BORDERLANDS 4 RAFA BUILD
LEVEL 1 TO 50
The Ultimate BUILD Guide
This Borderlands 4 Rafa build guide aims to guide you get through Rafa’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 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
Augment: Bullet-Buddy Deluxe
This will make you (and your teammates, if any) restore ammo over time while your Peacebreaker Cannons are active.
Capstone: Double-Ought Autoshot
Level 2-6: 5 Points on Sitiar
Increases your gun damage by 25%.
Level 7-11: 5 Points on Juerga
Your action skill duration is restored by a small percentage every time you critically hit an enemy.
Level 12-14: 3 Points on Maestro
You gain 27% bonus skill damage.
Level 15-16: 2 Points on Resiliencia
While your Overdrive passive is active, you get bonus damage reduction.
Level 17-21: 5 Points on Asymmetric Warfare
Indirect projectiles now deal additional damage.
Level 22-26: 5 Points on Errant Spark
Your indirect projectiles now deal bonus fire damage. If it already deals fire damage, this bonus is doubled.
Level 27: 1 Point on Lateral Plinking
Your indirect projectiles now have a 25% chance to ricochet.
Level 28: 1 Point onHostile Acquisition
Your indirect projectiles now have a small life steal bonus.
Level 29-30: 2 Points on Barrage
Gain bonus splash damage while your Overdrive passive is active.
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
- This build takes advantage of Rafa’s Peacebreaker Cannons, which can be buffed to generate ammo and deal a ton of damage. With the help of Juerga and your Overdrive passive, you’ll be clearing mobs like a speed demon that never runs out of bullets.
- Early on, you can use the Instinto augment instead of Bullet-Buddy Deluxe if you prefer killing enemies with your Peacebreaker Cannons instead. Swap this back to Bullet-Buddy Deluxe once you start approaching the appropriate level to unlock your capstone, Double-Ought Autoshot.
- There’s a version of this build that goes to the lower right side of the red skill tree first (where Barrage is located), but we’re going to be picking from the left to focus on survivability. Asymmetric Warfare, Double-Ought Autoshot, and Lateral Plinking combined with Hostile Acquisition will clear groups fast and keep your HP comfortably topped up throughout the campaign.
Best gears
Slot 1: Any good Jakobs shotgun or pistol
Slot 2: Any backup weapon with a different ammo type
Ordnance: Throwing knives with the Penetrator Augment
Repkit: Anything is fine
Shield: Any is fine, but amp shields help with DPS
Class Mod: Anything that buffs your damage
Enhancement: Same as above
Specific gear pieces aren’t as important in this stage of the game, but you’ll be progressing smoothly by focusing on high gun damage and playing into your indirect projectile buffs.
Jakobs weapons, even generic ones, are great for this build as they already have the innate ability to ricochet on critical hit. With a shotgun or pistol, you can easily score these through precise shooting, and with consistent aim, you’ll be triggering an ungodly number of ricochets. It’s not really worth target farming specific items at this point, as you’ll be outleveling them soon enough anyway. There’s also the fact that your Peacebreaker Cannons will have more than enough firepower to carry you through most of the game’s content. Once you unlock Double-Ought Autoshot, they become hilariously powerful on their own.
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 traverse the game’s wide open world.
- You can re-fight most bosses by paying the Moxxi’s Big Encore machine outside their respective arenas. This makes farming for specific gear a relatively fast process compared to older games, as it eliminates the need to reset the whole level.
- 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 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 31-33: 3 Points on Barrage.
Cap this off to unlock the next, arguably most important node.
Level 34-38: 5 Points on Temerario
Gain a stack of Temerario for every second that your Overdrive passive is active. Each stack grants bonus gun damage in exchange for worse gun handling.
Level 39: 1 Point on Soltado
Briefly double all of your Overdrive bonuses every time you kill an enemy.
Level 40-44: 5 Points on The Thrill
Gain increased fire rate. While Overdrive is active, you get additional fire rate buffs.
Level 45-49: 5 Points on Expedite
While your Overdrive passive is active, you gain an additional 25% bonus movement speed.
Level 50: 1 Point in your skill node of choice.
- You can put this into Resiliencia for additional damage reduction while Overdrive is on.
- Las Jaras might be an okay choice for a very small ammo generation buff, which adds on to Bullet-Buddy Deluxe’s 5% bonus.
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.
- 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 this build, you shouldn’t have any trouble melting this beefy badass psycho.
Rafa performs particularly well in drill sites because of how fast he can clear waves with his ricochets, which will be coming from both your own attacks and your Peacebreaker Cannons. Once the boss spawns, you’re still likely going to benefit from these as weaker mobs may still be present in the arena.
Overall, you’ll be completely fine with any of the three main methods. Overdrive’s bonus movement speed coupled with Expedite will make hunting Vile Bounties a breeze. If you can somehow keep your bonuses active in the open world, you can actually speed towards your bounty targets on foot.
With good aim (to break crystals), Vile Bounties will undeniably be your best EXP farming method. Once you bust the crystals, you can easily prevent their reformation by breaking all of the orbs via ricochets. Heck, some bounty targets might get shredded themselves before you even interact with that mechanic.
Best gears
Slot 1: Wombo Combo
Slot 2: Hot Slugger
Slots 3: Any Jakobs backup weapons
Slot 4: Any Torgue backup weapons
Ordnance: Throwing knives with the Penetrator Augment
Repkit: Triple Bypass with Amp
Shield: Anything with high capacity or an amp effect
Class Mod: Anything that increases DPS and adds points to Temerario
Enhancement: Anything that increases your DPS and buffs your Jakobs weapons/parts
This build takes full advantage of ricochets, so the Hot Slugger is a great all-arounder to have. Alternatively, any other weapon with a Jakobs-licensed part that’s easy to use and trigger crits with is great, especially when paired with all of your other passives and enhancement buffs. An enhancement with both Piercer and Leaper will make such weapons hilariously strong.
The Wombo Combo is fantastic against Vile Bounties, as the splash damage could help speed up the crystal breaking process against certain enemy types. It’s also just nice to have in general, especially for mobbing, as Barrage is buffing its AOE damage as well.
As for your shield, you’ll get by with pretty much anything the has high capacity. Even if it’s always depleted, you’ll have more than enough life steal to stay alive in any fight. There’s also the one that drops from the final boss of the game (the name gives it away), and this works really well with your life steal setup as it grants bonus damage reduction and a ton of health regeneration.
Tips for UVHM
- You can unlock higher levels of UVHM by completing challenges, but you don’t need to do this if your goal is just to level up. At most, you should 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 reset every time.
- If you have friends that can help you out, grouping up speeds up both Vile Bounties and drill site farming. This may not be that much faster with all of your ricochets, though.
- 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.
MORE RAFA BUILDS
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.