I've played this on both IOS and Android. Since my main phone is now Android I'm playing on that only now.

I've 4 vaults now, 2 across both OS'. And I just can't figure this game out.

I understand the basics of the game, I understand how to get more dwellers. What I don't understand is how to properly expand.

I usually have a double rec room, double diner, double power station and double water station upgraded to to the last level or the level before. All with the correct dwellers inside (as best I can do with my untalented dwellers) and I have many outfits that are on the dwellers for their jobs, gained from wasteland exploration and raider attacks etc. Yet, I always seem to be just above the threshold of all the resources, so I'm just managing to keep the vault running smoothly.

Any expansion needs more dwellers, which need more resources. So I have to build a resource room so that dweller can gather enough resources to keep the vault running. If my dwellers have children, I go under the resource limit until they grow up, at which point they go into working resources again. Anyone that shows up goes into working resources for themselves.... So I basically just end up expanding with only resource rooms...

Meaning, I have no available dwellers for other rooms... I just don't understand what I'm doing wrong????

The easiest way I've found to maximize your resources if to have each dweller within that room max out not only that stat for that room but also luck.

So for power generators, have a three room generator (max you can have) with 6 people within it with a strength of 10 (of as close you can get) with a high luck. With all 6 near maxed, you'll get resources quicker, so instead of maybe 3-4 minutes, it could take 60 seconds. With luck maxed, you'll earn caps sometimes even without rushing the room. plus with higher luck, you'll have better chances at successfully rushing a room and getting even more extra caps.

But its best to have all the dwellers within that room with a maxed stat for that room. That way resources come quicker and you can build over the minimum you need quicker. but once you can build the stat rooms, have dedicated dwellers learning those stats and then move them into resource rooms.

The best way I did this is I have 1 male dweller as a breeder, called him Big Daddy, he breeds with all new females as well as females you get at the beginning. I then give them the last name of Daddy so I know which ones can't breed with who. Then once I have a good stock (not meaning to demean that or anything) I then place that stock of 4-6 people into a Stat building room, let them build up as high as they can, then move them to the room when ready. Once I get Big Daddy's stats maxed and a females stats maxed, I get their levels maxed. Once that happens, you can actually breed legendary dwellers.

Hope this helps. Remember, max stats for that room. High levels, High luck.

When you train your dwellers main stat per each room to 10 ( S for power, A for food etc.) you can eventually manage a 200 dweller vault with one three room version of each resource room. And then all you have to add is more nuclear reactors as you build more training/storage/radio rooms. No need to rush anything unless you want to. The one thing to keep in mind is power room storage is wildly unbalanced compared to production. The more storage you have the more resources are stolen by mole rats etc.


If you really want to optimize, instead of water and food rooms build 3-4 nuka cola factories with six 10+ E and 10+ L dwellers in each, and keep rushing them any time the incident risk is below 10%.

I think you need to build up a surplus of resources. Build yourself some unoccupied production rooms for each resource toward the bottom of your vault.


Why unoccupied? You'll notice hash marks on the resource bars that show the need for each resource in relation to storage. As your vault grows, need starts to exceed storage and those hash marks move to the right. You might be producing enough resources to meet demand, but there's no place to store the surplus. Building empty resource rooms lets you store up surplus resources.


Why at the bottom of the vault? You want at least one level of dirt between the unoccupied storage levels and the occupied vault levels. Mole rats, rad roaches and fire will simply run their course on the unoccupied levels without attacking your dwellers.

This exactly. Resource generation is only a problem at the beginning. Best stat you can get is 3 and you'll get one dweller with 5 for each room. Next step are costumes. Best basic ones add 3 point doubling the efficiency of your dwellers.

Then you unlock the training rooms. With them you can pump your dwellers up to 10 points basically breaking the game. Now each dweller is more effective as 3 basic ones with good stats. With a basic costume a single trained dweller is working better than 4 dwellers with a 3 point stat.

Priority 1 - two or three Power Rooms, fully staffed. Do not upgrade until you have 50 to 120 Dwellers.

Priority 2 - two or three Water Rooms, fully staffed. Do not upgrade until you have 40 Dwellers.

Priority 3 - two or three Diners, fully staffed. Do not upgrade until you have 50 to 70 Dwellers.

Eventually you will have 100 or more dwellers, two Power Rooms and 3 Nuclear Reactors (a total of 5) along with 5 Water Rooms and 5 Diners.

Expend slowly, always keep more than 4000 Bottlecaps on hand or 25 Stimpaks for Raider and Deathclaw attacks

If you have more dwellers than you can support, send them into the wasteland and recall them right away, but don't collect them. Let them stand outside. They don't heal or use up resources when they're parked out front - for all practical purposes, they're out of the game until you collect them again. Bring them back in, one at a time, once you figure out where to put them.

If you don't have enough dwellers to man your rooms, you need to be more efficient with your dwellers and rooms. Do more training. Watch the room output numbers (output vs. time), because the upgrade paths aren't as obvious as they seem: the nuke reactor, for example, isn't a straight up improvement over the power gennie. The nuke provides awesome storage, but actually produces LESS power for the time than a much cheaper power generator room. So balance them off.

Once I had all the classrooms built in my first big vault, I started sending my dwellers to school. Everyone gets a basic education, all seven SPECIALS up to 5. Why 5 instead of 10? Because training time compounds, and rounding everyone up to straight 5s takes a lot less time. Start replacing production people with the graduates. Once everyone is at least straight 5s (I think of it as a high school education), your production efficiency should be much, much more stable.

After training to 5s, I usually start focusing on leveling, because by then some of my dwellers were getting into the 40s. As they hit 50 one by one, I'd pull them from production and put them back in training to max out to 10s.

But seriously, don't don't DON'T simply replace your power generators with nuke reactors. The nukes put out more power, but have a longer charge cycle. They're not effective generators. They're excellent batteries, but they'll kill you for cranking new power.