Borderlands 3 events tend to be hit or miss. The current one, “Door Busters,” isn’t just a hit. It’s a headshot.
Technically, “Door Busters” is part of a sweeping, month-long event called “Co-op Loot Drop.” Between now and April 30, if you band up with a co-op partner (or two, or three), any Badass enemies you gun down will drop extra loot. Co-op Loot Drop’s long-term gimmick is that there’s a different mini-event each week, of which “Door Busters” is the first.
The conceit of “Door Busters” is simple. All the wares in standard vending machines are replaced by gold-tier gear. Each machine has one just one piece of gear, but, as long as you have any level of Mayhem turned on, it’ll scale to your level. Marcus’ Munitions machines each have one weapon, Ammo Dumps have a grenade, and Zed’s Meds vendors have a shield and a class mod. (The Veteran Goods machine is unchanged.)
“Door Busters” comes with two hiccups. For starters, the gear isn’t cheap; I’ve had to shell out well over $100,000 on some weapons. For another, vending machines don’t have the normal reset countdown. Once you buy a machine’s sole offering, you’ll have to reload the game if you want more stuff from it.
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Enter: farming. I’ve found that two locations pay serious dividends. On Pandora, both fast-travel locations in the Devil’s Razor area (Boomtown and Roland’s Rest) have Zed’s Meds, Ammo Dump, and Marcus’ Munitions machines. Or you could go to the Floodmoor Basin area, on Eden-6. Two fast-travel locations there, Reliance and Knotty Peak, are also within spitting distance of all three types of vending machines. Just drop into Devil’s Razor, buy up all the legendary gear, head to the other fast-travel spot, and buy up all that gear. Then repeat the process for Floodmoor Basin, quit out of the game, rinse, wash, repeat.
Both Devil’s Razor and Floodmoor Basin are essentially designed for farming: You can hit up six vending machines without having to sit through Borderlands 3’s excruciating load screens. Of course, time isn’t exactly of the essence these days—but hey, some of us like to pretend we’re still living in an impatient world.
“Door Busters” runs until 9am on Thursday, at which point Gearbox will open the doors on a new mini-event.
More trips through the borderlands: