What is True Vault Hunter Mode?
True Vault Hunter Mode (TVHM) is Borderlands 3‘s New Game+. You gain access to this feature when you manage to finish the main campaign. Then you can choose to restart the story and play it all again at a higher difficulty. While your adventure starts at the beginning of the story, your character stays the same. You get to keep all your character progress and loot.
Why Play TVHM?
Here is a quick overview of why it’s worth it to play Borderlands 3 on TVHM.
- Experience the Story again
- After playing through the whole game you want to experience it again.
- Level up your Character
- When you completed your first playthrough of Borderlands 3, you are probably somewhere around level 35. TVHM can help you level up because the character level cap is set to level 72.
- For the Challenge
- Enemies are stronger and elemental damage plays a bigger part in TVHM.
- Get Max LVL Quest Reward
- There are some decent quest rewards in Borderlands 3. Then you play TVHM and reached the LVL Cap, you can get quest rewards on your level.
Tips for TVHM
In TVHM the enemies will be stronger and you will encounter more Badasses. If you want to be more effective and deal more damage you have to start using the right elemental damage types.
Staying alive with be more challenging. Therefore it is good to have something that restores your health. You can do this passively by picking up skills that provide health regeneration, however, by picking these skills they will take away from other skills that increase your damage output. Having a shield or a grenade mod that provides health is a good alternative.
TVHM vs Mayhem Mode
Are you wondering what the difference is between True Vault Hunter Mode and Mayhem Mode?
TVHM lets you experience the game from the start with an established character. Mayhem Mode lets you experience the End Game at a higher difficulty. However, there is no difference in the Elemental Resistance scaling between the two modes.
“Normal Mode + Mayhem Mode” is the same difficulty as “TVHM + Mayhem Mode”
Mayhem Mode Sidenote: When you choose to play TVHM you will need to complete the main story again in order to get access to mayhem mode again. Either TVHM or mayhem mode will be beneficial to your guardian rank as you gain bonus XP.
TVHM FAQ
Complete the main story campaign in Normal Mode. Then True Vault Hunter Mode unlocks in the main menu when you are selecting your character.
You first need to complete the main story campaign again before you get access to Mayhem Mode.
No, You can always return to Normal Mode even when you started playing on True Vault Hunter Mode.
No, your character rank and loot carries over to TVHM. Only the missions reset when starting out on TVHM but you can return to Normal Mode.
There is no reason to play on TVHM other than going through the story again.
Only if you want to re-experience the story or want max-level quest rewards. Other than that, you can do everything with Mayhem Mode Enabled.
Your Character Progress, Weapons, Gear, Money, Skills, etc all carry over to TVHM. The only thing that resets is the mission progress on that playthrough.
Yes, you can get more loot on True Vault Hunter Mode but so does Mayhem Mode. The two modes don’t stack.
