Borderlands 4 developer Gearbox is getting ready to release the game’s first major Story Pack DLC on PlayStation, Xbox and PC. Story Pack 1 – titled Mad Ellie and the Vault of the Damned – has a March 26 release date and a 8pm GMT UK release time. That’s 1pm PDT / 4pm EDT if you live in the US, or 9pm CET for European players. The story DLC launches alongside update 1.5, which must be downloaded and installed even if you haven’t purchased the Mad Ellie expansion.

The story DLC introduces a new Vault Hunter named C4SH the Rogue, who will be playable across the entire game.

That’s on top of the new Whispering Glacier map zone, which comes with a variety of story missions, side missions, activities, and collectibles.

Speaking of activities, you can tackle two major boss fights, as well as 16 mini-bosses, the new army of the DAHL Legion, Kraggons and Scavs.

There’s also a ton of new cosmetics to unlock, including two Vault Hunter Heads usable by all Vault Hunters, four Vault Hunter Skins, eight Vault Hunter Heads usable by C4SH, two Vault Hunter Bodies usable by C4SH, four Weapon Skins, four Vehicle Skins, three ECHO-4 Drone Skins and one ECHO-4 Frame.

C4SH the Rogue is a CasinoBot with a magical deck of cards that is said to imbue him with eldritch boons and misfortunes.

His Action Skills include Cross-Fire, Sleight of Hand and Cleromancy, the latter of which sees C4SH spawn a Bone Totem that fights alongside him.

The companion update also has the potential to improve the PC version of the game, which has received criticism for its performance.

According to Gearbox, fans can expect a 20% increase in performance after downloading the 1.5 update.

“The roughly 20% increase in average FPS comes from combined efforts focusing on GPU, CPU, and general efficiency, with the Optimisation Team identifying specific refinements to improve performance without being too noticeable in terms of visual fidelity,” Gearbox explains.

“In addition to improving average FPS, we reduced stutters, improving the 1% and 0.1% lows in frame rate. These are the bottom 1% and 0.1% of frames generated during our benchmark test and are indicators of frame stability. The closer these numbers are to the average FPS, the smoother and more responsive the game will feel, reducing stutters and hitches.

“Hitching is among the top challenges impacting performance, as a stuttering frame rate can really take you out of the action. We reduced hitching by refining our PSO (Pipeline State Objects) process to avoid overloading the game system with too many effects.”

Gearbox will also improve PC performance by trimming polygon counts for certain effects and by refining things like Cryo damage effects, collision physics, and cloth simulation.