BORDERLANDS 4 AMON BUILD
LEVEL 1 TO 60
The Ultimate BUILD Guide
This Borderlands 4 Amon build guide aims to guide you get through Amon’s progression from level 1 to 60, with detailed skill choices, recommended gear and a straightforward progression route.
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Normal Vault Hunter Mode – Level 1 to 30
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
Equip a Forgeshield that will absorb all damage coming from the front. Absorbing damage will fill up the Vengeance meter, and once it’s full, you gain a bonus damage reduction. Using the action skill again while the shield is still active will cause you to shoot a Forgewave, which deals Cryo damage to anything it hits,
Level 2-4: 3 Points on Impetus
Whenever you kill an enemy, gain bonus shield regeneration rate and movement speed for a few seconds.
Level 5-6: 2 Points on What Burns Within
Get a small bonus to your Incendiary damage.
Level 7-11: 5 Points on Wield the Storm
Increases your status effect damage and duration.
Level 12-16: 5 Points on Bullet Storm
Whenever you apply any status effect, gain a temporary gun damage boost. This effect can stack to a certain extent.
Level 17-21: 5 Points on Catastrophe
Whenever you apply Shock to an enemy, gain a temporary critical hit chance buff. Whenever you apply Burning, you get a temporary critical damage buff. Both of these buffs stack independently.
Level 22-24: 3 Points on Crackling Aegis
You get a status effect damage and ordnance damage buff based on how much shields you currently have. Having a higher amount of shields means more power.
Level 25-26: 2 Points on Fists of Stone
Reduce the cooldown of your Forgeskill whenever you deal melee damage. This effect is doubled if you use a melee attack.
Level 27: 1 Point on Electrical Fire
Whenever you burn an enemy, shock them as well. Whenever you deal shock damage, burn the target too.
Level 28: 1 Point on Gut Punch
Both melee and ordnance damage have a small chance to apply Weakness, which causes enemies to deal less damage while also receiving more of it. Weakness is counted as a status effect, so it will benefit from status effect duration buffs.
Level 29-30: 2 Points on Berserk
Whenever you activate your action skill, gain the Berserk status for a few seconds. This makes you immune to slows and grants bonus Cryo damage to your melee and gun attacks.
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
- Your weapons will be completely preference-based early on, as there is nothing in this build that requires any specific weapons, much less non-ordnance ones. To synergize with our early skill nodes, you can generally opt for Maliwan guns just so you can guarantee that whatever your shooting has a chance at applying status effects
- If survivability is an issue in the early game, you can consider dropping some points into Heavy Plate to increase your max shields. This will work well with a maxed out Impetus, and it should solve any early issues with dying as long as you can consistently score kills.
- Make sure to upgrade your weapons over time, as there is no point holding onto lower level guns throughout the story. No need to rush for a heavy weapon either, as you won’t need it until you reach the 30s.
Best gears
Slot 1: Any Torgue gun for high burst damage
Slot 2: Any fast Rifles or SMGs as backups
Slot 3: Any Maliwan gun (preferably fire element)
Ordnance: Any heavy weapon works here
Repkit: Any repkit works
Shield: Firewerks
This Amon build doesn’t truly go “online” until much later, when you start breaking into the blue skill tree and carrying a strong heavy weapon. With that said, our early skill nodes work well with Maliwan weapons, particularly ones that can apply burns.
As we reach the end of the red skill tree, you’ll notice that the last node we get on the lower right (Electrical Fire) will synergize well with anything that burns enemies, further increasing your general damage output due to nodes like Catastrophe and Bullet Storm. Having fast weapons to switch to once you’ve stacked up enough crit bonuses will let you clear mobs and bosses quickly.
Torgue weapons are pretty good to have no matter what, especially early on when getting downed is fairly common. These will have a ton of burst damage to let you immediately get back up from FFYL mode, especially when facing a lot of mobs.
Finally, Firewerks is a fantastic shield to have early on, as it will pretty much blow up everything in your path as you clear mobs. This is especially great on an early game Amon, specifically with this build. Impetus makes it so that you can quickly get back to full shields, and since you typically quickly outlevel the shield after farming it, having bonus regen rate will be a massive help.
Before STARTING UVHM
Before entering Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, these guides and tips will help you prepare for the challenges ahead.
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FINAL CHECKLIST
If it’s your first ever playthrough, make sure to complete 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.
You can re-fight most bosses by interacting with the Moxxi’s Big Encore machine outside their arena. This makes farming legendary gear a relatively fast process compared to older games. Of course, the drops themselves are still RNG-dependent.
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 31 to 60
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 31-35: 5 Points on Wrath of Nature
Gain bonus status effect application chance and Cryo effectiveness. While your action skill is active, these bonuses are doubled.
Augment: Cryonic Thrum
While Scourge is active, taunt nearby enemies and periodically fire a Cryonic Pulse that deals Cryo damage. This also heals nearby allies. Your movement speed will be reduced while aiming whenever this effect is active, but in exchange, you gain bonus Cryo damage while shooting and drain Vengeance per shot.
Level 36-40: 5 Points on Battleborn
Get bonus gun damage based on your current health. While at max health, this bonus is doubled.
Level 41-45: 5 Points on Tail of the Comet
Gain a chance to apply Cryo to enemies whenever you deal ordnance damage.
Level 46-50: 5 Points on Icy Rage
Whenever you kill an enemy with Cryo damage, gain a stack of Cryo Affinity, which further increases your gun damage.
Level 51-55: 5 Points on Primal Surge
Whenever you apply status effects, there is a 25% chance to restore some of your shield and ammo.
Level 56-60: 5 Points on Blackout
Ordnance damage now has a chance to trigger critical hits, which will also apply the Shock status effect
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: Any good Torgue weapon
Slot 2: Any high level Maliwan weapon
Slot 3 & 4: Any other weapon you like
Ordnance: Heimdahl or Purple Torgue launchers
Repkit: Kill Spring
Shield: Watts 4 Dinner with Amp
Class Mod: Grenadier
Enhancement: Depends on your weapons
As you go through the later levels, you’ll start seeing the value in having a powerful heavy weapon. Until you reach max level, you can get by with any rocket launcher or even minigun, or you could try to farm an Atling Gun if you really want a legendary that requires little effort to use. Eventually, you’ll want to try and get a Heimdahl for a massive power spike in the endgame.
If you’re struggling to farm legendaries at the moment, a good Torgue rocket launcher will suffice. Tonguewag Torgue launchers are amazing for this build, as they will almost always instantly trigger your kill skills on mobs and likely also score lots of crits in general.
Your regular guns don’t matter all that much for this build, as you will rarely be using them. With that said, a good Maliwan weapon is still a solid backup, as it will still work well with your skill nodes. A regular Torgue gun with high base damage will be useful for FFYL mode, but you shouldn’t be getting downed outside of extreme edge cases.
Kill Spring is a useful repkit to have with this build, but you have to be mindful and use it just before firing so you can get the most out of its buffs. The same goes for Watts 4 Dinner, as you want to take advantage of its amp before it gets removed (if ever). Honey Badger is a viable alternative shield if you keep accidentally hitting yourself with rockets
Grenadier is a good class mod in general, especially with high ordnance and damage buffs. For your enhancement, it doesn’t really matter what you get, so just tailor it to whatever regular guns you carry with you.
Optimizing for UVHM
Ready for Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode? Complete the following checklist to optimize your build before taking on the toughest content in the game.
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FINAL CHECKLIST
You can unlock further levels of UVHM by completing certain challenges, but for pure leveling, this isn’t necessary. 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.
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.