Borderlands Missions That Are Practically Impossible

The Borderlands series prides itself on its excessive violence and gunplay, as well as the sheer number of wacky missions and memorable characters that are packed into each installment. Borderlands is known its extensive endgame content as well, with enemies' power levels raising significantly and plenty of DLC to bring the pain.

With all of that sweet, sweet content, there are bound to be a few missions that go overboard in the difficulty department. Sometimes that's the point of those missions: to give players a new challenge that will have them grinding their teeth and respec-ing their chosen Vault Hunter for the battles at hand. Other times, however, the difficulty comes down to a flaw in the mission's concept or design. Either way, Borderlands has offered us more than a few moments of insane difficulty, some of which may seem nearly impossible without some clever exploits and occasionally fighting dirty. Grab your transfusion grenades and hop on your meat bicycles, it's time to talk about some Borderlands missions that are practically impossible.

The bosses in the first Borderlands game were no slouches, but players were pretty underwhelmed with the final challenge, the inter-dimensional monstrosity known as the Destroyer. That boss was locked in a stationary position and its weak spot — its massive central eye — was very easy to hit.

Disappointed fans of the first game were in for a treat when The Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC was released. This DLC raised the level cap for players and featured the appropriately-named mission "You. Will. Die.," which pitted players against Crawmerax the Invincible. Crawmerax constantly launches corrosive attacks and was designed to be hard to defeat, even with a full squad of friends. Crawmerax's level automatically scales to be four levels above that of the session host, while the little maggots it sends out to attack you (yes, maggots) are at least a level above the host.

Crawmerax was such a challenge when compared to the Destroyer that it's worth noting that several signs throughout the DLC will refer to it as the "Secret Final Boss." NPCs in Borderlands 2 will occasionally brag about how they faced the monster and lived. Basically, Crawmerax is still a big deal.

The majority of "Lair of the Harpy" honestly isn't that bad. The enemies you encounter throughout the Jakobs Estate are mostly the Children of the Vault's normal cannon fodder. These cultist bandits are relatively easy to blast your way through. No, the real trouble begins when you reach the estate's auditorium and Troy Calypso shows off a new ability as he powers up a nearby Goliath enemy. This Goliath is transformed into Billy the Anointed, who might be the most annoying mini-boss in the entire Borderlands franchise.

Billy uses multiple ranged attacks, including a shockwave that can completely knock out your shields. He will also attack surrounding enemies. If he kills them, your chances of taking them out and achieving a Second Wind become much lower. As if that weren't bad enough, Billy constantly teleports around the mansion, following you out of the room where the boss battle began. If you are killed by Billy, he will teleport to your respawn point, sometimes killing you before you even have control of your character again.

"Voracidous the Invincible" is part of the Sir Hammerlock's Big Game Hunt DLC for Borderlands 2. As if Voracidous' corrosive attacks and his high hit points didn't already make him a formidable opponent, he has plenty of backup. Voracidous is accompanied by a Savage enemy named Chief Ngwatu and several of his followers, who will all attack any Vault Hunters that threaten Voracidous. At some points in the battle, Chief Ngwatu will transfer his shield to Voracidous and vice-versa, further lengthening the struggle against the two enemies and necessitating that split your focus between the two.

As if that weren't enough, there's a tremor that goes through the field of battle every 13 seconds that will keep your own shield from fully regenerating. If you're able to deplete both Ngwatu or Voracidous' shields, Voracidous will kill Ngwatu and regain his full power. In other words, there are plenty of ways in which this beast can come back from the brink of defeat. There are also no loot boxes in the arena with which to resupply ammo, so you'd better hope your character has some kind of ammo regenerating skill.

To be perfectly honest, timed missions in the Borderlands series are always a bit of a hassle. Most of them have a pretty strict limit, but they're usually doable either on foot or in a vehicle. The Pre-Sequel mission "Recruitment Drive" seems simple enough: deliver some posters and hang them up in various areas while also burning posters belonging to a rival group. 

The mission gets almost untenable due to a few annoying gameplay factors. The zero gravity gameplay already made traversing the Pandora's moon of Elpis a sight trickier than previous installments, but where this mission really drives people wild is how ridiculously tight the time windows are. Even if you manage to get the hang of piloting the zero gravity Moon Zoomies and memorize the routes, you still have to deal with wave after wave of bandits attacking you at each drop-off point. It all adds up to being easily the most difficult timed mission in the Borderlands series.

The "Circle of Slaughter"-type missions have been a staple of the Borderlands franchise since the very first installment. These take the form of a series of arena-based battles that pit you against wave after wave of increasingly powerful enemies. These are usually pretty grueling, but not exactly insurmountable with the right abilities and weaponry. 

That all changed with the Slaughter locations in Borderlands 3. The enemies in these areas are total bullet sponges, using up most of your ammunition within a single round. Many of them are Badass class enemies as well, some of which have high shield capacities and are capable of one-shotting even a higher-level player. There also isn't nearly enough time between rounds to catch your breath, nor cover to duck behind while your shields recharge in many of these arenas. Players also tend to agree that these missions are simply too long. Again, the whole point of these missions is to be something of an endurance test, but the ones in Borderlands 3 make past Slaughter locations feel like a cake walk.

Another day, another ridiculously difficult Borderlands 2 boss. The second game in the series really kicked up the challenge to a degree that the rest of the series hasn't quite matched, particularly with the baddies that await you in DLCs and endgame content. Still, even by those standards, Master Gee the Invincible is a nasty piece of work who requires even more strategy than usual.

The biggest challenge when it comes to Master Gee is that the usual tried-and-true Borderlands strategy of "run around and just keep shooting, for the love of god" doesn't really apply here, since Master Gee has an incredibly strong shield that basically shrugs off bullets. The only way to put a dent in Gee is by killing the sandworms that spawn nearby, which will leave a corrosive cloud behind. Then you have to be able to knock Gee into that cloud to weaken his shields. Considering Gee will be attacking you while you kill the sandworms (and vice-versa), not to mention the fact that the corrosive cloud will be harmful to you as well, it's an interesting setup for a Borderlands boss that's especially hard to pull off.