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Fallout Shelter Wasteland Exploration Guide: How to Maximize Loot

This article is over 9 years old and may contain outdated information

It’s been a long time since we last talked about Fallout Shelter, but this doesn’t mean that I haven’t been playing the game daily since then and learning new stuff about it. One detail that I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to proved to be actually extremely important, and I am here to share it with you so that you won’t do the same mistakes that I did: how to properly explore the Wasteland in Fallout Shelter to maximize the loot gained (items and bottlecaps).

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At first, when population was low in the Vault, I would just send whoever was free, equipped them with whatever armor and weapon I had left and sending them to die after a few hours. As the population grew and I started to learn more, I understood that exploring the Wastelands in Fallout Shelter is the best, easiest and fastest way to fully equip your survivors with great equipment and make a lot of money fast.

But still… I wasn’t getting solid loot because my survivors used to die after just a few hours and the game itself says that the longer they time they spend exploring, the better the loot. So how to maximize loot in Fallout Shelter?

I tried everything possible: equipping them with 25 Radaways and 25 Stimpacks helped a little bit, but they rarely managed to survive over 18 hours (which was better than what I was getting, but still not amazing). I then started to send very high level dudes and dudettes out there, I paid attention to the skills they had, but still there was no real difference.

Until today, when I checked out my exploring survivors and realized what the secret really is. Here are the two people I had exploring:

Survivor #1 who died, as usual, after about 19 hours AND 25 Stimpacks and 9 Radaways:

fallout shelter wasteland exploring

Survivor #2 who was still exploring after 20 hours, with just 10 Stimpacks used and 6 Radaways:

fallout shelter wasteland exploring1

Which was the main difference? It was the WEAPON! The survivor with the way better weapon (Jane) was doing a lot better than the other survivor who, even though of a lower level, had better equipment (and their stats were similar). However, the guy – who died after 19 hours was sporting a Rusty Flamer that does 15 damage, while the girl has a way better Lead Belcher that does 19-24 damage.

And that is the secret to get the most out of the Fallout Shelter wastelands: equip your explorers with the best possible weapon. Max out the Stimpacks and Radaways and send them to explore. It’s not unusual for the Equipped with a Lead Belcher to spend over 36 hours out in the wastes and to return with some really nice equipment bits, including a similarly nice chunk of Bottlecaps.

Now that you know how to do ti, properly equip your survivors and send them out there to bring you the real loot!

Author
Image of Luciano
Luciano
Writing about computer and video games since 2008, Luciano started to develop a major interest in mobile gaming starting 2013, after his son was born and free hours for hardcore gaming became nothing but a sweet memory. As a result, Touch Tap Play was created (in 2013 also), so that he can share his love for mobile gaming, but especially write tips and tricks to help fellow gamers do better in their virtual adventures.