The Vault Dungeon Guide (FFXIV Heavensward) – Boss Mechanics & Strategy

Common Failure Points

• Getting hit by Adelphel’s light orbs after his charging run due to slow repositioning.
• Spreading Aetherial Tears around the wall during Grinnaux’s Hyperdimensional Slash, leaving no safe knockback zone.
• Getting knocked into an Aetherial Tear during Faith Unmoving and taking heavy tether damage.
• Failing to break Holy Chain quickly enough on Charibert, stacking recurring damage.
• Leaving Holy Flames alive at Charibert’s 50% phase, increasing the room-wide hit’s damage significantly.

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Dungeon Overview

The Vault is a level 57 dungeon introduced in patch 3.0 with Heavensward, set within the imposing fortress-cathedral of the Heavens’ Ward. It is one of the most narratively charged dungeons in the expansion, pitting players directly against three of Thordan’s elite knights in succession. Each boss fight reflects the individual character of the knight — Adelphel’s speed and aggression, Grinnaux’s brute force and arena denial, and Charibert’s cruel, methodical pressure.

With the addition of Duty Support in patch 6.2, The Vault received balance and progression adjustments making it accessible to solo players alongside Haurchefant, Alphinaud, and a Temple Banneret.

Two of the three bosses feature a phase transition — a low-health opener followed by a knockback that signals the true encounter beginning. The dungeon rewards players who treat each phase shift as a reset opportunity and go into the main encounter with clean positioning habits established.

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Duty Support

The Vault supports the Duty Support system introduced in patch 6.2. Players can enter the dungeon solo accompanied by the following NPC companions:

• Haurchefant (Gladiator / Chivalric Knight) — Tank or DPS
• Alphinaud (Academician) — Healer or DPS
• Temple Banneret (Banneret) — DPS

Dungeon Objectives

• Defeat Ser Adelphel
• Defeat Ser Grinnaux
• Defeat Ser Charibert

Boss Encounters

Ser Adelphel Brightblade

Key Mechanics

• Opening Phase — Adelphel begins with three low-health adds. Kill them alongside the boss. At around 30% HP, Adelphel knocks everyone back and transitions into his true form.
• Holy Shield Bash — Targets one player, jumps to them, and delivers a stun-and-hit combination.
• Holiest of Holy — Moderate raidwide damage hitting all players.
• Charging Run + Orbs — Adelphel charges around the arena, dealing damage and leaving orbs of light in his wake. The orbs explode and deal damage to nearby players. After completing his run, he targets one player and crashes down onto them.

Strategy Notes

The opening phase is straightforward — burn down the three adds alongside Adelphel and push him to the transition. The knockback at 30% is unavoidable; just be aware it is coming and reorient quickly when it fires.

In the main encounter, the most important mechanic to track is the charging run. As Adelphel moves around the arena, the orbs he leaves behind linger and will explode if players stand near them. After the charge completes, he will dive onto a specific player — that player should be aware they are the target and avoid clustering the party under the landing zone.

Move away from orb clusters as they form and give yourself space to maneuver. The orbs are not difficult to avoid individually, but players who stop tracking them during other mechanics will find themselves with nowhere safe to stand by the time the dive lands.

Holy Shield Bash targets a single player and is difficult to avoid entirely — be ready for the stun and keep healing topped accordingly. Holiest of Holy is unavoidable raidwide damage and simply needs to be healed through.

Failure Points

Most damage on this fight comes from players standing in orb explosions after losing track of the arena during the charge. Keep moving, watch where orbs are settling, and stay clear of the dive target’s landing zone.

Ser Grinnaux the Bull

Key Mechanics

• Opening Phase — Like Adelphel, Grinnaux begins with a reduced health pool and transitions into his full form with a knockback at a set HP threshold.
• Hyperdimensional Slash — Always used twice in a row. A red line AoE fires toward a random player and leaves an Aetherial Tear where it strikes the wall. Tears tether to and damage any player who gets too close. Bait both slashes to the same section of wall to consolidate the Tears.
• Faith Unmoving — Room-wide attack that knocks all players directly backward from Grinnaux. Used after the two Hyperdimensional Slash casts. Players must ensure their back is not facing an Aetherial Tear when this fires. Knockback-prevention abilities such as Arm’s Length or Surecast will negate this.
• Dimensional Rift — Circle AoE placed on the ground. Step out to avoid.
• Ground Pattern AoEs — Various floor telegraphs throughout the fight that require standard repositioning.

Strategy Notes

Grinnaux is fundamentally an arena management fight. The Aetherial Tears he creates with Hyperdimensional Slash persist for the remainder of the encounter and carve out dangerous zones that shrink the available safe space over time. How the party handles Tear placement determines how clean or chaotic the rest of the fight becomes.

The core strategy is to bait both Hyperdimensional Slash casts toward the same section of the wall — ideally a corner or a single wall segment — so the Tears cluster together rather than spreading across the arena. This preserves a large safe area on the opposite side of the room where the party can position freely.

Immediately after the two Slash casts, Faith Unmoving fires. The knockback pushes players directly away from Grinnaux. Before it resolves, every player must confirm that the direction they would be knocked toward does not lead into a Tear. If Tears are consolidated in one area, the rest of the wall is safe and positioning is simple. If Tears are scattered, Faith Unmoving becomes genuinely dangerous. Players with Arm’s Length or Surecast should use them here if positioning is uncertain.

Failure Points

Spreading Aetherial Tears across the wall is the root cause of almost every problem in this fight. Two or three scattered Tears combined with a Faith Unmoving knockback can leave players with no safe landing zone. Commit to baiting Slashes to one area from the first cast and hold that discipline throughout the fight.

Ser Charibert

Key Mechanics

• Altar Pyre — Unavoidable room-wide damage. Heal through it.
• Holy Chain — Chains two players together. Both players must run away from each other to break the chain. Leaving it unbroken causes recurring damage to both.
• Heavensflame — Places flame rings on the ground. Step out of the marked zones.
• Marching Knights — A broken row of knights spawns on one side of the room and marches across it. Players hit by the march receive the Slow debuff. The spawn side is consistent — learn it and stay clear of their path.
• 50% HP Phase — Charibert briefly disappears, then reappears flanked by a Dawn Knight and a Dusk Knight, with several Holy Flames summoned around the room’s perimeter. The Knights can be ignored — avoid their AoEs but do not waste time targeting them. Kill all Holy Flames immediately. After a short window, Charibert casts a room-wide attack that deals significantly more damage for each Holy Flame still alive. Once the phase resolves, the normal rotation resumes — but now with two rows of marching knights and double the Heavensflame rings.

Strategy Notes

Unlike the previous two bosses, Charibert has no opener phase — he enters the fight at full power. The fight is manageable in its first half but becomes considerably busier after the 50% transition, so building clean mechanical habits early pays off when the second half doubles the hazard density.

Holy Chain must be broken immediately. The moment chains appear, both affected players should run directly away from each other. Delayed breaks cause the recurring damage to stack up and create unnecessary healing pressure. If a chain player is also in a Heavensflame zone, break the chain first, then reposition.

The marching knights follow a predictable path — once you know their spawn side, keep half an eye on that edge of the room and step out of their column before they arrive. Taking a Slow in the middle of a busy mechanic sequence is an avoidable mistake.

The 50% phase is a hard priority check. The moment Holy Flames appear, every DPS should switch to them immediately. Do not finish a combo on Charibert, do not chase the Dawn or Dusk Knights — get the Holy Flames down before the room-wide cast resolves. Even one surviving Flame meaningfully increases the incoming damage; multiple surviving Flames can push it into wipe territory depending on healer resources. After the phase, the returning double-knight march and doubled Heavensflame rings require the same mechanics executed with tighter spacing and faster reactions.

Failure Points

The 50% phase is where most wipes happen — specifically, parties that let Holy Flames survive or that get disoriented by the simultaneous appearance of knights, flames, and Charibert’s own mechanics. Kill the flames first, always. Outside of that phase, broken Holy Chains and Slow stacks from the march are the primary sources of preventable damage.

Difficulty Assessment

The Vault is one of the stronger dungeon designs in Heavensward, with each boss offering a distinct mechanical identity that escalates the demands placed on the party. Adelphel introduces arena awareness under movement pressure, Grinnaux rewards deliberate hazard placement, and Charibert tests simultaneous priority management across multiple concurrent mechanics.

The dungeon emphasizes:

• Arena state tracking across persistent hazards
• Knockback positioning and anticipation
• Immediate debuff response under combat pressure
• Hard priority switching during the 50% phase

Groups that maintain positional discipline and treat the Aetherial Tears and Holy Flames as the priority targets they are will move through The Vault cleanly. Those who let hazards accumulate unchecked will find the back half of each fight significantly harder than it needs to be.

Previous Dungeon: The Aery | Next Dungeon: The Great Gubal Library

Guildmaster Notes

The Vault is a place built on conviction — on the idea that faith, pursued with sufficient certainty, justifies anything. The knights within it are not villains in the way of monsters. They believe. That is what makes facing them feel different from any other dungeon in this expansion.

By the time Charibert falls, something has shifted. The weight of what the Heavens’ Ward represents — and what has been done in the name of protecting it — settles in. The victory here is not clean. It rarely is when the ones you face were, in another world, the kind of men worth following.