Fallout Shelter SPECIAL Stat Effects on Wasteland Exploration

You're probably already familiar with the Fallout Shelter game and how the SPECIAL stats of your dwellers work within your vault buildings, but every one of your Dweller's SPECIAL stats greatly affects their explorations into the wasteland as well. For some reason unknown, the game doesn't delve too deeply into this aspect, which is quite a shame really; seeing as the whole game concept revolves around the desolation outside and escaping from it by help of the Vault-Tec company.

The Vault-Tec company wasn't too good at explaining how dwellers' SPECIAL stats affected their explorations into the wasteland, but that's quite alright, they have their hands full and we're here to lend an extra one. 

Fallout Shelter SPECIAL Stats Wasteland Exploration Effects

SPECIAL stats are really just an acronym for 7 different stats; Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility, and Luck.

For each of these 7 different stats, there are 2 different ways they affect the world/game around you. The first way is increasing output of resources inside the rooms of your vault. The second way, which we will cover more in-depth below, is determining the amount and quality of items your Dwellers will bring back from the Wastelands.

Strength: It is believed that the Strength stat acts as a multiplier for weapon damage. This is one of the only "wasteland benefits" that works inside your vault as well.

Perception: Perception works basically as vision in the Wasteland. When your Dwellers are exploring, they will "notice" more things to explore, and ultimately it winds up fetching you more items. The quality of those items however is not associated with this stat.

Endurance: Endurance is self-explanatory; the higher your Dwellers' endurance stat, the longer they can stay out in the wasteland.

Charisma: Charisma has a bit of an unknown effect in the Wasteland, but it's believed to help during encounters with other people such as helping slaves bandage their leg and receiving a reward of Caps.

Intelligence: Intelligence helps your Dwellers to bring back only the best items from the Wasteland. What's better known as "blue" or "rare" weapons and armor are more frequently found by Dwellers with high Intelligence.

Agility: Agility helps your Dweller to escape from unfavorable fights or circumstances. This will ultimately help your Dweller survive and explore the Wasteland for a longer period of time.

Luck: Luck increases your chances of finding caps while in the Wasteland. It could be linked to other findings (rare weapons and armor), but currently it only definitively helps with finding Caps.

Something that you most likely don't know, as we didn't realize it until quite far into the game; SPECIAL stats don't really have a "maximum". If you have a dweller with 10 Strength, putting a +7 Strength Commander Suit on him will make his SPECIAL stat +17 when assigned to a room.

So all you perfectionists out there who hate accessorizing their Dwellers... you still have to dress them up... sorry!