Power Armor isn't necessarily the best Armor for combat (depending on which version you have) ... my dwellers in the Super Reactor are mostly in Sports Fan Outfits (+4 Strength, +1 Luck) and Officer Fatigues (+5 Strength) ... usually one will drop in the entrance with the two guards there ... all but two will drop in the Super Reactor after the entrance ... the final two will drop in the Super Reactor on the next floor down ... seems pretty repeatable so far ... all my dwellers on those levels are level 50 though

Well, at least they aren't the over-amped Firestarters from Gang Nations.

I am not sure if this helps anyone... It certainly didn't help me.

I just hit 70 dwellers, all of which are under level 30. I only have a couple weapons above 10.

They blew through at the very least 1/3 of my population. I went from 90% happy to 4% in about a minute.

The game rewards you for growing fast, and then completely screws you. It's kinda BS to release an enemy that gives you no chance of survival. I am glad I haven't spent money on this game.

Also it seems like the biggest attacks happen when people are very close to returning from the wasteland. This is the first Deathclaw, but the 4th or fifth big attack that has happen right before people were returning.

I have the following:

73 Dwellers

35 Rooms

1 50 Dweller

29 30-39 Dwellers

43 1-29 Dwellers

1 Legendary Dweller

2 Rare Dwellers

7 10+ Weapons The rest are more or less junk.

Pre-Update Caps: 100k+ Current Caps: 60k and dropping with deathclaw attacks.

I've been playing what I thought was a very slow growth game, and haven't birthed a new dweller in my vault since dweller #34. All dwellers since have come from active radio room.

Frequent deathclaw attacks. Each deathclaw attack = 15+ Dead Dwellers costing 6000 +\- caps to revive.

I am extremely frustrated and giving up on the game. I'll keep it installed for a bit in case devs come to senses.

Gdelilah: From what I've been told, the radio room is what is attracting the Death Claws to your doorstep. If I were you, I would recommend selling the radio room for now, and raising the stats of your dwellers in the hopes that stats work the same in the Vault as they do in the waste, where S P and A increase damage, and E reduces damage taken. If that is not the case, I honestly don't have any clue how to help you though other than the Radio room.

Not lost one of my Dwellers to a Deathclaw attack yet. Lost one recently to a fire though ??


I have 200 Dwellers and have 2 Knights with flamers in the vault entrance about level 30ish, 5 more mixed Dwellers in the next room and 4 in the far right. I recalled all my high level scavengers and put them in these rooms and relocated all my soft Dwellers such as ones in med labs with lab coats further down.


When I get attacked by Deathclaws I have about 100+ stims ready to quick heal them and the room to the far right finishes off the Deathclaws every time.


The rooms on my first floor next to the vault entrance are level 1 storage rooms so I can quickly see everyone in the room and tap on them to heal quickly.

I have a slightly different approach. I have two dwellers with decent weapons guarding the entrance. One is with a flamer, the other a missile launcher. The entire first floor is filled with living quarters, which are empty. This gives time to have those two chase after the claws. Once the deathclaws have gone through the entire floor, they have to go back to the elevator shaft, giving me another chance to attack them. From there, they drop down and get swarmed by dwellers with sniper rifles and plasma pistols.

I've had 3 Deathclaw attacks so far and haven't really had a problem with them. My whole vault is armed and they seem to move on when they encounter heavy resistance so I usually just have them all dead by the 4th floor and then it's stims all around.

I've finally figured out how to stop the deathclaws quite literally... dead.

I MADE A DOGLEG.... no, not a dogmeat... a dogleg.... I literally force the deathclaws through this one killing room twice and they don't survive it. Hotel California for Deathclaws.... Hotel Deadclaws HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So far my system can be left to itself and I tend to lose one dweller atm because he needs to buff up a bit more... but I've got all the heavy artillery up top now... but still have enough down below that Molerats and creepie crawlies don't have a chance.

I think the problems people are having are early level vaults... because when you get level 40+ dwellers with Wazer Wiffles, Gatling Lasers, Guided Fatmans etc then the Deathclaws are easy meat... IF you plan your vault layout right.

The real problems are for Bethesda though... Say you pay for a bunch of lunch boxes and then a deathclaw attacks and eats your entire base... It's basically turned the game into an online gambling game and will pee off those people who have pumped over $5m dollars!

I've been through a couple dozen deathclaw attacks by now, several back-to-back. Bethesda claims that they are increased by two things (1) general foot-traffic leading to your vault door, such as an increased influx of dwellers caused by radio room(s), and (2) the frequency with which you open the vault door.

Pretty much every time I log in (for an average of 5-10 minutes), I get at least one attack. But, every time I log in, I am (1) letting someone in called by the radio, (2) letting them out again to go die in the wasteland, and (3) usually opening and closing the vault door several more times to either let in or out explorers. So there it is. If you go full shut-in and hide, you should see less of them.

Status-wise, I have 155 dwellers and a bunch of rooms. Every last dweller in the first three occupied rooms (6 each in 3x3 nuclear reactors) is level 50, perfect 10 SPECIAL, and armed with legendary armor and weapons (mostly top-tier power armor and all 20+ weapons). Yes, I have opened many, many lunchboxes. I have also likely killed (as in sent to the wasteland to die) hundreds, if not a thousand+, dwellers in order to artificially cap my population at 155.

The first time I got hit by deathclaws, they killed 3 folks in the first room and three folks in the second room, (for a total of six, for those of you into advanced math) before they were put down in the third. Which is a surprising lot of death, considering each and every one of them was -- very literally -- the best and strongest dweller currently possible in every metric the game allows. I am relatively sure, however, that the dwellers in both of those rooms started at approximately half health. I have no idea why, but that seems to have been the case. I've concluded that the game just decided to stick it to me for the first one, to drive things home and make it more of an "event." Which is kinda cool, but really only cool because it happened only just the one time....

Every time since that first deathclaw attack, I haven't lost a single dweller. I do babysit and apply stims. But I always miss 1-2 entirely, and they have always survived -- although usually just barely. Usually put 2 deathclaws down in the first room, and then the remaining 2-3 down in the second. They haven't made it past the second since that first time. Two back-to-back attacks would kill a lot of people in my vault if I didn't stim everyone back up to max after every attack. Which I do, because I've been hit with back-to-back attacks.

I have to assume that their power scales in accordance to something, for the simple reason that the things that tear through me would be unstopable by anything less than max/max+ dwellers.

So, there you have it. One anecdotal take on deathclaws from the max-everything end of the spectrum. They scale. They hit hard. After the first time, they seem to hit considerably less hard. Them's the breaks, and gotta be realistic about these things, might as well make the best of it.

I think you've hit the nail on the head - it's about how the vault has grown, whether you've focused on something too much, ie the "balance". It's difficult to judge properly in this game though. And I think the developers have dealt a cruel blow to those people whose vaults are unbalanced, judging by the amount of anger I'm seeing here and elsewhere about the new enemies.


BTW, I haven't updated my game to the new patch yet, very wary about my invested time (hundreds of hours) being wiped out; yet I also can't play my existing version because some of my dwellers have started to disappear randomly from my 200-dweller vault and I'm fed up !

Almost exactly the same here, except I have 35 dwellers.

From experience it is possible to survive repeated Deathclaw attacks, even with low level characters, simply try to balance out each character by rotatation, if you dont have high level weapons, arm the first three rooms, each with 6 characters, with the best shotguns you can get, place your med and science labs at least 3 levels down from the main door, and max out your stim cache, defense in depth guys let them run the gauntlet