Fallout Shelter gets crafting in new update

Forget about finding your son. Fallout Shelter has some new tools in its important quest for user retention.

The mobile hit released a new update today, developer Bethesda announced, that adds crafting. Fallout Shelter has been a hit for Bethesda, managing to earn 12 million downloads in a day, Bethesda creative director Todd Howard told GamesBeat. While Bethesda has long done well in the console and PC market (last year’s Fallout 4 shipped more than 12 million copies during the holidays), Fallout Shelter has helped the company take advantage of the growing mobile industry, which Newzoo says was worth $34.8 billion in 2015. Updates like this are important for free-to-play games. They keep users engaged and can prevent them from deleting the app.

The traditional Fallout games are open-world role-playing experiences that let players explore a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Fallout Shelter, however, is all about building and running your own vault, an underground facility designed to keep people safe from the hazards of the outside, radioactive world.

If you want to get crafting, you need to build a weapon or armor crafting room in your shelter. You can also now build a barbershop that will let you change your dwellers’ haircuts.

The update also adds parrots as a new pet type, along with new kinds of cats and dogs. It also brings some weapons and updates from Fallout 4 into the mobile game. You can check out a full list of additions at Bethesda’s site.