Borderlands 4: This Week’s Update and Patch Notes

Borderlands 4 isn’t exactly a live service title, but its endgame experience is heavily influenced by a weekly schedule. Each week, the game rotates endgame content, changes the location of Maurice’s Black Market vending machine, and often serves as the time when key patch notes are unveiled.

With this in mind, keeping track of the weekly update is crucial, whether you’re diving into the endgame for the first time or fine-tuning your builds with a gear checklist. Below, I’ll break down what’s available this week and highlight any significant changes so you can stay in the loop.

December 19, 2025: This guide has been refreshed with the weekly activities and patch notes for the period of December 18 – December 25. Following a major update recently, this week features only minor changes, but there’s still plenty happening as the holiday season brings stacked bosses and rewards.

Every week in Borderlands 4, the Big Encore boss, Wildcard Mission, and Black Market vending machine activities rotate. Since these are endgame features, you’ll need to have completed the campaign to access them. These updates go live every Thursday at 9 am Pacific.

Here’s what’s active this week from December 18 to December 25:

The Aegon’s Dream assault rifle boasts the Prophetic special effect, allowing its shots to alternate between incendiary and cryo damage. Additionally, switching to its underbarrel attachment rotates the barrels 90 degrees clockwise, resulting in a quicker fire rate and reduced windup time.

Even vault hunters can embrace the holiday cheer, as there are three Encore bosses to tackle until January 8, with a fivefold increase in legendary drop rates during this period. While this doesn’t apply to Encore bosses, it’s a nice bonus to keep the festivities rolling while enjoying seasonal treats.

As for the patch notes, this week’s update is minor, so not much has changed. Here’s the full rundown of Borderlands 4 patch notes for December 18 – December 25:

Stay informed about the most significant updates and the best deals curated by the community.

Last week saw another substantial patch for Borderlands 4, addressing some PC performance issues, introducing the Bloomreaper the Invincible raid boss, True Mode, Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode 6, and various balancing adjustments.

Here’s a summary of the key patch notes from last week (December 11 – 18):

Skillcraft tiers enhance your Action Skills, making them even more lethal against foes.

The team is aware of a reported issue with Vault Card progress being lost in multiplayer and is actively tracking it. Updates will be provided on the support website when available.

Dev Note: Companions aren’t performing at the level we aim for, so we’re starting by making them more reliable in various ways. We’ll monitor how different summons are doing and make further adjustments as needed.

Dev Note: Over the past few months, the team has been focused on optimizing runtime performance in Borderlands 4. Since launch, we’ve identified several fixes that improve framerate and reduce stuttering without compromising visual quality. Some of these improvements stem from our own code adjustments, while others come from newer versions of Epic’s Unreal Engine. More details are below.

However, there’s still a lot of work ahead. We’re committed to this journey, and in the coming months, we’ll continue to roll out additional performance enhancements. We appreciate the community’s feedback and your patience!

Borderlands 4 Shift codes: The new key connection.
Borderlands 4 Black Market location: New legendaries, no grind.
Borderlands 4 vault key fragment locations: Crack open Kairos.
Borderlands 4 characters: Meet your new Vault Hunters and find out who’s strongest.
Borderlands 4 Harlowe builds: The amped-up Gravitar.
Borderlands 4 Rafa builds: The speed-demon Exo-Soldier.
Borderlands 4 Vex builds: The spooky Siren.
Borderlands 4 Amon builds: The fierce Forgeknight.