After about six weeks, the Bloody Harvest event has finally come to a close within Borderlands 3. However, continuing to fill the void until the first expansion pack called Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot launches is the Takedown at Maliwan's Blacksite. Through the wave based combat and challenging enemies is plenty of new loot like the Tankman’s Shield.
However, standing in the way of those ultimate prizes is the ultimate boss of this event called Wotan the Invincible. With a title like that, players have been finding out that he's much tougher than most other boss level character in the game as he's largely considered Borderlands 3's first raid-level boss.
Taking Wotan down typically involves multiple phases complete with shields and damage stages to be mindful of. It's a lengthy fight, but one YouTuber has found a much faster and easier way to end this battle quickly. The method in question is highlighted in a video from Glitching Queen and as she mentions, there's a few items players will need in order to get this to work.
The Gear
The first item required is a legendary shield known as Brawler Ward which is typically dropped by Graveward. Thanks to a recent patch, this item has significantly increased in power by causing its damage effects to continually stack over time. Specifically, the 25% bonus weapon and 300% melee damage while the player shields are depleted.
To get the most out of the melee damage bonus, players will want to have the Face-puncher shotgun as shooting enemies is considered a melee attack by the game. This already high damage weapon becomes even more potent when multiple 300% damage bonuses start getting stacked on top of it.
Setting Up
While this technique can be used by any character and have them enhanced to various effects through abilities and mods, players will first need to deplete their shields to cause the buff to appear. The easiest way to do this is to die and respawn at a New-U Station. Each death will stack a new bonus on top of the one already received and there doesn't appear to be a cap to how many buffs players can get.
However, one down side to this is that dying over and over again will quickly get expensive as each revive takes a portion of the player's money. It was determined that in order to start dealing 1 million damage per shot, players would need to essentially die 30 times. Shockingly, 110 deaths are needed to start causing 18 million damage in every shot. Over 300 deaths are needed to get into the 150 million damage range.
One thing to keep in mind that this technique isn't just for Wotan and can be used effectively on any boss in Borderlands 3. To display this power, she deals 150 million damage to Wotan in one shot on Mayhem 4. For those wondering, Glitching Queen used a Moze build that focused on her red Shield of Retribution skill tree.
In fact, this stacking glitch was discovered by another YouTuber BG4G, who had a shield that provided a speed buff each time it was depleted. After a few deaths, their character was moving much faster than normal, due to the speed buffs continually stacking.
While this stack is active, players should avoid depleting their shield and getting a second wind as all previous damage stacks will be removed. So, the trick is to either die, or grab a shield that is fast at regenerating or has a very high capacity. Certain character abilities, class mods like Moze's Bloodletter, and artifacts like the Deathless will also come in handy.
While this certainly makes situations easier for players, it's highly unlikely that this is intended behavior and it likely means that Gearbox Software will be issuing a hot fix to put a cap on the amount of bonus stacks that players can get from shield items like the Brawler Ward. Gearbox has been fairly quick to patch things, so players should expect to see something sooner rather than later.
Borderlands 3 is out now for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One with a Stadia version in development.