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Somehow, Borderlands 4’s Crit Knife has returned.
The latest patch notes dated October 30, 2025 confirms it:
Corrected the Knife Penetrator Augment, which was unintentionally setting all attacks to a 30% critical chance.
The Community Finds Out
Lazy Data shared evidence of the change with this caption:
100% CRIT KNIFE IS BACK!
Yeah you just throw it 3 times now lmao and get 90%. a 4th to go over or just have any other crit chance.
Silly but yeah. lmao. This damn knife dude.
EpicNNG chimes in on this discovery:
Gearbox just brought back the OG crit knife.
How does this go through testing? We just see if the initial problem was fixed and don’t check for any downsides? Genuinely confused as to how this made it to pass.
Another player, sasage48054752, made an interesting point to EpicNNG:
I really do think it’s fine like this throwing 3 knifes for 100% crit is still way worse than it used to be
To which EpicNNG replied:
Correct.
You now need to press the button 3 times instead of 1, significantly increasing the skill gap on the item, thus making it rather arguably balanced for the overall climate of the game. It separates a good player from a great one.
What Was Gearbox Thinking?
EpicNNG argues that Gearbox attempted to rebalance the Crit Knife possible two updates in a row and failed. He does agree that it’s better than the nerf that used the wrong stats in the last patch.
We think it’s possible that Gearbox is facing technical issues that did not allow them to execute their rebalance properly the first time. The one week they took to push this update was not enough time to figure out those technical issues.
So, they rolled that rebalance back because they’re still trying to figure it out. We should remember that it’s easier for players to identify issues, than it is for developers to go into the code to fix those issues.
How Long Is Crit Knife Going To Be A Problem?
There’s no real visible deadline for Gearbox to fix the Crit Knife balance. But Gearbox does have to worry about how the Crit Knife will affect Borderlands 4’s community in the long term.
And in the long term, if high level players only stick with the Crit Knife, that ruins the balance between cooperative players. The game is less interesting overall, and there’s also less incentive to experiment and find different gear.
So Gearbox does need to address this. But what we may not know are the finer technical details that they are still figuring out.
