Borderlands 4 players have already discovered some ridiculous glitches and exploits, like its overpowered crit knives that were subsequently nerfed, and a bugged interaction that caused "total existence failure" for endgame bosses. But the latest glitch discovered in Gearbox's looter shooter might just take the cake, allowing players to unlock a character's most powerful abilities and then refund nearly all of their skill points.
Discovered by a player who opted to remain anonymous, the glitch was brought to light by Borderlands 4 YouTuber JoltzDude139 (via GamesRadar). The creator described it as "the most insane glitch in Borderlands" on X, adding that it will "change the build meta for every build."
JoltzDude139 followed up on his initial post with a video detailing how the "very stupid" and "broken" glitch works. First, you need to input sufficient skill points into the tree to reach your ability of choice, with only one skill point remaining, while ensuring that all abilities you put points into remain two points below being maxed out.
Once you've unlocked the skill you want, you must go back to an earlier skill and press the button to "dump" all your remaining skill points into the ability, then click the "undo" button to reverse the process. Instead of reimbursing one skill point, the undo function should reimburse two.
"What we're doing here is tricking the game into thinking we dumped more than one [point]," JoltzDude139 explains. What's more, repeating this process of dumping and then reimbursing your skill points will return even more points from the skill. The glitch doesn't work if you max out a particular skill when dumping the points, however, so you need to spread regained points through the skill tree as you buy them back.
As JoltzDude139 notes, achieving this is a "tedious process", while you'll need to have acquired a decent number of skill points before the trick becomes useful. Nonetheless, the exploit means players can gain the best abilities across a particular character's multiple skill trees without having to max out all the prerequisite abilities in the tree—letting you create combinations not previously possible.
It's a wild exploit, and it doesn't look like it'll be around for long. Responding to JoltzDude193's thread, Borderlands 4's creative director Graeme Timmins simply said "We're on it"—suggesting an update will be coming to BL4 soon that will wipe the glitch out. Consequently, if you want to see what wild skill combinations you can create without any limits, you'd be wise to hop onto Borderlands 4 soon.
This meta-breaking glitch is far from the biggest technical issue Borderlands 4 has encountered. The game's Steam Rating currently sits at 'Mixed', largely but not entirely due to ongoing complaints about performance. Gearbox has tried to remedy the shooter's technical woes in subsequent patches. But the issue has resulted in "softer" than expected sales, according to publisher Take-Two Interactive's boss.
