Other than being more difficult and giving a sort of completionist vibe what are the upsides to TVHM? Supposedly better loot is the answer I received when talking to friends but is this confirmed? Any other benefits?
True Vault Hunter Mode is basically the New Game Plus of the Borderlands franchise. Playing in this mode amps up the difficulty with enemies having more health and doing more damage, but you get better rewards in return.
Tougher, Stronger Enemies
TVHM poses a higher difficulty with enemies doing more damage and taking more damage to be defeated. Regular enemies and bosses will all receive this damage and health increase.
Better Loot
Stronger enemies means better loot! In TVHM, players will find items with higher stats compared to the ones they find in normal mode. When playing in TVHM, itâs necessary to use better gear to survive and win fights.
Higher Chances of Loot Tinks
Loot Tinks are special enemies that come out of loot boxes randomly. Defeating one will have them drop a random legendary item. In TVHM, theyâre more likely to spawn.
Easier to Level Up
Defeating enemies give higher XP in TVHM. This makes it easier for players to reach the Level 50 cap compared to playing in normal difficulty.
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Thereâs more exp to be gained running Mayhem mode normal since some of us canât activate Mayhem mode in sanctuary in TVHM without beating the story a second time.
You can also run into Anointed enemies in TVHM mixed in normal spawns.
Like previous games thereâs also some variant enemy types that donât show up in normal. (Though atleast as of yet I havenât run into things like rabid skags or armored psychos)
Heh reminded me of rabid Stalkers and New Pandora Surgeons - troop types I learned to hate in BL2 
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I assume that eventually there will also be an uvhm. Thatâs where all the good stuff was in bl2
I donât really see how itâs any different than playing Normal using Mayhem levels other than everything being reset.
Normal and TVHM set the base levels for a lot of things, Mayhem is another layer over the top of those. TVHM just has a better baseline is all (in return for higher enemy damage, more frequently shielded/armoured enemies and larger base health/armour/shield pools).
Thereâs a lot of debate going on about whether itâs worth it of course, or if itâs just âtechnically betterâ with no practical benefit, but there are differences.
You also have a higher chance of anointments on your loot is what I hear often.
Thereâs none. Mayhem ticks the TVHM box on.
To elaborate, TVHM has approximately three things normal doesnât.
- Enemies scale to you.
- Different elemental resistances.
- Anointed enemies everywhere.
When you turn on Mayhem, you automatically turn on these three boxes. So. From a Playing The Same Content standpoint, Mayhem 4 is the same on ânormalâ and âtvhmâ.
What TVHM does is allow you to go through the missions you already completed again.
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Mayhem doesnât change Resistance penalties and bonuses. It works exactly like this:
Enemy spawns are also different. Regular troops have a higher chance to have shields, Badasses have a higher chance to spawn in as Hardened and so on.
Enemies also have a generically increased amount of health. This can lower the amount of loot some people receive if their damage isnât up to the task because more stuff dies after the Treasure Hunter perk has expired. People using non-meta setups will also get a lot fewer kills per hour on many bosses meaning their time is better spent in Normal.
Thatâs not even close to the only differences and this myth that theyâre the same needs to die.
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You can easily check elemental multipliers yourself. Mayhem mode uses TVHM values. Bahrooâs testing was done without mayhem mode. Testing this is as simple as grabbing an elemental weapon in normal mode shooting the dummy, note the number then go turn on mayhem and shoot the dummy again.
Increased health in tvhm is another mechanic that has not carried over from previous Borderlands games. This is extremely hard to prove exactly either way, however all enemy scaling math I have done shows that enemy health is untouched by the playthrough. Mayhem Modes replaced tvhm in this functionality.
Enemy spawns I havenât scientifically tested, however from playing characters at mh4 in both modes I have never been able to tell a difference. If you can link me to someone showing and explaining their testing on it Iâd be interested to see it.
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Sometimes I play Tvhm only with 1 of my characters (I play all side missions in Tvhm just for fun). But at the moment people seems to avoid the mode, maybe in future Tvhm will become useful if the devs add Uvhm
I see UVHM mentioned all the time but I honestly donât think they plan to add another mode to Bl3.
Everything they used tvhm and uvhm for in the past has been absorbed into mayhem mode. If they wanted to add difficulty theyâd just do MH5.
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You are both right as far as I know. Why my posts are wrong doesnât matter, please accept an honest apology.
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I hope Mayhem 2.0 will make some sense. M4 was rushed and if GBX will add any new higher mode it need to be pretty damn balanced.
I hope theyâll show M2.0 next week.
Biggest benefit of TVHM, for me at least, is being able to snag up the mission reward items max level. Some of them are actually decent, not as good as the mission rewards from bl2, but decent nonetheless.
Iâve been curious about the enemy health pools and elemental effects in NVHM and TVHM on Mayhem Mode. Does anyone have any definitive proof if there is a difference or not?
Do you trust âI punched a cardboard cutout in all the modes with a green monster com and saw the numbersâ as proof for elemental?
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The elemental modifiers youâll get the best proof by trying yourself. Otherwise youâll just have to take the word of everyone who does testing and has found it out while trying to math something.
Enemy health values as I said earlier is harder to predict. For now just know that with the known enemy health and level values for levels 14, 15, 16 (Normal Mode) and 50 (True) I have been trying to work out scaling and any function that predicts the 3 normal mode values is always either equal to or higher than the level 50 values I know.
The other thing is if you play even mayhem 1 youâll realize that it is more difficult than TVHM, and thatâs with health increases of something like 15%.
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Well, once the game launched in September I was sure that elemental multipliers in Normal and TVHM are different if using Mayhem. Saw some day a post here about Mayhem uses the TVHM modifiers and I was like âthats bull*â â â â â. Then next time when launched the game I did a simple test (as pointed many times in previous posts) in Sanctuary and Iâve found by myself that it was true.
So yeah, you can just trust or go to S3 and check it in five minutes.
TVHM is only for reseting the story if you use Mayhem in Normal.
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