So, I have 8 dwellers that I typically send out.


I've sent all of them out with 25 stims and 10 rad.

They don't seem to be too efficient with the rad, but this isn't my problem.


I typically get a good 6-8 days out of them.

Twice now, I have paid the caps to get them all to survive past 10 days.


The problem is, regardless of how long they are out, they never seem to pick up any legendary gear, especially power armor.

This leads me to believe that the only way to get legendaries is to pay for lunch boxes.


I thought Bethesda had come up with a really good FTP concept until I hit this wall.

This is against by better beliefs of what FTP should mean, compared to what it apparently means.


Is it that you can't get legendaries from the wasteland, or is it that the drop rates are so small that it's a virtual no?


Either way, this disappoints me.

If you pay to revive them, they will keep exploring until you tell them to return.

You can revive them an infinite amount of times, and it never costs more than 1000 caps to revive.

Ah right, the word 'survive' got me confused. I never bother with that. Just takes waaaay longer for them to return then, since it may be many hours between their deaths and me reviving them.

I understand that lengendary should be hard to find to sell the Lunchbox. But it should be hard in some reasonable degree.


My vault has more than 10 top class explorers. Their Luck and all other SPECIAL nearly maxed out. Most are equipped with legendary weapons and outfits from Lunchbox. They can survive at least 3-5 days or more for one exploration. Yet they hardly find a legendary gear in a week. 11 days has passed since I got my last legenday gear from Wastland explorarion and No more legendary item since.


I think that such large group of near topclass explorers shoud yield at least one legendary item a day to br reasonable as game. 100+ man-days of exploration without findind any single legendary is just too disappointing. I am about to quit Wasteland exploration for good.

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Yeah.. See, the only reason to keep playing past a certain point is so you can find and fit your entire vault with legendary equipment.

I can understand them having drop rates of less than 5%, but it seems the drop rates are less than 1%.

Like .1 or .01..

We occasionally get free Lunchbox from fullfilling various objectives (quest) or weekly score evaluation in the game. Generally I get about total 3-4 legendary items or dwellers from the Lunchbox at two active vaults of mine each week.


I think that active Wasteland exploration, which requires more preparation, effort and care than fullfilling objectives should yield better overall compensation than Lunchbox from objectives.


If not, Wasteland exploration does not worth its efforts to continue, once the demand for common/rare grade items are satisfied.


Give us reason to continue to explore the Wasteland for long time. Give us daily pleasant surprise from the exploration.

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I have 20+ explorers with all stats maxed out. I am lead to beleive there is a 100 item limit for what each explorer can find. So having them out beyond the 60 hour mark has no benifit that i can tell (at 60 hours they hit the national guard depot).

I will say this though, when I have a dweller out for 3+ days, the next few I send out tend to find better stuff in their first hour, but this of course could just be coincidence.

I find maybe 1 legendary per 240+ explorer hours, assuming they all hit depot.

I'd like to share my opinion on finding legendaries haha I have gotten a few legendaries from the wasteland with medium lvled dwellers (28-35) and at about only 2 luck and 4-5 endurance with wasteland gear! I usually send them out for about 7-9 hours depending on how well they do and on my playing time:D But here comes the secret I use which usually gets me a legendary or 2 every 7-9 hours I do this, I send out around 25-30 people at a time! For 7-9 hours which leads me to believe that quantity is better than quality in terms of wasteland exploration:D you might be sending out 8 top tier dwellers but if the luck only cycles through them 8 against my 30 dwellers I guess 30 wins^^ hopes this helps! Happy hunting! I'm at the process of trying to max the endurance and luck of 30 dwellers to be my hunters!

Awesome reply Zach and I think this might be the best tip yet for exploration! I'm about to have a total of 70 ALL MAX STATS explorers (just been training the heck out of em) and will provide feedback once they have been out and have explored.

The argument of quantity over quality seems quite convincing. It seems that high SPECIAL stats play only limited minor role in improving odd of finding legendary items.


So sending out 100 untrained low level ordinary dwellers is much better than sending 10 highly trained high level specialist explorers to find more legendary items.

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The higher level and ability folks have a better chance of survival though since you get better stuff (on average) the longer you stay out ... and some of my best stuff has come from the National Guard Depot (at slightly more than 60 hours) so surviving to 60 hours helps get better stuff

If you are trying to metagame this, there are some statistics that can be found on the web to help.

A basic (not 100% accurate) summary is:

About every 15 minutes spent in the wasteland will give you a chance at some caps.

Around every hour spent in the wasteland will give you a chance at caps, a normal item, a rare item or a legendary item. The longer you survive in the wasteland, the better your chances of a reward other than caps/normal items. Dying and being resurrected seems to reset your odds back to when you first left the vault.

There are special encounters that occur at fixed times. The first of these encounters will normally occur soon after leaving the vault. The second about a half hour later. Somewhere around an hour and 15 minutes, you will have your third encounter. At about the 2 and a half hour mark another encounter. At the 5 hour mark another encounter. Then 10 hours, then 15 hours, then 20 hours, then 30 hours, then 40 hours, then 60 hours. Again the longer you are out, the better chance you have for a rare or a legendary.

Each of the timed events will test a different SPECIAL attribute which you must pass for a chance at loot. As an example, raiders will test your dweller's agility, NG Depot will test Perception, merchant will test Charisma, etc.

There appears to be at least one known timed event after the National Guard Depot (60 hour mark) but the Depot is also the point of diminishing returns. Chances are excellent that the best trained, best equipped and highest level dweller will be killed before reaching the 75 hour event, so it is best to start them on the long journey home after they reach the Depot.

Additionally, it should be noted that the longer your dweller is outside, the nastier the 15 minute events become. This seems to cap with Behemoths. This is NOT reset if your dweller dies and is resurrected.