Don't panic, the new Borderlands 4 update's boss farming nerf was an accident and Gearbox is reversing it

Nerf day has arrived, but it's landed a little too strong. The long-awaited Borderlands 4 patch notes Gearbox has been promising for weeks are finally here, just in time for the Horrors of Kairos Halloween event. They're largely focused on dealing with some of the "unintended interactions" that were leading ludicrous damage scaling and boss-melting builds, although there are some buffs and performance improvements to be found. But Gearbox has already confirmed that one of the most disappointing changes, one halting the ability to speed-farm bosses for big loot drops, was unintentional and will be reversed.

One of the best ways to farm for Borderlands 4 legendary weapons is repeatedly fighting a given boss over and over, especially if they have the specific drops you're after in their loot table. Gearbox has made this tremendously easy in BL4 with Moxxi's Big Encore machines, letting you respawn them instantly. To speed things up further, you've always been able to reset your character's skill cooldowns simply by opening up a vendor. But it didn't take long after the launch of the new Borderlands 4 update for players to notice that something was off.

In the wake of the FPS game's new patch, this vendor trick stopped working. It might not seem like much, but having to stand around waiting for your abilities to refresh (or instead go in without them) really slows down your boss fights. Fortunately, associate creative director Grant Kao confirms that this was an unintended change caused by "a fix to another bug related to camera movements," and says the cooldown reset will be returned to action.

Less fortunate are the likes of Vex's Bloodletter passive, Amon's Seeing Red, and Harlowe's Neutron Capture. The Siren's bleed effect can no longer trigger itself, stopping those ridiculous damage loops. The Forgeknight's stacking buff has kept its power gain from kills while Berserk, but the duration restored is now fixed at four seconds for all ranks, making it harder to maintain for extended periods.

The Gravitar's Neutro Capture passive, which supercharged her gun damage with the potency of her Chroma Accelerator ult, now only applies to gun shots (not all instances of damage output). Gearbox says it will remain "one of the best (if not the best) damage scalars in the game, but the power level will be much more in line with our expectations." It's probably the next Harlowe build on my list, so I'm glad to hear it'll still be very playable.

Elsewhere, the patch notes also dramatically reduce the cost of specialization respects (down to 1,500 Eridium from 5,000), improve the Lost Loot machine's logic to prioritize grabbing the best gear, and buff up a handful of underperforming passives and weapons. Gearbox says you can expect some stability improvements, too, although notes that it's continuing to work on boosting performance as development continues.

There are new Borderlands 4 Shift codes at the time of writing, so be sure to check our updated list to grab all the Golden Keys you can. If you and your crew are ready for a fresh adventure, here's our pick of the best co-op games in 2025.

Be sure to stop in at the PCGamesN Discord to shower us with tales of your favorite builds, luckiest loot drops, and what you think of the Halloween event. Honestly, I'm not especially enthused by it, but I'm still having enough fun with the game to treat it as a novelty extra.