We’ve dealt with room construction in great detail, so this topic may not be foreign to you. But when it comes to the more advanced nuances of room construction, we feel that there are some things you should be paying attention to in particular. Let’s talk about the types of rooms, how you should be running them, and how many you should be building.
When talking about Living Quarters, we suggest only building them when really necessary. Dwellers won’t stay there unless they’re making babies or spending time for recreation, which, in other words, means they don’t spend much time in there, period. As Living Quarters need power to operate, having more than what you need would be wasteful. Only build new residences if you’ve got lots of pregnant women who need a place to give birth. Storage rooms, likewise, should only be built on a need-to-build basis.
Moving on to resource-making buildings, meaning those that generate power, food, and water, the most important thing, really, is to make sure all storage bars are green. Medbays would be more important than Science Labs, as there are a number of things that could take their toll on your Dwellers’ health – aside from the obvious RadRoach and Raider attacks, fires and even failed rushes could have a negative effect on their health. Low food supply will also have the same negative effect, so once again, be sure your food storage is in the green. To summarize things, have more Medbays than Science Labs for increased Stimpak production and more places where you can send your sick Dwellers.
There may be a point where you may feel like you have too many weapons relative to your Dweller population, but it may actually be better to have as many as possible, regardless of your population – you can always sell unwanted weapons for bottle caps, and you’ll need to have some handy in a pinch, should you find yourself facing a Raider attack or be needing to send people off to explore the Wasteland.
Another benefit of having more than enough weapons can be seen when you experience RadRoach infestations. Typically, rooms that have Dwellers armed with weapons aren’t that affected by these bug attacks, and are cleared out faster than rooms without armed Dwellers. As for keeping your unused weapons, you can keep them in your storage rooms – still, many players don’t feel the need to do this, and would rather leave their Dwellers armed. It’s more convenient that way if you’re sending Dwellers out to explore, and when you’re protecting your vault from the next Raider or RadRoach attack, which could happen when you least expect it.
It’s absolutely important that the Dwellers nearest to your vault door should be the ones who are equipped – they’re your first line of defense, so make sure they’re already armed, then equip unequipped Dwellers as you see them, assuming they’re especially vulnerable to attack.
But what if you don’t have enough weapons? That too could happen to you in Fallout Shelter, and if that’s the case, there’s a good chance you aren’t organizing exploration missions to the Wasteland too often. By all means, send some of your Dwellers out to explore, ideally the ones who have high Luck ratings – they’ll have a better chance of not only finding weapons, but good ones as well.
As a rule of thumb, you should typically have at least one Dweller out and about, exploring the Wasteland for loot. But as you see your Dweller count grow, it would be wise to send more people out – you don’t want your vault to get too crowded, and you wouldn’t want either to be way in over your head when it comes to delegating tasks. Perhaps having 5 to 10 percent of your population exploring could be a good point of reference for you.
In addition to arming your Dwellers with weapons should they go exploring, they also should have an outfit, preferably one that improves the Luck stat; outfits for added Endurance or Strength are also recommended. And you can’t send anyone out there without Stimpaks and RadAways, especially if you plan to make it a long trip to the Wasteland. Without Stimpaks and RadAways, majority of Dwellers can survive about 90 minutes, so plan things accordingly if you’re stuck in a bind without any of these two handy.
As you advance in Fallout Shelter, you’ll be unlocking more rooms, including those that can be considered training facilities. These training rooms increase your Dwellers’ SPECIAL stats, and those with higher SPECIAL ratings are naturally more productive and are happy if you assign them to the proper room. You may also focus on training weaker Dwellers in these rooms.
Take a look at which resources are lowest, or the ones that need more Dwellers for proper operations. And take a look at your Dwellers with mediocre SPECIAL stats – these are the ones you need to send to the training room that matches their weakest skill. It’ll take a few hours to train them, but your patience will be richly rewarded in the form of better production.