The Destroyer

The Destroyer is a massive, godlike being from another dimension, and the final boss in Borderlands. It is a mass of flesh with a huge, glowing eye, a massive mouth, and several tentacles. The Eridians imprisoned the Destroyer within the Vault thousands of years previously at the cost of their entire civilization, in order to prevent the monstrosity from consuming the universe.

Background
The Guardian Angel knows of The Destroyer and that it is what awaits those who open the Vault. However it chooses not to share this information with the player characters, likely because it fears they would not pursue the Vault if they had prior knowledge of its contents. The Angel appears to want to use the Vault hunters to defeat the Destroyer once and for all.

Combat
The Destroyer does not move throughout the battle. It has multiple weak spots: Its eye, the glowing spots on the tentacles and its mouth/tongue. The Destroyer has a truly prodigious amount of health, as befits an extra-dimensional, godlike being of destruction.

At the beginning of the fight, and throughout the battle, the Destroyer will sprout a set of purple tentacles with glowing orbs near their bases. These tentacles throw purple, explosive spikes that can arc over cover, thus it is imperative to destroy these tentacles when they appear. These spikes can be destroyed by shooting the glowing orbs near the bases of the tentacles. These tentacles also count as separate enemies; severing one of them will activate 'On Kill' buffs and can trigger a second wind. They can also drop ammunition when they are destroyed.

The Destroyer will also lash out with its two reddish tentacles. These can't be destroyed, but these attacks are fairly obvious and easy to avoid, and only happens occasionally in any case. More often it will lift its red tentacles into the air and slam them into the ground, releasing a shockwave that launches nearby characters back. This can be avoided by hiding behind any of the stone pillars that litter the battlefield. After taking a decent amount of damage, The Destroyer will sprout two more red tentacles.

As the battle progresses, The Destroyer will also unleash a concentrated blast of pure energy from its glowing eye. The charging of this beam can be heard before it is unleashed. This is a very damaging attack and is difficult to dodge, but it can be avoided by hiding behind most of the rocky pillars. This attack is used frequently as a follow up to its tentacle slam, and characters caught by it may be knocked away from cover and unable to reach safety by the time the Destroyer unleashes the beam. The beam attack also has a knock-back effect, so attempts to stay in the back of the area, out of range of some of its tentacles, can result in being knocked off the cliff. Sometimes the beam can be seen piercing a pillar, although the stone will block the damage regardless.

Rakk sometimes spawn in the sky above and to the left of the Destroyer, and are good targets for a Second Wind if a character becomes crippled. Second Wind can also be activated by destroying one of the vulnerable tentacles.

A health regenerating shield or mod is highly beneficial during the fight, as is ammo regeneration.

Glitches
Pertaining to the battle

A glitch exists where characters can sometimes end up inside the body of the Destroyer. This is not a significant advantage, however, seeing as all of the Destroyer's attacks are still capable of harming the character inside. Critical hits can still be scored by aiming at the eye or the maw while in this position.

The Destroyer has two giant tentacles that grapple two pillars of stone. Next to this pillar gripped by the left tentacle is another small piece of stone. Characters hidden behind this are impervious to the Destroyer's attacks, but may harm the Destroyer in return.

Bugs
Some players have experienced a bug that caused The Destroyer to vanish from play when one player has exited during the fight with the Destroyer. Upon a restart of the game the Destroyer is absent, the mission checked as complete and the Vault Key unobtainable. This could have been caused by a game crash during the fight in some cases.

Workarounds found so far:

 * Connect to friend's game and kill The Destroyer in co-op.
 * Use WillowTree to edit the mission to either completed in order to skip it as a whole, or to mark it as undone to go through it again.

On some occasions, the game may crash on kill for a character scoped in on the Destroyer, and the kill will not be counted.


 * If you jump off the mountain before you die his health will not reset.

Trivia

 * The Destroyer is very similar to the final boss of Gearbox Software's first game, the Half-Life expansion Opposing Force.
 * In a title card that was cut from the final release of the game, its name was stated to be "Phil". Given the often humorous nature of these image captions, however, the veracity of this claim is open to dispute.