The Deluxe Editions of Borderlands 3 contains a digital bonus called Equippable “XP & Loot Drop Boost Mods”. While longtime Borderlands fans saw no issues with the items there are players that took issue with these items. Some believe that this might give an unfair advantage or that the items will also be available as a microtransaction. If you pre-ordered Borderlands 2 back in the day, you are familiar with the “Vault Hunters Relic” an item that gave a small boost to your loot drops. These new booster mods seem to do the same as you might have expected.
To be safe PCgamer reached out to 2K Games and asked for clarification about these boosters.
How do the Borderlands 3 Boost Mods work?
“While Borderlands 3 is not a competitive game, where boosts could lead to direct player advantages and be considered a competitive concern, we still take balance of the progression and loot systems in the game very seriously,” said a 2K spokesperson. “We are still fine-tuning these systems in Borderlands 3, and the benefits the boosts in the Deluxe, Super Deluxe and Collector’s Edition will provide, but at this stage we can confirm that the Loot and XP boosts will both be level capped and tied to specific pieces of gear, similar to boosts in past Borderlands games. The intent is to give those players an initial boost, but not something that permeates the entire Borderlands 3 experience indefinitely.”
2K GAMES
Vault Hunters Relic
The community did research on the “Vault Hunters Relic” back in the day. The Relic only made white, common, gear drop less. The impact of this is that there is a small increase that whites became green items and an even smaller chance that green items became blue items.
After a few thousand runs by the community, there was no noticeable increase to the Rare, purple, gear or the Legendary, orange, gear. Then modders boosted the “Vault Hunters Relics” percentage stats to insane numbers, however, even that didn’t affect the higher-tier weapons.
Unfair Advantage?
Would these boosters give you an unfair advantage over your co-op buddies? Well, I don’t think so and this is all because of the new level scaling. It doesn’t matter if your buddy is a higher (or lower) level than you because the enemies and loot will scale accordingly for each player. If the mission balance and structure are similar to the previous Borderlands titles then when you wear the XP booster you will probably be over-leveled a bit sooner, however, the overall game balance and structure will keep challenging you.
If Borderlands 3 also has 1 slot of a relic, then you need to choose which relic you want to equip and therefore miss out on some other buffs. So your chances of getting better loot or leveling up faster will be negated by not being able to equip that firepower boost.
