Borderlands 4 weekly update and latest patch notes

Borderlands 4 isn't quite a live service game, but its endgame does heavily revolve around a weekly schedule. This weekly update rotates endgame content, shifts the location of Maurice's Black Market vending machine, and is often when Gearbox reveals and releases key patch notes.

With this in mind, the weekly update is an important date to keep track of, whether you're just entering the endgame or perfecting your builds with a shopping list of gear. Below, I'll go over what's available this week and any major changes so you don't miss out.

Borderlands 4 weekly update

Each week in Borderlands 4, the Big Encore boss, Wildcard Mission, and Black Market vending machine activities change. Since these are endgame activities, you'll have to have completed the campaign before you can access them. These changes go live at the weekly reset time, which is every Thursday at 9 am Pacific.

Here's what's active this week from December 18 to December 25:

• Big Encore boss 1: There are three Encore bosses you can take on this week. The first is Primordial Guardian Inceptus, who is found in Arch of Inceptus in the Dissected Plateau. It has a chance of dropping the Lucky Clover legendary pistol, Husky Friend legendary shotgun, Extra Medium legendary shield, and Ravenfire legendary heavy weapon. It can also drop the Elementalist class mod for a Forgeknight, the Filantropo class mod for an Exo-Soldier, and am Avatar class mod for a siren.
• Big Encore boss 2: The second Encore boss is Primordial Guardian Origo, who is found in Arch of Origo in The Low Leys. It has a chance of dropping the Kaoson legendary SMG, the Watts 4 Dinner legendary shield, and the Bottled Lightning legendary heavy weapon. It can also drop the Kindread Spirits class mod for Sirens, the Buster class mod for Exo-Soldiers, the Atomic Driver class mod for Gravitars, and the Shatterwight class mod for Forgeknights.
• Big Encore boss 3: The third Encore boss is Primordial Guardian Radix, who is found in Arch of Radix in the Grindstone of the Worthy. It has a chance of dropping the Anarchy legendary shotgun, and the Adrenaline Pump legendary repkit. It can also drop the Grenazerker class mod for Exo-Soldiers, and the Teen Witch class mod for Sirens.
• Wildcard Mission: Rush the Gate with the healthy, wealthy, and experienced modifiers, and a guaranteed drop of the Aegon's Dream legendary assault rifle each time you complete it, a Vladof brand weapon.
• Maurice's Black Market vending machine: Under Sandytoes Villa on the western shore of Coastal Bonescape. Fast travel to the Abandoned Post safehouse and then either walk or drive your way to Sandytoes Villa, where you'll find the vending machine by a pier under the house.

The Aegon's Dream assault rifle has the Prophetic special effect, which means its shots alternate between incendiary upper barrel and cryo under barrel. Also, switching to its underbarrel attachment rotates the barrels 90 degrees clockwise, enabling faster fire rate and windup time.

Latest Borderlands 4 patch notes

Even vault hunters can get in the holiday spirit, as Gearbox has set up three Encore bosses for us to take on until January 8, and we're five times more likely to get a legendary drop up until this date too. While this doesn't include Encore bosses, it's still something nice to keep us ticking over while drowning in eggnog and chocolate.

As for patch notes, it was only a minor update this week, so not much has changed. Here's the full Borderlands 4 patch notes for the week of December 18 - December 25:

• Addressed an exploit where UVHM rewards could be redeemed in non-UVHM Bloomreaper fights
• Season's Lootings (Dec 18 - Jan 8): Legendary drop rates across Kairos, with the exception of Big Encore Bosses and Bloomreaper the Invincible, have up to 5x increased rates compared to the usual rates

Last week's Borderlands 4 patch notes

It was another major patch for Borderlands 4 last week that addressed PC performance issues (well, some of them), added the Bloomreaper the Invincible raid boss, True Mode, Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode 6, and other balancing tweaks.

Here's the meaty patch notes for Borderlands 4 from last week (December 11 - 18):

Bloomreaper the Invincible

• Added a new arena: The Bloom
• Added Bloomreaper the Invincible
• Added new Legendary gear to Bloomreaper’s dedicated loot pool:
  • Rainmaker - Ripper Sniper Rifle (guaranteed drop for Platinum-tier rewards in UVHM)
  • Mantra - Maliwan Shotgun
  • Undershield - Vladof Shield
  • Urchin - Tediore Ordnance (Grenade)
  • Jett-Setter - Ripper Ordnance (Heavy Weapon)
  • Misericorde - Siren Class Mod (can only drop for Silver-tier or higher rewards in UVHM)
  • Overdriver - Exo-Soldier Class Mod (can only drop for Silver-tier or higher rewards in UVHM)
  • Trooper - Gravitar Class Mod (can only drop for Silver-tier or higher rewards in UVHM)
  • Lamplighter - Forgeknight Class Mod (can only drop for Silver-tier or higher rewards in UVHM)

True Mode

• Added support for True Mode, a new difficulty that is always scaled for a party of 4 regardless of the amount of players. The change here ups that balance to provide a greater challenge to those who are ready to take it on. This new difficulty mode is available when a player has completed the campaign.

Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode 6

• Added support for UVHM 6
• Added new UVHM challenge
• Added new Firmware: Skillcraft, only available in UVHM 6.

Skillcraft tiers make your Action Skills even more dangerous to your enemies:

• Tier 1: Skill Damage +10%
• Tier 2: Skill Critical Chance +10%
• Tier 3: Dealing Skill Damage increases Skill Damage Dealt by 2% for 10 seconds. Max 25 Stacks

Gameplay

• The-Not-So-Immortal Boneface is no longer immortal due to an unintended regeneration boost during The Old Scrape
• Improved mission flow in Abduction Injunction so the “Kill Order Captors” step continues instead of failing to progress if enemies did not appear
• Bandit bounties now appear correctly in the Fade District
• Lost Loot now keeps SDU upgrades after a Save/Load
• Buying items in vending machines is now more reliable
• Backpack Upgrade SDUs no longer reset after opening a vending machine
• Mimicron fight no longer continues running after a player fast travels out of the arena during multiplayer
• Axemaul now attacks players normally when fighting from the Big Encore Machine
• The Kratchman now continues chasing players, even if they’re on top of a box
• Destroyed Generators no longer affect aim assist during A Lot to Process
• “Kill enemies with Maliwan guns and gear” now progresses correctly when using the Converging Kickballer
• Vault Card challenge “Kill enemies with Vladof guns and gear” now counts kills from Midnight Defiance’s additional projectiles
• “Adjust for Coriolis” Sniper Rifle challenge now tracks kills from more than 50 meters away
• Maliwan elemental challenges now give the correct amount of progress and no longer grant double credit for applying elemental states
• Daily and weekly Vault Card challenges now refresh properly when they expire
• Removed Phosphene challenges from Legendaries that were not meant to have them (Sweet Embrace and Cold Shoulder)
• The “Search for Hints [0/5]” objective in No-Escape Room now completes correctly even if hints were found early
• Improved digistruct tunnel transitions so players don’t get stuck after dashing into portals
• Updated ECHO Location guidance in several missions such that the path appears consistently and points the player in the right direction

Gear

• Reduced how far the Repulsor Augment could launch enemies, as it could cause mission blockers.
• Vehicle rockets and missiles no longer launch enemies long distances
• Updated Vladof Legendary Midnight Defiance Sniper Rifle with the Jakobs licensed part to more reliably ricochet projectiles on critical hits
• Level 3 Bullets to Spare Firmware now works correctly with COV magazines
• Maliwan Sniper Rifles with Singularity Grenade Launcher underbarrels have been corrected to impact enemies rather than passing through them
• The Tediore Legendary Pistol Budget Deity no longer shows unintended homing behavior
• Tediore Legendary Pistol Inscriber now counts the Timekeeper’s Radiant Shield correctly to prevent extra projectiles spawning
• Torgue sticky projectiles now explode after auto-reloading the Tediore Legendary Anarchy Shotgun when transitioning between areas
• The Order Legendary Rooker Sniper Rifle now plays proper airborne SFX while in flight
• Bullet impact decals now fade as normally instead of staying “hot” indefinitely
• VFX for the Daedalus Legendary Missilaser now appear instantly when fired
• Torgue Legendary Shield Firewerks missiles now spawn more reliably after defeating enemies
• Nova damage has been adjusted to increase as intended from stacks of Resolve from the Order Legendary Shield Cindershelly
• Prevented the Legendary Shield Super Soldier from regenerating Heavy Ordnance charges with the Power Play passive
• Elemental attribute details on gear cards now display as intended when comparing gear of the same element
• Updated Ripper Legendary Hellfire SMG to correctly apply its intended damage increase
• Order Legendary Rooker Sniper Rifle now spawns the correct amount of needles
• Vault Card challenge “Loot or Purchase 5 Ordnance” will now increase progress as intended with Heavy Weapons
• Updated the Vault Card Weekly Challenge “Loot or Purchase 10/15 Legendaries” to persist when save/loading

Gearbox also says that it's aware of a reported issue causing Vault Card progress to be lost in multiplayer, and that it's tracking and will provide updates on the Borderlands Support Website Issue Tracker when available.

Vault Hunters

• Prevented an exploit that unlocked Vault Hunter skills earlier than intended
• New characters no longer inherit SDU points from previous characters
• Amon and Rafa’s elemental stats now show the correct values when skipping the prologue
• Shield Boi from the Tediore Legendary Principal has been updated to allow Rafa Aphophis Lance skill and Vex Incarnate skill to fire through it normally

Trouble, Reapers, and Forge Weapon Changes

• Trouble now has a "Blink Melee Attack" that will occur every 12 seconds if too far from the target, causing them to immediately teleport and attack. This should make Trouble much more responsive in the heat of combat
• Trouble, Reapers, and Forge Weapons have also gained increased Damage Radius to make them reliably damage enemies

Dev Note: Companions aren’t quite hitting the benchmark that we would like them to be performing at, so we’re starting with making them more reliable in a variety of ways. We’ll be keeping an eye on how various summons are performing and make more adjustments as necessary.

Amon

• Tempered Pyre deals ~20% more damage
• Tempered Ice deals ~23% more damage
• Tempered Lightning deals ~13% more damage

Harlowe

• Updated Harlowe’s Potential Transference Capstone to allow the Adrenaline Pump Repkit to trigger as intended when Second Wind is earned in multiplayer sessions

Rafa

• Updated “Per My Last” to prevent it from unintentionally behaving as an Overdrive skill
• The Daedalus Legendary Rogue Luty Madlad SMG now interacts properly with the Exo-Soldier Action Skill APOPHIS Lance. Previously, the weapon could stop consuming ammo and firing despite showing the firing animation

Vex

• Troubles ranged attacks now also benefit from Melee Damage
• Blink Strike deals ~14% more damage
• Violent Outburst deals ~11% more damage
• Hexus Nexus deals ~14% more damage

Splitscreen Improvements

• Improved several splitscreen UI elements, including ECHO Log readability and news article sizing
• Enhanced Vault Card usability in splitscreen
• Splitscreen settings now persist after closing the game
• Improved instructions for reconnecting to online play
• Travel countdown notifications now show consistently for all splitscreen players

Visual/Audio Changes

• Reduced cases where the screen distorts before cinematics begin
• Character animations now switch correctly between ladder climbing and swimming in Belton’s Bore
• Oddman’s body no longer appears after replaying Exit Through the Rift Shop with a different choice
• Adjusted animations for enemies holding various weapons
• Updated various incorrect, missing, or low-resolution models and textures
• Corrected background display when using the Black Market Vending Machine in Carcadia Burn
• Updated areas where loot could get stuck, including Bramblesong and the final ramp in How Rush Saved Mercenary Day
• Updated multiple locations where collision, clipping, or out-of-bounds paths could occur
• Two non-functional ECHO Logs no longer appear after completing The Weird Way Home
• Enemies no longer disappear behind the metal door during Genone’s fight in The Yawning Yard
• Ensured doors in How Rush Saved Mercenary Day display with correct green lights when unlocked
• Improved visuals for Amon’s VH-2015 body customization so there are no visible gaps when viewed by other players in multiplayer
• Vault Card ticket amounts now refresh properly after the first purchase
• Updated various audio behaviors
• Updated how combat music reevaluates critical threats properly when entering fresh combat

UI/Text

• “Buy” and “Buyback” tabs in Vending IO now display the correct, different items
• Item Cards in vending machines no longer compare to unknown items
• Item level and value information now always show when comparing items in vending screens
• Improved stability and display consistency across all Vending Machine menus
• Added tooltips to the skills on Class Mods in Item Inspect to show what each skill does
• Improved weapon wheel speed and hold sensitivity
• Locked SHiFT rewards are now hidden in customization menus
• Improvements to ECHO Logs include functional sort buttons, dropdowns that close naturally, clear selection highlighting, and sort/filter preferences that persist between when leaving and re-entering the menu
• Key prompts now function correctly when switching widgets inside the News section of the pause menu
• The “Flip Card” prompt now appears consistently across item comparison menu
• Corrected some cases preventing the prompt to send loot to the bank to now appear and be functional in the Inventory menu
• Improved Vault Card visual consistency
• Updated various UI visuals and icons for alignment, consistency, and clarity
• Updated localization, various text descriptions, subtitle timings, and text alignment across the game
• Updated Credits

Player Experience Improvements

• Reduced a reported rare black-screen situation on Xbox Series X|S and PS5 after the vault loading screen
• Improved framerate when using a Torgue Shotgun with the Flameblast underbarrel
• Minor Update download now stops correctly when signing out during the download
• Titles with Windows usernames containing special characters now restart correctly after installing a Minor Update

PC Performance

Dev note: Over the past few months, the team has been investigating how to deliver the best runtime performance possible with Borderlands 4. Since launching, we've discovered a number of fixes that deliver noticeable framerate boosts and reduce stuttering without making sacrifices in visual quality. Some of the fixes are improvements to our code or content; other fixes come from later versions of Epic's Unreal Engine. See below for more details.

However, we still have much more to do here. We're in this for the long haul, and over the coming months we'll roll out even more performance improvements. We appreciate the community's feedback, and your patience!

• Improved the performance cost of many UI elements (menus, HUD, and overlays) without lowering visual quality
• The game now uses Profile-Guided Optimization (PGO), which allows the executable to run more efficiently and brings large CPU performance gains
• Encouraged smoother gameplay by reducing gameplay hitches caused by shader and PSO (Pipeline State Object) compilation
• Optimized grass, shrubs, and other foliage by updating their meshes and materials, reducing the cost of drawing them on screen
• Added several GPU optimizations pulled in from newer versions of Unreal Engine
• Improved the performance of the Lumen lighting system
• Improved the performance of foliage reflections and water
• Additional performance improvements for minimum-spec PCs in areas with grass, dynamic shadows, and wind effects
• In-engine cinematics now run at higher framerates, instead of being capped at 30 FPS
• Adjusted AI/NPC spawn counts in certain areas so enemies and NPCs no longer spawn in higher numbers than intended, improving both performance and gameplay flow
• Removal of unnecessary extra lights, especially lights used for supporting volumetric clouds.
• Improvements to Physics and Niagara to reduce memory leaks and Out-of-Memory crashes
• Improvements to Cloth initialization to reduce load and spawn cost time.
• Added new graphics options that lets players turn off shadows, volumetric clouds, and fog, offering better performance flexibility
• Improved how VRAM is used by reorganizing texture and mesh memory pools, allowing the game to keep better visual quality at lower graphics settings without hurting performance
• General stability improvements

Borderlands 4 Shift codes: The new key connection.
Borderlands 4 Black Market location: New legendaries, no grind.
Borderlands 4 vault key fragment locations: Crack open Kairos.
Borderlands 4 characters: Meet your new Vault Hunters and find out who's strongest.
Borderlands 4 Harlowe builds: The amped-up Gravitar.
Borderlands 4 Rafa builds: The speed-demon Exo-Soldier.
Borderlands 4 Vex builds: The spooky Siren.
Borderlands 4 Amon builds: The fierce Forgeknight.