Borderlands 3 Bloody Harvest - What is the Halloween Event?

Borderlands 3 is out now, and it's choc-full of all manner of wonderful quests, secrets, and loot to keep players happy for weeks - but that's not enough! The first big event for the game has been revealed, and it'll be a spooky event called Borderlands 3 Bloody Harvest.

The Bloody Harvest event was announced last week at PAX West, but now thanks to Gearbox and a few cunning dataminers we know a lot more about it. Head below for everything we know about the spooky Borderlands 3 Bloody Harvest event.

What is the Borderlands 3 Bloody Harvest event and what do we know about it?

Borderlands 3 Bloody Harvest will be the first big event for the loot shooter, and we know a fair few details now thanks to official announcements and datamines. Here's everything official we know about the event:

• It'll be a free update for Borderlands 3 and is coming in October. More specifically, the event lasts from October 24 until December 5.

• There will be "spooky activities", as it'll be Halloween-themed.

• Anyone who has left Pandora and launched the Sanctuary 3 will be able to access the event.

• As players explore Borderlands 3 they'll discover 'Haunted' enemies, and killing them will see their Ghosts go after you - potentially producing a Terror debuff that clouds your view and weakens your gun handling, accuracy, and spread.

• Defeating Haunted enemies will earn Hecktoplasm, which you can turn in to the monstrous Maurice on the Sanctuary 3.

• Turning enough Hecktoplasm in will gain you access to the Bloody Harvest map, with Rakk-O'-Lanterns, undead Maliwan goons, bloody Ratch pits and a boss.

• The boss is Captain Haunt, the undead skeletal version of the Maliwan Captain Traunt from the story campaign. He has a load of spooky new powers and will be a tough fight.

• There will be Bloody Harvest-specific rewards - including an ECHO Device Skin, a Weapon Trinket, a skin for each of the four Vault Hunters (see below) and a Global Weapon Skin. There's plenty of new Legendary and Anointed loot too.

• The Anointed loot plays off the new Terror debuff inflicted by the Haunted enemies. The debuff makes your aim worse and partially clouds your vision but, with a bit of good RNG, can be turned into a tool of your own.


That's all we know about Bloody Harvest so far officially, but dataminer Stephen Chapman (whose video you can see at the bottom of this page) discovered a fair number of additional details in the game's code. Bloody Harvest will apparently include:

• Additional customization options - new heads, skins, and weapon trinkets will be added, and presumably will be rewards for completing missions and challenges.

• New Challenges. As mentioned in the point above, there will be specific challenges related to the event - presumably specific goals rather than just new quests, which will probably be included too.

• Balex will be involved and will get new dialogue for the event. Balex is an AI trapped inside of a teddy bear, and is voiced by rapper Ice-T. He may even host the event, and the Sanctuary 3 is involved somehow.

• Balex's dialogue lines include "during Bloody Harvest, all drinking water will now be pumpkin spice-flavoured. You’re welcome," "Bloody Harvest, baby! It’s spooky time!" and "all right, it's the Bloody Harvest. I wanna see costumes, people! Slutty robot, slutty Vault monster, I don't care - just make it slutty!"

This isn't actually the first Bloody Harvest event Borderlands has seen, as there was a similar Halloween-themed DLC for Borderlands 2 with the same name - which introduced a new area on Pandora called Haunted Hollow. We'll provide you with more details when we get them.