Is Borderlands 4’s First Paid Bounty Pack Worth It?

I caved and bought the Borderlands 4 bounty pack bundle, so I was able to play through the new “Legend of the Stone Demon” mini-DLC. I definitely have some mixed thoughts on it. There’s some good, but there’s also some stuff to be aware of if you’re interested.

SPOILERS FOLLOW

The story has your Vault Hunter traveling into the heart of the mountain in Terminus Range at the request of Defiant Calder to kill a legendary Stone Demon said to lurk within. The Stone Demon is so feared that the area has been largely abandoned, and the Augers would send members off to be sacrificed to the beast, much like the story of the Minotaur in Ancient Greece. Also Calder’s brother was one such sacrifice many years ago, so part of his motivation is to avenge his brother Pietro.

The story is fine. I mean, the entire mini-DLC consists of one single mission. It isn’t a bad mission by any means, but it is only one mission. You do get to traverse the entirety of the new area as a part of the mission, and it does have a bunch of optional objectives that encourage you to explore. I really enjoyed my time playing through the mission, and it did take me a good thirty to sixty minutes, so it’s short enough that you can beat it in a single session, but long enough that it at least feels somewhat substantial.

The new area is really cool. I like the aesthetic of everything, between the ruined fragments of civilization and the visually striking gold ordonite everywhere. The area has some really nice set pieces, though mechanically the missions isn’t anything we haven’t seen before.

On the topic of ordonite, the mini-DLC adds in a new type of enemy: ordonite encrusted ones. I mentioned them in the last article as a part of the new event added in for free, but they appear a lot more regularly in “The Legend of the Stone Demon” proper. They’re basically stronger Vile enemies, so they have these big golden crystals attached to their bodies that you have to destroy before you can damage them. They’re fine. I’ll take some more enemy diversity. I really don’t mind their addition too much.

The bounty pack also adds in four new bosses and nine new legendary pieces of gear. The bosses are your standard fare. Some have some cool new attacks (visually speaking), and the Stone Demon itself has an interesting health regeneration phase. The bosses are all fine. I haven’t use enough of the legendaries to have a whole lot of opinions on them, but I’ll always welcome new gear to chase.

I will, however, talk about the new Hand Cannon pearlescent weapon. It’s really good. I think that of the new pearlescent pieces of gear, it’s the best one by far. That being said, it does synergize with my build the best, so I may be biased. Its special ability is that it’s a Torgue pistol where its sticky bullets deal tick damage a few times before exploding. I have one with a radiation override, and the new override feature definitely feels useful. I almost think that the Hand Cannon alone makes the bounty pack worth it because it’s such a fun, and strong, gun to use. Oh and you can get it guaranteed.

Now we get into the things I’m a little mixed on. You can replay the mission after you clear it. I really like that there’s a mission replay feature, and the fact that you can replay this one is really nice. I would have been really annoyed if you could only clear the new content once, especially because there’s no second, or even third, playthrough per character. Near the very beginning of the mission, there’s a version of the ordonite processor event I wrote about last week. The version in the mission is different though. You have a whopping 7+ minutes to clear it, and there will always be an enemy with a battery spawning or spawned in at all times. Pearls can drop from the ordonite bosses you face. The last one also drops the Hand Cannon guaranteed every single time. I’m mixed. On the one hand, I love guaranteed loot. I love being able to reliably chase a piece of gear that I really want. But the simple fact that it’s guaranteed completely defeats the purpose of farming it from the Stone Demon because 100% is always better than 0.9% even if the set-up for each run takes a little longer. Oh yeah, pearlescent drop rates got standardized to 0.9% across the board (assuming UVH 6), which is a pretty noticeable nerf. Unfortunately, the only pearl worth it (in my opinion) is the Hand Cannon, which is technically unaffected because you can get it guaranteed. It’s so bizarre because the ordonite processor event in the mission is infinitely better than the free one all players get and it solves every single problem I had with the free version. So if you want to farm pearls, the best method is to technically reload the new mission, run up to the room with the processor, do it, quit out of the mission, then reload it again.

SPOILERS END

Finally, the bounty pack adds in a brand new Vault Card, which is basically a battlepass. The Vault Card includes a bunch of cosmetics, and four new legendaries. I mean, it’s a battelpass filled with cosmetics. It’s fine. I do like the new Cthulhu head you can get; that’s a fun one. I also like the way the’ve been doing the Vault Cards. You get tokens by completing daily and weekly challenges, and by just leveling the card up by playing the game. You can then redeem the tokens for a given reward. While the tokens do not transfer between Vault Cards (you can only earn it for the active card), once you get a Vault Card, you permanently own it. That is a system that I really like because it means that even if you take an extended hiatus from the game, or you don’t pick the Vault Card up for a while, you’ll always have the content to unlock.

Overall, I really liked the new bounty pack. I think it adds in some fun new content, and I definitely intend to get my money’s worth. However, I don’t know if I can wholeheartedly recommend it. The bounty pack itself is priced at $12, or you can drop $40 for the entire pack, which technically saves you like $13 in terms of everything it offers, but that’s a pretty steep price too. I don’t think the bounty pack is worth $12. In another time, this would’ve been a $5 or $6 DLC. Granted it probably wouldn’t have included the Vault Card, but I don’t think the Vault Card adds in $6 of value. If you’re a diehard Borderlands fan, you’ll enjoy the bounty pack (assuming you don’t already own it), but if you’re a more casual fan of the series, I’d recommend waiting until the entire bounty pack bundle is on sale. It’s fun content, but I don’t think it’s really worth the price. If it was somewhere between $5 and $8, I’d definitely recommend it without a second thought, but it is a smidge overpriced.