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Azurephile gives this an astounding "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
Azurephile gives this a "Must Play" on the Ghost Scale
This achieves something special, and it would be a shame to miss it.
Recommended +1

  • Free on multiple platforms
I remember my fellow Cheerful Ghosts talking about Fallout Shelter shortly after it was released. Since I didn’t own a smartphone at the time, I ignored this game. Then, last year during the summer, Fallout Shelter came to PC via Bethesda’s launcher. Gaming companies have been releasing their own game launchers, like Steam, and they’re getting numerous, but I love Bethesda, so I installed it.

I played the game for a little while. It seemed like a game that contained a lot of waiting. It’s easy enough to play and the game does a great job of teaching you how to play and providing some great tips. Dwellers can act on their own, but it’s up to you to manage them. Each dweller has their own S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats, each of which is good for something. For instance, you’ll want to put your dwellers with high Strength in your power production rooms. Perception is good for water production, while Agility is good for food production. Intelligence is good for the medical room that produces Stimpaks and the science lab, which produces Radaway. Charm is good in the Living Quarters where you can breed your dwellers.

You can “rush” rooms, hurrying their production of a resources. If it goes well, you’ll get a bonus and caps, but if it fails your dwellers in the room will have to deal with an incident. Before rushing, the game will tell you the percent chance of an incident, so if you find that percentage is high, then it’s not a good idea to rush the room. The room can catch on fire, or creatures can appear such as Radroaches, Mole Rats, and Radscorpions. If your dwellers get hurt, you can given them Stimpaks. If they die, you can revive them after the incident. If not taken care of quickly enough, the incident could spread to other rooms.

In the meantime, there are chances that Raiders, Feral Ghouls, or Death Claws could invade your vault. Once they get in, it’s up to your dwellers to fend them off. These enemies always work their way from left to right on each floor, going to the next floor if not defeated in time. If you have a Mr. Handy, it will fight them, too, if it’s on the same floor or you can drag it there. Mr. Handy can also help protect your dwellers during an incident. It can be destroyed, but can repaired for 2,000 caps.

Rooms can be upgraded and expanded. Most rooms can be three rooms wide and it’s a good idea to make your rooms three wide. This means that six dwellers can fit inside. More dwellers working in a room, means it can produce quicker. You unlock rooms by getting dwellers. Once you get closer to 50-60 dwellers, you’ll be able to build new, better rooms for resource production. I have three of each, I removed the old resource rooms.

There is a limit to 200 dwellers in your vault and having that many can be a bit of a nightmare, especially if you have not yet made every room. The rooms that train dwellers S.P.E.C.I.A.L. stats are really good. You can train a certain stat in each room and rotate dwellers in and out. There’s also a Barbershop for customizing your dwellers, which I’ve made, but haven’t used. Also there is a theme workshop that lets you create themes. You’ll find theme recipe pieces on quests. It looks like the themes are Brotherhood of Steel, Railroad, Institute, and Minuteman.

There are a good number of quests to do. On most quests you can have up to three dwellers, but some quests only allow one, or have other various requirements. They can be difficult so it’s a good idea to bring your best dwellers with the best gear and the max amount of Stimpacs and Radaway they can carry (25) from the Vault. You can get a variety of rewards such as weapons, outfits, pets, lunchboxes (which can contain anything), junk, and more. If you fully upgrade the Overseer’s Office, you can have three groups out on quests at once. If your dwellers die and fail a quest, you can retry for a cost, or revive them and send them back home. I have a few certain dwellers I send out on quests. Many quests take some time to reach and get back from, but you can speed this up by spending Nuka-Cola Quantum, which is a very rare resource.

Speaking of quests, there’s a Bottle and Cappy quest line and when that is completed, B&C will occasionally visit your vault, raising happiness. While they’re exploring your vault, you can click on Cappy for caps or Bottle for caps or Nuka-Cola Quantum when they’re dancing. This is so valuable that I highly suggest doing this as soon as possible.

I like this game a lot more than I thought I would. I think this is about as much fun as another Fallout game. I’ve clocked 67 hours in Steam. I’m not sure how many hours I’ve spent playing on my phone or via the Bethesda launcher. I’m often surprised that this is a free game, you don’t always expect free games to be so good. You can spend real money to make in-game purchases, but I haven’t found that to be necessary.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 05/07/2017 at 04:15am

I got Bottle & Cappy a few weeks ago and I like that they come to your shelter to increase everyones morale and I can touch to get caps but I haven't ever see Bottle dance for the free Quantum. I'm hoarding Quantum now and have something like 60+ bottles of it. Like you i've found that not buying anything is just fine and honestly if I did buy lunchboxes or the like I think the game MIGHT be too easy. Right now the difficulty seems just about right and i'm just balancing playing with quests and making sure to grow my vault at the right clip. Right now I have 48 people in my vault and once the two kids are grown I plan to hit the big 50 soon! I've got two really solid quest groups that can clear anything i've assigned them and really think the best part about Fallout Shelter is the quest system. The original game missed it and I think having that makes Fallout Shelter WAY more interesting and WAY more fun a mobile game.

And yeah, it's like free and it's so good now. I think Bethesda is making money from it too so that's good to hear because I really want a Fallout Shelter 2, whatever that may look like. Or more updates to this version, that would be awesome too.

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/07/2017 at 06:23am

I'm so glad you got B&C. Bottle dances, but not as often. Sometimes he'll give you caps, sometimes Quantum. One time he gave me 5 Quantums! Wow, how'd you get so much Quantum? I've collected some, but I use them on quests, to either get my crew there quicker, or return quicker.

I agree that the difficulty is about right. It's still not incredibly easy. I'm not sure how many times I've done this, but I've restarted my vault (on all platforms) quite a few times. I've been on some hard quests that I've had to give up. I think if my better dwellers weren't already on a quest, they would have done better.

For some reason, I went through a few large breeding phases, so getting my population up wasn't a problem, until I had too many. I actually looked up how to get rid of extra dwellers and the best suggestion I found was to send them out to the Wasteland, which I thought was genius. You can only have less than 30 dwellers out exploring at a time, but doing this helped me get rid of my excessive population.

I really like the quest system, too. It's more adventurous and fun. The background music comes from the series and it makes me want to play other Fallout games again. I kind of suck at getting good critical hits. I wish the critical hit thing was different, but it's ok. Usually, even the worst critical hit does a hell of a lot of damage.

I can't really imagine a Fallout Shelter 2 right now, but they've already added a lot to the game in the year I've been able to play it. I think it's a really good game and, again, I like it a lot more than I thought I would. As I mentioned (perhaps in my other post), I played it a little bit and forgot about it until recently when I saw a friend playing it on his phone. At this time, it just arrived on Steam and I decided to focus on it more, especially on Steam for the achievements.

Anyway, Jon, you saw my last comment in my other post where I said that I should write a "proper review" of this game and you encouraged me, so here it is. :)

I think I'll soon go ahead and work this post into a Steam review.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 05/08/2017 at 03:50am

> Wow, how'd you get so much Quantum?

Quantum collection from Quests I just don't spend it so it adds up.

> I really like the quest system, too. It's more adventurous and fun. The background music comes from the series and it makes me want to play other Fallout games again.

Yeah totally. I really do feel to urge to return to Fallout 4 or 3 when i'm playing quests and the choice they made to include the original game music for those quests was a great idea. It really just puts you right there in the game in that moment and it feels like Fallout.

> I can't really imagine a Fallout Shelter 2 right now

So this version is incredible and the updates doubly so. This game was hella successful and my thought is it will become a franchise because it was so popular. I think they could do another version with more features, deeper gameplay, etc with the same premise that is both mobile and PC focused. I mean, that's what these kinds of things typically do. If success find next big thing and make new thing. We'll always have Fallout Shelter for sure but my guess is they will either keep updating FS or another one is in the works.

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/09/2017 at 03:56am

I had to edit my post. Themes are for the Diner and Living Quarters. They are based on the Fallout 4 factions. I was thinking that they were more specific, such as Railroad for the Diner and Institute for Living Quarters, but that seems to be wrong.

Jon, how many pets do you have? I have more than 5 I think. I think I have 3 or more dogs, 2 cats, and 1 bird. I should be getting another soon, I think one of the quests one of my groups is working on has one for a reward. I think it'd be cool if you could get these pets in another Fallout game. More pets in this game would be cool, too.

Oh! When sending dwellers out to the Wasteland, I think of it as though they were born and raised in the Vault and now it's time for them to go out into the world and experience it for themselves. I've sent a lot out due to extreme population, which I try to keep under control. Many of those I've sent out were level 1 males. I specifically sent those males out to spread their seeds. I've kept most of the females, although there have been a few I've gotten rid of or not revived. I don't like dwellers roaming around in my Vault. It makes tracking B&C more difficult, since they use the elevators. It also makes finding the Mysterious Stranger more difficult. So, I keep my population down and everyone assigned to a room so I don't have to deal with that.

I've also copied this post into a Steam review with minor changes.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 05/09/2017 at 04:35am

> Jon, how many pets do you have? I have more than 5 I think

That's sounds like about how many I have. I have a cat that isn't assigned a bird and the rest are dogs. The cat just grants happiness and Bottle and Cappy keep the vault near 100% happy. But right now some individual people are at 75% happiness because of some recent vault attacks so it's at about 85% happiness now total for the vault. It's usually much higher though.

I don't have extreme population yet as i'm at 53 and only let that number grow to less than 5 per day. Soon i'll be up there though. Right now when someone is born or is attracted to my vault through the radio signal I onboard them by putting them to work to boost them to 75% happiness then start training their stats. Strength is the first and I usually cap people out at 6 and then move to Agility, Endurance, Intellect, Perception, Charisma and finally Luck. When people are out of training they are still level one so I put them on Power duty OR drop them in the Wasteland until they are level 30 which is about 14-15 hours. Then they are ready for solid work/vault defense or put them in a Quest group which is currently full.

But I used to just have people with normally low stats and I think it's easier to work with people which much higher stats naturally. That said if you have them produce offspring the offspring don't inherit the high stats so it's really just individual based OR if you get a cool person through a Lunchbox that could net you someone with unnaturally high stats. Occasionally i'll set a new person to work but it's rare and when I can train them to get higher stats.

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/09/2017 at 06:15am

My pets have different abilities. One gives a bonus S.P.E.C.I.A.L. point to the child of the pregnant mother with the cat. One of my dogs increases junk found in the Wasteland. Another dog increases health regeneration. I can't recall what abilities my other pets have.

Raids don't get far in my base. I have the vault door, elevator, then tier 2 water processing room. On the next floor is another tier 2 water processing room, elevator, and then my hospital, I think. Death Claws barely reach that last room on the second floor, everything else either doesn't make it past the vault door, or barely makes it to the water processing room I have on that top floor. I have 2 dwellers in the vault door room, and a Mr. Handy on that top floor. I'm about to get another Mr. Handy that I'll put on my 2nd floor.

Nice, so you're training your dwellers much sooner than I did. That's great! I've had some dwellers max a stat, so I put them in the appropriate room.

I've gotten plenty of dwellers from lunchboxes. I think I got a new one in the last 24 hours.

Also, are you playing the mobile or PC version? I kind of hate the mobile version, because my phone isn't very big and it's hard to see everything. I'm really not too fond of touch controls either as I often touch it wrong and I do something I don't want to, like destroying a rock instead of accessing the menu. I haven't checked on my mobile game in a while, but I've been playing it on Steam frequently throughout the day.

I thought I took some in-game screenshots, but I can't find them. There's an old one located in my folder. Maybe I didn't do something right. I'll try to get some screenshots with Steam (F12 I think) and post a link here. I remember you suggested that and I didn't for a long time because I was still working on my tier 2 room upgrades and my dwellers were very unhappy at the time.

Oh! I started saving, I have about 80,000 caps. I need 90,000 to upgrade my weapon crafting room so that I can make Legendary weapons. :)

jdodson   Admin wrote on 05/10/2017 at 04:45am

> Also, are you playing the mobile or PC version? I kind of hate the mobile version, because my phone isn't very big and it's hard to see everything.

On my phone. I have an iPhone 6S Plus so my phone is fairly large. Not to say I don't fat finger things on occasion but I do think the phone version is quite good.

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/11/2017 at 09:09am

Awesome! I think even with a bigger screen, I'd still much prefer to play one of the PC versions. As far as I know, this game isn't available w/ Amazon, so I can't play it on my Kindle. It would be cool because that screen is 8.9".

Anyway, I just remembered something else I wanted to ask you. What kind of family names do your dwellers have or have you named them yourself? I select whatever name the game gives my babies. What's funny is that the Snow family is HUGE in my vault! I didn't name them (as I said). I even had a dweller named Johnny Snow (again I didn't name him). I'm sure I know which dweller started this and I don't remember how I got him, maybe from a lunchbox. Armstrong is another name, from a really good dweller I'm not sure how I got, again possibly from a lunchbox. I actually saw a variation on this as one dweller had the last name of Armstron (missing "g"). I think maybe his first name took up too many characters, so one was deleted from the end. Cox is another name in my vault that I don't know where it came from. My family trees are quite deep and it'd be awesome if I could actually view my dwellers family trees. I know they often intersect.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 05/12/2017 at 03:30am

> What kind of family names do your dwellers have or have you named them yourself?

Unless I am naming someone after one of my close friends, I just stick with their original birth names with one change. Each baby is marked with a [B] at the end of the last name to denote that it is in fact, a baby or a vault dwellers kid. Reason why is so I don't inbreed and I try and mix the [B]'s with the dwellers I attract with my radio signal. I know brothers and sisters will tell you they are related but with this system I don't even run into a problem at all as I just match last names.

I just updated my Overseers room so I can send out three quest groups and now have three going. It's nice and they all have some pretty nice weapons, armor and upgraded skills.

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/12/2017 at 04:41am

Well dwellers won't necessarily in-breed. It could just be between parents and their children, but you can see when they say they enjoy spending time with their family. Then you know that you have a pair you can't breed and need to change one of them. That's how I've done it and I still have Snows breeding with Snows. I think somewhere along the line they're all related. Also remember that babies get their last names from either parent.

Yeah, I love having the three quests available. Right now I'm working on getting two of my main quest groups (of three) to train their intelligence, because a quest requires six intelligence at about level 40. I have one quest that requires one level 48 dweller, but I'm not quite there yet. My best dwellers are in their mid-40s.

I seem to recall reading about This War of Mine and it seems a lot like Fallout Shelter, more quest oriented perhaps. I also recall that it had good reviews on Steam. I got it via Twitch Prime, but haven't played it yet. What are your thoughts about it?

jdodson   Admin wrote on 05/13/2017 at 08:31pm

I haven't played This War of Mine yet so I can't comment on it. So many games to play smile

I am putting my Vault in hibernation so I can take a break from the game for a bit. It's fun but it's getting a bit repetitive and I am at 60 dwellers, 3 quest groups and I am growing nicely so I am setting things up so I can take a break and come back to it to get to 100. Basically I am sending out all my quest groups so they can wait at the next quest and max out my vaults energy collection. Basically I am putting the Quest groups "out" so I don't forget which Quest thread they are on and then max out stuff so when I come back I have more than enough caps and resources. So far 100k caps, lots of armor and weapons and in vault equipped dwellers so I am pretty well set.

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/13/2017 at 08:48pm

Wow you're doing really well, I'd say better than I was at your point!

I spent 90k on upgrading my outfit room, now I'm trying to save 60k to do the weapons. I think I had that reversed in a comment or something.

I have two Mr. Handys. They're on the first and second floors. I had to build a fourth reactor, which is at the bottom of my vault, because I was having power issues.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 05/13/2017 at 10:22pm

So I just unlocked the nuclear reactor. Does that just do what the power room does but generate more energy? Curious if removing the old power rooms and replacing them makes sense if it's WAY better?

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/13/2017 at 10:41pm

Yes, I believe it does produce more power. I removed my old power rooms and put in the reactors. I didn't do this all at once though, so be careful.

jdodson   Admin wrote on 05/14/2017 at 12:00am

Good idea.

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/16/2017 at 06:00am

Bethesda won't say whether or not Fallout Shelter is coming to the PS4. They said, "In general, we never talk about whether we will or won't do games/platform/etc. If it isn't announced, we don't talk about it, either way." As a fan of the game I think it would do well on other platforms. However, I'm completely satisfied with the fact that I can play it on PC for free. I'm not a fan of the mobile version simply due to screen size and touch controls.

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/why-bethesda-wont-say-if-fallout-shelter-is-coming/1100-6450061/

Azurephile   Super Member   Post Author wrote on 05/21/2017 at 10:42pm

One of my dwellers reached level 50 yesterday, which is the max. I also have a Fat Man and Guided Missle Launcher. Those weapons are sweet. I think I can make more of them, too. I haven't been playing as much lately, but I check in with my vault every now and then. There's not too much to do as I complete higher level quests and still have some lower level ones showing up.

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