Bungie has shown off Vault Breaker in a new gameplay trailer. This is Marathon’s experimental, time-limited PvE mode, which arrives today in Season 2’s mid-season update. Vault Breaker is a roguelite mode that exists separately from the normal modes. In other words, it’s not simply a PvE toggle you can turn on across the game.
The Vault Breaker mode will be available for two weeks, ending 4th August. It takes place in the Cryo Archive map and supports solo, duos and trios. Anyone can jump in, regardless of their Runner level.
As seen in the latest gameplay trailer, Vault Breaker plays out like a roguelite where you increase your power between runs. Within the matches themselves, your goal is to raid Vaults while taking down UESC enemies. Vaults get tougher over time, and the choice of when to call it and extract is up to you.
A Vault Data currency is what’s used to upgrade your Sponsored Kit, which is what you’re going to need to pick each time you want to play this mode, as player-made loadouts are not supported in Vault Breaker.
Although your goal remains to extract without dying, the gear taken with you cannot be used across the normal game. In other words, you can’t go on farming runs in Vault Breaker to acquire gear you can use against players elsewhere. Upon extraction, everything – except event currency and rewards – will be turned into Vault Data. The more you invest, the stronger your starting Sponsored Kit is going to be in future runs.
The only relation Vault Breaker has to the normal rotation of modes is that the same Vault Data can be used in the Vault Breaker Armory to purchase items and gear for use outside the mode.
And, perhaps as a way to encourage new players, the game will award you Tier One Vault Data for killing a USEC Commander within the run, even if you don’t manage to successfully extract.
If you were hoping for something a little more involved, don’t fret: Bungie is working on a full PvE mode that’s set to arrive in Season 3. Details about how that’s going to work and how integrated it is – or not – in the full game are yet to be revealed.
Last Friday, Marathon director Joe Ziegler left Bungie for a new adventure, just four months after the launch of the somewhat struggling extraction shooter. The studio was recently hit with major layoffs. Though most redundancies affected the Destiny team, Marathon also lost some developers.
