I just found a strategy so good it's almost cheating.


If you build your vault by skipping every second floor, MoleRats, Rad Roaches, and fires will not be able to spread vertically...


Building your shelter this way you will never have to worry about anything killing off half your vault. You will never have to deal with an infestation in more than one room at a time...

Fires, Roachs and MoleRats will be effectively quarentined to the floor they appear on...


If you need to see the trick in action you can visit my channel on youtube Hail Kira

Where I posted an Overseer's Guide to Fallout Shelter

Yup, we know this. I'm currently doing it and it's pretty awesome. We call it the Zig-Zag method.

Interesting strategy. How does it affect the time to send reinforcements against Raider and Deathclaw attacks, though?

If you checkerboard you get the same effect ... the only downside of this type strategy is it works best for small population vaults only ... if you are trying to max your population (high population and max stats) then you will need the space for ability rooms ... the easiest way to minimize the threat of the room events (radroaches, molerats, fires) is to keep as many rooms at level 1 until you have high level dwellers ... a level 1 fire or attack is laughably easy to overcome ... since the events scale with the room level don't upgrade rooms until you need to and make sure that the dwellers in them are well armed and high level

Depends on how your top floor is geared. If done correctly, you should only have one room on the top floor. I currently have a three-room wide diner on my top floor, with six dwellers equipped with some decent weapons. Raiders will always move to that room and get taken out within seconds. I just keep an eye on my dwellers health during the fights, and heal them as needed. I haven't had Deathclaws yet, but I've read this strategy works well with them, too.

Yeah that's what I did with my last vault... Raiders never make it off the top floor where I got the power station... if the survive one round of fighting, they wander to the decoy room I have to the right of it and then have to double back into the room with all the artillery again... haha... haven't encountered Deathclaws yet... I'm playing on android so I've only been playing a week

On my highest level vault (50 dwellers) all of my training rooms are two wide and at the far right, and not upgraded. Radroaches that spawn there die before they even get out of the ground, and the molerats don't last much longer. OTOH, if they spawn in one of my upgraded rooms in that vault, it can be a very tough fight with several dead dwellers that need reviving. That's improving as I find better and better weapons with my explorers. Any more, I think room upgrades are a trap that the devs put in to catch players just starting out. I'm finding with other vaults that "spreading wide" is a much better early game strategy than "going tall".

On that vault, I bought a five pack of lunchboxes when I started it, and managed to grab a couple of Gatling lasers and a set of power armor. I keep two high level dwellers up at the entrance (currently level 30-ish; I cycle dwellers through there as others get stronger). Raiders last less than 20 seconds and never leave the first room. I haven't had any deathclaw attacks yet. Later on, as the vault gets bigger and I have more caps and level 50 dwellers I'm probably going to shuffle things around, but I seem to do okay for now.

I have another vault (will be 30 dwellers after a couple of ladies give birth) that I am not buying any lunchboxes for; the only ones they get are the ones they earn in the game. It's definitely a bit slower starting out, and raiders still give me a bit of a hard time because I have so few weapons, and nothing any better than 5-6 damage. OTOH, I've kept all the rooms at level 1, building more as I need more resources. I haven't had to revive a dweller yet. No molerats yet, though.

After hearing about deathclaws I figured I better check them out... So I watched a video of Deathclaws attacking some poor guys vault... it was devastating...

The thing comes in tears stuff up and moves so fast...


But I got a plan for them too... I just have to get up the the point where I can test it... gonna take a few days I think... but I can't wait to see if this will work

I'm still scared of getting them in my big vault, to the point where I haven't even built the radio room. All my population growth is by breeding. While everyone in my vault is armed, only a handful of them have truly good weapons. Everyone else's ranges from meh to near junk (I have managed to at least winnow out the BB guns and the rusty .32 pistols).

It's going to be a while before I can test anything out, though. I'm moving next weekend and am not going to have a lot of time for playing this (or any) game.

Before I was attacked by the deathlaw i was able to easily stop the raiders in less than a minute b/c my top floor was well equipped with dwellers with the best ammunition. Nothing less than 13-14 hits. In fact it got too easy. Then the deathclaw entered and I was shocked at how quickly they went from room to room. I had about 80 people and they managed to kill about 10 dwellers which isn't too bad. I also got hit by the deathclaw about 6 times in like 2 days. Went from scary to just annoying. Since my first floor is strong, they kill one of three deathclaws before they can get to the next room, but some dwellers health gets pretty low and I have to give healthpacks to the weak dwellers before they die. One thing for sure is this game is fun! Can't wait for future updates!

Awesome. Next time I lose a vault I'm a try this fo sho!

Curious. The only way to win is to not play the game.

Not exactly. Shelter is essentially an AFK game, and actually "punishes" you by not playing it that way.

The more time you spend in-game, the more prone you'll be to random attacks and hazards, so, just connect for a few minutes, get your resources, rush, increase stats, level up, equip, build, relocate dweller and disconnect; the less time you take, the smaller the window for hazardous events.

I think he was spoofing war games the 80s movie with Matthew Broderick.


Joshua's understanding of tic tac toe and Global Thermal Nuclear war as games....


But yes this game is more rewarding to those who check in frequently for 1-5 minutes vs. People who wish to prefer watching their ant colony.


I don't know if it was intentional but they almost created a Schrodinger's Cat model.


Our dwellers are in a constant state of being both dead and alive while we are logged off...


Upon logging on and observing their status they take on a fixed status of being either dead or alive.


They fare much better while not being observed....

In some ways, yes. But you also get tons more of caps if you're active from all the leveling guys up and collecting resources.

I'm pretty sure your guys level up way slower when you're not on the game either.


I think there's pros and cons from both ways.

Leveling it's slower, that's true, but much safer A successful rush, depending on hazard chance, nets you about 25-40 caps on average or so, and depending on the amount of resource rooms you have, you don't get thaat many caps from rushes

Also, since there seems to be a cooldown of about 5m or so for rushes to drop to their minimal hazard chance, unless you want high risk rushes for more caps, I'm with JoE Smash's side... I feel it's best to connect every 5-10 minutes to do the rushes, then log off to the main menu instead of watching an ant colony.

Still, there are many ways to play the game, people more active will level up and get more content faster, like many other games. Since I don't have that much time to play, I prefer the, although slower, safer approach.

My top floor has 5 single (4 resource and 1 gym) non upgraded rooms with my strongest and best armed, no elevator at the end, deathclaws have never made it to 2nd floor.

Upgraded rooms do not give a worthwhile boost until you have 100+ with near max stats, weaps and stat boost clothes.