Borderlands 4 guide: Tips to plunder Kairos for all its loot

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After six years, a couple of spin-offs, and a not-so-great movie, Borderlands 4 is finally here. While it might look like just another Borderlands game at first glance, there are a lot of big changes that'll keep even series veterans like me on their toes.

Of course, the most notable change is the shift to a fully open world structure, with several biomes to explore, each with quests, activities, bosses, and guns to loot. Lots and lots of guns is one thing that'll never change. Our Borderlands 4 guide will get you up to speed with everything you need to know to get started on Kairos.

Borderlands 4 Vault Hunters and builds

Hero

Pick the right character for you and deck them out with the best builds, or just play all four using the new campaign skip feature on subsequent Vault Hunters.

Borderlands 4 characters : Meet your new Vault Hunters and find out who's strongest.
Borderlands 4 Harlowe builds : The amped-up Gravitar.
Borderlands 4 Rafa builds : The speed-demon Exo-Soldier.
Borderlands 4 Vex builds : The spooky Siren.
Borderlands 4 Amon builds : The fierce Forgeknight.

Borderlands 4 legendary gear

Gear Up

The gear you bring with you is the other half of the build-making puzzle, so here are some legendary items you should hunt down.

Borderlands 4 Kaoson : Sticky bomb SMG.
Borderlands 4 Birt's Bees : SMG with a sting.
Borderlands 4 Aegon's Dream : Ice and fire assault rifle.
Borderlands 4 Wombo Combo : Explosive assault rifle.
Borderlands 4 Hot Slugger : Slug shotgun.
Borderlands 4 Hellwalker : Doom-inspired shotgun.
Borderlands 4 Rainbow Vomit : Multi-element shotgun.
Borderlands 4 Kickballer : Game-breaking ricochet shotgun.
Borderlands 4 Bod : The everything gun.
Borderlands 4 Convergence : Slicing shotgun.
Borderlands 4 Complex Root : Multi-hit sniper.
Borderlands 4 Katagawa's Revenge : Storm-slinger sniper.
Borderlands 4 Triple Bypass : Build-breaking repkit.
Borderlands 4 Kill Spring : Healing missile repkit.
Borderlands 4 Super Soldier : High-speed shield.
Borderlands 4 Slippy : Melee damage grenade.
Borderlands 4 Undead Eye : Vex's Blood Shot class mod.

Borderlands 4 missions and activities

Wayfinder

Sometimes a mission might leave you scratching your head on a specific objective, or perhaps you're after a particular boss?

Borderlands 4 vault key fragment locations : Crack open Kairos.
Borderlands 4 elevator clearance : Recruitment Drive.

Borderlands 4 systems

Basics

Handy tips to make the most of Borderlands 4's wide variety of systems, big and small.

Borderlands 4 Black Market location : Maurice's machine this week.
Borderlands 4 weekly reset : This week on Kairos.
How to respec your skill tree in Borderlands 4 : Hit the reset.
Borderlands 4 max level : The skill points you're restrained by.
Borderlands 4 XP farms : Level up fast.
All Borderlands 4 Shift codes : So many freebies.
Borderlands 4 Twitch Drops : Even more freebies just for watching streams.

Borderlands 4 system requirements

The original Borderlands 4 minimum system requirements stated the game required at least 8 CPU cores, and we speculated something was up with the original figure and that wouldn't be the case . A 2K rep confirmed the specification was an error on Steam , but we haven't seen that reflected in its updated recommendations. Here's what we're working with for now: