Section 9: Junk and Crafting - therabidsquirel/The-Fallout-Shelter-FAQ GitHub Wiki

Q: How do SPECIALs affect crafting?

A: In the crafting GUI where you can select a recipe to craft, in each item's slot you'll see a stat. If you tell the room to craft that item, that is the stat you then want in the room. When crafting something, the room displays the item's stat like other rooms display their stat. The crafting time you see in the slot is how long it would take with the current total relevant SPECIAL in the room plus any crafting pet. Especially for legendary items you can make huge improvements to crafting time by having six 10 stat dwellers in the room each with a +5 or +7 outfit, plus a crafting time pet (from weeks to hours). Basically pile as much relevant SPECIAL into the crafting room as you can, through dwellers and outfits, and definitely throw a crafting time pet in if you have one. This post plus some of the comments (hivemind_disruptor, limeybastard) include some in-depth analysis of how crafting time is determined, and the wiki has a bunch of exact times for weapons and outfits.

With outfits the SPECIAL requirement is usually the highest stat an outfit offers, but for outfits with no clear highest stat it is fairly random. Weapons are a lot more consistent with SPECIAL requirements, so here's a summary for them (italicized are single weapons, underlined are version 1.15 weapons, 1.16-1.18 weapons aren't fully included yet):

• S: Junk Jets, Flamers, Miniguns, Missile Launchers, Gatling Lasers, Fat Men, Plasma Throwers, Baseball Bat, Relentless Raider Sword, 4/5 Power Fists, Plasma Casters

• P: BB Guns, Lever-Action Rifles, Hunting Rifles, Pipe Rifles, Sniper Rifles, Laser Rifles, Railway Rifles, Gauss Rifles, Plasma Rifles, Laser Musket, Kitchen Knife, Grognak's Axe, Alien Disintegrators

• E: Sawed-Off Shotguns, Shotguns, Combat Shotguns, Pickaxe

• C:

• I: Institute Pistols, Institute Rifles, Fire Hydrant Bat, Ed's Custom Power Fist, Pulse Rifles

• A: .32 Pistols, 10mm Pistols, Scoped .44s, Pipe Pistols, Laser Pistols, Assault Rifles, Plasma Pistols, Alien Blasters, Pool Cue, Rippers, Gauss Pistols, Assaultron Heads

• L: Butcher Knife

Henrietta is currently the only non-craftable weapon in both version 1.13 and 1.18, and is only obtainable by getting Old Longfellow in lunchboxes. As you can see a lot of the best weapons are crafted with strength, while most everything else is perception and agility (with a touch of endurance and intelligence).

Q: How do I get junk?

A: Junk can be found in the wasteland (see 10.2) and can be recovered from weapons and outfits by scrapping them (see 9.7). You also get a guaranteed random piece of junk from every lunchbox, and can get junk as loot from quests.

Q: How do I get recipes?

A: There are several ways:

• Occasional quest loot.
• When a raider would drop a common weapon/outfit, there's a 5-25% chance it gets converted to a rare recipe instead. The chance increases by 5% with every 1-10 bracket of your vault's average dweller level, so the max of 25% occurs at 41-50 average level. When raiders drop a rare weapon/outfit, there's a static 25% chance it gets converted to a legendary recipe instead, though only if you have appropriate workshops at at least level 2.
• Most of your recipes you'll find exploring. There's a 5% chance common weapons/outfits get converted to rare recipes, and a 25% chance rare weapons/outfits get converted to legendary recipes. Like with raiders you need at least level 2 workshops to get legendary recipes. Note that recipes do not count towards the 100 item explorer carry limit (see 10.8).

Q: Why can't I build a weapon/outfit/theme workshop?

A: All of them can only be triple size. Make sure you have space.

Q: I have the recipe, required junk, and required caps, so why can't I see the option to craft it?

A: You also need to upgrade your crafting rooms to be able to craft rare (level 2) and legendary (level 3) items. Upgrading the crafting rooms requires you to have a certain population when you do the upgrade, unlike unlocking rooms which are unlocked permanently once you reach the population. Once you have upgraded the room to the appropriate level, don't forget you need the recipe, junk, and caps to craft something. For the theme workshop you can always craft any of the themes, all upgrading does is hugely reduce crafting times. Here's the population requirements for upgrading the workshops:

Room	Level 1	Level 2	Level 3
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

Q: How does finding junk in the wasteland work? Are +X% wasteland junk pets worth it?

A: See 10.12.

Q: How does scrapping weapons and outfits for junk work?

A: In your vault storage, when you select a weapon or outfit, next to the sell button will be a scrap button. Hitting that then brings up a scrap one or scrap all button. When you scrap an item, you only get junk that would've been used to craft the item (see 9.8 for a list of recipes and junk requirements). You can get anywhere from no junk to all of the junk that would've been used to craft it. There's a certain chance for different amounts of junk it could give you, so for rare and legendary items which take a lot of junk, you'll probably get at least something out of scrapping them. For common items on the other hand, because they don't take much junk, you're much more likely to get nothing out of scrapping them. Note that collecting junk from scrapping something counts towards collect junk objectives, even if from an item you just crafted.

Q: Is there a list of all the recipes and what junk they require?

A: Check the Fallout wiki for weapons and outfits.

Q: Should I craft early on? What junk should I keep?

A: Crafting is not worth it immediately. You'll probably find all the common weapons and outfits you need early on from exploring, so you're probably better off saving to craft rare. However, you need 45 dwellers to craft rare weapons and 55 dwellers to craft rare outfits (see 9.5), plus you need to find the recipes from exploring. Since crafting rooms have to be triple size, you will also need to train dwellers up a bit and probably have multiple in the room to not have ridiculous crafting times (see 9.1). You could also strategically use Quantums to help get the first few +5 outfits quicker to help with crafting (see the third bullet point in 19.3). Early on dwellers can be swapped out depending on what the room is crafting. Once you can start crafting good rares though then it really is worth it. Good rares are any of the +5 outfits, plus the highest tier rare weapons like plasma rifles and flamers. As for what junk to keep, always keep your legendary junk, unless you 100% know you won't need it for anything now or in the future. When it comes to rare and common, there are a couple strategies:

• Definitely check 9.8 out to see what junk is required for what, so you can determine what you want to keep.

• Set a limit on how much you want to carry. This is better later in the game where storage isn't as much of an issue and you can afford to keep lots of stuff.

• By the time you get to the point where you're crafting legendaries, your only bottleneck will probably be legendary junk. You could sell all common and rare junk then except what's needed for rare stuff you want to craft. This comment (ShardisWolfe) and this comment (metallicrooster) both list key junk to keep for those good rares.

• Keep your junk stored in weapons and outfits. With common weapons and outfits it may not be worth it (as there's a high chance to get no junk), but with rare weapons and outfits they almost always give more than one junk, meaning the item will take up less storage space than the junk. A good alternative if you're tight on storage space. See 9.7 for full detail on scrapping.

Q: I want to fill out the weapons and outfits tabs in the VDSG, what can't I craft?

A: First, if you don't know what you're missing, check out 7.1 for a list of weapons and outfits. There are currently 183 weapons in version 1.13 and 239 in version 1.18. In both versions only one weapon isn't craftable, Henrietta, which comes with Old Longfellow in lunchboxes. There are currently 138 outfits in version 1.13 and 160 in version 1.18. 19 outfits can't be crafted in version 1.13, while 23 can't be crafted in version 1.18. For the non-craftable outfits:

• 6 are lunchbox only commons with 4 SPECIAL each.
  • Accountant Outfit (4P)
  • Agent Provocateur (4I)
  • Bespoke Attire (4E)
  • Business Suit (4C)
  • Country Girl (4S)
  • Waitress Uniform (4A)
• 3 are lunchbox only rares with 6 SPECIAL each.
  • Bowling Shirt (6P)
  • Motorcycle Jacket (6S)
  • Swing Dress (6A)
• 5 are rare holiday outfits (2 Halloween, 1 Thanksgiving, 2 Christmas) which could be found like any other outfit, but only during their respective holidays. If you're missing any all you can do is hope they drop next holiday. Check out 20.23 for a list of all the holiday quests.
  • Ghost Costume (2E, 3A), (Halloween)
  • Skeleton Costume (2S, 3L), (Halloween)
  • Pilgrim Outfit (3C, 2I), (Thanksgiving)
  • Elf Outfit (3I, 2L), (Christmas)
  • Santa Outfit (3P, 2C), (Christmas)
• 4 are legendary high total SPECIAL outfits that can only be gotten once each as rewards from specific quests. 1 is a holiday outfit from one of the Christmas quests.
  • Jobinson's Jersey (4S, 4P, 4C, 4A)
  • Detective Outfit (4P, 4E, 4I, 4L)
  • Original Santa Suit (4P, 3E, 4C), (Christmas)
  • Horsemen of the Post-Apocalypse Outfit, you get to pick one and only one of the following:
    • Famine's Vestment (4S, 4E, 4I, 4L)
    • Pestilence's Plating (4E, 4C, 4I, 4A)
    • War's Armor (4S, 4P, 4E, 4C)
    • Death's Jacket (4P, 4E, 4A, 4L)
• 1 comes with Old Longfellow in lunchboxes.
  • Tattered Longcoat (2S, 2E, 2C, 2L)
• 4 are 1.18 exclusive, found in various ways. I have not been able to fully confirm how to find each of these, some may be wrong.
  • RobCo Factory Uniform (2E, 2L)
    • Found in quests.
  • RobCo R&D Suit (2E, 4I)
    • Found in quests and comes with Ed the Ghoul.
  • Alien Space Suit (regular variant), (2P, 4I, 2A)
    • Found in quests.
  • Alien Space Suit (alien face variant), (1E, 2I, 2A, 2L)
    • Found on the bodies of aliens during their external incident.

However, the VDSG excludes some weapons and outfits in both spaces and the total until they're found, meaning you can still fill the VDSG and be missing some items. This is no doubt done because some are exceedingly rare to find, like Henrietta and the Tattered Longcoat only coming with Old Longfellow from lunchboxes. The following table lists the totals for weapons and outfits, in versions 1.13 and 1.18, in a brand new vault and with everything collected:

VDSG Category	New Vault	Full Total
1.13 Weapons	182	183
1.13 Outfits	131	138
1.18 Weapons	238	239
1.18 Outfits	147	160

No junk, pets, or dwellers are excluded from their categories, the totals you see in a new vault are the real totals. As for what is hidden, the weapon is Henrietta since it's the only non-craftable weapon. For outfits that's more of a guessing game. The Tattered Longcoat is for sure one of them. For the other 6 in 1.13 it's possible it's all the seasonal outfits (the 5 rare and 1 legendary), but that's just a guess. For the additional 6 in 1.18 I have no idea.

Q: Does the stat used in crafting weapons affect their actual use in combat?

A: No, the SPECIAL used in crafting ONLY affects production time.

Q: If I wanted to craft one of everything, how much junk would I need?

A: thetoastmonster made two great posts for exactly this. They are correct as of version 1.13. I don't have a list for version 1.18 unfortunately.

• Weapons

• Outfits