BORDERLANDS 4 AMON BUILD
LEVEL 1 TO 50
The Ultimate BUILD Guide
This Borderlands 4 Amon build guide aims to guide you get through Amon’s progression from level 1 to 50, with detailed skill choices, recommended gear and a straightforward progression route.
For more Builds visit our Borderlands 4 hub page.
Normal Vault Hunter Mode – Level 1 to 31
During your first playthrough, you’ll be finishing the story in Normal Vault Hunter Mode (NVHM). This is the default setting with no modifiers, and you only unlock the first rank of UVHM, the endgame mode, as soon as you beat the final boss and officially complete the main questline.
I’ll be leaving it at that to avoid any spoilers, but it’s worth noting that higher UVHM ranks will require you to do specific challenges and finishing quests given by a certain important NPC. You’ll know who it is when you get there. Unlocking higher UVHM ranks isn’t mandatory, and in some cases, you can even continue playing in NVHM if your goal is just to reach max level.
Recommended Skills
Action Skill: Scourge
Augment & Capstone: Anything is fine. They aren’t important for this playstyle.
Level 2-6: 5 Points on Scorched Kairos
You gain bonus ordnance damage and magazine size.
Level 7-11: 5 Points on Tail of the Comet
Whenever you deal ordnance damage, there is a 60% chance to inflict the target with a cryo status effect, which does damage over time.
Level 12-16: 5 Points on Bullet Hail
Your gun shots have a chance to ricochet as elemental shards, which deal cryo damage.
Level 17-21: 5 Points on Icy Rage
Killing enemies with cryo damage will give you a stack of cryo affinity, which increases your gun damage.
Level 22-26: 5 Points on Primal Surge
Whenever you apply a status effect, there’s a 25% chance to restore 15% of your shields and 30% of your ammo.
Level 27-31: 5 Points on Blackout
Ordnance damage now has a chance to trigger critical hits, which will also deal bonus shock damage.
Progression route
Goal: In NVHM, the main goal is to complete the main story and unlock all of the post-campaign mechanics. Once the main questline officially ends, you’ve finally reached the true grind. Along the way, you can do side quests whenever you feel like doing so, though focusing solely on the story should get you to around level 30.
What makes Borderlands 4 special is that it changes up a lot of mechanics to the point where it’s almost like a fresh take on the franchise’s usual formula. Non-legendary gear, especially purple ones, are completely viable and sometimes even better for specific builds. Don’t fall into the trap of target farming certain items too often, because you’ll eventually outlevel them anyway.
Level 1 to 31: Finishing the main story
- Early in the story, these skill nodes won’t really do much to help you. If you’re willing to respect later on, feel free to take nodes like The Thrill and Battleborn until you can start taking advantage of the ordnance buffs.
- If you’re up for a bit of target farming, it’s worth trying to get the Atling Gun from the Callous Harbinger of Annihilating Death. It’s a powerful Vladof minigun with homing bullets, which works really well with Amon’s ordnance passives.
- Generic Vladof miniguns or autocannons will work just fine too. You’ll find these in varying rarities throughout your leveling journey.
Best gears
Slot 1: Any good generic weapon
Slot 2: Any backup weapon with a different ammo type
Ordnance: Atling Gun
Repkit: Anything works
Shield: Any high-capacity shield
Class Mod: Anything that buffs ordnance damage and/or cooldown
Enhancement: Same as above
The build doesn’t go “online” until later levels, and it starts to really hurt once you have ordnance specializations unlocked. In the meantime, you’ll want to be ready with some “regular” weapons.
Until you get to the point where your heavy weapons have virtually unlimited ammo, make sure to have a variety of guns that are scaled to your level. My personal recommendations are Torgue shotguns and Jakobs pistols. Both of these weapon types perform well as all-arounders, though you’re free to use literally anything you want at this point.
As for everything else, focus on boosting your heavy ordnance with stats like ordnance damage/cooldown or even fire rate. If you can’t seem to get anything with these buffs, pump up your gun damage so that your regular loadout can continue carrying you through the story.
Tips for NVHM
- If this is your first playthrough, rush through the Down and Outbound quest to unlock the digirunner. You can mount this almost anywhere, and you’ll need it to explore the open world efficiently.
- You can re-fight most bosses by interacting with the Moxxi’s Big Encore machine outside their respective arenas. This makes farming for specific legendary gear a relatively fast process compared to older games, as it eliminates the need to reset.
- Check vending machines every now and then, as they do occasionally carry decent upgrades. Legendary gear can even show up in them, albeit rarely.
Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode – Level 32 to 50
When you finish the story for the first time, you can complete a few challenges to unlock Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM). This lets you increase the difficulty of the game in exchange for better EXP and loot drop rates. It has higher ranks with “better” rewards, but when it comes to leveling, it’s actually better to ignore those for now.
For the purposes of this guide, I highly recommend turning on just tier 1 of UVHM. This will give you access to Vile Bounties, which can only show up in this game mode. Now, let’s get to your skills.
Recommended Skills
Level 32-34: 3 Points on Impetus
After every kill, you get a stack of bonus shield regeneration rate and movement speed.
Level 35-36: 2 Points on What Burns Within
Gain bonus incendiary damage.
Level 37-41: 5 Points on Wield the Storm
You gain bonus status effect damage and duration.
Level 42: 1 Point on Gut Punch
Both melee and ordnance damage have a chance to weaken enemies, increasing their damage taken and decreasing how much they deal.
Level 43-46: 4 Points on Bullet Storm
Whenever you apply a status effect, gain bonus gun damage. This can stack up to 5 times.
Level 47-50: 4 Points on Catastrophe
Whenever you apply shock to enemies, gain increased critical hit chance. This can stack up to 3 times.
Progression route
Goal: By the time you finish the story, you should be around the level 30+ range, which means you’re already good to go with heavy weaponry. Amon turns into a walking nuke as you enter UVHM, as long as you keep landing hits and replenishing ammunition. Before we go into more specifics, let’s go over the activities that you can do in order to grind EXP:
- Vile Bounties (the purple ones) come out on top for EXP grinding. They can spawn on any bounty board as long as UVHM is turned on, so feel free to check every safehouse after loading into the game. The downside is that you have to go back to the main menu to refresh boards.
- Drill sites are another good option, especially the Pitted Stain. Your speed in clearing these will depend on how fast you can clear the mobs and the boss. With appropriately leveled gear, they should go by fast. You can repeat these by activating the Moxxi’s Big Encore machine at the entrance.
- Boss farming is another quick way to gain a lot of EXP. Splashzone is the easiest because he’s very close to the Moxxi’s Big Encore machine. With a strong gun, you can delete him within seconds, and you can multiple kills per minute.
If your priority is purely getting to max level quickly and farming for gear, Amon can completely ignore side quests and random events out in the world. His strong ordnance damage makes any of the above activities a breeze, though there’s a bit of nuance depending on the gear you’ve chosen.
Personally, I would highly recommend going for drill sites top avoid the headaches that come with restarting the lobby and hunting down the Vile Bounty targets themselves. They’re relatively close in EXP gain if you do the Pitted Stain with a Firewerks equipped.
Also, bear in mind that using the Atling Gun (if you prefer it over the Bottled Lightning) will make it harder to deal with Vile Bounties. The homing bullets almost always work against you by hitting the target rather than the crystals protecting it.
All of these are preference-based, which is why an ordnance-focused Amon is probably one of the most “chill” playstyles out there. It’s mostly a plug-and-play build that works with for any bit of content, and you can even adjust your skill points to dip deeper into the red tree for more elemental damage.
Best gears
Slot 1: Hot Slugger
Slot 2: Aegon’s Dream
Slot 3 & 4: Any other backup weapons that you have
Ordnance: Bottled Lightning or Atling Gun
Repkit: Anything works
Shield: Super Soldier or Firewerks
Class Mod: Anything that buffs heavy weapons and shield generation through skill nodes.
Enhancement: Anything that boosts ordnance damage and fire rate. Gun damage works if you have the specialization that lets it synergize with ordnance.
The ammo generation from your skills, especially Primal Surge, will keep you completely topped up throughout any fight. Unless you miss an extraordinary number of shots, which is nearly impossible with the Atling Gun, you’ll never run dry.
If you’re running Bottled Lightning, pair it with the Super Soldier for a great balance of both survivability and damage. The Atling Gun benefits from this as well, though I would recommend using the Firewerks if you’re running drill sites, as its missiles can take out any stragglers hiding behind walls. Either combo can wipe out waves of enemies with ease, so it’s just down to whichever you find more fun to use.
As for your other slots, these weapons are just here to fill in the gaps for any mistakes that put your heavy weapon on cooldown. The Hot Slugger, for example, is a good all-purpose legendary that conveniently drops from the exact same boss that can give you an Atling Gun. The Aegon’s Dream rifle is great for activating your cryo and/or incendiary-related skills, like Icy Rage or Catastrophe.
For your class mod, go for something that can buff Ballistic Bulwark or Endless Bombardment. The latter is particularly useful if you’re using Bottled Lightning, as you’ll need all the ammo generation you can get with its astonishingly small base magazine. Extra points into Primal Surge would also be great.
Tips for UVHM
- You can unlock further levels of UVHM by doing varying challenges, but you don’t need to do this if your goal is to level up. At best, you can try to unlock UVHM 2 so you can refresh Vile Bounties by swapping the lobby’s difficulty between UVHM 1 and 2 instead of having to go to the main menu.
- If you have friends that can help you out, grouping up speeds up both Vile Bounties and drill site farming. With Amon on board, the latter will be comically fast.
- If you don’t plan on doing Vile Bounties, grinding EXP on NVHM is completely viable. Only do this if you have suboptimal gear and are greatly struggling with UVHM mobs.
Other Borderlands 4 Character Builds
If you enjoy trying different characters, check out these other Borderlands 4 builds:
Rafa Build
A cybernetic soldier who boosts his combat abilities with advanced tech and powerful weapons.
Vex Build
A dark Siren who uses supernatural powers to summon minions and overwhelm enemies.
Harlow Build
A tech specialist who controls the battlefield with gadgets and precision weaponry.