Gearbox Confirmed Borderlands 4’s Phosphenes Are Available Before Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode

We have some interesting new details about Borderlands 4’s gacha meta.

Gearbox’s creative director, Graeme Timmins, shared this information after players asked him on Twitter:

Phosphenes are not tied to UVHM, they are just exceedingly rare.

UVHM does ever so slightly improve world drops, which in that way, creates more opportunities for them to drop, but it’s not significant. Good luck hunting!

UVHM is short for Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode. But you might have a different question in mind.

What Are Phosphenes?

Game8 shared this description for Phosphenes:

Phospenes are legendary shiny weapon skins that can be only be equipped to a legendary weapon of the same type of the cosmetic.

Once you get a legendary weapon with a Phosphene skin, you’ll be able to re-apply it to identical legendaries during your playthrough.

For example, if you get a Phosphene-skinned Lead Balloon, all other Lead Balloons you get afterwards can be re-skinned to have the Phosphene skin.

How Enticing Are Phosphenes Anyway?

We can’t speak to every player’s preference or personal taste. But we do know that farming for shinies is one of the most popular things to do in Borderlands as a whole.

Gearbox leaned into this so that it could be a huge endgame activity, to keep players coming back long after they finished the story campaign.

Regardless if Phosphenes are particularly more or less popular than other kinds of shinies, it’s one of those things to occupy players after they’re doing with the story but they just want to keep playing.

Should You Spend Your Time Collecting Phosphenes?

That’s probably what Gearbox wants you to do. But you don’t want to get obsessed with it for your own sake.

These are just one of the things that Gearbox has set up so that players have goals beyond the story campaign. They also have a content roadmap planned for the weeks ahead.

So you could take your search for Phosphenes to that future content as well.

At least, we now know that you could have lucked your way into finding a Phosphene from the start of the game. But if you haven’t found one even after finishing the story, that’s just your poor luck.

You Can’t Actually Gacha Phosphenes

We joked about Borderlands 4 being a gacha. That’s because the game wants you to look for rarities. But it isn’t a real gacha and it doesn’t have a pity system.

So you can keep rolling the odds, and raising them by getting to Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode. But don’t bet too much that you’re certain to get a Phosphene eventually. Gearbox could increase the odds in the future. But there’s no guarantee you will get them.