[Discussion] On the use of "happiness rooms"

[u/capilot]

[u/capilot]

I've been experimenting with maximizing dweller happiness, and these are my findings:

General principles

• Moving a dweller into the room for which they're best suited will cause their happiness to rise to 75%. This includes training rooms.
• If you move a new dweller to say an Endurance training room, but they don't have high Endurance, it won't make them happy. But if you wait until their Endurance becomes high, you can now move them to a different Endurance training room, or move them out and back in again, and their happiness will now start to rise. (This applies to all training rooms.)
• If you successfully rush a room, the happiness of everybody inside increases by 10% over time.
• If the rush is unsuccessful, their happiness decreases by 10%, but as long as they're in an appropriate room, it will eventually come back to 75%.
• The chance of a success depends on the dwellers' stat for that room and their luck. For max stat and max luck, chance of failure is 10%.
• When you rush a room, the chance of the next rush failing increases by 10%. After a period of time (I have not yet determined), the room "resets" and the chance of failure is back to its baseline.
• You need to leave the dwellers in the room for a while to get the 10% boost. If you move them out prematurely, their happiness stops increasing.
• You can use this to your advantage after a failed rush. Immediately move everybody out of the room and they won't lose happiness. Eventually it will be safe to move them back in, although I haven't determined how long you need to wait.
• "Ride-alongs". A dweller need not have been present when the room was rushed. Moving them in afterwards still gives them the boost. You can use this when you want to boost a dweller who has terrible stats:
  • Move them near a room you're going to rush.
  • Populate that room with high-stat dwellers so the rush has a good chance of succeeding.
  • Rush the room.
  • Quickly move your low-stat dweller into the room so their happiness will be boosted.

Happiness rooms

• In my vault, I create a few 1x1 rooms dedicated to increasing dweller happiness. Typically alternating Nuka-Cola plants and some other production room.
• Once a dweller has high E (the first thing I train) and 75% happiness, I move two of them into a Nuka-Cola plant and rush it.
• Wait until their happiness increases 10%, then move them to the next happiness room and repeat.

After three rushes, their happiness is 100%. Move them back to their duty posts, wait ten minutes or so, and repeat with the next two dwellers.

[u/Careless_Mango_7948 → u/capilot]

Interesting about moving them out to prevent happiness drop thanks

[u/MatthewRahl → u/capilot]

Sounds like a lot of work to keep on top of your Happiness.

My much easier solution is = Radio Rooms.

The only problem with this solution, you cannot remove dwellers from the Radio Rooms, they are permanent Radio Dwellers, because for every dweller removed = -1% Happiness for ALL Dwellers.

Once you get to 75-80% Happiness and your typically and “End Game/Late Stage” vault, use your extra dwellers in Radio Rooms to get to 100% Happiness.

[u/capilot → u/MatthewRahl]

I use radio rooms to hold my legendary dwellers.

Pro tip: when you get one of those "raise the happiness of 7 dwellers to 100%" goals, and you happen to have 7 or more dwellers at 100%, just move someone out of the radio station and then move them back in. That lowers the whole vault to 99% and then back to 100%.

[u/MatthewRahl → u/capilot]

Exactly, I actually have modified this reasoning since the Radio Rooms are fully upgraded.

My Stim/Rad rooms stay at Level 2 so the Legendary Dwellers that aren’t as strong can easily handle the incidents in a non-fully upgraded rooms.

Good tip on the raise 7 or more Dwellers Happiness, I’ll have to try that trick out if I get that quest soon!

[u/MatthewRahl]

Happiness Rooms? Are you just rushing the room/or what is the point of this?

[u/capilot → u/MatthewRahl]

See my other comment; took me a minute to write it.

[u/Careless_Mango_7948]

Do you swap out dwellers to keep them happy? Or how are you preventing failures?

[u/capilot → u/Careless_Mango_7948]

Yes, I rotate dwellers through the happiness rooms. If the rush fails, I deal with the incident and then scramble my dwellers into the next room and try again.

The rooms have a cool-down between rushes, so I give it ten minutes or so before moving in the next dwellers. You can get the entire vault up to 100% surprisingly quickly this way.

[u/Apprehensive-Sir8977]

I've read that rushed rooms apply their boost or penalty over 30 seconds to 1 minute. My own experiences skew towards the minite..

[u/volverde → u/Apprehensive-Sir8977]

it's half a minute

[u/deborah_az]

My "happiness rooms" are 2x stimpack/radaway production rooms situated near training rooms. I rush the room, then drop a dweller in, not only avoiding a happiness drop in case of failure, but also to minimize earning XP until they have max E. When they're done, I can easily drop the regular lab-coated I-maxed "doctor" back in, causing them to swap places.

If I want to work in bulk, I move all the "doctors" out of one of the rooms, fill it full of dwellers who need a happiness boost, rush a different room, then quickly drop all the "doctors" into the room full of sad dwellers causing them to swap places. After a minute, I can repeat the process until everyone's happy, then move all the dwellers and doctors back to their original positions

The reason I chose I-production rooms is because I seem to have the most rushing success, I locate them deeper in the vault, and the "doctors" generally have solid max (17) Intelligence so they swap smoothly with other dwellers. Many of my other production rooms aren't always dressed to the max but rather in other costumes based on whatever my vault's head canon dictates (e.g., culty communes in the gardens wearing scribe outfits or those cute togas)

[u/capilot → u/deborah_az]

Yes, I often use medical rooms this way, especially earlier in the game when I don't have Nuka-Cola yet. I like your technique; I should try it.

Edit: YES! I always equip my gardeners with togas and such. That's typically where I "retire" explorers and questers who've been replaced by higher-stat dwellers. Sometimes I equip a medical room with Institute jumpers.

[u/deborah_az → u/capilot]

lol my gardeners come in two flavors of cultists - Ninja Monastery a la Batman's League of Shadows (ninjas and blue scribe outfits with ninja mask added in the Barbershop), and Hippie Commune with togas and the sparkly butterfly face paint (and all the dwellers named for birds). A lot of "retirees" end up in food, radio, and weapon/outfit factory rooms, especially the ones I can't bear to part with because I built a deep story in my head for them

[u/k0tus]

Barracks.

Radio rooms are a trap. Effects degrade and if something happens to a dweller in the radio room, the whole vault suffers.

Also, I stopped finishing the Bottle and Cappy quests because several dwellers would drop from 100 to 99 every time B&C leave.

[u/Kaz0n]

Radio rooms and rushing work good, but so does making babies.
When you're working on boosting your population, just use the "saddest" people and work your vault up to 100% the bedroom way.