Did you just read our Borderlands 4 review and decide that you want to give it a try? If so, you will quickly find that Kairos is bigger and badder than Pandora ever was. We’ve been playing for a few days now and have learned a few beginner tips along the way. If you need a little help getting your footing in this strange, new world, we are happy to pass along the things we learned that the game didn’t tell you. And be sure to share your favorite tips in the comments below.
On Your Six
By default, Borderlands 4 doesn’t have a minimap. Instead, enemies show up as little red blips on the compass bar across the top of your HUD. And while the compass works just fine to help you find the general direction to quests and other points of interest, it falls short in giving you the situational awareness you’ll need when battling a dozen or more bad guys all at once.
If you prefer a more traditional mini-map to keep track of your enemies, you’ll find the option to turn on the HUD’s radar in the options menu. Doing so will provide you with a much better representation of the enemy’s location. The radar gives a 360-degree top-down view of the area around you, and although it doesn’t display any topographical information, a quick glance can show you the relative distance and direction to any baddie’s location.
Adjust Your HUD Size
If you took advantage of our first tip and enabled the Radar, and you’re playing on an Ultrawide monitor, it can be challenging to see the UI elements positioned on the far edge of your screen. To bring those elements closer to the action at the center of your screen, open the Options menu and go to Visuals > Calibrate HUD Area. You can then adjust the horizontal and vertical limits of your HUD.
Watch Your Elemental Affinities
Adding elemental effects to your weapons is nothing new in the Borderlands series, but Borderlands 4 takes it to the next level. Depending on your chosen difficulty level, using a weapon with the correct elemental affinity can drastically affect your damage output.
You can reference the following chart to determine the damage modifiers for Easy/Normal/Hard difficulties:
Elemental Affinities
As you can see, the effects are minimal at Easy difficulty, so you can get away with choosing whatever elemental type suits your fancy. It’s a different story on Normal and Hard, where the pluses and minuses are much larger. You’ll need to choose a set of weapons with a variety of elemental types to ensure you are ready for anything that Kairos throws your way.
Upgrade Your Storage
In previous Borderlands games, you would visit Marcus to increase storage and ammo capacities. This go around, Marcus is nowhere to be found. Instead, you have to earn Storage Deck tokens to make upgrades. You will earn those tokens by completing Side quests and finding collectibles throughout your travels. Most quests and collectibles will net you 5 SDU tokens. And just in case unlocking fast travel points wasn’t enough motivation to unlock all of the Silos on the map, doing so will reward you with 40 SDUs.
Horde Your Golden Keys
One of the easiest ways to get free loot in Borderlands 4 is through Golden Chests. These special chests are located at major towns, starting with The Launchpad. Golden Chests will reward you with a pile of loot, and if you’re lucky, they can even include legendary gear in the pile. To unlock the Golden Chest, you’ll need to get a Golden Key by redeeming a Shift Code; check out our list of active Shift codes to make sure you get them all.
You can use a Golden Key at any level, but the rewards scale to your current level. So even though you might be tempted to use it as soon as you get one, you’ll want to resist the urge and save your Golden Keys until you reach max level. Although it’s nice to get a legendary weapon early in the game, it doesn’t take long for other loot to out power a lower level item. By saving your keys, you’ll ensure that any legendaries you earn will be one of the most powerful weapons you own. And given that Golden Keys are given out at the whim of Gearbox and Randy Pitchford, they are worth their weight in, well, gold.
Use Your Rewards
Unlike saving golden keys for later in the game, there’s no need to save the reward chests you earn. Reward chests don’t scale with your level, meaning the loot they contain is locked at the level you earned the chest. Use it as soon as you get it or it will just reward you with a pile of rubbish.
Go Fishing For Loot
Even the most ambitious Vault Hunter needs to take a break from all the killing every now and then. And what better way to relax than fishing, especially when you are fishing for loot?
When you’re running around, you may notice some bubbling water near the shore of a lake. When you spot one, target it with your grappling hook to begin fishing. A lot of junk will get hooked, but every now and then, a decent weapon will fly up; hook it with your grappling hook before it disappears, and it’s yours to keep. There’s even a chance of hooking legendary gear, including Slippy the fish, which is actually a legendary bouncing grenade!
Grab A Ride Before Exploring
Borderlands 4 is the first game in the series to have an expansive open world. With so much space to explore, you can easily get sidetracked early on by every discoverable that pops up on your map. You’ll want to hold off for just a little while before going off the main story rails, though.
Running between points of interest can be time-consuming, making exploration a painfully slow process. If you stick with the main story for just a little while, you will be rewarded with your Digirunner, a hover bike that can be summoned from anywhere. The Digirunner offers a significant speed boost compared to running on foot, saving you a ton of time as you move from one discovery to the next.
