Borderlands 4 Items

Whether to reflect the festive atmosphere or to better reward players, Borderlands 4 Bounty Pack 1, also the game's first DLC, How Rush Saved Mercenary Day, was released for free to all players on November 20, 2025 at 9:00 AM Pacific Time!

While some players believe the free release is a sign of the developers feeling guilty for the limited content of DLC itself, playing new events for free is always a good thing! Here's a breakdown of DLC's main content.

How To Unlock This DLC?

This DLC doesn't require any additional installation packages; simply update your Borderlands 4 to the latest version after its release.

The new weapons and skins introduced in DLC can be seen directly in the game, but if you want to access the core content of the bounty pack, you need to find a specific present in town to trigger the side mission "The War on Mercenary Day."

Of all the hidden present locations, The Launchpad is probably the easiest to find. However, if you don't find any presents or quest markers in the town, it means your main story progress is insufficient to experience the new DLC, and you need to move on immediately.

The locations where all presents will appear are as follows:

• The Launchpad - The Fadefields
• Carcadia - Carcadia Burn
• Belton's Bore - Terminus Range
• The Lockaway - Dominion

How To Complete DLC-Exclusive Side Quest?

After unlocking the quest, you need to travel to Slime's Five and Dime to pick up another gift package. Opening it will give you several gifts. Next, quest markers will appear, and you need to deliver all the gifts to the corresponding locations:

• 1. The top of the first building indicated by the marker.
• 2. The small house with a vent and a refrigerator.
• 3. Find a house by the roadside and deliver the gifts to the roof.

After delivering all the gifts, NPC Rush will instruct you to move away from the last house and observe it - it has exploded!

Infiltrating The Ministry Of Culture

Completing this part requires several steps, which we will explain one by one.

• 1. Destroy the first propaganda tower: Clear all Order troops you encounter, destroy tower components, and unlock the control lever to reveal the antenna battery.
• 2. Open the locked door: Hack the system to open the first-floor door, kill the enemy, and find the room behind the vent to remove the secondary lock.
• 3. Destroy the second propaganda tower: The operation is basically the same as step 1, note that the main battlefield is the observation deck.
• 4. Hack Minister Screw's computer: Return to the upper area of ​​the observation deck, defeat the enemies that appear, and then hack into Minister Screw's computer to obtain a photo of Rush and his father.
• 5. Destroy the third propaganda tower: Refer to steps 1 and 3.
• 6. Head to the landing zone: Defeat all enemies, organize your inventory, and then start the boss battle.

Defeat The Two Mission Bosses

The bosses Minister Screw and Donk will appear together. Each of them has three health bars and the following characteristics:

• Minister Screw: One shield bar, one armor bar, and one flesh bar.
• Donk: One shield bar and two armor bars.

To quickly consume these power bars and directly attack the boss, you need to bring more targeted weapons, such as:

• Electric and Cryo weapons: Break and counter shields.
• Corrosive weapons: Melt armor.
• Incendiary weapons: Burn through flesh.

We recommend defeating Donk first, as he will activate a shield to protect Minister Screw. While focusing on attacking Minister Screw, be careful of the black holes he summons - you can avoid them by grabbing the grappling hook above the arena.

Bring The Photo To Rush

After defeating the bosses, enter Minister Screw's bedroom to trigger a cutscene. After the cutscene, place the photo on the table to trigger Rush's memory - mission complete!

Afterwards, you'll receive Specialization EXP, cash, and Eridium as your main rewards, along with two cosmetics drops, which we'll list below.

New Items Available

By participating in the game and leveling up, as well as completing daily and weekly challenges, you can earn Vault Card tickets as rewards. These can be used to redeem some of the new items introduced in How Rush Saved Mercenary Day.

New Weapons

These weapons are divided into two categories: redeemable legendary weapons and weapons that drop directly from the boss in DLC side quest The War on Mercenary Day. They include:

Legendary Weapons:

• Aching Roil (SMG)
• Rooker (Sniper)
• Hardpoint (Pistol)
• Missilaser (Shotgun)

Each requires 10 Vault Cards and can be redeemed repeatedly.

Dropped Weapons:

• Rowdy Rider (Assault Rifle)
• Inscriber (Pistol)
• Healthraiser (Repkit)

New Cosmetics

These cosmetic categories include skins, attachments, paint jobs, and more, most of which can be redeemed using Vault Cards. Specific rewards are as follows:

Vault Hunter Heads:

• Make it Rein
• Geeks Bearing Gifts
• The Guzzler
• Chaos Reins

Vault Hunter Styles:

• Forgot about Dreidel
• Candlenights Catastrophe
• Better To Give...
• ...Than To Receive
• The Nurple (non-redeemable mission reward)

ECHO-4 Attachments:

• Naughty
• Nice

ECHO-4 Paintjobs:

• Forgot about Dreidel
• Candlenights Catastrophe
• Better To Give...
• ...Than To Receive
• The Nurple (non-redeemable mission reward)

Vehicle Paintjobs:

• Missile Toe
• Candy Caned
• That's a Wrap
• Don't Kramp My Style
• Frosty Reception

Weapon Skins:

• Silent Fight, Holy Fight
• It's The Thought That Counts
• Baby You're Cold Inside
• So Much More Than A Bag
• Eat Me

New Vehicle

The vehicle is Trident. While its skin requires Vault Cards, it can be obtained directly from "Sleigh, Queen" rewards earned after completing the first main mission.

That concludes the information on How Rush Saved Mercenary Day DLC. More DLCs are expected to be released in the future, so take advantage of this first bounty pack while you can!

In most large-scale games with complex content and mechanics, once you've completed the main storyline and farmed important resources, you'll try to unlock hidden or high-difficulty content, even if it doesn't significantly improve your character.

It's been over two months since Borderlands 4 was released. If you've been playing, you should have unlocked most of the main content. That means it's time to focus on the more interesting hidden content, such as phosphene weapons!

So what are these weapons? What are their special features, and how do you obtain them? We'll introduce them to you one by one.

Borderlands 4 Weapon System

First, we need to give a basic introduction to Borderlands 4 weapon system before introducing phosphene weapons. As part of game item system, weapon types include pistols, SMGs, ARs, shotguns, and sniper rifles, with rarity from lowest to highest:

• Common - White/Grey
• Uncommon - Green
• Rare - Blue
• Epic - Purple
• Legendary - Orange/Yellow

Building upon this, BL4 further introduced Weapon Manufacturers & Traits and Licensed Parts systems to enrich your weapon build possibilities, allowing them to be enhanced in various ways.

What Are Phosphene Weapons?

Phosphene weapons, also known as shiny weapons, don't actually belong entirely to this lethal weapon system. They appear as weapons with a special rainbow-colored appearance when they drop, purely cosmetic and offering no bonuses.

Therefore, rather than being a weapon type, phosphene weapons are more like weapon skins. They are unlocked upon pickup and can be applied to any other version of the current weapon.

Currently, obtaining this weapon in Borderlands 4 is the same as farming legendary weapons: repeatedly farming the relevant boss at different difficulties, only the drop rate for phosphene is even lower.

When Is The Best Time To Farm This Weapon?

If you're still leveling up and progressing through the main story, then sorry, phosphene weapon farming isn't something you should consider, as it offers no improvement but requires a huge time investment.

Furthermore, you need to ensure you already have a commonly used legendary weapon, as most weapon types have corresponding phosphene skins. Considering their extremely low drop rates, you're better off focusing on farming specific bosses.

How To Obtain Phosphene Weapons?

The drop rate for this weapon type is extremely low; unless you're incredibly lucky, it's impossible to obtain it without farming the relevant boss hundreds of times.

Therefore, you must have enough Borderlands 4 money or Eridium to continuously interact with Moxxi's Big Encore machines to obtain opportunities to reset the boss. To unlock this machine, you need to complete the main story campaign and the associated Encore quest.

Therefore, while the boss battles required to unlock phosphene weapons are difficult, you'll need to farm cash and Eridium by completing various daily tasks beforehand - a solid foundation is still essential.

In addition, the game will introduce a Big Encore boss each week, which can only be activated by consuming Eridium. While more dangerous, it offers greater rewards, and the drop rate for phosphene weapons may be slightly increased.

Improve Your UVH Rank

To maximize the weapon drop rate on top of the core strategy of farming bosses, the first viable method is to raise your UVH rank to the highest level.

UVH stands for Ultimate Vault Hunter, which can be considered a visual quantification of your character's combat ability. There are five ranks, from low to high, unlocked after completing the main story content.

With each rank increase, all enemies you encounter, including bosses, will level up, dealing more damage and increasing their defense. However, the quantity and rarity of loot drops will also increase accordingly.

You can find Ultimate Vault Hunter section in Challenges tab. View and complete the quests for your current rank. After that, Lilith will then issue a universal quest; completing this will unlock the next rank, up to UVH Rank 5.

Most of these quests require you to defeat specific bosses or enemies. The only thing to note is that the process from Rank 4 to Rank 5 is slightly more complex, as follows:

• 1. Defeat a specific boss.
• 2. Complete three Wildcard Missions in the primordial vaults.
• 3. Defeat the final boss using modifiers on UVH 4 difficulty.

Difficulty Settings

In addition to UVH rank, Borderlands 4 also has a game-wide difficulty system: easy, normal, and hard. Similar to UVH rank, the higher the rank, the greater the danger and reward. If you want to farm phosphene weapons, Hard is the best choice.

It's worth mentioning that if you play BL4 with other players in co-op mode, you can choose a different difficulty level - a new feature introduced to better serve players.

Summary

In short, there's only one way to obtain phosphene weapons: relentlessly farm bosses on high difficulties until you get them as drops. The only element you can influence is the difficulty setting.

While this doesn't guarantee you'll get phosphene appearance (there's no fixed drop rate yet), you'll definitely get more new legendary weapons along the way - at least you won't leave empty-handed!

You might think that since they're so difficult to obtain, it's not worth wasting time on them. But for loyal Borderlands 4 fans who have explored everything and have exhausted all other possibilities, phosphene weapons have their own allure.

To obtain this weapon, you need to accumulate cash through daily quests and constantly challenge yourself by killing bosses. Once you succeed and wield the weapon in a team battle, everyone will witness your hard work and luck!