Borderlands 3 - Gearbox Tower

Borderlands 3 Post about:

• Gearbox Tower
• Challenge Zones

Today's Post is About Borderlands 3: Gearbox Tower & Challenge Zones. The concept of Challenge Zones (dungeons) comes from other RPG's but Gearbox never actually developed Tower-Style Dungeons.

What Borderlands 3 Needs is a replay ability that is more enhanced by active Borderlands Players:

Gearbox Tower

• Located in World 2, Natura World
• Unlocked when you complete the story mission that requires you to travel to River City (a major city in World 2)
• Considered the first Challenge Zone Raid, cooperative play is encouraged to beat.
• Scaled by the highest level of the player in the lobby, not by host (on all difficulties)
• Can be beaten solo, but is very difficult.

What makes Challenge Zone raids interesting is how the difficulty is set on each Challenge Mode:

Floor Types:

• Puzzle Floors: Types of Floors with either Questions or Styles of Puzzles that require you to complete a certain task. Sometimes these also contain enemies that are much harder to kill, but generally there is a mechanic in that same room that makes the enemy easier to beat.
• Boss Floors: Kill Bosses (either literal or empowered enemies that have boss-like traits)
• Action Floors: Kill a set amount of digistruct enemies on each floor. Each floor requires you to kill 25 enemies to progress onward. At least 3 of them are Badass enemies.
• Defend Floors: A crystal is in the middle, you must defend it against waves of enemies. Each Defend Floor has 5 waves, ending with a Boss (similar to Underdome).
• Loot Floors: Receive loot for making it to these floors. Also this unlocks a respawn point for anyone who falls during the Tower Challenge, which gives them an extra chance for players to enter the Tower and assist their allies. 

Normal Mode

• Time Limit to Clear Tower: 40 minutes
• Rooms Required to Win: 24
• Floors Required to Win: 6
• Puzzle Floors: 2 (4 and 16)
• Boss Floors: 2 (10 and 22)
• Action Floors: 12  (1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, and 21)
• Defend Floors: 4 (5, 11, 17, and 23)
• Loot Floors: 4 (6, 12, 18, and 24)

True Vault Hunter Mode:

• Time Limit To Clear Tower: 35 minutes
• Rooms Required to Win: 28
• Floors Requires to Win: 7
• Puzzle Floors: 3 (4, 16 and 26)
• Boss Floors: 2 (10 and 27)
• Action Floors: 12 (1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21 and 22)
• Defend Floors: 5 (5, 11, 17, 23 and 25)
• Loot Floors: 5 (6, 12, 18, 24 and 28)

Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode:

• Time Limit to Clear Tower: 30 minutes
• Rooms Required to Win: 32
• Floors Required to Win: 8
• Puzzle Floors: 4 (4, 16, 26 and 31)
• Boss Floors: 3 (10, 22, and 30)
• Action Floors: 13 (1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 13, 14, 15, 19, 20, 21, 25, 27 and 28)
• Defend Floors: 6 (5, 11, 17, 23, 29 and 31)
• Loot Floors: 6 (6, 12, 18, 24, 30 and 32)

All Tower-Style Challenge Zones are done the same way for each difficulty.

About Difficulty:

• Enemy stats are increased by 1% for each floor progressed. (Normal),  1.5% for each floor progressed (TVHM) or 2% for each floor progressed (UVHM)
• Defend Floors use the same stats, except on future waves you will encounter more Badass and Super Badass enemies (on any difficulty!)
• Normal Mode enemies scale up to 23% Damage/Shield/Health capacity.
• True Vault Hunter enemies scale up to 42% Damage/Shield/Health capacity.
• Ultimate Vault Hunter enemies scale up to 64% Damage/Shield/Health capacity.

True and Ultimate Vault Hunter difficulty increases also are added to the scaling, which makes it feel much harder on TVHM and UVHM, but also makes the Loot Floor rooms more rewarding. Completing a Tower on TVHM gives you 1 Gold Dahl Treasure Chest (always guaranteed a purple or higher), and UVHM gives you 2 Gold Dahl Treasure Chests. 

Loot Floors:

• Loot Floor #1 always contains 1 White Treasure Chest, 1 Green Dahl Treasure Chest and Ammo Chests.
• Loot Floor #2 will always contain 1 Red Treasure Chest and 2 Green Dahl Treasure Chests. Also contains Ammo Chests.
• Loot Floor #3 will always contain 2 Red Treasure Chests, 1 Red Dahl Treasure Chest. Will also contain an Ammo Vendor by Marcus.
• Loot Floor #4 will contain a Silver Dahl Treasure Chest.
• Loot Floor #5 will contain a Gold Dahl Treasure Chest and an Ammo Vendor.
• Loot Floor #6 will contain a Gold Dahl Treasure Chest.

Too Easy?

Try Badass Upgrades! Once you beat it on a certain difficulty (Normal, TVHM and UVHM are separate) you unlock Badass Upgrades which do the following to towers:

Skilled Badass Upgrade: Adds +1 to the Base Level of enemies.

Veteran Badass Upgrade: Adds +2 to the Base Level of enemies.

Elite Badass Upgrade: Adds +3 to the Base Level of enemies.

With Badass Upgrades they do not affect world level (or will they?) and they only affect Tower Challenges.

They are worth Badass Tokens and SHOULD ONLY BE ATTEMPTED IF YOU HAVE A WELL-EQUIPPED PARTY OR SOLO CHARACTER.

• Beating it on Skilled Badass gives 5/10/15 Badass Tokens at end. (Normal/TVHM/UVHM)
• Beating it on Veteran Badass gives 10/20/30 Badass Tokens at end. (Normal/TVHM/UVHM)
• Beating it on Elite Badass gives a Blueprint to a building in the Dahl Capital Ship and also gives 5/10/15 Badass Tokens. The Blueprint is transferable (it is purple quality) 

Is There More?

Of course there is more things I can write about.

The next post is a pretty obvious one... the Borderlands 2 version of Slot Machines in Borderlands 3? This post will be live on June 7, 2015.