The 11 Best Fallout Shelter Tips and Tricks

Fallout Shelter is not only a compelling spin-off of Bethesda’s original Fallout series on smartphones but also on PC. However, managing a vault and building a bunker aren’t the easiest tasks. With that in mind, we have compiled a few key points in our Fallout Shelter Tips and Tricks.

1) You’ll need these resources

In the dystopian world of Fallout Shelter, it’s up to you to design a modern bunker facility and follow in the footsteps of many famous predecessors in the Fallout series. To create a reliable shelter for your residents, you’ll need resources. In Fallout Shelter, those resources are power, food, and water.

On the one hand, the presence or absence of these resources affects the survivors in your bunker in terms of Vault-Tec. On the other hand, you can’t produce food or water without electricity. The life expectancy of your survivors will decrease accordingly. Electricity is produced in the generator room. Food in the diner and fresh water can be obtained from the water treatment plant.

2) Fallout Shelter Tips on lunchboxes

Lunchboxes have always been a big part of the Fallout series. In Fallout Shelter, they give you extra resources, outfits, weapons, scrap metal, bottle caps, or the chance to get a rare or legendary inhabitant. You can get these crates by completing quests, or you can buy them. Either way, they will always give you a boost.

Tip: If you have enough bottle caps and don’t need the contents of a lunchbox, it can help to save them for when you really need them.

Basically, lunchboxes are the typical loot boxes. However, there is a little trick you can use to “rework” the contents. If you open a lunchbox and its contents are only half-interesting, leave the game for a moment and clear your cache. This will reset the draw you just made, and you can open the box again.

In general, it’s a good idea to complete the lunchbox tasks as quickly as possible. After all, it’s always a good idea to have one or two of the boxes up your sleeve for emergencies.

3) Which areas should you build?

For starters, you’ll need a generator room in Fallout Shelter. The survivors you use to work here should have a solid Strength (S) rating. Then build a diner. This is where the food for your survivors is produced. Inhabitants with a high Agility (A) are helpful here. You also need a water treatment plant with workers who have good Perception (P).

To have more space for new inhabitants, but also for offspring, you need barracks. Here, charismatic inhabitants in particular ensure the “continuity of humanity”. The decisive factor is therefore the trait Charisma (C).

It’s important to fill the rooms according to the values of the inhabitants. For example, the generator room should be staffed mainly by people with high Strength, and so on. However, especially in the early days, it can be useful to place workers where they are most needed.

4) How to get bottle caps

As in any Fallout game, bottle caps are your primary currency in Fallout Shelter. You use caps to build new rooms, upgrade rooms, or remove unwanted debris. You can earn them by sending residents to explore the wasteland, leveling up your workers, using the tempo mode, or simply selling things you no longer need.

Another way to get bottle caps is to complete the quests. There are always three challenges. For example, you have to collect a certain amount of food, water, or energy. For completing them, you’ll not only get lunchboxes but also some bottle caps. At the end of each day, there’s also a rating, for which you are also rewarded with caps.

5) Fallout Shelter tempo mode tips

In all production rooms, such as the diner, generator room, and water treatment room, you have the option to use tempo mode. This will speed up production and give you the resource and bottle caps immediately. However, there are risks involved in using it. The risk of failure is displayed as a percentage. If the tempo mode fails, RAD cockroaches will attack the room or a fire will break out.

The chance of failure increases the more often you use tempo mode. So make sure your chance is always less than 40 percent. But even then, success isn’t guaranteed.

6) Having babies has never been easier

To get more inhabitants for your Fallout Shelter Vault, you can either take in incoming survivors from time to time or simply create the “right circumstances” for your population to reproduce itself. To do this, simply send a woman and a man to the barracks. A high level of Charisma will help speed up the “getting to know each other” process. After some pomaded flirting, the two disappear behind a wall. A man and a pregnant woman return.

The woman is able to continue working for the three hours until she gives birth. However, she flees to protect the baby from cockroaches or robbers and does not put out any fires. The baby needs another three hours after birth to add value to the Vault as an adult.

7) Fallout Shelter layout tips

Always build one room at a time. Two or three rooms on the same level will connect to form one large area. So make sure you always have enough room to add another expansion. This makes it easier to keep track of everything and helps you collect resources faster. However, there is no real advantage to having larger rooms.

8) Watch out for low-level workers

When you have new workers in a room, you should always keep an eye on them. On the one hand, their “inexperience” makes them more likely to fail in tempo mode. On the other hand, they are also more vulnerable to attacks from raiders and especially RAD cockroaches. As these get stronger as the game progresses, low-level workers rarely survive their attacks. Also, in the heat of battle, it’s often difficult to select injured characters to heal.

9) Protect your vault from incidents

To protect the rooms of your Fallout Shelter Vault from cockroaches, you should equip the people who stay there with armor and weapons. In the event of an attack by RAD cockroaches, your inhabitants have a good chance of fending them off quickly. From time to time, however, your vault will be attacked by raiders or even death claws from the wasteland. The only thing standing between them and your people is the gate.

The entrance area can be upgraded, increasing the time it takes for attackers to breach the gate. However, the first upgrade, which costs 2,000 bottle caps, is difficult to implement, especially at the beginning. Therefore, you’ll have to equip some of your inhabitants with weapons and armor and send them to the Vault Gate in case of an attack. There they will fight the intruders and then return to their jobs.

Tip: Remember your fighters in the Vault so that you can quickly send them into action in case of an emergency. Also, arm the people in the room next to the entrance.

10) Take your people into the wasteland!

If you have good armor and a good weapon, you can send one of your citizens to explore the Wasteland. They will not only gain experience but also bottle caps, other survivors, and equipment. To help them survive, you can also give them RadAways and Stimpaks.

Keep a close eye on their progress, and remember that your explorers will need to return to the Vault so that you can take possession of the items they have collected. If the inhabitant dies in the wasteland, it will still cost you a few bottle caps to bring them back. In general, though, don’t forget to pick them up at the Vault gate.

11) These jobs fit your residents

Your residents will be most effective if the jobs they perform match their stats. Workers with high Strength are best placed in the generator room. Charismatic residents are best placed in the barracks so they can mate, and those with a high Intelligence score are best placed in the Stimpak production area.

However, don’t be afraid to move residents to other rooms in case of emergency or as needed. Especially in the beginning, when resources are scarce, you’ll sometimes have to reorganize. You should also give weapons to higher-level characters with higher stats to make the fight against intruders more reliable. They have more energy and don’t die as quickly.

Build the best shelter with PLITCH!

Fallout Shelter provides you with a long-lasting experience in the Fallout universe, adapting the core of the wasteland in a fun yet challenging way. Despite our PLTICH Fallout Shelter tips and tricks, frustration can set in quickly. To help you play the game at your own pace, or simply to help you build the vault of your dreams, we provide Fallout Shelter cheats and codes.

With PLITCH, you get all of our Fallout Shelter cheats for free. Just install the client and unlock unlimited resources, bottle caps, energy, or stimpaks. If you feel like it, you can also disable room events or enable Godmode. With PLITCH, it’s up to you how you experience the game.

Check out this blog and our YouTube channel to learn more about PLITCH!

Happy Gaming!