Acquire the Erlking?

[Berhg]

Are there any other sectors one of these Erlking Data Vaults can show up in besides Avarice and Windfall?

[DarthKane358]

Developers surpassed themselves. Create the most terrible gameplay mechanic at launch of the game (search for vaults) and now they've made it even more disgusting! Looking for a needle in a haystack without any hints or indication, great job (no )!

[Arvel]

I don't understand why they chose to lock progression for a big (pun not intended) feature of the new DLC behind data vaults.

X is a 4X series, I understand that, and I get that one of those Xs stands for, "eXplore," but that doesn't change the fact that hunting down data vaults just isn't fun or engaging.

Plenty of open-world games have similar scavenger hunt side quests, but the chief difference lies in their setting: Most of them take place in cities and fantasy realms where there is enjoyment to be had in just wandering off the beaten path. X is in space. Space is big, space generally looks the same wherever you are (within a sector), and space is predominantly empty.

A less aggravating 'eXplore' mechanic might be something like... Derelict station(s) that are off the beaten path but easier to find than data vaults. You could explore inside of them, maybe have some light puzzle solving necessary to open paths, little tidbits of lore or items littered around to keep the player engaged and interested. Maybe some scripted events like explosive decompression when you try opening a door, etc. Make it feel like a little adventure.

Hunting for data vaults just boils down to flying back and forth through empty space in a grid pattern, firing off your LRS regularly and hoping you get lucky. It isn't (to my knowledge) even a boring task you can fob off on the AI since, unlike lockboxes, there's no global order to tell your pilots, "Hey, if you come across a data vault I want you to stop and let me know about it."

Sorry if this started turning into a mini-rant. I love X, and I'm fond of Egosoft as a company, but after hours of hunting (without finding a single vault) I'm already starting to think I need to take a long break from X.

[cdcerber]

so, i found them all finally. the hot fix 2 does spawn the last 2 vaults, as basic and annoying this might be of an advice to anyone you just have to keep looking (i wish the hot fix would rather be to spawn them and for it to be fixed location for everyone)

how i went about it was, because i had a save pre Hot Fix 2 so loading it would spawn the last 2 vaults randomly i brute forced it a little.
made about 20 Pegasus and scattered them to edges of a sector with explore order, typed data vault in search box (typing "data" is enough tho) so only vaults are visible on map and you can see the icon from any zoom level, hit seta and pay a little attention for them to pop up. Imo this is faster than dumping sats everywhere, and don't need to clean up after.
if they didn't show up in reasonable time i reloaded the save and found them on second reload (making ~40 Pegasus 2 sectors at a time, no more to keep focus and not miss it showing up on map) one was over 300km behind jump gate so they can spawn quite far

[mp63]

...tis sux

Is there any way to determine if HF2 did spawn the correct number of vaults? I just found 3 so far, plastered windfall and avarice systems with Adv Sats... nothing.
One of my 3 vaults is blue (in Windfall IV) - could that be one of the HF2 spwans or is it just random?

[Berhg]

...
made about 20 Pegasus and scattered them to edges of a sector with explore order, typed data vault in search box (typing "data" is enough tho) so only vaults are visible on map and you can see the icon from any zoom level, hit seta and pay a little attention for them to pop up.
...

This is a great idea!

[Berhg]

...
Hunting for data vaults just boils down to flying back and forth through empty space in a grid pattern, firing off your LRS regularly and hoping you get lucky.
...

In case you didn't know, the 5 new data vaults in Avarice and Windfall do not ping off of Long Range Scans.

[Wraithsz]

Look like it really is random.
My 5 I found were.
1 - Avarice I
2 - Avarice V
3 - Avarice IV
4 - Windfall III
5 - Windfall I

[Arvel]

In case you didn't know, the 5 new data vaults in Avarice and Windfall do not ping off of Long Range Scans.

I didn't, but that explains why I found nothing till I started carpet bombing every DLC sector with advanced satellites. It took several hours but I've at least found three of the vaults now.

[mr.WHO]

Question - does vaults spawn after you capture the battleships, or can I find them before it?

[Agent256]

You can find them before you capture the ship, stumbled over 2 during campaign missions.

finally found the last one - just 411km from nearest gate

[Berhg]

...
made about 20 Pegasus and scattered them to edges of a sector with explore order, typed data vault in search box (typing "data" is enough tho) so only vaults are visible on map and you can see the icon from any zoom level, hit seta and pay a little attention for them to pop up.
...

This is a great idea!

I've been trying this technique but why do my explorers suddenly stop exploring after a short time? I've not known them to do that when exploring near the center of a zone.

[cdcerber]

...
made about 20 Pegasus and scattered them to edges of a sector with explore order, typed data vault in search box (typing "data" is enough tho) so only vaults are visible on map and you can see the icon from any zoom level, hit seta and pay a little attention for them to pop up.
...

This is a great idea!

I've been trying this technique but why do my explorers suddenly stop exploring after a short time? I've not known them to do that when exploring near the center of a zone.

seems they need fog of war to explore, and they have a radius of about 200 to 250km in the order if not modified, so maybe they are done with the task, when mine stopped i re ordered exploration further away

[Eyeseeyou]

I also want my voice heard, that I really don't like this.
The facts that the vaults spawn at random, don't ping off of long range scans, potentially are in sectory where you have to flee every once in a while and no method available to at least know in which sector to search is just too many non-fun parts to me.

I've been both dropping legions of scout to explore those sectors as well as plastering them with advanced sats for horrendous sums and yet I've only found 3 out of 5 vaults.

[DarthKane358]

I finally found all 5 vaults. In my case, three of them spawned in sector Avarice I. So if someone can't find one of these vaults, try searching in Avarice I.

[Maebius]

Just to be sure... if a scout "passes by" one of these vaults, they disappear in the fog afterwards?

Also, anyone found one way above the ecliptic?

[Witzzard]

Just to be sure... if a scout "passes by" one of these vaults, they disappear in the fog afterwards?

Also, anyone found one way above the ecliptic?

Yes, they disappear (like all data vaults) from your map when it's not in active scanner range.

Towards the second, i've got no real idea, the three i found so far all were quite near the ecliptic - estimating something like 10km up or down.

[cdcerber]

Just to be sure... if a scout "passes by" one of these vaults, they disappear in the fog afterwards?

Also, anyone found one way above the ecliptic?

yes, they will disappear, so if you rather use scouts than litter the sector with satellites you need to pay attention

saw one post in tech forum where dev looked at someone save and one vault spawned 30km down, so a bit off ecliptic but still would pop on scout or satellite, just hope the rng or devs aren't so ruthless to let them spawn further than that

[Berhg]

Just to be sure... if a scout "passes by" one of these vaults, they disappear in the fog afterwards?

Also, anyone found one way above the ecliptic?

....just hope the rng or devs aren't so ruthless to let them spawn further than that...

I would use the word sadistic.

Still haven't found my 5th and quite tired of the tedium. I'm about to give up on vanilla and go modded. (again. I go back and forth. )

[TKz]

I would use the word sadistic.

Still haven't found my 5th and quite tired of the tedium. I'm about to give up on vanilla and go modded. (again. I go back and forth. )

I simply read the save file to find the missing Data Vaults. They are in "zones", you can extract their coordinates, then uses theses coordinates from a known object in the sector to go straight to the vault. Two of my DV were 200-300 km from gates, so I saved a lot of time of not really interesting gameplay to do much more interesting things.