After going through a couple standard vaults, I recently started up a Survival vault. I'm on my toes like I haven't been since I first started this game, and it's quite unforgiving. That said, I've found an equilibrium for now. Survival vaults seem to move VERY slowly.

Here are a fewof things that have happened to me since I started. Let me know what your experiences are.

• An event about every 30-90 seconds.


• I'm almost always behind on one of my resources. The frequency of events makes it hard to catch up.


• My first Deathclaw attack was at 37 dwellers. They're not frequent, but they've hit about 6 times and I'm still only at 47 dwellers.


• I logged in at 45 dwellers and had to set my phone down to attend to something and forgot to close it first. I came back between 7-10 minutes later and a fire had wiped out all but 11 of my dwellers.

My first attempt at survival mode went badly. Got up to about 39 dwellers, and lost 26 of them to a single deathclaw attack. I deleted the vault thinking I'd never play again... but a week later, decided to give it another chance. I've been doing fine with it, now.

• Get to 35 dwellers ASAP, build an endurance room.


• Kick out one dweller right away, to be safe. Stay at 34 dwellers.


• Get all new dwellers to 10 endurance.


• Each time you get a new dweller, evict one of your highest level dwellers that leveled up without the benefit of endurance training.


• Keep doing that until all your old dwellers are gone, replaced by ones that started with 10 endurance.

This takes months, and in that time you should also have accumulated plenty of rare and legendary weapons from the wasteland to arm just about everyone with. Give your best weapons to your highest level dwellers, and put them at the top to face deathclaws. Now, you can safely go beyond 35 dwellers - and all the other incidents you encounter should be pretty easy, as well.

If someone recommended this, when I started the game, I'd have laughed at them. I thought I'd be playing for a few weeks tops. Why would I put months into a silly little smartphone game? Honestly, I don't know.. but I'm still at it. I only put in a few minutes each day though.

(side note: This plan would be ruined, if the game gives you nothing but junk and blueprints from the wasteland, even long before you can build workshops. Hopefully that isn't the case.. is it?)

Is there a way you can tell if a high level dweller leveled up with high endurance to start? I cannot remember which dwellers I leveled up first.

I just never bothered levelling up endurance

I just never bothered leveling up the endurance of dwellers I'd planned on evicting anyhow. If they were under level 10, I trained them up, but never trained anyone else.

One way to tell though, is to see how they do with incidents. If you notice their health drops really fast, they probably started with no endurance.

I never evicted anyone and trained the dwellers in endurance, luck , and a appropriate skill for the room.

Luckily in my Survival vault, I got heavy wasteland gear in one of my first lunchboxes. I change dwellers into that before leveling.


I have found fires to be the most deadly. I have lost four out of about sixty dwellers, all to fire I think, one after a deathclaw attack when I was out of stimpacks.


I now dress low level dwellers in lab coats so I can see them clearly and get them out of danger.


This vault is a single column of six-dweller rooms, with elevators on each side. This keeps out mole rats, except for the lowest room. Living areas and other rooms with no occupants are staggered (so incidents don't spread) at the very bottom and I just let incidents run out. Working rooms are on the top of this vault, then training rooms, then the empty rooms all spread out.


Deathclaws start at 36 dwellers, so it's best to have about 20 or 25 tough guys before you go there.


The most important thing is not to upgrade rooms at all if possible. Upgrading makes dwellers take more damage. This is not such a big deal for the rooms that are almost always empty though.


I just lost my fifth dweller, though it didn't really count A rare dweller turned up in a lunchbox, then was instantly killed in a deathclaw attack before I could get her sorted out with a lab coat... I thought she was in a lower room but I screwed up.


This vault has also had a Mister Handy, two pets and Lead Belcher from task-reward lunchboxes.


I have done a bit of exploration, but that means sending out the precious heavy wasteland gear into jeopardy, so I will probably wait until someone hits level 50 to do more. The vault is basically stable as is.