Section 20: Quests - therabidsquirel/The-Fallout-Shelter-FAQ GitHub Wiki

20.1

Q: How do SPECIALs affect questing?

A: Here's what's known:

  • Perception: Slows the arrows down during the crit mini-game, making it easier to get a higher damage multiplier. Even with very low perception though it's not too hard to reliably get the highest multiplier, x5, it just takes a bit of practice.

  • Endurance: Good for health as always, check out 4.1 for details.

  • Agility: Increases attack rate. Here's what this looks like (GOD-WAS-A-MUFFIN). It does not affect crit build, only luck does, see my post here.

  • Luck: Causes the crit meter to build faster for more frequent critical hits. It does not affect the loot you get, loot is fixed. It is possible it affects how many caps you get, seeing as how luck does this in the vault and exploration, but I don't know for sure. You can check 15.6 out yourself to see the breakdown for all (or at least most) quests. While sometimes loot is fixed exactly, it's usually only fixed in two ways:

    • Whether it's a weapon, outfit, junk, or recipe.

    • Whether it's common, rare, or legendary.

  • Strength, Charisma, and Intelligence: While they don't do anything on quests, quests can still sometimes require dwellers to have any SPECIAL stat at a high value to go on the quest, so you might not want to completely ignore these.

The effects of PAL are given in the game's help menu, but nothing is said about SCI. When quests were added in 1.6 a year after the game's release, there was plenty of debate about whether SCI did anything. Initially this comment (SlowbroGGOP) from a notable member of the community was the best evidence that SCI really do have no effect. Over time people agreed on it, and I've never seen any evidence SCI do anything on quests. If you do have any sort of evidence I would be very interested.

A common claim is that strength increases damage, not just in quests, but everywhere. Sometimes the claim is that it's just melee weapon damage. I've only ever seen claims though, never any data or evidence. The linked comment in the previous paragraph has mention of some testing of strength with melee weapons in quests and noticing no difference. There's also 2.6 with further testing I did of strength in general and finding nothing compelling. If you do have any evidence or testing I would again be very interested.

20.2

Q: What's the best weapon for questing?

A: Weapons actually behave differently while questing. In exploration and the vault it's just weapon damage, but quests have an additional mechanic separating weapons into four main types:

  • Single Shot: Most weapons fall under this category, with the best being the Dragon's Maw (22-29). On each attack interval they deal all of their damage in one chunk to one enemy.

  • Melee: Self-explanatory what weapons are in this category, with the best being the Fire Hydrant Bat (19-31). These deal damage exactly the same as single shot weapons but with two important additions. Enemies can only be attacked by one melee dweller at a time, and the target of the melee dweller must attack them back. If there's only one melee dweller in your group then this doesn't matter much, the other dwellers can still shoot the enemy being engaged by your melee dweller. With multiple melee weapons on a quest though, melee dwellers with no free target will do absolutely nothing.

    • The Power Fist (added in the mobile-only Anniversary update) is not actually melee, mechanically speaking. It doesn't prevent other Power Fist or melee users from attacking the same target, it doesn't force the target to attack them, and it actually deals damage as a multi-shot weapon.

  • Multi-Shot: Typically rapid fire weapons like Miniguns and Gatling Lasers fall under this category, with the best being the Vengeance (21-26). On each attack interval they split their damage between a number of shots they fire in quick succession. If they kill their target but haven't fired all the shots from the interval yet, then they will switch targets mid-attack. This is good because it doesn't waste extra damage on enemies near death like single shot weapons do, and as a consequence these weapons may be better than single shot weapons that have slightly more damage (such as Vengeance compared to Dragon's Maw).

  • Area of Effect (AOE): Only Missile Launchers and Fat Men fall under this category, with the best being the MIRV (22-27). On each attack interval they split their weapon damage among all the enemies in the room. This means the more enemies the less damage to each enemy, and they cannot focus fire on enemies. The crit damage portion of a critical hit from them are single target though.

Note as well that animations are usually unreliable. .32 pistols for example are animated as firing multiple shots, but only deal one chunk of damage and so would be considered single shot. Higher damage weapons should very often be priority, but sometimes you might want to sacrifice a bit of damage to have certain weapon types. I would not recommend all AOE for example, as this means you would be unable to focus fire on tougher enemies like bosses that really should be focused. Some people prefer all single shot or all multi-shot, while others prefer mixes like one AOE and either two single shot or two multi-shot. I would highly recommend against having more than one melee though, as one or two dwellers standing there doing nothing while the other engages a boss by themselves is a very bad situation.

For random quests, as you only have the one explorer I would advise against giving them an AOE weapon (if you want them to do random quests of course). The other types are fine. Focusing fire is even more important here due to enemies sometimes being much tougher and dwellers sometimes needing to save stimpaks and RadAway for continued exploration.

20.3

Q: What's the best outfit for questing?

A: Refer to the SPECIAL breakdown in 20.1 for details on the important stats. Endurance is only necessary while leveling up, so for level 50 questers outfits that focus PAL are best. An exclusive focus on agility (Expert Jumpsuit at +7A) is probably best for the extra DPS, but spread out stats work well too, like Heavy Merc Gear (+2PL, +3A). Death's Jacket (+4 PEAL) is amazing for quests, but you can only ever get one.

For random quests and explorers though you also have to consider what outfit you want for exploration. As long as an explorer has max agility and luck from training that should be sufficient for quests, letting you tailor their outfit to exploration instead (see 10.4).

20.4

Q: What's the best pet for questing?

A: The best pets are similar to the best pets for explorers. Anything that helps a quester stay alive is very useful, as some bosses on quests can hit ridiculously hard. I'd break the most useful down like this:

Health > Damage Resistance > Damage > Return Speed

Return speed affects all members of a quest while returning (as they have to travel together). Bonuses don't stack though, only the highest is used, see 8.4 on pet stacking.

Any kind of pet also provides a damage bonus on quests (and in the vault) based on their rarity. See 8.9 for more info. So even if you don't have a pet with a useful effect, you can still bring some along for the damage boost. If you're playing on survival it's also a really good idea to have at least one pet per quest group. If the whole team wipes, you still lose the dwellers, but the pet will bring back all of their equipment.

20.5

Q: How does the overseer's office work?

A: You must first build an overseer's office to enable questing, which is its only purpose. You can only build one of them, it has to be double size, and you cannot assign any dwellers to it (though incidents can still start and spread in them). You can destroy the room even with dwellers questing, and this will not influence them at all. Destroying the room will just prevent sending dwellers on quests until it is rebuilt again, so feel free to move it even if you have questers out. As soon as you build it for the first time it forces you into a tutorial quest. While it's forcing you through the setup incidents can happen and stuff can go wrong, but because it's during a tutorial it doesn't save. Force quit the game if something bad happens during the tutorial and it will revert. It's a really good tutorial though and covers a lot of basics, so at least do that first before asking questions about questing. At level 1 the overseer's office only lets you do 1 quest at a time, but you can upgrade to do 2 then 3 quests consecutively. You can send 1-3 dwellers on a quest, and more will make it much easier obviously.

20.6

Q: What are the requirements for questing?

A: First, for every requirement it applies to every dweller that you want to bring along. There are five kinds of requirements:

  • Level requirements. Every dweller must be at least the level specified.

  • Damage requirements. Symbolized by a target and number, it represents the maximum weapon damage each dweller must have. Average or minimum weapon damage doesn't matter, they just have to have at least that in maximum.

  • Equipment requirements. It will be either a weapon or outfit, or both. In any case it's usually the type of weapon/outfit, so if for example it specifies .32 pistol then anything from a rusty one to Wild Bill's Sidearm will work. Once in the quest you can freely swap weapons and outfits around with anything you find.

  • SPECIAL requirements. You might see a letter with a number next to it representing the level of a SPECIAL stat that is required for each dweller. An example of such a quest here and here (bluspacecow).

  • Dweller requirements. Sometimes it limits the maximum amount of dwellers you can send to two or even one.

20.7

Q: How does quest combat work?

A: It differs drastically from vault combat. Dwellers only attack one enemy at a time (and enemies only attack one dweller at a time). Dwellers automatically attack different enemies when combat starts, but you can retarget dwellers at any time. You can tap and drag on a dweller to get a target and drag it onto an enemy (which I've found works very well on PC), and you can also tap a dweller to bring up their info sheet and from there just tap an enemy (which I've found works very well on a mobile device). In both cases the enemy should flash a red outline to let you know they were targeted.

As mentioned in 20.2 different weapon types behave a little differently, but the core of it is that dwellers attack in intervals at a set rate based on their agility and deal damage based on their weapon. All you have to do is change targets if you don't like how they auto-attack, be sure to apply stimpaks and RadAway as needed, and use crits when you deem it necessary. Be careful, as some bosses in particular can be very powerful. Boss radscorpions and deathclaws in particular can one hit level 50 dwellers if they weren't leveled with high endurance (see 4.1).

20.8

Q: How do critical hits work?

A: As dwellers fight their invisible critical hit meter builds up, and it builds up faster with higher luck. When it reaches full a yellow check mark will appear over the enemy that dweller is targeting. Selecting it will freeze time for the critical hit mini-game. Select the target when the arrows are closer to the center to do more damage, up to x5 bonus damage. Higher perception makes the arrows go slower to make it easier for you. The dweller will then deal that damage exclusively to their target, even with AOE weapons, and will immediately follow it up with a regular attack (that will be AOE if the weapon is). This regular attack that follows the crit doesn't appear to mess with the timing of a dweller's attacks, as in using a crit right before a dweller would attack causes them to inflict crit damage and then follow up with two back to back regular attacks. As far as I can see there is no optimum way to use crits depending on when the dweller last attacked.

There is another way to optimize crit usage though, as you can save critical hits indefinitely on the same quest. If you see a check mark appear but in the current fight there's only weak or near dead enemies, then just don't select the check mark. It'll keep appearing over enemies across fights until you select it, so rather than wasting it on radroaches you can save it for a radscorpion, deathclaw, any boss enemy, or whatever is tougher.

Crits build independent of fire rate meaning agility does not affect it, see my post.

20.9

Q: How do random quests with explorers work?

A: As explorers do their thing they can stumble upon random quests. A lot of people just refer to them as random locations or the like because that's what they are, but I call them random quests to emphasize that they behave exactly like quests. Discovering them is real time and you have to be in-game to get the notification. If you do get lucky you'll see a notification in the top left of your screen, and you can select it and choose to enter what the explorer has discovered.

Specifically, every 60 seconds in-game it checks to give you a random quest, and the chance increases only with the number of explorers you have out. It's not a linear increase, each explorer adds 2% at first, the amount decreasing as you add more, maxing at 20% with 21 explorers. There's a 20 minute cooldown between random quests. Perception does not affect the chances, despite it being commonly claimed. These specifics were uncovered in this huge thread here.

If you accept, then at this point everything functions like a quest. The explorable area will only ever be one to a few rooms, but enemies can still be very tough, sometimes tougher than normal quests. During the quest you can swap gear out on the explorer with anything they found up until that point, but be sure they're equipped with what you want them to explore with before you end the quest. Random quests are harder the higher the level of the explorer, but they also reward more, and random quests can reward very well. You might need to use a good number of stimpaks and RadAway, so for this reason it is advised that even if your explorers have 11+ endurance for exploration rad immunity that they still carry some RadAway in case they get a random quest. If they succeed at the quest they will add what they found to their inventory and keep exploring (or auto-return if it put them at the limit).

20.10

Q: What if I give up on a quest or any dwellers die during one?

A: If some but not all dwellers die, you can only revive them after completing and exiting the quest. Reviving costs caps based on their level, from 100 caps at level 1 to 1000 caps at level 50. There are no other penalties for death. The dweller that died and others in the group don't lose happiness, and no items are lost. If everyone dies or you give up, the quest is failed and you don't get to keep anything you found. In the case of death you can choose to revive all the dwellers and try again, paying the revival cost for each plus a small cost to retry the quest (I don't believe the retry cost ever exceeds 1000 caps). Death is of course still permanent in survival, so if a dweller dies in a quest, random or not, it's over for them.

If there's still a party member left alive after a quest in survival, or you choose not to revive someone in normal, the surviving members will carry the gear of their dead comrades back. If they all die in survival, and in normal if you also choose not to revive them, their equipment will all be lost, unless they had at least one pet equipped, in which case the pet(s) will bring back all their equipped weapons and outfits.

20.11

Q: Why didn't I get the reward from a quest?

A: Any boxes (lunchboxes, pet carriers, Mr. Handy), Quantums, and dwellers are carried with your explorer/questers, but will not show up anywhere in their inventory. You will get them when you finally collect back at the vault. Dwellers you got from a quest will only appear in the vault line once you've collected your explorer or quest team.

Also keep in mind that a lot of the time the rewards for quests have to be looted. The reward will be in the same room where the objective is completed, but it's still a very good idea to loot every single shining object and dead enemy. You can often find stimpaks and RadAway in loot too, and especially in the case of random quests that can really help.

20.12

Q: What determines how hard a quest is?

A: For all random quests there are different difficulty variants that the game picks from depending on the explorer's level. Harder variants of the same random quest also provide greater rewards. This means that your early game explorer that's hit level 50 but has very low SPECIAL will probably get demolished because they're getting the hardest variant of the quest.

For normal quests it's the listed required level. A required level in the single digits will be able to be done with low level dwellers and weak weapons, while a level 50 quest means whoever you're sending should definitely be prepared.

20.13

Q: How many stimpaks and RadAway can questers carry?

A: Regardless of how many dwellers are in a quest group, you can only give them a max of 25 each (like with explorers). If you find more in loot though during the quest it can go over, and they can carry as many stimpaks and RadAway as they can find.

20.14

Q: Why are some enemies really strong?

A: It's probably a boss enemy. All bosses will have a skull next to their health bar to indicate this. It's usually best to focus fire on the bosses to take them down as quick as possible, both because they can deal a lot more damage and they all have special attacks. As soon as you enter a room you can see the enemies (or start to see them coming up from the ground). The fight won't start until everyone is fully in the room though, meaning you can't see the health bars right away. You can instead use visual cues to determine if an enemy is a boss. I don't know if the 1.15 enemies (protectrons, eyebots, and aliens) have boss variants. Here's a breakdown of the visuals and special attacks of all the bosses I do know:

  • Radroach:

    • Will be larger than normal and glowing green.

    • The special attack involves raising its head in a roar, which after a short while then summons 1-4 additional radroaches into the fight. It is unknown if there is a limit to how many it can summon, and though it shouldn't use the attack too often, it's best to kill it quick.

  • Mole Rat:

    • Will be larger than normal.

    • The special attack involves raising its head in a roar, which after a short while then summons 1-2 additional mole rats into the fight. It is unknown if there is a limit to how many it can summon, and though it shouldn't use the attack too often, it's best to kill it quick.

  • Ghoul:

    • Will be glowing green.

    • The special attack involves raising its hands in the air, which then deals a significant amount of radiation damage to all of your dwellers and heals any other ghouls in the room. Be prepared to apply RadAway and possibly stimpaks right after this attack.

  • Radscorpion:

    • Will be larger than normal and glowing green.

    • The special attack involves raising its claws above it as an orange glow appears, which will cause its next attack to deal massive damage. This is one of two strongest attacks in the game and can one hit full health dwellers that don't have good max health (see 4.1). Having at least E13 leveled questers is a very good idea, as is healing the target of the boss to full before being hit.

  • Raider:

    • Will have black paint across their eyes and have different armor unique to bosses.

    • The special attack involves pulling out a glowing orange grenade which they will then throw at their target. This deals AOE damage to all of your dwellers, and it appears to function like AOE weapons as well in that it splits damage between targets (meaning this can do a lot of damage to single dwellers, like on a random quest). Especially on a random quest it might be wise to heal up before being hit.

  • Deathclaw:

    • Will be larger than normal.

    • The special attack involves raising its arms above it as an orange glow appears, which will causes its next attack to deal massive damage. This is one of two strongest attacks in the game and can one hit full health dwellers that don't have good max health (see 4.1). Having at least E13 leveled questers is a very good idea, as is healing the target of the boss to full before being hit.

20.15

Q: Can I affect which dwellers are attacked more?

A: Not quite, no. It seems like if there are a different amount of enemies in the room compared to your dwellers that the enemy targeting is random, and there's no way to ensure one dweller is being targeted more. Enemies will always try to divide their forces among your dwellers though, and they do this dynamically throughout the battle. Say you have 3 dwellers against 5 enemies. The enemies will split their attention in a 2-2-1 spread at first. Say the enemy attacking a dweller by themselves dies first, so the spread is now 2-2-0, then one enemy will automatically switch targets to even it out and make a 2-1-1 spread.

However, there is a limited method to control the target of enemies. A dweller with a melee weapon will force their target to attack them back, so against a boss encounter for example you could have a tankier melee dweller target the boss to force its aggression. I would highly advise against more than one melee dweller on a quest though as they can't attack the same target at once, and if a melee dweller has no valid target they just stand around doing nothing.

20.16

Q: What random wasteland quests are worth it?

A: Check out my post here for a loot summary for all of them, though this is dated to version 1.13. Android and iOS on version 1.18 have some new random quests and even new possible locations. I don't have a list of these unfortunately.

20.17

Q: Is there somewhere I can easily find the answers for the trivia questions in the Game Show Gauntlet weekly quest?

A: A good compilation of questions with answers is here (istril).

20.18

Q: Does what I pick in a dialogue choice matter?

A: Depends. A good number of dialogue choices are fluff and don't make any difference, but there are those that do matter. The ones that do are almost always worded such that their effect is obvious to make it easy. There are a couple different types of choices, as follows:

  • Pick your reward: An NPC will be offering you something, and your choices will explicitly be what you'll get. Stuff like "a weapon", "an outfit", "medical supplies", etc.

  • Fight or not: You'll come across an NPC and the choices will clearly be friendly to them or start a fight. Something like you'll come across a ghoul and they'll tell you they're friendly, and you'll have choices like "Cool, let's be friends!" and "I don't care, I hate ghouls." I'm not even exaggerating that much, they really do make it obvious.

  • Answer the question: I think this only applies to the trivia questions in the Game Show Gauntlet weekly quest. Answer correctly and you'll get a reward, but pick a wrong answer and you'll have to fight. For a list of questions with answers see 20.17.

20.19

Q: Why can I only send one or two questing teams out, I thought the max was three?

A: It is, but you first have to upgrade the overseer's office. Level 1 is one team, level 2 is up to two teams, and level 3 is up to three teams. In addition to the usual caps cost for upgrading, upgrading also requires you to have a certain population (like the three workshops). You only need the population when you go to do the upgrade, you can remove dwellers after and be fine so long as you don't delete the office. Here are the population requirements:

Room Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
Overseer's Office 18 to unlock 30 to upgrade 55 to upgrade

20.20

Q: What are quest clues?

A: They're an item you can find on any quests, though they're insanely rare. If one of your teams finds one, then when they get back to your vault and you collect them one of five hidden quests will be added to your quest list. They all offer the best loot of any quests by far, and are also some of the hardest quests. The five are:

  • Factory Floor of Fear
  • The Mystery of Vault 666
  • Vault 789
  • Welcome to Paradise
  • With Friends Like These

There is however a guaranteed quest clue as one of the rewards at the very end of the Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse questline. You're on your own for the other four though, and good luck finding even one, they're that rare.

20.21

Q: What weapons and outfits will I need for quest requirements?

A: User princetonwu made a nice list here of every required weapon and outfit for all the quests, though this is dated to version 1.13. Android and iOS on version 1.18 have a few extra requirements that I don't know specifically. As far as what you need when you just have daily and weekly quests left, I only recall seeing raider armor and radiation suits being required. In most cases variants are fine, so if for example it specifies .32 pistol then anything from a rusty one to Wild Bill's Sidearm will work. Once in the quest you can freely swap weapons and outfits around with anything you find.

20.22

Q: Why am I not seeing the rest of the quests in a quest chain? Why am I not seeing other quests at all?

A: Many quests will only appear once your average dweller level is high enough (viewable in the stats page). Even in quest chains some of the later quests have higher level requirements to appear than earlier quests. I don't know of any resource for seeing all of these limits, I just know they exist for many quests. You never permanently lose quests because of this, so it's not of much concern. As average dweller level also significantly affects incident difficulty (see 6.2), in most cases I wouldn't recommend trying to boost your average level just to unlock some quests a little quicker. I'd recommend just waiting it out, you'll get them eventually as you naturally progress.

20.23

Q: How many limited time holiday quests are there?

A: There's a fair amount, for a fair amount of holidays. I believe the following are all of them. I've provided the dates of the holidays, the quests are usually available for at least a few weeks around those times each year. Any outfits for a holiday can be gotten at least once from one of the respective holiday quests, and also as exploration and lunchbox loot while the holiday is active. As the outfits aren't craftable, even during their holiday, you can see a list of them in 9.10 with all the other uncraftable items.

  • Valentine's Day (February 14)

    • The Book of Wuv (4 stage)

  • Saint Patrick's Day (March 17)

    • When Irish Eyes are Glowing (5 stage)

  • Easter (varies a lot, usually sometime in April)

    • Springtime for Atom (6 stage)

  • American Labour Day (first Monday of September)

    • Labor Dispute! (5 stage)

  • National Football League Kickoff (the Thursday after Labour Day)

    • The Gridiron Gang (3 stage)

  • Halloween (October 31)

    • The Mystery of Vault 31 (5 stage)
    • Ghostly Gag
    • The Haunting of Mass Chemical
    • Horror Movie Night!

  • American Thanksgiving (fourth Thursday of November)

    • No Thanks for the Gobbler! (3 stage)
    • Who's Carving the Turkey?
    • The Door Buster

  • Christmas (December 25)

    • Vault-Tec Saves Christmas! (4 stage)
    • The Party at the End of the World (6 stage)
    • To Grandmother's House We Go
    • The Spirit of Taking