How to get into the vault in Teardown

Teardown safe vault
(Image credit: Tuxedo Labs)

How do you open the Teardown vault? There's an intimidating metal door tucked away in a basement on Hollowrock Island, and your tools aren't making a dent in its reinforced face—yep, we encountered that, too. Riches await in the room behind, but they're locked away just out of reach.

While I haven't found a way to open the vault normally, yet, there is a way to access its concealed room by other means. You'll need a few items to bring along on your daring heist, but it's certainly worth taking a short detour from the main objective to score some extra cash. I'm here to help you gain access quickly, so that you can get back to completing more missions. Here's how to open the vault and retrieve the treats inside, plus the bad news if you've happened upon a Teardown safe.

How to get the cash inside the Teardown vault

To find the vault, hop off your escape boat, walk forwards and head up the stairs. Follow the pavement to find a big brick building. Enter the house and take the doorway on the right, then open the wooden door and go downstairs.

If you've tried to open the vault you'll know that even your best tools, including your sledgehammer and bombs, won't penetrate its steel door. Even the walls on either side are reinforced. So, while you can damage the wall to see through to the other side, you can't slip through. From what I can see, there's no way to open the vault, so we need to find another route into the room.

After spawning into the BlueTide Computers mission on Hollowrock Island, hop off your boat and immediately turn left. Walk along the edge of the water towards the grey rock ahead. Once in the rocky caves, turn right and promptly look up to see a metal grate nestled in the ceiling above. You can open it by hitting it with your sledgehammer to reveal a vertical air duct tube.

Now hoist yourself up into the narrow duct, as this leads to the room behind the vault door. You can do this with as little as eight wooden planks, but there's no harm in upgrading the number you start with at the computer terminal before starting the mission. Then continue placing the planks to help you reach the top of the vertical tube. The easiest way to get started is to place a plank vertically from the opening to the floor, then a diagonal plank linked to that one to create a little ramp (above). Stand on the ramp and add a couple of short, horizontal planks, sort of like makeshift steps. Continue placing these all the way up, and keep jumping onto them until you reach the top.

After arriving at the top of the air duct, walk along and open the grate at the end to gain access to the room. You can do this quickly using your blowtorch. On the table there's $400 with your name on it, and a stack of gold bullions worth $2500 on the floor. Grab the goods and use them to continue funding your mischievous destruction in Teardown.

What's the deal with the Teardown safe?

Long before you unlock the BlueTide Computers mission on Hollowrock Island, you'll take on the Making Space mission in West Point Marina. The objectives for this mission are quite straightforward, if a little bizarre. In an attempt to destroy someone's proof of ownership of a neat little cabin, you need to demolish the cabin, and take the Office safe and throw it in the ocean.

There's no known way to pry the safe open, so you might as well have some fun getting rid of it. To dispose of the safe, drag it by holding RMB until it plops into the water. It's a good idea to keep your sledgehammer handy in case there are any windows or other obstacles in your way. There's an optional challenge of dumping the Warehouse safe in the sea too, so feel free to take that on.

Emma Matthews

As PC Gamer's guides writer, Emma is usually juggling several games at once. She loves competitive first-person shooters like CS:GO and Call of Duty, but she always has time for a few rounds of Hearthstone. She's happiest when she's rescuing pugs in Spelunky 2.