the latter Border 4 The patch brings back the Crit Knife, which again provides guaranteed critical hits, though requires a higher skill to trigger the effect. This is the second point in a row Border 4 An update targeting the polarization mechanic.
A “crit knife” is anything Border 4 Throwing knife with penetrator augment perk. Basically, this effect guaranteed that all damage dealt to the affected target would be a critical hit for five seconds. When combined with modifiers like Damage Amp Payload – which increases incoming damage to a target – the original Crit Knife allows players to outright wipe out almost any enemy. The October 23 patch attempted to replace the guaranteed crits mechanic with a 30% increase in critical hit chance over the same timeframe. However, players soon reported that the change was buggy: instead of increasing their critical chance by 30%, stabbing would set it to 30% for five seconds. Since many endgame builds exceed that threshold to even drop ordnance perks, the change caused not only the crit knife to lose outright DPS for some players.
Borderlands 4 brings back the 100% crit knife, though it's not exactly the same
A week later, the Border 4 The October 30 update changed the crit knife once again. As reported by YouTuber Lazy_Data, knife throws that connect with a target will now correctly apply the 30% critical hit bonus of the Penetrator Augment. However, the effect appears to be stackable: three successful hits increase the crit chance to 90%, while four results in a guaranteed critical for five seconds. While the mechanics differ from the original version, the new crit knife remains just as powerful, requiring only slightly more effort to activate its full potential and melt through targets with a barrage of criticals.
The new Crit Knife may not be long for this world
Following the latest patch the Penetrator Augment flavor text still reads “Damage to the affected target has a 30% chance to cause a critical hit for 5s.” This term does not suggest that the effect is stackable with multiple knife throws. Patch notes for October 30th Border 4 The update acknowledges a bug from last week, saying that the Crit Knife nerf was “inadvertently setting all attacks to a 30% critical chance.” However, they make no mention of the effect being stackable.
Similarly, the October 23 changelog simply states that “Critical chance on Jakobs crit knife has been reduced by 30%” without indicating any stacking behavior. Given this context, it is possible that the current behavior of the crit knife is unintended and may be modified in a future patch.
The potential for more changes seems high as Gearbox has been talking openly about its efforts to implement the now-partially reversed balancing tweaks for some time. The developer also produced a funny in-memory video dedicated to him Border 4 Crit knife nerf. So, seeing the 100% crit chance return after a week – despite being a little harder to trigger – suggests that the story of this overpowered item isn't over.
- issued
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September 12, 2025
- ESRB
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Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Sexual Content, Strong Language, In-Game Purchases, User Interaction
