So upon even further investigation, it would seem that the following is the absolute, no questions asked best way to fight deathclaws and have no casualties. The following breakdown is against 3 Deathclaws. I've not had a 4 count encounter for a very long time since I keep my vault population below 140

What you need:

• 14 Dwellers level 50.


• all special 10, but Strength is the most important.


• Weapons that do a minimum of 20+ damage.


• power armor or clothing that provide a minimum of + 5 strength.

Where you put them:

• Two really strong guards at the door, but not your best! If ranking your defenders 1-14, the vault door should be number 7 and 8 in terms of strongest weapons/armor.


• Next room power, Put your best 6 in here!


• Another power room right below the first will house your 9-14 ranked defenders.

Why this works:

• Strength stacks on top of weapon damage.


• If all your weapons do a minimum of 20 damage, then you doing a minimum of 35 damage per dweller.


• The faster and more damage you do to deathclaws, the faster the leave a room.


• The faster they leave, the greater the chance to keep your dwellers alive (less damage taken overall).


• Endurance has little affect here since a lingering deathclaw will kill any dweller no matter how much life/hit points/endurance they have.

How it plays out every time:

• Vault door gaurds will survive within a pixel of their lives.


• Weakened deathclaws die in first power room (2 Down) will need to Stimpak each dweller twice.


• Deathclaws break down the elevator and attack the power room right below your first. (for some reason they never go left or right first even when those rooms are power rooms).


• Last deathclaw dies in 2nd power room. Will need to Stimpak each dweller once.

Ive tested this for the last few days and have produced consistent results. Its at the point where I can leave the game on, Mr Handy's collecting resources, and I only have to interact after the alarms sounds to apply stimpaks.

To clarify previous assumptions:

• Legendary status does not matter


• Not all power armor will be good since some have strength as low as +1 or +2.


• Officer fatigues, or sports fan armors better than low strength power armor since the goal is to get them moving out of a room ASAP.


• Power armor does indeed apply a slight defense bonus, but not enough to endure 3 deathclaws.


• Missile launchers, Laser gatling guns and fat man Nukes are the best weapons to use in the first kill room.


• Don't skimp out on the second kill room thinking its just mop up. Weaker load outs here can still lead to dweller death even if only one deathclaw remains.

Some extra tidbits:

• Raiders tend to attack me in groups of 4, carrying at most, sniper rifles, railguns and the occasional missile launcher. (probably due to my pop cap of 140)


• They all die in the first room with my guards having about 15-25% of their life bar left.


• Tried this setup with all dwellers wearing cloths/armor that provided +5 endurance. 3-4 dead dwellers in first kill room. Up to two deathclaws surviving to second kill room. 1-2 dead dwellers in that room. Same weapons, same dwellers. Only difference was clothing/armor.


• Power rooms make the most sense since all of your dwellers will have an affinity for this room anyway. Back to back attacks can lower moral. Just being in a power room will keep their moral at 75% minimum.


• Vault door has no affinity so keep the guards life bar full seems to be the only way to restore their moral (or having dwellers in the radio rooms).


• Deathclaws will only go to rooms with dwellers in them. They completely ignore unoccupied rooms.

Hope this helps anyone still having problems with them.

WingHeaven7 Stats and armor do nothing in the vault other than improve how well they work at their job. You could instead put level 50 people with 20 damage weapons and no armor 1 in all stats, and they'd do the same damage and take the same damage when fighting the deathclaws.

This has been tested and verified. As of the current update stats don't affect combat in the vault. In the wastes however they do.

Huh, thats odd and if true, a really silly oversight in game mechanics. The 6 dwellers I have with the +5 strength all live, when those same dwellers, with the same guns, with +5 endurance die...up to 4 when attacked by deathclaws.

But hey, I'm not gonna argue that I know better. If what you say is true, then that whole first post can be tossed and this thread should be closed/deleted. Thanks for the heads up. Going to play around with their armors a bit. See what happens. If they really don't matter than I'll just send that group out for weapons and have 6 random level 50s with whatever stats guard that room.

I just know that I have a room full of level 26 people. Their endurances range from 1-5. When raiders attack they all take the same damage by the time the raiders are dead. Yes, I feel it's an oversight as well. They should make stats useful in combat everywhere, but in the vault they are not.

If I have a lot of level 50 characters and 20+damage weapon, it might be easy battle for me, but I do not have

I agree with Wingheaven7. Except I do keep two at the vault door. All top weapons are in the first 3 rooms on the top level. I have not had a DC reach the second level. They breach the door and are out of there before killing my two guards. In the second room is a 3 room power plant level 3 with 6 dwellers with high weapons. Usually 2 drop there. The last walks into my radio room (2 rooms) with medium weapons and gets finished off there. Most of the time the DC leave the first two rooms before killing a dweller. (Although I do have stimpaks ready at bay) The dwellers there, health gets very low, but maybe the damage dealt to the DC's moves them along. And in the radio room, they (4 dwellers) are all under 5 experience with charisma level outfits. So I don't think outfits or experience matter. Just the weaponry. If one does make it down to the next level I have a 3 room power plant waiting for it with 6 dwellers with ok guns. I didn't update until I planned my defense. But it seems to work. Also for the mole rats, try to have one good to great gun in each room, surrounded by pistols or whatever you can salvage.

I have a similar strategy but I keep two guards in the entrance (they have the 20+ damage weapons) ... my other first level room is a power room (but most of my weapons are in the high teens) ... my second level room is also a power room with weapons in teens ... the Deathclaws go down in the first and second power room and no one dies (I STIM them after the encounter) ... the key thing is the level 50 (or at least 40+) dwellers and weapons that are at least in the mid to high teens

What worked pretty well for me, compared to fighting the deathclaws (>25 dead dwellers), was just to move all people out of their way. Dont fight them, let them run through empty rooms as good as you can and you will have much less casualties.

Welp, not to beat a dead horse, but I did some more tests and noticed something really odd. My original team of 6, with all my best weapons, I swapped their cloths to lucky +5 suits and they survived as if they had the strength plus 5 armors.

I then swapped the whole team out with another set of 6, level 50, all specials at 10, gave them all the weapons the previous 6 had, then equipped them with regular battle armor, +2 strength and +1 endurance...4 of them died in the next deathclaw attack. WTH? The next two attacks produced exactly the same result. 4 dead each time.

My population has not increased and has remained at 140 for three days. I put the old team back, with the original +5 strength armor and they all survived.

Maybe the stats themselves don't matter, but the cloths are definitely doing something. Maybe the game looks at the overall stat total and adds a health bonus. I don't get it. I'm going to try giving them each armor that add +7 combined stats, see if they survive with more or less health than before when they all had +5 strength.

Perhaps the game is doing this math to equate dweller health

Level + Combined Special + Armor=health.

I don't know. I just don't get it.

I seem to notice the same thing. In my "kill room" I have 6 level 50s with maxed SPECIALs, with my best weapons. The ones that have high STR bonus tend to take less damage than the ones that have high END bonus. So... clothing does have effect on damage received.

So you're saying that high S seems to be doing what high E does in the waste? Strange that. What kind of room are they in? Is it a power plant? If so perhaps whatever stat the room requires for bonus is also giving them a bonus to resistance.

Wait, shouldnt Endurance increase def/hp of dwellers specifically IN the vault? Man if you're right then I have been training my dwellers on endurance for nothing :/

Michelrpg: It does not. I've tested it. However someone else testing it seems to see a correlation between defense and other stats. More testing is in order here.

I've found that just making them run a gauntlet of death is the best way to deal with them. I've got two guards at the front with power armor and gatling lasers, an empty dorm room, and a power room with 6 high strengh people in it one which has a minigun and one with the miss launcher along with a Mr. Handy roaming the floor. I usually kill at least one deathclaw before they run to the second floor and always go to the power room where they are greated by 4 high strength dwellers with good weapons and another Mr. Handy and they usually kill one of the deathclaws and almost kill the second before it goes to the water room where 6 more very well armed dwellers end the threat very fast. If they did manage to get by them then they would run to clinic where I have 4 more well armed dwellers and the floors only get worse for the deathclaws from there. I haven't lost anyone in the last 15 deathclaw attacks I've had so I would say it's a pretty good strategy and I'm working on training more powerful and resilient dwellers to take over those rooms to try and end the fight on the first floor. They really aren't much of a threat to any vault really as long as they have to go though a lot of heavy firepower in each room. They seem to run away when confronted with more firepower then then can handle so having about 3 floors full of heavy firepower should bring them down for just about anyone.

I just wanted to post my props for your "tl;dr" containing more text than what was above it.

Sadly my "Kill Room" is a Barracks. So, I have 6 high level dwellers doing nothing... just in the off chance I have a DC attack. I can't move it either because I am at max population.

Well speaking of oddities, I just had a mole rat attack in my diner. I noticed that while everyone started with full HP, the level 30 ended with slightly less HP than the level 8s in there with him. This was despite the fact that they all have the same armor and weapons and A stat. However the level 8 did have 2 E, while the level 30 had 1. I wonder if stats really do not affect things or if something is just buggy.

Edit: Again a mole rat attack in my power room. A level 28 took less damage than a 29, but a level 30 took less than both of them. Something is going on. Perhaps they aren't taking AoE damage, but individual attacks applied randomly that just happen to even out over time?

I wish they would come out with some explaination of how the damage is tabulated so we can better defend against it. That way we wouldn't have to guess at what is going on.

[censored], I just got completely [censored] up by molerats. Most of my dweller's had decent weapons and armor. They just ripped through my vault like crazy, killing everything in their wake. The only survivors were in the training rooms.

seems like regular outfits don't do much to keep your dwellers alive even if you pair the armor to the room type it shares affinity with. In two days of testing every possible configuration of 12 dwellers, all level 50 with 10 in all specials, all with weapons doing over 20 damage and various combinations of +5-7 stat boosting armor I kept getting 2-4 dead dwellers agains deathclaws.


My test revealed two noticeable exceptions.

1. legendary dwellers fair better than regular vault born/radio called dwellers. No idea why but even in my level 1 power room with very little background for them to get caught up in, they always had about 20% more health than the other dwellers.


2. Power armor. Specifically the one that comes with Sarah Lyons, guarantees survival. The others types of power armor all seem to help more than regular clothing, but I noticed that in a room of 6 dwellers, all wearing power armor, the Sarah Lyons type armor bearers have about 10-20% more health bar than the others wearing the power armors I found in the wastes/lunch boxes.


So from my findings, the best way to defend against deathclaws is the following.

1. vault door empty

2. next room, 3 wide level 1 regular power room.

3. next room right below it, 3 wide anything, upgrades don't matter here since everything going to die pretty quick anyway.

4. 6 dwellers in first kill room all wearing power armor, all level 50, all legendary if you got them, all with weapons doing 20 or more damage minimum. Should kill two deathclaws in this room.

5. 6 dwellers in second room. If only three deathclaws, then this room can be setup for mop up duty. High teens weapons, all level 50, max special not that important.

6. In you have a high population vault and are fighting more than 3 DC's per attack than you will need the second room to be a copy of your first room. Power armor, weapons with over 20 damage, max level, special etc etc.

7. If you need to soften them up further you can stick two very well armed guards at the vault door. Just be ready to stim them mid fight.


So far I've not lost a single dweller with this setup. No 1000 cap revives. You will have to stim all of them. Some twice.


Hope this helps anyone still struggling.

Yikes. I think I'll hold off getting the update lol. I have something like 30 max level and stat characters on my big vault but don't want to have to pull them out of the wastes. I like the loot too much!

So upon even further investigation, it would seem that the following is the absolute, no questions asked best way to fight deathclaws and have no casualties. The following breakdown is against 3 Deathclaws. I've not had a 4 count encounter for a very long time since I keep my vault population below 140

What you need:

• 14 Dwellers level 50.


• all special 10, but Strength is the most important.


• Weapons that do a minimum of 20+ damage.


• power armor or clothing that provide a minimum of + 5 strength.

Where you put them:

• Two really strong guards at the door, but not your best! If ranking your defenders 1-14, the vault door should be number 7 and 8 in terms of strongest weapons/armor.


• Next room power, Put your best 6 in here!


• Another power room right below the first will house your 9-14 ranked defenders.

Why this works:

• Strength stacks on top of weapon damage.


• If all your weapons do a minimum of 20 damage, then you doing a minimum of 35 damage per dweller.


• The faster and more damage you do to deathclaws, the faster the leave a room.


• The faster they leave, the greater the chance to keep your dwellers alive (less damage taken overall).


• Endurance has little affect here since a lingering deathclaw will kill any dweller no matter how much life/hit points/endurance they have.

How it plays out every time:

• Vault door gaurds will survive within a pixel of their lives.


• Weakened deathclaws die in first power room (2 Down) will need to Stimpak each dweller twice.


• Deathclaws break down the elevator and attack the power room right below your first. (for some reason they never go left or right first even when those rooms are power rooms).


• Last deathclaw dies in 2nd power room. Will need to Stimpak each dweller once.

Ive tested this for the last few days and have produced consistent results. Its at the point where I can leave the game on, Mr Handy's collecting resources, and I only have to interact after the alarms sounds to apply stimpaks.

To clarify previous assumptions:

• Legendary status does not matter


• Not all power armor will be good since some have strength as low as +1 or +2.


• Officer fatigues, or sports fan armors better than low strength power armor since the goal is to get them moving out of a room ASAP.


• Power armor does indeed apply a slight defense bonus, but not enough to endure 3 deathclaws.


• Missile launchers, Laser gatling guns and fat man Nukes are the best weapons to use in the first kill room.


• Don't skimp out on the second kill room thinking its just mop up. Weaker load outs here can still lead to dweller death even if only one deathclaw remains.

Some extra tidbits:

• Raiders tend to attack me in groups of 4, carrying at most, sniper rifles, railguns and the occasional missile launcher. (probably due to my pop cap of 140)


• They all die in the first room with my guards having about 15-25% of their life bar left.


• Tried this setup with all dwellers wearing cloths/armor that provided +5 endurance. 3-4 dead dwellers in first kill room. Up to two deathclaws surviving to second kill room. 1-2 dead dwellers in that room. Same weapons, same dwellers. Only difference was clothing/armor.


• Power rooms make the most sense since all of your dwellers will have an affinity for this room anyway. Back to back attacks can lower moral. Just being in a power room will keep their moral at 75% minimum.


• Vault door has no affinity so keep the guards life bar full seems to be the only way to restore their moral (or having dwellers in the radio rooms).


• Deathclaws will only go to rooms with dwellers in them. They completely ignore unoccupied rooms.

Hope this helps anyone still having problems with them.

It isn't necessary to have all dwellers armed with 20+ weapons if you are running DCs through the 14 dweller gauntlet ... I only have 4 dwellers with 20+ and the remaining 10 are high teens (15-19) ... I put the 20+ weapons in the guard room (so I can take down the raiders faster) and the remaining 2 in the power room after the entrance ... I am repeatedly taking down the 4-6 DC raids with this configuration ... all dwellers are max stats, level 50, and with +5 Strength armor though (as was suggested)