The Borderlands 4 Level 70 grind changed significantly with Version 1.10. The update raised the maximum character level by 10 for every player, bringing the current cap to level 70 and opening another layer of skill-tree experimentation and endgame build crafting. You do not need Story Pack 2, Loveless, or Bounty Pack 5 to gain those extra levels—the cap increase is part of the free Version 1.10 update.
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Version 1.10 arrived on September 10, 2026 and officially increased the maximum level cap by 10. Current post-update documentation confirms that this moved Borderlands 4 from level 60 to level 70.
That change matters for much more than the number beside your Vault Hunter.
More levels mean additional skill points, more room to expand existing builds, and another reason to replace equipment that was previously considered finished. A perfectly rolled level 60 weapon can still help you start the grind, but once enemies and drops begin scaling beyond it, you should expect your old equipment to become increasingly inefficient.
Version 1.10 also launched alongside a large amount of additional content. Story Pack 2: FL4K and the Last Resort introduced Providence, eight story bosses, 13 additional minibosses, two new Pearlescent weapons, 18 Legendary gear pieces, and six Legendary Class Mods. Bounty Pack 5 added a repeatable mission with a boss, two minibosses, another Pearlescent weapon, and six new Legendary items.
Those DLCs create more places to earn XP and upgrade equipment, but they are optional for reaching level 70.
That distinction is important. If your only goal is maximum level, you should not feel forced to purchase or clear the new DLC before beginning the grind.
There is no single farm that will be fastest for every character and build.
A mobbing build that deletes entire waves can perform extremely well in Circle of Slaughter. A strong solo boss killer may prefer Bounties or Drill Sites. A coordinated group can turn demanding endgame activities into very efficient XP farms.
For most players, however, the practical priority looks like this:What Changed With the Borderlands 4 Level 70 Update?
Version 1.10 arrived on September 10, 2026 and officially increased the maximum level cap by 10. Current post-update documentation confirms that this moved Borderlands 4 from level 60 to level 70.
That change matters for much more than the number beside your Vault Hunter.
More levels mean additional skill points, more room to expand existing builds, and another reason to replace equipment that was previously considered finished. A perfectly rolled level 60 weapon can still help you start the grind, but once enemies and drops begin scaling beyond it, you should expect your old equipment to become increasingly inefficient.
Version 1.10 also launched alongside a large amount of additional content. Story Pack 2: FL4K and the Last Resort introduced Providence, eight story bosses, 13 additional minibosses, two new Pearlescent weapons, 18 Legendary gear pieces, and six Legendary Class Mods. Bounty Pack 5 added a repeatable mission with a boss, two minibosses, another Pearlescent weapon, and six new Legendary items.
Those DLCs create more places to earn XP and upgrade equipment, but they are optional for reaching level 70.
That distinction is important. If your only goal is maximum level, you should not feel forced to purchase or clear the new DLC before beginning the grind.
There is no single farm that will be fastest for every character and build.
A mobbing build that deletes entire waves can perform extremely well in Circle of Slaughter. A strong solo boss killer may prefer Bounties or Drill Sites. A coordinated group can turn demanding endgame activities into very efficient XP farms.
For most players, however, the practical priority looks like this:
Vile Bounties — Very High XP efficiency, Moderate loot value, best for solo leveling.
Circle of Slaughter — Very High XP efficiency with strong mobbing builds, Very High loot value, best for dense combat and well-geared characters.
Takedown at Hadron Abyss — High to Very High XP efficiency, Very High loot value, best for strong endgame builds and coordinated groups.
Ripper Drill Sites — High XP efficiency, High loot value, best for reliable leveling while upgrading gear.
Mission and Side-Content Completion — Moderate to High XP efficiency, Good loot value, best for players who prefer varied progression instead of repetitive farming.
Repeated Single Bosses — Lower efficiency for pure leveling, Excellent loot value, best for targeted gear farming.
Recent post-1.10 player testing continues to point toward Vile Bounties, Circle of Slaughter and Takedown runs as the standout level-70 options. Community results vary heavily according to build strength, difficulty and group composition, so claims such as a guaranteed number of levels per hour should be treated as personal results rather than fixed game values.
The most important principle is simpler:
The fastest leveling activity is the one that gives strong XP while your character can clear it rapidly and repeatedly.
A theoretically higher-reward difficulty becomes worse for leveling if every enemy suddenly takes several times longer to kill.
For a player who wants to reach level 70 without depending on a group, Vile Bounties remain one of the strongest options available.
These special purple contracts appear through Bounty Boards while playing in Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode. Current leveling guides consistently identify them as one of the highest-value sources of repeatable XP because most of the reward comes from completing the bounty rather than slowly clearing ordinary enemies.
Vile Bounties send you after enhanced enemies and reward a substantial chunk of progression for a relatively short objective.
Once UVHM is available, check the Bounty Boards associated with your unlocked Safehouses. Look specifically for purple Vile contracts.
The general loop is simple:
Check Bounty Boards for Vile contracts.
The more useful Safehouses and fast-travel locations you have unlocked, the easier it becomes to find worthwhile contracts without spending most of your session traveling.
Prioritize nearby targets.
A bounty with a slightly better reward is not necessarily efficient if getting there takes several minutes. XP-per-hour is heavily influenced by travel time.
Break the Vile target's crystals quickly.
Current guides recommend splash and area damage because they can make dealing with Vile protection much faster.
Complete the objective, collect the reward and move immediately to the next target.
Do your inventory cleanup between cycles instead of stopping after every kill.
Refresh the available contracts when necessary.
Current player-tested routes use session reloads or difficulty/rank changes where applicable to generate new Bounty Board opportunities. Because reset behavior can be altered by patches, always verify that your chosen reset still works after an update.
Traditional mob farming depends heavily on the XP value of individual enemies.
Vile Bounties concentrate more value into a specific completion objective. That means you can spend less time killing low-value trash and more time collecting meaningful rewards.
They are especially attractive for solo players because you do not need an optimized four-player group or a build capable of surviving long arena encounters.
The weakness is gear.
If you level several times while repeatedly completing bounties but never replace your weapons, your damage can start falling behind enemy scaling. That is when you should temporarily switch to something like a Drill Site or another activity that throws more equipment at you.
Do not allow an excellent XP farm to turn into a bad XP farm because your gun is ten levels behind your character.
Circle of Slaughter has become one of the most attractive alternatives to repetitive bounty farming.
The mode was added free for all Borderlands 4 players in Version 1.8. It becomes accessible after completing the Wrath of the Ripper Queen main mission and is entered through the Silent Crisis: Time Scope 5 arcade cabinet in Moxxi's Bottoms Up! bar.
Each run can contain five rounds with three waves per round, with the final wave of a round adding a boss encounter. That gives the activity exactly what an XP-focused player wants: lots of enemies packed into a relatively small amount of space and very little downtime between fights.
Enemy density is the main advantage.
Instead of driving across Kairos from objective to objective, enemies continuously come to you.
That makes Circle of Slaughter particularly strong for builds with:
Wide area damage
Chaining attacks
Strong status-effect spreading
Summons that can attack multiple targets
Fast Action Skill recovery
Splash damage
Reliable survivability under sustained pressure
Recent community testing after the level-70 increase frequently recommends Circle of Slaughter for characters capable of quickly clearing large groups. Several players have reported using it successfully for the level 60–70 grind, although individual times vary and should not be treated as guaranteed results.
The activity loses efficiency when you have to fight cautiously.
If your build spends too much time:
hiding while shields recover,
running out of ammunition,
reviving repeatedly,
chasing individual enemies,
or slowly burning through bosses,
you are not exploiting the main reason to use Circle of Slaughter.
Lowering the difficulty or improving your build can produce more XP over the same real-world playtime than forcing a higher UVHM setting.
The goal is fast kills, not the highest difficulty number on your screen.
The Takedown at Hadron Abyss is another high-density endgame activity worth considering once your Vault Hunter is strong enough.
It was released as free content in Version 1.8 and is built as a major endgame gauntlet rather than a basic farming arena. Version 1.10 also included further fixes for the Takedown, confirming that it remains an active part of the current endgame.
Recent level-70 discussions report good leveling results from Takedown runs, particularly for existing level 60 characters that already entered Version 1.10 with established builds.
Takedown combines heavy combat density with meaningful endgame rewards.
That makes it more productive than running around the open world killing random packs.
For a geared character, you can work toward several goals simultaneously:
Character XP
Specialization progression
Better equipment
Endgame practice
Build testing
Takedown-specific rewards
The downside is difficulty.
A newly boosted or poorly geared character will usually get more useful progression somewhere easier.
Spending ten minutes fighting something that a properly equipped Vault Hunter can destroy in one or two minutes is not efficient simply because the activity is labeled endgame.
Treat Hadron Abyss as an advanced leveling option rather than something every character must immediately farm.
Ripper Drill Sites offer one of the best compromises between leveling efficiency and keeping your equipment current.
Gearbox has confirmed there are six Ripper Drill Sites across Kairos. They consist of multiple enemy waves followed by a culminating boss encounter, and completed sites can be restarted using a nearby Moxxi's Big Encore machine.
That structure makes them useful for characters that are gaining levels faster than their equipment is improving.
A good leveling route should increase your character level without leaving your actual combat power behind.
Drill Sites produce a large amount of combat and loot in one compact activity.
Use them when:
Your main weapon is several levels behind.
Vile targets are becoming slow to kill.
You need a better shield or Class Mod.
Your current mobbing setup feels weak.
You want XP without repeatedly checking Bounty Boards.
Current leveling guides still list Drill Sites among the strongest repeatable XP alternatives, although their pure XP rate can be lower than a perfectly optimized Vile Bounty route.
That does not necessarily make them worse.
Imagine two players.
One earns levels slightly faster from Bounties but eventually spends thirty minutes farming replacement gear.
The other levels slightly slower through Drill Sites while continuously receiving usable drops.
Their real-world time to reach a functional level 70 build may be much closer than the raw XP numbers suggest.
Players starting Borderlands 4 for the first time should resist the temptation to search for an XP exploit immediately.
Your first priority should be progressing the main campaign.
Completing the story unlocks the systems that make efficient endgame farming possible, particularly Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode and the Specializations progression system. Gearbox specifically states that UVHM becomes accessible after completing the campaign with your first character.
UVHM causes enemies to scale globally to your level while introducing harder modifiers, higher enemy durability and more dangerous encounters. In exchange, Gearbox states that players receive better loot, scaled XP, Cash and Eridium.
The campaign also naturally opens regions, fast travel, bosses and activities that become valuable later.
Stopping your first playthrough for hours to grind a low-level enemy usually provides less long-term value than simply moving forward and unlocking the systems designed for endgame progression.
You do not need to complete everything before finishing the campaign.
Instead, use side missions when you need:
An XP bump before a difficult story encounter
Better equipment
A change from the main story
Access to useful areas or activities
Version 1.10 improved the chance for side quests to reward higher-rarity gear and updated some early-game mission rewards to better prepare characters for tougher encounters.
That makes side content useful—but it still does not mean you should stop and clear the entire map before reaching endgame.
Borderlands 4 is much friendlier to repeat characters than forcing every Vault Hunter through exactly the same early progression.
After the campaign has been completed and the appropriate endgame progression has been unlocked, players can create alternate Vault Hunters using the level 30 campaign-skip option rather than beginning again at level 1. This feature has been part of the game's alternate-character progression since launch and remains commonly used for new characters after the level-70 update.
For pure leveling efficiency, that is a huge advantage.
Do not immediately throw an undergeared level 30 character into the hardest activity available.
First make the character functional.
You want:
A coherent skill setup
A usable primary weapon
A reasonable shield
Enough survivability to remain aggressive
Useful fast-travel access
A mobbing option
A strong single-target option
Once the character can kill efficiently, transition into the same repeatable endgame activities used by your main character.
Vile Bounties are especially attractive.
Drill Sites can provide better gear while you level.
Circle of Slaughter becomes excellent once your build can sustain fast wave clears.
Takedown content makes more sense after your damage and survivability have caught up.
A common leveling mistake is assuming:
Higher difficulty = faster leveling.
The relationship is not that simple.
Gearbox confirms that UVHM increases difficulty through tougher enemies, larger health pools, stronger attacks and other modifiers. It also provides scaled-up XP and better rewards.
That creates a balancing problem.
Suppose moving up a UVHM rank improves the reward from combat but causes your kill time to double.
Your theoretical XP bonus may go up while your actual XP-per-minute goes down.
Current leveling analysis reaches the same conclusion: the additional combat XP from tougher UVHM settings is not automatically enough to compensate for enemies becoming considerably slower to kill.
Efficiency should determine your UVHM setting—not pride.
Move upward when enemies still die comfortably.
Move downward when:
Trash enemies become bullet sponges.
Boss phases take dramatically longer.
You start dying frequently.
Ammo problems become constant.
Your build requires excessive defensive play.
Once you reach level 70 and begin optimizing permanent gear, pushing difficulty becomes much more attractive because better loot becomes the objective.
During leveling, speed matters more.
The level-cap increase creates a familiar Borderlands problem.
You have incredible level 60 equipment.
Then you become level 63.
Level 65.
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Level 68.
Eventually, that once-perfect weapon starts feeling considerably less perfect.
The wrong reaction is to farm a complete perfect build every two levels.
During the climb to 70, equipment only needs to be good enough to keep your farming loop fast.
Prioritize:
Your main damage weapon
A strong mobbing weapon
Survivability
Class Mod or Enhancement synergy
Everything else
If an ordinary purple weapon five levels higher suddenly clears enemies faster than your beautiful old Legendary, use the purple weapon.
You can chase permanent rolls once you are 70.
Firmware begins appearing before the endgame and creates set bonuses across Repkits, Ordnance, Class Mods, Shields and Enhancements. Gearbox says Firmware can start dropping from level 25, while some sets are exclusive to Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode.
A useful Firmware combination can sometimes keep mediocre-looking equipment competitive because it strengthens the entire build rather than one item.
You do not need to min-max Firmware while leveling, but do not automatically discard every item simply because its raw item stats look slightly worse.
An XP farming build has a different job from a raid-boss build.
Your goal is to remove as much dead time as possible.
Most efficient leveling content throws many enemies at you.
Look for skills that improve:
Area damage
Splash damage
Chain effects
Status spread
Action Skill uptime
Movement speed
Reload speed
Ammo economy
An enemy that survives with 2% health still consumes another shot, another reload or another Action Skill cycle.
Reliable overkill is often more useful while leveling than theoretical maximum boss DPS.
Vile Bounties, Drill Sites and Circle of Slaughter eventually put a stronger target in front of you.
Do not build so heavily around mob clearing that bosses become five-minute fights.
Carry at least one weapon or damage setup capable of focusing a single durable enemy.
Version 1.10 contained a significant balance pass affecting existing Vault Hunters, including skill changes to Amon, Harlowe, Rafa and Vex. That means a leveling build copied from an older video may no longer perform exactly as it did when recorded.
Check the current skill values rather than blindly following an outdated screenshot.
Moxxi's Big Encore Machine is one of Borderlands 4's best farming improvements.
Gearbox designed it to let players immediately rematch defeated bosses instead of repeatedly quitting and reloading the game. Activating the machine costs Eridium and starts the fight again.
That is excellent for targeted gear farming.
It is not automatically the fastest way to gain character levels.
Current XP testing generally places repeated single-boss farming behind Vile Bounties and dense mobbing activities when XP alone is the goal.
Use Encore when you need something specific:
A weapon upgrade
A Class Mod
Firmware
A dedicated boss drop
Better gear before returning to your XP farm
Then go back to the content that gives you more experience per minute.
Farm bosses to remove a gearing bottleneck, not simply because bosses look like they should give the most XP.
Version 1.10 added plenty of new content that can naturally contribute to your level-70 progression.
Story Pack 2 sends players to Providence and contains new story missions, side missions, activities, collectibles, eight story bosses and 13 additional minibosses. Gearbox recommends the content for level 13 or higher.
Bounty Pack 5 adds a repeatable mission centered on Amara, plus new Vile enemies, two minibosses and a boss.
If you already own these packs, they are perfectly reasonable places to gain some of your post-update levels while seeing fresh content.
But there is an important distinction:
Fresh content is not necessarily the fastest XP farm.
If your objective is enjoying the new update, play Providence and Bounty Pack 5.
If your objective is getting from 60 to 70 as quickly as possible, compare how much XP you are earning against Vile Bounties, Circle of Slaughter and other repeatable activities.
You can always return to DLC content after hitting the cap, at which point its new loot will also drop at the level you actually want to keep.
Players who own a relevant Bounty Pack can also activate its Vault Card.
Gearbox explains that Vault Cards progress through the same XP-generating actions you are already performing—exploration, enemy kills and quest completion—and can provide additional loot and XP through their associated challenges.
That makes them an easy piece of parallel progression.
You are already farming.
You are already killing enemies.
You are already earning XP.
There is little reason to leave an owned Vault Card inactive if its progression can advance alongside your character.
Just do not confuse Vault Card progression with a universal character-XP multiplier. They are separate systems that can progress together.
Finishing the campaign unlocks another important progression layer: Specializations.
Gearbox describes Specializations as an account-wide system designed to continuously increase the strength of your Vault Hunters. It has its own XP bar and can be leveled hundreds of times, eventually unlocking passive Specialization Skills and Prestige nodes.
That means your endgame farming has value beyond simply reaching 70.
While running Bounties, Drill Sites, Circle of Slaughter or Takedown content, you are also participating in the broader endgame progression loop.
This is another reason rushing random low-level mobs before finishing the campaign is less attractive than getting to the actual endgame systems quickly.
A few habits can turn a fast level-70 grind into a painfully slow one.
Do not spend hours chasing a flawless level 64 roll that you intend to replace at 70.
Farm enough gear to maintain your clear speed.
Save serious optimization for the cap.
Better rewards do not matter if your character suddenly takes forever to kill ordinary enemies.
Measure difficulty by clear speed.
An efficient bounty close to a Safehouse can outperform a technically superior activity that requires several minutes of driving and loading.
Travel is zero XP.
Skill-tree synergy cannot always compensate for badly outdated weapons.
If your previously fast run suddenly feels slow, inspect your gear before blaming the farm.
A setup designed to delete one massive target may perform terribly against twenty smaller ones.
Adapt your build to the farm.
You do not need to study every green and blue weapon on the floor.
Check upgrades quickly and keep moving.
Inventory management can quietly consume a large part of a farming session.
Version 1.10 adjusted multiple Vault Hunter skills and significantly expanded the game's content.
Always check whether a guide was created before or after the September 2026 balance changes.
If your main Vault Hunter was already level 60 before Version 1.10, your route is straightforward.
Start with the build you already trust rather than rebuilding everything immediately.
Run several Vile Bounties or a dense activity such as Circle of Slaughter.
If your level 60 equipment still deletes enemies, keep going.
When clear speed begins dropping, run a Drill Site, Takedown or targeted boss farm to obtain replacement equipment.
Then return to your fastest XP activity.
Repeat that process until 70.
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Do not stop every level to recreate your old build.
Your objective is simply to maintain enough power that the XP farm stays fast.
Once you reach 70, begin the real gear rebuild.
That is when farming dedicated drops, Pearlescents, class mods, Firmware combinations and optimized versions of your favorite weapons starts making sense.
A completely fresh player has different priorities.
Complete the campaign first.
You need the campaign completion to unlock Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode and Specializations.
Use side content only when it provides something useful: levels, equipment or access.
After the story, begin testing repeatable activities.
Start with the easiest activity you can clear rapidly.
Move toward Vile Bounties once available.
Use Drill Sites when your gear falls behind.
Try Circle of Slaughter once your mobbing build becomes strong.
Move into harder endgame activities only when your damage supports them.
The fastest route is not about entering difficult content as early as possible.
It is about spending the highest percentage of your session actively earning XP.
What is the current max level in Borderlands 4?
The current maximum character level is 70. Version 1.10 increased the previous cap by 10 levels for all Borderlands 4 players.
Do I need Story Pack 2 to reach level 70?
No. The level-cap increase is part of Version 1.10 for all players. Story Pack 2, Loveless the Hacker and Bounty Pack 5 are separate paid content.
What is the fastest Borderlands 4 XP farm after the level 70 update?
For solo players, Vile Bounties remain one of the most consistently recommended methods. Circle of Slaughter can be equally attractive or faster for characters with exceptional mob-clearing builds, while strong endgame characters can also earn excellent progression through Takedown content. There is no reliable universal XP-per-hour figure because build, UVHM difficulty, gear, group composition and player speed all change the result.
Should I use the highest UVHM level while leveling?
Not automatically. UVHM improves rewards and scaled XP, but enemies also become stronger and tougher. Use a difficulty at which you can still clear efficiently.
Is Circle of Slaughter good for leveling to 70?
Yes. Its wave-based structure produces very high enemy density, and current player reports frequently recommend it for the 60–70 grind when using a strong mobbing build. Officially, Circle of Slaughter consists of up to five rounds with three waves per round and escalating boss encounters.
Are Drill Sites still worth farming?
Yes. They combine enemy waves, a boss and repeatability through Moxxi's Big Encore, making them particularly useful when you need both XP and new level-appropriate equipment. Gearbox confirms six Ripper Drill Sites exist across Kairos.
Should I farm Legendary gear before reaching 70?
Only when your current gear is hurting your clear speed. Otherwise, wait until level 70 before investing significant time into perfect rolls.
Can I start another Vault Hunter above level 1?
After progressing the game sufficiently on your account, Borderlands 4 provides a level 30 campaign-skip option for alternate characters. This remains a popular way to begin leveling additional Vault Hunters, including after the level-cap increase.
The Borderlands 4 Level 70 grind is much easier when you stop thinking about individual kills and start thinking about efficiency.
For most solo players, Vile Bounties are the strongest place to start because they concentrate large progression rewards into short repeatable objectives. Circle of Slaughter becomes extremely attractive when your build can erase waves quickly, while Ripper Drill Sites are excellent when you want XP without neglecting gear upgrades. Experienced Vault Hunters can also mix in the Takedown at Hadron Abyss for challenging, high-density endgame combat.
The key is maintaining momentum.
Do not spend hours perfecting temporary gear. Do not increase UVHM difficulty so far that enemies become damage sponges. Do not keep using badly outdated weapons because they were once your best roll.
Reach 70 first. Optimize second.
Once your Vault Hunter is capped, all the real farming becomes more valuable: level-70 Legendaries, Pearlescents, Firmware combinations, dedicated drops and optimized endgame builds.
And if you would rather spend more of your time testing builds, farming endgame loot and tackling difficult encounters instead of repeating the entire leveling grind, you can also explore gaming services available through BoostRoom.
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