Welcome, Vault Hunters! Today's Major Update includes the addition of Photo Mode, a rework of Harlowe's Zero-Point Action Skill, and Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode levels now increasing dedicated loot drop levels. This comes alongside a variety of improvements across gameplay, progression, gear, and visuals. And as always, we have a new set of Weekly Activities!

In addition to today's Major Update Notes, we've also just shared a Borderlands 4 2026 Roadmap with a look at what's coming to Kairos. Be sure to check it out and see what we've got planned this year, including paid content like Bounty Pack 2 and Story Pack 1, free feature additions like a level cap increase and cross-platform saves, and free endgame content including a second raid boss and a Takedown.

Please restart your game to ensure that the update goes through and to prevent connection errors in matchmaking.

Thanks to improvements in recent versions of Nvidia drivers, we no longer clear the game's GPU driver shader cache on first launch after updating to a new game version, when using Nvidia GPU drivers version 590.xx or newer

If you're encountering any issues, we have an Issue Tracker for known issues, our PC Troubleshooting Guide, or the Tech Tinkering Tips section of this very help center! Just in case you need more help, you can also contact our Support Teams directly.

Weekly Activities

• Weekly Big Encore Boss has switched to a tougher variant of a different existing boss with an even more rewarding loot pool for those that take it on. 

  • Leader Willem

• The Weekly Wildcard Mission has changed. These missions feature a guaranteed Legendary drop that you can repeatedly earn to get your ideal roll.

  • Mission: All Charged Up (Chain Master, Elemental Eater, Centripetal)

  • Legendary Gear Reward: Borstel Ballista Jakobs Sniper Rifle

• Maurice's Black Market Vending Machine has moved to another location and changed its offerings. Remember, while the location is the same, your vending machine items are different from other players, so ask around to see if someone has the item you're looking for!

New Content

Photo Mode

Photo Mode is now available to all Borderlands 4 players, so you can capture mayhem-fueled moments or serene shots of Kairos' scenic beauty to share with your fellow Vault Hunters! Check out the Borderlands 4 Photo Mode guide for full details! You can access Photo Mode via the Pause Menu during gameplay.

While Photo Mode is active, you can adjust the position of the camera using the standard movement controls. The Photo Mode UI has multiple tabs with a wide range of settings with different visual effects. In single-player, going into Photo Mode will pause all the action by default, so you can freely dial in your ideal shot without missing the perfect moment!

Please note that Photo Mode is only available during gameplay, and cannot be accessed during cutscenes. It's also not available in splitscreen play on consoles.

• Get the perfect shot by adjusting the Field of View, Depth of Field, camera angles, and various visual filters.
• Change the time of day or toggle the visibility of Player Characters, Summons, NPCs, Enemies, and even Damage Numbers to clear the frame.

We always love seeing what you capture in-game, so be sure to tag @Borderlands on social media! You can also upload shots to the Screenshots section of the Borderlands 4 Steam Community hub!

Change Notes:

Progression and Rewards

Contract Missions:

• Patrol: Order troops: Now progresses when killing enemies
• Trace: Scrap Core: The scrap core object is able to be interacted with consistently and the contract from Dominion can now be completed
• Convinced the Intrusive Thoughts Vile Ripper, Deep State Phalanx, and Breaux Chambeaux Phalanx bounties to show up when a player has taken their contracts

Vault Card Challenges:

• “Loot or Purchase 10/15 legendaries” Vault Card weekly challenge will no longer reset with a save/load
• “Loot or Purchase Ordnance” will now increase when conditions are met
• “Kill enemies with Torgue guns and gear” will now progress when using Torgue legendary grenade Firepot
• “Kill X enemies with Maliwan guns and gears” and the Maliwan Challenge “Last Wan Standing” and will now progress as intended

Challenges: 

• Legendary Forsaken Chaos and Legendary Midnight Defiance have been removed from the Collect All Phosphene Challenge
• Updated Maliwan status effects to better identify what triggered status effects, leading to better tracking on challenges

Progression and rewards

• Corrected a reported issue that was causing travel to Dominion to be locked by a player leaving a transition area in multiplayer
• “Potty Mouth” Mission: Objectives are no longer blocked when exiting to the main menu
• Corrected an issue causing unlocked DLC content to be unavailable while offline
• True Mode is now able to be consistently enabled for newly created level 30 UVHM characters
• Added the tutorial of True Mode when the campaign is completed
• Players creating a new character in multiplayer will now receive all intended rewards
• Addressed an issue causing all equipment to be lost when quitting to the main menu during a countdown in multiplayer when switching to solo play
• Addressed issues with the “Gourd Your Loins” cosmetic reward not being awarded with SHiFT code
  • If you were impacted by this issue the first time around, or you missed these gourd-geous heads during the Horrors of Kairos event, this SHiFT code will redeem your missing cosmetic! This code will not reward anything to those that successfully received their cosmetic the first time.
  • Redeem the SHiFT code below (check out our SHiFT User Guide if you don't already know how) to get the "Gourd Your Loins" Vault Hunter Head and the "Hex Appeal" Weapon Skin!*
  • THFB3-R9XKK-CFBJW-T33BB-9R3CC
  • *Requires a copy of Borderlands 4, SHiFT Account, and Internet connection. Must redeem by December 31, 2030. One redemption per SHiFT Account. Terms apply.

Vault Hunters

• Fixed critical Hit damage that isn't being applied to critical hits in some cases.

Specializations

• Daredevil: Action Skill Cooldown rate has been adjusted to .5% and a multiplicative Action Skill Damage bonus has been added
• Runner: Melee Damage bonus is now a multiplicative instead of additive

Harlowe the Gravitar Skill Rework

Dev Note: We’re making several changes to Zero-Point as another step towards making this skill tree feel more satisfying and better balanced relative to Harlowe’s other trees. Because we're changing the fundamental behavior of Zero-Point to include the old Inertia Augment behavior in the base skill, we want to see how these changes balance out before doing more work in the rest of the tree. 

We have our eye on a few other passives that may be candidates for some buffs, but between the recent passive buffs that were implemented several weeks ago, combined with today’s changes, we’ll revisit those in the future once we’ve gathered adequate feedback on the current changes.

Long term, we want to ensure each Vault Hunter has plenty of build diversity, with each Action Skill having its own pros and cons. When we see one falling behind though, we’ll continue to explore changes like today’s.

• Zero-Point (Base Skill): Now includes the benefits of the previous "Inertia" Augment. Killing an enemy in Stasis now resets the duration, searches for a new target, and makes the duration decrease faster
• Inertia Augment (Changed): Updated to increase Harlowe’s Slam Damage. Whenever she slams an enemy, create Mini Unstable Energy Pocket projectiles that randomly deal Cryo or Radiation damage. Additionally, she also gains increased Status Effect Damage and Status Effect Chance. This effect stacks.

Amon the Forgeknight

• Amon consistently deals bonus Cryo Damage when equipping Cryonic Thrum Augment in multiplayer
• Prevented unintended increases in the number of segments in the Vault Hunter bar when Amon activates his Action Skill
• Dragon’s Breath now applies properly to Ripper Heavy Weapons with beams
• Firewall Forgeskill will now block Moon-Maddened Callis projectile attacks

Vex the Siren

• Prevented the cooldown for Prismatic Ichors from resetting when applying a status effect
• Phase Pocket Passive no longer resets the Taser underbarrel magazine when using a Vladof Enhancement
• Corrected Incarnate Action Skill behavior to continue to work while using the Vibe Check capstone with the Legendary Class Mod Technomancer

General Gameplay

Bloomreaper Boss Fight:

• Falling into the fog will now consistently kill players instead of having them fall out of the map
• The purple rift will now only appear after the boss is defeated
• Addressed an instance of Bloomreaper keeping the Invincible health bar in the second phase
• Fixed an exploit that would allow UVHM time trial rewards to be obtained while not in UVHM
• Addressed an issue that would cause the chest for Platinum rewards to be empty after fulfilling the requirements
• Disc-shooting heavy weapons will now damage Bloomreaper’s crystals
• Vile Creeps should no longer get stuck in the air

World Events and Bosses:

• Increased the spawn rate of world bosses in the Punitive Manufactorium area
• Rewards will now reliably spawn when completing the Airship or The Goredello world events
• Minister Screw is no longer able to be frozen
• Toy Pinheads are now affected by singularity grenades
• Idolator Sol now takes damage from Elemental Hazards from skills while Bio Armor is broken
• Vile Lictor’s limbs will now continue to respawn after freezing them
• Gennifer will now remain inside the refugee even if the player is dying near the area
• Lowered the amount of badass enemies spawning in one spot by Electi Safe Collectable
• Ensured that boss fights consistently reset when all players have died
• Restored the ability to interact with Fortresses if travel was canceled by leaving a transition area in multiplayer

Loot and Stations:

• UVH levels now increase dedicated loot drop levels. The higher the level, the higher the chance of dedicated loot dropping!
• Changed the Respawn station outside of Umbral Foundry to a Fast Travel station to allow for easier travel to the entrance
• Prevented loot items from dropping into unintended areas after defeating The Oppressor or killing all enemies in Ripper Drill Site Saw’s Clench
• Red Chest in Coastal Bonescape will only unlock when all enemies are killed

Mission, Enemy and ECHO Location Updates:

• Guns Blazing: Arjay will now consistently engage in combat against enemies
• The Power Ballad of Rodd Vomit: Corrected enemy pathing to reach the player
• Missions will no longer progress unexpectedly in multiplayer when switching from splitscreen to solo play
• Radioactive Rail Liner will now attack if players are close to it
• ECHO Location guidance improvements
• Rift Champion icon removed from the Compass, with cleaned-up functionality for those icons in the Map

Guns & Gear

Enhancement: 

• Adjusted the Underdog enhancement to only apply to Vladof underbarrel weapons as intended. This will remove an accidental damage bonus that was happening when some guns switched their ammo or element types. We also updated Wombo Combo rockets so they now correctly count as underbarrel damage and receive this boost

Tediore: 

• Tediore Legendary Auto-rifle Chuck now throws properly when the player has over 120% gun reload speed
• Corrected a behavior that prevented homing on the third gun spawned by Tediore reloads when specific conditions were met
• Removed extra gun from Tediore shotguns with Ripper magazines

Maliwan: 

• Maliwan Legendary SMG Ohm I Got will no longer consume Energy Shield when Overshield is active
• Only active element Status Effect will spread when killing an enemy with a Maliwan-licensed part with Maliwan Enhancement and Transfuser Core
• Singularities now spawn correctly on Maliwan Sniper Rifles with Singularity Grenade Launcher underbarrels

Jakobs:

• Corrected Jakobs ricochet damage to apply the intended amount of damage on Jakobs weapons

Torgue:

• Torgue Legendary pistol Hardpoint will fire as intended with Tediore licensed-part “Shooting”
• Torgue Legendary Shield Compleation now properly triggers Segment Break armor shield augments

Order:

• Order Sniper Rifle Rooker Needle projectiles will consistently home in on enemies at a distance with the Callous augment
• Order Sniper Rifle Rooker will no longer spawn unintended underbarrel projectiles with Jakobs licensed parts and a Jakob enhancement with Leaper and Bounce Pass

Ripper:

• Ripper Shield Whats 4 Dinner will now consistently give the overshield in multiplayer from Overshield drops

CoV: 

• Weapons with CoV magazines now continue to fire when using Bullets to Spare firmware level 3 with the Ventilator enhancement

Daedalus:

• Daedalus SMGs with the Overcharge attachment and a Ripper Magazine will now inherit the Ripper magazine charge up time

Atlas: 

• Atlas Sure Shot perk is no longer triggered by Rafa Peacebreaker Cannons action skill while equipping a weapon with Atlas licensed parts and the Sure Shot enhancement
• Updated Tracker Antenna and Trauma Bond to no longer incorrectly apply to gear without Atlas-licensed parts

Ordnance

• Heavy Weapons now cause damage to BoomBoom Drones during the Ripper Queen fight

Firmware:

• Skillcraft will now receive the proper amount of stacks when dealing skill damage to enemies
• Deadeye 2-piece now works as intended with intended projectiles
• High Caliber 3-piece now functions as intended with Atlas Tracker Grenade
• Get Throwin’ now properly increases Heavy Gun ordnance damage

Visual, Audio, and Animation updates to Guns and Gear:

• Restored prefixes to Tediore Legendary Grenade UAV
• Order Legendary Pistol Bully with Hyperion Shield enhancement now display with all parts on the item card
• Repkit will no longer disappear when trying to heal after climbing
• Corrected animations for Daedalus SMGs with Atlas Underbarrel attachments when switching
• Corrected audio on the Daedalus Legendary Shotgun Missilaser
• Maliwan Legendary Shotgun Mantra now shows the Amara Phase Fist when shot
• Adjusted effects on Maliwan Legendary SMG Ohm I Got and Daedalus Legendary shotgun Missilaser to be consistent throughout gameplay
• Correct animation on Tediore Shotguns to prevent shell cases from appearing when using secondary fire
• Tediore weapons no longer explode when thrown if they overlap with water
• Tediore Assault Rifles and Pistols have consistent laser sights on gear
• Effects for Vladof legendary Assault Rifle Whiskey Foxtrot will now expire as intended
• Corrected reload animation for Ripper Shotguns with CoV magazines
• Corrected Ripper effects when shooting Ripperguns with Maliwan-licensed underbarrel parts
• Ripper Grenade Transmitter effects have been restored when it despawning
• Corrected missing effects of needles when using the Order Legendary Sniper Rifle Rooker

Audio & Visuals

• Vault Hunter voices now return to normal after unequipping the Kittycopter head customization
• Marcus now talks at the proper time
• The second round of the Goredello will now announce the enemy type
• Updated various sound effects to play while fighting Bloomreaper
• Updates to various incorrect or missing VO lines
• Damage numbers have been removed when continuing to shoot Arjay when fighting has ended
• Corrected ECHO-4 appearance when using the ECHO-IVIV frame and Nurple paintjob customization
• Ensured Vex the Sirens tattoos glow as intended with all skins
• Melee animations for Rafa, the Exo-Soldier, will now play correctly in multiplayer
• Characters can now climb after double jumping at the Abandoned Post Safehouse in the Coastal Bonescape
• Resolved climbing animations not syncing in multiplayer
• Using the grapple point by the propaganda speaker in The Howl will now take the player to the roof of the house
• Corrected Idolator Sol animations when buying Boss replay in multiplayer
• Reduced the brightness of Seeker Witness’ laser effects
• Ripsaw’s rotating blade effect will now disappear after their death
• Minister Screw triangle effects now disappear after death
• Ensured Bruce’s head consistently disappeared in multiplayer during Angry Mob mission
• Corrected instances of NPCs performing their animations early or in the wrong locations 
• Corrected effects on power cores during the “Powerdrop” Mission
• Carried items will no longer become attached to a weapon after firing and reloading quickly
• Adjusted fading distance in the intro
• Addressed hitching with Vault Hunter saves in the main menu
• Reduced the number of unused materials across the title
• Prevented Shield Boosters from blocking the screen
• Trees inside buildings no longer blow in the wind
• Missing animations when destroying the grate near the Vault Fragment in Tonnage Peel have been restored
• Unintended transition effects will no longer appear on players outside of Vile Lictor boss arena
• Fire no longer starts popping when getting closer to Dominion
• Prevented flickering after opening an Electi Safe
• Haybales in The Howl no longer show glass VFX when hit
• House now displays properly during Breeding Daisies
• The lights on the Candlelight Catastrophe skin now flash consistently
• Ensured the launch pad in Cuspid Climb is consistent with other launch pad areas
• The Black Market Vending Machine will no longer have an obstructed view if spawned in Tonnage Peel
• Lowered several floating items
• Addressed multiple cases of lootables not being able to be opened
• Updated various cinematics for consistency
• Corrected clipping, missing collision, out-of-bounds access, stuck spots, and visual errors in various areas of the game

UI, Text, Localization

• Sorting in the Customization Menu now defaults to show Unlocked Customizations first
• Corrected an issue causing the Backpack to appear empty after filtering
• Repkits now appear as intended in Inventory
• Corrected an issue causing Vault Cards to not update or progress in multiplayer
• Addressed an issue causing Vault Card progress to reset or disappear after a disconnect
• Vault Cards will no longer carry over progress if the same challenge reappears after the daily reset
• Updates to Vault Card UI
• Various optimization updates to UI
• Addressed various issues with scroll bar, sorting, and menu UI
• Updated localization, various text descriptions, subtitle timings, icon visibility, and alignment across the game 
• Material thumbnails in the Customization menu now appear correctly
• Updated Credits

Splitscreen

• “Flip Card” functionality has been restored after level transitions
• Corrected various scrolling issues in the Vault Cards Menu during split screen
• Corrected a case of a persistent “Logging in” message when a secondary player joins split-screen
• The Golden chest will no longer get stuck with the “Transaction in Progress” message when the secondary player leaves after opening
• Both splitscreen players will now see all mission items during “Breeding Daisies” mission
• Resolved an issue with Recent Friends not functioning as intended when a player is added to splitscreen during gameplay
• Adjusted Vault Card UI to prevent overlapping or not displaying the entire Item Card
• Vehicle FOV will now change for both players
• Adjusted nameplate text sizes to scale correctly in split screen
• Updated various UI elements for correct placement and to prevent overlapping. 

Player Experience

• [Console Only] Several instances of incorrect gear meshes have been fixed on consoles
• [PC Only] Adjusted default mouse sensitivity and added a setting option to disable mouse smoothing
• Blended facial animations for better optimization
• Visual optimizations for Rainbow Vomit
• Optimizations to Mission Menu
• Various improvements to stability and optimization