One of the many grinds in The First Descendant is acquiring the right materials you need to craft other items, Descendants and Ultimate Weapons. A lot of the materials can be obtained by killing enemies, or hitting up the Munitions caches and Resource Boxes in the open world.
There are some rare materials, though, that can't be acquired this way. For those, you'll need to hit up the Encrypted Vaults, also referred to in game as Encrypted Storage Boxes. These are a little different, and harder to find.
There's a whole process of farming to undergo to open a lot of these, too, because it wouldn't be The First Descendant if there wasn't. In this guide, I'll summarize what you need to know about finding and unlocking them.
What you need to unlock Encrypted Vaults
Before you even think about looking for Encrypted Vaults, you need to have the materials to unlock them. These come in the form of Code Breakers and Code Analyzers, and there are different tiers. The higher you go, the harder the Vault will be to crack.
So, how do you get these keys to the loot? Unfortunately there's no dedicated source to get them, you simply have to play the game, defeat the monsters, and build up a stash.
That's not to say the community hasn't been working together to figure out a fast way to give yourself a better chance at getting them, though. Right now, one of the best farms seems to be the Anticipated Ambush Point mission in Rockfall on the Sterile Lands map. This is also used by players a lot to farm Gold and Kuiper Shards, so it's a pretty decent spot.
The mission itself only takes maybe 30 seconds to complete assuming you're levelled up high enough, and you can do it on normal or hard difficulty. In my experience trying this, playing on hard yielded better results, certainly for the Kuiper Shards you'll pick up at the same time. Because it's a popular farming spot, assuming you leave your lobby on public you can almost guarantee there will be other players around to help you out, too.
There's also an added step to this process that can make it more lucrative. Enzo has a special ability that provides better efficiency and more rewards when using him to open the Encrypted Vaults.
There are also some listed in the game that flat out require Enzo to open at all. So if you didn't add him to your Descendant roster yet, consider him a must-have.
How to locate Encrypted Vaults
Encrypted Vaults won't show up on the in-game map, so you have to find them yourself. It's not too difficult, though.
The first thing to look for are the little teal colored circular icons you might have noticed on the ground throughout your time playing. These are the first sign that an Encrypted Vault is nearby.
When you find one, open up your Ecive and make sure you can hear audio clearly. When you're pointing in the right direction, you'll hear a distinctive beep. If you turn the wrong direction, you won't hear anything. Basically, follow the beeps until you find the goal.
There is also a community created set of interactive maps that you can use to help you narrow down the locations. They're not all on there, and the Vaults don't always spawn in the same places (though some do), but it's a handy tool to help you out.
Once you pop open the Encrypted Vault, you have a 'puzzle' to complete, which is really nothing more than pressing a button at the right time. The higher the tier of item you needed to open the Vault, the longer and harder it will be. You'll have more presses to make, and the targets will be smaller.
If you fail, you get no rewards, and you've still wasted your Code Breaker or Code Analyzer used to open it at all. I don't recommend using remote play for this, either, as I found that the slightest of delay using the ROG Ally X to stream from my Xbox Series X seemed to help me miss the targets every time (I swear it wasn't just bad skills!)
A bit of a grind, but a necessary one
The good news is that while acquiring the means to open the Encrypted Vaults takes some time, then you have to find them and open them, it is worth it. As pictured above, there are some materials in the game you have to get from them.
As always, the Access Info tab is your friend, showing you acquisition information for all of the Descendants parts and Ultimate Weapons. The same info can be found at Anais in Albion, too. Don't go out blindly spending your access keys, make sure you know what you need, where you need to go, and farm wisely.
