Transcription
Ladies, gentlemen, and vault hunters of all ages, we're one week into the life cycle of Borderlands 4, and quite a lot has been going on over that period of time surrounding the game. Lots of people playing it, many people struggling to play it, lots of people killing themselves with environmental hazards, people finding absolutely broken interactions and things that are literally broken and could kill the hardest bosses just by sort of breathing on them. And the whole time, Randy Pittsford has been chatting up a storm on Twitter. So, today we're going to do a weekly recap of what's going on with the game. Starting first off with all you need to know about your weekly activities, which updated just a few hours before this video went up. Going into some of the discourse and seeing what official gearbox sources are saying, too. And then to round things off, we will go over the currently active shift codes as well.
First up then, weekly reset time. The weekly wildcard mission is Shadow of the Mountain, which is the opening mission for the Terminus Range region. This is the one that opens with meeting to find Kelder and then going to his old office to retrieve the relic with a boss along the way in the form of the sky spanner crotch. The whole mission can be done in less than like half an hour pretty easily with the only real awkwardness being that this mission starts you at the very southern point of terminus range. The first objective is to go to the faction town which is quite far away from there but it also removes your ability to fast travel to the town. So you do have to go to it from your nearest fast travel point but that's not just not that big of a deal. The modifiers on enemies in the wild card mission this week are healthy, chain master, and leaking. So, not a difficult week by any means. You just have to bring a bit of bonus pow for the extra health bars. As for the reward from completing it, it's the Hell Walker Legendary Shotgun. This weapon is just a walking Doom reference. It shoots off one high damage shot before reloading very, very quickly and then you can just do that again on loop with the main special thing about this being when you pick it up off of the ground, it plays some music. But this also seems to be bug for other players in co-op where anytime someone who isn't you swaps this weapon off and on with their actual equipped weapon, it will just play the music again, which I find hilarious.
Next up, our weekly extra-large encore machine with fries. The boss that you can spend aridium to spawn for extra loot drop chances is Shadow Pelt, the boss of the Whistller's MA augur mine in the center of the Terminus Range region. His dedicated drop table includes Slippy, the melee damaging fish grenade, Vamoose, a legendary sniper rifle, and the Sparky Shield, a legendary shield that constantly does shock damage to nearby enemies if you don't have full shield. So if you want any of those legendaries, this is the week to go looking for them by doing this boss.
Then the final bit of weekly activity update, Maurice's Black Market Vending Machine. This sells eight items, four copies of the same legendary and then four copies of another one to give you choices between a bunch of different potential roles. You can only buy one and then you can't interact with the machine again. So make your choice wisely. The actual results from the machine are different for each player. So I can't tell you what will be inside of yours, but I can tell you where it is because it is hidden in game until you come across it. This week it's intended to be locked behind a side quest, but you can just sort of ignore that and skip it pretty easily. The actual location is here all the way on the eastern side of Terminus Range in the punitive manufacturum which is accessed right behind this checkpoint where there is a waterfall down at water level with a cave hidden behind it that you can enter. Follow through the cave and forwards and you will eventually come across this big wall. You can skip up it by jumping up this nice patch of ice on the left side of the actual railing and then just pop up top on this next section. The climbable wall that I have on the right here is blocked off until you do the side mission angry mob, which is the final side quest and any sort of side quest chain leading up to it, which starts off with mob mentality in the faction town itself. But that said, we don't have to do the side quest. We can get around this by just walking forwards, jumping on this doohickey here, jumping back onto the overhang here, and clambering up. Then you can just continue going up like normal. And the vending machine itself is right over here on the ledge of the highest platform overlooking the cave as a whole. easy in andout job to just check what you got and see if you want any of the offerings.
With the weeklyies covered, then let's talk about the game patches. There have been three patches to Borderlands 4 since release, including one that dropped earlier today. And for the most part, this has just been pure stability and performance updates to try and curb the issues that people are having with running the game properly. I have heard varying mixed reports, a number of people saying that it runs much better now, but I've also seen at least a couple of people saying it's actually worse. So, we'll have to see how this all shakes out, but I do hope they can get this sorted out because the game is a lot of fun, and I hate for people to not be able to experience cool games that they would enjoy simply because they aren't capable of running them. That said, today's patch also had a couple of slight non-performance updates, mostly a couple of bugs that could mess your game up a little bit, as well as removing the gilded glory pack legendaries from the standard chest loot pool.
Past that, let's talk about the discourse surrounding the game right now. There's a lot of talk about what is strong, what is weak, what's way too strong, and what is feeling literally broken. And so today, I want to talk about the sort of nerf radar, the things that I keep consistently see people saying either will or at least should get nerfed and discuss my thoughts on that. Before we even dive in, then it's worth mentioning that the only official word from anyone related to Gearbox on this topic since the release of the game is this tweet saying that there won't be any knee-jerk reaction nerfs happening. But if something is and creating performance and stability issues, then they will definitely be looking into it. They doubled down on this with another post where they specify that performance is their top priority.
With that in mind, the big one to bring up then for actual like balance is Vex's infinite bleed loop. The bloodletter passive gives gun and skill crits a chance to apply a bleed effect, which does damage over time for a portion of the amount that was done originally per second. It stacks upon itself, so multiple crits in a row will just grow the bleed larger and larger and larger. The main issue with this is that it can trigger itself. So if you get some natural crit chance to the point that the bleed ticks crit, then the bleed will re-trigger itself and infinitely grow over and over until it hits the integer cap for the game. This is an absolutely busted interaction. It simply is not how the skill is worded. It's not how it should work as the status should be neither gun nor skill damage. It should be status damage. This means that it is crits should not reapply the debuff to itself, but it does. The main issue with this is that it just sort of removes any real reason to do a proper build for Vex because this one interaction guaranteed kills any enemy with some minimal amounts of setup. This is fully expected to be nerfed and fixed at some point, but again, Gearbox is clearly currently focused on performance and bug fixes above all else. So, anything that is just a purely strength related issue likely won't be taken down for a bit.
On a similar note, I have seen lots of disscent on the Jacobs crit knife modifier, the one that makes it so enemies that are hit by the knife are then guaranteed to be crit by any source of damage for 5 seconds. The main reason that people think this knife needs to be nerfed, they think it is broken, is because of the Vex interaction, as that is what makes the bleed scale ridiculously quickly is having those crits. But if that interaction was fixed, then this knife would just be a strong ordinance that boosts builds that aren't ordinance focused. It would be very, very good. probably a staple in most high-end builds, but I don't think that warrants nerfing the item. So, in my mind, should blood letter as a passive get its interaction fixed? Yes, absolutely. Should the Jacob's crit knife modifier be nerfed? No. It's simply not out of the realm of realistic power of the game. It's just a fun build making component.
That said, the other main topic here is the way that the Jacob's ricochet on crit licensed part affects weapons that it can randomly roll on. For some weapons, it's not that big of a deal. is just a fun bonus. But anything that bounces or that the projectile does not disappear after it hits, it does some pretty ludicrous things. The most commonly known example is the kickballer legendary shotgun. I see people talk about this all the time. It fires a bouncing ball that explodes every time that it hits something. Fun and strong on its own, but if it drops with the Jacob's ricochet accessory modifier, and then you get a crit with the weapon. Now, every time it will hit, it spawns an extra ball and the extra ball will count as its own projectile. So, if that crits, it will spawn another ball. And because they don't disappear on hit, it just multiplies endlessly until the boss dies pretty much instantly. Similar things happen for Maliwan shotguns with the energy disc under barrel that also have the Jacobs attachment. The discs bounce, the crits ricochet into bonus discs, and this loops infinitely. Things like this are, I think, the best argument that exists for nerfing the crit knife, as it would be much harder to do this without guaranteed crit chance, but it would still be able to happen. There are still plenty of sources of generic crit chance increases and even the Jacobs enhancement that gives Rico chance for non-rits. So, this is not something that can be fixed that simply and in my mind is likely to just be part of how the game is going to be moving forwards unless they do a really serious focused balance patch more so than just like getting one issue at a time.
On a somewhat similar note, we do also know that they are working on stability and performance patches moving forwards, but also we know they are currently working on an FOV slider for console players, which is one of the larger complaints that I've heard from the people playing on consoles. So, it's great to see that they are both aware of the issue and working towards making it better.
Then, just to touch on it, as I don't feel it would be right to ignore it in this style of video, Randy Pitchford has been going wild on Twitter once again. He's telling people to refund the game. He's blaming players for being unable to get their game working optimally. He's suggesting that people are using computers below the recommended specs and that's the problem. And he's basically just fighting tooth and nail against people complaining about the performance of the game. All while the actual developer team is clearly doing their best to fix things instead of just yelling at the players. In his defense, telling people that they should refund the game if they can't play it isn't like bad advice, but it just really comes through with a tone like he's in a place of frustration where he's angry at the fans and telling them to just go away cuz he doesn't want to deal with them rather than giving that as actual advice because he wants to be helpful. It just doesn't shine a great light on the guy or the company. It's not the first time that he said things that piss people off, and it most likely won't be the last. But at least the game itself is getting patches to try and fix these performance issues.
Finally then today, let's go over all the currently active shift codes for those lovely golden keys and even more. These two keys expire within the next couple of days. So get them now or lose them. And all of them are for one golden key. These two keys expire on October 1st, so you have a little bit more time for these, but you might as well use them now, too. They are also for one golden key each. Then finally, we have this shift key with no expiry date. It is actually found in the endame credits the game. Go figure. And that is the final of the golden key ones. But there's also this final one. one. I know I said there was the last one, but there's one more. And this one gives you the break free cosmetic pack. This is a bunch of different cosmetics, and this one does not expire for years, but you might as well use it now and get the rewards inside of it. That's it. All the current shift codes that you can use in Borderlands 4. Shove them into the reward screen in the shift menu, and you'll get them nice and easy.
That just about does it for today, then everyone. A roundup of what is going on with Borderlands 4 after its first week of existence. an update on the new weekly activities going into our second week, the patches that we've had, the discourse in the community, and the responses we've heard from the developers. I hope you've all enjoyed this, and let me know your own thoughts on all this in the comments down below. Like if you like the video, subscribe with the notification bell for more. And most importantly, ladies and gentlemen, until next time. I'm the conductor of the poop train. Josh cotton and hollow with the videos dropping the humor like a hammer on your tippy toes. Bringing entertainment on a daily arrangement to take our insanity and turn it into entertainment. Yes, I said entertainment twice to reiterate that it is nice to look into your faces on a mostly daily basis when you let us in your homes to make the whole world our stage is uh goodbye.