In a previous threat that I posted some comments insisted that I was unfamiliar with Game Strategy. Well, you should do this and you should do that. One of them suggested that I make lots of babies to gain dwellers for my vault. The problem with that notion is that once the babies are born you have to create new living quarters to accommodate them. However, doing so means that your resources decline and constantly run in the Red. So you think, "I need to create more resources---more Generator rooms, more Water Pump rooms and more Diners." Yet, doing so still keeps your resources in the red. You are damned if you do and damned if you don't. Plus, you have to contend with those cursed Raiders who decimate have the people in the damn vault. In the meantime you have several dwellers out exploring the wasteland and coming back with caps, weapons and armor/clothing. So, you have to create more storage rooms while taking away more damn resources. It is a never ending and frustrating battle that take all of the fun out of playing the game. A Catch 22. What the hell Bethesda!

1-. Resources seem to be, in order of importance: Energy >>> Water = Food. Energy is priority #1 since you need it to power all other rooms, even resource ones; water and food seem to drop at the same rate as long as your rooms have the same size/level and dwellers have similar SPECIAL values on both.

2-. I'd focus first on maxing out resource generation and keeping the "minimum resource requirement" (point before it turs red) between 33-50% of the bar.

3-. Once you have a steady income of resources and DON'T depend on rushes to keep you "on the green", you may pair some of your dwellers, but must be aware of two points: Pregnant women will NOT fight or extinguish fires (so, you're losing a dweller on any hazard for some time), and once they give birth, the baby will require food and water without giving anything in return for several hours, so you mustbe sure you generate excess resources for some hours, or they'll drop to the red zone. First focus on generating surplus resources, then you may start breeding.

4-. You must plan in advance what your vault kids are going to do when they grow up. You should never build in advance (unless it's an energy room, since those rooms "pay for themselves in terms of energy), but must save caps beforehand so you can build the required rooms the moment they move to advlthood.

5-. Training rooms early on are very powerful; initially you'll want size-1 rooms and upgrade them instead of increasing their size. It's one of the best choices to place "new advlts", and once they increase the room stat enough, switch them for another dweller in the corresponding resource room; this way you will increase that resource output without the need of building other rooms (i.e. let's say your worst dweller in an energy plant (S) has Strenght 2; train a dweller to strenght 4-5, then switch places so the S2 dweller starts training; keep rotating and you'll have a steady room output increase without the need to build additional rooms, at least until you've maxed the required SPECIAL value for all the room workers)

Well, you "should" almost always have luck with one of the first few lunchboxes (you'll obtain 4-5 boxes in the first 30 minutes), and get at least one of the "legendary wanderers"; if you don't get any, restarting the vault may be actually better.

Early on I would send ONLY the best wanderer available, and keep him/her on a leash (you don't want dead wanderers at this stage), at least until you get access to the infirmary. In a couple hours the wanderer should obtain 2-3 pieces or equipment, moment at which you should return; start with short trips, and once you have every dweller armed (armor is somewhat secondary), you may start taking longer trips.

Take note that, while raiders will start draining some resources the moment they break in, they won't stop much in empty rooms and will move on, so you might, for example, place dorms in the entire sub-level 1 since you'll only need them for breeding purposes (and the 10 couple dance), so you essentially have an empty level.

Always give your best gear to the dwellers in the rooms nearest to the vault doors (be either in sub-level 1 or the two next to the elevators in sub-level 2); early on raiders can only move to three locations, horizontally through sub-level 1, or through the elevator down to sub-level 2; keeping there your best dwellers makes easy to give raiders a very warm welcome the moment they appear. Also, give the best gear to your males, unless a female has much better SPECIAL values and you don't plan to breed her; remember that pregnant women don't fight, and you do not want your best equipped dweller to start runing, yelling like crazy and hide everytime a fight breaks because you forgot to unequip her when you sent her to the dorms to spend some "quality time" a few hours ago.

You should AT MOST build a 1-size one storage room. You have 10 slots available and the basic 1-size storage increases that to 20.

Early on, 20 item storage is more than enough to hold everything your wanderer(s) might bring home, since the moment you retrieve the wanderer you should immediately equip all your dwellers with the obtained items (nice to see some female dwelleres sweathing on training rooms with their lingerie on), so you will just use your warehouse as temporary storage for a few minutes. You should only "save" a salect few pieces of equipment, for new dwellers (growing kids or radio newcomers) and sell the crappiest ones.

Later on, when your wanderers start spending days on the wasteland you may upgrade even more your storage, but even if you send several wanderers later on, remember that you can retrieve wanderers one at a time while others wait outside.

It depends on your growing rate. A few babies at once don′t make a difference. A jump of 8 or more can be trouble to your economy, especially when it is stretched thin. I made the mistake to grow my first vault to quickly. Although economy is strong, i now have 80 dwellers, of whom likely 40-60 are very low levels, and the rest ist somewhere between 20 and 30. Due to the size of the vault, the game already sends me Deathclaws all the time, which is bleeding out my vault. My strong economy cannot compensate the losses, the low lvl dwellers die too quickly, my weapons lack punch. In addition, my elited rooms create tougher fires and radroach/mole-rats attacks, which are too much for my lowlevels aswell.

I now started all over. Six times. I wanted to make sure i take the best of the first few Lunchboxes i receive, and had to restart again and again, until i got 3 golden and 2 blue items/chars out of the first 4. That Vault was worth it.

I grow that vault slowly, upgrading rooms only, if a task requires it. I breed new dweller in steps of 2-4, just enough to prepare 1-2 new facilites for them to work in. It takes time, feels slow and boring, but my dwellers develope more constantly, level up without too big gaps inbetween, the economy is rock solid and raiders die in the first room, thanks to good weapons and low vault level.

Within the next 5 hours, my first and only explorer will return after a 12 hours exploration, with a handfull of weapons and outfits...

One additional key aspect: in preperation for future Deathclaw attacks, i removed the barracks at level 1 early on in the game, and replaced it by a generator room. The first level of my vault will be just gate, elevators and generators. This way, i can make sure, all rooms at level 1 ae always crewed, and they got a crew with good strenght, armor and weapons.

Listen to what was already posted above, this will truly help you out.

Tho, I do not agree with every advice, especially when it comes to Vaults with production issues. If your Vault is overpopulated - grab your most useless Dwellers and send them into the Wasteland, until you fixed your resources. They don't need to wander for long, you just want to keep them out of the Energy-Water-Food circle for a while to rebuild.


In addition, I would keep at least one of your strongest weapons in the inventory. Do not equip it to any Dweller, keep it ready for any kind of incident.

Molerat attack in one of your rooms? Just hand one of your Dwellers working there the mentioned gun, let him finish the enemies and take it from him again. Works perfectly, as long as your Vault is still not too big.


And last but not least; there is no need to hurry. Be patient. Build up slowly, but steady. Train your dwellers' SPECIAL stats as much as possible. Upgrade, before you start building new rooms. And always plan ahead, regardless of what you do.

Those of you with positive feedback are much appreciated. Those with less than positive feedback not so well appreciated. Thank you all.

I would like to point out about storage rooms, there is nothing saying you need to keep 15 storage rooms to hold a big haul on hand at all times. When a wanderer returns take a look at how much he has, build enough storage to hold it all. Equip and sell everything you need or don't want to hold on to, and then scrap the extra storage rooms to save power. I do this all the time since I got lucky and had a dweller able to do a 21 hour mission right off the first day.

Not a bad idea, but that doesn't force you to micro your dwellers a little too much?

On a small room with two dwellers, is "easy to find" which one is unarmed (or has the worst weapon) and make the switch, but in larger rooms with several ones running around, shotting, firing yelling... it takes some time to find the correct one unles you end up saying "screw this" and pick one at random.

Also... not everybody plays on tablets or android emus... and choosing a particular movile dweller on a mobile phone... well, let's say it takes a little "longer" while you focus in, find the part of the room your dweller is... Probably the best idea in this case is to select the dweller by name, from the list.

decent option... except the part where you spend 375 caps for each storage room every time you have to build one. Early on caps are a little too scarce, and the refund of a warehouse is 60 caps, so every time you do that, you "lose" 315 caps. In case of need, I'd actually keep that warehouse. If you're able to get XX items from a single wasteland trip with a wanderer, chances are either he/she was really lucky, or that wanderer will keep improving and bringing even more goods the following trips. And while at that time that wanderer might bring some thousand caps with him, 300 caps are still useful.

Due to the fact that early on you need to expand slowly or risk overpowering mole rats or rad roaches, I had plenty of caps to deal with it. Plus said adventurer will often bring back more than enough caps to cover the cost. The strategy works just fine.

I have a strategy that reduces the number of mole rat attacks that can be problematic in the early game. I keep my elevators to the side of my vault and because elevators are not subject to events they act as a buffer for your rooms and the dirt on the side of the vault.

First floor: Vault door / Elevator / quarters 2 / resource 3 / Elevator

2nd floor: resource 3 / Elevator / resource 3 / storage 2 / Elevator

3+ floor: Elevator / room 3 / room 2 / room 3 / Elevator

There is only ONE elevator from the 2nd floor to the 3rd floor on the far right but its not a problem.

You are required to make all three resources rooms during the tutorial on the second floor with the intent of destroying one after you build the second quarters on the 1st floor.

So during the tutorial i had the following set up

_VD/E/Q

__P/E/F/W

I then started building as follows

_VD/E/Q

_PP/E/F/W

_VD/E/QQ/W

PPP/E/F

Finally my first four floors looked as such

_VD/E/QQ/WWW/E/

PPP/E /FFF / SS/E/

/E/RRR/RRR/RR/E/

/E/RRR/RRR/RR/E/

VD= Vault door; Q = Crew quaters; / = Room break

E = Elevator; F = food production; W = Water production

P = power production, S = Storage; R = any room

With this set up you are only vulnerable to mole rat attacks to the power room on the second floor and on the bottom floor I always make either 2 x three sized rooms and 1 x two sized rooms or 4x 2 size rooms, the reason is that it reduces the number of rooms that are vulnerable to mole rat attacks on the bottom floor to three so the odds are fewer vs 8x 1 size rooms. There are also numerous reasons why joined rooms are superior to non joined rooms.

When starting a new floor i make sure to build Elevators on each side before hand, this makes sure i can more easily determine the cost of starting a new room and a new floor, so that I cover the room above the new room has no floor dirt. sooo...

/E/RRR/RRR/RR/E/

/E/222 /333 / 44 /E/

_______________

Here is the last two floors of my vault. The numbers represent the rooms vulnerable to mole rat attacks. Room 1 is always the room right underneath the vault door and it always has well armed dwellers of high level because they are always levelling up and I know this room will be attacked from time to tome by mole rates so I arm the room.

/E/RRR/RRR/RR/E/

/E/222 /333 /RR/E/

/E/___/____ /44 /E/

_______________

by building two rooms on the bottom ("__ " these just represented dirt areas) right away I cover up the room right above me. Still leaving only 4 rooms vulnerable to mole rat attacks.

Here are some example of WRONG ways to build on the bottom floor.

/E/RRR/RRR/RR/E/

/E/222 /333 /44/E/

/E/___/____ /_5/E/

_______________

by building only one room on the bottom floor I keep room number 4 exposed to dirt and that means a mole rat attack could still happen in that room and the new room.

/E/RRR/RRR/RR/E/

/E/222 /333 /44 /E/

/E/55_/___ /__6/E/

_______________

by building a size two room on the left side under a 3 size room and building a new single room on the right hand side I create two rooms vulnerable to mole rat attacks while leaving the all the rooms on the above floor open to attack.

I hope this makes sense.

Once you get around 30-40 dwellers, it becomes super easy since you will only need one large generator room (3 together), one large diner, and one large water station. From there, you can start a rather amazing rotation system and you will always have pretty much full resources. If you don't mind waiting, stay at around this amount and focus on upgrading all of your current rooms (generator, diner, and water first) and getting all of your dwellers suit-up and ready, and all that lovely stuff.

To give you an idea https://scontent-ord1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfp1/t31.0-8/11888639_462660690575482_7535644465894634997_o.jpg... (Mind you though, I have two generator rooms but in the end, you only need one. Me having two is kinda mostly useless right now but might become useful when I start expanding once again). Basically, the rotation is simple... Put all of your best Agility dwellers (best 6 ones) in the diner. Then put two more dwellers for Agility as their highest (or tied) stat and put them in the training room for Agility. Once their agility has been trained enough that when you drag them to the Diner, you get a "+1" symbol, switch them out and simply repeat this process. (Every dweller in that diner for me right now has over 6 Agility, though this is including boosts from outfits). And do the same thing for generator room(s) and water room(s).

This system is very successful.

(Funny note: I have Cromwell in the water room).

I've found that upgrading also helps to conserve resources. Instead of building more resource areas, i try to upgrade the ones i have. I've found they consume less power and the dwellers don't work as hard, keeping them Happy longer

Good enough, as long as you keep expanding slowly, you usually have enough caps once your wanderer(s) start spending more and more time on the wasteland, but I still dont quite like to destroy rooms everytime.

One warehouse initially nets you +10 storage, (20 totalcounting the base 10), more than enough for those first days. After that, I prefer to add another one (upgrade nets +5, so initially is just plain better to build another one) and just make a 2-size room for a 30 total storage. Uopgrading that once will increase your storage to 40. Then, if still in need, I'd build more instead of keep upgrading.

Good choice, but I'd make a couple of changes here, specially if raiders and deathclaws can take the rightmost elevator to go down a level (If they don't it may be a better layout)

First problem you encounter: tutorial svcks. It will almost always force you to destroy one of the initial rooms or you'll end wit a subpar configuration; so I'd start the tutorial this way.

Ensure there are no rocks in the first three sub-levels (or they're at the far right). If there's a rock, I'd just plain restart the Vault.

[.] "Empty" full sized space. There's one to the left of the Vault Door
[V] Vault Door room
[E] Elevator
[Q] Dorms (Quarters)
[ ] Full-sized empty space (1-room size), there can be rocks on the spaces, or in between them.
[]  Small-sized empty space (half-room size, can hold an elevator)
[P] Power plant
[W] Water plant
[F] Food plant
[*] Room to destroy

Initial vault layout:

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][Q][ ][ ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 2: [ ][ ][ ][E][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][]

Now, tutorial forces you to place an elevator to sub-level 2, a Power plant room, and then will force you to place a Water plant and a Food plant (in any order). In order to build an eficient vault from scratch, you'll need to destroy one of the rooms and recreate it elsewhere:

Step 1: Adding the Power plant. Idea here is to place it in sub-level 2:

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][Q][ ][ ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 2: [ ][ ][P][E][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][]

Step 2: Adding the Food and Water plants

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][Q][W][ ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 2: [ ][ ][P][E][F][ ][ ][ ][ ][]

Step 3: You left the room tutorial, you may now destroy the room you placed in Sub-level 1

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][Q][*][ ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 2: [ ][ ][P][E][F][ ][ ][ ][ ][]

Now, here is where I'd change things from Goth's layout:

Step 4: Build another elevator to sub-level 3 and rebuild there the destroyed room.

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][Q][ ][ ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 2: [ ][ ][P][E][F][ ][ ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 3: [ ][ ][W][E][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][]

And here's why:

Step 5: Once needed, upgrade your sub-level 1 quarters to keep acomodating dwellers...

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][   Q   ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 2: [ ][ ][P][E][F][ ][ ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 3: [ ][ ][W][E][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][]

Step 6: Then build a Warehouse once you need some extra space... and do NOT build the rightmost elevator in that floor

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][   Q   ][ W  ][]
Sub-level 2: [ ][ ][P][E][F][ ][ ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 3: [ ][ ][W][E][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][]

Now, the sub-level 1 is basically "empty". There are no dwellers in the entire floor except when you're whooing someone on the dorms. This essentially nets you some good extra 10-15 seconds to get ready while raiders or deathclaws check every room in the floor. Once they do check the rightmost room, they'll start moving towars the only elevator, moment where your Power Plant dwellers will ready their weapons (enemies seem to check rooms from left to right). Give the Power plant dwellers your best weapons and armor, and then the ones on the Food or Water plant at the same sublevel across the elevator.

Step 6: You keep improving the resource rooms, which in the end will become3-size ones.

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][   Q   ][ W  ][]
Sub-level 2: [   P   ][E][   F   ][ ][ ][]
Sub-level 3: [   W   ][E][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][]

Since you have a two size room avalable to the right of each floor, you can place there rooms that do not require to be 3-sized to be useful, like extra dorms, a radio, some extra medbays, and maybe another set of warehouses later.

Finally, sub-level 2 onwards you can place the rightmost elevator to improve access to the rest of your dwellers, but by not placing the second sub-level 1 elevator you ensure the dwellers in the sub-level 2 rightmost room are not the ones engaging the enemies if they take the that elevator; allowing you to control the order enemies will engage your first few rooms (Power plant, then the 3-size room to the right of the main elevator, then the 2-size room at the end of sub-level 2); giving the best equipment to those dwellers in order will ensure raiders die at the power plant (haven't seen raiders disengaging) and deathclaws will ve severely damaged if they're able to reach sub-level 3.

Step 7+, adding more rooms:

Sub-level 1: [.][ V  ][E][   Q   ][ W  ][]
Sub-level 2: [   P   ][E][   F   ][2siz][E]
Sub-level 3: [   W   ][E][3 size ][2siz][E]
Sub-lvl 4+:  [3 size ][E][3 size ][2siz][E]

Finally, as of the current version, seems that deathclaw behavior is the following: They'll normally behave like raiders, moving from left to right checking every room and engaging dwellers before going down a level, but they may chose randomly to disengage from combat and resume"roaming mode", skipping to the "next" available room. Once deathclaws reach the "end" of the vault (last room in the bottom level), they'll take the shortest path and leave the vault without further engagements.

The catch here is that they don't seem to be able to retrace their steps (they will not reengage dwellers in a room they left even if they cross if in their way to an elevator), so once they "clear" sub-level 1 you may actually transfer dwellers to the 10 empty slots available there (dorms and warehouse) and they'll be safe from deatch claws. Dwellers issued a movement command don't seem to take damage until they reach their destination, so you may actually micro your dwellers, moving them to already "checked rooms" so only your "guards" engage.

I do believe I have a handle on it now. Thanks to all of you. Although, I am still trying to get a grasp on rearranging all of my dwellers to 100%. In addition, I now have two child with three more on the way. I did try to arrange the pregnancies in away that would not svck my resources to the red. I also have a few more rooms opened up that I have not created yet--beyond the science lab.

Take note that Lab is almost unneeded once you gain access to Endurance training (every point of endurance reduces the amount of rad taken, so your wanderers should perform heavy End training before roaming too much), so don't invest much on it. Medbays are much more useful.

Thanks. The only other obstacle I seem to have is placing all of the Dwellers in their proper place to get 100 Happy. There is no easy task.

I have wondered about this. To protect from the bottum have you tried lining the last floor with elevators?

I'm at 56 dwellers and sitting at full resources at any given time and I got tons of people training at any given time.

I haven't been finding troubles with anything so far, though I'm dreading the deathclaw attacks after reading about people's frustrations.

I'm now in a rocky training montage for the best vault defenders to prepare for the upcoming attacks.

Well, working dwellers will steadily increase happines, but happines is usually gained by whooing or rushing rooms, but every time you fail a rush the room workers will lose happiness from both the rush and the subsequent hazard.

Achieving 100% on a dweller is "easy", maintanining it is the tricky part, unless you don't rush anymore and you're lucky with the random hazards.

Hmmm, I understand you mean bottom?

Raiders and Deathclaws come from the wasteland, and check every room in the vault, and random hazards only appear in already built rooms. Maybe in a later update Beth can add several hazards coming from the ground under the vault, or digging/clawing their way through the vault walls.

Take note that an elevator must have a connection, you cannot just place an elevator leading nowhere (you can see this when you try to place the secondary elevator in any sub-level, another elevator will be generated in the next sub-level, chaining both).

My biggest pet peeve is the radio between successes and failures with Rushing. There are more g'damn failures than successes. I think it is bull-[censored].

I wanted to take the time to thank everyone for their sincere assistance. I have have played strategy games before, such as X3: Reunion. I played the game for well over a year, but got tired of it. Sadly, I have gotten tired of playing Fallout Shelter in less than a week. Again., I sincerely appreciate of your help. I just don't have the patience with strategy games and their numerous bugs. Perhaps some day I will try it again.

I have not done so because I just got the game (android user) and have not expanded my vault to where I am happy with it yet. I have heard there is a max size for the vault but I'm not sure if that is a hard cap or people hitting their capacity limit with their current number of living quarters.

I did discover that I could destroy the 2nd floor power room that was under my vault door along with the starting elevator on the second floor and I built a nuclear reactor with an elevator on the far left wall protecting that room too. This does mean the fist floor elevator right beside the vault door goes no where and the only elevator to the second floor is on the far right but this isn't a problem.

I do believe that your bottom floor of all elevators will work but it is a rather expensive to test until you are pretty sure your expansion is over or you have lots and lots of cash which I don't yet.

I have found a great way to deal with deathclaws. It took me a while to figure out, but you can actually destroy the first elevator connected to the valt door. To see image go to imgur "/" JBBVdsD


I would suggest starting a new valt for this, because you have to kill off eveyone in your valt. Assuming you have started a new file, complete the forced tutorial with as few dwellers as possible. Do not build any extra rooms, do not bring in any more dwellers (just enough to keep each main room running), and just save up caps. You will need between 3k-5k caps for the next step. You can send your dwellers into the wasteland or take the easy way and get a 15 pack of lunch boxes.


Once you have saved up the caps, it's time to kill. Just send all of your dwellers out into the wastes to die. Then click "remove" once dead. This way you can delete all of your rooms.


The next part is to set up your ground floor exactly as seen. The rest is just up to personal preference. Just make sure to have the two sets of elevators all the way against the walls.


The way it works is by exploiting the pathing for deathclaw ai. The deathclaw will always get to the second floor, run all the way to the left, drop down, run all the way to the right, and repeat. If you put strong or well armed dwellers on floors 1-3 they should never make it past the second floor (I say 3 to be safe).


If anyone actually does this themselves, let me know how it goes. I have only had time to test this set up on two files and has worked great both times! But I would love to see if different room setups affect the tracking. Anyway have fun!

I solved this by simply limiting myself to 2 babies at a time.

Simple.

You can easily supply enough resources for two freeloading kids at any time and plan ahead accordingly.