Raider Attacks & Incidents ~ the truth

[optimusmart]

First of all, I know we have a few threads on this, but useful info and misinformation is everywhere, so I wanted to make this thread to have all the important info in 1 place.

 

Just to give you an idea on how I have discovered these things, I have spent probably about 20hrs+ experimenting with incidents, the minor variables as well as researching so I hope I cover everything

 

Here we go;

 

Applies to all difficulties:

 

- A incident has a chance of occurring every 20secs or so I believe (but normal has a cooldown period, see further below)

- A rush incident will reset the timer

- Reloading the vault resets the timer

-I believe each incident has a 10% chance to occur when it procs, with perhaps a 70% chance that nothing will occur. The %s may be slightly different, its just a guess from observations (determined with fires/roaches/raiders currently in the pool)

-When more incidents enter the incident pool,  dont know how that is calculated as I have only really played with Raiders and below. Each incident could make each Incidents chances smaller as the new one squeezes in, the chance of no incident smaller or a mixture

-Incidents and the stranger are not from the same pool, they seem to be on a different counter

- Assuming dweller requirement is reached, Deathclaws have a chance to appear when the vault door is opened, but NOT raiders

- Radio station does NOT attract any enemies

- Nothing will increase Raider attack frequency other than decreasing the incident pool

- Incidents will stop occurring if any resources drop to 0. I found this to be problematic, sometimes they seemed to stop earlier, and sometimes they wouldnt even start again when I bought resources back up, I would have to reload vault to fix

- Putting time back while in the vault can glitch incidents and stop them from occurring, reload vault to fix

-Incident difficulty increases via size and upgrade off rooms, not sure if connected to average dweller level as well, never got that far into testing.

-Leaving Raider bodies on the floor will not prevent other raids

- The 3 x objective pet will triple each raider attack count but will not be visible on the stats counter. If the stats counter say 10 for example, u will have 30 complete as long as the pet was equipped on a dweller in the raider defeat room (i've not confirmed all this myself yet, but read it)

-If certain incidents appear to become more frequent or incidents seem to appear more often, it is purely just RNG, sometimes its good, sometimes bad. RNG is very good at misleading us

- Within an hour, u will get approx 8-10 incidents on normal and about 30-40 incidents on survival

 

 

There are a few differences with Normal and Survivor difficulties;

 

NORMAL

-Minimum dweller count Raiders occur at is 14, Roaches is 10 and Fires slightly earlier. Minimum dweller count the next incident occurs at is 32 (Molerats)

-After a incident has occured via rush or just RNG, the RNG incident counter enters a kind off cooldown state for about 7mins before they have chance off proccing again. I guess this is to give u chance to recover. The same cooldown state occurs when reloading a vault, I guess to allow u to sort ur fault while being away

-Skipping forward 7 days MAY cancel the cooldown. I cant put a finger on this, sometimes after skipping, a incident would occur within 2mins, sometimes upto 10mins. As it wasnt consistent,  cant be sure it the countdown does cancel and its just bad RNG, or if its a bug from timeskipping. A bug in a sense that sometimes the countdown cancels, sometimes not. From observations, it seems the countdown is related to actual time passed anyhow, and that timeskipping has no direct effect

 

 

SURVIVOR

-Minimum dweller count for Raiders is 16, roaches is 5 and fires 1, I think

- The incident counter has no cooldown state on survival, meaning incidents will occur almost EVERY 2mins, sometimes sooner, sometimes a bit later

-Incidents are MUCH harder on survival by default, the fire and roaches are manageable early on, but the raiders are very very tough. Maybe this is why they begin 2 dwellers later, to allow u to get medbay first

-Incident types start at a much lower dweller count than on normal, except for the raiders

 

 

For actually obtaining the Raider Attacks, the most efficient way is to;

 

1 (optional). When u start the vault, buy some pets in the hope u get the 3 x objective. U definitely should with 40pets, and maybe with the 15 pets set

2. Follow the UNLOCK ALL ROOMS IN 30MINS thread that I have here and do that 

3. Now just play as normal, going for other trophies, but NEVER take your dweller count above 31

4. Once you have every other Trophy and are basically finished with the game, backup ur save, then try to rearrange ur vault slightly so all resources are on 1 or 2 floors, can bring ur dweller count to 14 if u wish

5. Buy 1 or 2 Mr handies from the store, or from cetain quests. Let them collect ur resources and just leave ur vault open overnight. Endgame, ur dwellers should be strong enough to cope without ur Input. Overtime, dwellers health will replenish, but not Mr handies, he will break and u will have to repair eventually, but if dwellers are strong enough, they should survive the night

 

Alternatively;

Create a new vault with single unupgraded rooms, 14 dwellers, 2.Mr handies (everything should fit on 2 floors), equip them with weapons from lunchboxes and leave on overnight again

 

DO NOT try to farm them yourself, it will get really frustrating. Leave them till last, if trophy hasnt popped, just rearrange ur vault slightly, get 1 or 2 Mr handies and leave ur vault open overnight, much easier.

 

I think that covers most of it, if I missed anything or u have.any info to add, questions or a point I made here u want to discuss then please fire away

Edited June 20, 2018 by optimusmart

[Rorro_Lux]

nice job. its my last trophy and i have 28 raider attacks. I followed your instructions and now will leave it on overnight and hopefully ill get it.

[optimusmart]

13 minutes ago, Lord_Luxus said:

nice job. its my last trophy and i have 28 raider attacks. I followed your instructions and now will leave it on overnight and hopefully ill get it.

 

I think its the best way, u could spend hours in game changing little things under the belief ur speeding it up, but u just cant. Just bloody RNG misleading u, misled me for ages until I finally caved admitting it cant be controlled here

 

It will prevent the headache bud, just get the vault to a selfsustaining layout, then leave open overnight. Hopefully Trophy will be yes by morning, if not quite on 50, leave little longer

 

Edited June 20, 2018 by optimusmart

[BlackTorito]

Its more efficient and free to advise to keep any pet cage you receive through the entire game (which while doing quests and stuff may be around ~5 or more) and just keep back-ups and opening all of them until you get the multiplier objetive pet (which is Dogmeat or the blue parrot). I got mine using back-ups with 3 cages here and there while farming some raiders, I got a 3x one by the time I was at 29/50 and got the trophy easily after that, just make sure the raider wave is defeated on the room where the pet is.

 

Also, I have been leaving the game afk for a few hours and sometimes I return and find some of them dead and resources red, so if you are leaving overnight, make sure you have few rooms and fill them enough so fires and stuff dont caught your dwellers off-guard too much, especially if they are all overleveled.

Edited June 20, 2018 by BlackTorito

[Maxud_amin]

I never had the overnight thing work. I go to sleep and when I came back, see everyone in full health and no incidents happening in the vault in the past few hours. Its like the game detects that you are AFK.

I had to watch TV and move the joysticks to make the game think i am on and playing.

And one time i had 4 raider attacks in a row within 10 mins. I thought I broke the game...and them the power went out ?? I was left with 49 raider attacks... imagine my frustration. 

The next one took 12 ours of me being AFK. Stupid RNG.

I had 39 dwellers btw.

Thank god i got the plat haha

[optimusmart]

1 hour ago, BlackTorito said:

Its more efficient and free to advise to keep any pet cage you receive through the entire game (which while doing quests and stuff may be around ~5 or more) and just keep back-ups and opening all of them until you get the multiplier objetive pet (which is Dogmeat or the blue parrot). I got mine using back-ups with 3 cages here and there while farming some raiders, I got a 3x one by the time I was at 29/50 and got the trophy easily after that, just make sure the raider wave is defeated on the room where the pet is.

 

Also, I have been leaving the game afk for a few hours and sometimes I return and find some of them dead and resources red, so if you are leaving overnight, make sure you have few rooms and fill them enough so fires and stuff dont caught your dwellers off-guard too much, especially if they are all overleveled.

 

Some good tips bud, I will try to elaborate on them a bit

 

I did mention the pet, but I didnt mention the savescumming u mentioned (that I posted in another thread a few days ago), because I didnt want to go too much into that, even though it greatly helps. From my experience when testing with the pets, I found there are like 100 or so variants, unlucky players could be savescumming for ages. U were lucky, but really, I would advise to buy the 15 pet pack and savescum with that. 

 

And for anyone reading this, lunchboxes/pet carriers content will change over time while in the collection.l list, BUT, it is not calculated of the system clock. The PS4 seems to have another clock behind the scenes, which is what the Trophy times are taken from (expains why trophy times will always be correct no matter what). The lunchbox/pet timer is taken from this, and because we have no access to this, it means we must ALLOW real timetime to pass. Basically, every 30mins or so realtime, PS4 on or not, anything in the collection list, the contents will change. If u want to exploit this, just be sure u ALWAYS backup save again BEFORE just  before opening pets/boxes. Restoring a save before whatever realtime had passed, will reset contents back to the state at the time the backup was made

 

So like this if u want to savescum for pets;

1- Get some pet carriers so they are in the collecrion tab but not opened (either from quests or the store)

2. Backup ur save

3. Open, not what u want, restore save again

4. Wait 30mins

5. Backup save

6. Repeat 3-6 until happy

 

Really, if u are bothered about the pet., u want it at the VERY START of the game as it gives 3 x objective completion on everything, not just Raider attacks. It would bring the 100 count down to 33, the 100 objective count down to 33, the Raider count down to 17, the legendary count down to 7, the theme count down etc etc

 

 

I didnt want to explain everything as then I am making a game guide ;), Ive tried to stick just to incidents

 

Rather than inform everyone how to get a strong vault that can survive u being away which I wasnt looking to do here, I have just used phrases like, 'make sure ur vault is selfsustaining' and that 'the vault can survive u being away'

 

A point on ur resources going red though while away, u will find that if u are on normal, and u only have single rooms, not upgrades, then each incident will have very pow health and safety cleared quite quickly with minimal danger. Dweller health replenishes over time and with 8min intervals between incidents, its only really the Mr handies who would suffer

 

Of course though, the larger your rooms and the more upgraded they are, the stronger and.better equipped ur dwellers need to be

 

I found, when creating a new vault and speeding to 14, making 2 floors off resources, single rooms, Mr handies, weapons from lunchboxes, some good some bad, leaving on would pose little problems

 

For the easiest time AFK, have only single rooms, not upgraded

 

 

29 minutes ago, Maxud_amin said:

I never had the overnight thing work. I go to sleep and when I came back, see everyone in full health and no incidents happening in the vault in the past few hours. Its like the game detects that you are AFK.

I had to watch TV and move the joysticks to make the game think i am on and playing.

And one time i had 4 raider attacks in a row within 10 mins. I thought I broke the game...and them the power went out ?? I was left with 49 raider attacks... imagine my frustration. 

The next one took 12 ours of me being AFK. Stupid RNG.

I had 39 dwellers btw.

Thank god i got the plat haha

 

The game may detect u being AFK, but there are no penalties, its a natural thing to do in this game. Maybe u hadnt disabled all power saving options, but NO incidents at all points to a bug

 

When incidents happen rarely or dont happen at all, its because they have bugged. Best to close ur vault and reopen to refresh if before AFK, then wait 15mins to make sure incidents are working correctly

 

If ur resources ever go red, I found that can sometimes bug incidents 

 

If in doubt anyone, quit to main menu and reopen to refresh, and make sure incidents are working right before u AFK

 

 

If anybody wants to do their own testing with incidents, its much easier on Survival as incidents happen much more often

 

And an incident should occur at least every 15 mins on normal, and at least every 5 mins on survive. If they are happening a lot less than this or a lot more, then they have bugged out. When refreshing ur vault, the intervals become more consistent, I found with skipping time and stuff it would mess it all up

 

 

Edited June 20, 2018 by optimusmart

[Maxud_amin]

6 minutes ago, optimusmart said:

The game may detect u being AFK, but there are no penalties, its a natural thing to do.in this game.

 

When incidents happen rarely or dont happen at all, its because they have bugged. Best to close ur vault and reopen to refresh if before AFK, then wait 15mins to make sure incidents are working correctly

 

If ur resources ever go red, I found that can sometimes bug incidents 

 

If in doubt anyone, quit to main menu and reopen to refresh, and make sure incidents are working right before u AFK

Like you...I did research on this too. it took me over 100 hours to plat the game only to realize I was stupid and could've done it in much less time.

I did make sure incidents were happening before I go AFK. But somehow no incidents occur after what I think is half an hour or so. Don't know...it is all assumption after all.

I also made sure i never play on a past date. Even when I turned my ps4 off and got on after...time reset to present. But i moved my time to the last time I played. I saw sometimes, that the incidents stopped working if I dont.

[optimusmart]

1 hour ago, Maxud_amin said:

Like you...I did research on this too. it took me over 100 hours to plat the game only to realize I was stupid and could've done it in much less time.

I did make sure incidents were happening before I go AFK. But somehow no incidents occur after what I think is half an hour or so. Don't know...it is all assumption after all.

I also made sure i never play on a past date. Even when I turned my ps4 off and got on after...time reset to present. But i moved my time to the last time I played. I saw sometimes, that the incidents stopped working if I dont.

 

Ur not stupid m8, its easy to be misled on videogames, especially with this one as the time saving tips are all over the place. And even then sometimes the are not explained right

 

If incidents were occurring when u went AFK, but then stopped, what could have happened, is one of ur resources went red for whatever reason, and then the incidents bugged out. As I mentioned in the OP, incidents stop once a resource hit 0, but they can bug out earlier. And sometimes when the resources climb back up, the incidents will start again, but sometimes they wont. 

 

To be safe, u want either a vault with single rooms, not upgraded, or very very strong dwellers. That way ur resources would always be green when AFK

 

And just because the production rate is high above consumption rate, doesnt mean they will rarely go red. U could have a incident that could soon drain ur resources if rooms are big/unpgraded and dwellers weak

 

Incidents will always work to begin after reloading ur vault, no matter ur time or date, changing time during is what can bug them.

 

Glad u got it finally, but it can be a bloody grindy game cant it. When I look a it, I just cant see any satisfaction in playing other than getting plat. I mean there is no endgame is there

 

 

EDIT;

Seems the mysterious Stranger will glitch also. Resources were 0, brought them back up, nothing happened. Reloaded vault, stranger appears within a minute, incident 5mins later

 

As stranger is more frequent (and seem to begin appearing when u have 8 or more rooms or so, if he hasnt appeared for a while, prob safe to say incidents have glitched as well and a reload is needed.

 

The mysterious stranger occurs more frequent (similar to the incident rate on survival) because I assume he has no cooldown stage, because he isnt a danger

 

Edited June 20, 2018 by optimusmart

[Rorro_Lux]

yes. I followed what you said and had the 50th raider attack when i woke up and went to check. 

so thats probably about 22 raider attacks in 8 to 10 hours since i had 22 the night before.

got the plat!

[GastNDorf]

The game doesn't detect when you're AFK, but nothing will occur if you're in any menu, be it dweller, rush, quest log etc...

[optimusmart]

It does, the only way to pause the game is to suspend it

[VanDeaM]

so do raider attacks carry over from playthroughs? My vault has 90 people in it and I need 20 more raider attacks. is it better to start over or cut my population to 31?

Edited June 21, 2018 by VanDeaM

[optimusmart]

2 minutes ago, VanDeaM said:

so do raider attacks carry over from playthroughs? My vault has 90 people in it and I need 20 more raider attacks. is it better to start over or cut my population to 31?

 Does not carry across vaults. You will be best backing up your save, then evicting loads until you have 14-31 dwellers. Easier at 14 because obviously less resources will be needed, then just bear in mind info in OP so no mistakes are made.

Edited June 21, 2018 by optimusmart

[Cleggworth]

21 minutes ago, VanDeaM said:

so do raider attacks carry over from playthroughs? My vault has 90 people in it and I need 20 more raider attacks. is it better to start over or cut my population to 31?

Cut your population to 29. 30 is when molerats start. Before that it's just raiders, radroach and fires

[Stormwarrior90]

39 dwellers are too much?I need more 35 raiders attacks

[optimusmart]

24 minutes ago, Cleggworth said:

Cut your population to 29. 30 is when molerats start. Before that it's just raiders, radroach and fires

Molerats start at 32, did you experience a Molerat yourself happening at 30 or have you just read it somewhere???

 

If you look across the net, Raider Attacks are apparently suppose to begin at 16, but it is actually 14, that is the accuracy  we are dealing with surrounding this.

 

For the record, the reason I am standing by 32, is because I have left the game on at 30 for about 4 hours, and the same at 31, MOLERATS NEVER OCURRED. As soon as I increase to 32, Molerats popped up within 2 incidents. All I have read somewhere is that they MAY appear earlier from a failed rush, thats all

 

I made this thread to eliminate misinformation, but it is still popping up, even in this very thread. Unless of course I have been severely unlucky and your testing data says otherwise??

 

7 minutes ago, Stormwarrior90 said:

39 dwellers are too much?I need more 35 raiders attacks

 

Its not too much, but then Raider attacks may not be as frequent due to a few more incident entering the incident pool. Decrease to 31 or lower, but for the easiest time, decrease to 14 as the resources to manage will be much lower, for food/water anyway. I cant comment on power because I dont know what rooms you have or plan on leaving

Edited June 21, 2018 by optimusmart

[Stormwarrior90]

10 minutes ago, optimusmart said:

Molerats start at 32, did you experience a Molerat yourself happening at 30 or have you just read it somewhere???

 

If you look across the net, Raider Attacks are apparently suppose to begin at 16, but it is actually 14, that is the accuracy  we are dealing with surrounding this.

 

For the record, the reason I am standing by 32, is because I have left the game on at 30 for about 4 hours, and the same at 31, MOLERATS NEVER OCURRED. As soon as I increase to 32, Molerats popped up within 2 incidents. All I have read somewhere is that they MAY appear earlier from a failed rush, thats all

 

I made this thread to eliminate misinformation, but it is still popping up, even in this very thread. Unless of course I have been severely unlucky and your testing data says otherwise??

 

 

Its not too much, but then Raider attacks may not be as frequent due to a few more incident entering the incident pool. Decrease to 31 or lower, but for the easiest time, decrease to 14 as the resources to manage will be much lower, for food/water anyway. I cant comment on power because I dont know what rooms you have or plan on leaving

50 rooms,it's better to start a new vault? 

[optimusmart]

You need 35 more right, if you start a new vault, it will take a few hours AFK to catch up to that and you will lose all weapons and levels etc

 

I'd advise, backing up your save, this why when you're done you can restore it and your vault will be back in that state, even the time will be. Now remove all your Dwellers bar 14 and keep your Mr Handys. Smash all your rooms, except any single unupgraded quarters/diner/water/power which i doubt you have anyway. then make two floors with everything on to carry the vault, but only single rooms ununpgraded. You will find you may have to add some quarters before you remove your current ones though

 

For 14 dwellers, you will need about 2 of each resource (single unupgraded), put your best dwellers in each, Mr Handy on each floor, equip them with best weapons, and you are good to go AFK. You will need to alternate rooms so they don't merge obviously

 

(ITS VERY IMPORTANT you have single unupgraded rooms. Otherwise incidents will be last longer and be stronger so Mr Handys/dwellers may die or die quicker and you can only revive them yourself)

 

You are much better downgrading it all than starting again, think its the best way for all to be honest. We just crack on through the game, then last of all, you donwgrade and AFK for this trophy

 

At 35 Attacks left, think you are looking at about 10hrs AFK, get ready for when you go sleep or something

Edited June 21, 2018 by optimusmart

[eGEORGE__]

I used the method suggested here of creating a second vault with 2 Mr. Handys and 14 dwellers. It was relatively fast to set up and easy to get going.

 

I did take me a really long time though. I let my game run for 2 full days before I got it. Just had to check in every couple of hours to repair my Handys.

[Guest]

Didnt get a single damn raider in 2hrs...with 28 dwellers. Im gonna nuke them when im done!!?

[Property_Damage]

Its all this stupid shit like this in games that prevent me from playing certain things

[optimusmart]

13 minutes ago, ERGOPROXY-DECAY said:

Didnt get a single damn raider in 2hrs...with 28 dwellers. Im gonna nuke them when im done!!

 

Damn, that Is unlucky. Thing is with RNG, probability numbers may not appear correct after you have wrote down results from a few hundred or so times, probably more

 

Ive given up with this game myself, too boring. Games are fun when u play actually play them, not the waiting which is all this game is

 

 

3 minutes ago, Property_Damage said:

Its all this stupid shit like this in games that prevent me from playing certain things

 

I wouldnt advised this game for console players, the gameplay just doesnt suit it

Edited June 23, 2018 by optimusmart

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, optimusmart said:

Ive given up with this game myself, too boring. Games are fun when u play actually play them, not the waiting which is all this game is

 

Well im on the last trophy...i will! Beat this rng. Thing is I went to sleep those 2hrs so im not sure if any incident occured... ? i will have to leave it on later today to see if anything in case it bugged on me??

[Macabro]

Hi.

 

I have 52 dwellers.

 

I know the chance of raiders has already  gone down for me, but do they ever stop coming?  

 

I'm still getting them but now they are mixed with everything up to radscorpions, so less often.

 

I don't care about it taking a long time but I don't want to have to evict dwellers to be able to have raider attacks again.

Are there any other trophies that need to be done early on? Not that I noticed but maybe I missed something?

 

Thanks!

[DoctorDrPepper]

This just begs the question, why isnt the trophy for repelling 50 attacks of any kind, why did they have to make it just raiders?