MeinMMO editor Dariusz Müller is currently testing Borderlands 4 and can already report on a boss fight in this preview. Five things particularly caught his attention.
In Borderlands 4, our Vault Hunter faces off against the Timekeeper, who naturally sends his own fighters into the ring. Throughout the campaign, we therefore join the Crimson Resistance to fight against Idolator Sol, a lieutenant of the Timekeeper.
The battle leads us straight to Sol’s fortress, where we fight our way through with the help of the Crimson Resistance. At the end of the mission, Idolator Sol awaits us, whom we then turn into a puddle in a boss fight.
This one boss fight revealed a lot about the game to me. I now want to share with you what I noticed.
The boss has his own counter
Idolator Sol protects himself in the fight with impenetrable armor – to avoid spoiling the story, I won’t go into detail here. You have to break this armor repeatedly by picking up a canister and throwing it at him. This exposes the bare body of your powerful enemy and allows you to deal damage.
Sol also has a crit spot: his gigantic head. If you remove the armor from his head, you can attack him with critical hits, thereby inflicting even more damage.
Keep an eye on the arena and the boss’s actions
You can break Sol’s armor, but he can also regenerate it. I learned that it’s important to keep an eye on the arena and the actions of the boss during the boss fight – even if it seems like he’s currently defenseless.
In the boss arena, aside from Sol, there are individual adds running around, in this case small, boring soldiers who think they can somehow damage your mighty Vault Hunter. Sol can use these soldiers to repair his armor. You then have to break it again. This can be stressful in a later phase of the fight.
It’s better if you prevent the armor from regenerating and send the harmless adds to their demise.
The skills of the Vault Hunters are perfect for damage phases
I need to use my Vault Hunter’s action skill more often. Raw firepower can work, but a solid hit from the action skill simply creates a beautiful gap in the health bar of the villain.
What is an action skill?
If you’re new to Borderlands: Each Vault Hunter has three action skills to choose from. These action skills are the defining abilities that a class has within the respective skill trees. They accordingly determine the played build and playstyle.
In my first run, I play Amon with the axes of Cryo and Fire. When I combine both axes, it becomes a double axe. While leveling up, I focused on having the lowest cooldown possible for the axes so that they are always available when I need them.
In the boss fight, however, I relied far too long on my firearms, while I can deal much more damage with a single strike using the axes. Sol showed me that I need to keep an even closer eye on the cooldown and can actually use my action skill more often than I thought.
The new movement is not just for fun
Sol attacks you repeatedly in the boss fight and sometimes with area attacks. He literally chases you through the arena – and every experienced gamer knows, you should dodge a boss’s attacks. But there is no attack that you can’t dodge.
In Borderlands 4, there are new ways to move in combat. You’re not just standing there or running around like a startled chicken in circles. You can use double jumps, slide, hover briefly in the air after a jump, and perform a dash while floating.
Especially the dash has been useful in the boss fight, as it allows you to dodge a boss’s area attack instead of taking a heavy hit.
No cringe chatter during serious action
What I noticed positively is the conversations during the fight. They are relatively reserved. Sol occasionally grumbles something in his armor, but there is no continuous, verbal exchange between the fighters, sprinkled with cringe-worthy remarks. No NPC is jabbering in my ear from the sidelines about how great I’m doing and that I’m defeating the villain.
In this fight, it’s about life and death for the Vault Hunter and Sol. I find it fitting that they don’t throw clichéd insults at each other.
If you still don’t know which Vault Hunter you will pick to face Idolator Sol and the Timekeeper, you can find an overview with the most important information about the 4 classes on MeinMMO: Borderlands 4: All character classes with story and skills in the list
