. When it comes to more specific information though, like the effects of SPECIAL or how rooms work or whatever else, it often has lots of incorrect information. It's good for a quick number check on something, but not good for learning about the game.

1.4
Q: How do I transfer my vault between platforms?

A: The format of the saves is the same between platforms, so all you have to do is transfer the save file itself. There are plenty of methods of moving files between devices, so look those up if you don't know any for your device. The Vault#.sav.bkp files are backup files for the vault. I would strongly recommend manually creating backups though, info on that in 15.1. Here's where the saves are located:

• Android: Android/data/com.bethsoft.falloutshelter/files/Vault#.sav
  
  (you'll need a file explorer app to access it on your device, or just plug into a computer)
  
  
• iOS: User App Files/Fallout Shelter/Documents/Vault#.sav
  
  (see 15.1 for how to perform file transfers)
  
  
• Bethesda Launcher: C:/Users/<your username>/Documents/My Games/Fallout Shelter/Vault#.sav
  
  
• Steam: C:/Users/<your username>/AppData/Local/Fallout Shelter/Vault#.sav
  
  
• Windows 10 and Xbox One: This one's more difficult. If you have the Play Anywhere version and are either on Windows 10 or can sync your Xbox with Windows 10, it's very deep in this path:
  

C:/Users/<your username>/AppData/Local/Packages/BethesdaSoftworks.FalloutShelter_<some string of numbers and letters>/SystemAppData/wgs/<very large hex number>/<very large hex number>/

The parts in will be different for each user. Here's an example of what the path might look like:

C:/Users/Joe Smith/AppData/Local/Packages/BethesdaSoftworks.FalloutShelter_3275kfvn8vcwc/ SystemAppData/wgs/0009000002967BFA_0000000000000000000000007FACC08D/2182153 5E3D44FCBBE5D833C6EBCFACF/

Once you're in that directory you should see three files. Two will have a size of about 1kb, while the third will be much larger (about 64kb for an early game). All you need to do is rename and swap out your vault (say "Vault1.sav") with this large file (which might be something like "BB81E4B38B64413D9D5C886B7F9B580B"). This should work both ways. Note the Play Anywhere file doesn't have an extension, so you'll have to remove or add the ".sav" extension for transferring to or from respectively.

• PS4 and Nintendo Switch: I know nothing about the game on these platforms, but my guess would be that you don't have access to the save files.

Section 1: Important Information | part 2

1.5
Q: What are some good layout tips?

A: A lot of layout is down to personal preference and what you want out of it, but there are some good general tips:

• Plan ahead for your living quarters. The game doesn't let you build a living quarters if it would put your capacity over 200 population. It also won't let you demolish a living quarters if it would drop your capacity beneath your current population. Explorers and questers still count, the only way get rid of dwellers is permanently by eviction or removing their dead body. So for example, one 3 wide, level 3 living quarters provides room for 40 population, meaning five puts you at max. If you then reach 200 population, but decide you want to move a living quarters, you can't build another first as you're at the max, but you can't demolish one either. You'd have to get rid of 40 of those 200 dwellers before you could demolish and rebuild a living quarters. A little bit of planning prevents something like this from happening, though you only really have to worry about it as you're getting closer to max population.
  
  
• Plan ahead for your elevators, and try to keep them tidy. On each floor you can fit two 3 wide rooms, one 2 wide room, and two elevators. Making two elevator shafts going from top to bottom in your vault works very well then, as it makes building and reorganizing your vault considerably easier. Having elevators willy nilly all over the place makes for difficult vault planning and can make demolishing and moving rooms around very hard to do, unless you've got a very clear layout plan of what you want. If you go the elevator shaft route, decide where you want them as quickly as you can. If later say you want to move an elevator shaft from the middle right to the far right of your vault, you'll have to destroy the original elevator shaft as well as all of the rooms on the far right. This can obviously be both expensive and a pain with moving dwellers around.
  
  
• Remember that most rooms are most efficient as 3 wide. This includes power rooms (they used to be more efficient 2 wide, that was fixed a while ago) and storage rooms. The only rooms it doesn't include are medbays and science labs. For production both are most efficient as 2 wide, and for stimpak and RadAway storage width doesn't matter. Regardless of room size or level, each medbay/science lab "cell" provides storage for 10 stimpaks/RadAway. For this reason medbays and science labs are very good rooms to use as your 2 wides in your vault, while everything else is good for 3 wide. Barbershops and the overseer's office have to be 2 wide, so those of course work as well. Rooms you don't use too much could work well as 2 wides as well to save 3 wides for more important rooms. Some people use radio rooms just for objective grinding for example, so they make okay 2 wides as you're not using them that much. Regardless, try to avoid 1 wide rooms unless you have good reason. 1 wide rooms of any type are very inefficient. An exception to this is with objective grinding, in which having a single 1 wide, level 1 room makes rush spamming very effective (more in bullet 4 of 11.2).
  
  
• If you really don't like mole rats, you could mole rat proof your vault. 6.4 covers how that works if you're interested. This was common early in the game's life, but then the 1.6 update added radscorpions that are definitely more annoying than mole rats and can't be prevented. If your vault can handle radscorpions it can very probably handle mole rats, and for this reason I can't recommend mole rat proofing.
  
  
• ShardisWolfe took the time to write out a very detailed and good comment on vault design, so feel free to give it a look as well.
  
  All that reading's nice, but what would this actually look like in end game vaults? Check out 1.10 for screenshots of my vaults with a long explanation of choices I've made, and check out 1.11 for screenshots of other people's end game vaults.

1.6
Q: Why are my dwellers dying really quickly during quests, exploration, or in the vault?

A: This is a very common problem that comes from misunderstanding how health works in the game. It's a hidden mechanic that has barely any explanation (the only one being a brief loading screen tip), and so a lot of people end up screwing themselves over on it without even realizing. Check out 4.1, it explains everything including what you can do to have dwellers with high health.

1.7
Q: I haven't played in a while, what's been added and what have I missed?

A: A good summary would be the changelogs. As of editing, this post[bethesda.net] has the patch notes for almost every update in the game, from 1.1 to 1.12. Only 1.13 is missing, but all it really did was add a few quests.

1.8
Q: My vault(s) disappeared from the vault list and I can't see or access them, am I screwed?

A: This could mean your save is corrupted. Thanks to ShardisWolfe for this answer.

• First check to see if the .sav file(s) for your vault(s) is in the right place, see 1.4 for the locations. There should also be a .sav.bkp file there, which is a backup file for your vault. If you don't see a .sav or a .sav.bkp then the vault is gone, so I hope you have a manual backup you can use.
  
  
• If the .sav is there, try moving it somewhere else for safety and then rename the .sav.bkp to just .sav.
  
  
• If you're on Windows, you can try opening the Bethesda launcher and clicking options then "Validate Files". If it's a problem with the game and not your save this could fix it.
  
  
• If that also doesn't work you can try completely uninstalling then reinstalling the game (backup the saves and backups first though, as the folder they're in will get removed during uninstall).
  
  
• If none of that works you can check out robot9706's save editor[robot9706.github.io], it's very reliable and has some features for fixing corrupted saves.
  
  
• If there's still no luck, then you can always use a JSON converter and editor (15.2) to dig around in your save to try to fix it. That or you can use one or a save editor to make a new vault and rebuild it to what you remember your vault was.

1.9
Q: Are there any video guides out there?

A: There's an awesome Vault Log playlist by YouTuber Pressing X that's very informative, in-depth and easy to follow. It's ongoing, so you can always check back to their playlist to see if new episodes are out.

1.10
Q: What is your vault like?

A: I've got two actually, a normal vault (404) started early September 2015, and a survival vault (777) started May 16, 2016. Here are some screenshots:

Vault 404 (Normal)[i.imgur.com]

Vault 777 (Survival)[i.imgur.com]
Both screenshots are as of game version 1.9. Here's my vault list so you can see they are actually different vaults despite looking almost identical. I loved the layout I eventually settled on in my normal vault, so when I eventually started survival I stuck with it.

Both have the same operational population of 185 with extras being legendary dwellers I've gotten and am collecting (in the radio rooms), throwing out any duplicates (so eight legendaries in 404 and seven in 777). Don't think you need to have close to 200 dwellers to man an end game vault though, in fact you can easily do it with less than 100. A good chunk of those 185 I could evict without any problems. 18 are breeders (3 males and 15 females) that I used to use for pregnancy-related objective grinding, but I stopped getting those objectives a while ago and just haven't bothered to remove the dwellers even though they currently do nothing. I've got 36 crafters and could very easily cut 12, plus I've got an extra fourth questing team that never does anything (only cause I like 12 better than 9 and it means they can fill up the two rooms beneath my nuclear reactors when not questing). I'm also producing an abundance of resources and could cut back in all departments easily. Having as many dwellers as I do is absolutely excessive for my needs, but I consider having a near fully populated vault an end game goal for myself.

Section 2: SPECIAL

2.1
Q: How do SPECIALs affect gameplay?

A: They have a huge effect on explorers in the wasteland, see 10.1 for that. Endurance gives dwellers more health when they level up, see 4.1 for the details there. Beyond that SPECIALs only affect a dweller's performance in a room, see 3.1 for that and 9.1 for crafting specifically. Questing makes use of SPECIAL in a different way as well, so check out 20.1 for that. Especially if you're looking at older posts you'll probably see mention of various SPECIAL affecting combat in the vault. This is not true, SPECIALs do not affect combat in the vault (2.6). The only thing that matters is weapon damage and health (meaning endurance has an indirect effect), see 6.1 for more details on that. Here's a quick breakdown of what each is good for:

• S: Wasteland, crafting, power rooms (power generator and nuclear reactor)
  
  
• P: Wasteland, crafting, questing, water rooms (water treatment and purification)
  
  
• E: Wasteland, crafting, dweller health, Nuka-Cola bottlers
  
  
• C: Wasteland, crafting, living quarters, radio rooms, barbershops
  
  
• I: Wasteland, crafting, medbays, science labs
  
  
• A: Wasteland, crafting, questing, food rooms (diner and garden)
  
  
• L: Wasteland, crafting, questing, more caps and better rush chance from rooms

2.2
Q: What SPECIALs should I train to max?

A: Check 2.1 to see what affects what to determine what you want to do. If you're looking for the bare minimum for the best possible dwellers, then all dwellers should be trained to max endurance while at level 1 and leveled to 50 with preferably some good endurance gear. Explorers generally work well with max SPECIAL, while people in the vault only need endurance for health, plus luck and whatever stat is needed for the room they'll be in. Any designated crafting dwellers work best with max SPECIAL, as there are items requiring each SPECIAL you can craft. Questing only directly uses PAL (while E for health is also very important), so for questers you can max PEAL and ignore SCI.

2.3
Q: Do outfits increase SPECIAL above 10?

A: Yes. The maximum possible you can have in one attribute is 17 (10 with a +7 legendary outfit).

2.4
Q: If I move a dweller out of a training room, will they lose the progress they have made?

A: No. SPECIAL levels work just like regular experience levels, in that dwellers gain experience points toward that stat. When you move them back into the training room they will continue exactly where they left off.

2.5
Q: I've read that intelligence will increase how much experience dwellers get and will reduce training time, is this true?

A: It's not, no SPECIAL increases how much experience a dweller earns, either towards levels or SPECIAL. The only way to make dwellers level up faster is with an Experience pet, while the only way to reduce training time is with a Training Time pet, to have more dwellers in the training room, or to have a more upgraded training room.

While it's an understandable theory given intelligence increases experience earned in Fallout 4, which shares a lot with Fallout Shelter, you can test for yourself with low and high intelligence dwellers. They'll earn the same experience from all sources in the game both for leveling up and training.

2.6
Q: I've heard that strength increases damage, is this true?

A: I've yet to see any evidence it's true. I've got a post here that covers combat in the vault, quests, and exploration, with testing and links to sources. There's summaries in the post, but for an extra short summary it's nothing for the vault (no SPECIAL contributes to combat, just endurance for health), nothing for quests, and a minor role in exploration next to PECI (with AL being by far the most important).

Section 3: Rooms, Resources, and Storage | Part 1

3.1
Q: How do SPECIALs affect production in a room?

A: Each room has a stat associated with it, which I will call the room stat. Outfits always contribute to the room stat. In resource rooms, more total room stat will mean faster production times. More total luck will also mean a greater chance at more caps being generated when you collect from the room. In living quarters, dwellers with higher charisma will get to shagging faster. All dwellers will eventually get there, higher charisma just speeds it up. In radio rooms more charisma reduces the amount of time it takes to roll and see if a broadcast is generated (when the timer on a radio rooms runs out, it's not guaranteed to generate a signal for you to tap on and call a dweller). In barbershops more charisma reduces the amount of time it takes to make alterations. Storage and training rooms also have room stats, though they don't actually do anything. They can count towards being the "right" room for a dweller though (see 4.2).

3.2
Q: Why are my dwellers taking radiation damage in my vault?

A: You don't have enough water production and/or storage.

3.3
Q: Why are my dwellers losing health in my vault?

A: You don't have enough food production and/or storage.

3.4
Q: Why are my rooms losing power?

A: You don't have enough power production and/or storage.

3.5
Q: What's the difference between resource production and storage? Which is more important?

A: Both are equally important. You increase storage for a resource by building more rooms for that resource or upgrading existing ones. Storage can be checked by tapping your resource bars at the top of the screen. You increase production by upgrading rooms for that resource or increasing the total relevant SPECIAL in those rooms (by assigning more dwellers, training the relevant SPECIAL of workers, or equipping outfits that provide relevant SPECIAL). Production along with consumption can be checked in the stats tab (the same menu where the survival guide and help tabs are). If you're lacking in either one you can have resource shortages, so you need good amounts of both.

3.6
Q: How much production and storage should I have for my resources?

A: You'll notice a little tick in each of your three resource bars. Those ticks represent what the minimum consumption level of that resource is relative to how much storage you have. If a bar drops below that line, bad things start happening (see 3.2 through 3.4). The closer that tick is to the left then, the safer you are. Increasing consumption moves the tick to the right, while increasing your storage moves the tick to the left. As a good rule of thumb, having the ticks at least halfway to the left is good for storage, and having production be at least double consumption is good for production.

3.7
Q: What rooms should I upgrade?

A: Most of them, eventually at least. All rooms are more efficient at higher upgrade levels. Be aware though, interior incidents are tougher the higher the level of the room. At the start of the game avoid upgrading rooms as you'll probably make incidents tougher than can be handled. For this reason you may want to not upgrade training rooms then, as you'll probably have level one dwellers in them. Upgraded training rooms are more efficient, but at the cost of incidents that are too tough for level one dwellers to handle. See 6.2 for more information in incident strength.

3.8
Q: What rooms should I merge?

A: Almost all of them. Almost all rooms are more efficient at 3 wide compared to 1 or 2 wide. The only exceptions are medbays and science labs, where the production per tile is most efficient at 2 wide. Also for medbays and science labs, storage is the same per room tile (10 each) regardless of how wide the room is or how upgraded it is. For both of these reasons, since per floor you can only fit two 3 wides and one 2 wide, it's efficient to make the 2 wides on you floors medbays and science labs.

3.9
Q: Should I upgrade rooms first then merge them, or merge first then upgrade?

A: You'll save a lot of caps if you merge first then upgrade.

3.10
Q: How do room rushes work?

A: Changed in the version 1.5 update, the chance for rush failure now follows this formula:

40 - 1.5(average room stat + average luck), minimum 10%
Add 10% for each recent rush, to a max of 6 recent rushes

Since it considers only average room stat and average luck (outfits included), that means one dweller with 10 room stat and 10 luck in a 3 wide room will have a better rush chance compared to six dwellers each with 9 room stat and 9 luck (10% failure rate compared to 13%). Both the room stat and luck have an equal effect, so if you're just trying to lower fail chance it doesn't matter which you add more of to the room. While outfits count, an average of 10 room stat and 10 luck is all that's needed to reach the minimum 10%. Also, the 10% addition for each recent rush can really penalize you for spamming rushes. It's generally a better idea to rush only once or twice, then wait for those 10% penalties to go away before rushing again.

3.11
Q: Why can't I build a weapon/outfit/theme workshop, barbershop, or overseer's office?

A: The workshops can only be 3 wide, while the barbershop and overseer's office can only be 2 wide. Make sure you have space.

3.13
Q: I need to reorganize my vault, how can I do that?

A: The rule for rooms and elevators is that every single one of them must have a valid path to the vault entrance. It doesn't matter how twisted that path is, it just has to exist. Because of this, it's impossible to destroy the room/elevator immediately next to the vault entrance without first demolishing every other room in your vault. Also of note, you can't destroy living quarters or storage rooms if it would drop your capacity beneath how much population/items you have. Planning ahead really helps with a lot of this, as you can end up in situations where you can't remove a certain room without demolishing a huge section of your vault or evicting a bunch of people. Also keep in mind though you can make temporary paths to the vault entrance. If you want to keep one room but destroy the room next to it, and that would cut it off, you might be able to temporarily connect that room in another way till you replace the neighbouring room.

3.14
Q: Are radio rooms worth it?

A: Yes and no, it depends what you plan on using them for. What they're primarily advertised in the game as doing, increasing happiness, is actually what they're worst at. Do not use radio rooms for happiness, there are much better methods as outlined in 4.2. They can be used to call dwellers to the vault, and they're okay at that. All dwellers called will be common dwellers (12 total SPECIAL points) at level 1 with no equipment (level 5 with a crappy common weapon on survival). Radio rooms do trigger deathclaws and raiders though whenever you call a dweller. Having a radio room just existing, even if manned, will not attract deathclaws though. Only tapping on the room when it's done to call a dweller can trigger attacks. Most people prefer breeding for increasing their population, as it really is much easier to control. That pretty much leaves out the intended uses of the radio room then. What they are good for though is helping with objective grinding. More info on that in 11.3

Section 3: Rooms, Resources, and Storage | Part 2

3.15
Q: What rooms require population to upgrade? Once I get that population do I unlock the upgrade like I unlock rooms?

A: There are a couple rooms which require you to have a certain population to upgrade to level 2 and 3. Unlike unlocking rooms, which once you've done so is permanent, upgrading requires you to have the population at the time of the upgrade. It doesn't matter if you were at that population before, or even if you currently have a level 3 version of the room, upgrading an additional room always requires you to have the population. All rooms that have population upgrade requirements are as follows (with their unlock requirements included as well):

Room_____________Level 1________Level 2______Level 3
Weapon Workshop- - -22 to unlock- - -45 to upgrade- - -75 to upgrade
Outfit Workshop- - -32 to unlock- - -55 to upgrade- - -90 to upgrade
Theme Workshop- - -42 to unlock- - -65 to upgrade- - -105 to upgrade
Overseer's Office- - -18 to unlock- - -30 to upgrade- - -55 to upgrade

Section 4: Dweller Happiness and Health

4.1
Q: How is a dweller's health determined?

A: A dweller only gets more health when they level up, based on what their endurance is at the time (outfit included). Only endurance affects it, nothing else does, not even health pets. This means the dwellers you get at the start will probably have leveled with low endurance, meaning they'll forever be at low health. This also means to maximize health you need to train a dweller to 10 endurance while at level 1, then level them up to 50 with preferably some good endurance gear. See my other post for full details on health, including numbers and formulas. If you'd prefer a video instead, SlowbroGGOP has got you covered.

4.2
Q: How can I increase the happiness of my dwellers?

A: There are a number of ways:

Dwellers normally stabilize at 50% happiness, but can stabilize at 75% instead of they're in a "right"" room for them. A dweller's highest SPECIAL (outfit included) is what they're "proficient" in, and in ties all tied SPECIAL count. If a dweller is working in a room that matches their proficient stat they'll stabilize at 75%. When you go to drag a dweller to a room, the room will be outlined yellow if it's not their "right" room while it will be outlined green if it is. All rooms have a stat associated with them (with crafting rooms it depends on what's currently being crafted, and it's nothing if nothing is being made), so all rooms are capable of being the "right" room for a dweller (except the vault entrance). However, for whatever reason, living quarters, training rooms, and barbershops will always display a yellow outline, despite still counting for dwellers and still being able to raise happiness. All other rooms should display a green outline when appropriate.

Successfully rushing a room applies a happiness increase effect to the room. From the moment the success occurs it's +10% over 30 seconds. This means you can move dwellers into the room after the rush to increase their happiness, and move dwellers out of the room after to stop increasing their happiness.

Two dwellers going at it in the living quarters raises both of their happiness to 100%. There's no way to get the happiness and not have a baby, as the moment they initiate getting it on you can no longer drag them away. You can always evict/kill off the poor child once they grow up though.

Adding a dweller to a radio room will cause a slight vault-wide increase, see 4.5 for radio room happiness.

There are +X% happiness pets that do exactly what they say they do. The amount they provide will increase happiness over 100% (though more than 100% is never displayed). Removing the pet removes the bonus. This means if you have a dweller at 90% and give them a +50% pet they'll go to 140% (100% will be displayed), and removing the pet will put them back to 90%.

4.3
Q: How can I get dwellers to 100% happiness?

A: Read 4.2. Room rushing and/or breeding are the two easiest ways to do it.

4.4
Q: Why are my dwellers losing happiness?

A: There a number of things that can cause this. An important thing to note is that any present source of decreasing happiness trumps all sources of increasing happiness. In other words if you do two room rushes, where one is a failure and the other is a success, regardless of which occurs first the decrease in happiness takes priority. Here's the full list of sources:

Being in the same room as a dead dweller is a huge hit to happiness. Either revive the dweller or remove them. If dwellers are complaining about a dead body when clearly none are present, that's a known glitch (see 16.2).

Being heavily injured or irradiated will decrease happiness. Be sure to have enough food and water to avoid either of those things happening, and also be sure to heal dwellers after an attack if they get very injured.

Failing a rush in a room does the exact inverse of succeeding a rush, applying a happiness decrease effect to the room that's -10% over 30 seconds. You can move dwellers into the room after the rush to decrease their happiness, and move dwellers out of the room after to stop decreasing their happiness (though if you move everyone out of the room the incident can then spread to any connected rooms).

Removing a dweller from a radio room will cause a slight vault-wide decrease, see 4.5 for radio room happiness.

Removing a +X% happiness pet from a dweller takes that bonus away. There is no way to remove such a pet and not take the hit to happiness for that dweller (there used to be, it was patched). As such these pets are really only a band-aid solution to happiness.

4.5
Q: How do radio rooms affect happiness?

A: First, note that the kind of dweller you use has no bearing on the happiness boost (including a dweller's charisma), and neither does the level of the radio room. All that matters is how many dwellers are in radio rooms and how many are together.

When you put any dweller in a radio room it increases the happiness of everyone in the vault by 0.5% to 1%. This includes moving dwellers in to deal with an incident. Removing a dweller from a radio room (including a dweller leaving after dealing with an incident) does the inverse and decreases the happiness of everyone in the vault by 0.5% to 1%. If a dweller is not in the vault for adding or removing from the radio room their happiness is completely unaffected. As a consequence of this if you have 100% dwellers and you put someone in a radio room then take them out, those dwellers will now be at 99% even though the net position of dwellers is the same.

The magnitude of the boost depends on how many other dwellers are in the same radio room. If they're alone it's the minimum 0.5%, while if they're with five others in a triple room it's the maximum 1%. How full a room is doesn't matter, just how many dwellers are in the room (meaning single and double rooms are limited just because you can't put as many in them as triples). This means for optimal happiness boosts you're best filling triple rooms with dwellers as opposed to filling single or double rooms or scattering dwellers around different radio rooms. For example, six dwellers in six different rooms provides a 3% boost. Six dwellers filling three single rooms provides a ~4% boost, four dwellers in a double and two in a single provides ~5%, while six in a triple provides 6%.

Happiness boosts from radio rooms can be stacked as much as you want. Remember though that they're a one time effect when you put a dweller into the room, and you'll have to deal with losing happiness when removing any dwellers. Since a filled triple room provides a total of 6% upon moving the dwellers in, you could for example fill four triple rooms for 24%.

4.6
Q: How can I see how much health my dwellers have?

A: There's no way in-game unfortunately, you'll have to rely on a save editor of some kind just to view the numbers. See 15.2.

Section 5: Breeding

5.1
Q: Can I control SPECIALs in the children I breed?

A: Yes, but you have limited control. Basically, it checks the "primary" stats of the parents first. Whatever stat (or stats if tied) is highest for a parent is considered their primary stat, and outfits are not included in this case. Taking the primary stats of both parents into account, it then makes the highest stat of the child one of the primary stats of one of the parents. For example, if you breed a father with 5 strength and a mother with 3 agility and 3 luck, the child has an equal chance of having their highest stat be S, A, or L. This (IHaveACrystalBall) is a very old post that explains SPECIAL inheritance in full detail, but the mechanics shouldn't have changed since.

5.2
Q: How do "Twins Chance" pets affect breeding?

A: There has been plenty of debate about how these work, but based on previous information and a conversation here I'm now convinced the implementation is as follows:

Equipping the pet on a female dweller both for conception (the dance and sex) and for when she becomes ready to give birth (the moment the pregnancy icon appears) will give her a chance at twins or even triplets. Swapping one pet out for conception is easy enough, but if you only have one pet and multiple pregnant women it will be harder to ensure each has the pet equipped the moment they become ready to give birth. The easiest method I can think of doing so would be staggering conception for each woman by a minute or so, recording the order, and then swapping the pet between them in three hours when they'll be ready.

If you successfully use a Twins Chance pet for a pregnancy you also get a chance at triplets, which is a global 2% regardless of the bonus of the pet. It is impossible to gets twins or triplets without the pet.

This pet can be synergized with a Child SPECIALs pet. Twins Chance needs to be equipped for conception and when the pregnancy icon shows up, while Child SPECIALs then needs to be equipped when you tap the pregnancy icon.

5.3
Q: How do "Child SPECIALs" pets affect breeding?

A: Equipping the pet on a female dweller for giving birth (by tapping the pregnancy icon) will add the specified amount to each of the child's SPECIALs. This means if the pet says +3 child SPECIALs, the child gets a total 21 extra SPECIAL points. You can easily swap one pet around between women before tapping their icons.

This pet can be synergized with a Twins Chance pet. Twins Chance needs to be equipped for conception and when the pregnancy icon shows up, while Child SPECIALs then needs to be equipped when you tap the pregnancy icon.

5.4
Q: Why was my child born with high SPECIAL?

A: Parents with combined 122+ stat points have a chance to produce rare children. Rare children (like rare dwellers) start with 28 total stat points. Parents with combined 134+ stat points have a chance to produce legendary children. Legendary children (like legendary dwellers) start with 40 total stat points. SPECIAL from outfits are not counted in determining chance for rare/legendary children. See 18.1 for an example screenshot of both. The only advantage they have over common children is a higher starting point for their SPECIAL, which has the biggest benefit in less training time. The chances are relatively low for either (see 5.7), so if you want a bunch you'd be best to have lots of max SPECIAL dwellers go at it.

5.5
Q: I want to increase my population, should I breed or use radio rooms?

A: A lot of people prefer breeding. Radio rooms only give you plain, generic dwellers, and run the risk of attracting deathclaws whenever you call a dweller. If you take into account what I've said in 5.1 through 5.4, you'll see you can do a lot more with breeding. By combining 5.2 through 5.4 (have max SPECIAL parents, equip Twins Chance pet for conception then end of pregnancy, then equip Child SPECIALs pet for birth), it's possible to get lots of very high starting SPECIAL children, saving tonnes of training time. Radio rooms will get the job done, but are comparatively very limited. The one real advantage radio rooms have over breeding is you get adult dwellers whenever you call someone, and don't have to wait for three hours of pregnancy followed by three hours of childhood.

5.6
Q: What's the population limit?

A: 200 dwellers, and explorers always count. This is achievable with five 3 wide, level 3 living quarters. Be aware though, you can't demolish living quarters if it would drop your capacity beneath your population, and you can't build or upgrade more living quarters if doing so would give you more than 200 capacity. This means if you have 200 dwellers, you're not going to be able to move the living quarters or build new ones without evicting a whole bunch of people first. Plan ahead where you want them. Another thing to note is you can't bring in any dwellers at all if you're at 200. So if you open a lunchbox and get some crappy rare dweller, but you have 200 population, there's nothing you can do. To remove the dweller from the line you'd have to be able to bring them in so you could then evict them. This can become a problem as the line is only allowed to be 10 dwellers long, and you can't open lunchboxes period if the line is full. I would suggest not sitting right at 200 population, but perhaps a couple beneath, that way you can remove lunchbox and quest reward dwellers from your line without having to evict any dwellers.

5.7
Q: What are the chances of getting rare/legendary children?

A: The short of it for two max SPECIAL parents is as follows:

Common child:------~80%
Rare child------------~13.33%
Legendary child:----~6.67%

So there are two formulas used to determine this, as follows:

max = (male_total_special + female_total_special - 14) / 126
value = random(max / 4, max)

If value is in the interval [0.85, 0.95) the child will be rare, while if it is in the interval [0.95, 1) the child will be legendary. Anything less than 0.85 will result in a common child. So say we have two max SPECIAL parents, meaning:

max = (70 + 70 - 14) / 126 = 1

This means value will be a random number within the interval [0.25, 1). If we look at the possibilities to the hundredth place, 5 are 0.95 or higher, so 5 of 75 possibilities is ~6.67%. Likewise there are 10 possibilities in the interval [0.85, 0.95), so 10 of 75 possibilities is ~13.33%. From these formulae we can also see where the 122+ for rare and 134+ for legendary comes from. The math is less clean at anything but max SPECIAL due to the formula for max, but it does check out.

Section 6: Incidents | Part 1

6.1
Q: How does combat work in the vault?

A: There are only two things that affect your dweller's performance, and that's their health and weapon damage. Pets can also affect combat if it's a relevant effect (+X damage, +X% damage resistance, etc.). Weapon damage is what you see, and health is explained in 4.1. SPECIALs do not affect combat (see 2.6), and outfits do not act as armor in any shape or form.

6.2
Q: What determines how strong incidents are?

A: Let me classify two kinds of incidents, internal (fires, radroaches, mole rats, radscorpions) and external (raiders, feral ghouls, deathclaws).

Internal incidents get stronger with the level of the room they're in. Level one incidents are a pushover even for most weak dwellers, level two are a fair bit tougher, and level three can wipe the floor with weak dwellers. For this reason do not upgrade rooms right away in a new game, wait until dwellers in them have more health and better weapons (though for fires weapons don't matter and it's just health). Interior incidents also get tougher the wider the room is, but it pretty much scales appropriately with the increased number of dwellers the room can take. In other words two dwellers will have a harder time in a 2 wide room compared to a 1 wide, but four dwellers in a 2 wide should be about equal to two dwellers in a 1 wide.

External incidents get stronger based on the average level of all the dwellers in your vault (explorers not counted). If you've only got one person in the vault then, but they're level 50, then external incidents will be as strong as possible. For this reason you can avoid tapping the level ups of dwellers in production rooms to avoid making external incidents stronger, though this is mostly useful for survival vaults where incidents are frequent and brutal. Another useful technique is to breed a bunch of new level 1 dwellers to drop your average, though be sure you have the food and water to support that.

6.3
Q: How do internal incidents spread?

A: Incidents only spread when a room is empty, either because it was empty to begin with, you vacated everyone from it, or it killed everyone. After a short while in an empty room, they spread and the source room can no longer be affected from that incident. This means all incidents will eventually spread out and die, as they don't ever go through the same room twice. When an incident spreads from a room, basically it does so to all of its neighbouring rooms. This post here (firaro) has all the details on how spreading works, and how you can manipulate that.

Radscorpions are the exception to this though. They appear randomly like the others, but rather than spreading out if uncontested, after a certain amount of time whether they're being fought or not they randomly teleport to another room. They don't spread out, but they can easily randomly land in empty rooms as they teleport around. Yes, it's supposed to be them burrowing around through your vault, but how they do it might as well be teleportation.

6.4
Q: I've heard people mentioning you can mole rat proof your vault, how do you do that?

A: Mole rats can appear in any room that is touching any amount of dirt, except if it's the dirt that is above the buildable area of the vault. The room itself has to be directly touching dirt, so having elevators in the way blocks it (as incidents can't appear in elevators). Here's an example screenshot[i.stack.imgur.com] (codyman144) of what that might look like.

However, I wouldn't recommend mole rat proofing. You might find a lot of discussion about how great it is, but radscorpions weren't added into the game until much later. For a while mole rats were the hardest internal incident, and the only one that drained power. Back then it was great, but with unpreventable and much deadlier radscorpions, mole rat proofing is a lot of extra work (and sacrificing aesthetic) for not much payoff. It might even make things worse by making radscorpions more common, since mole rats can't happen, though I can only say "might" because I don't think I've ever seen any data on it. Either way, if you can deal with radscorpions, you can very likely deal with mole rats.

6.5
Q: My vault just got wiped by (insert incident here), what the hell?

A: Refer to 6.2 on incident strength. In the case of internal incidents you probably had level three rooms with low health, low weapon damage dwellers in them, or in the case of external incidents you probably had similar dwellers in your top rooms and a high average dweller level. For internal incidents, avoid leveling up rooms until the dwellers in them have better weapons and more health. For external incidents, deathclaws are really the only problem, and they only appear at 61 population or higher. A very common tactic is to sit just at 60 population and make the dwellers in the top of your vault tough (see 4.1 on health), that way they can handle the beating deathclaws dish out.

6.6
Q: Why are my dwellers running around during an incident and not helping/shooting?

A: It's a purely aesthetic animation and doesn't affect anything. During any kind of incident, the damage of both your dwellers and the incident is added up and applied as a gradual damage over time effect to the other side. Both sides have health (even fires), and incidents die if their health is depleted. Incident health and damage together make up the strength of the incident (see 6.2). One exception to this animation though is during the very start of an incident, when dwellers all rush to their battle poses. An incident will start affecting dwellers in the room right away, but dwellers only start contributing (both dealing and taking damage) once they reach their "starting position". This can happen in any room, but is most noticeable in nuclear reactors, which are deep rooms with a very large back area. If you pay attention you'll notice the dweller in the very back won't start losing health until they get to the very front, at which point the incident has been going on for at least several seconds. For this reason I would recommend not having a nuclear reactor as the first room(s) in your vault, as it means during deathclaw fights in particular you won't get the most effectiveness out of those strong dwellers you have up there.

6.7
Q: When do deathclaws start attacking?

A: The earliest they've been seen definitively is 61 in normal and 36 in survival. It's possible they might appear at 60/35, but there's no hard proof so far. You're definitely safe at 59/34 and lower though. Check out 6.11 for the limits for all incidents.

6.8
Q: My pets run out of the room during an incident, do they still help?

A: Pet bonuses still apply whether the pet is visually in the room or not. Objective Completion, Damage, Health, Damage Resist, and XP pets can all be used to help in some way in an incident.

Section 6: Incidents | Part 2

6.9
Q: Every time I tab back into my game I get an incident immediately, what's going on?

A: There's an incident timer that ticks in the background of the game. As it ticks more the chance of an incident happening increases. Eventually it gets to a point where an incident is guaranteed. Tabbing out of the game (versus fully exiting and closing it) keeps the timer ticking, but as incidents can't happen while the game isn't running in the foreground, then it happens as soon as you go back to the game. A lot of UIs (crafting, explorer, storage) also prevent incidents from happening while not stopping the timer, so if you spend a lot of time in one you'll probably find an incident occurs as soon as you close the UI. This timer can be exploited though. Failing a rush resets the timer, meaning you can strategically rush a low level room to failure (see 6.2 on incident strength) to deal with an easy incident every once in a while, as opposed to dealing with something like deathclaws or an internal incident in a higher level room. This is particularly useful in a survival vault where incidents are frequent and brutal.

6.10
Q: When do radscorpions start attacking?

A: They appear to occur earlier from rush failures than random attacks, but the earliest they've been seen (from rushes at least) is 50 in normal and 36 in survival. You should be safe as long as you're beneath that. Check out 6.11 for the limits for all incidents.

6.11
Q: When does each incident occur in both normal and survival vaults?

A: There's an excellent post here (ShardisWolfe) attempting to find all of the limits.

6.12
Q: Does intelligence help for putting out fires faster?

A: No, no SPECIAL stat does. In 2.6 I link to a post I made on testing whether strength increases damage, post here. As a result of that though I found that no SPECIAL directly helps with incidents in the vault. I had two groups, one with all SPECIAL at 1 and no outfit, and the other with all SPECIAL at 10 and the +7 strength outfit. I used a save editor to do this, and to give them all the same health despite having different endurance. I timed them against fires, radroaches, and mole rats, and none of the numbers suggest any significant difference.

Section 7: Weapons and Outfits

7.1
Q: Where can I find a list of weapons/outfits?

A: As mentioned in 1.3, check the Fallout wiki for weapons[fallout.wikia.com] and outfits[fallout.wikia.com]. If you're looking for a complete picture of the survival guide so you can easily see what weapons and outfits you're missing, give this post of mine a look.

7.2
Q: What's the best weapon?

A: Almost always that's whatever is the highest damage. The top three are:

Dragon's Maw at 22-29 damage (25.5 average). Craftable only.

Fire Hydrant Bat at 19-31 damage (25 average). Craftable only, except for one that's a reward for the "Duo of Destruction: Glowing Radscorpions" quest.

MIRV at 22-27 damage (24.5 average). Craftable or obtainable from lunchbox.

The one exception is quests (including random wasteland quests explorers find, but not exploration itself). Quests introduce the extra mechanic of how weapons deal their damage. See 20.2 for the breakdown of weapons in quests.

7.3
Q: What's the best outfit?

A: The answer to that depends on what the dweller is doing, as outfits only provide SPECIAL bonuses:

In the vault, outfits that provide more in a single SPECIAL are almost always more useful than outfits that provide less spread out over multiple SPECIAL. There's an outfit for each kind of SPECIAL that provides a bonus to just that stat, and each comes in three forms, common (+3), rare (+5), and legendary (+7). You'll likely start trying to get everyone +3 outfits depending on the room they're working in, then +5, and only much later in the game when you're able to craft legendaries with ease will you really work towards those +7 outfits. See 2.1 for a quick breakdown of SPECIAL.

For exploration it becomes a much more difficult question, so see 10.4 for that.

Questing isn't nearly as complicated for best SPECIAL compared to exploration, check out 20.3 for the shorter rundown.

7.4
Q: How do weapons and outfits affect wasteland exploration?

A: See 10.2.

7.5
Q: Do outfits affect training or combat in the vault? Do they provide armor or damage/radiation resistance?

A: No to all of that. Endurance does affect health, which of course matters for vault combat, but endurance itself doesn't have a direct effect (see 4.1 for health). Endurance is useless on level 50 dwellers in the vault as their max health is set at that point, unless of course they're in a room that needs it like bottlers or a crafting room.

There are only two cases of resistance in the game. One is obvious, Damage Resistance pets, they work anywhere. The other is rad resistance in exploration only (not vault or quests). Endurance increases exploration rad resistance, with immunity occurring at 11+ endurance. Despite what you'd think, and what makes logical sense, power armor provides no extra protection from anything and is no different than someone wearing pajamas. All that matters for outfit is their SPECIAL bonus.

7.6
Q: How does weapon damage work?

A: The damage numbers you see or what you get, remember that no SPECIALs or anything else affect it. All weapons have two damage numbers, a minimum and maximum. With single damage weapons that number is both the minimum and maximum. Weapons have an equal chance to deal any amount of damage within their range, so the best measure of effectiveness is comparing weapons by their average damage. For weapons with a range, add the two numbers up and divide by two to get the average. The game doesn't look at average damage when sorting weapons by damage, but rather what it does is sorts first by maximum damage and then only looks at minimum if maximum is tied. The game will therefore sort a 15-19 damage weapon in the equip menu as better than an 18 damage weapon, even though the average of the former is 17 compared to the 18 of the latter.

Section 8: Pets

8.1
Q: Where can I find a list of pets?

A: The Fallout wiki[fallout.wikia.com] has a good list of all the breeds and their legendary versions. I used to have another link here for the number ranges in each breed, but the link has since broke so I don't have anything good to put here for that.

8.2
Q: What's the best pet?

A: Like with outfits, that depends what the dweller is doing. Check here (ShardisWolfe) for a very good breakdown of all the pet effects and what's useful. An important thing to note though is that for Wasteland Junk pets specifically, their usefulness depends on whether you're in normal or survival. They're amazing in survival but only average in normal. See 9.6 for more information on how finding junk works.

8.3
Q: How do I get pets?

A: Like with lunchboxes, Mr. Handy, and Quantums, you can get them free from objectives and quests or by buying them from the in-game store. They can also be found as the rare card of lunchboxes, though the chance is low.

8.4
Q: Do pet bonuses stack?

A: No. Most pets affect only a single dweller, but several affect multiple. Equipping two pets with the same effect in the same "area of effect" will not stack them, only the highest bonus will be used while any others will be ignored. These are all of the effects that apply to more than one dweller:

• The effects Crafting Cost, Crafting Time, Objective Completion, and Stranger Chance apply to the whole room they're in.
  
  
• Wasteland Return Speed applies to all the dwellers in a questing group.

8.5
Q: This is a crappy pet, should I sell it?

A: Some pets you will probably never get any use out of because they're just plain bad. I'd personally sell them if you know you won't need them. However, if you're in a survival mode vault, keep all the pets you get. If you equip any pet on an explorer or quester and they die, they're still dead (perma-death can't be avoided in survival), but the pet will bring back everything they were carrying, including what they had equipped. Obviously giving them a useful pet would be better, but if you don't have any then give them bad pets so that you at least don't have to worry about someone you sent out with good gear dying and losing it.

8.6
Q: Why is the bonus on (insert Legendary pet) worse than a Common pet?

A: There are messed up pet breeds which have no Common or Rare versions, but instead have 3 Legendary versions where 2 of the Legendaries have bonuses consistent with a Common or Rare pet. The affected pet breeds include:

• Bloodhound (dog - Wasteland Junk)
  
  
• Pit Bull Terrier (dog - Damage)
  
  
• LaPerm (cat - Wasteland Junk)
  
  
• Manx (cat - Twins Chance)

There are correctly designed pet breeds as alternatives to most of the above. These include:

• St. Bernard (dog - Wasteland Junk) as alternative to Bloodhound
  
  
• Lykoi (cat - Damage) as alternative to Pit Bull Terrier
  
  
• Palla's Cat (cat - Wasteland Junk) as alternative to LaPerm

In addition to the above, there are also some breeds with a Rare version but no Common version, and 2 Legendary versions.

8.7
Q: Is there a limit to the number of pets I can equip?

A: There a couple depending on what we're talking about:

Per room you can only have pets equipped to half the room's dweller capacity. A single room can only have one pet, a double two, and a triple three (compared to two, four, and six dwellers respectively). The one and only exception is the vault door, which can have both two dwellers and two pets in it.

There is a hard pet equip limit of 100. Across all explorers, questers, and dwellers in the vault you are only allowed to have a maximum of 100 equipped. You can have as many as you want in storage as long as you have the storage space, but only 100 equipped. Here's a picture[i.imgur.com] (DanEngler) of the notification you get when you reach that limit.

8.8
Q: I got an objective completion pet, what do they do?

A: The only current effects are x2 and x3, and they don't stack (see 8.4). When you equip one to a dweller, any objective that dweller contributes to will have their contribution multiplied by the pet's modifier. Collect water? Put the pet in a water room to double or triple how much collecting from that room counts. Survive deathclaw attacks without casualties? Have the pet on a dweller in the room where the attack ends. Stop incidents? Have the pet in the same room the incident is stopped in. Craft weapons? Have the pet in the crafting room when you collect the crafted weapon. The possibilities are endless, and this is probably the most useful pet in the game for this reason.

Section 9: Junk and Crafting | Part 1

9.1
Q: How do SPECIALs affect crafting?

A: In the crafting GUI where you can select a recipe to craft, in each item's slot you'll see a stat. If you tell the room to craft that item, that is the stat you then want in the room. When crafting something, the room displays the item's stat like other rooms display their stat. The crafting time you see in the slot is how long it would take with the current total relevant SPECIAL in the room plus any crafting pet. Especially for legendary items you can make huge improvements to crafting time by having six 10 stat dwellers in the room each with a +5 or +7 outfit, plus a crafting time pet (from weeks to hours). Basically pile as much relevant SPECIAL into the crafting room as you can, through dwellers and outfits, and definitely throw a crafting time pet in if you have one. This post plus some of the comments (hivemind_disruptor, limeybastard) include some in-depth analysis of how crafting time is determined, and the wiki has a bunch of exact times for weapons[fallout.wikia.com] and outfits.[fallout.wikia.com]

With outfits the SPECIAL requirement is usually the highest stat an outfit offers, but for outfits with no clear highest stat it is fairly random. Weapons are a lot more consistent with SPECIAL requirements, so here's a summary for them (italicized are single weapons):

• S: Junk Jets, Flamers, Miniguns, Missile Launchers, Gatling Lasers, Fat Men, Plasma Throwers, Baseball Bat, Relentless Raider Sword
  
  
• P: BB Guns, Lever-Action Rifles, Hunting Rifles, Pipe Rifles, Sniper Rifles, Laser Rifles, Railway Rifles, Gauss Rifles, Plasma Rifles, Laser Musket, Kitchen Knife
  
  
• E: Sawed-Off Shotguns, Shotguns, Combat Shotguns, Pickaxe
  
  
• C:
  
  
• I: Institute Pistols, Institute Rifles, Fire Hydrant Bat
  
  
• A: .32 Pistols, 10mm Pistols, Scoped .44s, Pipe Pistols, Laser Pistols, Assault Rifles, Plasma Pistols, Alien Blasters, Pool Cue
  
  
• L: Butcher Knife

Henrietta is currently the only non-craftable weapon, and is only obtainable by getting Old Longfellow in lunchboxes. As you can see a lot of the best weapons are crafted with strength, while most everything else is perception and agility (with a touch of endurance and intelligence).

9.2
Q: How do I get junk?

A: Junk can be found in the wasteland (see 9.6) and can be recovered from weapons and outfits by scrapping them (see 9.7). You also get a guaranteed random piece of junk from every lunchbox, and can get junk as loot from quests.

9.3
Q: How do I get recipes?

A: They can occasionally be dropped by raiders as the loot drop instead of a weapon or outfit, and they can occasionally be found as loot during quests, but you'll find most of your recipes in the wasteland. Note that recipes do not count towards the 100 item explorer carry limit (see 10.8).

9.4
Q: Why can't I build a weapon/outfit/theme workshop?

A: They all can only be 3 wide. Make sure you have space.

9.5
Q: I have the recipe, required junk, and required caps, so why can't I see the option to craft it?

A: You also need to upgrade your crafting rooms to be able to craft rare (level 2) and legendary (level 3) items. Upgrading the crafting rooms requires you to have a certain population when you do the upgrade, unlike unlocking rooms which are unlocked permanently once you reach the population. Once you have upgraded the room to the appropriate level, don't forget you need the recipe, junk, and caps to craft something. For the theme workshop you can always craft any of the themes, all upgrading does is hugely reduce crafting times. Here's the population requirements for upgrading the workshops:

Room----------------------Level 1------------Level 2----------Level 3
Weapon Workshop-22 to unlock----45 to upgrade---75 to upgrade
Outfit Workshop-----32 to unlock----55 to upgrade---90 to upgrade
Theme Workshop---42 to unlock----65 to upgrade---105 to upgrade

9.6
Q: How does finding junk in the wasteland work? Are +X% wasteland junk pets worth it?

A: Short version, Wasteland Junk pets are amazing in survival but only average in normal.

Basically there are two kinds of junk events, fixed and repeatable. Repeatable occur roughly every 160 minutes, while fixed occur at fixed times of course. Both events have a specific SPECIAL stat associated with them, and the higher that explorer's stat the better the chance of getting a piece of junk. What SPECIAL matters is actually different depending on a normal or survival vault (etherealshatter). In survival explorers find way more legendary junk and constantly do it so long as they can survive the trip, so as long as they survive what SPECIAL they have doesn't really matter. In normal though endurance, charisma, and luck (ECL) are the biggest SPECIAL determinants in finding legendary junk. Because of the lower drop rates, you will actually maximize the amount of legendary junk you get by leaving SPIA low and maxing ECL (while focusing on EL with outfits).

Wasteland Junk pets add their percent chance of getting a second piece of junk if an explorer succeeds at a junk event. Since explorers find a tonne of legendary junk in survival this pet greatly increases how much is found. In normal though because much less legendary junk is found, this pet can sometimes cause an explorer to find more regular junk and return sooner before they get more legendary junk than they would've without the pet. If one focuses on early legendary junk though (which is mostly endurance determined), say by equipping Heavy Wasteland Gear on a max SPECIAL explorer, then this pet can still shine (though Wasteland Return Speed is better).

9.7
Q: How does scrapping weapons and outfits for junk work?

A: In your vault storage, when you select a weapon or outfit, next to the sell button will be a scrap button. Hitting that then brings up a scrap one or scrap all button. When you scrap an item, you only get junk that would've been used to craft the item (see 9.8 for a list of recipes and junk requirements). You can get anywhere from no junk to all of the junk that would've been used to craft it. There's a certain chance for different amounts of junk it could give you, so for rare and legendary items which take a lot of junk, you'll probably get at least something out of scrapping them. For common items on the other hand, because they don't take much junk, you're much more likely to get nothing out of scrapping them. Note that collecting junk from scrapping something counts towards collect junk objectives, even if from an item you just crafted.

9.8
Q: Is there a list of all the recipes and what junk they require?

A: Check the Fallout wiki for weapons[fallout.wikia.com] and outfits[fallout.wikia.com].

Section 9: Junk and Crafting | Part 2

9.9
Q: Should I craft early on? What junk should I keep?

A: Crafting is not worth it immediately. You'll probably find all the common weapons and outfits you need early on from exploring, so you're probably better off saving to craft rare. However, you need 45 dwellers to craft rare weapons and 55 dwellers to craft rare outfits (see 9.5), plus you need to find the recipes from exploring. Since you can only build the crafting rooms 3 wide, you also will need to train dwellers up a bit and probably have multiple in the room to not have ridiculous crafting times (see 9.1). You could also strategically use Quantums to help get the first few +5 outfits quicker to help with crafting (see the third bullet point in 19.3). Early on dwellers can be swapped out depending on what the room is crafting. Once you can start crafting good rares though then it really is worth it. Good rares are any of the +5 outfits, plus the highest tier rare weapons like plasma rifles and flamers. As for what junk to keep, always keep your legendary junk, unless you 100% know you won't need it for anything now or in the future. When it comes to rare and common, there are a couple strategies:

• Definitely check 9.8 out to see what junk is required for what, so you can determine what you want to keep.
  
  
• Set a limit on how much you want to carry. This is better later in the game where storage isn't as much of an issue and you can afford to keep lots of stuff.
  
  
• By the time you get to the point where you're crafting legendaries, your only bottleneck will probably be legendary junk. You could sell all common and rare junk then except what's needed for rare stuff you want to craft. This comment (ShardisWolfe) and this comment (metallicrooster) both list key junk to keep for those good rares.
  
  
• Keep your junk stored in weapons and outfits. With common weapons and outfits it may not be worth it (as there's a high chance to get no junk), but with rare weapons and outfits they almost always give more than one junk, meaning the item will take up less storage space than the junk. A good alternative if you're tight on storage space. See 9.7 for full detail on scrapping.

9.10
Q: I want to fill out the weapons and outfits tabs in the VDSG, what can't I craft?

A: First, if you don't know what you're missing, check out 7.1 for a list of weapons and outfits. There are currently 183 weapons in the game, only one of which isn't craftable. That weapon is Henrietta, and comes with Old Longfellow in lunchboxes. There are currently 138 outfits in the game, 119 of which can be crafted. Of the missing 19:

• 6 are lunchbox only commons with 4 SPECIAL each.
  
  
  • Accountant Outfit (+4P)
    
    
  • Agent Provocateur (+4I)
    
    
  • Bespoke Attire (+4E)
    
    
  • Business Suit (+4C)
    
    
  • Country Girl (+4S)
    
    
  • Waitress Uniform (+4A)
  
  
• 3 are lunchbox only rares with 6 SPECIAL each.
  
  
  • Bowling Shirt (+6P)
    
    
  • Motorcycle Jacket (+6S)
    
    
  • Swing Dress (+6A)
  
  
• 5 are rare seasonal outfits (2 Halloween, 1 Thanksgiving, 2 Christmas) which could be found like any other outfit, but only during their respective holidays. If you're missing any all you can do is hope they drop next holiday.
  
  
  • Ghost Costume (+2E, +3A)
    
    
  • Skeleton Costume (+2S, +3L)
    
    
  • Pilgrim Outfit (+3C, +2I)
    
    
  • Elf Outfit (+3I, +2L)
    
    
  • Santa Outfit (+3P, +2C)
  
  
• 4 are legendary high total SPECIAL outfits that can only be gotten once each as rewards from specific quests.
  
  
  • Jobinson's Jersey (+4S, +4P, +4C, +4A)
    
    
  • Detective Outfit (+4P, +4E, +4I, +4L)
    
    
  • Original Santa Suit (+4P, +3E, +4C)
    
    
  • Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse Outfit, you get to pick one and only one of the following:
    
    
    • Famine's Vestment (+4S, +4E, +4I, +4L)
      
      
    • Pestilence's Plating (+4E, +4C, +4I, +4A)
      
      
    • War's Armor (+4S, +4P, +4E, +4C)
      
      
    • Death's Jacket (+4P, +4E, +4A, +4L)
  
  
• 1 comes with Old Longfellow in lunchboxes.
  
  
  • Tattered Longcoat (+2S, +2E, +2C, +2L)

Old Longfellow's weapon (Henrietta) and outfit (Tattered Longcoat) are a special case in that they will show up in the VDSG if you got them, but the VDSG will otherwise exclude them in both spaces and totals. If you don't have them the weapons and outfit totals will then be 182 and 137 respectively. When you start a new game the VDSG will list the totals as 182 and 130 respectively, meaning it's excluding 7 more outfits from the total until you get them. I believe those are the 5 seasonal outfits, the Original Santa Suit, and the Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse Outfit.

9.11
Q: Does the stat used in crafting weapons affect their actual use in combat?

A: No, the SPECIAL used in crafting ONLY affects production time.

9.12
Q: If I wanted to craft one of everything, how much junk would I need?

A: thetoastmonster made two great posts for exactly this. They are correct as of version 1.13.

• Weapons
  
• Outfits

Section 10: The Wasteland | Part 1

10.1
Q: How do SPECIALs affect exploration?

A: Here are all the main points:

• Random quests found by explorers use quest mechanics, so PAL are your stats if you care about those, agility and luck being very important. See 20.1 for the breakdown of SPECIAL during quests.
  
  
• Endurance is by far the most important, see 4.1 on dweller health. Having high health from having leveled with high endurance will greatly increase the survivability of any explorer. Endurance also provides radiation resistance in the wasteland (only the wasteland, not in the vault or while questing), and at 11+ endurance a dweller is immune. Even with rad immunity though it's still good to give them a few RadAway in case they stumble upon a random quest and need it.
  
  
• Luck is the stat used for determining how many caps an explorer finds. The amount of caps found linearly increases with luck, so focus on it if you really want caps.
  
  
• Perception is useful for finding weapons, outfits, and recipes. Junk is separate from these things and very different, but if you aren't concerned about junk then perception is your stat.
  
  
• All SPECIAL play a role in survivability. Explorers are put against many combat events on their trip, and all SPECIAL contribute in some way to success during these events. Dweller health and weapon damage are also obviously very key to survivability. Luck is actually the most important for survivability, with agility a near second. These two have a noticeable effect even when a dweller has a strong weapon. If a dweller has a weak weapon all SPECIAL have a noticeable effect, with agility and luck still being the most prominent. So ultimately if you're concerned about survivability try to max all SPECIAL with a focus on luck and agility (and don't forget about endurance for health).
  
  
• For junk the answer is different depending on a normal or survival vault. In the late game you'll probably only care about legendary junk for crafting. The short is that ECL are critical for legendary junk in a normal vault, where charisma is good at 10 and endurance and luck excel when as high as possible. Survivability is the only real concern for legendary junk in a survival vault, and as long as an explorer can make the full trip SPECIAL doesn't matter too much. See 9.6 for more information on legendary junk from exploration in normal and survival.

10.2
Q: How do weapons and outfits affect exploration?

A: Weapons only matter during combat events and random quests in the wasteland, and the more damage the better (see 7.6 for weapon damage). Weapon damage is a huge determinant in how far an explorer will make it or how well they'll do on random quests, so try to give your explorers the best you can. See 10.3 for a little more on the best weapon. Also, if you're curious about what enemies can be encountered in exploration see here for a table I made (huge thanks to TunderProsum for a lot of the information). I never got around to completing it, but the information that is there should still be accurate.

Outfits just add to SPECIAL, so see 10.1 for the effect of SPECIAL during exploration, and 10.4 for the breakdown on what outfits are best.

10.3
Q: What's the best weapon for exploration?

A: The more damage the better (see 7.6 for weapon damage). If you care about random wasteland quests though, you might want to avoid giving them an AOE weapon so they can focus fire if needed (see 20.2 for quest weapon types).

10.4
Q: What's the best outfit for exploration?

A: That greatly depends on what you're going for. Some people prefer something with at least +1E because that gives wasteland radiation immunity. With E10 they only need a few RadAway, but there is a glitch that seems to happen randomly where explorers don't use RadAway (see 16.10). 11 or more endurance ensures that glitch won't affect you.

The biggest concern for outfits otherwise is often legendary junk, see 9.6 for information there. To summarize, outfit really doesn't matter in survival so long as a dweller can survive the trip. Agility and luck help the most with surviving, so focus those. In normal though a focus on ECL is good for legendary junk (with charisma not really adding much past 10), so outfits that focus on endurance and luck are good. Furthermore, explorers can actually find more legendary junk with maxed ECL and minimum SPIA. For low SPIA and max ECL the following is good:

Lucky Formal Wear > Detective Outfit (not craftable, can only get 1) > Heavy Wasteland Gear > Sheriff's Duster > T-60f Power Armor > Piper's Outfit ...

For max SPECIAL the following is good:

Tunnel Snake's Outfit > Eulogy Jones' Suit > Heavy Wasteland Gear > Tenpenny's Suit > Piper's Outfit > Abraham's Relaxedwear > Lucky Formal Wear > Lucky Nightwear ...

However, if you care about random wasteland quests, you'll want high agility and luck. Perception doesn't really matter as with a bit of practice you can still get the x5 crit multiplier with low perception, but luck and especially agility are necessary to complete harder quests. In normal you might want to instead do low SPI and max ECAL.

10.5
Q: What's the best pet for exploration?

A: See 8.2 on good pets. Wasteland Return Speed is always super useful, Wasteland Junk is super useful in survival (not so much in normal), and Damage, Health, and Damage Resistance are useful if you're concerned about explorer survivability. You can also use Objective Completion pets on explorers to help with any exploration related objectives.

10.6
Q: Is it possible to find legendaries in the wasteland?

A: It used to be possible and there were glitches that let you find them as well, however, currently in the game it is 100% impossible to find legendary weapons and outfits in the wasteland. You do however find legendary junk and recipes in the wasteland. You can sometimes find legendary weapons and outfits during high level quests, but not in random wasteland quests.

10.7
Q: How many explorers can I have?

A: 25 is the limit, plus 5 Mr. Handy robots (see 12.3).

10.8
Q: How many items can an explorer carry?

A: 100, at which point they auto-return to the vault and you can't keep them exploring. You also can't tell them to drop all those stupid BB guns they decided would be useful. A small note, recipes for crafting do not count towards the carry limit. I did some testing on that here. Only items that take storage space in your vault count towards the limit.

10.9
Q: My explorer just equipped a worse weapon/outfit they found, why did they do that?

A: Their definition of what's better is different from yours. For weapons, as I say in 7.6, they auto-equip anything they consider better by looking at maximum damage first then minimum in the event of a tie. They do not look at average weapon damage, so it's possible for them to equip something they found that has a slightly lower average. For outfits, they only look at total SPECIAL, and switch out if whatever they just found offers more total SPECIAL. So if you have someone with an outfit that provides +3 total and they find something with +5 total, they'll equip what they found. To avoid this, send explorers out with at least +5 total SPECIAL on their outfit. The highest total SPECIAL that can be found in the wasteland are +5 outfits, and they don't switch out if the total SPECIAL is tied. Switching out outfits can be a much larger pain than weapons, as they might switch out that +3E you gave them for health while they level up for some +5C pajamas they found, and you might not realize it right away. Even only a day out an explorer will probably find at least one rare outfit, and they definitely will if it's a 100 item trip, so be wary of what you give them.

Section 10: The Wasteland | Part 2

10.10
Q: I saw my explorer find an item, but it's not in their inventory. What's going on?

A: They auto-equipped it (see 10.9), and their old weapon/outfit will be in their inventory.

10.11
Q: How do encounters work in the wasteland? Are the +X% wasteland weapons and outfits pets worth it?

A: Short version, Wasteland Weapons and Outfits pets are not worth it.

Basically there are two kinds of events, fixed and repeatable. Repeatable occur roughly every 60 minutes, while fixed occur at fixed times of course. The fixed events have a specific SPECIAL stat associated with them, and the higher that explorer's stat the better the chance of getting a weapon, outfit, or recipe. The hourly event is a guaranteed find. Wasteland Weapons and Outfits pets add their percent chance of getting a second item if an explorer succeeds at an event, so because there are so many events for weapons and outfits during a trip the pet will get an explorer a lot more of each, meaning they hit 100 items and auto-return much sooner. The chance of getting legendary recipes and good rares is highest the further out you are, so if you want the good stuff don't use this pet. The pet is really only good at the start of the game when you're just looking for anything from the wasteland.

Section 11: Objectives | Part 1

11.1
Q: I got an objective completion pet, what do they do?

A: They're insanely useful for completing objectives faster, see 8.8 for how they work.

11.2
Q: Are there easy ways to grind objectives?

A: There are:

• Using an objective completion pet can speed tonnes of things up (see 11.1).
  
  
• See 11.3 for using radio rooms to help.
  
  
• See 11.4 for tips on "without a weapon" objectives.
  
  
• For any rush or interior incident related objectives, either keep an existing 1 wide, level 1 room, or make a new one temporarily for the sake of the objective. It's important it's 1 wide and level 1, see 6.2 on incident strength. Either get one or two new dwellers or use some existing ones, preferably low room stat and luck (see 3.10 on rushing). Give them preferably good weapons, then throw them in the room and rush the crap out of it. Make sure the room is touching dirt if it's a mole rat objective you're going for. You can also disarm them if it's a kill X mole rats/radroaches without a weapon objective (read more on those in 11.4). You can also assign a Mr. Handy to the floor and assign a pet to one of the dwellers to further help (both of which can also help with no weapon objectives).
  
  
• There are several objectives related to pregnancy and breeding. For all of them you can have a bunch of kids just to get the objective, then evict them as soon as they grow up so you don't actually grow your population. If you really want to grind them you can have a bunch of dwellers that exist solely for that purpose with max charisma to ensure quick breeding times.
  
  
• See 11.7 for tips on the Mysterious Stranger.
  
  
• For any collect weapon/outfit/junk or craft weapon/outfit objectives, excess crafting rooms and junk will certainly speed things up. Crafting weapons/outfits counts for both of those, so unless the objective specifies rare weapons/outfits, just make a bunch of the cheapest common items you can. Even for the rare ones though if you've got great crafting times you can go through those quickly. On collect junk, junk collected from scrapping weapons/outfits counts. You probably don't want to use legendary junk, but if you craft then scrap rare weapons/outfits you'll likely get a fair amount of junk per item, and will even get most of your junk back too (so it's not like you need a mountain of excess junk).
  
  
• For the collect X power/water/food in under a minute objectives, there are a couple things that can help. Use an Objective Completion pet (see 11.1) if you have one. You can try rushing rooms, just be sure to do it after collecting from the room, as rushes reset room timers regardless of what they were at. You can temporarily build more rooms and throw more dwellers in to try and up your production as well. Probably the most useful thing you can do though, if you have Mr. Handy, is exit the game. Resources continue to drain and resource room timers continue to count down for a couple minutes after you exit, but if Mr. Handy can gather enough to complete the objective in that time you should get the objective when you enter your vault again, even if it otherwise would've put you over a minute.

11.3
Q: I've heard radio rooms are good for objectives?

A: You can use them for several useful things, yes:

• For objectives to raise dwellers to 100% happiness, if you have dwellers that are at 100% happiness, then removing a dweller from the radio room and throwing them back in keeps everyone at the same happiness level but counts every dweller that is at 100%. Radio rooms make it stupidly easy by having to drag one dweller twice.
  
  
• Any kind of deathclaw attack objectives become much easier. When you load up your vault, if you have a signal in a radio room waiting, use it and call a dweller. It's not guaranteed, but you should have a good chance of getting attacked by deathclaws (sometimes raiders). Repeatedly sending dwellers in and out of the wastes should also eventually trigger an attack. If you want to be methodical about using the vault door, give this post (firaro) a look. Either way, just waiting around for deathclaws to attack can sometimes take quite a while.
  
  
• They can help with any kind of rush or interior incident related objectives. If you follow the fourth bullet in 11.2 for these, you can use the radio room to bring in a new dweller or two solely for using them for the objective(s), then "dispose" of them after you're done. The only real benefit to this is you don't have to worry about messing with the happiness of actual dwellers in your vault from all the failed rushes, as you're essentially using disposable dwellers.
  
  11.4
  Q: Holy crap, kill X (insert incident enemy here) without a weapon, how is that even possible?
  
  A: For any of these objectives there are two important things to know. For it to count, whatever you have to kill has to be killed in a room that is completely unarmed and has been for as long as the enemy has been in the room. This means they have to be unarmed for the length of an interior incident, but for exterior incidents you just have to disarm before they get to the room. Previous damage from armed dwellers in other rooms doesn't matter either. The second thing is that Mr. Handy counts as unarmed, so if you've got one have him on the same floor where the unarmed room is that will be dealing with the incident. +X Damage pets also don't break the unarmed rule, so definitely use any you have. If you have an Objective Completion pet (see 11.1), equip them in the unarmed room.
  
  Radroaches and mole rats are easy, check bullet 4 in 11.2. That method might also work for radscorpions, but as they can teleport to another room after enough time even while being fought it might not be reliable. Try with Handy and a damage pet and see if you can kill them before they spread.
  
  For deathclaws and raiders it's trickier. The most reliable method is to "calibrate" the first rooms in your vault, such that you have weapons in the first room(s), that way the raiders/deathclaws get softened up. In the room where they'd die, make that your unarmed room. Absolutely use an Objective Completion pet and a Mr. Handy if you have either or both, as with this method you probably won't be able kill all the enemies in the attack in the same unarmed room. Check 6.2 on incident strength, and know as they get tougher or weaker you might have to recalibrate your rooms to change where they die. Another method is to totally disarm everyone at the start of the vault, which can work well for raiders, but is almost certainly a bad idea for deathclaws.
  
  11.5
  Q: This objective is just plain ridiculous, what do I do?
  
  A: Some just are, and some you probably just don't feel like trying to do even though they are possible to grind. All you can do is wait for your daily skip or use 2 quantums if you feel it's worth it (see 19.3 for best quantum use). You can hold onto it if you really want to, but even if it awards a lunchbox, pet, or Mr. Handy and is a really hard objective, you might get another easier objective and complete it before you even would've finished the hard one. Some you just have to skip, your call.
  
  11.6
  Q: Has anyone collected lots of data around objectives?
  
  A: GOD-WAS-A-MUFFIN has.

Section 11: Objectives | Part 2

11.7
Q: What are some tips for finding the Mysterious Stranger?

A: There are a number of things you can do:

• You can use Stranger Chance pets, which sort of act like magnets increasing the chance he will appear in a room one of the pets is in, see here (Mayumi7). The pet effect does not increase his frequency of appearing, it just changes the likelihood of where he will appear. You can only use one per room per the rules of pet stacking (8.4), but if you have multiple the best method would be to put all of them in separate but close triple rooms (the pet has an increased effect so to say from single to double to triple rooms). That section of your vault where all the pets are will be an area you should always check first then, as it will be a powerful magnet for the Stranger, especially if you have a lot of pets.
  
  
• Make sure you have sounds on as when he appears he plays an entrance sound, and it's directional to where he is from where you're looking, so headphones/earbuds with stereo sound will help. The sound will also be louder the closer he is to where you're looking. You'll know you've missed him when his leaving sound plays. The downside here is that if you're zoomed out the sound level is always low as if he was far away, even if he's in the middle of your screen.
  
  
• If you're on a mobile device it will vibrate twice as he enters and once as he leaves, if you have that enabled.
  
  
• He appears in elevators and in certain spots in each room, so learning over time what he looks like and where he appears will make it easier.
  
  
• If you turn HD zoom out off he's much easier to spot when zoomed all the way out. The only disadvantage to this is when he's in an elevator, as when that happen while it's 3D the elevator door is open and the light is green. Zoomed out with HD zoom out off will only have him standing in the elevator. He's not hard to spot in elevators anyway, so I think the benefits of having HD zoom out off definitely outweigh that.
  
  This post (istril) is a good example of using these tips to find him in a large vault.

Section 12: Mr. Handy

12.1
Q: How do I get a Mr. Handy?

A: Like with lunchboxes, pets, and Quantums, you can get them free from objectives and quests or by buying them from the in-game store. They can also be found as the rare card of lunchboxes, though the chance is low.

12.2
Q: What is Mr. Handy even good for?

A: There's a limit of one Mr. Handy per floor. You put one on a floor, and they'll automatically hover over and collect from any resource room when it's ready. It's not immediate, but if you have a good amount of excess resource production and storage plus a Mr. Handy on all of your resource floors, then you don't have to worry about manually collecting at all. One by himself is not that useful. Beyond resource collection Mr. Handy also rushes to help with any incident that breaks out on his floor, though his damage is hardly stellar. You can send him exploring (see 12.3), he can help quite a bit with "without a weapon" objectives (see 11.4), and he can help with resource collection objectives (bullet 8 in 11.2).

12.3
Q: Mr. Handy can be sent into the wasteland to explore?

A: He can. You can send at most five in addition to your 25 explorers. Mr. Handy takes no damage while exploring, but he only finds caps and will auto-return once he hits 5000. It takes somewhere in the range of 2.5 to 5 days for him to hit 5000 (it varies a lot), plus there's half whatever it takes in return time as well. For an early game vault 5000 caps every 4 to 7 days is pretty good, so I'd recommend sending any Mr. Handy out early game unless you need his help with incidents or resources.

12.4
Q: Can I repair Mr. Handy?

A: No, nor does he regain health over time. If he eventually dies he can be repaired to full health for 2000 caps though, in both normal and survival vaults. His destruction and repair do not count towards the deaths and revivals stats of your vault, nor does his destruction count as a casualty in completing any "do X without casualties" objectives.

12.5
Q: What can Mr. Handy not do?

A: He can't auto-tap any icons over dwellers (level up, stat up, giving birth). He also can't collect from a finished crafting room, and he won't do anything to a generated signal from a radio room.

Section 13: Lunchboxes

13.1
Q: How do I get lunchboxes?

A: Like with Mr. Handy, pets, and Quantums, you can get them free from objectives and quests or by buying them from the in-game store. Unlike the others, you cannot get a lunchbox from a lunchbox, and you get one as a daily reward instead of caps on each of your seventh days logged in and playing.

13.2
Q: How do they work? Why do I get crap most of the time?

A: There are five cards in a lunchbox, where the first four (cap card, resource card, junk card, item card) always appear in random order and the last card is the rare card. The cards each have different categories they can award you something from, where each category has a certain chance, and if that category is rolled you get something random from it (like if rare weapon is rolled you get a random rare weapon). Here's the breakdown of categories:

• Cap Card:
  
  • (common) 100 caps
    
    
  • (rare) 500 caps
  
  
• Resource Card:
  
  
  • (common) 50 power/food/water
    
    
  • (common) 1 stimpak/RadAway
    
    
  • (purple) Nuka-Cola Quantum (2-6)
  
  
• Junk Card:
  
  • Common/rare/legendary junk
  
  
• Item Card:
  
  • Common/rare/legendary weapon
    
    
  • Common/rare/legendary outfit
  
  
• Rare Card:
  
  • (rare) 500 caps
    
    
  • Rare/legendary weapon
    
    
  • Rare/legendary outfit
    
    
  • Rare/legendary dweller
    
    
  • Common/rare/legendary pet
    
    
  • (legendary) Mr. Handy

In the rare card, the chance for 500 caps or a rare dweller are fairly high, which is why you see them a lot of the time and tend to end up with crap from your "guaranteed rare".

13.3
Q: I'm trying to get Old Longfellow and his gear, are they not in lunchboxes?

A: I don't think you can get his gear by itself, I think the only way is to get him as his gear comes with him. Before I suspected that he was limited time, but I've had confirmation well after his release from a Steam user that he can be found in lunchboxes.

Section 14: Survival Mode

14.1
Q: What is survival mode?

A: Survival mode is a significantly harder version of the same game. Incidents occur much more frequently and are tougher, resources are consumed faster, and dweller death is permanent (no reviving). Another important thing to note is that in a normal vault deathclaws only attack at 61 population and higher, while in a survival vault they attack at 35 population and higher. You check a box off at the top on the vault creation screen, and it warns you twice about the difficulty asking if you're sure. Survival mode vaults will be marked with a radiation symbol with an "S" on it in the vault list.

14.2
Q: I'm up for the challenge, should I try it?

A: I would only recommend survival mode if you've played the game normally, and are aware of how hidden mechanics like dweller health and incident difficulty work. If you know all of that and go in with a plan it really isn't that hard, but it really is a test of patience how well you know the game.

14.3
Q: Are there any guides for survival mode?

A: There are a lot of bits and pieces I've seen posted, but I don't think I've seen anything that covers the whole thing. There are a couple basic things to do though:

• Start a new game if you don't get a legendary weapon with at least around 20 damage in your first easy lunchboxes. A really good weapon is better than almost anything else you could get and isn't too hard to find in a lunchbox. The exception is the +7E Heavy Wasteland Gear, but don't put yourself through trying to get that from a lunchbox.
  
  
• Leave all rooms at level 1 for a while, unless that room will for sure be empty. Internal incidents are very easy to deal with in level 1 rooms, even for low level dwellers with bad weapons. Combine this with the previous and if you equip the weapon around as incidents appear it will make anything a breeze. Only level rooms up when you're confident the dwellers in it have good health and weapons to survive the much harder incidents.
  
  
• Avoid leveling up dwellers at the start. It will keep your average level low making external incidents very weak, and will avoid leveling your dwellers with terrible health. Leveling them with 1 or 2 endurance won't give them much health anyway. Wait till you've gotten the endurance training room at 35 population and train them up.
  
  
• Pets are insurance for your explorers and questers. If an explorer or a questing team dies you lose them and all their equipment. If they have a pet though (a quest team needs only one), you still lose the dweller(s), but the pet comes back with all of their equipment and loot. If you're sending anyone out with really good gear, giving them any pet is a good idea. This makes normally useless pets like Rad Healing Speed very useful in survival.
  
  
• Don't go over 34 population (except to quickly unlock the endurance training room at 35). 34 is safe, above is deathclaw and radscorpion territory, the hardest external and internal incidents respectively. Do all your prep work at 34 or lower until you think you're ready. If it proves too much you can always evict back to 34 and prep more. Most of that prep will be training what stats you can, especially endurance on low level dwellers, and getting what gear you can from exploration or quests.
  
  
• There's a way to easily control incidents, described in 6.9. Making a 1 wide, level 1 production
• room and throwing a dweller or two in it makes a very controlled environment for incidents. The incidents are as weak as possible due to the minimum room level and width, and you only have to worry about quickly healing one or two dwellers if that's necessary. Whenever you're playing and want to avoid any incidents you can rush spam that room. The dweller(s) in it will have terrible happiness, but it shouldn't put a significant dent in your average happiness if everyone else is good. Making the room a medbay is a good idea, as when rushes do succeed you'll get stimpaks that can be used to heal when the rushes fail.
  
  
• If you want to unlock something with a population requirement higher than the deathclaw threshold, it's very possible to do a controlled, temporary population burst. From the previous point, make a rush failure room you can exploit to avoid ever getting deathclaws while you're expanding your population. Depending on how high you want to go, you might want to ensure you have extra food and water storage for all the extra dwellers. If you only play in your vault for short bursts you could have more resource rooms than you can fully man and spread your workers out between them. Longer production timers shouldn't matter as much for short bursts of playtime, as unless they're really long they should all be ready to collect every time you come back.
  
  
  • I took this strategy to the absolute extreme and expanded from 35 to 100 population to unlock every room. I'd also saved the caps beforehand to upgrade one weapon and outfit workshop each to level 3. I only played long enough to give birth and wait for the breeders to get pregnant again, constantly rush spamming the one room, and just leaving new dwellers on coffee break. It all went down without any deathclaw attacks or other hiccups by abusing the game mechanics as I've described. Once everything was unlocked and the crafting rooms were upgraded, I evicted everyone on coffee break to drop back to 35.

Section 15: Save Files and Editing

15.1
Q: How can I protect my vault from corruption, if I have to reinstall the game, or move to a new device?

A: The game's method of doing so is cloud saving (not available on Bethesda Launcher version, available everywhere else I believe). For platforms that don't automatically cloud save simply check the box next to your vault in the vault list, and you will enable it. If you've reinstalled the game or are playing on a new device, check the box in the empty slot where your vault was, and a loading bar should come up as it downloads your vault from the cloud. That being said, I would strongly recommend manually backing up your vault every once in a while as well. People have had problems recovering their vaults from the cloud before, and if your game corrupts it's easy for the corrupt version to get saved to the cloud (and if you're not using the cloud or can't and it corrupts then you're screwed if you don't have a backup).

• Android: Give robot9706's Android save editor[robot9706.github.io] a look as it has a backup feature (along with many other useful editing features). There's also Zara's Backup for Fallout Shelter[play.google.com] app in the Google Play Store.
  
  
• iOS: I've got two methods here for transferring to and from thanks to two iOS users. The first, from Chelly:
  
  • Do a device backup via iTunes.
    
  • The filename will be hashed, that is, it will be some long string of letters and numbers. Using a backup explorer of your choice you can view what the hashes are for the actual filenames to find out which is the file you want.
    
  • Grab the save file. If you're doing this to use a save editor you'll want to rename it to Vault1.sav, do your stuff, then rename it back to exactly the same long string of letters and numbers.
    
  • Put the save you want back in the backup, with the correct hash as its filename.
    
  • Restore your device via iTunes.
    The other method is from an anonymous user. They've provided a detailed step-by-step, which they did on iOS version 11.4:
    
    
  • Backup your save to the cloud, just in case
    
  • Install the free iMazing[imazing.com] for Windows or macOS
    
  • Temporarily disable Find My iPhone
    
  • Connect your iPhone to the computer
    
  • Unlock the phone and grant access to the computer
    
  • Open iMazing, but do not perform a full backup
    
  • Select Manage Apps
    
  • Click Device
    
  • Locate Fallout Shelter
    
  • Click Backup
    
  • Select Backup Destination
    
  • Click Next and let the backup complete
    
  • Rename the backup from iMazingapp to .zip
    
  • Extract the files from the backup
    
  • Open Documents
    
  • Grab any vault save file(s) and do any save editing you want at this point
    
  • Replace the vault save file(s), re-compress the files into a .zip, and rename it back to iMazingapp
    
  • Delete Fallout Shelter from your iOS device
    
  • Reinstall and launch the app, but don't start a new game or download any cloud saves
    
  • Close Fallout Shelter
    
  • Open iMazing
    
  • Select Manage Apps
    
  • Click Device
    
  • Locate Fallout Shelter
    
  • Restore App Data, choosing the Fallout Shelter.iMazingApp
    
  • Restore App
    
  • Open Fallout Shelter and you're good to go
• Bethesda Launcher, Steam, and Windows 10: It's easy enough to just manually copy files, copy the vault saves to wherever you want.
  
  
• Xbox One: The only way would be to sync your Xbox with a Windows 10 computer and then backup from there.
  
  
• PS4 and Nintendo Switch: I know nothing about the game on these platforms, but my guess would be that you don't have access to the save files.

For all platforms see 1.4 for where the game files are located.

15.2
Q: Is there anyway to cheat or edit my vault?

A: Yes:

• Android: robot9706's Android save editor has all the editing and cheating options you could want for the game, and is very well-built and reliable. Among many features it includes a button to return all explorers from the wasteland, and a button to fix the game if you've messed with time.
  
  
• iOS: Refer to 15.1 for how to transfer save files to a computer. Once on a computer you can easily use any save editor before transferring back to iOS, so refer to the Bethesda Launcher method for that.
  
  
• Bethesda Launcher: robot9706's Windows save editor has all the editing and cheating options you could want for the game, and is very well-built and reliable. rakion99's save editor is a good and reliable option for a web-based editor. It doesn't have all of the features of robot9706's, but it still has a lot. It also has a JSON decrypt/encrypt if you want to manually edit things yourself.
  
  
• Steam: The best way would be to locate the file (see 1.4) and use the Bethesda Launcher method.
  
  
• Windows 10 and Xbox One: The best way would be to sync with Windows 10, locate the vault there, transfer it to the Windows Bethesda launcher version, use the Bethesda Launcher method, then transfer it back. See 1.4 for how to go about file location and transfer.
  
  
• PS4 and Nintendo Switch: I know nothing about the game on these platforms, but my guess would be that you're out of luck here.
  
  15.3
  Q: I've been away from the game for a while and my explorers will take many days/weeks to return, can I speed that up?
  
  A: See 15.2.
  
  15.4
  Q: I've messed with my device/PC time and things are broken now! Can I fix them?
  
  A: It's fixable, but as always I don't recommend messing with device/PC in the first place. Check 15.2.
  
  15.5
  Q: Are there any mods out there for the game?
  
  A: I'm sure there are quite a few, but looking for them might be risky.
  
  If you're on Android or Windows robot9706 has a modded version of the game[robot9706.github.io] you can download. It includes things like unlimited dwellers and the ability to destroy any rooms. For Windows only robot9706 also has an extended version[robot9706.github.io] which allows you to implement custom outfit textures.
  
  Someone found this[faloutshelter.com] for Android which makes a lot of things unlimited. It appears to be trustworthy. It's an APK, so you'll have to uninstall the normal game then install the modded version from it. Don't forget to backup your vault(s) first, otherwise you'll lose them when uninstalling.
  
  If anyone knows of anything else that is trustworthy I could include it here.
  
  15.6
  Q: Is there anywhere I can find a dump of game data and IDs?
  
  A: robot9706 has once again done a great job and done so here[robot9706.github.io]. It includes dwellers, weapons, outfits, pets, and quests. You can even sort by any of the columns.

Section 16: Known Bugs and Glitches

16.1
Q: I haven't logged in for weeks and my dweller(s) in the wasteland have all this good gear and are still alive. Are they superhuman?

A: This is what I refer to as the long exploration time glitch. See 1.2 for details.

16.2
Q: Why are my dwellers complaining about a dead body in a certain room despite there clearly being none?

A: This is a glitch that happens if a dweller dies, and you exit the game without dealing with the body (removing or reviving). When you log back in, there's a chance the body will be gone so that you can't interact with it, but the dwellers still know it's there. To deal with the invisible body glitch, demolishing the room and rebuilding it will fix the issue. If it's in the vault entrance, well, that's a lot harder to deal with. You'd have to do some magic with editing your save file. I won't put specifics here because I don't know, but if someone lets me know I'll add it.

16.3
Q: Why do my objectives keep resetting?

A: This is a common glitch that has been in the game since day one. People have done all sorts of speculation as to the cause, but nothing conclusive has been found so far. There's no real fix either. Regularly manually backing up your vault and restoring whenever a reset occurs might help (see 15.1), and keeping track of the objective yourself and using an editor (see 15.2) to mark it as complete when you would have normally gotten it works well.

16.4
Q: Why have my achievements stopped tracking progress?

A: This is another common glitch that has been in the game since day one, and another glitch that has no known conclusive cause or fix. To clarify, achievements are different from objectives. Objectives are the tasks that give you rewards for completing them, while achievements are for Google Play Games (Android), Game Center (iOS), and now Xbox One and Steam achievements of course (Bethesda Launcher version has no achievements). Just keep playing the game and hope you eventually get them.

16.5
Q: Why don't I get all the items an explorer had when I collect them?

A: It takes a little while to load the explorer's inventory, so if you collect them as soon as you open the explorer UI you'll do so before it loaded everything, and it will cut itself short and not give you everything. To get around this, wait for their explorer log to load in. At that point the items have for sure loaded, so you won't lose any when you collect them. I talk about it here in an old post of mine.

16.6
Q: I opened up the explorer UI to look at someone I just sent out, and they have tonnes of stuff already, are they super awesome?

A: No. It's unknown what triggers it, but sometimes when you open the UI an explorer with nothing in their inventory (someone just sent out) will have a duplicated inventory from one of your other explorers that's further out. You can tell it's duplicated because they'll have exactly all of the same items in the same order. If you close the UI the new explorer loses the duplicated items and their inventory returns to normal, but if you stay on the screen and have them return and collect them, then you can successfully receive potentially a lot of duplicated items. This is an exploit, so if you consider that cheating for your vault or not is up to you.

16.7
Q: During a quest a raider my dweller(s) fought died and has the crosses over their eyes, but they're still standing and fighting and are invincible now. Am I screwed for this quest?

A: Heal up your dweller(s) first to ensure they have good health, then try totally exiting and closing the app. After a total restart of the app most people report this being fixed.

16.8
Q: I just lost all sound in my game, what happened?

A: This appears to happen when a notification with sound occurs. After the notification occurs, sound is lost in the game until you completely exit the app and restart it. If it's bothering you either restart the game when it happens or mute your notification volume but leave media volume at the desired level.

16.9
Q: I'm on Android/iOS and the game keeps crashing, can I do anything?

A: I've seen a great deal of people saying disabling cloud saving fixes it, so try that. If you were relying on cloud saving as your only means of backing up your vault, I'd take a look at other means of doing so (15.1).

16.10
Q: My explorers aren't using any RadAway, so their health bar fills with rads and they die while still holding stimpaks and RadAway. What gives?

A: This has been posted about many times on the game's subreddits, and unfortunately I've never seen any explanation for why it happens. I've unfortunately also never seen a fix to make them use their RadAway. You can however work around it by making sure they have at least 11 endurance for exploration rad immunity. Even if you haven't experienced this glitch, preparing for it with E11+ explorers is never a bad idea.

Section 17: Old Bugs, Glitches, and Features

17.1
Q: What's the point of this section?

A: Information for this game is sometimes hard to find, so as a result people sometimes see outdated things without knowing they're outdated. This is to let you know what is outdated so you don't spend hours trying to replicate an old glitch you saw.

17.2
Q: I've seen previous mention of the NTG, what's that?

A: The negative time glitch[i.imgur.com]. It was a method to let explorers find a legendary drop as soon as they started exploring, but is no longer possible.

17.3
Q:I've seen older screenshots of explorers with up to 50 stimpaks/RadAway, isn't the limit 25?

A: The limit is 25. There was an old glitch that no longer works that let you double how many stimpaks and RadAway you gave an explorer. There might be newer screenshots above the limit though, and this is because dwellers can sometimes find some in random quests while exploring and the limit is ignored there[i.imgur.com] (the_rabidsquirel). One can also use a save editor of course to change how many an explorer has once they're out.

17.4
Q: I see a lot of mention in old threads about the NGD, what's that?

A: The National Guard Depot, a fixed time event in the wasteland occurring at roughly 60 hours out. It used to have a small chance of awarding legendary weapons and outfits, which is why everyone talked about it back then. It no longer does though, and in general it is no longer possible to find legendary weapons and outfits in the wasteland. Crafting and lunchboxes are your only hope, or maybe if you get lucky during quests.

Section 18: Screenshots

18.1
Q: Any interesting screenshots?

A: Check 1.2 for a list of screenshots all about the long exploration time glitch, otherwise here's a list of a few, some of which get posted a fair amount on the subreddits:

• (+)[i.imgur.com] Stupidly high rush failure rate.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Rare child. (ghostdunks)
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Legendary child. (ghostdunks)
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Bald child.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Bearded child.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Literally the worst legendary lunchbox card ever.
  
  
• (+) [i.imgur.com]Dead explorer still on his feet.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Dead dwellers laying on the ground outside the vault.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] A pontiff knocking up a woman.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Dwellers having sex while a child is in the room.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Pregnant women exercising.
  
  
• (+) [i.imgur.com]Dweller looks like an object.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Water drop icon rotated.
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] A ridiculous objective. (TheAmoebaBoys)
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Explorer just barely making it. (SanshaXII)
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Odd dialogue. (the_rabidsquirel)
  
  
• (+)[i.imgur.com] Batman. (the_rabidsquirel) I cheated a little on this one by editing the grave over the mother as well, but the grave over the father does happen if the father's dead.

Section 19: Nuka Cola Quantum

19.1
Q: What are Quantums used for?

A: They're used to speed up time for or skip various things. They can instantaneously finish wasteland return time, quest start and return time, crafting time, SPECIAL training time, and barbershop customization time. They can also be used to skip objectives after your daily skip has been used, to skip some quests, and to unlock themes without having to collect all the fragments. Quantum costs are as follows:

• 1 Quantum per 2 hours of time skipped. Any amount over 2 hours will take an extra Quantum. Remaining crafting time at 2h 1m for example will take 2 Quantums to skip, but 1h 59m will only take 1. Use this to your advantage and wait a couple minutes to use Quantums if you're that close to a 2 hour mark.
  
  
• 2+ Quantums to skip an objective. The first skip after your free skip always costs 2, and any skips after that are 150% the price of the previous skip cost rounded up. This results in the pattern 2, 3, 5, 8, 12, 18, 27, 41, 62. The cost does not increase past 62 and the cost resets back to 2 once you get another free skip.
  
  
• 1 Quantum to skip a quest (daily, weekly, and blue quests only).
  
  
• 3 Quantums per missing fragment to complete a theme recipe. This means it will take minimum 3 Quantums (8/9 recipe fragments found) and maximum 27 Quantums (0/9 recipe fragments found) to complete a recipe.

19.2
Q: How do I get Quantums?

A: Like with lunchboxes, Mr. Handy, and pets, you can get them free from objectives and quests or by buying them from the in-game store. They can also be found as the resource card of lunchboxes, and while it's not too common it's also not too rare. They can additionally be gotten from Bottle (more on Bottle and Cappy in 21.2).

19.3
Q: What's the best use of Quantums?

A: First off, I don't think it's very useful to complete theme recipes. They're entirely aesthetic and offer no advantage, so you might as well save your Quantums for anything else as you'll get all the fragments eventually from quests and exploration.

If you really don't like the listed daily or weekly quest and you have the Quantum to spare you can skip them and immediately get a new one. For blue quests there are only a limited number, and skipping just puts it to the back of the queue, so they're not really worth skipping unless they have a requirement you just can't meet right now, or you really do want to hope the next one in line has loot you like better. On that note you will always be able to craft the required weapons and outfits for quests (the exception being limited time holiday quests that require holiday outfits, but even if you can skip them there's no point). There was an example (53045248437532743874) of a quest that required a lunchbox only outfit, but this has since been updated to require something much easier and not based on luck to obtain.

For the remaining time skips and objective skipping, keep in mind that a Quantum is worth 2 hours of time, and it takes 2 Quantums to skip an objective (so 4 hours worth). Since any amount of time into the next two hour period will cost an additional Quantum, wait to use Quantums if you're only a couple minutes off of it costing 1 less at a 2 hour mark.

In terms of where you should use them that depends on what you want.

• Objective skips might be really worth it, as 4 hours of Quantums compared to waiting up to 24 hours for a daily skip could definitely be a huge time saving compared to other uses.
  
  
• Keep in mind periods for which you can't play, sleep of course being a big one. If an explorer is returning in an hour, but it's late and you really need to go to bed to get up early tomorrow, that 1 hour is effectively however many hours you sleep of them waiting at your door.
  
  
• If you don't have enough dwellers yet to fill a crafting room, and if you don't have good outfits yet for a stat you'll use in crafting, skipping time on the first +5 outfits for example could save a lot of time. You just have to send your best dwellers there long enough to spend Quantums on good outfits, which will greatly help the few dwellers you can afford to keep in the room.

Beyond these tips use them where you see fit. Maybe it'd really benefit you if a dweller finished training right now, or maybe if dwellers got to a quest right now, and so on. There are a lot of ways you could spend Quantums usefully, just think about whatever you want and how you'd be spending your time getting there, versus how Quantums would affect that time.

Section 20: Quests | Part 1

20.1
Q: How do SPECIALs affect questing?

A: Here's what's known:

• Perception: Slows the arrows down during the crit mini-game, making it easier to get a higher damage multiplier. Even with very low perception though it's not too hard to reliably get the highest multiplier, x5, it just takes a bit of practice.
  
  
• Endurance: Good for health as always, check out 4.1 for details.
  
  
• Agility: Increases attack rate. Here's what this looks like[gfycat.com] (GOD-WAS-A-MUFFIN). It does not affect crit build, only luck does, see my post here.
  
  
• Luck: Causes the crit meter to build faster for more frequent critical hits. It does not affect the loot you get, loot is fixed. You can check 15.6 out yourself to see the breakdown for all (or at least most) quests. While sometimes loot is fixed exactly, it's usually only fixed in two ways:
  
  • Whether it's a weapon, outfit, junk, or recipe.
    
    
  • Whether it's common, rare, or legendary.

The effects of PAL are given in the game's help menu, but nothing is said about SCI. When quests were added in 1.6 a year after the game's release, there was plenty of debate about whether SCI did anything. Initially this comment (SlowbroGGOP) from a notable member of the community was the best evidence that SCI really do have no effect. Over time people agreed on it, and I've never seen any evidence SCI do anything on quests. If you do have any sort of evidence I would be very interested.

A common claim is that strength increases damage, not just in quests, but everywhere. Sometimes the claim is that it's just melee weapon damage. I've only ever seen claims though, never any data or evidence. The linked comment in the previous paragraph has mention of some testing of strength with melee weapons in quests and noticing no difference. There's also 2.6 with further testing I did of strength in general and finding nothing compelling. If you do have any evidence or testing I would again be very interested.

20.2
Q: What's the best weapon for questing?

A: Weapons actually behave differently while questing. In exploration and the vault it's just weapon damage, but quests have an additional mechanic separating weapons into three main types:

• Single Shot: Most weapons fall under this category, with the best being the Dragon's Maw (22-29). On each attack interval they deal all of their damage in one chunk to one enemy.
  
  
• Melee: Self-explanatory what weapons are in this category, with the best being the Fire Hydrant Bat (19-31). I consider this a subcategory of single shot. These function exactly the same as single shot weapons but with one important exception, enemies can only be attacked by one melee dweller at a time. If there's only one melee dweller in your group then this doesn't matter, the other dwellers can still shoot the enemy being engaged by your melee dweller. With multiple melee weapons on a quest though, melee dwellers with no free target will do absolutely nothing.
  
  
• Multi-Shot: Typically rapid fire weapons like Miniguns and Gatling Lasers fall under this category, with the best being the Vengeance (21-26). On each attack interval they split their damage between a number of shots they fire in quick succession. If they kill their target but haven't fired all the shots from the interval yet, then they will switch targets mid-attack. This is good because it doesn't waste extra damage on enemies near death like single shot weapons do, and as a consequence these weapons may be better than single shot weapons that have slightly more damage (such as Vengeance compared to Dragon's Maw).
  
  
• Area of Effect (AOE): Only Missile Launchers and Fat Men fall under this category, with the best being the MIRV (22-27). On each attack interval they split their weapon damage among all the enemies in the room. This means the more enemies the less damage to each enemy, and they cannot focus fire on enemies. Critical hits from them still hit single targets though.
  
  Note as well that animations are usually unreliable. .32 pistols for example are animated as firing multiple shots, but only deal one chunk of damage and so would be considered single shot. Higher damage weapons should very often be priority, but sometimes you might want to sacrifice a bit of damage to have certain weapon types. I would not recommend all AOE for example, as this means you would be unable to focus fire on tougher enemies like bosses that really should be focused. Some people prefer all single shot or all multi-shot, while others prefer mixes like one AOE and either two single shot or two multi-shot. I would highly recommend against having more than one melee though, as one or two dwellers standing there doing nothing while the other engages a boss by themselves is a very bad situation.
  
  For random quests, as you only have the one explorer I would advise against giving them an AOE weapon (if you want them to do random quests of course). The other types are fine. Focusing fire is even more important here due to enemies sometimes being much tougher and dwellers sometimes needing to save stimpaks and RadAway for continued exploration.
  
  20.3
  Q: What's the best outfit for questing?
  
  A: Refer to the SPECIAL breakdown in 20.1 for details on the important stats. Endurance is only necessary while leveling up, so for level 50 questers outfits that focus PAL are best. An exclusive focus on agility (Expert Jumpsuit at +7A) is probably best for the extra DPS, but spread out stats work well too, like Heavy Merc Gear (+2PL, +3A). Death's Jacket (+4 PEAL) is amazing for quests, but you can only ever get one.
  
  For random quests and explorers though you also have to consider what outfit you want for exploration. As long as an explorer has max agility and luck from training that should be sufficient for quests, letting you tailor their outfit to exploration instead (see 10.4).
  
  20.4
  Q: What's the best pet for questing?
  
  A: The best pets are similar to the best pets for explorers. Anything that helps a quester stay alive is very useful, as some bosses on quests can hit ridiculously hard. I'd break the most useful down like this:
  
  Health > Damage Resistance > Damage > Return Speed
  
  Return speed affects all members of a quest while returning (as they have to travel together). Bonuses don't stack though, only the highest is used, see 8.4 on pet stacking.
  
  Any kind of pet does also provide a very small damage bonus on quests. The only source for this is one of the game's loading screen tips, but I don't think anyone's ever done an analysis on it. As far as I've seen it's not really noticeable, but if you've got extra pets you have nothing else to use for it wouldn't hurt to give them to questers. Unlike in the vault where rooms can only have a number of pets equal to half the room's dweller capacity, every member on a quest team can have a pet.
  
  
  

Section 20: Quests | Part 2

20.5
Q: How does the overseer's office work?

A: You must first build an overseer's office to enable questing, which is its only purpose. You can only build one of them, it has to be 2 wide, and you cannot assign any dwellers to it (though incidents can still start and spread in them). You can destroy the room even with dwellers questing, and this will not influence them at all. Destroying the room will just prevent sending dwellers on quests until it is rebuilt again, so feel free to move it even if you have questers out. As soon as you build it for the first time it forces you into a tutorial quest. While it's forcing you through the setup incidents can happen and stuff can go wrong, but because it's during a tutorial it doesn't save. Force quit the game if something bad happens during the tutorial and it will revert. It's a really good tutorial though and covers a lot of basics, so at least do that first before asking questions about questing. At level 1 the overseer's office only lets you do 1 quest at a time, but you can upgrade to do 2 then 3 quests consecutively. You can send 1-3 dwellers on a quest, and more will make it much easier obviously.

20.6
Q: What are the requirements for questing?

A: First, for every requirement it applies to every dweller that you want to bring along. There are five kinds of requirements:

• Level requirements. Every dweller must be at least the level specified.
  
  
• Damage requirements. Symbolized by a target and number, it represents the maximum weapon damage each dweller must have. Average or minimum weapon damage doesn't matter, they just have to have at least that in maximum.
  
  
• Equipment requirements. It will be either a weapon or outfit, or both. In any case it's the type of weapon/outfit, so if for example it specifies .32 pistol then anything from a rusty one to Wild Bill's Sidearm will work. In some quests though you might be able to switch out for gear you've found during the quest.
  
  
• SPECIAL requirements. You might see a letter with a number next to it representing the level of a SPECIAL stat that is required for each dweller. An example of such a quest here and here (bluspacecow).
  
  
• Dweller requirements. Sometimes it limits the maximum amount of dwellers you can send to two or even one.

20.7
Q: How does quest combat work?

A: It differs drastically from vault combat. Dwellers only attack one enemy at a time (and enemies only attack one dweller at a time). Dwellers automatically attack different enemies when combat starts, but you can retarget dwellers at any time. You can tap and drag on a dweller to get a target and drag it onto an enemy (which I've found works very well on PC), and you can also tap a dweller to bring up their info sheet and from there just tap an enemy (which I've found works very well on a mobile device). In both cases the enemy should flash a red outline to let you know they were targeted.

As mentioned in 20.2 different weapon types behave a little differently, but the core of it is that dwellers attack in intervals at a set rate based on their agility and deal damage based on their weapon. All you have to do is change targets if you don't like how they auto-attack, be sure to apply stimpaks and RadAway as needed, and use crits when you deem it necessary. Be careful, as some bosses in particular can be very powerful. Boss radscorpions and deathclaws in particular can one hit level 50 dwellers if they weren't leveled with high endurance (see 4.1).

20.8
Q: How do critical hits work?

A: As dwellers fight their critical hit meter builds up, and it builds up faster with higher luck. When it reaches full a yellow check mark will appear over the enemy that dweller is attacking. Tapping it will freeze time for the critical hit mini-game. Tap the arrows closer to the center to do more damage, up to x5 bonus damage. Note that regardless of the weapon type, even those that deal AOE damage, critical hits only inflict bonus damage on the selected enemy. Higher perception makes the arrows go slower to make it easier for you. A very important mechanic is that you can save critical hits. If you see a check mark appear but in the current fight there's only weak or near dead enemies, then just don't tap the check mark. It'll keep appearing over enemies across fights until you tap it, so rather than wasting it on radroaches you can save it for a radscorpion, deathclaw, any boss enemy, or whatever is tougher.

Crits build independent of fire rate meaning agility does not affect it, see my post.

20.9
Q: How do random quests with explorers work?

A: As explorers do their thing they can stumble upon random quests. A lot of people just refer to them as random locations or the like because that's what they are, but I call them random quests to emphasize that they behave exactly like quests. Discovering them is real time and you have to be in-game to get the notification, so if you're only checking for short periods of time your chances of getting a random quest are fairly low even with a lot of explorers. If you do get lucky you'll see a notification in the top left of your screen, and you can tap it and choose to enter what the explorer has discovered.

If you accept, then at this point everything functions like a quest. The explorable area will only ever be one to a few rooms, but enemies can still be very tough, sometimes tougher than normal quests. During the quest you can swap gear out on the explorer with anything they found up until that point, but be sure they're equipped with what you want them to explore with before you end the quest. Random quests are harder the higher the level of the explorer, but they also reward more, and random quests can reward very well. You might need to use a good number of stimpaks and RadAway, so for this reason it is advised that even if your explorers have 11+ endurance for exploration rad immunity that they still carry some RadAway in case they get a random quest. If they succeed at the quest they will add what they found to their inventory and keep exploring (or auto-return if it put them at the limit).

20.10
Q: What if I give up on a quest or any dwellers die during one?

A: If you give up or have everyone die before completing a quest then you don't keep anything you found. You only keep stuff if you complete the objective, it's all or nothing. If a dweller dies you can revive them as per usual after the quest if you want, and if all dwellers die you can choose to revive them and either retry the quest or head home. Death is of course still permanent in survival, so if a dweller dies in a quest, random or not, it's over for them. If there's still a party member left alive after a quest in survival they can carry the gear of their dead comrades back, but if all of them die you lose everything they had. Like with exploration though you can equip pets on them and the pets will return with what they had equipped, so you only lose the dweller(s).

20.11
Q: Why didn't I get the reward from a quest?

A: Any boxes (lunchboxes, pet carriers, Mr. Handy), Quantums, and dwellers are carried with your explorer/questers, but will not show up anywhere in their inventory. You will get them when you finally collect back at the vault. Dwellers you got from a quest will only appear in the vault line once you've collected your explorer or quest team.

Also keep in mind that a lot of the time the rewards for quests have to be looted. The reward will be in the same room where the objective is completed, but it's still a very good idea to loot every single shining object and dead enemy. You can often find stimpaks and RadAway in loot too, and especially in the case of random quests that can really help.

Section 20: Quests | Part 3

20.12
Q: What determines how hard a quest is?

A: For all random quests there are different difficulty variants that the game picks from depending on the explorer's level. Harder variants of the same random quest also provide greater rewards. This means that your early game explorer that's hit level 50 but has very low SPECIAL will probably get demolished because they're getting the hardest variant of the quest.

For normal quests it's the listed required level. A required level in the single digits will be able to be done with low level dwellers and weak weapons, while a level 50 quest means whoever you're sending should definitely be prepared.

20.13
Q: How many stimpaks and RadAway can questers carry?

A: Regardless of how many dwellers are in a quest group, you can only give them a max of 25 each (like with explorers). If you find more in loot though during the quest it can go over, and they can carry as many stimpaks and RadAway as they can find.

20.14
Q: Why are some enemies really strong?

A: It's probably a boss enemy. All bosses will have a skull next to their health bar to indicate this. It's usually best to focus fire on the bosses to take them down as quick as possible, both because they can deal a lot more damage and they all have special attacks. As soon as you enter a room you can see the enemies (or start to see them coming up from the ground). The fight won't start until everyone is fully in the room though, meaning you can't see the health bars right away. You can instead use visual cues to determine if an enemy is a boss. Here's a breakdown of the visuals and special attacks of all the bosses:

• Radroach:
  
  • Will be larger than normal and glowing green.
    
    
  • The special attack involves raising its head in a roar, which after a short while then summons 1-4 additional radroaches into the fight. It is unknown if there is a limit to how many it can summon, and though it shouldn't use the attack too often, it's best to kill it quick.
  
  
• Mole Rat:
  
  • Will be larger than normal.
    
    
  • The special attack involves raising its head in a roar, which after a short while then summons 1-2 additional mole rats into the fight. It is unknown if there is a limit to how many it can summon, and though it shouldn't use the attack too often, it's best to kill it quick.
  
  
• Ghoul:
  
  • Will be glowing green.
    
    
  • The special attack involves raising its hands in the air, which then deals a significant amount of radiation damage to all of your dwellers and heals any other ghouls in the room. Be prepared to apply RadAway and possibly stimpaks right after this attack.
  
  
• Radscorpion:
  
  • Will be larger than normal and glowing green.
    
    
  • The special attack involves raising its claws above it as an orange glow appears, which will cause its next attack to deal massive damage. This is one of two strongest attacks in the game and can one hit full health dwellers that don't have good max health (see 4.1). Having at least E13 leveled questers is a very good idea, as is healing the target of the boss to full before being hit.
  
  
• Raider:
  
  • Will have black paint across their eyes and have different armor unique to bosses.
    
    
  • The special attack involves pulling out a glowing orange grenade which they will then throw at their target. This deals AOE damage to all of your dwellers, and it appears to function like AOE weapons as well in that it splits damage between targets (meaning this can do a lot of damage to single dwellers, like on a random quest). Especially on a random quest it might be wise to heal up before being hit.
  
  
• Deathclaw:
  
  • Will be larger than normal.
    
    
  • The special attack involves raising its arms above it as an orange glow appears, which will causes its next attack to deal massive damage. This is one of two strongest attacks in the game and can one hit full health dwellers that don't have good max health (see 4.1). Having at least E13 leveled questers is a very good idea, as is healing the target of the boss to full before being hit.

20.15
Q: Can I affect which dwellers are attacked more?

A: There doesn't appear to be a way, no. It seems like if there are a different amount of enemies in the room compared to your dwellers that the enemy targeting is random.

20.16
Q: What random wasteland quests are worth it?

A: Check out my post here for a loot summary for all of them.

20.17
Q: Is there somewhere I can easily find the answers for the trivia questions in the Game Show Gauntlet weekly quest?

A: A good compilation of questions with answers is here (istril).

20.18
Q: Does what I pick in a dialogue choice matter?

A: Depends. A good number of dialogue choices are fluff and don't make any difference, but there are those that do matter. The ones that do are almost always worded such that their effect is obvious to make it easy. There are a couple different types of choices, as follows:

Pick your reward: An NPC will be offering you something, and your choices will explicitly be what you'll get. Stuff like "a weapon", "an outfit", "medical supplies", etc.

Fight or not: You'll come across an NPC and the choices will clearly be friendly to them or start a fight. Something like you'll come across a ghoul and they'll tell you they're friendly, and you'll have choices like "Cool, let's be friends!" and "I don't care, I hate ghouls." I'm not even exaggerating that much, they really do make it obvious.

Answer the question: I think this only applies to the trivia questions in the Game Show Gauntlet weekly quest. Answer correctly and you'll get a reward, but pick a wrong answer and you'll have to fight. For a list of questions with answers see 20.17.

20.19
Q: Why can I only send one or two questing teams out, I thought the max was three?

A: It is, but you first have to upgrade the overseer's office. Level 1 is one team, level 2 is up to two teams, and level 3 is up to three teams. In addition to the usual caps cost for upgrading, upgrading also requires you to have a certain population (like the three workshops). You only need the population when you go to do the upgrade, you can remove dwellers after and be fine so long as you don't delete the office. Here are the population requirements:

Room	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3
Overseer's Office	18 to unlock	30 to upgrade	55 to upgrade

Section 21: Bottle and Cappy Stuart edited this page on 10 May · 3 revisions

21.1
Q: How do I get Bottle and Cappy to visit my vault?

A: There is a limited time only quest chain of five quests to find them, and completing the quest chain will cause them to visit your vault. I'm not entirely sure what "limited time" means in this instance as the quest seems to always be available. If you've done that then they will randomly visit your vault every once in a while whenever you're in the game.

21.2
Q: What do they do when they visit?

A: They wander around in your vault randomly, making stops in rooms. Whenever they stop in a room there's a chance they'll start dancing. If you tap on them while they're dancing you'll get a reward. Cappy dances in almost every room and rewards caps when tapped, while Bottle dances much less frequently but can reward caps or Quantums. After a while, whether you've been tapping them or not, they'll leave.

For the duration of their visit they also provide a temporary +20% happiness boost to everyone in the vault. If a dweller was higher than 80% happiness before the visit (including 100%) they will return to exactly what they were before (unlike the small bonus from radio rooms).

Unfortunately, as they open the vault door when they enter and leave, they are capable of triggering exterior incidents like deathclaws (if you have the population to trigger them of course). You cannot refuse their entry or stop them from coming, once you've done their quests they will forever visit your vault with no way to influence it. Them opening the door probably won't be a problem for you anyway, but just so you're aware.

[Samir]

With how common joke guides have become, seeing a guide so well done is a real pleasure to the eye

[Majordiogo04]

Hey everyone, thank you all so much for the comments and prizes, I really appreciate it, I haven't played Fallout Shelter in a while, so I ended up missing out on some updates, but I'll update certainly this guide soon. Once again, thank you very much to everyone who commented and left their reviews, I am very grateful for it

[GustaVJung]

changes of the new update?

[Lasercar]

Can this guide be updated to the latest version of the one on Github?

[Mystique]

My dwellers happiness stuck in 77% even it is in right place. Can u help me to solve that problem?

[Murnjendoof]

One last thing, but I think I've discovered a new bug. I know it works on the Switch version, but I'm not sure about other versions. You know how when Bottle and Cappy visit the vault, they give a temporary happiness boost which goes away once they leave? Well, I accidentally discovered that if you put your console into sleep mode while they're in the vault, leave the console in sleep mode for a while, and come back, Bottle and Cappy will be gone but your dwellers will still have the increased happiness. You can even do it as they're about to leave if you don't want to miss out on any caps. It's incredibly helpful for raising vault happiness.

[Murnjendoof]

This was an incredibly helpful guide... even though most of this stuff should have honestly been explained in-game, but hey that's what dedicated fans are for I guess. Anyway, I was wondering if there's any information on the "limited time" quests? As you said, the Bottle and Cappy quest seems to always be available, and other than the holiday quests I've never actually seen one disappear. Is it just false advertising to make the quests seem more enticing, or do they just stick around for an absurdly long time?

[SpiceWeasel76]

Fantastic guide. Thanks!
Something that I couldn’t see there.. How does earning XP work in training rooms? For example.. if I have a dweller that requires 30m to go up one level and I log back in 1 hour later have I wasted 30m towards the next level because I haven’t clicked the symbol above their head?

[ANGELØX·Ð3v1L]

Just........ W O W
This helped me so much in game, thank you very much : D

[gregre]

This is simply a great guide and helped me understand a lot of mechanics and made my shelter life in this pandemic a little nicer. I started playing years ago and stopped. Now I'm back and found this guide. I saw it before multiple times, but thought it couldn't possibly reach up to my expectations I got from the title, but it just did. This is simply extra helpful Thank you