Borderlands Games Now Much More Likely to Give You a Legendary Item

The Borderlands games, much like action RPGs such as Diablo, are essentially loot-driven games. Legendary items are among the most exciting things you can find, and starting this week, you'll see them drop far more often in recent Borderlands games.

Following a series of tests, Gearbox has tripled the drop rate of legendary items in Borderlands 2, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, and Borderlands: The Handsome Collection (which is comprised of the former two games). This change is now in effect across all platforms; simply allow your game to download the hot fix that went live earlier this week, and you'll find it much easier to build up your collection of legendaries.

Last month, Gearbox began experimenting with the rate at which legendary weapons are dropped, tweaking the likelihood every week without giving players exact figures on how things had changed. This was done to avoid having players' opinions affected by their perception of the numbers, rather than simply how things felt.

Feedback was collected through surveys and the official forums, and after more than a month of testing, Gearbox arrived at the new 3x bump. "After digging through all the data, we discovered that standard drop rates were perceived as too rare but that anything over a 3x boost felt like too much--almost to the point where it was starting to take away the challenge and excitement from seeing that beautiful orange glow," Gearbox's Jeff Skal explained.

It's unclear how this feedback will be factored into the next game in the series, which we know is being designed specifically for current-gen consoles (and presumably PC) and will lack the direction of series creator Matthew Armstrong. In the meantime, we could see the original Borderlands come to Xbox One and PS4 if fans demand it.