Fallout Shelter bugs

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This page lists bugs in Fallout Shelter.

• Clipping issues (i.e. items poking through one another) and typos are not notable. All other bugs are notable.
• The main bug page should not contain duplicate listings from individual article pages. Entries should be moved to the appropriate page.
• Please observe the editing guideline. In particular, do not use first-person or forum-style speech.

This page describes and lists any known fixes for known issues and bugs on the iOS and Android game Fallout Shelter.

Known bugs

Android

• If you get a notification ( email, Message, etc.) the sound will turn off and remain off until the game is restarted.
  • This seems to happen anytime an external sound is played, you can avoid this by setting your phone to vibrate or silent while the app is running.
• If a deathclaw attack starts while having a new dweller from the wasteland outside, the "Survive deathclaw attacks with no casualties" objective will not advance. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Occasionally when Mr. Handy is sent to the wasteland when on low health, he duplicates and a copy is in the game permanently.^{[verification overdue]}
• If a Mr. Handy dies when you're zoomed into a room the whole screen is going to stay with a white layer on top. ^{[verification overdue]}
  • Possible fix: select a dweller.
• Crippling performance issues and performance leaks with any action. Lag spikes can become unbearable after less than 10 minutes of heavy activity, so bad as to even make quitting the game difficult. ^[verified]
  • To fix this issue, open the game options and set CAM SENS to 0% and Turn-Off HD ZOOM OUT.
• When exploring locations in the 1.6 update, all of your objective progress will be erased. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Tasks randomly stop counting towards objective completion when returning to the game after a crash or even after a proper exit. ^{[verification overdue]}
• The game crashes when heavily using the room assignment list. Often the game will crash when using the room assignment list to assign dwellers to rooms. ^[verified]
• Frequently moving dwellers around causes some major kind of performance leak, along with doing just about everything else. Reset the game frequently. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Sometimes deselecting a room or a dweller will not change the interface, the interface will remain until you select and deselect another dweller or room. ^[verified]
• Objectives cannot be removed each day on Android Lollipop version.^{[verification overdue]}
• After the tutorial where you build the power plant, it tells you to select a dweller to assign to the power plant but the dweller may not be selectable. ^[verified]
• All dwellers have blacked out faces.^{[verification overdue]}
• Sending out an explorer sometimes results in an absurdly large return time when recalled. ^[verified]
• During raider attacks if the game crashes, the game may become locked in the "under attack" mode. There will no longer be raiders, but dwellers will still be in attack mode, and absolutely no resources will be produced, even in rooms that weren't attacked.^[verified]
  • A possible fix is quitting and re-entering the game through the main menu.
• When you unequip armor and weaponry from a dweller before they enter the vault the game will crash and, while restarting it crashes when trying to load the vault, ^[verified]
• When in the loading screen after choosing a vault number, the game will crash and send you back to the phone's home screen.^[verified]
• The game may get stuck on the "Loading..." screen when loading the Vault. ^[verified]
  • The only known fix is to force stop the game then clear its cache.
    • If this doesn't work, reset the device as well.
• Occasionally when dwellers are sent to explore, they will end up exploring for an infinite amount of time without accumulating items or experiencing events.^[verified]
  • This is caused when a player advances the phone's timer ahead. After the amount of time that was jumped ahead passes, the explorers should start encountering creatures and collecting loot again.
• If dwellers are exploring for more than 60 hours, they never get any events or items past the 60 hour point. ^{[verification overdue]}
• The game may constantly crash upon opening the objectives screen. Restarting the game does not fix the problem.^[verified]
  • Fix: reddit fix
• Game crashes on "Please stand by" screen if the cellphone shuts down while playing previously.^[verified]
  • The only known fix currently is to completely reinstall Fallout Shelter, as the crash destroys any existing saves.
• When assigning Vault Dwellers to a new room or when two couples go to have a baby at the same time (overlapping themselves), they will occasionally become invisible and unable to be selected. To fix this close down the app completely.^[verified]
  • Another fix that works sometimes is to make the invisible dweller go through an elevator by assigning him to a room on a different floor by using the assignment list menu.
• If the phone's batteries run out after opening a lunchbox and unlocking the cards, the cards will disappear once the game has restarted.^[verified]
• In radroach incidents, sometimes the workers will animate as running around uselessly or continuing their work task instead of assisting with exterminating the radroaches if they are unarmed. ^[verified]
• XP earned while the vault dwellers are exploring the wastes doesn't seem to increase their level.^[verified]
• Stimpaks cannot be applied to dwellers.^{[verification overdue]}
• When reviving dwellers there's a chance that an invisible corpse will remain and upset anyone working there. The only known ways to fix this so far is to delete the room and rebuild it or have another dweller die in the same room and deal with the corpse.^[verified]
• During raider attacks, dwellers from other rooms take damage although raiders are not present. The dwellers in the room where raiders are do not shoot them.^[verified]
  • This seem to happen when assigning someone to an empty room raiders are about to leave. The raiders will look like they're still in that room while they are actually fighting somewhere else, explaining neither the dwellers nor raiders attacking, and dwellers in another room taking damage (and thus actually damaging the raiders).
• Occasionally fires will not be put out, resulting in an inability to collect resources from any other room. ^[verified]
• When explorers return, attempting to collect the items results in the failure to collect them despite having plenty of storage space.^[verified]
• When a selected dweller dies from an emergency, the game doesn't deselect them and it is still possible to use a stimpak on them. Despite this, the dweller will still die, maintaining a normal facial expression. ^[verified]
• When switching between apps while a vault is on fire, upon returning, the fire cannot be extinguished. ^[verified]
• During a radroach infestation, it is possible for the radroaches to be invincible and eventually kill all of the dwellers. This can also occur with radscorpions, and feral ghouls. ^[verified]
• The core gameplay can be drastically altered by messing with the device's internal clock. Should one set one's clock backwards, all incidents cease unless triggered by the player, and all production rooms gain whatever amount of time that the player went back to added to their next production time. The production rooms can be reset by rushing, allowing a player to collect resources risk-free for as long as the clock has been set behind. This can also be used to manipulate the time dwellers spend in the wasteland, but they won't collect anything until the clock has been caught up. The altered time will affect their enemy spawns and loot drops, however, and can also be used to bring them home prematurely by recalling them after setting the clock back and then rolling it forward. Changing the clock or getting to the point in time the clock was changed to originally should fix this highly exploitable bug.^[verified]
  • If a room is rushed immediately prior to setting the device's clock backwards in time to exploit this bug, upon having set the clock backwards, the failure rate of a rush for the room in question will have skyrocketed. This is likely because the game gauges rush failure rate based partially on the time since the last rush, and it decreases with time. Since the previous rush is read as having been in the future, the failure chance is elevated accordingly.
• An exploring dweller will occasionally find an item, but not appear within their inventory. The happens randomly but often on the first item found.^{[verification overdue]}
• The game may crash on certain devices, versions of the Android OS, and runtime (Dalvik/ART) if the Google Play games service is running. ^{[verification overdue]}
  • The service may be uninstalled as a possible workaround, but it renders add-ons unable to be purchased.
  • If running on a KitKat OS, use Dalvik runtime as a workaround.
• On a rare occasion an elevator may become indestructible. While attempting to destroy it, "the elevator is in use" message shows. This happens even if there are no other rooms or elevators connected to it (apart from its parent one) and no dweller is moving between any rooms/levels. ^[verified]
  • Exiting and reloading the vault will normally fix this.
• Letting a mole rat attack spread into an empty dead end room may result in a crash when the mole rats have nowhere to go. After the crash you can no longer play this vault, as the game continues to register (and briefly display) mole rats in that room, triggering another crash. No amount of reboots seems to help. ^{[verification overdue]}
  • This crash is because of a mole rat objective and will stop happening if you can open the game and delete the objective before the crash happens again.
• The game will crash if a character over level 50 is out in the wasteland. ^{[verification overdue]}
  • This applies to characters that turn level 51 while exploring the wasteland, causing the vault to not load.
• The game will randomly reset all active objectives to 0. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Occasionally after the 1.3 update, all female dwellers will wear glasses. ^{[verification overdue]}
• When the librarian outfit is given to a dweller that already has glasses, they will receive a second pair of glasses. ^{[verification overdue]}
• If a dweller's weapon is changed after giving them the command to leave the vault but change their weapon before they leave. That weapon will be gone. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Occasionally time will not pass for an exploring dweller with the app closed, while leaving all other time functions, such as pregnancies, room timers, and questing unaffected.
• Occasionally when a Dweller becomes pregnant, trying to move her back to a production room will deselect her. The only fix is to restart the game.
• Returning from the wasteland sometimes reduces health bar to just above zero.
• Returning from the wasteland sometimes incurs rad damage and sometimes beyond what the health bar indicates.
• Rad damage when entering a quest is sometimes more severe than health bar indicates. This may result in instant death from any enemy even though health bar appears nearly full.
• If the game is not played for an extended amount of time, Radio studios may take much longer to attract a new dweller. A possible fix to this is emptying the room. ^{[verification overdue]}
• When a dweller levels up and upgrades one of their S.P.E.C.I.A.L stat at the same time, only the level increase is applied. ^{[verification overdue]}
• When one returns to their vault after completing a quest, the Caps and Nuka-Cola Quantum counters will be maxed out for about 3 seconds. ^[verified]

iOS

• Upgrading a room will not work if you have the same amount of caps as the cost of upgrading. For example, if a room upgrade costs 750 caps and the player has 750 caps, the player would have to wait until they have reached at least 751 caps in order to purchase the upgrade.^[verified]
• The game will freeze up and black screen with no discernable pattern. The app can be reopened by returning to the home screen. Brief data can be lost in these instances, such as caps gained, objectives removed or completed, and rooms built. It may also result in the permanent pregnancy bug. ^[verified]
• If the Vault is bigger than 20+ civilians, the vault may never load because of permanent crashes at the loading screen of the vault. ^[verified]
• If the game crashes while naming or just after naming a baby dweller, The mother may remain pregnant and not leave the pregnant state after rebooting. Another possible cause appears to be deleting or modifying the residence in which the dweller got pregnant, after they've gotten pregnant, although this is not true in all cases. ^[verified]
• During a radroach infestation, it is possible for the radroaches to be invincible and eventually kill all of the dwellers. ^[verified]
• It is possible for Fallout Shelter to crash when a rush is attempted. ^[verified]
• If a dweller is equipped with RadAway and stimpaks and is on their way to the wasteland, but the expedition is canceled by an event such as rad roach infestation, fire, or raider attack, the items equipped to the dweller will be lost. ^[verified]
• When reviving dwellers there's a chance that an invisible corpse will remain and upset anyone working there. The only known way to fix this so far is to delete the room and rebuild it. ^[verified]
• When attempting to move a newly pregnant dweller back to her job, she sometimes becomes selectable but undraggable. A restart will fix this, along with dragging other dwellers into the living room until the pregnant one is kicked out. ^[verified]
  • If a pregnant dweller becomes undraggable, her pregnancy timer doesn't count down until the game is restarted.^{[verification overdue]}
• After sheltering a random survivor, they may keep their original outfit instead of changing to a vault jumpsuit. This can be verified when going to change their outfit, the name of the clothing is a modifier with an number at the end, example: Casual01. ^[verified]
• After an attack ends, the alarm may continue ringing and the sound of roaches and attacks will remain, even if life in the vault is completely normal. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Objectives will sometimes reset back to zero, usually overnight. This happens frequently with the longer ones, such as "Explore the Wasteland for 14 hours," "Collect 2300 Power," or "Deliver 16 babies." ^{[verification overdue]}
• When you get rare or legendary dwellers, they don't appear at the collection. It does not currently have a solution. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Dwellers sent to explore the Wasteland will sometimes change their outfit if they find an outfit that is the same rarity as the one currently equipped. The original outfit will be moved to their inventory. ^[verified]
• Dwellers may become invisible. It is unknown what causes this, but closing the game and reloading it restores their visibility. ^[verified]
• A dweller recalled from the Wasteland before leaving the screen becomes invisible in 2D rendering mode only (corresponding to them having their weapon drawn while walking, in 3D mode) until they finish moving to an assignment that causes them to put their weapon away. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Dwellers walk diagonally through walls and ceilings. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Dwellers no longer move unless you double click on their room.^{[verification overdue]}
• Dwellers are only considered bald when babies. This can make completing the "Have X bald dwellers in the vault" objectives very difficult, as it will only count the number of babies in the vault. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Tampering with the device's time while the app is active may freeze all the events in the game. You will no longer have random incidents (fire, pests, raiders) except for deathclaws, and when rushing rooms only radroach infestations and fires happen, resulting in the incident of not being able to complete certain objectives such as "Survive ten mole rat attacks without any casualties". You will also not get any daily rewards anymore. The resources will no longer run down over time. Explorers will no longer gather any loot from the wasteland, and there will be no dialogue except for the moment the expedition starts. It is possible to fix this glitch by editing the game's time stamp, but depending on the amount of time you jumped, you will have to wait a very long time before the vault returns to normal. For example, if you set the time forward three days, you will have to wait three days before your vault life properly "resumes". You will know when the vault returns to normal because you'll start receiving a daily performance report again. An immediate solution is to simply turn of the app, reverse the time by double the amount you set it forward, open and enter the vault, turn off the app again, then finally change the date to the current date. To see if this worked, just send a dweller into the wasteland, and see if the exploration time works.^{[verification overdue]}
• The game freezes and crashes when a number of dwellers return at once from exploring. The frame rate starts to drop before the game freezes all together. ^{[verification overdue]}
• The Game Center achievements do not always count progression, and will sometimes complete upon logging in later. Other times they remain frozen and incomplete. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Letting a mole rat attack spread into an empty dead end room may result in a crash when the mole rats have nowhere to go. After the crash you can no longer play this vault, as the game continues to register (and briefly display) mole rats in that room, triggering another crash. No amount of reboots seems to help. ^{[verification overdue]}
• During a raid, dwellers in a random room away from the raiders will gradually lose health and die. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Some legendary weapons will disappear when equipped to a dweller inside the vault after a period of time and be replaced by a random weapon. The legendary weapon is gone unless acquired again. ^{[verification overdue]}
• The game may reset all active objectives to 0 when an application update is deployed. ^{[verification overdue]}
• If the game crashes while an explorable location found in the Wasteland is available, the explorable location can be lost as if it had been ignored. ^{[verification overdue]}
• When mole rats spawn in a room, one has a chance of being invincible. To fix this; remove all remaining dwellers in the room and let the mole rats move to another room.
• Objectives can be randomly generated with an unreasonable number of Nuka-Cola Quantum as the reward (for example, collecting 5150 caps on quests for a reward of 3151 Nuka-Cola Quantum). When you attempt to collect the reward, the game will crash, presumably as it attempts to draw more than three thousand tiny bottles of Nuka-Cola Quantum flying across the screen.^{[verification overdue]}

PC

• When exploring locations in the 1.6 update, all of your objective progress will be erased.
• When rushing a room, if the rush fails and the dwellers are damaged till they die, when attempting to revive, if the death animations of all the affected dwellers hasn't played out (and thus the incident ended) any attempt to revive will take your caps but will not actually revive the dwellers.
• When having the exact amount of CAPS needed to upgrade a room, the game will state there is not enough resources.
• Occasionally, the game will not let you interact with anything (cannot click on characters or collect resources) beyond bringing up the menu and quitting. Upon quitting the game and reloading, you suffer from an infinite loading screen. This infinite loading screen bug seems to always happen directly after the "unable to interact" bug. This is a Vault ending bug and currently has no known fix or workaround.
• The game will crash when deleting the first water pump constructed at the beginning of a vault. with only three rooms.
• If one zooms out to maximum, one can leave the playable area. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Setting the clock back any time one's PC will cause near-silent sound problems until the game is restarted. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Renaming a dweller to have first name of "None" will crash the game when sent to Wasteland. ^{[verification overdue]}
• Sometimes, when attempting a rush, the game will freeze and become unresponsive. ^{[verification overdue]}
• In 1.12 update when you have objective to get females pregnant, a pregnancy is not registered to the objective when occurs simultaneously with a Raider attack to the vault.