Fallout shelter guide book

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

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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.

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?

Explorers not finding anything.

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.

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:

(you'll need a file explorer app to access it on your device, or just plug into a computer)

(see 15.1 for how to perform file transfers)

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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)

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).

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

The effects Crafting Cost, Crafting Time, Objective Completion, and Stranger Chance apply to the whole room they're in.

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?

Bloodhound (dog - Wasteland Junk)

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.

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]

S: Junk Jets, Flamers, Miniguns, Missile Launchers, Gatling Lasers, Fat Men, Plasma Throwers, Baseball Bat, Relentless Raider Sword

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] .

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.

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)