Shelter

## Overview

Point of Interest icon of a shelter hatch.

**Shelters** are underground structures that can be entered to loot for rewards. A shelter can come with a Shelter Loudspeaker nearby, which means it cannot be entered until its tower defense mini-game has been beaten; the Home Shelter in the Caged Suburbs does not initiate a tower defense mini-game because The Survivor emerged from it at the start of the game, so it does not have a Loudspeaker. In the Underworld and Doomsday DLCs, shelters have no Loudspeakers and are instead opened via keycards; rather than completing a tower defense mini-game outside the shelter, their interiors feature combat and/or puzzles that must be completed before obtaining their rewards.

The Shelter Loudspeaker can be used to start a tower defense mini-game, which causes multiple waves of Ex-Human Dwellers to emerge from the shelter. Once entered, the shelters may contain additional, non-Dweller enemies to fight.

### Rewards

The reward for successfully completing the tower defense mini-game is gaining entry into a shelter to search for its reward; shelters without the mini-game will require you to fight off enemies or solve puzzles to obtain their reward. All shelters in the base game (except the Home Shelter) contain Central Processing Unit×1 and a recipe.

In the Doomsday DLC, all shelters reward Beam Gun Battery×1 instead of a Central Processing Unit or recipe; completing these shelters is the only way to upgrade the Beam Gun .

## Tower Defense Mini-Game

The first time you interact with a Shelter Loudspeaker, you'll receive the Shelter Defence quest, which tasks you with completing a shelter tower defense. Completing this quest will reward you with Turret Ammo Expansion I.

To initiate a particular shelter's tower defense mini-game, you must first interact with its nearby Loudspeaker to "hack" it. This will drop Central Processing Unit×1, which can be used to build a Machine Gun Turret. After the Loudspeaker has been hacked, interacting with the Loudspeaker again will start the mini-game. Once activated, the Loudspeaker will project a white orb that shows the path the attacking Ex-Human Dwellers will take to reach the Loudspeaker. These orbs show you the path you need to defend.

The goal of the tower defense mini-game is to prevent the Dwellers, which emerge from the shelter, from reaching and destroying the Loudspeaker. If they manage to destroy it, you will effectively suffer a soft death and respawn next to the Loudspeaker, ready to attempt the mini-game again.

## Strategy

You can use the Builder's Kit to build as many offensive/defensive objects as your Build Limit allows. As usual, you should not do so until you have invented Teardown Efficiency to ensure you get back all the Materials you used to build it. The turrets are costly, and while you won't lose your CPUs, it's better to conserve your resources when attempting to find the best configuration for your defensive strategy in the mini-game.

Before attempting the mini-game, it is advisable to visit and hack all the Loudspeakers you've come across to obtain as many Central Processing Units as possible; the number of turrets you can build is limited by how many CPUs you have. The Dwellers have 500 HP and deal a lot of melee damage, so if multiple attack a turret at once, it will be destroyed quickly without putting a significant dent into the horde. As a result, a single Machine Gun Turret is unlikely to provide an effective defense against them; therefore, the more turrets, the better the defense. Because turrets consume a lot of ammo quickly, obtaining Turret Ammo Expansion I, Turret Ammo Expansion II, and leveling up the Turret Specialist skill will also help.

Use multiple Sandbags to create chokepoints, then angle several Machine Gun Turrets or Rocket Turrets towards the choke to deal damage to several enemies at once. Be warned that the Rocket Turret can deal damage to you as well if you are in the radius of its explosion. Pre-place Proximity Mines along the path to Loudspeaker; equip the Bandolier and Soldier outfit to get more mines to place. You can also bring Frag Grenades or Stun Grenades  to stun large clumps of the Dwellers.

The best weapons to use to finish off the Dwellers will be ones with multi-targeting/AoE capabilities, so the absolute best is the Khopesh. If you don't have that, the Katana will do, though it might be a bit underwhelming damage-wise. The Laser Sword , though it lacks a multi-target modifier, has an incredibly fast swing speed and has very high damage, which can make it a good choice for quickly cutting through Dwellers.

Lastly, to increase your chances of surviving if you get swarmed by multiple Dwellers, it is advisable to equip the Soldier Helmet and Shiny Piece Of Metal to increase your damage deflect (when you are damaged by the Dwellers, it will also damage them). The Ammo Box  may help you, if you have it, so that you can continue to spam additional grenades or mines against the Dwellers, though you might not need it.

## Locations

### Base Game

1. ↑ All shelters always contain Central Processing Unit×1.
2. ↑ If you have used a Recipe before discovering it, that location will instead contain some of the ingredients that go into it.
3. ↑ Entry requires Gas Mask.

## Interior Layouts

Below is a gallery of all shelters' interior layouts.

* Arcturus
* Borealis
* Everglade
* Hedgefield
* Sunburn Desert
* Polaris
* Frore
* Vulcan
* The Displaced Shelter
* Nona Secure Laboratory
* Decima Testing Facility
* Morta Secure Laboratory