Big Changes To Borderlands 3's Mayhem Mode Are Coming

Gearbox rolled out its revised Mayhem Mode for Borderlands 3 a few weeks ago, and since then it's been making minor improvements and revisions based on player feedback. The studio is also working on larger-scale adjustments, as detailed in a new blog post covering Mayhem and general quality-of-life changes.

The studio says the feedback it hears most often is about difficulty, gear balancing, scaled damage sources, and build diversity. To address these, it will be rolling out updates in two distinct phases. The first will deal with the stat scaling and gear changes between different Mayhem levels. Starting with the next Takedown update, enemy health, armor, and shield stat bonuses will be scaled down in higher Mayhem levels, and both under- and overperforming gear will be rebalanced. This update will also introduce a new line in the item card that will identify which Mayhem level you received a piece of gear from.

The second phase will focus on character balance and diversifying builds. Non-weapon sources of damage like action skills, melee, and vehicle damage will all scale with Mayhem levels, and Grenade Mods will drop as Mayhem gear with bonuses. The update will also bring bonus Skill Damage into Class Mods, giving those an even bigger boost. Vending machines and chests will also start spitting out gear that's correctly leveled for your current Mayhem level, but Gearbox says it will take time to implement and test that functionality.

The changes to skill damage will have an impact on class balance, and Gearbox says it expects the community to quickly find the best builds, but it hopes that this will help spread diversity of more builds regardless.

"We know the community will find the builds that do the most damage, but we anticipate a greater amount of builds made and played for fun after we make these changes," it said.

Outside of Mayhem, the studio said it will be making some quality-of-life improvements. Those include a revision to the Fight For Your Life mechanic, making it easier for players to revive their buddies, especially if they rally to help together. Drop rates will be adjusted for dedicated loot, and you'll get more opportunities to spend your Eridium. Plus the previously disabled Mayhem modifiers will be coming back, with optimizations to make sure they don't repeat the performance issues that led to them being disabled before.

Mayhem is late-game content for Borderlands 3, letting players who have finished the campaign ratchet up the difficulty of enemies to increase the chances of better loot. If you haven't returned to Pandora yet, the game is currently on sale.