Borderlands 4 is a looter shooter that revolves around… loot. But what happens if you can’t get your hard-earned Legendary loot because it’s trapped outside the boundaries or behind an unseen wall? Desperate Borderlands 4 players are encountering this exact problem and are now asking developer Gearbox for a solution.
If you’ve played Borderlands 4, you probably know this feeling. It’s the Europhoria of a legendary drop amidst the confetti-like explosion of loot that erupts after a downed boss. This is something that the Borderlands series has always done well, maybe even better than any other looter shooter. When Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford recently said that if more developers better understood why players love loot, Borderlands would have “good competitors,” most agreed with him.
However, if the Legendary flies away and lands outside the boundaries, the frustration will be as intense as the euphoria that caused it. Double the intensity if the Legendary leaves after a particularly arduous boss fight.
This has been a problem with Borderlands 4 since launch, but it was exacerbated this week with the weekly reset of endgame content, which resulted in The Oppressor becoming this week’s Big Encore boss fight. The problem is that Oppressor is a flying enemy (flying enemies in shooters are almost always more annoying to fight than any other), which means he flies around the sky, sometimes over areas the player can’t reach. What happens when you hit a killer shot in the air? Loot sometimes lands on a roof, behind an unseen wall just out of reach, or completely off the map.
Players are understandably furious. “Don’t waste your Eridium on the Big Encore Boss Opressor unless you want to lose the loot” committed redditor PuzzleheadedDust8094. “If you value your Eridium and don’t like being cheated out of your items because the Gearbox is unable to prevent your loot from going outside the arena or through walls, you should definitely avoid fighting this boss UNTIL THEY FIX IT.
“I’ve lost a lot of loot to bosses dropping things in places you can’t get to because it’s a giant death pit or because of fake invisible walls. This week’s Big Encore boss might be the biggest culprit so far. I lost (and I wish I was joking) 7 out of 10 Big Encore worth of loot. That’s 700 of your hard-earned Eridium dropped in mud. “
“I swear to God if they don’t fix Oppressor’s loot issues (outside the area or spread across the arena and not where the boss is) and flying around for a whole fucking minute before you even hit him, I might lose some faith.” said StretchDizzy7792.
“Please check your Big Encore selections. Two weeks in a row of bosses with problems (loot under the floor in recent weeks). It takes 15 minutes of farming a boss to figure out if there is a problem that most people will experience.”
“I hope they pushed the patch to add a fix.”
“Big Encore… 6 Kills. 3 Legendary Out of Reach. 0 Legendary in Lost Loot Crate” said S0LWAY. “Horse apples! Absolute horse apples!!”
This is a reference to Borderlands 4’s Lost Loot Machine, which is intended to back up this very issue by collecting lost loot and saving it for later collection. But it doesn’t seem to be working properly – at least players think it’s not working properly — because it favors low-quality loot over uncommon loot, thus filling up, leaving no room for reward weapons.
“The Lost Loot Machine needs to be broken,” said one disgruntled player. “There’s no way it’s working properly now. I only saw one purple and one blue element in it. The rest were always white and green.”
“It should replace gear with higher quality loot when full, but it definitely doesn’t,” said another. “I leave blue gear all the time and it should be littered with blues, but it’s not.”
@GearboxOfficial @Borderland
It flies sporadically, with no inertia, looks terrible, gets stuck in map geometry, flies out of the arena when you die to drop all your loot in inaccessible places. The arena is filled with unseen walls for a reason. Did this fight even make it through quality control? pic.twitter.com/JFUwmWKqJr— Bunbun Jackalope 🐰 (@BunbunJackalope) October 17, 2025
For now, Borderlands 4 players are trying to assist each other by suggesting solutions to the problem, although there is no consensus on what works, nor are there any guarantees. Some people suggest saving and exiting as soon as the Legendary goes out of bounds, and then going straight to the Lost Loot Machine after reloading. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Maybe not.
This week’s highly anticipated patch, the one intended to nerf “unintended interactions” such as the Critical Knife, has been postponed until early next week. Some are hoping that this “Day 30 Update” will also solve the problem of missing Borderlands 4 Legendaries. Meanwhile, a recent mod has appeared, on the Borderlands 4 NexusMods websitewhich some gamers have success with (of course, this only happens if you’re playing on PC). It’s called Ground Loot Helpers and it allows you to teleport all your loot to your character. That’s a quality of life improvement I can get behind.
Unlike the unseen wall.
We had a lot more information about Borderlands 4 last month A Borderlands 4 data miner has uncovered evidence suggesting that one of Borderlands 3’s most hated characters was cut and replaced relatively behind schedule in development. 2K Games and Gearbox declined to comment when contacted by IGN.
AND IGN recently interviewed a Borderlands 4 player who spent 150 hours killing over 3,000 bosses to find out what the game’s true drop rate is.
If you’re diving into Borderlands 4, don’t give up on hourly updates SHiFT code list. We have it too huge interactive map ready to utilize and a fool Borderlands 4 scheduling tool courtesy of our friends from Maxroll. Also check out the choices of our experienced players what character to choose (no one agreed).
Wesley is the news director at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. Wesley can be reached at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
