Reference

The things you look up mid-week. Starting with the one everybody opens a spreadsheet for.

The Great Vault

Your lowest run sets your third reward.

Everyone says “run eight dungeons.” None of them tells you which eight, or explains exactly what you are getting. That is the entire difference between a chore list and understanding the system. Let’s lock in.

Three tracks
Three slots each
Every slot has an owner

Every slot has an owner

A slot is not paid for by the pile. Each one is set by one specific run, counted down from your best:

So eight keys is not eight chances at a good item. It is one good item, one decent item, and one item as good as the weakest key you were willing to run. Sandbagging the last three to finish the count costs you the whole third slot.

Runs nine and after add nothing to the chest

They still pay crests and loot, so they are not wasted. But if you are building your Vault, it stops watching after eight. Learn it now instead of finding out in week six.

Reading the chart. 1, 4 and 8 are the runs that set a slot. 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7 do not set anything themselves; they are the toll you pay to reach the next one that does. 9 and after do nothing for the Vault at all.

Does a depleted key still count?

Yes. Fully, and at the key’s full level.

The Vault cares that the dungeon was completed, meaning every boss down. It does not care about the timer. That has been true since Mythic+ launched and Blizzard has confirmed it directly. A depleted +8 sits in your Vault as a +8, in the same slot, worth the same as if you had timed it.

What the timer costs you is everything outside the chest.

 TimedDepleted
Great Vault creditYesYes
Level the Vault counts it atFullFull
End of dungeon chestFull tableReduced, usually one item instead of two
CrestsFullReduced, usually about half
Your keyGoes up, or staysDrops a level
Mythic ratingFullPartial, scaled by how far over you ran

So for planning your week, a run is a run. If you are chasing Vault slots, finishing a key you are going to lose the timer on is still worth doing. If you are chasing crests, rating or key level, it is not the same at all.

If your Vault looks wrong after an untimed run, check again later. There is a known display bug where the Vault tooltip does not show untimed completions in the count even though the server has recorded them. Blizzard has acknowledged it. The credit is almost certainly there; the window just has not caught up.

Source: Wowhead, Midnight Mythic+ guides, citing Blizzard.

Four more things worth knowing

Which eight, then

The Vault does not care which dungeons, only how many. Your key level and your patience care a great deal. Here is the Season 2 pool, with the teleport OffBar puts on the pad for each one.

DungeonWhereTeleport OffBar typesOur pin
Altar of FangsVaults of Atal'Utek/cast Path of Venomous Evolutiontested on hardware
Murder RowSilvermoon City/cast Path of the Devious Smugglernot pressed yet
Den of NalorakkZul'Aman/cast Path of the Worthy Aspirantnot pressed yet
The Blinding ValeHarandar/cast Path of the Blooming Verdurenot pressed yet
Voidscar ArenaVoidstorm/cast Path of the Brutal Combatantnot pressed yet
Kings' RestZuldazar/cast Path of the Slumbering Conquerornot pressed yet
Temple of SethralissVol'dun/cast Path of the Sacred Templenot pressed yet
Ruby Life PoolsThe Waking Shores/cast Path of the Clutch Defendernot pressed yet

What “our pin” means. Each of these keys drops a map pin on a single press and takes the teleport on a double press. The pin coordinates are ours, and the column says plainly which ones a human has actually pressed in game. Seven of the eight are waiting on a tester. We would rather tell you that than imply we checked.

Routes, skips and boss orders live with the people who do them properly. Method and Wowhead write those, they keep them current, and that work is theirs. We are not going to paraphrase it onto our own page and call it reference. What you get here is the part we can stand behind: the pool, the pins, and the exact line each key types.

Plan your week

Count what you have done and set what each owning run actually was. It will tell you what each slot is worth, and what opens the next one.

Vault resets Tuesday in NA, Wednesday in EU.

On item levels. The thresholds and the owning-run rule above are the Vault’s own mechanics and do not change week to week. Item level numbers are deliberately not shown yet. We have not verified this season’s reward table against a source we trust, and a tool that tells you the wrong item level is worse than one that tells you nothing. The reward track is shown, because that part is structural. Numbers go in the moment they are confirmed.

What else is coming here

This section is for the things you look up while you are playing rather than while you are setting up: reward tracks, crest and upgrade costs, what a given difficulty actually drops. If there is something you keep alt-tabbing for, that is what belongs here.