I don't have permission to post links so I can't show screenshots, but you'll find the times below; you can confirm it in your logs. For the industrious - or skeptical - amongst you, you can find a thread titled "Rares at Fixed interval opportunities (incomplete)" over at the Reddit forum for Fallout Shelter. There are links to screenshots there.

The best I found was a Plasma Pistol. I don't recall when it was found but she was exploring over 2 days.

i found eulogy jones suit sometime within the 6-8 hour mark...it had already scrolled off when i logged in and saw my guy wearing it.


i also found a rusty flamer in the 2-4 hour range.


not sure how much was luck and how much was RNG.


i have also had guys out for 36 hours that found nothing but common trash

I have been sending my group of explorers into the wasteland regularly now who have 10STR 10END AND 10LUCK.


Length of time... S.P.E.C.I.A.L ... It all seems to have a negligible affect on drops, creatures fought, or damage sustained, IMO, when compared to the actual LEVEL OF THE VAULT DWELLER.


My level 47 butch with his base stats has already been in the wasteland for 4 days and has only used 8 stimpacks. My level 10 dude in power armor ( T-60a + Amplified Alien Blaster) with the above maxed SPECIAL didnt survive longer than 26 hours and used up ALL of his 25 stimpaks. He was actually dead when i woke up in the morning. Items collected so far have all been rubbish but i pull 10,000 caps easy on these trips, averaging about 4000 caps per 24 hours. Its quite disappointing actually, that SPECIAL seems to count for so very, very little.


Now get this. I breed about 12 new dwellers a day and always send the ugly ones out to die. New dwellers or any of the ugly older ones who've been around for a while and gained a LOT of levels (cause hey, after fully upgrading my vault, what else have I got to do? I call it "selective breeding" ) Yesterday I sent a group of 8 into the wasteland, some were level 1s and some where level 45s who I decided I didn't like anymore. Well, one of those 45s picked up an Enhanced Fat man, and another picked up an X-01 Mark 1 power armor and they had only been out for under 1.5 hours and they have bs 1s and 2s for LUCK/END/STR (one guy was high PER from water duty, the other was high INT from med bay.

Suffice it to say, the higher level ones, in my experience tend to accumulate much, much better gear than lower level dwellers with better SPECIAL. They last up to 10 hours on 0 stimpacks, whereas most level 1 noobs seem to die after 2 or so hours.


Level is king!

Can you show? What stats he got? what weapon you have?

My Butch is wearing the Sports Fan Outfit (+4 STR +1 LUCK) and is using a Focused Plasma Rifle (17-20 DMG).

Butch has a base of 5 STR, 6 END, and 2 LUCK.

What are other stats?

While I agree that there is better loot the longer you stay out, I am now certain that there is a random luck generator in play as well. My main vault has 20 nearly maxed stat lv 40-50 explorers who are sent out with 25 stims and rad aways each time, they nab me the occasionally awesome thing after ~2 days and I'm fine with that.

But on my second little vault of 20 dwellers, I sent out my first couple explorers with no stims, 2 luck, no weapons or armor, hoping to grab a few 32 pistols, and what does one of them find around the 2 hour mark? a Legendary Eulogy Jones' Suit!

So yes, the higher the level, the better the gear, the better the stats you have a good chance of staying out and grabbing some good stuff, but never stray from the path of true dumb luck, RNGesus be praised!