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What's the trick to farming caps efficiently, in Fallout Shelter?

Is it better to send Dwellers for short trips to the wasteland, or are long ones better? Is it worth having high luck and Mr. Handy for idle collecting?

Any other pointers I've missed?

4 Answers 4

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This question might appear broad, however there should only be a few general methods for farming caps, disregarding glitches and exploits.

Exploring the Wasteland

Your dwellers will find caps in the wasteland, but they will also find weapons and armor. These items can also be sold for caps.

A dweller will find rarer items, worth more caps, the longer they are exploring. The dwellers Luck stat plays a part, too. A known method for fast forwarding this process is to simply send them out, and fast forward your phones clock. If you set the clock a day forward, explorers will immediately have a day added to their exploration.

It might be worth considering the bounty they hold in comparison to resurrection cost, in the case of dead dwellers, but please be aware that altering the clock can have other adverse reactions, as already seen from some of the other questions being asked about Fallout Shelter at present.

Leveling Dwellers and Collecting Resources

Every time a dweller levels, or you collect resources from a room, you are awarded a small sum of caps. A rooms cap reward depends on the collective sum of luck between its workers, while a dweller yields an amount of caps equal to their new level, upon leveling up.

Rush Bonuses

Rushing a room gives you a caps bonus. You have a chance to fail, but surviving any repercussion tends to yield a small amount of caps, and experience for all dwellers in the room. If you keep an eye on your dwellers health values, you could easily rush a room repeatedly for greater reward.

Note : The cap reward is equal to the chance of failure, and is independent of the room size or occupancy. Thus, having several small, unupgraded rooms can be used to quickly farm caps, without the more dangerous incidents of larger rooms.

Add high LUCK dwellers to resource rooms

Every time a resource is collected, there is a chance of getting extra caps based on the workers' LUCK stat. By having many resource rooms filled with dwellers with high LUCK, you will gain a steady income from just collecting resources.

Open Lunchboxes

Lunchboxes often have cards of 100 or 500 caps inside them. You can keep pushing objectives to unlock the odd lunchbox reward, or simply purchase them for real money.

There was a known exploit for quickly generating "free" lunchboxes in the first iOS version of the game, but this was patched in the first update to the iOS version and was never available on the android version.

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  • I found that leveling a dweller awards caps equal to the level he/she just reached. So a dweller that levels from 8 to 9 awards 9 caps; one that levels from 22 to 23 awards 23 caps.
    – Nolonar
    Commented Aug 23, 2015 at 9:55
  • LUCK also has a chance of giving you caps when you collect resources. This includes normal resource collection and rush room collections.
    – Nelson
    Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 3:24
  • @Nelson thats great, if you have confirmed, you should edit it into the answer. Thats the idea behind a community wiki
    – user106385
    Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 7:42
  • Thanks for mentioning the Luck when collecting resources it’s never mentioned in other forums Commented May 16 at 12:12
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I once got over 4k from the Mysterious Stranger. Not bad at all.

Anyway, With the recent upgrade, things are a bit different. From about a week's play since then, here are my thoughts:

  • We get less outfits and weapons from the wasteland. Caps I think are about the same.

  • Quests are a nice way to make money, but mostly items. We get far more money from just wandering the wastes.

  • I'm not entirely sure, but I think we get less lunch boxes. But, there are also the pet carriers and (could be plain chance) I got more Mr.Handies.

  • There is also crafting outfits and weapons. First, we get less of them from the wastes. We then need to spend money on the crafting rooms, plus the cost of crafting (caps and junk). I also don't sell outfits and weapons anymore, but rather recycle to get more junk.

All in all, I find it harder to get caps now. Not that bad, since there is more to do in the game now.

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Having people explore with high stats in all categories will increase the gear and caps you get

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There's also the method of finding and clicking on the Mysterious Stranger that appears about every 5 minutes who has random amounts of caps on him every time. Just listen to the mysterious song segment that plays that indicates he's appeared. If your volume is off, then feel the vibrates. 2 vibrates means he's appeared and 1 vibrate means he disappeared. You have to search immediately though cause he vanishes in about 10-15 seconds. His caps range from 200 to 4000+. I once got over 2000 caps twice in a row

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  • 1
    Also zoom out until game switches to 2D and it will be much easier to find him
    – Poma
    Commented Aug 11, 2016 at 10:42
  • Wow, thanks @Poma ! Note that you have to have HD ZOOM OUT set to offfor this to take effect. Otherwise it's always 3D. I think I prefer it off anyway. Commented May 9, 2017 at 1:52

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