BORDERLANDS 4 VEX BUILD
LEVEL 1 TO 50
The Ultimate BUILD Guide
This Borderlands 4 Vex build guide aims to guide you get through Vex’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 going through the game in Normal Vault Hunter Mode (NVHM). In this game, it’s the default setting with no modifiers, and you only unlock the first rank of UVHM, the endgame mode, as soon as you finish the story.
To avoid any potential spoilers, I’ll leave it at that, but it’s worth noting that further 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 to that point. Unlocking higher UVHM ranks is not required for leveling up and may actually slow you down despite the slight EXP boost.
Recommended Skills
Action Skill: Phase Phamiliary
This gives you Trouble, a powerful minion that will do some of the tanking and a respectable amount of damage for you.
Level 2-6: 5 Points on Grave Sustenance
On kill, restore up to 25% of your missing action skill duration.
Pick Augment: Blink Strike
Holding the action skill will cause Trouble to Blink Strike at the target enemy. This attack will always crit against enemies below half health.
Level 7-9: 3 Points on Grave Command
On kill, restore some of your command skill cooldown and Trouble’s respawn cooldown.
Level 10-14: 5 Points on Yowl and Bay
Your minions will now have bonus max health capacity. After commanding Trouble, you gain bonus gun damage for 8 seconds.
Level 15-16: 2 Points on Vorpal Fiends
Both you and Trouble gain bonus critical hit damage.
Change Augment: Hexus Nexus
Trouble can now taunt enemies, causing them to target him. Holding the action skill will now cause Trouble to charge at the target enemy, creating a singularity and dealing damage in a small area.
Level 17-21: 5 Points on Shocking Attunement
While you are attuned to shock, gain bonus movement speed and gun damage while moving.
Level 22-26: 5 Points on Infusion
Whenever you use a repkit, both you and Trouble gain bonus damage with weapons and melee. You also deal bonus elemental damage based on your current weapon.
Pick Capstone: Unsealed
Trouble will now mark his current target, which causes them to take bonus damage from your guns. Killing a marked enemy will grant Trouble a stack of Unsealed, which increases his health regeneration and damage. These bonuses are doubled while Phase Phamiliar is active.
Level 27-29: 3 Points on Guns and Needles
Restores some of your repkit cooldown on kill.
Level 30-31: 2 Points on Grave Sights
On kill, gain a stack of bonus critical hit damage and gun handling.
Progression route
Goal: In NVHM, your main focus should be on finishing the main story to unlock the endgame mechanics. Side quests can be done at your leisure, but speaking from experience, you can completely focus on the story and finish it by around the level 30 range, give or take.
Unlike in all of the previous games, you can get by with any rarity of weapons. Over time, you’ll be rocking a mix of purple and legendary gear, but you aren’t going to struggle in earlier levels while using “junk” weapons. Don’t bother target farming too hard, because you’re going to outlevel gear rather quickly.
Here are a few tips to help with the leveling process:
Level 1 to 30: Going through the story
- Vex benefits greatly from using elemental weapons due to her Phase Covenant passive, which lets her attune to your current weapon’s element. This means that Maliwan is your go-to manufacturer.
- Shock weapons will let you take full advantage of Shocking Attunement. This lets you speed around and clear mobs faster, which is great with how open the map is nowadays.
- Once you unlock Hexus Nexus, you can now have Trouble act as your tank. This will make both mobbing and bossing much easier, even if you have an underleveled shield.
Best gears
Slot 1: Any Maliwan weapon (preferably an SMG) with the shock element will do well.
Slot 2: A different element Maliwan weapon for shock-resistant enemies.
Slot 3: Any Jakobs pistol as a backup.
Ordnance: Anything works here.
Repkit: Any Order repkit.
Shield: Firewerks
For this build, it’s important to have fast weapons to take full advantage of all your gun damage buffs. The Jakobs backup isn’t mandatory, but if you’re carrying a pair of SMGs, it never hurts to have a different weapon type that deals non-elemental damage. Torgue might work for this purpose too.
Order repkits have multiple charges, which lets you abuse Infusion and Guns and Needles. Once you have the latter unlocked, don’t be afraid to spam it while mobbing. You’ll deal a surprising amount of damage by keeping Infusion up at all times.
As for your shield, Firewerks is a fantastic early game choice for mobbing, as it does a ton of damage to nearby enemies on kill. You can get it from Splashzone, which is the first boss that you can farm in the game. Although it takes little effort to kill him, you don’t have to stay here for too long. If it doesn’t drop after a while, just settle for any appropriately leveled shield.
Tips for NVHM
- 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 50
Upon completing the story and finishing certain challenges, you will have access to Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode (UVHM), which lets you increase the difficulty in exchange for better rates across the board, as well as increased loot quality. There’s a bit of nuance when it comes to which mode is better for leveling.
For the purposes of this guide, I highly recommend turning it on as soon as you unlock it. This gives you access to Vile Bounties, which do not spawn in the normal mode. Before we proceed, let’s finish off our skill tree.
Recommended Skills
Level 32-36: 5 Points on Fiendish Invigoration
Whenever you use a repkit, both you and Trouble will gain bonus movement speed and fire rate.
Level 37-41: 5 Points on Target Prescience
Your gun damage will now have extra critical hit chance against any part of enemies.
Level 42-46: 5 Points on Channeling
You get bonus action skill duration and attunement duration.
Level 47-49: 3 Points on Vorpal Fiends
We’re capping out this skill to get more critical hit damage on both yourself and Trouble.
Level 50: 1 Point on any skill node you want.
- Stormblessed will give you a bit of bonus shock damage, which works well with your main weapons.
- An extra point on Grave Sights will give you slightly more critical hit damage on kill.
Progression route
Goal: By around this level range, you are likely done with the story. If not, that’s also fine! Just continue working on it and following the skill tree until you unlock Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode. Once you’ve activated UVHM, you can do the following open world activities to grind your levels:
- Vile Bounties (the purple ones) are the absolute best when it comes to EXP grinding. They can show up on any bounty board as long as UVHM is turned on. The downside is that you have to go back to the main menu to refresh bounty boards.
- Drill sites are another fantastic choice, especially the Pitted Stain. Your speed in clearing these will depend entirely 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 relatively fast way to gain a lot of EXP. Splashzone is the easiest due to his distance to the Moxxi’s Big Encore machine and the fact that he’s essentially just a slightly beefier badass psycho. With a strong gun, you can delete him within seconds.
For Vex, it’s going to be easy finishing Vile Bounties at any level. Hexus Nexus takes the pressure away from you, giving you plenty of room to deal with the weak spots and orbs that you have to destroy while fighting these special enemies. Make sure to max out your SMG ammo count early, as you’ll be burning through a ton of bullets with this build.
Aside from these open world methods, doing any leftover side quests can net you a decent amount of EXP if you ever wanted to complete them. Killing random mobs in the open world is much less efficient, but it’s still an okay source of EXP if you just want to kick back and roam the map.
Best gears
Slot 1: Onslaught (shock)
Slot 2: Onslaught or generic Maliwan weapon(any other element)
Slot 3: Any Maliwan gun with shock as backup.
Slot 4: Any strong Torgue backup weapon.
Ordnance: Anything. This doesn’t matter much in this build.
Repkit: AF1000
Shield: Firewerks
Class Mod: Teen Witch
Enhancement: Anything that buffs your SMGs and/or Maliwan weapons in general.
Once you’re done with the story, it’s worth farming an Onslaught from Idolator Sol. Obviously, you’ll want to have at least a shock version of the weapon to take advantage of your passive skills. If you’re really unlucky, you’ll be fine with any Maliwan SMG that has shock as its element. Bring a Torgue weapon if you’re struggling with hitting Vile Bounty targets’ weak spots.
The AF1000 is a fantastic repkit to have with this build. It has an extremely long duration and a short cooldown, which is further sped up by Guns and Needles. It drops from Rocken Roller, which is a boss you can find at the Trinket Crevass. Feel free to farm for it whenever you can, as the level doesn’t really matter for how you’re going to use it.
As for the shield, Firewerks continues to be a good choice for level grinding. In drill sites, you’ll be clearing each attempt much faster with the help of its passive effects. This also works decently against Vile Bounties, especially if you have weaker targets nearby.
There’s also a shield that drops from the final boss that you can use if survivability is an issue, and this works particularly well if you have a source of lifesteal or a Pacemaker repkit.
Speaking of which, the Teen Witch can come with a combo of gun or SMG damage and lifesteal. These stats are ideal for maximum damage and survivability. Kindread Spirits can be an okay alternative too.
Tips for UVHM
- 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.
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.