Section 3: Rooms, Resources, and Storage - therabidsquirel/The-Fallout-Shelter-FAQ GitHub Wiki

3.1

Q: How do SPECIALs affect production in a room?

A: Each room has a stat associated with it, which I will call the room stat. Outfits always contribute to the room stat. In resource rooms, more total room stat will mean faster production times. A higher average luck in the room will increase the chance at caps being generated when you collect from the room. Room stat and luck together will lower the chance of failing rushes. In living quarters, dwellers with higher charisma will get to shagging faster. All dwellers will eventually get there, higher charisma just speeds it up. In radio rooms more charisma reduces the amount of time it takes to roll and see if a broadcast is generated (when the timer on a radio rooms runs out, it's not guaranteed to generate a signal for you to tap on and call a dweller). In barbershops more charisma reduces the amount of time it takes to make alterations. Storage and training rooms also have room stats, though they don't actually do anything. They can count towards being the "right" room for a dweller though (see 4.2).

3.2

Q: Why are my dwellers taking radiation damage in my vault?

A: You don't have enough water production and/or storage.

3.3

Q: Why are my dwellers losing health in my vault?

A: You don't have enough food production and/or storage.

3.4

Q: Why are my rooms losing power?

A: You don't have enough power production and/or storage.

3.5

Q: What's the difference between resource production and storage? Which is more important?

A: Both are equally important. You increase storage for a resource by building more rooms for that resource or upgrading existing ones. Storage can be checked by tapping your resource bars at the top of the screen. You increase production by upgrading rooms for that resource or increasing the total relevant SPECIAL in those rooms (by assigning more dwellers, training the relevant SPECIAL of workers, or equipping outfits that provide relevant SPECIAL). Production along with consumption can be checked in the stats tab (the same menu where the survival guide and help tabs are). If you're lacking in either one you can have resource shortages, so you need good amounts of both.

3.6

Q: How much production and storage should I have for my resources?

A: You'll notice a little tick in each of your three resource bars. Those ticks represent what the minimum consumption level of that resource is relative to how much storage you have. If a bar drops below that line, bad things start happening (see 3.2 through 3.4). The closer that tick is to the left then, the safer you are. Increasing consumption moves the tick to the right, while increasing your storage moves the tick to the left. As a good rule of thumb, having the ticks at least halfway to the left is good for storage, and having production be at least double consumption is good for production.

3.7

Q: What rooms should I upgrade?

A: Most of them, eventually at least. All rooms are more efficient at higher upgrade levels. Be aware though, interior incidents are tougher the higher the level of the room. At the start of the game avoid upgrading rooms as you'll probably make incidents tougher than can be handled. For this reason you may want to not upgrade training rooms then, as you'll probably have level one dwellers in them. Upgraded training rooms are more efficient, but at the cost of incidents that are too tough for level one dwellers to handle. See 6.2 for more information in incident strength.

3.8

Q: What rooms should I merge?

A: Almost all of them. Almost all rooms are more efficient as a triple compared to a single or double. The only exceptions are medbays and science labs. For production both are most efficient as a double, and for stimpak and RadAway storage width (and level) doesn't matter. Medbays and science labs always provides storage for 10 stimpaks/RadAway per single room area, so a triple room and three single rooms both provide 30 storage for example. For this reason medbays and science labs are very good to use as the double rooms in your vault.

Merging rooms does make interior incidents harder, but this is mostly offset by being able to put more dwellers in the room. As long as your rooms are full or near-full this shouldn't matter. Unlike in 3.7 where I recommend not upgrading rooms in the early game, feel free to merge rooms whenever.

3.9

Q: Should I upgrade rooms first then merge them, or merge first then upgrade?

A: You'll save a lot of caps if you merge first then upgrade, but other than that it doesn't matter.

3.10

Q: How do room rushes work?

A: Changed a long time ago in the version 1.5 update, the chance for rush failure now follows this formula:

40 - 1.5(average room stat + average luck), minimum 10%

Add 10% for each recent rush, to a max of 6 recent rushes

Since it considers only average room stat and average luck (outfits included), that means one dweller with 10 room stat and 10 luck in a triple room will have a better rush chance compared to six dwellers each with 9 room stat and 9 luck (10% failure rate compared to 13%). Both the room stat and luck have an equal effect, so if you're just trying to lower fail chance it doesn't matter which you add more of to the room. While outfits count, an average of 10 room stat and 10 luck is all that's needed to reach the minimum 10%. Also, the 10% addition for each recent rush can really penalize you for spamming rushes. It's generally a better idea to rush only once or twice, then wait for those 10% penalties to go away before rushing again.

3.11

Q: Why can't I build a weapon/outfit/theme workshop, barbershop, or overseer's office?

A: The workshops can only be triple size, while the barbershop and overseer's office can only be double size. Make sure you have space.

3.12

Q: My resources are in the red and I'm in huge trouble, what do I do?

A: Power is most important, focus on that. If your power goes red and your food and water rooms lose power, then you'll start running out of those as well. See 3.5 and 3.6 on how resources work. Remember that dwellers consume food and water while everything but elevators, power rooms, and the overseer's office consume power. If you can't expand your resource production/storage, then you probably have to cut back on your consumption. If you're short on power, are there rooms you can demolish? If you're short on food/water, are there dwellers you can evict? You may have to demolish a lot of rooms and/or evict a lot of dwellers, but it is possible to recover from a total resource disaster.

If you have low food or water I would advise against trying to apply stimpaks and RadAway to all your dwellers. With your resources still in the red they'll just become low health and irradiated shortly after, meaning you'll have wasted the stimpaks and RadAway. Save them instead for healing dwellers up in an incident to save their lives.

Be vary wary about rushing. With low food and water an incident like radscorpions could absolutely decimate your vault, so whether rushing is a good idea or not depends on how armed your dwellers are, how many stimpaks and RadAway you have, and what your population is (see 6.11 for a list of what populations incidents appear at). If you are going to rush, only do so immediately after a room has finished a production cycle. Since rushing resets production time whether it's a success or failure, rushing anytime but immediately after collecting from the room is wasting production time, and if you're in the red you can't afford that. Also don't rush the same room twice in a row even if you fail the first time. You need the best success chance for each rush, so wait for the failure chance to drop back to baseline before rushing a room again.

With all that in mind you'll have to play patiently. If you play in short bursts you'll minimize the amount of natural incidents that appear. Enter your vault, collect resources, do a few rushes if you think you can take it, wait for and collect a second resource cycle, then leave your vault and wait at least a few minutes for rooms to be ready again and rush chances to be back to baseline. If this isn't causing your resources to go up, or worse they're going down even more, then you probably have too much resource consumption or need better production. For better production I would strongly advise not building more rooms or getting more dwellers, but rather sending a few dwellers to training rooms to raise a stat needed for resources. Training up your existing dwellers will help massively in resource production and make a big difference.

Once you're finally in the clear, expand slowly. Following the rule of thumb I lay out at the end of 3.6, and also make sure your resources are good before you get more dwellers/rooms. Don't have more than a couple children at once, as a population boom will likely see your food and water experiencing strain. Always utilize training rooms, and also try to get someone exploring. Early on they won't make it very far at all, but if you're not in survival their revival cost will be cheap and they'll probably bring back more caps than it cost. If they can bring back even just a weapon/outfit or two at a time that will start to really help your vault.

3.13

Q: I need to reorganize my vault, how can I do that?

A: The rule for rooms and elevators is that every single one of them must have a valid path to the vault entrance. It doesn't matter how twisted that path is, it just has to exist. Because of this, it's impossible to destroy the room/elevator immediately next to the vault entrance without first demolishing every other room in your vault. Also of note, you can't destroy living quarters or storage rooms if it would drop your capacity beneath how much population/items you have. Planning ahead really helps with a lot of this, as you can end up in situations where you can't remove a certain room without demolishing a huge section of your vault or evicting a bunch of people. Also keep in mind though you can make temporary paths to the vault entrance. If you want to keep one room but destroy the room next to it, and that would cut it off, you might be able to temporarily connect that room in another way till you replace the neighbouring room.

3.14

Q: Are radio rooms worth it?

A: Yes and no, it depends what you plan on using them for. What they're primarily advertised in the game as doing, increasing happiness, is actually what they're worst at. Do not use radio rooms for happiness, there are much better methods as outlined in 4.2. They can be used to call dwellers to the vault, and they're okay at that. All dwellers called will be common dwellers (12 total SPECIAL) at level 1 with no equipment in normal, or level 5 with a low damage common weapon in survival. Radio rooms can trigger deathclaws whenever you call a dweller if you're past their population threshold (see 6.15). Having a radio room broadcast outside the vault, even if staffed, will not trigger attacks. Only selecting the room when it's done to call a dweller can trigger attacks. Most people prefer breeding for increasing their population, as it really is much easier to control. That pretty much leaves out the intended uses of the radio room then. What they are good for though is helping with objective grinding. More info on that in 11.3.

3.15

Q: What rooms require population to upgrade? Once I get that population do I unlock the upgrade like I unlock rooms?

A: There are a couple rooms which require you to have a certain population to upgrade to level 2 and 3. Unlike unlocking rooms, which once you've done so is permanent, upgrading requires you to have the population at the time of the upgrade. It doesn't matter if you were at that population before, or even if you currently have a level 3 version of the room, upgrading an additional room always requires you to have the population. All rooms that have population upgrade requirements are as follows (with their unlock requirements included as well):

Room	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3
Overseer's Office	18 to unlock	30 to upgrade	55 to upgrade
Weapon Workshop	22 to unlock	45 to upgrade	75 to upgrade
Outfit Workshop	32 to unlock	55 to upgrade	90 to upgrade
Theme Workshop	42 to unlock	65 to upgrade	105 to upgrade

3.16

Q: How does luck affect bonus caps from rooms?

A: Whenever collecting from a room, or when a rush succeeds, it looks at the average luck in the room to determine the chance for bonus caps. Every point of luck adds 5%, capping at 50% at 10 luck. The actual amount of bonus caps is random. If the chance for bonus caps succeeds, it randomly rolls for 4 tiers of cap rewards, starting with the highest. If the highest 3 all fail then it gives the last, tiny amount of caps.