This guide is designed to allow you to play Fallout Shelter without paying any money (unless you want to support the developers). It involves third party software which should be virus/malware free, but always check with your favourite software.

Run the game, create a vault, save and exit.

Download this save editor: http://robot9706.github.io/FSSE/ (Windows version: http://robot9706.github.io/FSSE/Download/Win.zip). I am not the developer or affiliated with the developer. There are other editors (for both android and windows) but this one seems to be the best / most updated.

Virus/malware/etc: As with any untrusted source/download, you should verify that it is free of virus/malware. If you are looking for a free antivirus, I suggest Comodo firewall/antivirus or Nod32 antivirus. At the time of this writing, my software did not detect any malicious code.

• Extract zip to a folder and run "FSSEWin.exe".
  
• Select "Vault" from the top menu and "Open File".
  
• In the location bar type "%appdata%" without the quotes. You'll be taken to ..\appdata\roaming\
  
• Navigate up one folder to ..\appdata\ and open the "local" folder.
  
• Open the "FalloutShelter" folder. The location should look something like this: C:\Users\profile_name\AppData\Local\FalloutShelter
  
• Choose the vault save slot you wish to edit. ie. "Vault1.sav"
  
• Now you are ready to modify your save file. See below for some recommendations.
  
• Use ctrl+s or vault->save menu to save. You can close the editor when you are done.

Premium items:

• Resources: Quantum: 99999 (more than enough for all its uses)
  
• Lunchboxes: Simple: 25 (useful for getting various items and dwellers)
  
• Lunchboxes: MrHandy: 25 (useful for automated resource collection)
  
• Lunchboxes: Pet: 50 (some pets have a really nice bonus, but since they are random, you may want a lot of crates to find the right ones. You can also use the save editor to add pets to your storage)
  
• Lunchboxes: Starter: 5 (useful when you start your vault. Somewhat useful later on if you want dwellers quicker.)

I suggest not setting the "caps" resource amount too high at the start of the game or else it takes a lot away from the incremental gameplay. You may wish to edit this value later in the game so you can afford upgrades. Use starter lunchboxes to get a boost to caps/resources/dwellers/etc.

Another option is to create a "test / sandbox" vault and give it 999,999 caps + unlock all rooms/recipes (under the tools tab) and a bunch of dwellers. Then you can play with the vault / endgame mechanics and find a layout/design you enjoy.

You can add items to your storage (weapons, outfits, junk and pets) using the save editor, but this will take away from the overall gameplay.

You can add dwellers using the save editor which may be preferred if you don't want to spend time getting all the ladies pregnant (tedious gameplay). You can also use simple lunchboxes and starter lunchboxes to get dwellers. If you don't want to do the pregnant gameplay, I recommend using the save editor and adding a bunch of level 1, 1 special dwellers and using the game mechanics to level them up. At the time of this writing, there is no way to edit dwellers pregnant status, but hopefully the editor developer will add this functionality.

With premium items unlocked you will find a lot of gameplay is more enjoyable. Below is some things that might help enhance your game experience.

• Quantum: use to speedup quest travel (instant) and return explorers. Use to speed up training (double click a room with trainers and you should see little bottles near them). Use to speed up crafting times (requires at least 1 person "working" in the room) and theme unlocks.
  
• Lunchboxes: use the starter boxes to make early gameplay quicker. Use them later on to get rare/legendary dwellers (useful for quests). Each starter box has a bunch of resources, a MrHandy, some dwellers and junk. Use simple boxes to try your luck on getting something useful (weapon/outfit), pet, dwellers, or resources (which count towards quests).
  
• Pets: If you go for pregnant gameplay, there are some nice pets for that (twin chance, +specials). Exploring has some good pets (+junk, +weapon/outfit, +return time). There are xp boosting pets (+% xp). There are survivability pets (+hp, +damage resistance, +damage).
  
• Experiment with vault layout. When your vault is attacked, the attackers go one room at a time until they reach the end of a floor, then drop a level and repeat. You can use this to create "buffer rooms" at the top floors and fill them with dwellers with good stats / good weapons. Consider having a test vault / save with a lot of caps and experiement with layouts.
  
• When exploring/questing, you can click the stimpack / radaway icons to select max quantity (25 each) instead of clicking the up arrow 25 times.
  
• Build and upgrade multiple hospitals/medbays to increase your stimpack/radaway storage (useful for sending multiple explorers out with max stimpacks).
  
• Combat/quests: Aim for high agility (attack speed), high luck (crit meter speed and chance to find loot), high endurance (more hp gained per level) and high strength (more weapon damage, +carry capacity while exploring). Perception controls the speed of the crit meter but while exploring it increases chance of finding locations. Charisma and Intelligence provide nothing to combat.
  
• Helpful wiki: http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Fallout_Shelter

Another piece of software that may be of use to some players is Time Travel (http://www.serialporttool.com/TimeTravel.htm). It is a free application that allows you to set the speed of your clock. Fallout Shelter uses your computer clock for a lot of its calculations (travel time, craft time, time to make resources) however it will not affect combat time (time between attacks) on quests.