The talk around here is still all about Pendles. This past week, we showed off Pendles in all his “sneky” glory in our second livestream. Community Manager Joe King was joined by Design Director Brian Thomas and Character Designer Ben Gettleman for a full hour covering Pendles’ past and present. Not only did they detail their top tips and tricks for Pendles, but they also went over ways to effectively counter him. If you missed the stream, you can catch up below!
Watch live video from GearboxSoftware on www.twitch.tv
Speaking of Pendles, as of today, his early access period is over and he is unlockable to everyone! The wait is finally over. Check out the stream above to get caught up on all the need-to-know info and then jump into the game. And don’t forget: we gave away Pendles’ “Constrictor” gold skin on the stream and the SHiFT code is below. The code is good through this Monday, 8/8, so make sure to redeem it soon!
We do have a few hot fixes to tell you all about this week, the most notable being adjustments to Mellka. Mellka is meant to be a mid to short range harasser. We found that her health and gun accuracy allowed her to poke enemies from afar and stay in combat for long periods of time. The gun accuracy changes will force Mellka players to be closer to combat. Mellka's health decrease will also reduce the amount of time the player is able to maintain lane presence. As you may know, hot fixes begin rolling out every Thursday at 12pm PT (3pm ET).
• Reduced Mellka’s base health by 18% (from 1130 to 982 at level 1)
• Reduced Mellka’s Custom Machine Pistol accuracy
• Reduced the volume of music when in the Command Menu
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from incrementing Montana’s “Fireside Sing-Along” lore challenge
• Minor tweaks to matchmaking
• Disabled the “Burning Sunset” legendary gear due to it offering unintended invincibility in certain situations
Every week, we try to make you all aware of at least one person who is doing great things for the community. There’s are lots of amazing streamer s and content creators out there that you should keep an eye on and one of them is SuperBadJuJu! JuJu, aka Matt, does weekly Battleborn streams every Wednesday from 12pm-7pm PT (3pm-10pm ET) on his Twitch channel and is definitely worth a watch. He keeps his stream fun, relaxed, and most of all, interactive. Make sure to drop by, say “hi” to JuJu, and tell him the Battleplan sent ya!
As we mentioned above, Pendles is available for everyone as of today! You can hop into the game and unlock him for 47,500 in-game credits. Pendles is the second of our five free post-launch characters and, unless you’ve been living under a rock like a sssssneaky snake, you know that we recently announced the third free character, Ernest! In last week’s livestream, we shared some new concept art of Ernest and we’re excited to bring you more details on him in the very near future!
Ernest, like his fellow Aviants Toby and Benedict, loves blowing stuff up. But instead of glory and vengeance like his feathren (feathered brethren, just let me have this), he fights for honor and duty to the soldiers at his side. Ernest is one of the UPR’s premiere demolitions experts and a brilliant tactician known for his “outside the box” approach, exploiting foes’ weaknesses with well-placed, well-timed explosive ordnance.
For this coming week though, we’re looking to help you guys get a head start on Pendles and we figured the best way to do that would be another Double XP Event, so that’s what we’re going to do! Starting tomorrow (Friday, August 5th) at 8am PT (11am ET), you’ll be able to get double Character and Command Rank XP all the way through Wednesday, August 10th at 8am PT.
