The new Season 3 has brought the vaults into Diablo 4 and other things are required there than just particularly strong meta builds. In return, you can expect really good loot at the end.
Why don’t oneshot builds help here? Many monster mobs await you in the vaults, but no strong final boss. In addition, you will find traps in many rooms, corners and chests that you have to avoid so that you can actually collect the loot at the end.
Some other activities often involve laying strong bosses. An expert took down one of the toughest bosses in one fell swoop because he was wearing the right pants. However, a strong oneshot build won’t help you in the vaults, because attention and preparation are more important here. Being able to take down strong opponents particularly quickly won’t necessarily get you to your goal here.
Diablo 4: The gameplay trailer for Season 3
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More protection stacks = more loot at the end of the vault
How do I prepare myself? In the vaults you can exchange so-called Pearls of Protection for stacks of protection. You get the pearls from the “Herald of Malphas”, who you summon during the Arcane Quakes and for completing a vault. If you exchange them, you will receive protection stacks, which you will lose as soon as you are hit by a trap.
That doesn’t sound so tragic at first, but there are chests waiting for you at the end of the vault that you can only open if you have enough protection stacks left. Although you also get a chest for completing the trap room and one for completing the vault, the chests you get for the protection stacks contain the better loot.
The following chests await you at world level 4 at the end:
As far as loot goes, you’ll get gold, equipment, nightmare seals, pearls of protection, crafting materials, and stones for your Seneschal companion. In the screenshots you can see examples from the “Vault of Ink” in the nightmare version (level 21):
This is the loot from the normal vault chest
For comparison: the loot from all chests for 15 protection stacks on WT4
Better to accept a death than to lose protection
How do the vaults work? At the beginning you walk through a small dungeon area where only enemies await you, but no traps. At the end you enter the vault through a portal. Once there you will find a pillar where you can exchange your pearls. Since patch 1.3.0a you get 10 protection stacks per pearl.
Many traps await you in the vault. If you’re looking for a lot of loot, it’s better to accept a death than to be hit by the traps too often – especially if you encounter the Butcher who tries to push you into the traps. It can quickly happen that you lack protection for the large chests. Of course, this only applies if you don’t play hardcore.
In some vaults you have to collect an item to open doors. Once you have made your way through the vault, you will finally come to a large room full of traps. An event is triggered there in which mobs keep spawning. You have to wipe them out and at the same time watch out for the traps. Upon completion of the event, a chest will spawn in the room.
The run is then completed and depending on how many protection stacks you have left, you can either open just one or several chests in the next room. Note that the stacks expire as soon as you leave the vault. So teleport into the city first, roughly to empty your inventory, when the chests are open.
Behind some chests in vaults a small fortune awaits you, behind others a nasty surprise:
Nightmare Vaults are even more rewarding
How do I get to the vault? You can easily enter the vaults via the gate hall or via the map if you go to the entrance. However, it is more worthwhile if you turn them into Nightmare Vaults, as you will also level up your glyphs.
To do this you need seals, which you craft beforehand with seal powder, shattered stone and gold, find in vaults or get from the whisper tree. Then, as with the nightmare dungeons, you can teleport directly there.
The vaults could therefore particularly appeal to players who want to try out different builds without paying attention to the meta. The vaults could also be something for those who want a change from the normal (nightmare) dungeons.
MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus thinks the new vaults are really good content and says he hasn’t had this much fun in a long time. You can read more about it here: Diablo 4: The feature that is currently annoying everyone in Season 3 makes me really happy