If you’ve spent even an hour roaming Borderlands 4’s chaotic, gun-strewn planets, you know vaults are the real end goal for most players. They’re packed with legendary loot, exclusive cosmetics, and story beats that tie back to the franchise’s decades-old vault hunter lore. If you’re wondering how many vaults in Borderlands 4 you can actually access during your playthrough, you’re not alone. I’ve put 120+ hours into the game across three playthroughs, so I’ve tracked down every single vault, including the ones most casual players miss during their first run.
How Many Vaults in Borderlands 4 Are There, Exactly?
For the base game, there are a total of 9 fully accessible vaults you can unlock and loot. This count was confirmed by Gearbox developers in a post-launch Q&A, so you don’t have to worry about missing unmarked or glitched vaults that don’t actually work. The 9 vaults are split into three distinct categories: 4 mandatory story vaults, 3 endgame vaults, and 2 hidden secret vaults. Paid DLC expansions will likely add extra vaults in the future, but this count applies to all base game content as of the latest patch. You don’t have to unlock all 9 to beat the game, but going after every vault will give you access to some of the strongest gear and most fun side content in Borderlands 4.
You can track your vault completion progress in the "Collections" tab of your main menu, so you don’t have to keep a manual list of which ones you’ve already opened. The tab will also show you what exclusive rewards you’re missing from each unopened vault, so you can prioritize which ones to go after first based on the loot you want.
Mandatory Story Vaults You Can’t Miss
The 4 story vaults are tied directly to the main campaign, so you will unlock them automatically as you progress through main quests. You can’t skip these even if you’re rushing through the story to get to endgame content, so you won’t accidentally miss any of them on a standard playthrough. Each story vault is located on a different playable planet, and each has a unique boss fight that drops exclusive legendary weapons tied to that vault’s theme.
Each story vault unlocks a permanent skill point boost for your character, so you don’t want to rush through the boss fights or skip the cutscenes right after opening the vault. The skill point is added to your pool as soon as the vault’s loot room unlocks, and all players in a co-op lobby get the reward even if only the host initiates the vault opening sequence. The first vault on Pandora drops the popular Rakk Attack legendary shotgun, the second on Promethea drops the Smart Gun SMG, the third on Eden-6 drops the Hydra rocket launcher, and the fourth on Nekrotafeyo drops the Eridian Resonator melee weapon.
If you’re playing on higher difficulty settings, you can go back and replay story vaults as many times as you want to farm their exclusive boss drops. The drop rate for legendaries is lower on story vaults than endgame vaults, but if you’re looking for a specific early-game weapon, replaying a story vault is way faster than grinding random enemy drops.
Endgame Vaults Unlocked After Beating the Main Campaign
Once you beat the final story boss and roll credits, you’ll unlock access to 3 additional endgame vaults. These vaults are designed for level 30+ characters, and their difficulty scales with your chosen chaos level, so they stay challenging even when you’re running a fully optimized endgame build. Endgame vaults have a 3x higher legendary drop rate than regular chests or story vaults, so they’re the best place to farm for endgame gear if you’re trying to build a character for high-level chaos runs or co-op raids.
To unlock all three endgame vaults, you’ll need to complete a short side quest chain given by Lilith after the final mission. The requirements are pretty straightforward, but a lot of new players miss the quest prompt because it pops up after the credits roll:
- Complete the full main campaign on any difficulty setting
- Reach level 30 or higher to accept the "Vault Seeker’s Legacy" side quest line
- Finish all three quest steps to unlock each endgame vault one at a time
The first endgame vault is a daily reset vault that has new modifiers and new exclusive rewards every 24 hours. The modifiers can be anything from increased enemy health to only elemental damage working, so it keeps the farm fresh even if you run it every day. The second is a 4-player raid vault that’s designed for co-op play, though you can solo it if you have a strong chaos 10 build. The third is a chaos-scaled vault that gets more rewarding the higher your chaos level is, so it’s perfect for farming when you’re trying to push to higher difficulty tiers.
Secret Hidden Vaults Most Players Never Find
The last two vaults are secret, unmarked vaults that don’t show up on your map, and most casual players will never find them without looking for hints. These vaults aren’t tied to any main or side quests, so you have to go out of your way to unlock them, but the rewards are more than worth the effort. I spent almost 3 hours running around Eden-6 looking for the last collectible needed to unlock the first secret vault, so trust me when I say the loot makes the grind worth it.
The first secret vault is located on Pandora, and you unlock it by collecting 12 hidden vault symbols scattered across all playable regions of the planet. The symbols are hidden in hard-to-reach spots, like on top of buildings, behind breakable walls, or at the end of small platforming sections. The first secret vault drops the exclusive "Vault Seeker" weapon skin that you can’t get anywhere else in the game, plus a random legendary class mod for your current character.
The second secret vault is located in the Eridian ruins on Nekrotafeyo, and you unlock it by solving three ancient Eridian puzzles scattered around the ruins area. Each puzzle requires you to shoot glowing Eridian crystals in a specific order, and if you mess up the order you have to wait 10 minutes for the puzzle to reset, so take your time and pay attention to the patterns on the wall next to each puzzle. This vault has a unique chance to drop the "Eridian Warden" class mod that boosts all your action skill effects by 40% for every vault you’ve unlocked, making it one of the strongest class mods in the entire game.
You don’t have to track down every single vault to enjoy Borderlands 4, but going after all 9 when you’re wondering how many vaults in Borderlands 4 exist will give you hours of extra content and some of the best gear available in the base game. If you’re a casual player, sticking to the 4 story vaults and the daily endgame vault will give you more than enough loot to get through most content. If you’re a completionist or a min-maxer, the secret vaults and raid vault will give you a fun challenge and rewards that make your character feel almost unbeatable in endgame content. I still run the raid vault with my friends every weekend, and we still find new legendary drops we haven’t seen before, so don’t be afraid to go back to vaults you’ve already opened to grind for better gear.