Borderlands 4 offers a tailored experience for every type of player, whether you're a newcomer who wants to enjoy the story or a veteran seeking the ultimate challenge. The game's difficulty system provides a flexible way to scale the chaos, from the main campaign to the intense endgame. Here's a breakdown of how difficulty works and how to adjust it to your liking.
Borderlands 4: All Difficulty Settings
Campaign Difficulty Modes
When you start a new campaign in
Borderlands 4, you have three difficulty options to choose from: Easy, Normal, and Hard. These modes affect enemy strength and loot rewards, providing a different experience for each playstyle.
- Easy Mode: This mode is perfect for players who want to focus on the story and exploration without the stress of constant, difficult firefights. Enemies take more damage, and the importance of elemental weaknesses is significantly reduced, giving you a lot more leeway with your gear.
- Normal Mode: This is the standard, balanced difficulty. It offers the classic Borderlands experience with a good balance of challenge and reward. Enemies and loot drops are well-tuned for a player progressing through the campaign.
- Hard Mode: For those seeking a greater challenge, Hard mode amps up the difficulty. Enemies hit harder, and their elemental affinities become much more important. A wrong elemental matchup can result in a harsh damage penalty. To compensate for the increased difficulty, you are rewarded with more Cash and a higher chance of getting better loot, including rare and legendary items.
Important Note: A great new feature in
Borderlands 4 is that in co-op sessions, each player can select their own individual difficulty setting. This means a veteran can play on Hard mode for better loot while a friend can play on Easy to focus on the narrative, without negatively affecting each other's experience.You can change the difficulty at any time by pausing the game and navigating to the
Session Settings option. This allows you to adjust the challenge on the fly, so if a boss is proving too difficult, you can lower the difficulty, or if you're looking for better loot, you can turn it up.
Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM)
Once you complete the main story of Borderlands 4, the real endgame begins with the introduction of Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM). This is not a New Game+ mode that forces you to replay theentire campaign from scratch. Instead, it acts as a permanent,selectable difficulty mode that scales the entire world to your leveland introduces new challenges.
Key features of UVHM include:
- Increased Enemy Strength: Enemies become significantly tougher, with increased health, damage, and new modifiers that make them more dangerous.
- Better Loot: To match the increased difficulty, the quality and quantity of lootfrom enemies and bosses are drastically improved, giving you a muchhigher chance of finding powerful legendary gear. You also earn moreCash and Eridium.
- New Endgame Activities: UVHM unlocks various endgame activities, including Wildcard Missions and new boss encounters, which are designed to push your builds to their limits.
- UVH Ranks: Borderlands 4's UVHM has five distinct difficulty ranks. To progress from one rank tothe next, you must complete a set of challenges, often culminating in achallenging Wildcard Mission. Successfully completing thesemissions will unlock the next UVH rank, increasing the difficulty andthe rewards. The final rank, UVH5, provides the ultimate challenge with the best possible loot.
Even in UVHM, you can still revisit any part of the planet Kairos to do side quests, farm bosses, or tackle new activities. The world isyour playground, and with the ability to increase your UVH rank, you can continuously challenge yourself and refine your perfect build.
Platform(s): PlayStation 5 PS5, Microsoft Windows PC, Nintendo Switch 2, Xbox Series X/S
Genre(s): First-person shooter, action role-playing
Developer(s): Gearbox Software
Release date: September 12, 2025
Mode: Single-player, multiplayer
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