I was pretty excited when I read about Marathon’s Vault Breaker PvE mode in June: I like shooting things, and I love the Marathon aesthetic, but the grind of extraction shooters just isn’t my thing. In an update released today, ahead of next week’s mid-season update, Bungie revealed more about the upcoming “experimental” PvE mode, including that its initial iteration will only be available for two weeks.
Vault Breaker will go live alongside the mid-season update on July 21, and will be playable until August 4. The full rollout is currently set to happen in Marathon season 3, which begins on September 22—although that won’t necessarily be the date it goes live.
It’s understandable that Bungie would want to go slow with Vault Breaker, at least to start. As “a roguelite PvE experience inside Cryo Archive,” it makes significant changes to the Marathon formula: Players will access Vault Breaker with unique Sponsored Kits, and instead of extracting with the loot they’ve gathered, it will all be left behind. Instead, players will upgrade their equipment with a new kind of in-game currency collected during runs called Vault Data.
One new detail revealed in today’s update is that there will be two tiers of Vault Data. Tier One Vault Data is found in vaults and must be exfilled in order to be collected, and will also be awarded for killing a UESC Commander regardless of whether or not you successfully extract; Tier Two Vault Data is only earned by successfully solving consecutive vaults on the same run, and then extracting. Bungie warned that “this will be especially tough for solo Runners,” although you’ll also be able to take the mode on in duos or trios, if you’re into that sort of thing.