Going In for a Couple of Long Missions

Borderlands was the first game in the series to have a raid boss, a mega-powerful beast that was more than likely going to kill you the first time it saw you, and then you just died. It’s name was Crawmerax the Invincible, and it arrived in the last mission of the last expansion of the game, The Secret Armory of General Knoxx, in a mission titled “You. Will. Die.” It was appropriately named since, unless you were super-duper powerful and already had incredible guns, or you knew of the one secret place on the map that was safe to use, you were likely going to die. It set a standard that all future raid bosses were expected to match.

Borderlands 2 took the idea and ran with it. The sequel featured a raid boss, Terramorphous the Invincible, who was unlocked once you finished the final main story quest of the game. It, too, was pretty darn hard to kill, requiring a good combination of skills, know-how, guns, and a slightly smaller safe place that could protect you… some of the time. There was also a hidden raid boss you could find, Vermiverous the Invincible, which was born by letting a tiny larval varkid grow through all its evolutions (larval, adult, badass, super badass, and ultimate badass) before turning into Vermiverous. And then, for each of the expansions that were added to the game, another raid boss was included as well, giving Borderlands 2, so far, the largest collection of raid bosses of any game in the series.

Sure, other games included their own (The Pre-Sequel had The Invincible Sentinel, for instance), but Borderlands 2 remains the game with the largest collection. Interestingly, Borderlands 3 did nothing to displace its predecessor from that throne. The base game didn’t include a raid boss at all, and it wasn’t until the Director's Cut that a raid boss, Hermiverous the Invincible, was included (and, along with them, Vermiverous could show up as well… although getting it to spawn wasn’t always easy). But fans still wanted their raids. They wanted harder bosses to fight and better loot to get. And Gearbox did eventually list, publishing two “Takedown Raids” for the game as free content during the second season of Borderlands 3’s extended content support.

Now, Takedown Raids are slightly different from standard raid bosses. In a normal raid, all you really have to do is go to the boss’s chamber (potentially with a mission to kill that boss selected) and then activate the boss and fight them. That’s the whole of the experience. A Takedown Raid, though, is a much more involved experience. The players arrive on a new map and are forced to fight their way through goons and baddies until they reach a mid-point boss. A big battle ensues, and then is followed by the back half of the mission, with more baddies to kill and areas to explore, all before the final fight against an even bigger boss occurs. It can be a long, involved process that will test players, their gear, and what they expect from a mission… but it’s also a lot of fun.

The first of the two raid missions was the Takedown at the Maliwan Blacksite. After getting a message from Lorelai, the vault hunters are sent to a secret Maliwan research facility. The base is absolutely filled with Maliwan troops, along with very powerful mechs designed to do one thing: kill any intruders. The mission is to get through the base to the final development site and destroy whatever weapon Maliwan has been designing. But be warned, the weapon will fight back.

The Maliwan Blacksite features two boss encounters. The first is the Valkyrie squad. These are three flying mechs – Hildr, Rota, Sigrdrifa – that will fight in tandem, swapping places and relieving each other, drawing out the fight against them. When one loses a chunk of its health, the next will rotate in, and they each will fight with ranged guns and melee, working to take the vault hunters down. Honestly, though, I didn’t find these bosses to be that difficult. They’re mechs, which means they have shields and armor, and since it’s a set of three of these, none of them have either shields or health in over abundance. A good corrosive weapon will take them down with relative ease.

The difficulty doesn’t come until you make it through to the final fight later in the mission, which is against Wotan the Invincible. This is a mega-mech with a huge shield that blocks all attacks. It can summon enemies and robots, and will shoot at the players with a barrage of attacks. The trick is to shoot it through the few, moving gaps in its shield, getting in hits while you can until its first shield bar is emptied.

That then activates phase two and that’s when the fight gets really nasty. Wotan will move and pop up a double shield, inner and outer, and the outer shield blocks all attacks. You can walk through the outer shield, though, although this puts you closer in range to the robot and its summoned troops, making you much more of a sitting duck. Taking down its shield bar enough eliminates the outer shield, but Wotan only gets more powerful the further into the fight you get, unleashing more and more weapons, missiles, bombs, and other attacks. And then, once the fight has gone on long enough, it’ll split in two, with its “better half” flying around, attacking the players while its powerful lower half continues its own barrage. This is a long, drawn out fight that will take all your skill to handle.

I won’t lie, the Wotan fight feels like a massive spike in difficulty over everything that came before in the Maliwan Blacksite. Players online say this is the easier of the two takedowns, and while I generally feel like that’s true, Wotan actually struck me as the hardest fight in these missions. Everything leading up to it was easy enough, and then it killed my party a couple of times before we finally finished it off. But at least when you run these missions you can start at a midpoint, past the sub-boss, if you do die in the back half.

The second of the raid missions, Takedown at the Guardian Breach, is a much harder beast. My party died a lot in this mission, and that’s because there’s a lot more that you have to do, and many more places that can kill you. Like with the Maliwan Blacksite, the basics are that you will fight through a long section of enemies (native creatures this time around) before you come to a blocked gate. To open the gate you have to stand within a bounding square, which then charges the crystal. Charge all the crystals and the door opens.

It’s easy the first time when there’s no enemies, but the next gate has three crystals to charge, enemy guardians that will spawn in endlessly to try and stop you, and if enemies enter the square with you, the crystal won’t charge. Worse, you have to keep each crystal activated, at least occasionally, because if the crystals drain off their charge for too long then explode and the mission fails, sending you back to your last check point. Just getting through these can feel like a raid in and of itself, and we haven’t even reached the first boss.

This boss, Anathema the Relentless, is fought on a multi-tiered stage. There’s a large, central platform and then four raised platforms at the main stage’s corners, with jump jets linking them all. Anathem will arrive and fight the player with melee attacks. The best strategy is to move, running away while firing, working to keep your distance from its powerful, although fairly slow, melee attacks. But be careful. Once enough damage is done, the boss will charge for a powerful, nuclear attack. It will explode on the platform it’s standing on, as well as two other platforms in the arena, and if you get caught in the blast it will drop you into Fight For Your Life. Avoid the explosions, and the boss, as much as you can.

Once you have made it through Anathema, the second half of the mission starts. You’ll have to go through another sequence of fighting enemies, another crystal lighting section, and then more enemies, all before arriving at the final boss of the raid, Scourge the Invincible Martyr. This boss is multi-phased, as you would expect, although its phases are interesting. Its first phase sees the boss attacking you with a combination of ranged blasts, ground-pound strikes, and melee. You have to blow through its first bar of shields to get it to phase shift, and then it’ll warp you and the other players in your team to a new, mini-arena. There you’ll have to blast apart all the enemies that get summoned while Scourge remains in the original arena (which you can’t yet access), recharging off two crystals. Once you kill enough enemies a portal back will open and you can blast the crystals Scourge is charging on, dropping him out of his invincibility phase.

The second phase works a lot like the first, with Scourge hounding after you with his various attacks. He can also summon big, exploding guardians, though, and if you don’t take them out before they finish charging their attack, you will get felled. You need to draw them towards the boss and kill them so they explode on him, keeping him active and available to attack. Burn through all of his second bar of health (as well as whatever he recharged between phases) and he’ll warp you away again so he can do a second charge phase.

Of note, this second warp will put each player in their own mini-arena, and not a large shared one like the first time. Each player will have to take out their own enemies before they can warp back, and all the while Scourge will be charging. Once you can get in you can blast his crystals and stop his charge phase, and then the battle will carry on again as during his second phase. It’s long, drawn out, and very hard. Expect to die a few times throughout the mission as you come to grips with everything.

Despite its challenge, though, I actually think this second takedown was a lot of fun. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, it takes a long time to complete it (a full run can easily take an hour-and-a-half unless you’re really good at optimizing your gear and skill trees). Yes, you will die a lot. But when you complete the takedown, that feeling of satisfaction is so well earned. I loved it, and I want to go back and do it again.

As bonus content for Borderlands 3, the takedowns are great fun. The fact that they’re free content just makes them even better. Great content that you don’t have to pay extra for is a massive win in my book. Just be ready for a battle because these takedowns aren’t like your normal missions. You’re in for a real battle this time around.