BORDERLANDS 4 RAFA BUILD
LEVEL 1 TO 60
The Ultimate BUILD Guide
This Borderlands 4 Rafa build guide aims to guide you get through Rafa’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 30
During your first playthrough, you’ll be progressing through the 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 beat the final boss and finish the main questline.
I’ll leave this vague to avoid major spoilers, but it’s worth noting that higher UVHM ranks require you to complete challenges and finish quests given by a certain important NPC. You’ll know who it is when you get there. 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: Peacebreaker Cannons
Rafa equips his Peacebreaker Cannons, which will automatically fire at enemies you’re aiming at. This skill deals kinetic gun damage and can be canceled early for a shorter cooldown.
Level 2-6: 5 Points on Shield Barriest
While Overdrive is active, gain increased shield recharge rate and regen delay.
Augment: Instinto
Your Peacebreaker Cannons now have bonus critical hit chance, and pressing F while they are active will double this bonus while also increasing their critical hit damage. To balance this out, your action skill will drain faster while it is active, but killing enemies will cause you to regain some of its duration.
Level 7-11: 5 Points on Juerga
Restore some of your action skill duration whenever you score a critical hit on an enemy.
Level 12-16: 5 Points on Resiliencia
While Overdrive is active, you gain bonus damage reduction.
Level 17-21: 5 Points on Barrage
You get increased splash damage while Overdrive is active.
Level 22-26: 5 Points on Temerario
While Overdrive is active, you gain increased gun damage in exchange for reduced weapon handling.
Capstone: Volatile Hollowpoints
Your Peacebreaker Cannons are now replaced with rockets that deal splash damage
Level 27: 1 Point on Soltado
Double all of your Overdrive bonuses for a few seconds whenever you score a kill.
Level 28-30: 3 Points on El Valiente
Deal bonus damage from all sources. This bonus gets stronger the fuller your shields are, and this buff doubles while you’re at max capacity.
Progression route
Goal: In NVHM, your main goal is to finish the main questline to unlock all of the post-campaign mechanics. Once the story officially ends, you can start the real grind for max level. 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.
In Borderlands 4, a lot of the mechanics that you’d expect from the franchise have been changed, and you may be in for a bit of a shock when you first start playing. The most important change to keep in mind is that, unlike in the previous game, you aren’t flooded with legendaries anymore, and you don’t need them to grind fast.
Here are a few tips to help with the leveling process:
Level 1 to 30: Going through the story
- Jakobs weapons work well for this build in the early levels, as you’ll benefit a lot from Juerga with how often you’ll be scoring crits and, as a result, also hitting ricochets for faster clears. It’s worth noting that Juerga has a cooldown of a few seconds, so you still can’t rely on it for infinite duration.
- If survivability is an issue, you can consider putting points into Field Repairs instead, as this will help you restore (or further boost with overshield) your shields whenever you activate your action skill. CYA before Juerga could help too, though with how low your max health will likely be in the early levels, this may not do much.
- Don’t forget to upgrade your guns as you level up. This build is entirely gun-dependent, so always keep your gear updated to avoid running into a wall later on.
Best gears
Slot 1: Any Jakobs shotgun for quick crits and high burst damage
Slot 2: Any fast Rifle or SMG as a backup
Ordnance: Anything works here
Repkit: Any repkit works
Shield: Firewerks
This build takes advantage of Overdrive synergies and being able to consistently score crits and killing enemies as fast as possible. In line with this, you’re going to be using a lot of high burst damage or fast weapons to dish out a lot of punishment.
Jakobs weapons, especially shotguns if you prefer getting close, are fantastic for this as they allow you to ricochet on crit, spreading damage across a whole crowd. Any fast rifle or SMG will be great too, especially if you aim for weak points to continue scoring crits.
The build aims to be as simple as possible, since you basically just activate your Peacebreaker Cannons whenever you enter a fight, and then try your best to keep it active as long as possible. Use it off cooldown if fights last long enough to let that happen, and just keep aiming for the head to consistently trigger Juerga.
The Firewerks shield is optional, but it is a fantastic early game tool that you can farm from Splashzone, who is a boss that you face during the opening sections of the game. He has a relatively high chance to drop the shield, and it’s something that you can take with you all throughout the campaign (farming an updated version is easy, too). Again, this is optional, so feel free to use whatever properly leveled shield you have as you go through the main questline.
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 now unlock Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM). This mode increases the overall difficulty of the game in exchange for better EXP and loot drop rates. It has higher ranks with “better” rates, but these will actually slow you down if your goal is to reach max level ASAP.
For this guide, I highly recommend turning on tier 1 of UVHM and leaving it at that. 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 31-35: 5 Points on CYA
Whenever you score a kill, restore your shields based on your maximum HP.
Level 36-40: 5 Points on Las Jaras
While Overdrive is active, regenerate a percentage of your ammo every second.
Level 41-45: 5 Points on The Thrill
Gain increased fire rate. This bonus is increased even more while Overdrive is active.
Level 46-50: 5 Points on First Impression
The first shot you fire from any fully loaded weapon magazine will gain bonus damage.
Level 51-55: 5 Points on Brain Dump
While Overdrive is active, you get bonus critical hit chance with your guns.
Level 56-60: 5 Points on Jaque
Whenever you deal damage with your action skill, gain a stack of Jaque. Each stack of Jaque increases your Overdrive bonuses by a small percentage, and you lose all stacks after Overdrive ends. Stacks are capped at 20.
Progression route
Goal: You should be around level 30 by the time you complete the story, assuming you’ve been focusing solely on finishing it. By the time you unlock Rafa’s capstone ability, you should be in a pretty good position to target farm specific gear, as clearing enemies will get much easier from this point on.
Let’s go over the different methods you can do in the open world to grind for EXP:
- Vile Bounties (the purple ones) are the best option for grinding EXP. They can only show up on bounty boards while UVHM is turned 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 great 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.
With this build, Rafa will breeze through all of these methods. Even with Vile Bounties, your splash damage will easily deal with problematic weak points that would normally be a pain to hit. Survivability shouldn’t be a problem because of Shield Barriest and Resiliencia, and your high burst will get rid of enemies before they even deal enough damage.
Keeping your action skill (and consequently, Overdrive) active is going to be the main issue that you’ll have to live with while still progressing through the story. Fights will likely end before this becomes a real problem, but always try your best to mitigate this with Juerga by aiming for weak points. Your Peacebreaker Cannons will help if aim is an issue, but you can’t always rely on it to land crits for you.
Best gears
Slot 1: Wombo Combo
Slot 2: Any high level Jakobs weapons
Slot 3: A different Jakobs weapon
Slot 4: Any other weapon you like
Ordnance: Any Penetrator knife for the crit chance
Repkit: Triple Bypass
Shield: Watts 4 Dinner with Amp
Class Mod: Dancer
Enhancement: Depends on your weapons
Again, this is an incredibly simple build, so there is no “mandatory” weapon, even at the late game stages. Wombo Combo is a fun recommendation that works with this build, as its underbarrel rockets will benefit from Barrage’s bonus splash damage, and it’s just a decent weapon overall.
Your backup Jakobs weapons can technically be anything else you want, but this manufacturer in particular is a good backup because of its crits and ricochets. Literally anything that fires fast and can crit will be good, so you’re spoiled for choice while using this. You can also consider Torgue weapons, though pick ones with a high fire rate if ever, as this build relies a lot on quick kills.
Penetrator augment knives are a must, as they let you deal critical hits without shooting weak points. This isn’t essential, but it’ll provide you the best DPS possible. Watts 4 Dinner synergizes well with your shield-based skills, and a variant with Amp will further increase your already absurd damage output.
The Triple Bypass repkit is taken because you’re expected to unlock the Now With Caffeine specialization as you progress into the endgame. This allows you to speed up your action skill cooldown per use, and the Triple Bypass is a massive help here due to its multiple charges.
Dancer is an essential component of this build, as it will drastically increase your Overdrive bonuses, and it’ll keep Overdrive active for as long as your action skill is active. It may also free up some of your skill points since it can spawn with free levels into Soltado and Temerario, allowing you to allocate them elsewhere.
Finally, your enhancement is completely gun-dependent. Just pick one that will buff your favorite weapons, and preferably one that has a gun damage and/or fire rate bonus. As long as it increases your DPS, it’ll fit in well with this build.
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:
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.
Amon Build
A battle-hardened fighter focused on brutal melee combat and strong elemental attacks.