I understand that survival mode is supposed to be hardcoe and all, but holy $#!+ ..on normal mode, I'm at about 70 dwellers, and have yet to see a single deathclaw, so had no idea what to expect. If the difference is anything like raiders survival vs normal, it wouldn't really compare anyhow.

I was getting bored of how easy that was, so found survival mode to be a great change of pace. Thought I was really getting the hang of it, carefully, methodically progressing at a nice measured rate, but then at 39 dwellers, my first deathclaw attack.

Wiped out 25-30 of my dwellers. Had lots of stimpaks, a well layed out vault, the best sawed-off shotguns I'd found so far at the front, but couldn't even click fast enough to do anything. I went from doing so well, to seeing the past week of gameplay down the drain. Might as well just delete and start over, but of course, not going to do that. I'm done.

Sorry for the whine, but wow, no idea what the devs are thinking with such an extreme difficulty spike like this.

Heavy weapons ftw

39 dwellers. I didn't have any heavy weapons, yet.

That's the reason why I don't play on survival mode - I just want to have fun.

And the chances are you won't have heavy weapons until you but some lunch boxes. ...


The key to survival is ranking your dwellers up in 'E' first get their endurance up to 10 and equip then with the highest endurance boosting clothes. Then put them to work and makes sure that your first room has the dwellers with the highest overall level in it as they'll last longer.


I don't know if it's true or not, but I think the deathclaw frequency and strength increases after 100 dwellers, so I'm currently staying smack on 100 dwellers and ranking them all up first, so that when is done, the first two rooms arts full of rank 50 dwellers to stand a chance against Deathclaws.

Get lots of dwellers upwards of 10 endurance, and then leveling them up, before passing 35 population? You don't even get to build an endurance room until 35, what a pain. That's getting way too serious about the game for me.


The problem is that normal mode is at the other extreme. Once I learned what basic mistakes to avoid, I don't even have to worry about strategy or anything. It's all just overkill for the occasional incidents I rarely even need a single stimpak for.


Where is the middle ground? I want some challenge, but not perma-death and entire vault razing deathclaws. It goes from mindnumbingly easy, to requiring fanatical min/max insanity, while still facing an everpresent risk of losing it all due to any old random thing, like targeting glitches, invisible health bars, dropping your phone at the worst time, or whatever else.

Yeah, that happened to me too....


38 Dwellers, was working on getting the E up. Then a Deathclaw attack happened. I lost only 3 Dwellers so it was still ok. And then the second attack happened immediately after and I lost 8 more dwellers.... Thus my vault was jeopardized because I had no more energy rooms manned to cover the expenses.

I like the perma death thing. I find normal mode way to easy with revival. But Deathclaws are really too hard to survive when they are not even held of for more than one second by a fully equipped vault door.

First priority for me were stimpacks, for exactly that reason, follow on attacks. It was difficult though balancing everything and I couldn't send people or to explore fire a few days, but got there in the end. Now have 2 hospitals pumping out 12 at a time.


It is a balance at around 30 dwellers add you can't rank them up yet and you're limited to luck as to the levels of the dwellers who just turn up.

Yeah, that was a big part of it. My normal raider defense group ended up being too slow, and they were the only ones with better than normal weapons. The reason I lost so many was also because after they wiped out the entire first room and a half, I just gave up. Those were most of my strongest dwellers, and I guess I'm just not cut out for perma-death. Just wanted the increased challenge, really.

There's you problem right there.

DO NOT LEVEL DWELLERS UP.

Incident difficultly is based on the level of your average dweller.

And yes it is better to stimpak your low level dweller than to level them up.

Playing survival mode is very different than playing regular mode.

Wait, what?! I thought endurance only added health per level? If you don't level them up, what's the point of training endurance?

Endurance does add health per level...

BUT higher level enemy encounters and low-damage weapons just doesn't make the trade worth it.

Were you able to get higher damage weapons then yes leveling could work.

I don't get it. The monsters you face are stronger if your dwellers have level 1 but high endurance ??

Pretty sure I uninstalled the game when Death Claws showed up at my doorstep ten times too many. I can't imagine dealing with them in a perma-death mode. Having the death claws at all pretty much threw the E3 mention of Fallout Shelter being a "casual game" out the window, down ten flights of stairs, forcefully kicked it back up ten flights of stairs, then launched it into low orbit so the concept burned up in the atmosphere. I don't blame the death claws themselves. They just want some food.

Ultimately, Fallout Shelter is a cautionary tale. Don't stay in a vault if you want to live. Staying in a vault is the best way to end up eaten by a Death Claw.

I have a pretty good system for dealing with the deathclaws and it basically involves getting out of their way. I have my rooms situated so that I can USUALLY move dwellers to recently vacated rooms to get them out of the path of the deathclaws. Even with that tactic I still lose 2 to 4 every attack as a result of:

• The app will not let me select a dweller and drag them out. (I blame the change that made it harder to accidentally drag a dweller)


• The same issue will often prevent me from selecting a dweller quickly enough to administer a stimpack.

I often have trouble with radroaches, molerats and raiders due to these selection issues. I'd often lose one or two low level dwellers trying to get them out.

Until recently I had a rapid response team of 6 lvl 40 dwellers with maxed out stats, power armor and heavy weapons. Unfortunately that team is now down to 2 because of two other issues that should be resolved:

• Dwellers have a tendency to move around a lot during a fight. Sure it looks *cute*, but they have a knack for lining up behind each other. At that point the selection process becomes difficult with that one dying dweller hiding their deteriorating health meter behind a stronger one.


• Health bars do not always display and they get lost in all that moving around. Keeping six dwellers alive is hard to do when they're constantly moving, probably wearing the same outfit, and some with bars and some without.

If they fix the constant movement, the intermittent health bars, make dweller selection almost as easy as it once was, and file down those deathclaws just a bit, survival mode would be tough, but manageable.