Fallout Shelter isolation vault update: population 67

I'm fairly braindead at the moment, but have a screenshot of where my isolation vault challenge is at:



We won't go into how many caps I've wasted on a major overhaul of the layout again, but I'm happy with the way it's going now and I'm almost at unlocking gardens which is nice. They'll be going in that empty upper middle section, along with Nuka Cola plants (eventually) and the diners will be replaced by the higher-teir water purification rooms once they're unlocked. The older-tier water rooms will be demolished at that point.

The training rooms will only be there for as long as I need them, and the radio room has moved a good two or three times now. This vault is a real money-maker, which is handy with nuclear plants over the 10K per building cost mark now, nevermind the upgrades.

And deathclaws? They make it through 14 rooms (8 levels down the first column) and the dude in the medlab there finishes off the last one. I think the game is mad at me, cuz I hardly ever get deathclaws and can handle them with ease, since I have a metric crapton of stimpacks and only have to heal one person at a time.

Fallout 4: How to turn in quests to Preston Garvey without getting new ones

This is a slight spoiler but the odds are, if you are here, you're looking for exactly this information. Basically, Preston Garvey is someone who will give you random quests to help settlers, and instead of asking you if you want to help, he will force each new quest upon you any time you turn in a completed one, or walk remotely near him. He seriously will not stop, ever. Via suggestions around the 'nets and some trial and error, I've worked out the sequence to successfully turning in Preston's missions while avoiding new ones.

1. Walk up to Preston and talk to him to start turning in the quest. He'll say a random thank-you/grats line or two.

2. Stay in front of Preston for the moment. He will now say something along the lines of "I have a new mission for you." Let him say this first line, otherwise the turn-in XP doesn't seem to pop properly in the next step.

3. As Preston is beginning to speak the first few words of the actual mission, walk/run away from him slightly and bring up your Pip-boy the moment you see the XP reward for the quest you just turned in. (If you stay standing there staring at Preston, the Pip-boy seems unresponsive. To be safe, you want to at least stay within earshot for this step or the turn-in XP may not pop.)

4. Fast-travel to somewhere else (Red Rocket Truck Stop will do).

5. Wait a few moments to make sure the new mission didn't register. Bask in the glow of the quest reward XP.

6. Done! :D

I managed to do this for two quests in a row, fast-traveling to Red Rocket Truck Stop both times without the new quest registering. Eat my shorts, Preston!

Update: It appears even if you never hear about the quests, you can fail them, which is stupid and has to be one of the worst game design decisions ever made. I've read elsewhere that failing those quests results in a permanent happiness loss at the related settlement, but I can't confirm this yet (I will at some point because screw Preston and his stupid quests). Every other faction I've come across with repeatable quests asks first you if you want to do them. And of course, it doesn't matter how ridiculously-fortified each settlement is, someone will always get kidnapped or think raiders can get through missile turrets and guards armed to the teeth. Stupid. Seriously, devs... what were you thinking? I'd shoot Preston between the eyes myself at this point, but he's immortal due to being a companion choice.

Update 2: Regarding the previous update, failing quests you never got in the first place may be glitched to not actually matter. I noticed that quests marked as failed for this reason seemed to reset if I went and talked to Preston out of curiosity. He gave me the failed quests all over again as if they were brand new (same location and everything) and didn't whine at me for having failed anything.

Also, if you avoid enough of the initial questline that leads to Preston becoming an active part of the ongoing game (hint: don't turn in the quest after you get the goodies on the roof of the building he's in), it appears that the random quests still do exist. I left Preston and friends where they are originally located with just enough of the quest left to make them stay there indefinitely, but later on discovered that a guard at Sanctuary (which I had populated via a radio beacon) had one of the usual "omg someone has been kidnapped/whatever" quests. I reloaded a quicksave and avoided her from then on. The game has yet to tell me I've failed any such quests at any of the settlements that character is running, and that character has a lot of time in-game after the initial meeting with Miss Quest Guard Of Doom.

Critical help for Fallout 4 bugs, glitches, and things you NEED to know (as non-spoilery as possible)

Fallout 4 is riddled with bugs and glitches, plus there is a frustrating lack of information for important things in the game, so I'm going to keep this updated with the most crucial stuff as I go along. Some of this will be partial fixes since it's clear specific issues need patching directly from Bethesda. As for the rest, it's not clear if it'll ever get patched because it may be "working as intended."


Militia "help x settlement" quests are timed!

To avoid spoilers I'll make this very vague. Basically, you are going to get militia quests regarding specific settlements at some point, and they'll usually start with a certain NPC saying "I've heard of another settlement that needs our help." Picking up the initial quest itself starts a timer that is very, very long (seriously, to the point that I thought that the first stage didn't have one for ages). Visiting the settlement and engaging the person involved will start a much shorter timer (and they WILL force you to talk to them if you get close enough). There doesn't appear to be any real indication in the game for how long you have to complete the actual mission, so be prepared to go and do the quest immediately.

This is based on my observations that two of three settlement-helping quests were still fine when I hadn't visited the related settlements, but the third quest failed a while after I had visited its settlement and talked to the person who needed help. And much later, I finally saw a very fast message telling me I was running out of time to talk to a specific settlement which must have been the oldest quest of this type.


Do not leave weapons, armor, and power armor useable at settlements!

Unless you want random settlers getting in the power armor and using it (especially during raid defense), make sure you remove the fusion core from any suits you aren't using yourself. NPCs elsewhere can also "steal" your power armor if you leave it unattended with an active fusion core. As for weapons and armor, I'm not sure about armor but settlers and enemies will definitely pick up any weapons they find lying around. Always store your things at settlements inside containers that can only be accessed by clicking on the container menu (aka don't use a bucket or a shelf where the item is still technically in the open).


Weapons lag while changing weapons with favorite keys.

This is one that needs patched, as changing weapons via the Pip-Boy still works as quickly as expected. Using favorites appears to eventually become glitched to have a delay, sometimes a very long delay which locks out any ability to use a weapon (except for your fists if you are lucky and can get the game to respond at all). Searching forums seems to show that reverting to an old save will fix it, but there's only so much of that I personally am willing to do. So, if you don't want to be constantly checking to see if the weapon-lag glitch has hit you, be prepared for it to set in at some point. Once that happens, and when it's crucial to change weapons quickly, use the Pip-Boy interface to change weapons instead of using favorites via number keys.


A settlement I am allied with keeps getting attacked by raiders!

Contrary to information I found elsewhere (the game or forums, I'm not sure), keeping defense points "close to" resource points is not good enough. Keep your defense points equal to or preferably higher than your resource points. In theory this should keep settlements from being attacked at all, or at least it's worked for me with Sanctuary as of 70 hours into the game.

I've seen one "help defend x settlement failed" quest message show up randomly, and sadly it is very easy to miss the message that the settlement is under attack, espcially if you are already in the middle of a battle elsewhere. That settlement's defense points were one less (11) than the total resource points (12, combining the values of food, water, and power). After plopping down an extra turret, all has been quiet there.

Update: It wasn't all that much later that Sanctuary did finally get attacked one random time I arrived, by super mutants no less. With proper defense numbers at settlements, attacks seem to happen when I arrive at a settlement and very rarely happen when I am not there.


Severe FPS issues indoors / FPS issues in general.

I'm running an older graphics card, so this is especially notable on my machine (and it's just the card, the rest of the system is fine for this game). The following two fixes helped me even though they're generally meant for better cards, so I'm linking to them here:

How To Fix MouseLag Issue In Fallout 4 and Achieve 80FPS-120FPS at Max Settings and FXAA - Note that the "NVidia logo" they're talking about on the desktop is found via right-clicking the destop. It's the "NVIDIA Control Panel" listed in that menu.

Reddit fix for FPS drop indoors - because certain effects used more indoors than out will cause pretty much everyone to have FPS drop indoors.


Supply lines do NOT share food and water resources between settlements, but may give the illusion that they do.

Supply lines only connect workshops in each settlement, giving the ability to use stored components in one settlement that are technically located in another settlement. The "illusion" of food and water resources being shared comes from some 90 hours of personal gameplay, where the food/water resource numbers would be in the green after I started a supply line (often with the first settler to arrive at a new settlement), without having any actual plants or water available or tended.

I think what happened was, resource meters may count harvested food/veggies and bottles of purified water as actual resources, even though it doesn't make the numbers go up; it just turns them green and happiness goes up as if there were proper resources. Once I finally pulled all the purified water out of the workbench at one of the settlements, the water number there showed red and happiness began going down. It's possible that the supply lines count food and water items in any workbench along the connected supply lines a well.

I have a feeling this stored-resource concept was not intended by the devs and may get patched out, because it definitely creates confusion for how supply lines work. I am also not sure if settlers use a certain amount of that stored food every day, to make up for the lack of actual water pumps, plants, etc. I just know that I wasted hours turning one settlement into a water-producing mammoth, and another into a food-producing haven, only to finally realize it wasn't actually sharing those numbers across the map.

TL;DR: Make sure each settlement has their own personal water and food supply in numbers matching (or exceeding) the population of that settlement.


Maximum settler population per settlement is 10 plus your charisma.

So if you have 10 charisma, you can have 20 settlers in a settlement. If you have 5 charisma, you can have 15 settlers in a settlement. I have not tested wearing charisma gear with my 10-charisma character to see if I can push max population past 20, mostly because there's no real point to having hundreds of settlers to manage between all the settlements. Plus, I have no idea if taking off charisma gear after successfully recruiting more people would make them leave again.


Junk items fail miserably for use as decorations!

This is seriously disappointing, and I doubt we'll see a patch to fix it unless the devs feel particularly merciful. Basically, I have only seen one vase in one settlement successfully stay on a table after leaving and coming back later (the vase was already on the table but I moved the table and then had to put the vase back on it; the vase had a flower in it so perhaps somehow it is a "true" decor item). Most of the time, items will fall through whatever surface they've been set on as soon as you get a good distance away from the settlement, or wind up "lost" until you find them lying in a weird spot elsewhere in the settlement.


What happens to the unused components of a junk item that the workshop used part of?

They go in the workshop. The workshop inventory has some delay showing that the extra components are actually there, but entering build mode and then exiting it again immediately will force the workshop inventory list to update faster.


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More to come as I find the worst of the problems. This was last updated: November 22, 2015.

Fallout Shelter vault progress: Megavault and Isolation Challenge

This game helped keep me sane during some pretty bad migraine issues over the last month, and still proves to be entertaining, so it deserves a shoutout. I play it on my Android tablet, and while I could whine up a storm about the problems it has (crappy touch controls, dwellers bunching together and dying because I can't click them to heal them, revived dwellers being put on coffee break and ignoring their room assignments, dwellers constantly being unselected by deaths of others / starts or endings of incidents / rushes succeeding / a butterfly flapped its wings in the Amazon, incidents zooming into rooms and lagging out the game, numerous graphical glitches, etc.), it still passes time quite well. So, without further ado...

I present the Megavault, aka Lag City:



Room rundown, all of which have maxed upgrades unless noted:

Vault door: two level 50 guards on duty
Residences, single: 17 (2 are stage 2 upgrade, max allowed aka 200 dwellers)
Nuclear reactors, triple: 11
Nuclear reactors, single ("rush spam incident room"): 1
Nuka cola plants, triple: 4
Medlabs, triple: 2
Medlabs, double: 2
Science labs, triple: 2
Science labs, single: 2
Radio rooms, triple: 4
Gardens, triple: 2
Water purification, triple: 2
Storage, triple: 4
Storage, single: 8
Training rooms, triple: 2 for Luck, 1 for each of the other stats
Elevators: enough to permanently cease molerat incidents
"The Basement": 6 triple power rooms in various stages of upgrades to complete objectives; they are rebuilt and upgraded as needed. These are now completely unmanned, dwellers shown there in the screenshots have been moved to guard residences between the training rooms to keep radroach outbreaks from spreading all over.
Misc notes: bought 80 lunchboxes while they were massively on sale during the Android debut, plus three Mr. Handy 5-packs over time

All resource-generating rooms (except for the basement) are fully-staffed.

General information:
Vault number: 13
Date started: approx. Sept 6, 2015
Population: 190
Caps: 999,999
Caps maxed: 11am EST Oct 6, 2015
Highest caps seen (because it's glitchy): 1,000,599
Gun/Outfit storage: 410
Stimpack storage: 105
Radaway storage: 85
Raiders make it to: vault door room
Deathclaws make it to: first floor single reactor

As for SPECIAL stats, the entire first floor and the far-right nuclear reactor on the second floor all have 10 strength, 10 endurance, and 10 luck (some stats are filled in by gear, some gear pushes them over those numbers); they also have the highest-damaging weapons in the vault and are at or near the max level of 50. The guards in the vault door room and the first-floor storage room are level 50. Until I added the guards in the storage room, deathclaws tended to make it to the second-floor right-hand nuclear reactor.

The SPECIAL stats for every other resource-generating room are whatever the room requires, plus luck, at 10 (including gear, some of which pushes dwellers past 10). There are two exceptions, one of which is the triple storage rooms which have level 50 guards that were pulled from nuclear reactors and replaced by other dwellers (therefore those guards have 10 strength and 10 luck, since staffing storage rooms doesn't actually seem to do anything). The other exception is the radio rooms, where the dwellers have 10+ charisma with gear but I ignored luck in case it brings newbie survivors in faster and that is the last thing I need. I wish it were possible to turn that option off for radio rooms... this vault surely has a reputation for being a bottomless deathtrap at this point.

The radios keep happiness high, and while doubling the original two triples I had definitely made a notable difference to get happiness closer to 100%, it also attracts more newbie survivors who are useless to me. I used to kill them off in the "incident room" single nuclear reactor on the first floor, but now I use one of the single science labs because the entire first floor is set up with guards and I got tired of moving them.

For quite a while, many floors were devoted to training rooms. I had roughly half my population in training while half worked to keep resources flowing, along with leveling up. All the dwellers except for the dream team are now done training.

My "dream team" is eight favorite characters (mine and a friend's original characters plus Richard B. Riddick, as best the game could duplicate them) who are completely maxing out their stats at 10, not counting gear. I intend to use them for creating a few more dweller children (update: bah, two kids in a row had the same crappy stats as any other level 1 newbie, sad... so ends the era of babymaking), seeing if they have notably better luck in the wasteland, and probably taking over guard/working positions on the first floor. The only other dweller with maxed stats (including gear) is Hannibal Lecter, and he spends his time in the wasteland for long stints.


And for shiznits and giggles, here is the isolation vault challenge I've been working on after paring down a previous vault to 13 dwellers... Vault 666:



I won't bother with a room breakdown since the vault is still in progress, plus the screenshot montage is fairly crappily-done. But the general idea is proving interesting, and I do wonder if I'll have enough room to get population to the magic deathclaw number of 60... kind of hoping not, although by then I should have enough single-person medlabs churning out stimpacks to keep the initial set of guards alive. I also have no idea how deep the deathclaws might go, nor what path they will take at the crossroads between power rooms and residences.

Anyways, the general idea is elsewhere on the internet, that an isolation vault has rooms with only one person, and they never meet. I have further fine-tuned the concept into more rules, like how no set of adjoining rooms will have more than one dweller for the entire set (the ones on the far-right side), and how most rooms are stacked kitty-corner to each other (stops incidents from spreading to other rooms). Very low-level dwellers can escape to a safe, empty room to avoid incidents, but decent-level dwellers must stay in their room and see the incident to its end.

Maybe someday I'll fill in all the dirt borders around rooms with elevators, but if so, that's an expense I am not looking forward to. I want to see how the dwellers handle molerats before I decide on that, and I like the clean look of the current setup. There will be one more diner and one more water room on the upper-middle tier when population requires it, and most likely more once I dig that tier lower. If I get far enough in population, those rooms will become gardens and water purification plants, possibly even Nuka Cola plants but I doubt my population will get high enough.

There is a version of Hannibal Lecter in this vault too, and he either controls the radio room to bring in new dwellers, or goes out into the wasteland to collect gear, to keep supply ahead of demand.

Something I noticed by taking apart the old vault (which I realized was fast becoming a boring version of the Megavault), is that at 13 dwellers, I had no raider attacks nor molerats even though I had rooms unlocked in build mode from initially having 50 dwellers. It seems population limits directly affect what spawns, and it's not a "no turning back" situation when you go past the magic number for specific incidents. (I believe 40 is molerats from what I've read elsewhere, and 60 for deathclaws; not sure about raiders but I think they finally showed up after I had 15 dwellers).

I feel like I'm forgetting something... par for the course. So yeah, that's my foray into Fallout Shelter. There pretty much is no endgame aside from upgrading dweller gear via wasteland runs and waiting for the last leveling dweller to hit 50. It's definitely a game where the journey is the point.

Oh, and you know those toys toddlers have, the noisy ones that "magically" break, or have the batteries removed in the dead of night and, oh, "they don't make batteries like that anymore"? This game is totally that, for adults.