Borderlands 3 Has A Battle Royale (Kinda)

Given the series traditional love for referencing pop culture, and given how prevalent battle royale games have become in the years since the release of Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, it’s of little surprise that the sub-genre would appear in Borderlands 3. In Borderlands 3, you can participate in a battle royale side quest that’s given to you by Moxxi. It’s called Kill Killavolt.

In Kill Killavolt, Moxxi tasks you with killing one of her ex-lovers, Killavolt. Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to get to him as he’s taken to wearing a near-indestructible suit that channels massive amounts of electricity. Moxxi believes the only time he’s vulnerable is when he’s having sex, and thus tasks you with entering the battle royale competition in which the sole victor wins the opportunity to spend the night alone with Killavolt. Moxxi then gifts you with a means of shorting out Killavolt’s suit, which will allow you to hold your own against him once he’s let his guard down around you.

Despite taking place within a battle royale, several of the standard rules for a battle royale do not apply to the mission. You can afford to die without losing all of your progress, for example, and the battlefield you’re thrown into does not shrink as time goes on. Like a battle royale, however, you do have to kill all of your competition. And this mission lasts a very long time, so you’ll need to regularly stop to loot for ammo and health or you’ll risk finding yourself in a firefight without any means of defending yourself. So yeah, Borderlands 3 kind of has a battle royale, if only in the loosest sense of the term.

When we say this mission is long, we mean it takes up an entire area of Borderlands 3 and can last up to 40 minutes. It goes on for such a long time that there are additional side missions you can find to do in the midst of participating in the battle royale–one of which even gives you a grenade launcher that shoots explosive poop that’s very helpful for fighting against Killavolt. You’ll know which side mission gives you the poop gun, trust us–it’s very difficult to miss. You can see the gun in action in the video embedded above.

Killavolt is one of the earliest bullet-sponge bosses in Borderlands 3, as he’s (obviously) resistant to shock damage but he also wears shields–which are strong against everything except shock damage. So make sure you just have a big damage dealer firearm before taking Killavolt on. You’ll need it.

In GameSpot’s Borderlands 3 review, I wrote, “Borderlands 3 has a few stumbling blocks when it comes to bosses, but these fights are overshadowed by the game’s rewarding gunplay and over-the-top humor. The game’s character-driven narrative acts as a satisfying finale for the loot-shooter franchise, and the new mechanics and features–especially the reworked skill trees and weapon manufacturer effects–give you plenty of agency in how you want to play through it.”