Tips for farming at the Turret Calibration in the Factory

Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel BL: TPS Gameplay Discussion (Spoilers!)
#1

Almost all the tips I’ve seen for using the Let’s Build a Robot Army mission’s turret calibration step to farm moonstones, experience, badass ranks, etc. have said to stand at the center spawn point and either kill with weapons or butt slams. However, this method lets the turrets get kills way to easily, which can severely limit your farming. I’ve learned a much better way to farm using this mission.

  1. Equip a Cryo Spike shield and any class mod that boosts elemental effect chance. If you can get an avalanche shield that’s even better. The reason for cryo spike is the main enemy we’re going to grind is a melee attacker.

  2. Once you trigger the spawns walk back towards the entrance and wait for the turrets to get 4 kills. This starts the spawning of lil lunitic baddasses. As soon as the turrets have the 4 kills step outside the entrance and kill any regular mobs that came from the center door. Only 2 badasses will spawn at a time.

  3. On the right side of the area outside the entrance there is a crate with a money box on top of it. Go stand in the little corner the crate makes with the wall. This will keep the badassses from knocking you back with their slams and hits.

  4. Let the badasses hit you until they freeze then shatter them. This lets you get the badass ranks in weapons, melee, cryo damage, shattering and critical hits if you aim for their head when shattering.

  5. When your inventory is full from all the loot, lead the two badasses out to the main hallway of the factory. Now you have time to run back to the vending machines to sell the loot and get back before they walk within range of the turrets again.

  6. Never let the turrets get to more than 7/12 kills, because at 8/12 suicidal lunatics start spawning and the turrets can kill them before they reach you. If the turrets get to 8/12 and you still want to grind for experience of badass ranks save and exit then continue. this will reset this step of the mission to 0/12 kills. Alternately, just teleport back to Concordia so you can spend some of those moonstones you’ve collected either for deck upgrades or at the Grinder, as leaving the factory will also reset this step to 0/12 turret kills.

  7. On NVHM the experience per kill drops to about 30-35 once you reach level 22. So at this point you can either let the turrets get their 12 kills and continue on with the storyline, or stay and grind more to work on badass ranks, farm moonstones, etc.

I only have 1 character to TVHM and I screwed up grinding this mission by trying to kill everything coming out of the center spawn point. I can update this post with TVHM and UVHM info once I get another character to TVHM and my main gets to UVHM. I also screed up the grinding with my 2nd and 3rd characters on NVHM. However, with my 3rd character, Fragtrap, I did remember to save and exit before the turrets got the 12th kill. That’s when I decided to try waiting at the entrance to the room after the spawns started. It took some trial and error to find the sweet-spot in number of turret kills.

Edit: Gladstone shuts up shortly after moving the fighting outside the turret room. I think his complaints are on the same trigger point as the center door spawns are. As long as you don’t trigger more center door spawns after the turrets get to the 4-7 kill sweet spot he won’t complain. Which means not going back in to the turret room for any reason until you’re done farming.

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#2

NOOOO

It has a long delay, so yeah spike and nova are nice but when it goes down it stays down for way to long. Short delay is what you want with a bit mob like that.

Also never let the turrets get any kills, just kill as fast as possible and clean up after.

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#3

Solo farming, you can’t kill fast enough to prevent the turrets from getting kills, except possible only with certain characters, builds and gear. The point of this thread is to help anyone to be able to solo farm this mission on any character with any gear and any build. A cryo spike shield works just fine when you only have the 2 badasses spawning while you’re standing outside the room. As long as you don’t go back into the room once the turrets have at least 4 kills and no more than 7 kills you can farm all day, sell off all the loot dropped, buy more ammo if need be, etc. without having anything other than the 2 badasses spawning.

Yes, this is much slower than standing at the spawn point killing stuff, but it’s also much easier to control the turrets kill count even you’re new to the game and never played BL1 or BL2.

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#4

The Too Scoops works wonders for soloing this, its one of the best freeze guns in the game

#5

Sure, if you want to work on shotgun badass ranks while farming this mission. My OP tips are to allow working on badass ranks with any weapon or element.

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#6

I love that mission for the unending mobs it produces… didn’t realize that four was the magic number before the big guys come out, but bringing the fight outside of the room is a great way to prolong it. Most enemies won’t die in the run past the turrets, but Aurelia’s Frost Diadem, Athena’s Shield (with Wrath of the Goddess) and Wilhelm’s surveyors, if left to their own devices, will bring the fight back into that room very easily (where the turrets may land some finishing blows, inching you closer to the end of that mission).

I love spike shields, but mostly use them with Claptrap when he rolls the shield subroutine. These, combined with Repulsive and 3DD1.3, make for some super funny steamrolling. I rarely kill anything with just those items, but dang if it isn’t hilarious.

Seriously though, I like nova shields in that particular room, because those enemies are all melee, and if your shield goes down, several of them are going to eat it (which is my favorite part about them).

#7

My advice, use a BFG and let loose. AND SHUT THE HELL UP GLADSTONE!

#8

This is exactly how I control it too. 7 is the trick…

#9

I stumbled upon this magic number range of 4 to 7 as well. I was farming it for a bit with Nisha in UVHM. Trying to grind levels. I even splitscreened in a level 51 Jack I earned by playing the entire game in splitscreen as 1 player (meaning one controller sits around a lot doing nothing and I played using half of my tv).

Anyhow. The jack is nice because it can kill pretty easily with it’s holograms without me even touching that controller. The downside is higher player counts make the enemies tougher.

Anyhow, I noticed at some point that once the fight got pushed outside the doorway, the turrets weren’t able to get any kills on the tougher guys that were running through the room.

I might need to try a different nisha build for this grind. One that tries to keep my showdown longer and less cooldown.

#10

This is horde mode in form of a mission, I wish the Claptrap Voyage gives us a repeatable horde mode.

#11

Yes, the first step in the OP should be “Press mute button!” :hear_no_evil:

#12

No need to mute. He shuts up shortly after moving the fight out of the room. I think his complaints are on the same trigger point as the center door spawns are. As long as you don’t trigger more center door spawns after the turrets get to the 4-7 kill sweet spot he won’t complain. Which means not going back in to the turret room for any reason until you’re done farming.

OP updated

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#13

guardian hunter works better

#14

Guardian Hunter isn’t until after you’ve finished that play-through. This is in the middle of the play-through.

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#15

true but you can not complete GH and still complete the game, not true at the turret facilty

Lets break the robot army!
#16

They are both useful missions depending on what level you are, what playthrough and what your goal is. Maybe you want to grind XP in UVHM until you’re max level so that you can get the rest of your gear at max level.