First steps | Basics Fallout Shelter Guide
Last update: 01 June 2016
After starting the game, a short tutorial starts. It contains basic information about tasks assignment or taking new dwellers. Completing the tutorial causes drastic decrease of new settlers - now everything depends on you. It is advised to get familiar with some basic rules in order to start the expansion of the Vault properly.
1. Plan your work. At the beginning you have enough space to build several basic rooms delivering resources. Don't forget to take into account that you possibly will merge them in the future or you will want to build more rooms. Develop your Vault reasonably so you don't have to demolish half of it in the future. Remember, that the most efficient are the biggest (triple) rooms, leave some space to expand it in next stages of the game.
2. Get to know all of your dwellers. At the beginning you have only few of them so you can control statistics of all of them. It will help you to assign each of them to the right task, thanks of what your production will be faster and more efficient. Also, dwellers will be happier doing what they like to do.
3. Don't overuse the "rush" option. It is very tempting as this option results with extra resources, experience, caps and higher satisfaction of your crew. Don't overuse it though because failure leads to disasters and it can slow down your development at the beginning of the game. Use it only when the possibility of an incident doesn't exceed 40%.
4. Achieve objectives. First side tasks are very easy and don't take much time so it is worthy to complete them fast and get some caps as well as much more precious lunchbox with resources. If you're patient, you can try to settle a new Vault until you draw at least one legendary dweller in received lunchboxes - it can be useful when exploring the wasteland.
5. Watch out for disasters. They happen randomly and you can't do anything about it. When a disaster happens, assign citizens to fight the fire or radroaches. It's similar with raiders' attacks - in first order you should protect the rooms that are closest to the Vault entrance. You should also upgrade the entrance as quickly as possible to reduce the amount of attacks and make it longer for enemies to get inside.
6. Augment your population. When you complete the tutorial you find out, that there are not many new dwellers coming from the outside. What you can do is to make your women pregnant. You can make it your priority goal at the beginning, when you don't have to worry about lack of resources. Also, it is necessary to augment your population if you want to unlock new buildings. When you reach 20 dwellers you can buy a radio, however production of babies seems to be more efficient. Don't overdo though - pregnant women are not able to fend off disaster and raiders and babies needs to eat and drink like adults.
7. Increase the experience level of your dwellers. Each of them has an experience bar. It is quite easy to fill it at the beginning of the game. Don't hesitate to click on an "lvl" icon when it appears above your dwellers head. The higher the experience, the better the health of dweller is. It makes him more endurable in case of raiders and disasters.
8. Explore. Send rare or legendary dweller to explore the wasteland. At the beginning phase of the game you can order him to come back after finding a few items and give those items to other dwellers.
9. Give outfits to dwellers - their work will be more effective and you'll be able to collect your resources earlier.
10. Use the time while the application is turned off. You can't be attacked, but you can develop your Vault, explore the wasteland or give birth to new children. Remember to put at least one dweller into each room where resources are produced - when you turn the game back on, you'll get a maximum amount of them.