Section 11: Objectives - therabidsquirel/The-Fallout-Shelter-FAQ GitHub Wiki

11.1

Q: I got an objective completion pet, what do they do?

A: They're insanely useful for completing objectives faster, see 8.8 for how they work.

11.2

Q: Are there easy ways to grind objectives?

A: There are:

Using an objective completion pet can speed tonnes of things up (see 11.1).
See 11.3 for using radio rooms to help.
See 11.4 for tips on "without a weapon" objectives.
For any rush or interior incident related objectives, either keep an existing level 1 single room, or make a new one temporarily for the sake of the objective. It's important it's level 1, see 6.2 on incident strength. Either get one or two new dwellers or use some existing ones, preferably low room stat and luck (see 3.10 on rushing). Give them preferably good weapons, then throw them in the room and rush the crap out of it. Make sure the room is touching dirt if it's a mole rat objective you're going for. You can also disarm them if it's a kill X mole rats/radroaches without a weapon objective (read more on those in 11.4). You can also assign a Mr. Handy to the floor and assign a pet to one of the dwellers to further help (both of which can also help with no weapon objectives).
There are several objectives related to pregnancy and breeding. For all of them you can have a bunch of kids just to get the objective, then evict them as soon as they grow up so you don't actually grow your population. If you really want to grind them you can have a bunch of dwellers that exist solely for that purpose with max charisma to ensure quick breeding times.
See 11.7 for tips on the Mysterious Stranger.
For any collect weapon/outfit/junk or craft weapon/outfit objectives, excess crafting rooms and junk will certainly speed things up. Crafting weapons/outfits counts for both of those, so unless the objective specifies rare weapons/outfits, just make a bunch of the cheapest common items you can. Even for the rare ones though if you've got great crafting times you can go through those quickly. On collect junk, junk collected from scrapping weapons/outfits counts. You probably don't want to use legendary junk, but if you craft then scrap rare weapons/outfits you'll likely get a fair amount of junk per item, and will even get most of your junk back too (so it's not like you need a mountain of excess junk).
For the collect X power/water/food in under a minute objectives, there are a couple things that can help. Use an Objective Completion pet (see 11.1) if you have one. You can try rushing rooms, just be sure to do it after collecting from the room, as rushes reset room timers regardless of what they were at. You can temporarily build more rooms and throw more dwellers in to try and up your production as well. Probably the most useful thing you can do though, if you have Mr. Handy, is exit the game. Resources continue to drain and resource room timers continue to count down for a couple minutes after you exit, but if Mr. Handy can gather enough to complete the objective in that time you should get the objective when you enter your vault again, even if it otherwise would've put you over a minute.

11.3

Q: I've heard radio rooms are good for objectives?

A: You can use them for several useful things, yes:

For objectives to raise dwellers to 100% happiness, if you have dwellers that are at 100% happiness, then removing a dweller from the radio room and throwing them back in keeps everyone at the same happiness level but counts every dweller that is at 100%. Radio rooms make it stupidly easy by having to drag one dweller twice.
Any kind of deathclaw attack objectives become much easier. When you load up your vault, if you have a signal in a radio room waiting, use it and call a dweller. It's not guaranteed, but you should have a good chance of getting attacked by deathclaws. Repeatedly sending dwellers in and out of the wastes should also eventually trigger an attack. See 6.15 for confirmation that this can trigger deathclaws. If you want to be methodical about using the vault door, give this post (firaro) a look. Either way, just waiting around for deathclaws to attack can sometimes take quite a while.
They can help with any kind of rush or interior incident related objectives. If you follow the fourth bullet in 11.2 for these, you can use the radio room to bring in a new dweller or two solely for using them for the objective(s), then "dispose" of them after you're done. The only real benefit to this is you don't have to worry about messing with the happiness of actual dwellers in your vault from all the failed rushes, as you're essentially using disposable dwellers.

11.4

Q: Holy crap, kill X (insert incident enemy here) without a weapon, how is that even possible?

A: For any of these objectives there are two important things to know. For it to count, whatever you have to kill has to be killed in a room that is completely unarmed and has been for as long as the enemy has been in the room. This means they have to be unarmed for the length of an interior incident, but for exterior incidents you just have to disarm before they get to the room. Previous damage from armed dwellers in other rooms doesn't matter either. The second thing is that Mr. Handy counts as unarmed, so if you've got one have him on the same floor where the unarmed room is that will be dealing with the incident. +X Damage pets also don't break the unarmed rule, so definitely use any you have. If you have an Objective Completion pet (see 11.1), equip them in the unarmed room.

Radroaches and mole rats are easy, check bullet 4 in 11.2. That method might also work for radscorpions, but as they can teleport to another room after enough time even while being fought it might not be reliable. Try with Handy and a damage pet and see if you can kill them before they spread.

For deathclaws and raiders it's trickier. The most reliable method is to "calibrate" the first rooms in your vault, such that you have weapons in the first room(s), that way the raiders/deathclaws get softened up. In the room where they'd die, make that your unarmed room. Absolutely use an Objective Completion pet and a Mr. Handy if you have either or both, as with this method you probably won't be able kill all the enemies in the attack in the same unarmed room. Check 6.2 on incident strength, and know as they get tougher or weaker you might have to recalibrate your rooms to change where they die. Another method is to totally disarm everyone at the start of the vault, which can work well for raiders, but is almost certainly a bad idea for deathclaws.

11.5

Q: This objective is just plain ridiculous, what do I do?

A: Some just are, and some you probably just don't feel like trying to do even though they are possible to grind. All you can do is wait for your daily skip or use 2 quantums if you feel it's worth it (see 19.3 for best quantum use). You can hold onto it if you really want to, but even if it awards a lunchbox, pet, or Mr. Handy and is a really hard objective, you might get another easier objective and complete it before you even would've finished the hard one. Some you just have to skip, your call.

11.6

Q: Has anyone collected lots of data around objectives?

A: There was a reddit post I previously had linked here where someone logged grinding through a tonne of objectives over the course of a month. Unfortunately that post has since been deleted, and I don't currently know of any other collections of data or anything on objectives.

11.7

Q: What are some tips for finding the Mysterious Stranger?

A: There are a number of things you can do:

You can use Stranger Chance pets, which sort of act like magnets increasing the chance he will appear in a room one of the pets is in, see here (Mayumi7). The pet effect does not increase his frequency of appearing, it just changes the likelihood of where he will appear. You can only use one per room per the rules of pet stacking (8.4), but if you have multiple the best method would be to put all of them in separate but close triple rooms (the pet has an increased effect so to say from single to double to triple rooms). That section of your vault where all the pets are will be an area you should always check first then, as it will be a powerful magnet for the Stranger, especially if you have a lot of pets.
Make sure you have sounds on as when he appears he plays an entrance sound, and it's directional to where he is from where you're looking, so headphones/earbuds with stereo sound will help. The sound will also be louder the closer he is to where you're looking. You'll know you've missed him when his leaving sound plays. The downside here is that if you're zoomed out the sound level is always low as if he was far away, even if he's in the middle of your screen.
If you're on a mobile device it will vibrate twice as he enters and once as he leaves, if you have that enabled.
He appears in elevators and in certain spots in each room, so learning over time what he looks like and where he appears will make it easier.
If you turn HD zoom out off he's much easier to spot when zoomed all the way out. The only disadvantage to this is when he's in an elevator, as when that happen while it's 3D the elevator door is open and the light is green. Zoomed out with HD zoom out off will only have him standing in the elevator. He's not hard to spot in elevators anyway, so I think the benefits of having HD zoom out off definitely outweigh that.

This post (istril) is a good example of using these tips to find him in a large vault.

11.8

Q: Why do I have an objective to kill protectrons/eyebots without a weapon? They're a quest enemy, but I thought that objective type was in the vault only?

A: "Without a weapon" objectives are indeed vault-only, while protectrons and eyebots are quest-only enemies. This is straight up an impossible objective, you'll have to skip it. Thanks to the huge data mine here from Lasercar, we can see that protectron and eyebot incidents are sitting unused in the game, which unfortunately means they can be selected for this objective type even though they aren't implemented.