Borderlands 4: Beginner’s Guide to Surviving on Kairos

Before you begin…

Before you begin your adventure on Kairos…well, AFTER you watch the intro movie AND complete the beginning of the game that sets the mood AND gain full control of your vault hunter, press start and head to the Options menu.

You know how they always say Borderlands has a billion guns? They have close to a billion options. Seriously, this is one of the biggest options menus I have ever encountered. Don’t worry, I will not be going over every section. I just wanted to highlight some important/useful ones that may not be clear for newcomers and even veterans of the series.

Note: I am playing Borderlands 4 on PlayStation 5, and these are the options available to me. It may be different on PC.

Under visual options, they finally added the FOV (field of view) slider to the game, usually standard on PC. This allows the player to see more or less of the game world when the camera sits behind the character, like in Borderlands. It can make a difference in-game, but you have to see it with your own eyes to make the final call.

Warning! You may want this on all your games now.

That funny (and annoying) robot, Claptrap is back! I suppose enough people have requested this so that you can adjust his volume (found under Audio - Advanced). Personally, I find his stories amusing, but to each their own. Whether you like him or not, play with the volume for a nice surprise.

Without Claptrap though, we don’t get: “Stairs?! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!” or “I Ascend!!” Just saying.

Speaking of robots, Borderlands 4 introduces ECHO-4. ECHO-4 is 1000x more useful than Claptrap but does not tell any funny stories. You can’t win them all. Under Gameplay options, you can adjust the ECHO Location Path Visibility Duration between Short, Medium, and Long. When you press Up on the D-Pad, ECHO-4 will show you a path to follow for quests and custom pins on the map. If the duration is set too long, the path remains visible for a good amount of time, but it also has a longer cooldown before you can use it again. By setting this to short, you can effectively spam the button to see the path. Again, your call, but being able to spam it comes in handy, especially with how easy it is to drive off the beaten path.

Also under gameplay is Toggle Radar Display. If you were following Borderlands 4 at all pre-launch, there was some discourse over the compass on top of the screen instead of the radar, which has been in all of the previous games. By default, the radar is off in favor of the compass. If you do turn on the radar, the compass remains. It’s not an either-or type of option. In previous games, the radar was extremely helpful, as you could kind of follow it because the world had invisible walls, and the radar outlined where you could go. Borderlands 4 added significant verticality, so the radar functions completely differently. I will say, if you get flustered in combat, the radar indicates where enemies are relative to your position, versus the compass showing only what is within your frontal vision (if enemies are alive behind you, the only indicators are the bullets hitting in the back).

The radar seems redundant now but…

General Tips/Tricks

Pick a difficulty, any difficulty. Until you actually finish the campaign, the difficulty really does not matter. If you are a returning player who knows how to switch elements for certain types of enemies, start on hard and adjust it down if needed. The difficulty can be changed at any point, so feel free to adjust when needed.

If you have any reservations, go with easy. The end game doesn’t begin until UVHM anyway.

You cannot overlevel or outlevel the content. Enemies scale with your level. In some instances, enemies will be a level or two higher, but that is by design. Leaving to level up a few times will just increase the enemy level to be a level or two higher, and you are back to the drawing board. The only real reason to gain a few levels before tackling an area that is proving difficult would be for the additional skill points. There are two reasons that an area may seem insurmountable: git gud (kidding, kidding); your build is a mess (very easy to do and also very easy to fix), or your gear is not on par with your level.

There are lots of build guides out there (maxroll.gg is an excellent resource) but if you want to do it on your own, I would recommend picking skills that are obvious power increases. Things like Kill Skill: Increase Gun Damage require you to kill things, but Increase Gun Damage is a flat number that benefits you immediately.

Do not worry about skill synergies in the early goings, as you will not have enough points to make anything work. When you do have points to play with, use the re-spec machines. You can find skill tree planners online if you want to map out how to spend your points. I think I re-specced at least 5x before beating the campaign, and have re-specced another 10 or so post-game tinkering with builds. Each vault hunter has three skill trees to work with, and the main ability from each tree can be used regardless of where you spend the points. Unless a skill impacts a certain ability, points spent in other trees do not lose functionality. For example, I play Vex and have an Incarnate build. If I invest points in Cold Iron in the Dead Ringer tree, I still gain increased Gun Damage even though I am playing a different tree.

While the cost of re-speccing increases over time, money seems to be in abundance on Kairos. I do not recall a previous Borderlands game where I had such an influx of money so early on in my playthrough. Quests give plenty of money in reward, and with a billion guns dropping all the time, you have plenty to sell. As you learn what type of guns and what brand of guns you prefer, you will be junking the rest. Pro tip: pressing done on the D-Pad instead of Square (on PS5), you will automatically mark an item as junk instead of having to go into your inventory and manually mark each item. You can also send items directly to the bank from anywhere. Mark an item as Bank and hold L3 will send it out of your inventory. Unfortunately, withdrawals have to be done in person.

The ability to clear inventory on the go is huge!

Keep an eye on your gear level. If enemies suddenly seem bullet-resistant, check item level compared to your level. You don’t have to worry about everything on par all the time, but a 4-5 level gap can prove to be a huge difference. For example, I was around 43-44 when I reached the end of the game. My shield was a level 33. I went and picked up the same shield, but at level 44, and the shield capacity jumped by nearly 5000. Since enemies scale to your level, they also drop gear at that level so it is not hard to acquire even level gear. Legendaries are a different story as they are world drops, OR they can be target-farmed. In Borderlands 4, purple gear is equal to and even better than legendary gear.

Every boss you beat while playing can become farmable via Moxxi’s Big Encore but it is not really an efficient use of time. It also provides a pitiful amount of experience. That said, there is an early game boss, Splashzone, that should be farmed for one specific item. He does drop a shotgun, Leaded Balloon, and a grenade, Jelly, that are really good, but both outlive their usefulness eventually (hell, you may not even like how they function). The item in question is the Firewerks shield. The legendary perk is Bundled, which states: On kill, spawns Missiles that home in on nearby enemies and deal XXXX Damage each. You rarely ever face just a single enemy in combat, so this is huge as it will be triggering constantly in combat. During my playthrough, I returned to Splashzone every 5-10 levels to get a better version (more capacity on the shield and more damage from the missiles). Splashzone is also incredibly easy to kill. Even if he is stubborn and it takes a few kills to get it to drop, it should not take forever. It does cost money to activate Moxxi’s Big Encore, but if you collect all the loot dropped, you can make anywhere from double to 4-5x the cost back when selling.

You’ll earn back double, triple, even quadruple that easily

Guns in the Borderlands series always had branding (those pesky corporations). Guns in Borderlands 4 not only have similar branding, but they can now have parts from other manufacturers. New to the series is a gun enhancement gear slot. These provide stat bonuses to specific gun manufacturers as well as provide passive stats. For example, a Vladof enhancement works for all Vladof guns plus any gun with a Vladof part such as an underbarrel. The passive stats work with all guns equipped (i.e., pistol damage works for all pistols regardless of manufacturer). Don’t feel obligated to stick with one brand of gun while leveling.

Anything Hyperion is effected but the gun accuracy applies to all guns

At Level 20, you can equip class mods. Similar to the previous games, these can provide free stat points. Until you reach end endgame and are looking for something specific, any class mod will work. If it gives points in skills you don’t have, those become active.

Regardless if you play on Easy or Hard during the campaign, you should know what elemental weapons work best again what type of enemies. Shock is best for shields (blue health bars), fire is great against flesh (red health bars), corrosive against armor (yellow health bars), cryo against flesh or armor, and it can freeze enemies in place, and radiation against flesh and shields, and has the chance to explode enemies. Not an element but kinetic is the final damage type and works against everything.

Ordanance is another new gear slot. This is where you can equip grenades, throwing knives that act like grenades, machine guns, and rocket launchers. They have ammo, but they also don’t have ammo. Huh? The grenades and knives have charges, but the machine guns and rocket launchers have an ammo pool. Once the charges are spent or the ammo is expended, there is a cooldown until you can use it again. Many of these items also do much more than just explode, as they can increase the damage taken by an enemy, decrease the enemy’s damage output, or guarantee a critical hit for 5 seconds (this has been the talk of nerfs, but it is unclear as to what the nerf will be). I found singularity items worked best for me. Not only does it suck enemies in and spin them around like rag dolls, but it serves as temporary crowd control if you ever feel overwhelmed.

A critical hit with a throwing knife is never not satisfying

Returning all the way from the original Borderlands are health kits, now known as Repkits. These are on-use heals with a cooldown. Keep an eye out for the on-use effects, as many do so much more than just heal. They can be used at full health, too, and benefit from the on-use effect.

In previous Borderlands games, you purchased SDU kits to expand on your inventory, ammo pools, and bank slots. In Borderlands 4, SDU is still the needed currency but is found through exploring Kairos. By unlocking safe houses and silos (which also become fast travel points), hacking propaganda speakers, finding shrines, and completing activities for the first time, you can earn SDU to upgrade. Each upgrade costs more than the rest. I recommend going for inventory space, as ammo can be found everywhere.

Last but not least are the Golden Keys that can be entered on the Shift website. With better blue and purple gear found in-game, it is worth spending the keys every few levels for upgrades rather than hoarding once you get to 50. You can target farm legendaries this time around, so gearing up as you go is a better use of the keys.

Post-Game Tips

So you finished the game but you are not level 50 yet. What do you do? You can still go and farm legendaries if you want, but as I said earlier, this gives minimal experience. Questing and the bounty board are your best bet. In a rush? Head to Makeshift Chalet in Lopside in the Carcadia Burn region. You want to grab Vile Bounties from the Bounty Board here. Vile Bounties give the largest amount of experience for the least amount of work. The reason you want to grab from this location is that the bounties spawn relatively close to the safe house. A simple quit and reload will shuffle the board or replenish it.

Firmware are set bonuses that can spawn on Repkits, Ordanance, Class Mods, Shields, and Gun Enhancements. In the post-game, you can do a one-time transfer per item of the set bonus to another item (it has to be the same type of item - i.e., shield to shield, ordanance to ordanance, etc.). If you find any firmware you particularly like, send it to the bank for later use.

During the post-game tutorial, the game introduces Maurice’s Black Market Vending Machine. If you played Borderlands 3, it is the one and the same. After the tutorial, the machine spawns randomly in the world and remains there for one week, resetting on Thursdays. The vending machine will contain two different items, but with multiple versions of said items. You can only buy one item at a time before the machine goes on a 30-minute cooldown. The machine contents are also different for all players, so find out what your friends have.

The true endgame is increasing your rank in UVHM, and this can be found under Missions/Challenges. This replaces the difficulty options but can be turned off at any time to go back to the base difficulties. What are the benefits of playing on UVHM? For one, higher drop rates of gear and firmware. You will see more parts on guns as well as new firmware. Note: the base gear stats remain the same. This is not like Mayhem levels from Borderlands 3, where a Mayhem 10 weapon has better stats than a Mayhem 4 weapon.

What I Hope is Changed/Fixed/Added

At least on PS5, the UI needs some work. One particular thing is the ability to mark items as Junk. For whatever reason, items beyond the first 4 or so rows cannot be marked Junk. If you click the Junk button, it marks items several rows above instead. This needs to be fixed ASAP as it is a pain in the ass and I have accidentally sold items I wanted to keep. Piggybacking on that, you have to go through a dropdown menu to mark favorites. In past games, the same button would cycle between Favorite, Junk, and Unmarked. We need that back.

Outside of the inventory, looking at items on the ground only shows half the stats. If I am farming a specific gun/better version of the gun I have, I probably want a specific parts roll. When looking at items that drop, you only see the base stats.

I love Rift Encounters (you will see giant domes spawn randomly and face a mini boss who drops a ton of loot). The problem lies in the despawning of the boss if you leave the area. There needs to be a timer, and not be an instant thing. Way too many times have I dodged backwards or sideways to avoid something, only to instantly despawn the boss. Hell, lock me in the area if you have to. I don’t mind that the boss despawns if you die, but I have had bosses despawn with a sliver of health just because I sidestepped a little too far.

I would love to see some form of a loadout system. I have no problem with the cost of resetting skills but it would be cool if we could save one or two other skill sets without having to head back to a machine. I played around with a melee-focused Vex build, but it did not feel right against flying enemies. It would be cool to swap to something else for a different boss or area and then swap back. Perhaps, there could be re-spec machines near Moxxi’s Big Encore?

While the cost of resetting skills is not an issue, the cost of resetting the specialization tree is absurd. 5,000 eridium? Could we not start smaller? I get it that it is not something that will be regularly reset, especially when you have a ton of points and everything is filled in anyway, but, until that point, it could be a bit more affordable.

The concept of replaying missions and the Wild Card missions is fantastic, but they need to be shorter in length. One of the Wildcard missions to advance in UVHM ranks is to kill Callis again. Do I really need to complete the part of the mission where I help Zane build a turbo boost? Considering I have already completed the mission once, why can’t I just start at her base?

There needs to be an option to not track any quests at all. I have had bounties I pick up in one region that I never finish, which constantly remain on-screen. There should be a way for me not to track anything at all if that is what I choose.

Last but not least is an idea I had about firmware extraction. Instead of having to hoard various pieces until I get the right piece I want to put the firmware on, could we not just extract the firmware and save it? Same cost and all (even the same gear restrictions), but it could appear in a list. I have the bank space, but it would be a nice QoL upgrade to not have to go through it each time.