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There’s no escaping that the Vaults are at the heart of every Borderlands, the best FPS series for people who don’t like them. Even if the story focuses on the characters, the alien locations, and lots and lots of guns, the issue of the Vaults is always present throughout. Usually, you race against the villains to get to one before they do.
The mystery of the Vaults was a huge component of the first game in particular, but even as the series has progressed, it isn’t always clear exactly what the deal with the Vaults is since each one seems a little different. So it’s time to answer some of those questions. What are the Vaults? What’s inside them? Who made them? Read below to find out.
This article contains spoilers for the series as a whole, but particularly for Borderlands 3.
What Are The Vaults?
Simply put, an ancient alien race known as the Eridians created the Vaults to seal away their advanced technology, or threats to the galaxy as a whole. They were typically hidden away, requiring considerable work to uncover and special keys to open.
Each Vault is typically guarded not only by secrecy but by some form of guardian entity. This makes the perfect boss fight, of course, but sometimes the boss inside of a Vault is the very thing that Vault was meant to keep sealed away.
What Are Vault Hunters?
Vault Hunters are people who hope to find and open a Vault, usually for the promise of treasure and glory. Their mythical status has caused many to believe the Vaults are filled with vast riches and advanced technology, which often turns out to be true.
Typically, Vault Hunters are also the playable characters in each Borderlands game. There have been 20 playable Vault Hunters so far. Brick, Lilith, Mordecai, and Roland were featured in Borderlands. Maya, Salvador, Axton, Zer0, Gaige, and Krieg were available in Borderlands 2, counting DLC.
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What Is Inside The Vaults?
With multiple Vaults across the series, sometimes even multiple Vaults per game, there are quite a few to keep track of. Each Vault contains something different, even if they all have some things in common.
From a gameplay perspective, every Vault contains considerable loot for the player. It has multiple chests, each holding the chance for some top-tier loot.
On the narrative front, things are a little more complicated. Many of the Vaults are storehouses for Eridian weapons or technology, making them highly sought after. The reward for opening a Vault like that, if you can defeat the guardian, would drastically alter your fortunes.
Some Vaults, however, are more like prisons for especially dangerous creatures like The Destroyer or The Ravager. While they might still contain useful technology, the problem is that you might not know which kind of Vault you’re opening until you do.
How Many Vaults Are There?
The simple truth is that we don’t know how many Vaults there are. There will almost certainly be at least one Vault in every Borderlands game ever made, and in the Borderlands setting itself, there are no known numbers for the Vaults.
Is Pandora A Vault?
As shocking as it might seem if you haven’t played Borderlands 3, yes, the entire planet of Pandora is itself a Vault. Known as The Great Vault it was designed to house the entity known as The Destroyer, an eldritch abomination.
Funnily enough, this means that the entire time you spent in the first Borderlands running across Pandora trying to find the Vault? You were already there the entire time.
The Vault from the first game was technically only a small window into where The Destroyer was held. The Destroyer defeated in that game’s climax was just a very small portion of the full creature that would be defeated in Borderlands 3.
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