Are you jumping into Fallout Shelter in 2025, or coming back after a break?
This guide brings together everything you need to know, from the basics to smarter strategies, to help you build a better vault and keep your dwellers performing well and healthy.
Fallout Shelter is available on multiple platforms, but this guide is written with mobile players in mind – whether you’re on Android or iOS.
Vault Layout Tips
A well-organised vault layout is important for efficiency, aesthetics and easier dweller management.
At the start of the game, begin by stacking similar rooms together to merge them, which increases their output and helps streamline resource management. Rooms can be merged in groups of 3.
Avoid building identical rooms directly above or below each other, as this can lead to fires and incidents spreading rapidly between floors. It’s best to place power rooms close to the entrance of your vault. This allows for faster restoration of essential services after attacks and keeps your most critical resource online.
Explore the best vault layout tips for Fallout Shelter
Managing Resources
Power, food, and water are the core of your vault’s survival, and managing them efficiently is crucial for the wellbeing of your dwellers.
Prioritise power generation, as every other room depends on it. Rather than overbuilding, focus on upgrading existing rooms to improve output without using excessive space or caps. Rushing rooms can be a good way to get quick boosts, but it comes with risks like fires and radroach infestations, so use this feature strategically.
Discover our Fallout Shelter resource management guide to learn how to keep supplies running.
Dwellers & Happiness
Your dwellers’ happiness directly affects productivity, so it pays to keep the mood high. Assign dwellers to rooms that match their SPECIAL stats for maximum resource output.
Tip: Assign dwellers to training rooms to boost their SPECIAL stats. This not only improves room efficiency but also helps keep your dwellers happier, as they’ll be working in areas that match their strengths.
Idle dwellers become unhappy quickly, so always keep them busy, whether that’s working, training, or exploring. When breeding, pair high-Charisma dwellers to improve the chances of successful relationships and faster pregnancy times.
Combat & Defense
As your vault grows, external threats like raiders and deathclaws become more frequent and dangerous.
Equip your top-floor dwellers with the best weapons and outfits available, ideally boosting Endurance, Agility and Strength. Merging rooms near the entrance is a smart tactic, as it allows multiple dwellers to respond to attacks simultaneously, increasing your defensive capabilities and reducing risk to deeper vault levels.
Crafting & Junk
Crafting is your gateway to powerful gear, especially in the mid to late game. Gather junk items through wasteland exploration or lunchboxes and focus on crafting high-impact weapons early on to improve your vault’s defense and exploration results.
Beginner tip: Without blueprints, the Rusty Laser Pistol is one of the easier early-game weapons to craft. It has a 7 damage output and the crafting materials are fairly easy to obtain at the start.
Outfits come next, they significantly enhance your dwellers’ SPECIAL stats.
Useful early game outfits include the Handyman Jumpsuit (AGI3) for food production, Armoured Vaultsuit (PER3) for water production, Military Fatigues (STR3) for power output, and Labcoat (INT3) for Stimpak and RadAway production.
Don’t forget to scrap or sell duplicate gear and items for valuable crafting materials or caps. If you want to know what to do with junk items, we have created a more detailed separate guide for this.
Wasteland Exploration
Exploration is key to fast progression in Fallout Shelter, offering chances to gain rare loot, outfits, caps, and junk. Managing your dwellers’ health during expeditions is important, and that’s where Stimpaks come in. These healing items can make or break a long run into the wasteland, especially when you’re pushing for rare finds or legendary gear.
Always send dwellers out with a supply of Stimpaks and RadAways.
Full guide: How to get Stimpaks and RadAway
Outfits that boost Endurance or Luck improve survivability and reward quality. Keep an eye on their exploration log; if their health drops too low or they find something valuable, recall them quickly to avoid losing your gains. If a dweller dies during exploration, it usually costs a substantial amount of caps to revive them.
Advanced Fallout Shelter Tips
There are plenty of hidden tricks that can give you the edge throughout the game.
Mysterious Stranger
The Mysterious Stranger appears randomly, listen for the distinctive piano sound and tap him quickly to earn caps. You’ll have to look for him in different rooms in your vault. Mobile players have the option to watch a short advertisement to claim even more caps.
Mr Handy
Mr. Handy is another useful addition to your vault. He can collect resources from rooms automatically, help defend during incidents, and clean up corpses after attacks. While not essential early game, having one or more Mr. Handys becomes very helpful as your vault grows.
Explore the full Mr Handy Guide.
Nuka Cola Quantum
Nuka-Cola Quantum is a valuable premium currency that lets you speed up exploration, building, and crafting. It’s best used sparingly; save it for rushing long Wasteland runs or completing critical objectives. You can earn it through daily objectives, quests, or the occasional lunchbox reward.
For the best uses of Nuka Cola Quantum, check out our helpful article.
Lunchboxes
Use lunchboxes wisely. Opening them after establishing your core rooms can prevent early game overload. If you’re looking to get more lunchboxes without spending money, there are a few clever ways to earn them through in-game objectives and time-limited events.
Read more: How to Get More Lunchboxes in Fallout Shelter
Dweller Training
Don’t neglect training rooms, which steadily increase your dwellers’ stats and unlock greater potential. You can train dwellers in all 7 SPECIAL stats.
Radio Room
A radio room is also a great way to boost happiness and attract new dwellers. If you want to grow your vault population quick, build one of these rooms as soon as possible and assign dwellers with high Charisma.
Final Summary
Fallout Shelter offers deep strategy beneath its simple surface. With the right planning, you can turn your vault into a thriving utopia. Keep checking back for updated guides, and feel free to explore all of our content for more tips!
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