Borderlands 4 Hidden Items & Collectibles Complete Guide

2026-06-10·Secrets & Collectibles

Borderlands 4 has six types of collectibles spread across Kairos and the Eridian Rifts. Some are tracked in your challenges menu. Some aren't. Some are permanently missable - progress past a certain point and they're gone until your next playthrough. Here's everything worth finding.

I'm organizing this by collectible type rather than region, because most collectibles spawn across multiple regions and hunting by type is more efficient than hunting by area. If you're trying to 100% the game, do one collectible type at a time per region.

Eridian Glyphs (24 Total)

These are the main story collectibles. Each region has six. They're glowing purple symbols etched into walls, floors, and ceilings - usually in out-of-the-way spots that require traversal mechanics to reach.

Finding all six in a region unlocks that region's backstory - audio logs from the original Eridian inhabitants that explain why they abandoned Kairos and how the Timekeeper discovered the planet. The lore is surprisingly good and completely missable if you don't hunt glyphs.

All 24 glyphs reward the "First Contact" artifact (see the easter eggs guide) and a legendary Maliwan SMG called "The Ancient" that deals bonus damage to Order enemies. The Ancient is one of the best guns in the game for the campaign but you can't get it until you've already beaten the campaign - by the time you collect all 24 glyphs, you'll be well past the point where it's useful for story content. Annoying design, but it shreds in Rifts.

Hardest glyphs to find:

  • Verdant Expanse #4: inside a hollow tree accessible only via grappling hook from an adjacent cliff. The hook point is hidden by leaves - look for a patch of slightly different-colored foliage.

  • The Forge #6: on the ceiling of the reactor room. You need to double jump from the highest catwalk and glide to reach it. Miss the glide and you fall into the reactor pit, which kills you. Bring a long-range weapon to activate the glyph from a distance if you're struggling.
  • The Spire #3: behind a fake wall in the Inner Sanctum. The wall looks identical to every other wall. Melee it. There's no visual tell. I only found this because I melee random walls in every game out of Borderlands-paranoia.

Typhon Chests (18 Total)

Named after Typhon Deleon from Borderlands 3. These are golden chests hidden in each region (4-5 per region) marked by faint humming audio cues. The loot inside scales to your current level, so opening them at low levels gives you gear you'll outgrow quickly.

My strategy: mark the locations but don't open them until level 25-30. The gear at that level carries you through the mid-game. If you're desperate for gear early, open 2-3 and save the rest.

Typhon chests have a hidden mechanic: the first chest you open in each region has boosted loot quality. The game wants your first chest experience to be exciting, so it front-loads the RNG. This means you should save your first chest in each region for a level where gear matters - not level 5 in Ironhold when you'll replace everything in an hour.

Notable Typhon chest locations that are easy to miss:

  • Ironhold: behind the waterfall in the east slums. The waterfall conceals a cave entrance.
  • Verdant Expanse: on a floating platform above the central lake. Requires the hover bike to reach - drive off a specific ramp at full speed.
  • The Forge: inside a locked storage container. The key is a random drop from Forge workers. Farm the assembly line for about 10 minutes and it'll drop.
  • The Spire: in the Timekeeper's private quarters (post-boss only - you can't get this one until after you beat the game).

Legendary Weapons From Side Content

Some of the best legendaries come from side missions and exploration, not bosses. These are the standouts:

The Bolts Bane (SMG): Reward from "The Bolts That Bind" side quest in the Verdant Expanse. Shoots projectiles that chain between enemies affected by Bolts - which is every humanoid enemy in the game. Effectively a Maliwan Cloud Kill for BL4. Carries you through the entire campaign.

The Negotiator (Shotgun): Reward from the "Supply Lines" side quest chain in Ironhold. Jakobs shotgun with a unique effect: critical hits refund ammo directly to your magazine. With the Jakobs full-part bonus (+50% crit), this gun never needs to reload as long as you hit headshots. Borderline broken on Vex and Rav with crit builds.

The Warden's Mercy (Rocket Launcher): Drops from Warden Kael at about a 5% rate. Torgue launcher that fires a volley of 6 micro-rockets instead of one large one. Each micro-rocket applies the full sticky bonus damage when detonated. On Harlowe with Explosive Release, this one-cycles most campaign bosses.

The Ancient (SMG): All 24 Eridian Glyphs reward. Maliwan SMG with rotating elemental damage - cycles between shock, incendiary, and corrosive with each reload. Insane utility. One gun for every situation. Ammo-hungry but solves your elemental coverage problem entirely.

The Kairos-Ender (Pistol): Drops from the secret "Final" boss at Rift level 100 (the dunce cap enemy). Jakobs pistol with infinite ammo and damage that scales with your Guardian Rank. At Guardian Rank 200, this is the highest DPS weapon in the game. At Guardian Rank 0, it's a mediocre purple. The definition of a "win more" weapon - you need to have basically beaten the game to make it good.

Missable Items

These are items you can permanently lose access to in a playthrough:

The Disruptor Grenade Mod: From "The Bolts That Bind" side quest in the Verdant Expanse. If you progress past the Forge without completing this quest, the quest-giver disappears and the grenade mod is gone until your next playthrough. I missed this on my first run. Don't miss it. The stun effect works on every Order enemy for the rest of the game.

The Vault Hunter Artifact: From the "Old Wounds" side quest in Ironhold. You need to talk to a wounded Resistance fighter in the medical bay before completing the third story mission. After mission 3, he dies and the quest is gone. The artifact gives +25% damage against bosses. Irreplaceable.

The C4$H Pre-Order Items: If you didn't pre-order, you can't get these. They're cosmetic only (a skin and a weapon trinket), so you're not missing anything functional. But completionists should know they exist and are permanently locked if you bought the game post-launch.

Rift-Exclusive Collectibles

Eridian Rifts have their own collectible system separate from the campaign. Rift-specific Eridian Glyphs (12 total) appear in specific Rift layouts and unlock Rift-specific lore. Finding all 12 gives you a legendary class mod called "The Seer" that boosts all skill tree capstones by +1.

Rift glyphs spawn randomly - each Rift run has a 10% chance to contain a glyph you haven't found. You can't target-farm them. Just play Rifts and they'll appear eventually. Took me about 60 Rift runs to find all 12.

The Final Collectible Count

  • 24 Eridian Glyphs (campaign)
  • 12 Eridian Glyphs (Rifts)
  • 18 Typhon Chests
  • 6 Legendary weapons from side content
  • 2 Permanently missable items
  • 3 Pre-order exclusives (cosmetic)
  • 1 achievement for 100% completion

Total: roughly 60 hours to 100% if you're efficient, 80+ if you're exploring blind. The Rift glyphs are the bottleneck - everything else can be farmed systematically.