Wasteland Survival Guide

The most important thing of your Vault survival is to explore the Wasteland. If you are not properly equipped, you’ll eventually fail. Longer your Dweller survives, the better gear they’ll find (and get more XP).

• SPECIAL stats affect Wasteland survivability different ways. Better stat = Better results. This is my guess how different SPECIAL stats affect your Dweller survivability:
  • Strenght. How well your Dweller handles the combat situations
  • Perception. Dweller notices enemies before they notice him/her.
  • Endurance. Maybe Radiation resistance?
  • Communications. What happens when your Dweller meets someone. Are they friendly or not?
  • Intelligence. How your Dweller manages to resolve different tasks (eg. opening boxes)
  • Agility. Maybe Damage resistance?
  • Luck. How often your Dweller finds rare items.
• Level affects your Dweller hit points
• Outfit boosts SPECIAL stats
• Weapon affects the outcome of battles
• Stimpacks replenish health
• RadAways remove radiation levels

Fallout Shelter Vault Management

Early Game (-30 Dwellers)

Basically you lack everything: dwellers, resources, weapons and outfits. Now it’s time to make your Vault self sufficient by building the right rooms. Do not over expand – you’ll lack power quite fast. I’m not explaining how to build your Vault, it’s pretty straight forward – but after first floors always make sure you can link three same kind of rooms together. Do not build three rooms straight before you have enough Dwellers to actually use them.

• Recruit every Dweller who happens to wander to your door. Don’t look at the stats – you’ll improve them later on. Build Radio Station as soon as possible.
• As soon as possible send some Dwellers to scout Wasteland. Pick the Dweller with the highest SPECIAL stats and if you have any extra weapons or outfits, feel free to equip your Dweller as good as possible
• If you lack weaponry or outfits – as you will – leave them to the storage and equip them only when Incidents occur. This way your best equipments will always be easy and fast to reach and you don’t have to try to find them from your Vault
• Rush as often as possible, but be careful to follow your Dwellers Health.
• Do not leave guards to your door, but instead send your best fighters to combat only if raiders attack.
• If you lack Power your rooms will shut down. This is dangerous, because eventually you are not producing any water or food.
• If you lack Food your Dwellers health will start to weaken. This is dangerous, because you are more vulnerable to radroach and raider attacks
• If you lack Water your Dwellers will gain Rads and their health will weaken. Again, they are more vulnerable to raiders and radroaches.

Mid Game (30-70 Dwellers)

It’s time to expand your Vault. Be careful not to over expand.

• Train your Dwellers as much as possible. Once your Dweller reaches maximum level, send him/her back to work and take new trainee to training center
• Send your male and female Dwellers to Barracks and let them make babies! As soon as the baby has grown into a healthy Dweller, remember to give some work to him/her
• Rush as much as you can to get more Caps. Put Caps to Upgrades and expansions.
• Explore as much as possible.
• Equip every Dweller with right outfit and weapon
• Follow Happiness. Generate enough resources, build Radio Station and make sure everyone is working. If needed, remove very unhappy Dwellers by sending them to the wasteland with one way ticket.
• If you have manpower, put permanent guards to Vault door. Equip them with best weapons and make sure they are high level Dwellers. This is not mandatory, but you’ll get lazy and you can just let your defences work automatically

Late Game (100+ Dwellers)

You are now expanding and burrowing deeper underground

• Maximum Dweller limit is 200. Leave some space for possible Lunch Box characters. If you need to make space, just send your lvl 1 Dweller to the wasteland without any gear… or if you are very sympathetic person give your Dweller a .32 gun for self defence. Few hours later Wasteland has removed your extra population problem
• Explore aggressively. Send at least 5 % of your population out at any time. If your high level Dweller dies in the wasteland, it costs only 1000 CAPS to revive and usually your Dweller has at least that amount in his/hers pockets. So it’s worth the risk to let your Dwellers explore as long as possible and then get them back when they die. This way you’ll get the most chances to acquire rare weapons and outfits.
• Send extra Dwellers to Warehouse. Do this only if you lack space in your Training facilities
• Raiders will get eventually better equipped and harder to kill. So make sure you have two well equipped and high level guards at your Vault door. Reinforce your door if you haven’t done so yet to get few more extra seconds to prepare your defences
• Upgrade your Dweller weapons and outfits regularly
• Put your high level Dwellers to training centers – try to get at least one 10/10/10/10/10/10/10 SPECIAL stat Dweller
• Your ultimate goal is to get Nuka Cola room ready. It’ll resolve your food & water problems.

Fallout Shelter Hints and Tips

• Pregnant Women can use Outfits even they seem to be using yellow pregnancy outfit
• Sell everything you don’t need
• As far as I know, it’s not worth to put a multi stat bonus outfit for a Dweller, only the highest SPECIAL stat matters. So sell Merc Outfits etc and save your +3 basic gear.
• SPECIAL stat is limited to 10, but it can be raised above 10 with right outfit
• Those pesky Radroaches are easy to kill? Think again – if you have few lvl 1 Dwellers defending a room they can be easily defeated, if the room is large enough. Large room = more fires, more radroaches.
• Raider weapons will improve over time, so they become more powerful
• If you have to rush your production to keep up your consumption, consider expanding resource production rooms. You’ll fail eventually, because Incidents hamper your resource production.

Remember to read My Fallout Shelter Strategy Guide part 1.