It's been a very eventful week for Borderlands 3 as Gearbox not only announced the first downloadable content story content called Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot, but they also released the first takedown event centered on the corporation Maliwan. As part of the Takedown on Maliwan's Blacksite, the game also received a massive update that buffs most Vault Hunters, fixes a number of game related issues, and more. However, the update also added a challenging yet rewarding new Mayhem mode as well.
As detailed in the Borderlands 3 patch notes, Mayhem 4 further increases enemy health to make it the toughest challenge available in the game so far. However, players who opt into this mode receive increased loot drop chances and a new set of legendaries and class mods to chase.
One thing to note is that with the added health for enemies, Gearbox has also changed the way the random modifier system works. Inside of Mayhem 4, only one positive modifier is active for the player and the enemy only gets one bonus modifier as well. The big reason for this Mayhem 4 change is to support players trying different character builds without preventing them from actually taking down enemies. It's worth noting that this change does not impact any of the other Mayhem modes.
In this update, Gearbox also changed how players utilize the Mayhem station. To activate Mayhem, players now need interact with the center pillar and then use the side pillars to increase or decrease the level. With Mayhem 2.0 on the horizon, Gearbox is not only monitoring how difficult this mode is for players, but they're also taking feedback into account.
With the added difficulty, players now have new options thanks to major buffs to Zane, Moze, and Fl4k. Part of the complaint with these characters is that their action skills were not tuned for end game, forcing players to create builds that typically avoided utilizing them. With this update, companions like Iron Bear, Digi-Clone, and FL4K's pets finally got the boost they needed from health to damage and even passive skills. The update should open new avenues for creative builds from the player base as there are now more viable options than ever.
Borderlands 3: Moxxi's Heist of the Handsome Jackpot launches on December 19 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.