The Relieving of the Guard in Borderlands 4 (Full Quest Walkthrough)

The Relieving of the Guard is a short DLC side mission on Providence Island, in the Pyroclast Field area. It is marked as an easy-tier job, it takes about a minute of actual play, and its only real purpose is to hand you a much longer collectible hunt at the end.

Quick answer: Talk to Private Hatch, take the mission, and while he is inside the portable toilet, walk up to the green console next to the hatch and choose Neglect your duties. The Tediore guns escape, the mission completes instantly, and the Escaped Tediore Guns collectible quest unlocks.

The Relieving of the Guard mission details and rewards

Everything you need before you start is below. The mission scales to your progress, so the exact XP figure you see may differ from the one shown at level 53.

Detail	Value
Type	DLC side mission, Easy difficulty
Location	Providence Island — Pyroclast Field
Quest giver	Private Hatch
Objectives	Guard the hatch, then Neglect your duties
XP reward	42,140 XP (at level 53)
Item rewards	ECHO-4 Paintjob and a Pistol
Unlocks	Escaped Tediore Guns collectible quest

How to start the mission on Providence Island

Open the map and look for The Relieving of the Guard marker in the Pyroclast Field section of Providence Island. Set it as your tracked objective so the waypoint shows up on the HUD and mini-map.

Providence Island gameplay with an on-screen quest tracker and waypoint markers guiding the player — The Providence Island HUD, where tracked objectives and waypoint markers point you toward the mission area. Image: Gearbox Software

Follow the waypoint and drop down to the platform where Private Hatch is standing. He is guarding an industrial hatch and is very clearly in a hurry to use the restroom.

Talk to him and accept the mission. He immediately runs off to the portable toilet nearby, leaving you with a single objective on screen: Guard the hatch.

Two-panel comparison of the guard post with the hatch closed on the left and open on the right — Left: speaking to Private Hatch with the hatch still sealed. Right: the same post after the hatch has been opened. Image: Gearbox Software

The trigger that completes the mission

Guarding the hatch is not a timed defence, and there is nothing to shoot. The mission only advances when you deliberately fail at your job.

Walk over to the console with the green button, positioned right beside the hatch Private Hatch asked you to watch. The interact prompt reads Neglect your duties.

Press the button. The hatch opens, green gas pours out, and several walking Tediore guns — tagged as Runaway Gun — scramble out of the container and bolt in every direction.

Stay where you are. Private Hatch comes out of the toilet, panics about the escaped guns, and the mission wraps up on its own. You do not need to chase or kill anything here.

A close-range objective marker hovers over a kneeling character as the player holds a rifle — The close-range objective marker over the NPC as the mission closes out at the guard post. Image: Gearbox Software

Note: the escaping guns are the point of the mission, not a mistake. There is no alternative ending where the guns stay contained, so letting them out is the intended outcome.

How to confirm the mission completed

Three things happen in quick succession once the guns run off. The mission complete banner appears with the XP payout, the ECHO-4 Paintjob and Pistol land in your rewards, and a new entry called Escaped Tediore Guns appears in your mission log.

If none of that shows up, the usual cause is that the mission was never accepted in the first place. Check that you spoke to Private Hatch and confirmed the mission before touching anything at the post, because the console only reads as Neglect your duties while the Guard the hatch objective is active.

What the Escaped Tediore Guns quest asks you to do

The real content sits on the other side of that button press. Escaped Tediore Guns is a collectible hunt with a single instruction: find all ten of the escaped Tediore guns and bring them home. It is the longer half of the job by a wide margin.

Once it unlocks, open the map and switch to the collectibles view. A Tediore Guns category appears there and pins the locations you still need to visit, so you can sweep Providence Island at your own pace rather than tracking the runaways in real time.

The Escaped Tediore Guns quest panel listing the objective to find all ten guns and bring them home — The Escaped Tediore Guns panel, with the objective to recover all ten runaway guns. Image: Gearbox Software

Treat the guard post as a one-minute stop, then plan a full lap of Providence Island for the ten guns. The mission itself is really just the key that turns on the collectible tracker.