Firstly Bethesda, PLEASE increase your topic title character limit. I HATE forums that have small caps. Anyway...

So, I just had a dweller out for over sixteen hours and she still hasn't found anything better than the revolves and rifles my people who've been out for four hours have been collecting. What is the minimum amount of time a dweller needs to be out in order to bring back something that's really worthwhile?

There isnt really a "set" time that you start getting better gear, there is an event around 60 hours or so that has a higher chance of getting a rare piece but ive never noticed much around that point. Other than that its mostly random, Ive had dwellers out for 3 days bring nothing but garbage back, and dwellers out for 20 minutes grab a legendary.

luck stats raises the ammount of caps/loot you get, but doesnt seem to have much effect on loot quality, it honestly feels like the system favors quantity of explorers of quality, so just keep sending them out and hope you get lucky.

I have noticed as a vault grows, the quality of (at least common) weapons improves, when you first start you will get mostly 10mm and .32 pistols, then move up to lever action and hunting rifles, then sawed off shotguns and laser pistols and so on.

TL;DR - No real sweet spot, mostly random, just keep trying.

It is random so their is no guaranteed time ... That said, there are three timed events with better item chances:


Gas station at 20 hours - chance of two rare items

Diner at 30 hours - chance at two rare items

National guard depot at 60 hours - chance of legendary item


I have 55 explorers who stay out until they run out of Stims ... I have no weapons less than 10 damage now and am getting ready to purge anything less than 12 or 14 soon

Whew! After 5+ weeks, 2 vaults, over 500 Dwellers (explorer death circulation) I could easily tell you that the idea here is more quantity over quality. I at one time had over 50+ explorers (ALL MAX STAT 10 plus their outifits) out at a time and would receive a hand full of RARE weapons with all of them after 1 and half to 3 and a half days. Every once in a while a low level dweller would find something rare. Legendary weapons would come maybe 1 out of 30 expeditions (usually at the 60 hour National Depot event). If you are new and sending only a few dwellers out, it is not impossible to get something legendary but your chances are well, John Candy said it best in Planes, Trains, and Automobiles "You'd have a better chance playing pick up sticks with your butt cheeks than you would".....

Hey Kbrickley, I may have asked you this earlier but what are you running this on (version of ios, etc.) I ask because you seem to have found the LUCK secret of not having your huge vault fall into the load crash bug. Did you install the latest patch of FS?

I am running iOS 8.3 and the latest FOS app version on an iPad Air Retina ... I get periodic crashes during play but it runs much better with the latest patch and always restarts after a crash

I kinda figured that. Maybe I'll put in a game room and send my top explores there to train for a bit and see if it improves anything.

SMART smart smart. Wish I had not updated my ios ever! Seems like you are good then. No way to update back to that is there?

Not that I am aware of ... I usually hold off on updates to the main OS unless I am having problems and need to make the update immediately ... if my phone is running then I wait until the dust settles to see if there are too many problems or not ... I usually do the App updates immediately so I was lucky that my vault was strong enough to be ready for Deathclaw central ... now they are little more than an inconvenience (since they don't offer any benefits for killing them and they can't kill my people)