Battleborn has been out in the wild for little over a week now, and developer Gearbox is now ready to roll out its first wave of updates to the game.
The most notable change coming in the game's first patch is a much-needed adjustment to the difficulty of certain story missions — in particular, missions with stationary defense objectives like those seen in the level the Saboteur.
If you haven't yet played the Saboteur, it's by far the most difficult mission in the game. One of the most popular topics on the Battleborn forums is titled "The Saboteur pretty much can't be done, right?" Its thread is filled with horror stories of players who have struggled time and time again to finish the level with no success. Gearbox said in a forum post that an update would be coming to the mission soon, and now, it's finally arrived.
Defense objectives across the board now have double health, which should make defense-oriented missions in general far easier. The difficulty of defense missions were one of our main criticisms about Battleborn in our official review, so it's nice to see Gearbox responding so quickly to fix the issue. Gearbox is also adding a turret that can be built to help players emerge victorious during the final defense objective in the Saboteur.
That should have more than a few players breathing a collective sigh of relief. Outside of difficulty adjustments to defense missions, a number of characters are being brought down a notch for being too powerful. The melee tank Galilea was killing her opponents too fast, so her great sword and shield bash damage is being reduced significantly. Fungus ninja Miko's ability to heal his teammates has proven to be a little too effective as well, so his movement speed bonus as part of his level 7 Flight or Fight augment is being reduced, as is the healing effect of his Biosynthesis. Last but not least is the robot ISIC. He's too resilient, so Gearbox is reducing his health as well as the amount of damage his rotating wards can block.
Outside of character changes, players will now be able to buy all faction loot packs starting at rank 15 and can also expect to see faster matchmaking times. You can read the full patch notes here.
