Section 2: SPECIAL

2.1

Q: How do SPECIALs affect gameplay?

A: Here's a table, links provided within are for further reading:

SPECIAL	Global Effects	Vault Effects	Exploration Effects	Quest Effects
All		Crafting	Survivability (legendary junk in survival difficulty) Small help finding weapons/outfits/recipes/junk
Strength		Power generator (power) Nuclear reactor (power)	Larger contribution to survivability
Perception		Water treatment (water) Water purification (water)	Small help with legendary junk (normal difficulty)	Crit arrow speed
Endurance	Dweller health	Nuka-Cola bottler (food/water)	Rad resistance (immunity at 11+) Legendary junk (normal difficulty) Larger contribution to survivability
Charisma		Living quarters Radio room Barbershop	Legendary junk (normal difficulty)
Intelligence		Medbay (stimpaks) Science lab (RadAway)
Agility		Diner (food) Garden (food)	Larger contribution to survivability	Attack rate
Luck		Rush chance Chance for caps	Finding caps Legendary junk (normal difficulty) Larger contribution to survivability	Crit build rate

2.2

Q: What SPECIALs should I train to max?

A: Check 2.1 to see what affects what to determine what you want to do. If you're looking for the bare minimum for the best possible dwellers:

• For HP, all dwellers should be trained to max E while at level 1 and leveled to 50 with preferably some good E gear. Vault workers don't particularly need max HP, explorers and questers definitely benefit more.
• People in the vault only need L and whatever stat is needed for the room they'll be in. Any designated crafting dwellers work best with max SPECIAL, as there are items requiring each SPECIAL you can craft. You might want breeders to have max SPECIAL too for a chance at rare and legendary kids (see 5.4).
• If you're concerned about surviving, all SPECIAL help. Lasting a trip is all that's needed for legendary junk in survival. For legendary junk in normal you'll need ECL, with P helping a tiny bit, and A if you care about random quests.
• Questing only directly uses PAL, however, some quests might require high SCI to start them, meaning questers work best with max SPECIAL.

2.3

Q: Do outfits increase SPECIAL above 10?

A: Yes. The maximum possible you can have in one attribute is 17 (10 with a +7 legendary outfit).

2.4

Q: If I move a dweller out of a training room, will they lose the progress they have made?

A: No. SPECIAL levels work just like regular experience levels, in that dwellers gain experience points toward that stat. When you move them back into the training room they will continue exactly where they left off.

2.5

Q: I've read that intelligence will increase how much experience dwellers get and will reduce training time, is this true?

A: It's not, no SPECIAL increases how much experience a dweller earns, either towards levels or SPECIAL. The only way to make dwellers level up faster is with an Experience pet, while the only way to reduce training time is with a Training Time pet, to have more dwellers in the training room, or to have a more upgraded training room.

While it's an understandable theory given intelligence increases experience earned in Fallout 4, which shares a lot with Fallout Shelter, you can test for yourself with low and high intelligence dwellers. They'll earn the same experience from all sources in the game both for leveling up and training.

2.6

Q: I've heard that strength increases damage, is this true?

A: I've yet to see any evidence it's true. I've got a post here that covers combat in the vault, quests, and exploration, with testing and links to sources. Since then we've had much more data about exploration which I've organized in this post. There's summaries in the posts, but for an extra short summary it's no effect in the vault, no effect in quests, and a varying role in exploration depending on the difficulty and version you're playing. Strength doesn't globally affect damage in exploration. Rather, all encounters have a single stat associated with them that help with passing the encounter, and some use strength, though all SPECIAL are used to various degrees.