Since launch, Borderlands 4 players have been experimenting with every possible skill and weapon combo to see what breaks the game.
The talk of the moment is a Vex setup that can produce infinite damage.
The approach uses a rare throwing knife together with the Penetrator augment and Vex’s Bloodletter ability.
When these mechanics stack together, the damage ramps up so fast that bosses melt in seconds.
How Does the Penetrator Augment Change Everything?
The key element of the build is Penetrator, which causes all attacks with certain throwing knives to land as criticals for its duration.
Unlike typical gear scaling, this augment works regardless of weapon level, which means even a mid-tier knife can create the same outcome as a top-end one.
As soon as an enemy is marked, her skills take over. Her Bloodletter trait makes critical hits apply bleeding damage, which in turn continues to strike as criticals while Penetrator is active.
Layer on her Contamination passive, which ramps status-effect application all the way to 100%, and you have a loop where every bleed tick spawns more bleeds that also crit. The damage builds at a breakneck pace.
What Proof Do Players Have That It Works?
Players first spotted how outrageous this was when content creator NickTew demonstrated it against the boss Primordial Guardian Inceptus.
In his test, just two throws of the knife, followed by minimal gunfire, were enough to drain the boss in seconds. The wild part is that the build didn’t even rely on top-tier equipment.
Even at Ultimate Vault Hunter Rank 5, weaker weapons still trigger the same critical bleed synergy, making it a strong choice for farming Legendary gear.
The problem is that it doesn’t carry over well to multiplayer, since the chain fails under group conditions, meaning it currently excels only in solo encounters.
How Does the Bleed Loop Keep Feeding Itself?
The appeal is obvious when you throw the knife, fire a shot, and then watch the enemy health bar melt away as stacks of bleed multiply faster than the game can keep up.
Social media clips show bosses falling with little resistance, and players say it looks like an exploit.
Even Borderlands 4’s own creative director has acknowledged the issue, noting that it resembles bugs they fixed with other Vault Hunters before launch.
The suspicion is that the bleed calculation is looping recursively, applying new instances of itself rather than behaving as intended.
The finding feels even more significant in light of Gearbox’s recent string of quick performance fixes, such as a PC-only patch that added settings guides for AMD and Nvidia.
The update warned that changing graphics settings would recompile shaders for up to fifteen minutes. Right in the middle of the improvements, the infinite damage exploit found its way in.
What Do Players Need to Run the Build?
If you plan to run the build, note that the Penetrator throwing knife is rare yet farmable.
Splashzone is one place players report finding it. When you have it, level Bloodletter, invest in Contamination so it bleeds land, and slot passives that improve damage-over-time or weapon consistency.
Shotguns are popular picks since each pellet takes advantage of the guaranteed crit window, but any high-damage gun works.
Survivability can be an issue if the loop falls off, so balancing with some defensive or sustain nodes is smart.
The catch is that Gearbox is monitoring balance and patching fast, so this setup likely won’t survive for long.
Developers have no interest in bosses being erased without firing more than a shot or two, especially with endgame encounters planned.
That said, Borderlands has always thrived on players finding broken interactions, and this one fits that legacy perfectly.
If you want to see Vex at her most ridiculous, now is the moment to give the build a spin before it disappears.
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