Apex Legends Golden Vaults Seemingly Can't Be Opened Just Yet

Season 3: Meltdown has officially begun in Apex Legends, bringing a bunch of new content to the battle royale--including changes that make the game a bit more welcoming to newcomers. One of the more noteworthy changes is the introduction of a brand-new map, World's Edge, which sees the Legends fight it out on a massive battlefield of ice and fire. Hidden within that map are three mysteriously locked vaults, all of which hide high-level gear. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to open them just yet. Here's what we know about the vaults and corresponding keys.

First teased in the Apex Legends Season 3 gameplay trailer, the vaults are scattered throughout World's Edge. One is in an underground tunnel called The Mine Pass, which connects The Train Yard to the field just outside Fuel Depot. You can find another in the cavern that connects The Geyser to the settlement, located between Capitol City and Overlook. The third vault is also hidden in a tunnel--this one in the cliffs that separate Lava City and Sorting Factory. We've circled the locations in the map below.

The problem, of course, is that all the vaults are locked. In the aforementioned trailer, it was implied that you'd need to destroy one of the flying loot ticks that populate spots on World's Edge for a random chance of getting a key that opens the vault. Perhaps we're just plain unlucky here at GameSpot, though, as we haven't found a key after smashing quite a few ticks.

However, the keys themselves may just not be obtainable yet. If you go up to the door of any of the vaults, you'll see a timer that's counting down to Wednesday, October 9 at 10AM PT / 1PM ET / 6PM BST--a little over a week after Season 3 went live. There's no indication as to what the timer specifically entails, but we're assuming it's counting down to when players will be allowed to open the vaults. If that's the case, we most likely still have a few days before keys start dropping from ticks.

Given the contents of each vault--a collection of purple- and gold-tier body armor, helmets, knockdown shields, backpacks, and weapon attachments--whichever team gains access to them first will have a tremendous advantage for the rest of the game. So perhaps Respawn is delaying access to the vaults to give players enough time to become acquainted with the new map and have a general understanding of the new Charge Rifle, hop-up attachments, and gameplay changes. Granted, Season 3 hasn't been live for very long. We could be missing something and there may be a way to speed up the timer and open the vaults right now. We'll keep looking.

In the meantime, Season 3 introduces plenty of unlockables to work towards, with new recon character Crypto possessing 40 skins and the Meltdown battle pass introducing over 100 rewards--including a cool-looking legendary Pathfinder skin and smoking hot legendary Lifeline skin. Apex Legends is available for Xbox One, PS4, and PC.