Fallout Shelter deviates from the standard Fallout formula by putting you in the shoes of an overseer who has to ensure the prosperity of their vault. Starting out can be daunting and complex, but we have you covered.
If you’re not used to management-style games, Fallout Shelter can be challenging to get started with. You start the game with a handful of dwellers that take up prominent positions in your vault and will quickly have to expand by adding more rooms and attracting more people. These people will then work in your vault, start families, and create a thriving living environment.
Surviving the game’s early stages can be hard, with various threats lurking around the corner. These 10 tips will help you make the early game easier, allowing for better vault management.
1) Dweller management
Managing your population is key. Every dweller spawns with their own combination of SPECIAL stats, resulting in units having different work specialties. Knowing where best to place every dweller is essential to running an optimal vault: Every functioning room in the vault utilizes one of the dwellers’ seven stats.
Every dweller has a primary stat that originates from either Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. Checking a certain room will indicate which primary stat is needed for it to function optimally, so move the appropriate dwellers to them.
For best results, you can open the dweller list and sort them via their levels or attributes, making them easier to manage. You can also keep track of their location here.
2) Completing objectives
As you progress through the game, quests will pop up from time to time. You have daily quests, weekly objectives, and some limited-time quests that provide caps and special rewards. Since you won’t be able to do all of them early, we recommend sticking to daily quests.
Daily and weekly objectives generally give you tasks you can complete at your level. They can be as simple as creating a new room or leveling up an existing one, so make sure you are on top of them whenever possible. You can also rush rooms to gain more caps, but this method is risky and can cause incidents in your vault.
3) Increasing population
To maintain the smooth operation of a thriving vault, you will need people and lots of them. You will have to maintain the dwellers’ basic needs, which involve power, water, and food. The more people you have working in a room, the better its work rate will be, which leads to a better output and faster need fulfillment.
So, how do you get more dwellers? Pair your existing ones together and have them make babies. Also, from time to time, you will encounter wastelanders looking for a place to live. As you expand your vault, you can also add the Radio Studio room to attract more outsiders this way.
4) Vault expansion rate
As your population increases, you will need to make more space in your vault. This includes building more and expanding existing power generators, diners, and water treatment plants. Eventually, you will need storage rooms to stock up on equipment and medbays to treat sick or injured dwellers that have returned from exploration.
With so many rooms to choose from, including training rooms later on, planning your vault’s layout is important. Visualize the rooms and the space they will take upon upgrading, and place your elevators accordingly so your dwellers can travel quickly between them. Having 2-3 sets of elevators makes traversing easier. It doesn’t hurt to splurge a few extra caps for efficiency.
Make sure not to expand too quickly. Not only does management get trickier, but there is another matter you will need to cater to.
5) Defending against attacks
The other matter at hand is the attacks that will come your way. Whenever you have spare caps, make sure you upgrade your vault door and preferably place a couple of guards in the vicinity. As one of the few safe bastions in the wasteland, you will be attacked from time to time by other humans as well as terrors from the outside.
Early attacks will be minimal and easy to handle with basic defenses. However, as your vault size and population increase, more powerful attacks will come your way. Wastelanders will be better equipped, and higher-leveled creatures might tunnel through your defenses.
Be on the lookout for Deathclaws. Deathclaw attacks happen after your vault’s population exceeds 60. Plan ahead of time and ensure you are well-prepared for them because they can cause immense damage.
6) Wasteland exploration
The wastelands beyond your vault are dangerous and teeming with enemies that can take out your explorers if you’re not careful. While most explorations are done solo, you can also form a team to survey specific areas as part of certain objectives.
Exploration is also one of the quickest ways to level up certain dwellers. Just make sure you equip them properly first. You will want an appropriate armored outfit with a strong weapon to ensure they can take out any enemies. Giving your explorers enough Stimpaks and RadAways before they leave will help them power through a lot of the problems they might face.
7) Mysterious Stranger encounters
By this point, you have encountered all sorts of human and non-human creatures making their way into your vault. However, there is a special case. The Mysterious Stranger is a unique character that can spawn at any location in your vault after his signature three-note tune plays.
Early in the game, he should be easy to spot since your vault will still be quite small in stature. When you do find him, make sure to click him to gain a few caps. The amount of caps you can gain by doing this is quite random, with some encounters granting 50-100 while others might net you thousands.
8) Dweller training
As you level up your existing dwellers and gain more of them, it becomes important to make sure your residents are in the best shape they can be to tackle any encounter. Training your dwellers is the best way to achieve this, with the game providing different training rooms depending on the SPECIAL stat you want to raise.
Training rooms unlock once your vault exceeds 24 dwellers. There are seven training rooms that unlock at different dweller population caps and provide different benefits.
| Room | Required population | Stat raised |
| Weight Room | 24 | Strength |
| Athletics Room | 26 | Agility |
| Armory | 28 | Perception |
| Classroom | 30 | Intelligence |
| Fitness Room | 35 | Endurance |
| Lounge | 40 | Charisma |
| Game Room | 45 | Luck |
Depending on your dwellers’ assignments, they might be better suited for certain rooms. Dwellers with a high Strength stat should be assigned to the power generators; those with high Agility should report to the diner; and the ones with high Perception should work at the water treatment plants.
9) Outfit management
Sometimes, your dwellers’ current stats just won’t cut it for a certain task. To offset that problem, you should acquire outfits. They let you raise certain dwellers’ stats beyond what their training would allow. At first, you can only acquire outfits as rewards for completing objectives, but as you gain more dwellers, that starts to change.
The outfit workshop unlocks when your population exceeds 32. This room lets your dwellers craft their own outfits customized to your needs. Once your population exceeds 90, you will gain access to the outfit plant, an advanced workshop that can also craft Legendary ones, giving your dwellers all the protection they need.
10) Legendary dwellers
Now that you’re almost set to run your vault, you will need to learn about one final thing: Legendary dwellers. Since your vault runs on dwellers, having more of them with their stats as high as possible is optimal, and Legendary dwellers provide just that. You can find your early Legendary dwellers as objective rewards for these quests.
- A Settler Needs Your Help
- Climbing the Ranks
- Searching in the Dark
Legendary dwellers can also appear as characters brought in by your radio station. Once you have a few of them, you can attempt to have them start a family by making babies. If both parents are Legendary dwellers, the chances of creating a Legendary dweller baby are very high. Almost nothing can stand in your way with enough Legendary dwellers in your vault.
