Borderlands 4 is, at its core, a looter shooter about one thing: loot. But what happens when your hard-earned Legendary drop ends up trapped behind an invisible wall or outside the map entirely? That’s the frustration many Borderlands 4 players are facing right now — and they’re begging developer Gearbox to fix it.
If you’ve played the series, you know the rush — the euphoria of seeing that golden beam among the confetti-like shower of loot spilling from a fallen boss. Few franchises capture that thrill like Borderlands does. As Gearbox chief Randy Pitchford recently said, if more studios understood why players love loot, Borderlands might finally have “good competitors.”
But when your Legendary weapon arcs majestically through the air… only to vanish beyond the playable area, that euphoria turns to pure irritation. And when it happens after a tough, time-consuming boss fight? It stings twice as much.
This isn’t a new issue — players have been reporting it since launch — but this week’s endgame content rotation seems to have made things worse. The latest Big Encore boss, The Oppressor, is a flying enemy (and as any shooter fan knows, flying enemies are rarely fun). Because it swoops and circles over inaccessible parts of the arena, killing it midair can send loot raining down onto unreachable roofs, behind invisible geometry, or off the map completely.
Understandably, players are fuming.
“Do not waste your Eridium on this week’s Big Encore boss Oppressor unless you want to lose loot,” warned redditor PuzzleheadedDust8094. “I’ve lost 7 out of 10 Big Encores worth of loot — that’s 700 hard-earned Eridium down the drain.”
Another player, StretchDizzy7792, was equally frustrated:
“If they don’t fix The Oppressor’s loot issues — drops going out of bounds, scattering across the arena, or just floating for a full minute before you can shoot him — I’m going to lose faith.”
Many fans are pleading with Gearbox to quality-check their weekly boss selections.
“Two weeks in a row of broken encounters,” one post reads. “Last week loot got trapped under the floor, now this. It only takes 15 minutes of farming to realize these issues affect everyone.”
Players are trading makeshift fixes among themselves, though none seem reliable. Some suggest quitting to main menu when loot falls out of bounds, then reopening the session and checking the Lost Loot Machine — sometimes it works, sometimes not.
A new mod on the Borderlands 4 NexusMods page, Ground Loot Helpers, offers PC players a clever workaround by teleporting all nearby drops to the player’s position. It’s not official, but it’s a godsend for those tired of watching Legendaries spiral off into the void.
Meanwhile, Gearbox’s delayed “Day 30 Update” — originally planned to nerf “unintended interactions” like the crit knife exploit — is now expected early next week. Players are hoping it also tackles the lost loot issue once and for all.
Until then, every fight with The Oppressor carries a new kind of tension: not just will it drop, but will you even be able to reach it?
Invisible walls have never felt quite so real.
