Borderlands 3’s Bloody Harvest event has arrived, and as I’ve played it over the course of the past day, I’m ready to “review it.”
And…it’s not really all that much work, because it’s nearly identical to last year’s in every way. Often to its detriment.
At least one aspect of the mode is fixed, in that if you get sick of the ghost-infected enemies you can turn the event “off,” which was not possible when it ran for something like six weeks originally, and it got to the point where there was more time with the event active than without it since BL3’s launch.
But really, almost nothing has changed. Same farming loop, same weapons, same terror mechanic, even if some of the terror anointments have gotten buffs. I can count two changes:
1. Some new cosmetics for completing event challenges, including a new skin (unless I missed this before somehow).
2. Captain Haunt now has actual voice lines.
The second point is one I was happy to see as one point of feedback last time is that the reason people like the Traunt brothers was their goofy dialogue, and it was sad that Captain Haunt didn’t have any. Now he does and talks about souls a lot, which is fun.
But past that? I am somewhat disappointed to see relatively few changes or additions to this event. Unlike say, bringing back Revenge of the Cartels as it was, because I really, really want to re-earn a bunch of those weapons, I can’t say the same about the limited, mostly terror-based offerings of Bloody Harvest.
My favorite legendary from this event is Ghast Call, the grenade, but my two drops of it have not arrived with any actual anointments, even though all Mayhem 10 drops are supposed to be anointed now, which seems like an oversight. This might be because there are no terror-related grenade anointments, so instead of dropping with normal grenade ones that have now existed since Ghast Call first showed up last year, there’s just…none. So I am left farming a good grenade that is now not great because it just won’t be anointed, apparently.
I did not like the terror mechanic last year and I do not like it this year either. Crafting an entire gear and anointment set around a temporary status effect is not a good call. While yes, there are a couple ways to self-generate terror after this month is over, those are not really viable builds compared to alternatives and really, terror stuff is only valid during this one month, so farming up this gear does not seem useful. The Cartels event was great because those weapons proved useful long, long after the event wrapped (and some even after they were outleveled). But that’s just not going to be true of most Bloody Harvest finds, and it even makes old drops worse as you might find a Hellwaker without the normal anoint you want, but instead some terror anoint instead. It’s diluted the pool.
So yeah, I guess this event just isn’t for me. Enough people must have liked the terror mechanic for Gearbox to have essentially not changed it at all bringing the event back, but I just can’t get behind it, and don’t know how much I’ll bother farming it, especially if I can’t get any really good Ghast Calls. I’ll explore it a bit more to see if I’m missing anything, but for now, it just seems to identical to last year for me.
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