The Vault Detailed strategy guide by Myd2boosting.com
This guide brought to you by D2 raid boosting, entails the “puzzle encounter” of the Last Wish raid. There will be no boss fight or dps check in this encounter. It’s just one giant, circular room featuring some puzzle mechanics. For your D2 boost experience, we will try to best explain this encounter in the most simple terms.
You will first notice the giant globe in the middle of the room with 3 plates around it. Assign 3 players to designate the plates and the other 3 players as their personal defenders so you essentially have 2 player per plate. Once started, these 3 plates will need to be “cleansed” with the taken essence orb so frequently used in this raid. Very much like in the Morgeth encounter, using your grenade ability while holding it to cleanse the plate. Knowing which plate to cleanse depends on the buff, randomly assigned to each plate. Either being Penumbra or Antumbra. (This will make sense further into this guide)
Corresponding to the plates you will see there are 3 biomes around the room. One with a large rock in the middle, another with a set of stairs and the third, a bunch of trees. Lots of players call these biomes different names, which is not important as long as the entire fireteam agree and know the name you have chosen.
These 3 biomes are connected by a tunnel either on the left or the right side of the room. If you were to pick a tunnel and continue running in one direction, you would do a full circle ending up where you started.
To start this encounter the 3 players assigned to the plates would simply step on them, lighting up a series of 3 symbols per player up on the globe. The symbols will be left, middle and right with the middle symbol highlighted. This symbol will be the first called out to the other 2 players. There is a sort of “universal” name for each of these symbols in the D2 boost community, you will want to familiarize yourself with. Otherwise, just try your best to quickly describe what the symbol is.
Once the starting player has called out their middle symbol, the other two will want to quickly announce who has a copy of this symbol and if it is on the left or right side of their middle symbol. So the starting player would say they have a “bird on a branch” as their middle symbol. Only one of the other 2 players will have a copy of this symbol in their series of 3 and it will either be on the left or the right side of the middle. This player would then call out its on their left or right side and the biome they represent, “Left, trees”. Then immediately call out what their middle symbol is to find who has the copy and what side
This means that the “trees” plate requires a cleanse from the Penumbra buff because the player on this biome had the callout symbol on their left. Were it to be on the right side of their middle
symbol, this plate would need to be cleansed with the Antumbra buff. So the only tough part of these mechanics is knowing that Penumbra will always be if the copy is on a players left or Antumbra if the copy is on a players right. The 2 buffs are about to make alot more sense as we explain the next part of this encounter.
A player will want to take note, which of the 2 buffs will be assigned to which of the biome plates and type it out in chat for quick reference. Plate walls will begin to rotate around the middle of the room much like the inner workings of a lock blocking off 2 of the 3 biomes with a large black wall. This open room will be the first holding a taken essence for cleansing the plates.
Keeping in mind, this encounter is on a timer, players will want to clear all enemies from this room unil the eye of riven spawns and dies, dropping the orb. During this part, only one of the players in the fireteam will want to be in this biome as the walls will then rotate again, blocking off this room and opening another. The players outside will want to notify the orb runner of which biome they can exit through. Taking either the left or right tunnel to the next biome (this rotation will be the same for the entire phase of the encounter. Either being clockwise or counter clockwise to escape)
The runner will take note of the buff alerted to them in their HUD, either being Penumbra or Antumba. This is why you will want a quick reference to which plate needs which buff. The runner will then exit the designated biome, run to the proper plate and use his grenade ability (while holding the orb) and cleanse the plate. As 3 plates need to be cleansed, you will need 3 runners and no runner can pick up the orb twice because of a debuff it leaves on the player.
Each time a player picks up the orb, a large taken knight will spawn in one of the biomes and fight his way to the plate to plant his sword, wiping the encounter and killing everyone. This is also why each plate has a defender and a callout/runner.
The room will shift again, closing 2 of the biomes to leave one free for a runner to do their job but also spawning two of the taken knights when the orb is picked up. Then a final third shift of the rooms will spawn 3 taken knights, one to each biome, as the final runner grabs his orb to cleanse.
As soon as all knights are down, the room is cleared of any remaining enemies, the players will assume their original starting positions at the plates to start a second, then a third phase of this encounter. The D2 raid boost experts recommend you use AOE supers and close range shotguns/heavy weapons