Borderlands 3 Update Reworks Passive Character Abilities, Patch Notes

While there’s a major expansion on the way next month, you don’t have to wait or even pay to get more Borderlands 3 right now. Today at 5pm PST, a new patch will drop for Borderlands 3 adding in the Takedown at the Maliwan Blacksite end-game mission. Detailed last month, the mission is made to be tackled with a group of four players at level 50. It won’t be easy, and you’ll all need to bring your A-game if you want any chance of winning. Do so, however, and you’ll find yourself in the possession of the one thing that drives Borderlands 3 players forward: more loot.

You’ll need this loot if you want a chance to survive the new Mayhem 4 difficulty level. You can access Mayhem difficulty options in Sanctuary III after you complete the campaign. Each level brings in different randomized modifiers, along with increasing enemy health and damage. If you want the best loot the game can offer, this is how you have the highest chance of getting it. It just won’t be easy. Gearbox notes that they’re watching how Mayhem 4 affects players and that they’re currently working on revamping Mayhem into a new system currently named Mayhem 2.0.

In addition to this, a few minor updates have been added. The amount of bank space you can have has been increased from 50 to 300, with more space being able to be bought from Marcus. Bosses now have dedicated loot pools for legendary items, so you’ll have a much better idea of who you need to farm for the good stuff. New vending machines now populate the game world, so you have more places to buy things. Finally, a target dummy with a “familiar mask” has been added to the shooting range Sanctuary III, in case you need to try out your new gun.

Zane, Moze, and FL4K have also had their passive abilities reworked to be more powerful. According to Gearbox, they “wanted to increase their viability for later levels of Mayhem while also targeting some passives that were underperforming compared to some others.” Ultimately, all three characters have had their passives buffed across the board. They note that Amara hasn’t had any changes, as they felt she was in a pretty good place right now. Beyond this, there’s a very long list of stability, UI, and other adjustments made to the game.

Borderlands 3 Update Patch Notes

NEW CONTENT:

Takedown at the Maliwan Blacksite

Lorelei has recruited the Vault Hunters to destroy a top-secret weapon Maliwan has been developing at their Blacksite. You and your squad should prepare for an extreme challenge because this content is balanced for four players at level 50. You can gain access to the Blacksite via a mission found on Sanctuary III after completing the main campaign with that character.
Takedowns feature special rules not found in the rest of the game! Respawning is disabled, so make sure you and your co-op partners get Second Wind or you’ll spectate until the team wipes. If you do die, you’re not out permanently! Die during the first half, you’ll get to rejoin your team if they defeat the Valkyrie Squad. If you’re out the second half, but your team manages to defeat Wotan The Invincible, you’ll get to respawn to enjoy the rewards you didn’t completely earn!
Make sure your squad is in the session before you throw the switch inside the Air Lock, or anyone who joins after the switch is thrown joins as a spectator!

Mayhem 4

Mayhem 4 is here for players looking for the toughest challenge in the game! Mayhem 4 adds another increase to enemy health, increases the loot drop chances, and adds a set of new Legendaries! Because the health value greatly increased, Mayhem 4 also slightly adjusts the random modifier system. Mayhem 4 will only roll one positive modifier for the player and one enemy bonus modifier. We want players to try different builds without severely hampering their ability to take down enemies in Mayhem 4. Note that Mayhem 1-3 are unchanged.
In addition to increasing enemy health and adjusting the modifiers, Mayhem 4 contains new Legendary weapons and class mods for players to hunt. These new pieces of gear will contribute to new builds and new ways to kill enemies!
To support Mayhem 4, we changed the Mayhem station slightly. Players will activate Mayhem through the center pillar and increase or decrease Mayhem levels by using the pillars on each side. Looking forward, we will monitor the challenge of Mayhem 4 closely. We’re working hard on Mayhem 2.0, which will add brand new gameplay additions to Mayhem Mode in the future. Until then, we hope you enjoy the challenge and new loot!

Bank Expansion

All characters now begin the game with 20 bank slots instead of 10. The existing Bank SDUs will give everyone a total of 100 available spaces. An additional 10 Bank SDUs are available to purchase in Marcus’s shop on Sanctuary III using the in-game cash currency, each awarding 20 spaces, for a grand total of 300 total bank spaces!

Dedicated Loot Pools for Bosses

All bosses have been updated with new loot pools that give them dedicated Legendary items to drop. Players can now discovery which bosses drop their favorite gear and more easily farm their favorite items. Let the hunt begin!

Additional Vending Machines

The following environments have received additional vending machines. They can typically be found before bosses or the mid waypoint in larger environments:

Athenas
Atlas HQ
Lectra City
Jakobs Estate
Voracious Canopy
Tazendeer Ruins
The Pyre of Stars

Target Dummy

Players can take out their aggression, or test their gear, on a Handsome Jack target inside the shooting range on Sanctuary III.

END GAME CHARACTER BALANCE

For this patch, we adjusted many passives involving companions such as Iron Bear, Digi-Clone, and FL4K pets in general. We wanted to increase their viability for later levels of Mayhem while also targeting some passives that were underperforming compared to some others. Iron Bear saw increases to the base scaling and additional bonuses were added through passives and augments. We allowed some of Zane’s kill-skill bonuses to stack up to two times, increasing their output under certain conditions. FL4K pets also saw some increases over level to their damage so that they didn’t feel underpowered for Mayhem Mode. We are currently happy with the variety of Amara’s builds, but we are always monitoring feedback and will adjust if necessary.

Moze

Iron Bear Damage increased per level, to a total of just under 150% at max level
Desperate Measures now gives Iron Bear the bonus too
Experimental Munitions – Iron Bear also deals bonus fire damage on critical hits
Scorching RPM’s also grants increased Hard Point damage by 5% per level
Vampyr – When Iron Bear deals area damage, Iron Bear receives half the healing bonus
Iron Bear now launches barrels when the player melees them
Increased Iron Bear Bubble Shield from 20% to 50% of Moze’s health

Zane

SNTL damage scale increased by 2% per level
Donnybrook, Pocket Full of Grenades, Cool Hand, Violent Violence, and Violent Speed bonuses now stack twice
Fixed Violent Momentum to scale more at higher movement speeds
Best Served Cold radius and damage increased by 2% per level
Confident Confidence increased max weapon damage bonus from 20% to 35%
Changed Trick of the Light element to Cryo and increased bonus from 18% to 36%
Borrowed Time duration increased from 15% to 30% per active skill
Double Barrel‘s bonus increased from 20% to 25%
Quick Breather now restores 50% of the clone’s health after a swap
Pocket Full of Grenades bonus slightly decreased from 6.5% to 5% as it now stacks
Violent Violence bonus slightly decreased from 4% to 3% as it now stacks

FL4K

Ambush Predator now has a HUD Icon when the buff is active
Increased the pet damage to scale 10/5% per level instead of 9%
Added pet damage to Grim Harvest at 7% per level
Added pet damage to The Most Dangerous Game at 9% per level
Added pet damage to Interplanetary Stalker at 1% per stack, per level
Added pet damage to Furious Attack at 0.6% per stack
Added pet damage to The Fast and the Furryous at 10% per level
Lick the Wounds gained a pet damage buff after reviving the player
Increased pet damage for Psycho Head on a Stick from 10% to 20%
Increased damage in Pack Tactics from 5% to 7% per level
Adjusted Megavore to not reward critical hit bonuses when receiving damage from self-damage

STABILITY

Fixed multiple crashes that occasionally occurred when interacting with the ECHO menu
Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred after quitting to the main menu multiple times
Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred when transitioning to Athenas during a 4-player multiplayer session
Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred when Iron Bear was destroyed
Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred when entering or exiting Iron Bear
Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred while in heavy combat with Varkids
Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred in networked games
Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred when split screen party joins another game during Marcus intro
Fixed a crash that occasionally occurred when a split screen user quit to the Main Menu
Fixed a rare crash that occasionally occurred when dropping a piece of gear on PC
Fixed a rare crash that occasionally occurred after 3 clients joined the host
Fixed a rare crash that occasionally occurred when destructible environmental art took damage
Fixed a rare crash that occasionally occurred when a client transitioned to Desolation’s Edge
Fixed a rare crash that could occur when entering Fade Away
Fixed a rare crash related to the Time of Day of an environment
Fixed a rare crash that occasionally occurred as a result of improper text fields
Fixed a crash related to the Minimap Widget
Fixed multiple crashes that occasionally occurred when players fast traveled
Fixed a reported issue that prevent the application from terminating properly
Fixed a reported issue where the news widget would hang indefinitely
Disabled the benchmark feature when in a coop group

UI

Improved overall performance in menus

Note: we are still working on additional performance updates that will be implemented in future updates.

Improved performance of bank
[PlayStation 4 Only] Fixed a reported issue that prevented some players from marking items as Junk or Favorite on PlayStation 4
Addressed a reported issue where sorting the inventory by type sometimes sorted the inventory by score
Added ‘Sort By Rarity’ to Bank, Inventory, Item Trading and Vending Machine Selling
Clients now receive an indication of why their travel attempt failed
Updated names in the credits
Addressed a reported issue where corrupted characters were sometimes displayed for some Fast Travel Stations in Japanese and Simplified Chinese
Addressed a reported issue where characters were sometimes displayed in the incorrect direction for some Fast Travel Stations and Level Transitions in Traditional Chinese
Addressed a reported issue where comparing class mods sometimes displayed the incorrect icons on the abbreviated item cards
Addressed a reported issue where items slots could sometimes overlap when viewing player storage
Addressed a reported issue where the travel countdown timer could sometimes be interrupted by opening the chat window
[PC Only] Addressed a reported issue where occasionally mouse input could be lost
Addressed a reported issue where Item Cards at the beginning of the game didn’t display
Addressed a reported issue where missions were sometimes not sorting correctly in the Mission Log
Addressed a reported issue where the friends list could occasionally be too long for split screen
Addressed a reported issue where a player could sometimes lose their HUD in split screen
Addressed a reported issue where the info panel briefly displayed when looking at Planet Challenges
Addressed a reported issue where players could sometimes be sent to the wrong location when selecting a destination quickly in the Map
Addressed a rare issue where a dialog box could not be dismissed

MISSIONS

Addressed a reported issue that could sometimes cause NPCs to get stuck during a teleport
Addressed a reported progression blocker where an NPC leading the player could sometimes break if one of the players left the game
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Lilith could sometimes become stuck during the mission “From the Ground Up”
Addressed a reported progression blocker that occasionally occurred when two players tried to accept the quest item at the same time from the slot machine during the mission “Sanctuary”
Addressed a few reported progression blockers that occasionally occurred when travelling to another map and back during the mission “Sanctuary”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Lorelei’s cyclone could sometimes be lost after players enter and exit the menu during the mission “Hostile Takeover”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where the door into KillaVolt’s arena sometimes wouldn’t open during the mission “Kill KillaVolt”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where an Amber Lamps bot could sometimes spawn during the mission “Dynasty Diner” and leave the combat area
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Bloodshine’s sister could sometimes not spawn during the mission “Proof of Wife”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Rhys-Ball could sometimes become stuck during the mission “Space Laser Tag”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Brick could sometimes become stuck in a concrete block during the mission “Hammerlocked”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Tina sometimes couldn’t be spoken to during the mission “Hammerlocked”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Billy, The Anointed would sometimes disappear during the mission “Lair of the Harpy”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where split screen clients could sometimes not progress the objective “Equip Black Flame” during the mission “Witch’s Brew”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Balex could sometimes stop pathing during the mission “The Family Jewel”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Tannis sometimes couldn’t be spoke to during the mission “The Great Vault”
Addressed a reported progression blocker where Tannis sometimes wouldn’t interact with a critical mission objective during the mission “In the Shadow of Starlight”
Addressed a reported progression blocker issue where a Tink could sometimes jump outside the barrier during the mission “Trial of Fervor”
Addressed a few reported progression blockers during the mission “The Trial of Survival”

GAMEPLAY

Rare, Hunt, and Bounty Enemies now always match the players level
Made adjustment to default zoom speed for gamepad
Mayhem Mods that cancel each other out can no longer be active at the same time
Shields that start regenerating immediately after depleting now properly trigger Not Depleted events.

– Moze is no longer able to infinitely stack the damage, health, and shield regen buffs of the Brawler Ward Legendary shield after equipping the Bloodletter Class Mod.
Rough Rider shield properly triggers depleted augments when equipped
Addressed a reported issue where certain shields could provide buffs to players even when not equipped

– Players can no longer stack the health regeneration buff of the Brawler Ward Legendary shield on another shield when repeatedly equipping and unequipping the Brawler Ward shield in Inventory.
Addressed a reported issue where class mods and artifacts were sometimes accumulating action skill cooldowns when respeccing
Addressed a reported issue where Hellwalker anointed parts could sometimes be incorrectly weighted
Addressed a reported issue that sometimes prevented the Zane’s barrier from blocking E-Tech weapon projectiles
Addressed a reported issue where FL4K’s pets could sometimes be frozen without showing any of the effects of being frozen
Addressed a reported issue where the Action Skill cooldown timer for FL4K’s Gamma Burst could sometimes stack cooldowns when players revived or spawned a pet each time
Addressed a reported issue where the skill augment Active Tracking for Moze sometimes didn’t target enemies in turrets
Addressed a reported issue where the Mayhem Modifier sometimes failed to affect Eridium gained
Addressed a reported issue where parts of The Anvil were sometimes not properly balanced
Addressed a reported issue where the Mother of Dragons sometimes wouldn’t drop her loot
Addressed a reported issue where Rare Spawn enemies might not have spawned during a mission if players had already defeated that enemy during that session
Addressed a reported issue where loot sometimes wouldn’t spawn after players had found all Eridian Writings

GENERAL

DX12 is now the default Graphics API on Windows 10 for users with AMD video cards
Added support for future types of hotfixes
Added Spectator mode for Takedowns
Explosion effects now dissipate faster
Bullet tracers passing through Zane’s shield are more transparent
Improved the general audio performance and memory usage
Save games triggered by money or changes in the inventory have been throttled
Addressed a reported issue where save files had the potential to be deleted after the game crashed in the middle of saving
Addressed a reported issue where Guardian Rank and tokens could potentially be lost
Addressed a reported issue where equipped weapon skins were sometimes not properly displayed
Addressed a reported issue where ECHO themes were sometimes not displayed properly for co-op players
Addressed a reported issue where Clay and Wainwright Jakobs would sometimes not appear properly in their Title Cards
Addressed a reported issue where a Boundary Turret in Floodmoor Basin would sometimes not detect Iron Bear
Addressed a reported issue where Iron Bear could sometimes fall through the platform during the Graveward fight
Addressed a reported issue where players would sometimes load into Tazendeer Ruins facing the wrong direction
Addressed a reported issue where players could sometimes become invulnerable when swapping artifacts
Addressed a reported issue where Rakk could sometimes get stuck behind geometry in The Cistern of Slaughter
Addressed a reported issue where players could rejoin the arena in The Cistern of Slaughter after dying
Addressed a reported issue where Depth of Field would sometimes not work properly in split screen
Addressed a reported issue where the player’s shield bar could sometimes disappear from the HUD
Addressed a reported issue where the Vault Symbol on loading screens sometimes appeared incorrectly on consoles
Addressed a reported issue where events would occasionally not work properly if ECHOcast was not enabled before loading into a map
Addressed multiple issues with Badass Events not spawning in certain maps for the Twitch ECHOcast extension
Addressed a reported issue that prevented stats from sometimes properly incrementing while in vehicles
Addressed a reported issue where Service Bots audio would sometimes ignore acoustic data
Addressed a reported issue where player characters would sometimes call out health vials when already at max health
Addressed multiple issues where audio was sometimes muffled or lost
Addressed multiple issues where players would sometimes lose gravity permanently
Edit group hint is now hidden when input is not available

HOTFIX NOTES

Hotfixes are separate from the update and applied at the main menu when Borderlands 3 is connected to the internet. Unlike updates, hotfixes are not permanent—they are temporarily stored in memory during the game session and lost upon exiting Borderlands 3. To ensure that you receive hotfixes, make sure that your system is connected to the internet when Borderlands 3 boots up and hang out on the Menu screen until you see the background change (right now, you’re looking for pumpkins)!

Addressed a reported concern that the Legendary Maliwan “Recursion” ricochets sometimes failed to target ghosts
Adjusted Rampager’s item pool to allow for specific Legendaries to drop
Addressed a reported concern that “Boom Sickle” sometimes showed incorrect part text.

We still have a lot of things that we’re working on, including additional performance and stability updates, Mayhem updates and 2.0, skippable cinematics, and more.

If you haven’t gotten a chance to try out Borderlands 3 yet, there’s a free weekend that will be starting today and giving you the chance. You can also always check out our review to see what we thought of the game.

[Source: Borderlands Official Website]