In order to get everything you want in the game, you will need to find the following by searching the wasteland -

1) The 4 Logic books covering 1-20 Intelligence so you can build max integrity items and craft higher tier materials for crafting tier 4 objects.
2) The T4 Recycler blueprints – there is no way to get plentiful materials in the game without this object.

You need these to make an impressive base with a great team of survivors. Otherwise you will need to spend more time and resources building many items in the base to build your Intelligence stat, and without a T4 recycler you will not have enough high end materials to build better stuff in your base without significant amounts of time trading and scavenging.

To a lesser extent, it would be helpful to find
1) The Medical Bed plans. This will allow you to cure mental and physical ailments, and to experiment with your survivors to increase their stat cap by an extra +1, up to a maximum of 20.
2) Floppy discs. These will allow your leader to gain extra traits to become more awesome.
3) Stat training books for Perception. You cannot train Perception in any other way. Stat training books for Charisma would also be useful, but trading also increases your Charisma so it is not as important to stress over finding this.
4) The pickup. Useful for travelling around the wasteland fast and with extra carrying capacity but if you get forced to repair the tyres, the 3* rubber repair cost hurts a lot.

Everything else you need can be built in the shelter.

The following items are seeded in the map – they are in a fixed location and you must search every building to find them. They do not re-generate in other locations.
Tools (for increasing workbench efficiency).
Blueprints (there should be two blueprints for each item spread amongst the map).
Books (The story books are in fixed locations. The stat training books are also in fixed locations, but they can still be found in random searches).
Floppy Disks (found in any building, even resource generating buildings). There are at least 14 discs.

These items will be found in these locations regardless of your Perception skill.

The higher the threat in the area, the higher the book and blueprints levels tend to be. Blueprints tend to be in building clusters that have office buildings and roads travelling though them. Not always, but most of the time.

Leave no stone unturned
Unfortunately, the game does not tell you the last time you searched a property, it only says the last time you “visited” a property, which is mostly useless information. This means that you could skip a property very easily and never know that you did not search that property properly, ending up with you being frustrated because you cannot find a particular blueprint. If you pass over a place without searching it, make a note to ensure that you return to search the property otherwise you will be forced to search every location again to see if you missed items.
A few things can screw up your searching plans
(1) A dog may find an object randomly on the map, which bypasses any search you have planned on that property. You have to stop and command a search on that place after that encounter.
(2) You may end up on a property and immediately encounter a pet that you can attempt to recruit. This will bypass any search command you have on that property as well. You have to stop and command a search on that place after that encounter.
(3) You may have a quest encounter on that map which forces you into an event and blocks you from searching. If the quest marker disappears, you can then search that place, otherwise you will have to return after the quest has been completed to search that location. This is usually the biggest cause of missed items for players.

If you find the pickup chassis, which has a weight of 450, and you are unable to carry it, I recommend loading the most recent save before you search that location and come back when you can support that carry weight, either through higher quality bags, better strength values or more people in the squad.

Try to travel around properties you do not intend to search so the map give you a better indication of the last time you searched it otherwise you will not have an accurate idea of when it was last searched (unless you are tracking the last time EVERY property was searched - which is insane). Most properties reset most of their contents around day 40, so try for around 40 days between searches.

Still can't find the items and you are ready to rage quit? Go into your save file and search for “<Searched>False</Searched>”. Work out where that location is and go search it. While you can also search for the item you want in the game file, it is better to justify this because the developer decided that “last visited” was more important than “last searched”. I have no idea why, because the save file actually tells you the last day the location was searched (that information is in the SAVE FILE) and knowing when you last passed over a location is useless information.

EXAMPLE - This just happened to me 5 minutes ago as of writing this section here you are reading. I had revealed and searched the entire map but I did not find the recycler blueprint. I then floated my cursor over every location which showed that the "last visited" section was filled. Frustrated about where the hell it was, I opened the save file and searched for "recyclerBlueprint". I found it. The commands around it said that is was not searched ( <Searched>False</Searched> ) and the location was " <MapTile_12_1> " so I started at the very left of the map, and counted down the bottom left side 12 squares, then right one and ended up at "Abandoned Mine". That place had a quest on it from the moment I discovered it while searching for locations, preventing me from searching it, and I did not note down that I did not search it (as per point 3 above). So thanks again devs for using the stupid "Last visited" descriptor and preventing quest locations from being searched!

I'll give you my opinion on the talents in each stat tree. Take it as advice.

Strength
Tier 1 – GET Blunt Force Specialization (because most high damage melee weapons are blunt). The other good skills I recommend would be Backpack Weight Training (more carrying capacity is always good) and Imposing Physique (even though it has a 10% chance of success, that chance is spread across all your characters and when it triggers it makes fights easy).
Tier 2 – There are no "must take" skills in this tier.
Tier 3 – Again, no skill you really need to take, but Utility Specialist is worth taking since it allows you to hold more equipment. One of your equipment slots will be dedicated to armor, so anything extra is useful to take. Plus, if you find equipment on your mission, equipping it to a survivor makes it weightless. Thunderous Uppercut is probably the only active skill in the entire Strength Tree worth getting since we have Daze and Impaired, but I never used it since killing the opponent by doing more damage is better than relying on random chances to take them out of the fight for 2 turns.

Dexterity
Tier 1- GET Flick Sand. With 3 stars invested, you have your first 2 Stamina offensive skill that does 120% base weapon damage. I recommend getting Fast Reflexes for the minor increase in being able to perform a counterattack, but you will be lucky to see more than 2 counterattacks in any play session. Blade Specialization is useful for early game daggers and other offensive items, but you can skip it.
Tier 2 – If you get ranged weapon training from Tier 1, getting Aimed Gunshot and use that skill rather than the "Single Shot" in the attack menu since the skill increases your accuracy by 25% with the same stamina cost. If you plan on having a ranged attacker, you need both of these skills fully maxed.
Tier 3 – YOU MUST GET CQC Training and Backstab. CQC training adds a 2nd attack to your basic melee attack at your base weapon damage level against your opponent, adding about 30% extra in damage to your opponent. Backstab requires you to be in the back row, and you can only attack the back row of your opponent, but you will do crazy damage for only 2 stamina points. 2! Since your character gets 1 free move every turn, they should be racing for the back to stab every opponent in the back row before you can freely start attacking the front row. With a full party starting with 6 stam in battle, you can have each of your characters attack the front row with a basic melee attack, and one backstab to the back row. Oneshotting your opponents was never so cheap and easy.

Intelligence
Tier 1 – GET Focused (+30% accuracy on melee attacks) and Tactician (+15% damage for all party members. Distraction tactics is useful for increasing your chance to avoid combat by running away, which you end up doing if (a) you have no more inventory room and you don't want to bother having more stuff to sort through or (b) you are weak sauce travelling through risk level 5 territory.
The rest is not as useful.
Tier 2 – GET Knowledge of Anatomy (+30% melee damage). This really adds some more weight to your punches.
Tier 3 – GET Calculated One-Two. This is the ultimate 2 stamina offensive attack[/u]. While Flick Sand does 120% base weapon damage along with a dex debuff, this attack does 320% base weapon damage which will one shot most weak opponents, or deal a lot of damage to higher level characters. If you have no one to backstab and you have used up your melee attack so you only have 2 stam left, you will be using this skill. As for the other skills, you will need Surgeon and Experiment on at least 2 characters with this skill (so one can operate on the other if the need arises). Improvised Explosive is a waste of a skill because it costs 10 stamina points. If you get to the point where you can use this skill in combat (which would be on your second turn after making no attacks), you should already be killing things in 1-2 blows making this useless.

Charisma
Tier 1 – Nothing here is a must get, but Inspiring helps the mood of other characters in the shelter, Motivator increases crafting speed and are worth getting. Convincing Voice is worth getting if you plan on trying to attract traders since it give a 15% extra chance of success, which should give you a .... 20% chance of attracting traders (just kidding (but not really, you still have a very low chance of success)). The other skills do have their use but they are not that important.
Tier 2 – GET Marching Song to increase the speed of your party when travelling. Speed means returning with loot faster = less idling at the base and your party will really be speeding along when all of your characters in the party have this skill. GET Placebo Effect to reduce incoming combat damage by 20%. The rest aren't worth getting, I mean, spending 6 stamina points with Confuse Opponent to have a 75% chance of dazing that opponent? Might as well spend those 6 stamina points putting your opponent 6 feet under with a melee attack and backstab or 3 Calculated One-Twos.
Tier 3 – Rallying is worth getting however it will not increase their dex or fortitude scores to anything above 20. If for some reason all of your characters have 20 dex and 20 fortitude, it has no effect.
As for Silver Tongue, by the time you get the opportunity to buy this skill, you should be able to slaughter any patrols you encounter and if you are above 200 reputation you can just walk away as friends regardless.

Perception
Tier 1 – GET Unshakeable. Being affected by fear means you have a strong chance of missing a turn and you will encounter parties who can inflict fear frequently. This increases your chance of being to act by 70% which makes a big difference. I recommend Expedited Healing and Study Movements. Since I rarely see counter attacks, I am not sure if the Always Prepared skill is really worth getting. Maybe I will see 3 counterattacks in a game instead of 2. Poison Resilience is only worth dumping spare points into if you want, I've been poisoned twice in 15 games so far.
Tier 2 – I recommend Relishes A Challenge. This skill is very useful early to mid game when you do not have a full team yet as the increase to damage makes a 300% damage team (3 x 100% per person) become a 450% damage team (3 x 150%) team with an extra +2 dex to a maximum of 20 dex. Taunt can be useful in some circumstances to make the opponent miss a turn with a 75% chance of success, useful where you have a full strength opponent and your team is on its last legs.
Tier 3 – I recommend Therapist to not only cure mental ailments from your survivors but is very useful for two different faction story missions. The rest of the skills on this tier are rubbish. I have used Return to Sender once, so it is ok as a place to dump skill points, Automatic repairing is useless because (a) you should be repairing stuff as soon as it gets below 25% rather than 10%, and (b) who would leave a character idle when it could be training, cooking, crafting or repairing stuff that has gone below 25% in durability? The other 2 skills are debuffs with a 50% chance of working. Locate weakpoint for a 50% chance to give you a 25% bonus in damaging your opponent lol? Even if this had a 100% chance of working, you would have to hit your opponent 4 times to make the cost breakeven, and you should be killing off your opponents in 2 hits anways.

Fortitude
Tier 1 – GET Shake it off. Daze attacks are frequently used by your opponents and stun your characters for 1-3 rounds on average. Avoiding these is number 1. Well, avoiding death is number 1, this is number 2, followed by fear as number 3. I recommend Pain Resistance Training, at least two points in Home Turf Advantage and one point in both Iron Stomach and Strong Immune System.
Tier 2 – GET Iron Skin (30% damage reduction). There is something wrong with anyone skipping this. I recommend Valiant and Working Long Hours after that. Blood Transfusion might be helpful if one of your characters is getting low on HP, but a first aid kit can heal just as much damage without causing one of your other character
s to lose 25% of their health. I've never used shared healing, overwhelming your opponents and killing them means I hardly need to use healing, except on home shelter assaults when I have left weak-ish people there.
Tier 3 – GET Patch Yourself up. This is a great skill, not only will it keep your team out there without being forced to return for healing, it also prevents infections from battles when they end and you have low health because the test for whether your character is infected takes place after the heal is taken into account. With at least 20% health, you should not be infected – ever. I strongly recommend Hardy for avoiding death. The other skills aren't really worth it – Rage attack causes damage to your own character for a minor 125% base damage hit for 4 stamina points (just do the 1-2 twice instead), Final Countdown means that your character has taken a death blow anyway (you should not get to this point ever) and Determined to Win for the same reason.

Traits
There are only 2 positive traits worth getting - Tidy, Resourceful and Hands-On. The ones that reduce the needs are really not as great as you think - you hardly notice the effect at all. The same applies in reverse for negative traits - the ones that increase your needs are the best to "suffer" from, but the Messy, Hands-Off and Wasteful traits are really bad - I won't take survivors with those.

What about traits for your main character?
Stats have a big effect on your characters capabilities so this is what I recommend - Acrobat, Body Builder and Unbreakable to get stat caps for Strength, Dexterity and Fortitude at 20. This leaves you with -4 skill points. Choose Absolute Drainer (conversations are for losers), Eavesdropper (conversations are for losers x 2), Repulsive (you can heal this debuff with a surgeon later and have someone else act as leader for your party for negotiations and trading) and Hyper Allergic (oh no, an extra 25% damage from poison?!? In the very remote chance that you even get poisoned, that will increase the set 5 points of damage you receive per round from poison and increase it to .... an extra 1.25 points of damage per round. I guess you will have to console yourself with crushing them into a fine paste with your 20 strength.)

Now, you may recall that your starting stats, if high, will allow your character to have a higher stat cap. Since you now have a guaranteed 20 for strength, dex and fort, drop the starting values to 1 for those stats, and increase the other 3 stats – Intelligence, Charisma and Perception - to 5. You will have a 1/3 chance of having a stat cap of 19 for those stats (after experiments are taken into account) and a 2/3 chance of a stat cap of 20. Your character will be a powerhouse in any fight, and damn close to perfect in the remaining stats.

You can use the trait points you earn during the game to buy Killer Instinct, Perpetual Energy and Super Cardio. Maybe Lucky as well if you are.... lucky to find all the discs.

I hate the stat cap mechanic in the game. (1) Because it exists and limits your characters ability to perform tasts - who wants someone with an Intelligence of 14 to build your temperature objects and (b) you never find out what the caps are until your characters hit them somewhere far later in the game, messing up your plans or roles for them. What really gets to me - some of the random people you can recruit in the game have caps much higher than what your followers could have received legitimately through the character generating process. One recruit had 2 20 caps, 3 at about 18 and one at 14. The game would have had to give you 28 points at the start to get those caps, rather than the 18 you do get. Its not like you can discard your pals after spending hours and hours training them up to that level....

I awake slowly on top of the surgery table, feeling my consciousness return to me gradually. I try to prop myself up, fighting my lethargic body to try and stand up.

“Woah there, we just finished your surgery a minute ago. How are you feeling?” says a voice to my side. It is Max#Kewl, the person who just performed an experimental surgery on me to attempt to increase my Intelligence.

“I have bad news Jacob43v3r, the experiment was a failure.” He looked down, depressed over his failure during the complicated 5 minute surgery process. He looked up into my face and continued, the sorrow in his voice obvious. “That's not all. There was a minor side effect from the procedure. You have ..... tennis elbow.”

“What? Why the hell were you even doing at my elbow? Weren't you trying to improve my Intellect? Isn't that in the head brainy thing area?” I replied angrily. “Maybe that's why you failed miserably.”

Max#Kewl straightened up on his chair with a frown and a sharp gaze, ready to defend himself. “Look, I didn't just become a surgeon yesterday... it was the day before actually.... but I know what I am doing. I learned everything I need to know from this book to be a skilled surgeon!” as he held up a dog eared book with a smudged title displaying the words Advanced Logic. “Perhaps you should argue with the author instead of me.”

I replied sarcastically “Perhaps he advised that the best way to get to the brain was to start from the elbow and go from there right?”

Experiment – Can attempt to increase the max level cap of a single stat of another character. Has a 25% chance of success. Failure leads to a random ailment.

Books train Intelligence, Perception and Charisma, and they each have 4 different levels – 1-5, 6-10, 11-15 and 16-20.

Charisma can increase through successful trades and successful trades can increase the charisma of your character faster than through reading books, but that only works for the leader of your party.

Intelligence can also be gained through building objects but this can be a slow, expensive exercise. Reading books to increase intelligence is the best way to build this stat.

Perception can only increase by reading books.

If you are having trouble finding stat books, look at the inventory available from other factions. The Black Rose and New Order often stack Intelligence books, and Los Muertos stocks Perception books. The Church of Truth may have Perception books but those are more likely to be found while trading with their outposts once you have a friendly reputation.

Be warned that there are occasions when you may obtain a book that is too high for you to benefit from. For example, if you obtain a Logic book that covers 1-5 and then obtain a book that trains 16-20, the bookshelf will show “2/4” for the Logic book section and that can lead to misunderstandings on what you can train using those books. Often I found myself with Logic Books 1-5, 6-10 and 16-20 and I was stuck with a character that had an Intelligence score of 13, unable to train further without that 3rd tier book. You will need to check your inventory to see what books you have on hand.

Just like in real life, the temperature generating objects only have a limited effect over a certain area. For example, a T3 heater can successfully heat 6 rooms in one bunch unless the temperature starts going below -15C. A T1 heater / cooler can cover a 2-3 room area.

The upcoming winter is very cold, so you need to work towards getting around 2 T3 heaters (or those of a similar power) in order to have an area where your survivors will not take damage from low freezing points. You can endure very hot summers with a T3 cooler, for most of the game you will be fighting lower temperatures.

When the temperature does reach -15C, a full row of rooms requires a T4 heater and 1 (sometimes 2) T3 heaters to remain at 18C. You can move all the heaters you need from other places in the shelter to that one room to keep your survivors happy and your hydroponics crops growing.

A fridge area should be about -3C to avoid any spoilage and to give you some wiggle room if the heat starts affecting that room. To avoid your character from slowing down from being cold in the fridge area, building a table just outside - your character will move out from the cold storage area as soon as they grab their food to eat at the table. If there is no table, they will eat in the fridge area, slowly freezing themselves.

For living areas, the heater should be at 18C and the air conditioning should be about 20C.

Always remember to set any cold producing objects at their proper temperature after building it since they always start with 3C.

Sparks fly as M3chdude works hard on finishing the new Quantum Battery for the base as he attaches the last circuit board. Hopefully the shelter will be fine with this new state of the art power storage device. “Looks like that chapter on Quantum Mechanics came in handy. Now to install the laser to excite the photons and stimulate .....”

“M3chdude, we have a problem!” gasps the newbie running into the room. “Max#Kewl came back from a mission and his leg is broken. We need a splint to heal it!”

M3chdude frowns. “Don't we have a splint from the last trader who came by?”

“We did but we needed to use it on Jacob43v3r who broke his arm the day before. Can you craft one?”

“I can't, I don't know how.”

“Come on, its like nylon thread, a piece of wood and some cloth ... or wool?”

M3chdude frowns and his forehead crinkles in concentration. “Wool.... wood? Nope, I have no idea, can't help you. I guess we have to wait for the next trader with those to come by. In the meanwhile, I'm almost finished on this Quantum Battery. That Bragg reflector isn't going to install itself.”

Splints can only be found in hospitals or from traders passing by the base. They cannot be craft.....

“Wait a sec” says the newbie. “Doesn't Dud3dud3 have a skill that lets him fix a broken leg without using a splint?” “Yeah, but he has to be in combat to use it.” “That's it, lets get them to have a mock fight inside the shelter.” “Not gonna work, it has to be a real fight.” “I don't understand this at all....”

Set Bone is a skill in the Strength tree, Tier 2, that gives you a 25-75% chance of repairing a broken limb in combat as an action that costs 4 stamina poin.....

M3chdude's face suddenly lights up. “Ah, wait a sec, did he meet anyone on the way back to base?” “Nope, he came straight back since his leg was broken.” “Pity, if you meet a person out in the wasteland with a broken leg, it immediately heals.” “What, are you crazy?”

BUG – Encountering a group in the wasteland while having a character with a broken limb will restore that limb after the encounter en......

“I know! Lets just send him out into the wasteland again to encounter a new group to get his leg fixed.”

“Nope, you can't leave the shelter with a broken limb.”

“That doesn't matter, we can just take him in the pickup truck we restored, he doesn't even need to use limbs just to sit in seat so we can easily....”

“Nope, can't do it. Shelter rule.”

“Oh come on”

Characters with broken limbs cannot train or join expeditions.

UPDATE - Splints can now be created on the workbench, Tier 1 just after the First Aid Kit. 1 Wool, 1 Wood.

Always use the fusebox to turn off and on the power to various objects to save your shelter residents the trip, and the disable action. Turn off the spotlights, you don't need them. When you need power, you can also turn off the weather vane, the water purifier and the entrance light but don't forget to turn them back on when they are needed – leaving the water purifier off during black rain means you will not receive any increase in your water provisions.

The incinerator generates power when it is in use. Turn it off if you do not need the power. Note that it turns on automatically if it receives burnable materials such as corpses or coal. You should only have it on if you (a) need the power or (b) are using it to generate power to store in batteries at your base.

You should build windmills when you start having power troubles that require you to have the incinerator on just to keep the base going. About three windmills should cover most of your needs. A solar panel generates the most power without requiring fuel but it turns off during the night (you should have a battery working at this point) and gets dirty really fast which reduces efficiency at some point above 50%, requiring it to be cleaned as well as repaired. One solar panel is enough to cover all of your power needs by the time your shelter is almost fully developed.

For myself, I have found that Lightning Rods do not work. After building a few at my base and seeing them not working at all, I tested this by installing 4 which also did not work. By the way, you can turn these off at the fuse box to stop their durability degrading, and then turn them back on during lightning storms.

The best way to counter fires from lightning strikes is to (a) make sure your shelter has the water containers position as explained in this guide elsewhere (ie next to the stairwells) and (b) use the fusebox to turn off electrical items you are not using to stop fires from starting there. If a fire spawns in your fridge area, move the food storage objects to another location to stop them from also burning and get the fire under control ASAP. Your daily food degradation can reach up to 180% in an active fire zone. If your new location is able to be converted into a fridge quickly, do so but as long as it isn't in the fire zone, your food will degrade at a slow rate regardless. Return those items once the temperature has been brought down, or is at least colder than the location you have stored them at.

Rain falls, you get water.

Try to get up to a water storage capacity of 200 within 20 days of starting the game. Ultimately, aim for a capacity of about 300 to have enough to manage the shelter until the next rainfall. Once you have built a T4 recycler, you should start generating a lot of Tier 2 Rubber and Plastic resources which you can use to build a lot of T3 water containers. Just make sure you don't build so many that you start using up the valuable T3 rubber and plastic resources – they are time consuming to obtain and necessary for important T4 objects. I often open up my storage, check how many T2 plastics I have on hand, divide that by 10 and use that as a guide on the max I can build without wasting my T3 plastics.

Take showers or visit the toilet when your needs are at about 70% full to reduce wastage of the resource. Soap will reduce the water usage by 1 water, but note that you will always use at least 1 water – A Tier 4 shower will use up 1 water each time regardless of whether you use soap or not.

Long term planning – Start building better quality Toilets and Showers when you go up a tier - the basic versions use 4 water per use, and each additional tier you go up reduces water usage by one. It is never a waste of resources to upgrade to better versions. Having a pet dog with the resource collecting on the map skill will allow you to find lots of water on the map.

Upgrade Efficiency on your Water Collector, to keep more water for each rainfall. For polluted rain, upgrade the capacity and efficiency of the Water Purifier.

If your water purifier has reached maximum capacity and it is still raining, you can craft "Bottled Dirty Water" to put into storage, and then "use" them later when the black rain is no longer falling to put them into the purifier. You can use this same trick for clean water if it starts to exceed your maximum capacity, but remember that each craft options uses 1 T1 Plastic.

Oh dear, I have 10 water left
Get into your inventory, select water containers, right click and add them to your water capacity. Use dirty water which puts the contents into your water purifier, but not so much that it exceeds your purifiers capacity.
Go and find the closest reservoir and start working that location. Unless you are friendly (ie rep 200+) with that faction, you may end up in many fights.
You can trade with friendly factions which have water in their trade inventory.
Otherwise, scavenge or try your luck at encountering other groups to trade or loot.

When you harvest seeds, you have a chance of harvesting 0-2 seeds. So if you start the game, plant the only the broccoli seed you have, and then harvest it and it spawns no seeds, you will have to live off rabbits or find other seeds easy to grow effectively in that temperature (or reload).

The best fridge setup - a 2 room freezer with 6 T2 medium pantries with a T3 or T4 cooler built in above the pantries. You will have to fit them in tightly (this is where the 'alt' key when placing objects comes in REALLY useful – it snaps them right next to the object you want to place them in – I found this out in my 11th playthrough....). Until you can build T3 coolers, you will have to live with a messy fridge with a standing fan which can magically generate a temperature below 0C and has 30 durability, requiring frequent repairs.

Chicken coops are the best way to generate food – the eggs can be cooked on their own, or used in recipes in the second tier. The coops can store up to 4 chickens, and the chickens can only obtained by using Fertilized Eggs on the coop, which can be found in farms and parks. If your coop stops generating eggs, your chickens may have retired (they usually last about 80-100 days). Select manage on the coop, see if a chicken has stopped laying and if it has, slaughter it for meat and replace it. That's the farming life after all.

The main problem with the meals is that the T3 and T4 meals require high level ingredients, and a fair variety of them for some of the meals. If you are lazy, a chicken coop or 2 with a planter inside your base growing mushrooms will allow you to create mushroom omelettes (2 eggs, 2 mushrooms, 65 sustinence value).

However, if you have a supply of meat, grow brocolli during fall and spring and grow a few potatoes either in a planter or up above, you can cook Meat Stew (1 Meat, 1 Brocolli, 1 Potato) which also happens to be worth 40 Trade Value at 3 star quality.

You can use cooked desperate meat as feed for the chicken coops or the food bowls for pets. You can also make travel rations with it. Just don't feed it to your residents

Planters should only be deployed once you have enough temperature controlling objects in that location, or at least a heater Between 18C to 20C will cover all the growable crops, so storing them in the same room as your beds makes it easier to access and keep at a good temperature. Planters can only grow certain crops such as tomatoes, mushrooms, potatoes, and the random seeds which grow drug-type crops. The planters should be kept in use as often as possible – if you are not growing potatoes or mushrooms, you should be growing the “Plant Seed”s in order to use them to make drugs for sale (or use) or to grow Aloe Vera for Lubricant and Raw Honey for Soap. I bet you didn't know you could 'grow' honey, you probably thought it came from bee hives.

FUN ACTIVITY - You can collect the eggs, cook the eggs and then use them as the feed for the coop (36% value in feed) creating an infinite loop where the chickens both eat the eggs and lay them.

For people with too much stuff who need other types of stuff.

You can use your Radio Transmitter to reach out to other factions to set up a trade meet, and you will have a preview of what is available.
Using the radio to "Contact traders" has a very low chance of success.
The trade value remains static for all items in the game, however you can increase the value of your goods when trading via the Faction Goal achievement.

Charisma does not affect the trading value of goods, but it does increase the % of success you can have when attempting to trade goods that have a total value lower than the other person. For example, offering 100 trade value for 120 of the other guys stuff might have a 0% chance at 1 Charisma, but it may be 45% at 20 Charisma.
If you push a trade onto a faction that eventually fails since they won't accept it, you will lose 20 faction reputation points.

Unlimited trading!
However, if you have above 200 reputation with a faction and have yet to ally with them, you can visit one of their outposts, or their main base, and trade with them there. Best of all, you can sit on that location, select the outpost /base again to visit without moving and trade again with a refreshed inventory. You can also build your charisma and faction reputation. Each extra trade takes up no ingame time.
This is great for generating resources that are difficult to find. For example, if I am low on plastic or rubber, I stock up on glass, stews and any other excess items such as stat books I have extra copies of and visit the Old Clan outpost and trade over and over again for those items.
If you have allied with a faction, there is a very small chance you might be able to visit the location once to start a trade, but after that nothing happens at that location.

Here is a brief list of the trade goods available from different factions. Some like the Black Rose also offers a pistol and pistol ammo with each base/outpost trade, which is great if you are after T3 crafting materials with a T4 Recycler.

Build your characters!
When you start the game, the only reason you should be scavenging is to build Strength and Dexterity training gear for your characters while meeting all of their needs at the shelter. In fact, you can send out 2 characters to scavenge right from the start, although their carrying capacity is low, but you do need to inject some resources to start building your basic base objects. Reduce risk by sticking to Level 1 areas, and start on 2s once you both have daggers and build up your survivors's combat capabilities. Once your characters get to 10 Strength and have CQC from the Dexterity tree, they are combat ready for almost all encounters, except those in the Level 5 areas.

Try to obtain flick sand so you have something to do with the spare 2 stamina you have after your primary melee attack.

You don't have to worry about always having a scavenging team out in the field while you build up your strength - there are no time critical events to worry about. It is critically important to have a characters capable of defeating opponents in the field and training is the most efficient way to get there.

If the other team has the first go at hitting you during an encounter, you aren't tough enough yet for those opponents. You should be the first ones attacking since your dex should be higher.

Battle encounters - the best attacks to use against your opponents
At the start of the game, you should be using your primary melee attacks and flick sand to maximise damage to your opponents. Flick sand costs 2 stamina points in the Dex tree and will be the earliest 2 stamina point attack you can access. As soon as you get access to the 3rd tier of the Dex tree, obtain CQC first, then max out Backstab. CQC will allow you to have an extra attack (though at the lower Base Attack Damage level), and when you get Backstab, you should use this as often as you can to take out the back row opponents ASAP. 2 stamina points for more than double damage against your opponents is a massive benefit, it is equivalent to 2 melee attacks at 25% the cost.
The last skill you need to get for end game is Calculated One-Two. This attack costs 2 stamina points for 320% of base attack damage - it can be more powerful than one basic melee attack so using this twice can be more powerful than a melee attack, even moreso for characters with low strength or attack bonuses. This will depend on the attack damage that your weapon can dish out of course.

Base Attack Damage is the base damage that your weapon causes without modifiers. Your opponent receiving the attack can reduce the damage using armor and skills so it may not appear that is doing much damage against such opponents.

Shelter attacks!
Shelter attacks commence on Day 10 as the day begins at midnight.
If you have more than 1 person in your base defense force, put the best armed dweller(s) in the back row. Why? These %$!#s like to disarm you. A lot. You can end up spending most of your time picking up your dropped weapon or focusing on weak sauce unarmed attacks. If you have 2 shelter assaulters and decide to have 2 defenders in the same row, chances are they will keep hitting you with disarm spam forcing you to engage in hand to hand, or continuously take damage from their disarms until you die.

Aim to have 2 people defending your base at all times. Since you start the game with 3 and the first attack on the base starts on day 10, you should look at recruiting a random visitor within the first 3 who turn up at your base. You should have at least 3 defenders full time at your base by day 40.

Always store first aid kits in your inventory when equipping items to fight the shelter assailants. They have saved my hide in many early game sieges.

Once the encounter ends, move your first aid containers next to characters with bleeds and broken limbs so they can heal them quickly. You can burn your opponent's bodies in an Incinerator for extra power without taking morale penalties, bury them in a grave or (if you have not built any of the aforementioned objects) butcher them for desperate meat (BIG MORALE PENALTY for this one).

Torniquet - the best skill for your opponents so they can die faster for you
The tourniquet skill does not work. In fact, you can cheese a fight by starting a bleed on an opponent and if the other members of their team have the tourniquet skill, they will spend all of their actions trying to stop the bleed by using their skill. With no blows coming in, you can take them out one by one.

Best Weapons
The best weapons for you will be the ones with the highest damage output that your character can equip. For shelter attacks or very tough fights, you can be excused for using ranged weapons but for the most part, using melee weapons is good enough. Just remember that some weapons benefit from the +30% blunt or bladed damage bonuses so that would be the only time to reconsider which weapon is more worthwhile. A dagger given to a character that only has a 30% bladed weapon bonus will be better for them than a baseball bat.

Get your cat bell and dog whistle, we are going pet hunting!

Cats - They kill the rats and scavenge for materials to bring back to the base. Best choice for a starting pet.

Dogs - The skill points they receive are random so their benefits are also random, but since they can at least expand your maximum inventory weight when you go scavenging, they are a valued addition. By the way, they are useless in combat.

The game spawns 9 random pets on the map in set locations and encounters with the pet will be close or right on top of those locations.

When you encounter a pet, save. Always save before entering the encounter. For the first encounter, try to end it successfully after successful “Stay still” and two “Throw scrap” actions. Save afterwards. If you manage to score a second encounter, save again, then attempt to use friendly actions again until you have 4 stamina left. Try a recruit action. If it fails, reload the second pet encounter. If it succeeds, congratulations.

The hard part is obtaining a second encounter and this is the most frustrating part. If you find a pet on a searchable location, you must have good luck - there is a good chance that searching that location will immediately spawn a brand new pet encounter. You can also try spamming searches on that searchable location (“Search” “Cancel” “Search” “Ahh.. an encounter!”) to see if that works. You might encounter a lot of other survivors and faction members but that's how spam searching works.

Otherwise, move around a bit, search locations within 2 blocks of that encounter in different directions while continuing to return to the place that you initially had that encounter.

Your reputation with the pet you encounter degrades over time so you should stick around that location and try to encounter the pet again if you really want it – though it is mostly luck to try and find it again. I end most games with 3 dogs and 2 cats - I have to build a second feed bowl to stop them starving.

“Hey Max#Kewl, I'm just going up topside to do some repairs on our water collector. I'll try to be fast so I can get back without taking too much frost damage.”

“There must be a way of avoiding that damage. Maybe we could wear a jacket or something.”

“Yeah, its a pity we only have these these this t-shirts to wear around the base and nothing else.”

“Wait a sec, I saw Pwinr3ss wearing a jacket earlier, she could go up instead of me.”

“I asked her about that and she it doesn't work that way, its for cosmetic purposes only.”

“Why don't we get all the t-shirts in the base, put them on one person when they have to go up and that should keep them warm enough.”

“Can't do that. We only have one for each person.”

“Yeah, laundry day is hard around here.”

“I'll get M3chdude to see if there is some warm clothing technology we can research. He's almost finished with the Quantum Battery, we will see if we can whip up a cardigan or something.”

“Dunno. The guy is good with a circuit board but useless with anything involving fabric. The best he can do is make rope. Don't even let me get started on splints.”

“Damn it. Maybe we can make a portable boiler or something...”

Temperatures above 27C or below 0C cause your character to take continuous damage.

A brief note on the hard to get achievements

Scholar is broken. You can get all the books, but it will not trigger as of patch 1.2.14.

Good management – Achieving all of the faction goals. Most of these are self explanatory but I have some suggestions for a few of them. You can also earn many other achievements while accomplishing this goal.
Persuasive – You will need to convince a total of 10 prisoners to join your faction. Then you can dismiss them afterwards. You will need to subdue a lot of prisoners by hitting them gently in the head (ie don't one shot them with sledgehammers, use bare hands or knuckles to hit them in the head over and over again until they are taken down). You will need to feed them water and food (this is where the “carry” option for food and water comes in to use if you were wondering). Use persuade on them once midnight passes by, keep the temperature right and as time passes by, they will join you thanks to the effects of the Stockholm Syndrome. If you have 4 cells filled with prisoners at one time, you can receive the Aggressive Jailer achievement. Also, let them leave the cell itself before dismissing them, otherwise they die in the cell since they cannot exit it.
Fast dismantling. You will need 2 characters, one to build small medicine cabinets and one to dismantle them (hopefully with the resourceful trait). With a bit of space, build and dismantle until you pass this.
Firefighter – You need to put out a total of 50 fires. No need to wait for lightning storms – most electrical items burst into flames once they reach 0 integrity so get a bunch of low intellect characters, have them build crappy items like pedestal fans and have a water source close by. When they burst into fire, just put out the fire, don't repair them – as they will burst into fire again since they still have 0 integrity. After a while, this endless fire hazard will help you achieve this goal. You didn't put this next to other objects right?

Home Alone – Build a lot of land mines, and place them between the shelter door and the fence opening. Since the opponents typically go straight towards the base once they pass the gate post, try to focus on mining both of those paths. You will need to build at least 12 mines to have a chance of killing them all, but about 20 should do the job. You should have enough cordite and magnesium to go crazy on this stuff.

ALWAYS save before you create an expedition. Most game killing bugs occur when the expedition starts – too many to list here. Save yourself from the frustration – save before sending expeditions!

Make sure that you keep your water containers right next to the staircase as much as possible, not spread out on floors. Why? If a fire occurs, your character will run to the closest water container in any direction, and that includes up or down. If you have a water container on a floor below your character, but there is another water container on your level but it is not as close as the water container in the floor below, your character will pass all the water containers while running to the next floor to get water from that container. Putting all of the water containers next to the stairwell means that your characters will not be running between floors while your base falls apart. Most shelters will have the stairwell on the left, so keep the water containers to the left.

This "bug" also applies to cleaning. I often get the character to "Clean Level" and then "Clean Shelter" to lower the time this takes.

When you start the game, put the beds on the top floor since your characters hate dirt rooms, and put as many items you don't use, or don't frequently use on the next floor. You should be able to start building better walls (aka the T3 wall) by the time you get started building on the 3rd floor.

When being breached, put one character at the door. Why? The raiders will disperse once the door opens, going to water storage objects, item storage objects and (this is key) objects to ignite on fire. In fact, sometimes they can walk back out of the shelter to ignite objects on the surface, except for the oxygen filter, signpost or water collector. The only reason you would not have a survivor at the entrance is if the opponents are too strong so you wait for them on different floors (where you can pick them off one by one) or let them take some stuff while you deal with the stragglers. If you encounter one of the opponents on a floor that his friends are no on, you can start combat with just that one on their own.

Do you like being lazy? I do. Try to have one shower (and a spare bed) for each character that you send out on expeditions. When they return, they will all need 3 things – water, a shower and sleep (unless your leader has the perpetual energy skill) so you just need to select one of the showers, a water butt and a bed for all the people returning. When you have 4 people returning, this makes it easy to manage them since you probably already have shelter survivors at the base that you are already managing.

Don't reload a faction preset when starting a new game. Your 2 followers will all have 1 for their stats unless you go into their character and forcefully allocate them. Having 1 for their stats is useful if you want to build their skill trees from scratch as long as you don't mind that the cap for all their stats will be around 12 and they will be crap at the start.

The game tells you that perception is useful for dealing with traps. There are NO traps in the game.

The only way to build relationships between survivors is to let them idle and they will randomly go up to speak to others in the shelter. Relationship points are mostly useless – they will give you more experience bonuses while you are on expeditions, but the most effective way of building stats is training at your base. Also, since your survivors need to scavenge, build, repair and clean, leaving them idle to build relationship points is wasting time which could be spent on more valuable activities.

Silly bug - Sometimes in dialogue, you are informed that you have lost reputation due to some action taken. This is false – the game does not reduce your reputation despite the message.

HARDCORE MODE! ---- This mode advertises itself as giving you only 50% of the starting materials, and more frequent sieges. However it has a bug (surprise surprise) - after 20 days in or interacting with other factions, the difficulty for in your savegame file for 2 items - "breachFrequency" and "mapResources" resets itself to normal. I edited the savegame file to restore it back to hardcore difficulty but it reset itself again.