Gearbox is not planning to roll out nerfs to Borderlands 4 at the moment, associate creative director Grant Kao said, as the studio prepares a larger update scheduled for the end of January. “Avoiding nerfs at the moment,” Kao wrote in a response on X, adding that the developer is “expanding the pool of new gear pretty dramatically” for upcoming content.
Buffs yes. Avoiding nerfs at the moment. We're expanding the pool of new gear pretty dramatically going into the next couple content drops and I wholeheartedly want to avoid ruining someone's countless hours of farming. The Bod is an example where we can "fix" the bonus but wont.
— Grant (@grantkao) January 21, 2026
Kao singled out the legendary shotgun known as the Bod. The weapon currently benefits from unintended scaling interactions because it registers as multiple weapon types and so triggers a wide range of bonuses and skills. Gearbox is not removing the gun’s power right now. Instead the studio will make the Bod easier to obtain by moving it from a low percentage drop tier into the primary drop tier so players can farm it more reliably.
Borderlands has a history of tense reactions to balance changes, particularly at launch windows. Gearbox has already delayed some balance work in order to get fixes and testing right, the studio pushed back its Day 30 balance update to allow extra QA and adjustments, giving players more time with current builds and loot before broader tuning arrives. The Day 30 timing and context were adjusted to allow additional tweaks and stability work.
Kao also named one concrete loot change coming with the larger update. “One change I can speak to is an increase of multiple percentage points for dedicated loot drops scaling with [Ultimate Vault Hunter] levels,” he wrote, indicating targeted loot will become easier to acquire for players in Ultimate Vault Hunter mode.
Gearbox’s current approach is to let high-power items remain available while the studio expands the range of new gear and watches for any single build that clearly breaks game balance. Kao said the intent is to avoid taking away a player’s hard-won loot after long farming runs, and to reserve stronger interventions for situations where a weapon or interaction is unambiguously harmful to game variety.
The larger balance and gear pool adjustments are expected at the end of January. Until then, some powerful setups and rare drops will remain in the live game while Gearbox broadens options and tunes targeted loot scaling for high-level players.
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Borderlands 4
Developed by Gearbox Software
See if you have what it takes to go down in history as a legendary Vault Hunter as you search for secret alien treasure, blasting everything in sight.
- Genre: Shooter, Role-playing (RPG), Adventure
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch 2, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5
- Modes: Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative
- Release: 2025-09-11
- Publisher: 2K
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Age Rating:
GRAC 19+ / USK 18 / CLASS_IND 18 / ACB MA 15+ / PEGI 18 / CERO Z / ESRB M
- IGDB Rating: 72.0/100
