How to defend your vault: a practical guide

ยท How-to

Your pets earn coins while they sit on display, and anything on display can be stolen. A good vault does not need to be impossible. It needs to make a thief slow down, guess and make noise.

1. Know your budget

Every trap costs build points. You start with 250 points, and you get 50 more for every 100 trophies, up to 1,000. The Vault workshop upgrade adds 50 points per tier, in three tiers. Costs:

Walls are cheap, so use them to shape the route. Make the thief walk past your expensive traps instead of buying more of them.

The Pet Heist vault builder with walls, lasers and the raider's predicted path
The builder shows the path a raider is likely to take

2. Put guards where thieves make noise

Sneaking is silent. A running thief can be heard within 3.6 metres. A thief carrying a pet squeaks, and that can be heard within 4.5 metres. A missed lockpick pin makes noise that carries 6 metres. So the best places for a guard dog are near your locks and along the way out from the pedestals.

A guard cat naps but wakes on noise, hears better than a dog and runs faster, with shorter vision. A robot vacuum never catches anyone, but bumping into it raises the alarm, and every bump during an alarm takes 3 seconds off the thief's escape timer. You can have up to 4 guards.

3. Plates catch runners, not sneakers

Walking over a pressure plate sets off the alarm. Sneaking over it is safe. That makes plates a trap for impatient thieves. Put them in long corridors and right after a door, where people want to run. Thieves with the grapple dash, from level 11, can jump over them.

4. Time your lasers

Lasers blink on and off, and touching a live beam rings the alarm. Two or three in a row, with different timing, are much harder than one. Place them where the thief has to stop anyway, such as in front of a locked door. The EMP, from level 7, switches lasers and cameras off for 5 seconds, so do not rely on lasers alone.

5. Steel walls against the drill

From level 3 a thief can carry a drill that breaks one inner wall. It is loud, but skips your maze. Use steel walls, at 6 points each and up to 8, where a single broken wall would open a shortcut to the pedestals.

6. Pass the test run

Before anyone can raid your vault, you must beat it yourself once. If you are not sure where to start, pick one of the 11 starter layouts and change it.

7. Shields, insurance and your nest

If a pet is stolen anyway, you have 24 hours to win it back. Take revenge, or call the revenge squad. For a full list of every trap, read the trap vault guide, and see the pet guide to decide which pets to put on display.