Raid the Giants' Vault Walkthrough

[nibel]

I heard many people talking about this quest, and "how easy is to run it in 3 minutes" using their big bad casters that can instakill everything, or self-healing melee that can outlive anything, or whatever. Many people try this quest and are wiped at the 2 sorcerers on entrance, or get overwhelmed by the mobs in the corridor, or give up in the jumping parts because you get lost and have no idea where you should be to proceed.

The news are: They are right. This quest is the easiest solo loot room at cap at this moment. And to help everyone that could never hit the 3-minute mark because of lack of pathing, I decided to write this walkthrough with visual aids.

What you need to quickly complete this quest:

-Invisibility x3 clickie (or spell, or scrolls. You need 3 hits for the quest)
-Jump +40 (House P buffs help)
-Featherfall
-Enough DPS to kill 2 orange-named bosses, and some constructs.

What you can equip to help on this quest, but is not necessary:

-Resist 30 fire (ship buff, equipment, or spell)
-Striding 30% or better (haste or speed boost)
-Wings
-Instakills (work on orange-nameds)

First, you get the quest with Murkletter. You need to complete Eye of the Titan and Reclaiming Memories before you can run this quest.


Now that you got the quest, enter it. You'll be in a long, long fall that end in a water pit. Before you hit the bottom, cast invisibility (and any other buff you want).


As soon as you hit the bottom, invisible, you'll find a path to the main area. There are 2 inspired sorcerers and 3 inspired soldiers here. Since you are invisible, you can run straight the path and ignore them. Go to the left when you approach the shrine.


Climb up this ledge.


And look at this direction.


You need to run and grab the edge here. The spiral have a ton of traps around it, so if you try to walk there, you'll be blasted and greased, and not get much done. As soon as you grab the edge, look at your right side.


You need to walk this path up until you find a rune. Activating the rune will break your invisibility, and some fire mephits will immediatelly attack you. If you have fire resistance 30, you can ignore them. Otherwise, kill all three mephits (plus any respawn)


Keep climbing your way up (there is only one path at this side) and activate the other 2 runes you find on the way. This is important later.



As soon as you hit the third rune, turn 180° and you'll see a tree branch sticking out. There is an entrance there, so, just jump there.


When you enter the new path, hit your second invisibility charge and proceed ignoring all the enemies you find on the way (usually, a gargoyle, a mephit, and 2 animated armors).


When you find the shrine, turn left.


You'll see a orange-named animated armor guarding a lever. You need to pull it to disarm the traps in the spiral. Since you are invisible, he will not attack you right now, so you can maneuver around it and turn the lever. You do not need to kill this guardian.


Back to the normal path, you'll find another pool of water.


Swim down it to find a key. You need this key to find the key to the main chest.


Now start the first nightmare for Coal Chamberists: You need to climb up. Don't worry, the climbing is much smaller than coal chamber. You need around 7 jumps to reach the top. Just be patient and keep going.


Sometimes, when you are halfway, you'll receive a DM notice about a rare monster on the top.


Just kill Sulphorot and loot a chest.


Proceed to the next pit and jump down, but stick to the west wall.


Again, sometimes you'll receive a notice about another rare monster. You need to go west to find the passage.


Kill Ironwing and loot a chest.


After this, hit invisibility for the third and last time, and fall down all the way.


Proceed to the only path until you return to the central room. To the left you'll see a locked door. If you were following my instructions, you got the key on the pool after the first lever.


Keep going until you find a key behind a blue barrier, near another lever.


Pull the lever and fight Hullstone. Yes, I know you dont NEED to fight him. But I'll keep the bug out of the walkthrough


After defeating Hullstone, the blue barrier drop and you can get the key.


Exit back to the main room. You'll notice two crystals in the spire, and the right one should be lit. This mean you activated the 3 runes I told you to activate before.


Go to the right, and follow until you find a smoking crystal in the ground. This is an air jet and will throw you up back to that tree branch that leads for the first lever.


When you reach the top, get back to the third rune, and face west.


You'll see the other entrance. You need to aim at that lone crystal near the wall.


Jump there and make your way to the passage in the wall.


Inside you'll find another guardian and the second lever. If you have another invisibility charge, you can become invisible and avoid a fight. Otherwise, just kill it and pull the lever.


When you kill the guardian, the door in the back will open. If you have looted only one chest on this room, go there (remember to pull the lever, or you have to climb back up later).


On the top of this path is the optional "find an exit from the vault". If you are not already at the level cap, this quick xp will help you a bit.


Every instance of Giants' Vault have 2 optional chests. The rares that spawn, and this one, near the exit. If the chest is here, you need to kill the three animated armors to unlock the chest.


After that, just go back your way and aim down to the top of the spiral. If you pulled both levers, the traps should be disabled.



Unlock the chest with the jeweled key, and enjoy your 3 free chests.


I hope this walkthrough help some people.

[epopotamus]

+1 for the step by step picture guide.

mr cow also has a video run on his youtube channel, which together with this thread should be enough for most ppl to do fast successful runs.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylgjApyUNnY

[johnnyputrid]

Very nicely done. I love ransacking this quest with a +2 loot gem, can easily make around 100k plat in an hour or so.

Also of note, the Inspired Sorcerers occasionally cast Enervation/Energy Drain, so having a deathward clickie can be handy. You could use the shrine in the main room to fix yourself up after get neg-leveled, but why waste the time? One click, no worries.

[Lordress]

thank you! I find the still pictures with written descriptions/directions much more helpful than videos.

Nothing wrong with the video guides, mind you...but some of us older *ahem* people need slower, more detailed help..hehehe

Anyway...thanks a bunch!

~L

[Rubix]

+1

Nice, thanQ

[Ague]

+1 to you... good job

[chance2000]

Not a bad walk thru at all.
I run this quest on 6 different toons 8 times each.
Using the ddo viewer 8 shows ranscak even though you have not gotten a message from a chest.
I always leave it at 8 runs.
My bard does the selling, I average 500-600k per week just selling the loot I do not keep to the house p pawn.
I do run a +2 loot stone on my vault runners.
As for the amount of time.
Smigit a level 20 dwarf fighter it is normally 7-11 min.
Xappit level 18 wiz, Xsong level 20 bard and my 2 artificers (lvl20) they all do the run in like 15 min.
My tempest Ranger Smigitjr level 20 is 7-11 min.
The silver flame trinket helps a lot.
I get paralyzers, smiters, disruptors, vorpals, and banishers.
Those I put in storage to give to guild members and other friends.

[Jeromio]

+1 for a very nicely put together guide!

I'm not entirely sure if it's more effecient, but I think you can do it an alternate way that might be a bit faster:
Don't bother with the runes on the way up (just takes time, can get some aggro, have to re-invis), immediately go for the lever at/and vault exit chest, go back and jump over to the tree chunk and head to the lever by the shrine/pool key, after the rare(s) fighting go down and get the chest key and run up and grab the three end chests.
This should take on average between 4-7 minutes depending on what kind of character you're running with.

You don't actually have to fight Hullstone... just takes additional time.

Cheers!

[lugoman]

FYI, you can skip the runes. They only activate the air jets that blow you to the chest area. You can run up the ramp instead, the traps go away when you throw the last lever.

[nibel]

Thanks all for the feedback.

mr cow also has a video run on his youtube channel, which together with this thread should be enough for most ppl to do fast successful runs.

Also of note, the Inspired Sorcerers occasionally cast Enervation/Energy Drain, so having a deathward clickie can be handy. You could use the shrine in the main room to fix yourself up after get neg-leveled, but why waste the time? One click, no worries.

I'm not entirely sure if it's more effecient, but I think you can do it an alternate way that might be a bit faster:
Don't bother with the runes on the way up (just takes time, can get some aggro, have to re-invis), immediately go for the lever at/and vault exit chest, go back and jump over to the tree chunk and head to the lever by the shrine/pool key, after the rare(s) fighting go down and get the chest key and run up and grab the three end chests.
This should take on average between 4-7 minutes depending on what kind of character you're running with.

What I like more about Giants' Vault is exactly because there is not only one perfect path. I choose this one for the walkthrough because it's the more straightfoward one. You don't have to zigzag a lot (which would need me to draw red lines to mark pathing on the images), and neither have to fight anything outside the rares.

You don't need to activate the runes, but it's a big time saver. Specially because when you exit Hullstone's room, there is a small chance that some mobs see you. The air jet cut the pathing to you, and they rubberband back.

On this path, my rogue average 5-minute runs, and my air savant can do it in 3 minute all the time (because of wings, mostly).

You don't actually have to fight Hullstone... just takes additional time.

I believe they might fix the bug sometime in the future, so I intentionally left out how to surpass hullstone without fighting, and did it as it should be done.