Fallout New Vegas vault locations

Vault 3 is a Vault-Tec shelter inside the South Vegas ruins on the southwestern edge of Vegas, and the home base of the Fiends. The original dwellers survived the war, but when a water leak forced them to open the door and trade, the Fiends talked their way in and slaughtered them. Now the vault is a partly flooded, chem-soaked warren ruled by Motor-Runner, the Fiend boss, with his two dogs at his side in the maintenance wing.

The vault matters for several quests. Aba Daba Honeymoon sends you here from the Red Rock drug lab to deliver a package to Motor-Runner, Colonel Hsu at Camp McCarran wants Motor-Runner dead and his missing ranger Bryce Anders found, and the Brotherhood of Steel quest Still in the Dark also leads here. The NCR's Three-Card Bounty targets other Fiend leaders, whose camps are found elsewhere. Killing Motor-Runner yields his unique helmet and his chainsaw. Terminals and notes inside tell the vault's grim history in detail.

Vault 3 is one of the toughest dungeons in the Vegas area. Fiends carry assault rifles, flamers and heavy melee weapons, they are everywhere in the corridors, and Motor-Runner himself hits hard. Companions can get swarmed in the narrow halls. Loot makes up for it: huge quantities of chems, ammunition and weapons spread through the living quarters and maintenance areas. Come with armor-piercing ammunition, plenty of stimpaks, and a plan for the dogs.

Vault 11 is one of the most disturbing places in the game. Its door is tucked into a hillside south of the 188 Trading Post, and from the outside it is unremarkable. Inside, the terminals and audio logs lay out a social experiment in which the residents were told to sacrifice one person each year or the vault would kill everyone, and the way they handled that order destroyed them long before the Courier arrived.

Exploring the vault triggers the unmarked quest Democracy Inaction, which asks you to piece together what happened through terminals, campaign posters and the final survivors' recording near the entrance. The entry tunnel is full of giant mantises, parts of the lower levels are flooded and radioactive, and at the bottom the sacrificial chamber hides four robots and eight turrets that attack when the final presentation ends. Lockpick and Science help with the many locked doors and terminals.

Vault 11 is worth every minute for the story alone, and there is good loot scattered across the living quarters and the overseer's office as well. Come at a mid level with decent ranged weapons for the robots, and give yourself time to read everything. The entrance also makes a fine fast travel point between El Dorado Dry Lake and the 188 when you are working the eastern roads.

Vault 19 is a Vault-Tec shelter in the hills northeast of Goodsprings, beside Nevada 159 between Bonnie Springs and Whittaker Farmstead. The way in is a sewer grate inside the attendant's booth of an old fenced parking lot. Its pre-war experiment split the residents into isolated Red and Blue sectors and fed their paranoia about each other. Today it is home to a breakaway group of Powder Gangers under Samuel Cooke, who left the Correctional Facility and brought their explosives with them. The lower levels open onto natural caves full of sulfur deposits.

The quest Why Can't We Be Friends? begins when you talk to Cooke or to Philip Lem, who sit in the two overseers' offices. Cooke wants the fire geckos cleared from the sulfur caves so his men can mine the sulfur for explosives to use against the NCR, and then wants his group to join the Great Khans. Lem wants the sulfur deposit blown up to stop Cooke's plan, and afterwards wants to lead the convicts back to surrender to the NCR. You can also wire the deposit to blow and bring the entire vault down on everyone inside.

Fire geckos are the main threat in the caves, breathing flames that eat through light armor, and night stalkers lurk there too. The vault itself is large and dark, with plenty of containers, Vault 19 jumpsuits and four C-4 plastic explosives hidden around the halls. Bring fire resistance if you have it, and an Explosives skill of 60 if you want Lem's ending or want to destroy the vault.

Vault 21 was a working Vault-Tec vault built on the Las Vegas Strip, and its experiment was that every dispute had to be settled by gambling. In 2274 the residents decided Mr. House's offer to reopen with a marathon game of blackjack, and the side that wanted out won. House stripped the vault and poured concrete into most of it, but Sarah Weintraub and her brother, now known as Michael Angelo, persuaded him to leave part of the upper levels open. Doc Mitchell of Goodsprings is one of the former residents who moved away.

The entrance is a gift shop under a neon Vault 21 sign on the west side of the Strip's southern section, across from the NCR Embassy. Sarah greets visitors, sells souvenirs and offers a tour of her old home. A bulkhead behind the shop leads down to an atrium with two blackjack tables, a diner and living quarters, including a guest room you can rent and then keep using as a player home.

Sarah's room, behind an Average lock in the northeast corner, holds the Strip snow globe, and the Hard-locked dresser there has 270 caps and clothing. Sarah's Suits You, Sarah asks you to bring her authentic vault jumpsuits. Vulpes Inculta's The Finger of Suspicion sends you here to deal with Omerta thugs bothering Martina Groesbeck, and Carlitos, who lives here, is part of Bye Bye Love. A sealed maintenance level below can only be reached through the basement of the Tops.

Vault 22 was the only Vault in the Mojave built for scientists rather than ordinary residents. Its staff researched staple crops, fertilizers and pest control, and one of their experiments, a fungus meant to kill insects, spread to the residents and turned them into spore carriers. The Vault door stands open and overgrown in the hills east of Jacobstown and west of Westside, beside a welcome sign painted over with the warning 'Stay out! The plants kill!'

Inside, five levels are choked with vegetation and crawling with spore carriers, spore plants and giant mantises. You can move between floors by the stairs or by fixing the main elevator with 50 Repair. A keycard in the residential quarters on level 4 unlocks the caves, and level 5, pest control, is packed with savage spore carriers. Keely, a ghoul scientist who went missing here, is in the caves off level 5, and the unique AER14 prototype laser rifle lies on the stairs between levels 4 and 5.

Most visits start with There Stands the Grass, where Doctor Thomas Hildern of the Office of Science and Industry at Camp McCarran wants the Vault's research data. The mantis eggs Red Lucy asks for in Bleed Me Dry are found here, and HEPA filters in a sealed oxygen recycling room matter for the Brotherhood quest Still in the Dark. Note that once you talk to Keely she locks the Vault until her quest is resolved.

Vault 34 is a Vault-Tec vault southwest of Nellis Air Force Base, reached through a cave mouth on a hill where a U.S. Army truck sits loaded with radioactive barrels. The experiment here was an armory stocked with far more weapons than the residents needed. Overcrowding led to riots, and one group walked out and became the Boomers at Nellis. A later uprising damaged the reactor, it began leaking radiation, and the people left inside turned feral.

Today the halls belong to feral ghoul vault dwellers and security guards, with the Overseer waiting as a feral ghoul reaver backed by two turrets. Golden geckos roam outside and in parts of the vault. Radiation is heavy, worst in the reactor and armory areas and the flooded sections, so bring Rad-X, RadAway and a radiation suit if you have one. Companions will not heal on their own while hostile ghouls remain, so keep stimpaks ready for them.

The prize is the armory. Find the two terminal passwords on dead vault technicians in the flooded rooms, drain the flooded level and unlock the Overseer's office, then kill the Overseer and use the password he drops to open the armory. It holds the unique All-American marksman carbine, a pulse gun in a Very Hard locked case, Guns and Bullets and a large weapon stash. Vault 34 is also the end of Hard Luck Blues, where you choose between the trapped survivors inside and the irradiated crops at the NCR Sharecropper Farms.