Borderlands 4: Amon Minion (Forgedrones) leveling guide

Borderlands 4’s Amon has a Minion build that rivals Vex, thanks to his Forgedrones. He can swarm the field with annoyingly powerful minions, perhaps even better than Vex can herself. By activating his Ordinance, and his Action Skill, he can summon minions that will fight for him, and who doesn’t want that? It comes with drawbacks, certainly, like any good minion build does.

If you want to let someone else do the fighting, but want to play solo, here’s your best bet. We’ll guide you through leveling an Amon Minion build in Borderlands 4, so you’re armed with all the information you’re going to need to have at your fingertips.

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Pros and Cons of an Amon Minion build in Borderlands 4

Before you jump into an Amon Minion build in Borderlands 4, here’s its particular strengths and weaknesses. This will help you decide if this build is right for you going into your playthrough.

Strengths

• Forgedrone Swarm: You can keep a nice, overwhelming swarm of minions in play without too much work in this build. They do the bulk of your damage, so the more, the merrier.
• Focused Elemental Damage: You specialize in Incendiary/Shock damage, so fleshy enemies, and shields? Roasted. It’s so satisfying to shred through shields in this build.
• Actual DPS: Unlike many other Amon builds, this one actually delivers on damage! It does way better than most other builds for the Forgeknight.

Weaknesses

• Less Tanky: The downside for this build is that, while Amon is typically tanky, not so in this case. We’re all about damage as the Minion build archetype.
• Reliability: While yes, this build does a lot of very satisfying damage, almost all of it comes from your Forgedrones. If you aren’t getting those out, your damage is going to suffer.

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Borderlands 4 Amon Minion campaign build: Level 1-30 skill order

The Amon Minion build in Borderlands 4 is going to be a pure Green tree build, from start to end, which is pretty nice. This build really starts to kick off after level 18. By then, you have put a point in Tempered Ice and Tempered Lightning, so you can get all three Forgedrone types active at once.

Tempered Ice makes your Ordinance spawn an Icy Hammer Forgedrone, and Tempered Lightning makes your Action Skill create a Lightning Sword Forgedrone. At this point (level ~18), we’re going to want to start buffing Ordinance damage, since Tempered Ice will eventually do Ordinance damage (Ordained Hammer talent), and as the hardest hitting Forgedrone, we want to get the most out of it as possible.

Here's what your early skill points are going to look like until level 30 (Image via 2K Games)

Skill Point choices

• Cast Iron x5 (Green)
• Tempered Pyre x5 (Green)
• Destruction Engine x4 (Green)
• Axe and Stone (Green)
• Twin Tempers x1 (Green)
• Blade Tempest (Replaces Axe and Stone)
• Tempered Lightning x1 (Green)
• Tempered Ice x1 (Green)
• Tempered Lightning x4 (Green)
• Escalation x5 (Green)
• Storm Surge
• Honed Point x3 (Green)

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Gearing for an Amon Minion build

The Amon Minion build isn’t gear dependant, which is nice. There are no hard required Enhancements, Class Mods, or gun types that you absolutely must have in order for it to work. The Vex Phase Phamiliar build, for example, definitely has hardline requirements that must be met.

I recommend having some flavor of Corrosive weapon though, because you lack that kind of damage in this build. My preferred gun is Moxxi’s shotgun, Sweet Embrace, but your needs may differ.

The only other thing I think that is important in terms of gearing is having low-cooldown, high-charge Ordinance, so no Heavy Weapons - unless you spec into Endless Bombardment. I wouldn’t recommend it either way.

Your Ordinance spawns Forgedrones, so you want multiple charges at a low cooldown, so Knives/Grenades. When looking at Class Mods, you want ideally, something that will enhance Forgedrones, Action Skill, Forge Skill, or Ordinance Damage. Those are the ideal picks.

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Borderlands 4 Amon Minion build: 30-50 Skill order, and endgame pivot options

Here's a more complete skill tree for Minion builds (Image via 2K Games)

The interesting thing about the Amon Minion build in Borderlands 4, is that you really only need the first 39 points to be specific things. Beyond the Ordained Hammer skill below, it becomes incredibly flexible.

The last ten points can go where you feel they need to be, but we’re going to put our suggestion below. You don’t have to follow that, however. We’re going with Cacophony for the extra Ordinance damage, and Gathering Storm for more elemental damage, in this case.

30-50 skill points

• Tempered Ice x4 (Green)
• Masterwork x5 (Green)
• Ordained Hammer x1 (Green)
• Cacophony x5 (Green)
• Gathering Storm x5 (Green)

Endgame pivot options

One of the downsides to Forgedrone builds is, at least for now, they don’t really have a long lifetime. After UVHM 1, it really starts to fall off. Once you level cap, you may want to consider other builds instead.

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Check out our other Borderlands 4 guides and features

• All Weapon Manufacturers in Borderlands 4
• Who is the villain of Borderlands 4?
• What are Enhancements in Borderlands 4?
• Does Borderlands 4 have co-op and crossplay?