In case you got swept away with the hype train for Borderlands 3 and have no prior experience with the series, you’re probably pretty familiar with Borderlands 3 Eridium. It’s a glowing purple rock crystal that you can harvest after hitting a certain point in the main campaign, but also a rare currency that can be used to acquire new skins and weapons from vendors around the many Borderlands 3 planets, including from Crazy Earl’s vending machine.
As Eridium farming isn’t possible until you’ve finished the first portion of Borderlands 3’s story, we’re going to quickly flash you the spoilers warning now. Consider yourself warned. If you’re just starting out then you’ve likely already encountered Borderlands 3 Eridium from tough enemy drops or as a currency required in stores, but you can’t actually start farming Eridium until you clear out the first vault, which is at chapter 10.
This is a resource you’ll want to collect as much as possible though, as the weapons you can buy for it are exceptional, so naturally you’ll want a means of farming Eridium in Borderlands 3, which is where we come in.
Best way to farm Borderlands 3 Eridium
The best way to farm Eridium arrives at around chapter 10. As soon as you clear out the first vault, slaying the guardian of the vault in the Forgotten Basilica and entering Vault of the Rampager, you’ll gain access to an artifact that lets you melee Eridium to harvest it. To start this quick farming method you must not progress any further in the Beneath the Meridian mission. Instead you simply harvest the Eridium crystals that seal the vault’s chests shut then quit the game and restart.
You’ll be lumped back at the last checkpoint with no boss to slay and can simply run straight into the vault to farm the Eridium from the chests. Better still, you’ll occasionally be able to open the chests so you can farm weapons, too. You should get a few hundred Eridium with each run, so if you’re committed, you can farm thousands of Eridium before resuming with the main story in Borderlands 3. Eridium is a very useful resource for getting Borderlands 3 weapons, Borderlands 3 anointed gear, and improving your Borderlands 3 builds.
Restarting the game near a resource is the basic method of farming most items in Borderlands 3 though so there may be faster ways of farming Eridium than this one.
If you don’t want to spend any time repetitively grinding then you can also focus your attention on going back through the early portions of the game and gathering up all of the Eridium crystals you couldn’t harvest before. The game should repopulate these areas with higher level enemies, too, so you may get lucky and get some of the purple currency from them while you’re at it.