Posted by Borderlands 4 just received its second bounty pack mini-DLC this past week, and while I have not purchased and played it yet, the update did add in some nice free content for everyone to play with. This free content is what I’m going to be taking a look at today.
The meat of this free update is the new “Ordonite Up” event and the two new pearlescent rarity weapons it can drop. I have a few issues with both of these that I’ll get to momentarily. Starting with the event itself, the structure is rather straightforward: you pay 200 eridium to spawn in enemies, then battle your way through three rounds where you collect dropped batteries and insert them into the ordonite drill thing with a mini-boss spawning after you put in three, five, and seven batteries respectively. Also the event lasts for four minutes with no way to increase the timer after you start. The event isn’t easy, and while part of me thinks that it shouldn’t be since the prizes include “the rarest weapons in the game,” it needs work. First, I HATE when the game makes content hard by putting in arbitrary timers, especially when there are a lot of things that can happen outside of the player’s control. For example, the big ordonite infused mini-boss that can drop the pearls takes about ten second to spawn. That time can really add up, especially if you’re able to fight all three. The mini-bosses are also pretty tanky, as they should be, so deleting them might take a second. In a vacuum, I’m fine with that, but it gets really frustrating when the mini-boss just despawns when the timer hits zero even though he’s almost dead and you get nothing for your troubles. There are five possible mini-bosses that can spawn: Ten Toes (a modified regular ripper enemy), Tiny Bigs (a modified meathead enemy), Slayowulf (a modified psycho enemy), King Crosis (a modified zerker enemy), and Theylob (a modified splicer enemy). Of these five mini-bosses, Ten Toes, Tiny Bigs, and King Crosis are the easiest, and most preferable, by far. I HATE fighting Slayowulf and Theylob. Slayowulf is incredibly aggressive, which leads to him chasing you down, and sometimes getting ragdolled away so you lose track of him in the chaos. Theylob is obnoxious because each mini-boss brings in additional enemies in its enemy type, so Theylob brings two super tanky splicers that will knock you around and get in the way. Plus when a splicer reaches half health, the top torso gets destroyed, leaving behind the metal legs that are hard to hit, fly around everywhere, and block damage.
My biggest gripe with the new event, however, has to do with the canisters you use to progress. Certain variants of a specific enemy type drop the canisters, and it can be feast or famine with them. Sometimes we get three or more canisters in the first thirty seconds of a round, but then when we reach round three, we go an entire minute without a single one spawning. Heck sometimes the enemies just straight up stop spawning and you can’t progress in the event; this has happened arguably more times than I’ve completed the event, and yes I have completed the event before. Sometimes the canisters glitch out and cease to exist. As a result, the event can feel really frustrating to farm because progression slows down to a crawl for no reason other than “bad luck lmao.” I think that to mitigate this, there should be a minimum number of the canister enemies that spawn in every enemy wave because it really sucks fighting through three waves of enemies without a single canister one spawning. And again, you have to buy each round with your hard-earned eridium, which is a currency that’s a fair bit harder to attain than money.
Lastly, let’s look at the two new weapons: the Tediore Eigenburst shotgun and the Maliwan Conflux sniper rifle. Oh here’s another dumb inclusion: the two weapons aren’t weighted equally. I play on Ultimate Vault Hunter level 6, and my build is more than capable of handling it (I play a kinetic bleed lifesteal Vex with Torgue weapons and I’m nearly impossible to kill while pumping out crazy damage; my damage isn’t as crazy as my buddy’s Rafa, but it’s more than sufficient enough to tear through this content, especially with his help), so my Eigenburst drop rate is 7.5% (I think; the numbers I see are baseline 3% + 0.75% * UVH level, so I think my drop rate is 7.5%). The Conflux drop rate is 1.8% (using the same formula). Whoever thought about that disparity should not be in charge of drop rate implementation anymore. The two pearls should have the SAME drop rate, not an astronomical 5.7% difference. As a result, I have received quite a few Eigenbursts, but only one Conflux. To really add insult to injury, I think the Eigenburst is the BETTER of the two! But first, let’s talk about what they do. Pearlescent weapons have a new elemental override mechanic that means when you deal damage to an enemy that doesn’t match its primary weakness, the elemental override kicks in if applicable. So for example, if I use a kinetic Eigenburst with corrosive override and I shoot an armored enemy, the corrosive override will kick in and I’ll deal corrosive damage; if I shoot a shielded enemy, I’ll still just deal the regular kinetic damage. It’s an ok mechanic, but I haven’t been able to develop much of an opinion on it because the only pearl I actually see myself using is locked behind buying the bounty pack (oh and you can get a guaranteed copy of it through the bounty pack story, which is a whole other issue). As for the weapon abilities, Eigenburst deals more damage as the magazine decreases and Conflux deals more damage per status effect inflicted on the target. They’re both fine, I guess. I’ve enjoyed using the Eigenburst, but it chews through ammo. Plus my build probably isn’t the best specced into getting the most out of what it can offer. Same for the Conflux. Conflux is weird because I see it mostly as a boss-melting weapon and not as a mobber, but applying all the status effects to maximize damage output just feels kind of clunky and impractical when there are so many more accessible options out there.
In addition to the new pearlescent weapons, players who don’t own the bounty pack can get the new legendary Shalashaska Jakobs pistol. Its gimmick is that if you don’t manually reload, you gain an extra ricochet on critical hit, and this effect can stack five times. It sounds mediocre on paper, but I’ve found it very useful and effective in the game, especially because I was able to get one with Torgue explosive bullets. It has good mobbing capabilities, so I would encourage you not to sleep on it.
Overall, the free pearl update for Borderlands 4 is… rather disappointing. I’ll always take free content over no content, but this free content has some problems in it. After beating the new event and seeing what it has to offer, I can say with confidence that it has some issues. I really hope that Gearbox is able to fix the consistency with the canisters and their spawn-rate. I also hope that the next round of pearls are a bit more… interesting. Oh and one final annoyance: the pearls that drop from the event might not even be at your level; when farming with my buddy, we got a few to drop at level 49 instead of our usual 50, so that was fun (not). Hopefully Gearbox takes this as a learning experience and fixes these issues, or makes the next batch of pearls a bit more desirable. But until then, I might as well try and enjoy the new stuff.
Broad Scope Entertainment 