BORDERLANDS 4 C4SH BUILD
LEVEL 1 TO 60
The Ultimate BUILD Guide
This Borderlands 4 C4SH build guide aims to guide you get through C4SH’s progression from level 1 to 60, with detailed skill choices, recommended gear and a straightforward progression route.
For more builds, guides, Easter Eggs and the latest SHIFT codes, visit our Borderlands 4 hub page.
Normal Vault Hunter Mode – Level 1 to 35
In your first playthrough, you’ll be going through the main story in Normal Vault Hunter Mode (NVHM). This is the default setting with no modifiers, and the first rank of UVHM (the endgame mode) is unlocked as soon as you officially beat the main questline and complete some tasks for a certain important NPC.
I’ll leave this vague to avoid major spoilers, but it’s worth noting that higher UVHM ranks require you to complete additional challenges and a repeat of specific missions with modifiers in effect. You don’t have to unlock higher UVHM ranks unless you really like the challenge of spongier enemies. For just pure leveling, even normal difficulty is fine in some cases.
Recommended Skills
Action Skill: Cleromancy
On cast, roll your Bone Dice to create a Bone Totem, which will have varying effects based on the result of your roll. Doubles will spawn a buffed version of the dice’s corresponding totem. More totem types can be unlocked through certain augments.
Level 2-6: 5 Points on Charm Bracelet
Gain increased skill damage, which is further buffed with every active totem on the field.
Pick Augment: Five is Alive
Gan an extra charge of Cleromancy. Rolling 5s will now spawn a Lightning Rod Totem, which will cast lightning bolts that can chain to nearby enemies. Status effects will speed up the generation of these bolts.
Level 7-11: 5 Points on Ready to Roll
During Windfall, you get increased action skill duration and cooldown rate.
Level 12-15: 4 Points on Bonemeal Ticket
Whenever your Bone Totems score a kill, restore some of your action skill duration.
Level 16: 1 Point on Devil’s Tines
Get an extra augment slot
2nd Augment: Heavenly Sevens
Your Bone Totems will now have a longer duration, and you can spawn a Protector Totem by rolling 7s. These new totems will give you bonus overshield, fire rate, and reload speed.
Level 17: 1 Point on Can’t Stop Winning
Gain a chance to score critical hits with your guns and action skills. Every time you score a critical hit, gain a small chance to activate Windfall.
Level 18-22: 5 Points on Accursed Bones
Dealing damage with your action skill will cause your targets to become Jinxed. This status effect causes them to take bonus damage from all sources while also decreasing the damage they can deal. You also have bonus lifesteal against Jinxed targets.
Level 23-27: 5 Points on Tormented
You and your companions will now have bonus critical hit damage, which is further increased while attacking Jinxed targets.
Level 28: 1 Point on Snake Eyes
Whenever you hit enemies with your gun, fire a bone shard at Jinxed enemies. These bone shards will also create bone splinters that deal damage to nearby enemies. Enemies hit by bone shards take bonus damage from all sources.
Level 29: 1 Point on Call
Whenever you use your action skill, you and your totems will get a guaranteed critical hit on Jinxed targets.
Level 30-34: 5 Points on Restless Remains
Whenever one of your totems dies, it has a small chance to respawn. Higher Fortune stacks gives you a higher chance to respawn totems.
Progression route
Goal: In NVHM, your main focus should be on completing the main questline to gain access to the post-campaign features. When the story officially ends, that’s when the real grind starts, as is tradition. Along the way, you can do side quests whenever you feel like it, though focusing solely on the story should get you to around level 30.
Borderlands 4 feels a lot more different than the previous entries, but in a good way. The most important thing to keep in mind is that, unlike in the previous game, you aren’t going to be flooded with legendary items anymore. Luckily, you don’t need them to grind fast, as generic gear is more viable now.
Level 1 to 30: Going through the story
- This build, especially early on, doesn’t rely too much on specific gear pieces to be effective. Instead, it’s a whole lot of RNG, as is the case with the green skill tree’s reliance on dice rolls.
- Survivability shouldn’t be much of an issue as your own bone totems can act as meat shields, and with Protector totems spawned by Heavenly Sevens, you are going to be incredibly tanky. Bonemeal Ticket will grant your totems their own sustain as well.
- You’ll start to feel a significant power spike as you unlock abilities like Can’t Stop Winning and Accursed Bones, especially if you start tailoring your loadout towards high crit weapons. Jakobs guns, even generic ones, will be fantastic for this, especially with the bonus critical hit damage from Tormented.
Best gears
Slot 1: Any Jakobs gun for crits
Slot 2: Any fast Rifles or SMGs
Ordnance: Anything works here
Repkit: Any repkit works
Shield: Firewerks
For this C4SH build, any Jakobs weapon is a great choice all throughout the leveling process. Not only do they have a lot of base damage, which is going to be massive with critical hit damage buffs, but you’ll also get ricochets on crits that’ll help with mobbing. Bring one or two different types of Jakobs guns to avoid ammo issues.
It’s also worth noting that Can’t Stop Winning has a decent chance of granting you Windfall whenever you score a critical hit. This will further buff you and your totems’ already good damage output at this point. It also grants a very small chance to crit with any gun, so mag dumping a fast-firing gun can help trigger this effect.
As for anything else in your loadout, it’s completely up to personal preference. What’s important is that you keep spamming your action skill and landing critical hits. Firewerks is a decent shield to go for as it helps a lot with mobbing, but it isn’t mandatory. If you don’t want to farm Splashzone, feel free to continue using whatever appropriately-leveled shield you already have.
Before STARTING UVHM
Before entering Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode, these guides and tips will help you prepare for the challenges ahead.
CONTINUE READING
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 32 to 60
The first time you finish the story, you can unlock Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM). This mode increases the difficulty of the game in exchange for slightly better EXP and loot drop rates. It has higher ranks with further rate increases, but the enemies will be too spongy that it’ll actually slow you down if your goal is to reach max level.
For this guide, I highly recommend turning on tier 1 of UVHM and ignoring the rest for now. Vile Bounties can only show up in this game mode, and keeping it at the first tier will make it so that enemies are still reasonably easy to kill.
Recommended Skills
Level 35-39: 5 Points on Potent Posse
You gain bonus gun damage while your companions gain bonus overall damage. These bonuses get stronger with more Fortune stacks.
Level 40: 1 Point on Tooth and Nail
You and your companions get bonus melee damage. Whenever any of you deal melee damage to enemies, you gain a chance to Jinx that target.
Level 41-45: 5 Points on Sidekick’s Revenge
Whenever you gain a Fortune stack, some of your health is turned into overshield instead. Whenever you lose HP, get bonus action skill damage.
Level 46-48: 3 Points on The Glorious Dead
Whenever one of your allies enters FFYL mode or one of your totems dies, gain increased gun and skill damage.
Level 49: 1 Point on Alchemy
Whenever you apply elemental effects, you gain a stack of Fortune. You also get increased elemental effect chance.
Level 50-54: 5 Points on Hard-Boiled
Whenever you gain a Fortune stack, you restore some of your action skill duration.
Level 55-59: 5 Points on Your Huckleberry
Gain bonus critical hit damage.
Level 60: 1 Point on Devil’s Tines (Chaos Walking)
Gain another augment slot.
3rd Augment: Three’s Company
You gain increased Windfall duration with each active totem. You can also create Arcane totems by rolling 3s, and these grant bonus action skill damage. This totem will also instantly give you a Cleromancy charge.
Progression route
Goal: If you’ve only been focusing on the main questline, you should be around the level 35 range by the time you complete the story.
With the story completed, here are the open world activities you can grind for EXP:
- Vile Bounties (the purple ones) offer the highest EXP rates when done efficiently. They can only show up on bounty boards while UVHM is on, so make sure to check every safehouse after loading into the game. The downside to this method is that you have to reset the lobby to refresh boards.
- Drill sites are a decent 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. This build’s specialty is trivializing boss fights, so you’re free to choose almost anything else if you’re going down this path.
For this build specifically, boss farming and Vile Bounties should be your go-to farming activity. Personally, I would go for bosses to target certain drops instead, and the predictability of each one’s arena makes it easy to land your action skill. If you are fine with chasing down targets all around the map and restarting the game for more contracts, Vile Bounties are the best choice.
Drill sites can still be decent, but you’ll need to find other sources of status effects if you can’t apply any via your action skill. Mobs melt too fast that you can’t always take advantage of Skeptic for faster cooldowns.
While still leveling up, or immediately after reaching 50, go for the bosses that drop the best gear for your build. On that note…
Best gears
Slot 1: Constable
Slot 2: Jail-Broken Gatling
Slots 3 & 4: Any backups that you prefer
Ordnance: Anything works here
Repkit: Kill Spring or Shiny War Paint
Shield: Watts 4 Dinner with Amp and/or Siphon
Class Mod: Whale
Enhancement: Anything with bonus gun damage
This is a very simple build that relies a lot on spamming action skills, so even just slotting in a Constable will help you deal a ton of damage in general. The bonus damage from nodes like Potent Posse and Tormented will obliterate enemies, and since the Constable can apply elemental effects, you’ll even be triggering Alchemy for more Fortune stacks.
Fortune stacks are extremely important here, as these will grant you more damage, longer totem duration, extra survivability from Sidekick’s Revenge, and more Windfall activations. Jail-Broken Gatling is a solid backup weapon because of its fast fire rate and elemental damage, especially once you start ramping up with stacks of Backfire, which can grant extra projectiles too.
Kill Spring is a great choice if survivability is somehow an issue. This will let you heal up to full for Sidekick’s Revenge. Shiny War Paint is great if you prefer a more active DPS buff and aren’t struggling with health, as it grants even more fire rate to stack on top of your already pumped-up speed.
Whale is the ideal class mod here as it converts all of your cooldown rate bonuses into action skill damage, making your totems more potent. In exchange, you now have a cooldown rate of 0, and you restore 10% of your cooldown every time you earn a Fortune stack. Earning Fortune stacks will also give you bonus reload speed and fire rate, letting it synergize well with your top weapons.
Finally, just pick up a Watts 4 Dinner with at least Amp for extra DPS. Siphon is nice to have too, but not completely needed since you already generate overshield without it. As for your enhancement, all that’s important here is that you beef up your gun damage stat even more.
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.
CONTINUE READING
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.
Amon Build
A battle-hardened fighter focused on brutal melee combat and strong elemental attacks.