Explore our comprehensive guide on the endgame of Borderlands 3: from your Guardian levels to the hunt for legendary weapons, there’s plenty to keep you busy once you’ve completed the main campaign.
After countless hours of gameplay and completing the main storyline of Borderlands 3, what will you dive into next? A common option is to create multiple characters to explore different gameplay styles or to embark on a quest for powerful legendary weapons. If you’re unsure where to start, we’ll help you choose from the four playable classes.
But that’s not all there is! In this guide, we’ll delve into all aspects of Borderlands 3’s endgame. The replayability is immense, with additional difficulty levels, arenas, endless character upgrades, and more. Here’s everything you can do once the campaign is over. Just remember: the elements listed below intertwine to form the game’s expansive endgame content. Combined, they offer a massive amount of gameplay at launch. Ultimately, the most important aspect of Borderlands is creating a unique character build that suits your playstyle while finding gear to complement it. You’ll need to gather plenty of loot!
All Our Endgame Guides
Replayable Arenas
Slaughter Circles
This game mode, previously featured in Borderlands 2, requires you to clear waves of increasingly powerful enemies. If you die, you lose. It’s as straightforward as that. You can clear up to five rounds filled with multiple waves of foes. The longer you survive, the better the loot drops. There are even bonus objectives to keep Mr. Torgue happy!
Proving Grounds
In this challenge, you must defeat hordes of enemies and progress through the trial to face a final boss, all within 30 minutes. Completing this challenge rewards you with a chest filled with valuable loot– a great incentive! Proving Grounds consists of seven missions scattered across the galaxy, featuring constantly refreshing objectives generated randomly. Completing these objectives enhances the loot quality waiting for you at the end of each proving ground challenge. Think of it as a raid, with optional challenges like defeating the Fallen Guardian, surviving without dying, or finishing in under 15 minutes.
Note:
- Both types of arena content are infinitely replayable!
- Imagine combining this with Chaos Mode — it promises real challenges and plentiful loot!
Ultimate Hunter Mode
This mode isn’t groundbreaking; it’s similar to what we saw in previous titles. Once you’ve completed your first campaign on normal difficulty, you can restart the entire game at a higher difficulty. Loot improves and enemies become tougher. This is essentially the New Game+ equivalent in Borderlands. Let’s face it, this is where the game truly begins! It’s unfortunate that the developers require players to complete the campaign once before unlocking this mode.
Guardian Levels
Completing the main campaign unlocks Guardian Levels. If you’re familiar with the badass token system from earlier games, the concept is similar: you’ll earn stat upgrades applicable to all your characters.
Your Guardian token meter sits just above your experience bar and fills as you earn experience points. Whenever the meter is full, you unlock a new token. You can spend this token to unlock stat bonuses from three trees (Bounty Hunter, Survivor and Precision). When you spend a Guardian token, you can choose one option from six randomly selected stats, two from each tree. Your choices will matter, though randomness can prevent you from always increasing the same stat. Nonetheless, nothing stops you from focusing on one specific tree, which could be an interesting strategy considering the information that follows.
Bounty Hunter
- Critical Damage
- Grenade Damage
- Weapon Damage
- Fire Rate
- Melee Damage
- Vehicle Damage
Survivor
- Combat Duration for Survival
- Movement Speed in Combat
- Maximum Health
- Shield Capacity
- Shield Recharge Delay
- Shield Recharge Speed
- Hunter
Precision
- Action Skill Latency
- Rare Loot Chance
- Recoil Reduction
- Reload Speed
By investing a certain number of tokens, you unlock specific Guardian rewards from each of the trees, Bounty Hunter, Survivor, and Precision. There are six levels across all trees, which you unlock by spending 10, 15, 25, 35, 50, or 75 tokens in their category. While not precise, it’s known that the different tiers unlock weapon skins, character skins, and especially new, genuinely useful passives. For instance, rewards at Guardian Level 2 may increase your weapon damage during Survival (in the Bounty Hunter tree), or allow you to exit Survival with full health and shields (in the Survivor tree), etc. It seems that the higher the level achieved in a tree, the more beneficial the unlocked passive becomes. Focusing on a single tree may be a sound strategy?
This system allows you to further enhance your Vault Hunter or address any of its weaknesses. These Guardian levels also present a way to progress your character infinitely.
Chaos Mode
After completing the campaign, a terminal appears aboard Sanctuary-3 offering three difficulty levels: Chaos 1, 2, or 3. Activate any of these modes, and the stakes and rewards become significantly greater: enemies gain more health, shields, and armor, while you earn more cash, Eridium, and experience points, with a higher chance of finding better loot. However, access to the Chaos mode terminal in Ultimate Hunter mode is only available after unlocking Sanctuary 3 in the campaign. We highly recommend trying out Chaos mode once you’re in Ultimate Hunter, as it enhances your progression while making it more challenging and loot-rich.
In Chaos mode, you’ll also encounter more ruthless and elite enemies. Overall, everything becomes more challenging. To balance this difficulty, enemies may occasionally drop “elite” gear that grants bonuses to your action skills and can be tailored to specific Vault Hunters. This is crucial for optimizing your character in the endgame. A unique build could soon emerge!
In addition to introducing more resilient enemies, Chaos mode also applies affixes to the planets you visit, compelling you to adapt your playstyle accordingly. For instance, with the affix “Wild”, enemies’ weapons inflict more damage, while the affix “Sorcery” diminishes damage from your regular bullets, increases the damage of your elemental shots, and introduces various other modifiers visible on the map screen. Some of these modifiers will only activate in Chaos 2 or 3, making survival significantly more complex.
Game Support and DLC
Gearbox has expressed its intent to support their latest title thoroughly, as demonstrated during this year’s PAX West. They have already announced free content updates as well as the release of the first DLC for the game. Everything mentioned here is expected to launch before the end of 2019, with further details set to arrive on September 18th.
This bodes well for the future of Borderlands 3. Will we see even more substantial content coming our way? Only time will tell!
Our Predictions for the Future
Rumors are circulating online, and we believe the following are likely to occur:
- Higher Chaos Levels beyond 3, providing even more challenges for fans of the series.
- An extension to the max character level in one of the DLCs, allowing for even more diverse builds. Will the max level reach 72, as seen in previous titles?
- A wealth of free and event-based content, keeping players engaged.
- Lastly, an Ultimate Hunter 2 mode seems unlikely and counterproductive. Having to replay the same campaign twice is already a lot to ask in 2019, let alone three times…
Key Takeaways
- Ultimate Hunter mode feels overly obligatory and could have been skipped by Gearbox.
- Guardian levels are intriguing; they appeal to fans wanting to upgrade their characters infinitely.
- Chaos mode is the true standout feature. It not only offers a challenging difficulty but also adds thrilling farming elements. You’ll spend much time hunting for the perfect “elite” weapon to complete your ultimate build…
- Both types of arenas prevent stagnation in the campaign as you farm for what you need.
- Ultimately, for us, the endgame of Borderlands 3 will involve lots of farming in the Proving Grounds, Slaughter Circles, and campain bosses. All while in Ultimate Hunter mode with Chaos active, until we find the gear to make our characters invincible. How about you?
