When should you do Side Missions in Borderlands 4?

Borderlands 4 has 98 Side Missions (that we know of so far), with dizzying variety in terms of how engaging or rewarding they are. Generally, with older titles, the "optimal" completionist run with all side-quests would be reserved for TVHM, UVHM, or higher modes, as the rewards you gained from these quests would be level-capped at that point.

The idea of Side Missions offering unique pieces of worldbuilding perspective or sometimes just plain old quirky Borderlands shenanigans still remains the same with this entry. However, some of the gameplay implications have changed. After learning a bit about the level-scaling system in Borderlands 4, many players may wonder: when should you do the Side Missions, and are all of them worth doing?

Should you full-clear all Side Missions in Borderlands 4 before you do the campaign?

Some Side Missions are by-the-miles whodunnits that get better later on (Image via 2K)

The answer ranges from "no" to "well, it depends". The optimal thing, for sure, is to hold off on doing too many Side Missions till you've beaten the campaign. The reason for doing that, however, are different in Borderlands 4 compared to the previous games.

Each Side Mission in Borderlands 4 will give you a flat amount of XP, so they fill up more of your progress towards the next level early on. Other than XP, Cash, and Eridium, the other rewards are put into a reward cache.

The cache can drop green, blue, or purple-rarity gear of a fixed type, but the level of the gear is always based on your current level. So technically, if you held on to all the caches till you were level 50 (the current level cap in Borderlands 4) and get the highest-level variant of these rewards. However, the big caveat here is that Borderlands 4 does not have non-Legendary unique red-text weapons.

In other words, there's no point withholding a Side Mission in Borderlands 4 hoping for the best variant of a unique reward. Instead, the decision here has to do with your leveling curve itself.

Generally, if you're on your first character, it's recommended to beat the campaign by the point you're level 30-32. The general enemy scaling curve expects you to be this level at the minimum, and the reason you want to do this as fast as possible is due to Specialization.

Specialization is a secondary leveling system that unlocks only after you clear the campaign for the first time, so if you get it at lvl 30 or earlier, it's more efficient because you're getting two types of XP after that point.

On the whole, this is the only reason you'd want to rush the main campaign in Borderlands 4 instead of doing all the Side Missions. If you do too many Side Missions first and get to very high levels before doing Main Missions, you miss out on some of this double-dipping.

Points in the story where you should do Side Missions to catch up with enemy levels in Borderlands 4

There are two points during the campaign where you'd want to do some Side Missions or contracts to catch up with enemy levels if you're beelining the campaign:

When you get to Idolator's Noose, i.e. before A Lot To Process, you should get to lvl 10 (from lvl 8 if you've been rushing the campaign).
Before you enter Dominion with The Fallen Wall quest, you should be at least lvl 25-27. This is the big leveling jump during the quest where you'd want to do catch-up leveling, and areas in this region will generally have enemies placed as high as lvl 34 as their minimum level.

Keeping this in mind, you're free to do as many or as few of the Side Missions you want before you finish the campaign. There's one notable exception: the Vend of The Line quest. This is the only Side Mission in Borderlands 4 to guarantee legendary rewards that scale with your level when you're doing the mission, so hold this till Lvl 50.

Check out our other guides on the game:

About the author

Sambit Pal is an esports Journalist on Gaming and MMO at Sportskeeda. He has Master's degree in English Literature. In his spare time, he is an amateur sleuth trying to trace the Riven Mafia in Warframe, and a recovering Bethesda modding addict. He also secretly enjoys action Roguelites, a severe lack of gitting gud notwithstanding.

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Edited by Sambit Pal