Guide/Getting started (2024)

This starting guide provides advice for players who do not know how to begin their Vault Hunters journey. It mainly teaches you how to get in your first vault.

Before reading this page, it's expected for players to have already played and completed vanilla Minecraft and a good knowledge about the mechanics in Minecraft. You must create a new world before starting the tutorial.

Overview[]

Starting out: Skill points and the minimap[]

After loading into a world, the first thing you'll likely notice will be the text "5 unspent skill points" in the upper-right corner of your screen. skill points can be spent talents and abilities. Talents are passive skills which can grant buffs such as permanent potion effects, increased experience gain and a longer reach for placing and destroying blocks. Abilities are active skills which have varying effects when used; for example, Dash will launch you forward, Rampage will grant you increased damage for several seconds and Execute will empower your next attack. You can view the various skills and talents in Vault Hunters by opening the vault information screen (H by default) and selecting the second and third tabs in the upper-left.

Since you won't get any new skill points (or the ability to refund spent ones) until you've beaten vanilla Minecraft and started running vaults, it's crucial that you invest your first 5 points wisely. A point in Twerker is a near-necessity for singleplayer worlds, as it makes the acquisition of food (and, through trading, emeralds and enchanted books) significantly faster; on multiplayer worlds it may be desirable for only one player to take Twerker so others can focus their skill points elsewhere. Dash is also immensely useful, as it increases your mobility substantially and grants you unlimited flight time with an elytra (until the elytra breaks, of course). Some in the community also consider Vein Miner a must-have, as it can make mining expeditions substantially quicker, but expenditure of your remaining 3 skill points is largely up to personal preference. If in doubt, leave your skill points unspent until you've settled on a direction.

The other notable addition to your GUI is the minimap, added by the Xaero's Minimap mod. By default, the M key will toggle the world map, which keeps track of where you've explored, and the U key will bring up the waypoints menu, which is useful for keeping track of important locations like your home base or nether portal. For for more information, see Xaero's Minimap and Xaero's World Map on CurseForge.

Key binds[]

Vault Hunters is a large modpack, and it's easy to do something by accident if you press the wrong button. Before you set about finding a place to call home, review the controls page to see the most important input mappings you'll have to keep track of, and rebind them as necessary in Options > Controls.

Vanilla Minecraft[]

Before you can fully dive into Vault Hunters, you must complete vanilla Minecraft and defeat the ender dragon. This task is made easier by the few limited mods that are accessible before running vaults, although the nerfs to vanilla armor do counteract this somewhat. Once the dragon has been defeated you should collect some purpur blocks from an end city before returning to the overworld to craft a vault altar.

Crystal crafting[]

Vault crystals are created using a vault altar, so you'll need to craft one of these to get started with the_vault mod.

Once you have the altar set up you may right-click it with a vault rock to begin crafting your first crystal.^{[note 1]} Vault rocks drop from vault rock ore, which is found at Y levels 5-12 with a rarity of 0-1 ores per chunk; as this makes them somewhat inconvenient to obtain, the ore should be mined with a pickaxe enchanted with Fortune to reduce the number of mining expeditions you'll need to make.

Once the vault rock has been placed the altar will display the 4 item requirements which must be completed to craft the crystal. Throwing the desired items into the altar (or pushing them in using a hopper, ME Export Bus or the like) and then powering the altar via redstone will produce a vault crystal. Crouching will display the names of the required items, and breaking the altar and re-placing it elsewhere will preserve its state.

While you may be able to complete your first crystal or two with the resources you have on hand, the costs of crafting a vault crystal increase as more crystals are crafted, and securing an adequate supply of crystal ingredients (eg. by building farms) is an essential part of Vault Hunters.

Vault preparation[]

Before you rush into your first vault you need to know that there is no natural regeneration when inside of the Vault. For this reason it is recommended that you have full Protection IV netherite armor (as the protectiveness of vanilla armor has been nerfed due to vault gear’s appearance at vault level 25) and take in some instant health 2 potions and/or golden apples to regain health. It is also possible to run a vault without armor by bringing in 3 extended potions of invisibility, but this is somewhat risky and becomes unviable with the introduction of exploding chests and Locked vaults at level 25. (Gilded chests can explode before level 25 as well.)

Changes to vanilla recipes[]

Instant health potions and regeneration potions have had their recipes changed and you will need golden apples instead of glistering melons for health potions and vault essence instead of ghast tears to make regeneration potions. Golden apples have also had their recipes changed and require 8 gold blocks instead of 8 gold ingots.

Equipment[]

The weapons you should take into the vault depend on your preferred fighting style in Minecraft (e.g. axes vs swords), but we recommend taking in a Smite V weapon as most mobs inside of the Vault are undead before vault level 25. Bringing a Sharpness V weapon as well will help against creepers and witches (as well as spiders after level 25), and also against some bosses, although fighting the boss in your first few vault runs is strongly discouraged.

A pickaxe with Efficiency and Silk Touch is essential, as you will find vault ores in the Vault which are essential for progression. These ores are best mined outside the Vault once you have obtained a vault paxel with the Fortunate modifier, higher Fortune levels via Super Enchanted Books (from trader cores) and Ancient Tomes (from chests in higher-level vaults), and/or the Fortunate specialization for the Vein Miner ability.

Inventory management is also a big challenge when you first start out so taking in some shulker boxes to put your loot in during a vault run is always a good idea. Once you have obtained some crates from your vault runs you can take these in instead for additional storage capacity.

Solid blocks and ender pearls are also useful items to have on you when going through the vault. Opportunities for ranged combat are generally limited, although a bow with Power V can be useful against skeletons and creepers. A totem of undying is great for insurance, but is not required.

Vault Portal[]

Now that you have your vault crystal, you must construct a vault portal in order to enter The Vault dimension. This portal is made the same way as a nether portal, with a frame made of blackstone instead of obsidian, and is activated by right-clicking your vault crystal on a block face inside the frame. Once you're ready to go, enter the portal to begin your vault run!

Once inside the Vault the only way out is to either exit through the portal you came in from, or to find and activate all of the 3-6 obelisks required (seen on the bottom left side of your screen) and kill the Vault Boss. Keep a close eye on the timer, as you'll die instantly if it reaches 0. As you level up you will also experience new vaults with other objectives to complete to escape, but you won’t have to worry about that until level 25!

Known Issues[]

Vault Hunters is currently in beta and has various issues some of which are known by the developers and/or the community. See Known Issues for a partial list.

See also[]

• GUIDE TO VAULT HUNTERS! on VH google docs

Notes[]