Fallout Shelter: Best Stats For Exploring The Wasteland, Ranked

Summary

• Certain stats, such as Luck and Intelligence are crucial when sending your vault dwellers to explore.
• While some stats are more beneficial than others, each has its own purpose.
• While Luck is the best stat to utilise, we go over every stat and rank them based on how helpful they are.

Sending a settler into the wasteland in Fallout Shelter is scary. It’s like sending your child to school for the first time, except they might come home missing a few limbs. Still, the sake of humanity needs them to gather what they can from this post-apocalyptic world.

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Searching the wasteland is vital for gathering materials and levelling up your vault dwellers. They need the experience and knowledge if they’re going to help the growth of your vault. Similarly to every Fallout game, S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats determine survival aspects, from fighting against enemies to digging up junk. This list looks at the best stats for your vault dwellers to help them survive.

S.P.E.C.I.A.L stands for Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck. In Fallout Shelter, the max level for these stats is ten but it can be increased with various kinds of gear.

7 Strength

Determines

How to improve

The chance to successfully open lockers

Assign dwellers to a weights room

Strength in Fallout Shelter isn’t as detrimental to your survival as it might be in other Fallout games. It doesn’t define your dweller’s carry capacity or overall strength like you might expect. The only thing that changes is the chance of success of opening lockers.

Opening lockers in the wasteland can be beneficial, as they could contain high-quality loot. Unfortunately, it’s not guaranteed that your dweller will come across lockers often. Chances are, your dweller could explore for days and only come across a handful of lockers to open.

6 Charisma

Determines

How to improve

The chance to succeed during civilised encounters

Assign dwellers to a lounge

Civilised encounters are when your dweller discovers locations occupied by people you can talk to, like Institute soldiers or the Brotherhood of Steel. Talking to these groups can lead to fighting or freely exploring the location. Ideally, you’ll avoid a fight and keep all your limbs.

Encounters with civil parties are uncommon, so it’s not the most vital stat to level up. Charisma is better used for socialising in the safety of the vault. It certainly won’t do much good against an angry deathclaw.

5 Agility

Determines

How to improve

How quickly your dweller can fire their weapons

How much damage your dweller can avoid when escaping fights

Assign dwellers to an athletics room

Agility isn’t the most useful for finding loot, but it’s essential for your dwellers’ survival. Fighting enemies can be difficult, so increasing your dwellers’ rate of fire can give them the upper hand in combat.

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If the battle is already lost, agility can help your dwellers get to safety. By decreasing the damage they receive when escaping, they can continue exploring the wasteland before heading home. Successfully escaping also helps when you’ve run out of stimpaks. It means you won’t have to spend 1,000 caps reviving the dweller to bring them home.

4 Perception

Determines

How to improve

The chance of finding new locations

The accuracy of critical hits

Assign dwellers to an armoury

Discovering locations is an enjoyable aspect of Fallout Shelter. After leaving your dwellers to look after themselves in the brutal wilderness, they suddenly pull you to a new location. Perception increases the chance of uncovering these areas, so you can follow your dweller around a little more closely while they’re looting.

Well, you can make them go into a room and then wait for them to (hopefully) win the fight with whatever’s in there. Luckily, increasing perception means they have a higher chance of landing critical hits and winning.

3 Endurance

Determines

How to improve

How many hit points your dwellers gain when levelling up

Assign dwellers to a fitness room

Endurance is used to calculate your dwellers’ total health. Higher endurance means dwellers can take more damage before succumbing to cruel enemies. It can be hard to lose a dweller you enjoy, especially if you’re low on caps and have no choice but to let them go.

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Increasing their health means they can stay out in the wasteland for longer to collect more loot. Paired with the right gear, your dwellers can gain a lot of health. Using endurance-focused gear means you won’t be able to increase other stats as much, but your dweller will be a tank in the wasteland.

2 Intelligence

Determines

How to improve

The chances of finding Stimpaks and RadAway

The chances of succeeding during civilised encounters with wounded people

Assign dwellers to a classroom

It’s critical to keep your wits about you in the wasteland. You never know what kind of people you’ll encounter, so it’s always good to be careful. Intelligence can help you during unsteady encounters with wounded people. You can treat them and send them on their way like the kind explorer you are.

Intelligence also increases your chances of finding Stimpaks and RadAway. If your vault is a little slow in production, looting health items in the wasteland is the next best thing. It also means your dweller can explore for longer if they continue finding them.

1 Luck

Determines

How to improve

The chance of finding higher quality items

The speed at which the critical hit meter fills up

How many caps your dwellers find

Assign dwellers to a game room

Luck is by far the best stat to utilise when exploring the wasteland. You want to find the best of the best when your dwellers are risking their lives, and luck will boost your chances. Most substantially, luck increases the amount of caps your dwellers will find. Caps are used for almost everything in your vault, so a healthy stockpile is good.

The luck stat also increases the speed of filling the critical hit meter. Since the wilds are filled with lethal creatures, any advantage in combat is helpful. You never know what you’ll find when scouting locations, so having a powerful ability is handy.

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