Borderlands 2 is an awesome game. On release we awarded the game a shining 9.5/10, and as you can see from the title’s Metacritic score, we are far from alone in our adoration of Gearbox Software’s latest open-world first-person shooter. Despite the game’s excellent quality however, it isn’t without its share of flaws. Most notably, shortly after the release of the game’s Mechromancer DLC pack players discovered an insidious glitch that would reset their Badass Rank to zero while also deleting any Gold Keys found in the player’s inventory. Given that Badass points are earned relatively slowly by completing in-game tasks and Gold Keys are only available through special offers from the developer, those stricken by this glitch were understandably upset at losing dozens of hours of play time and items that were effectively irreplaceable.

Notice that we said “were?” As of this morning, Gearbox has issued a patch which it claims will finally squash the Badass Rank bug and give any players who encounter the issue in the future the ability to fix the problem themselves. “Added functionality to detect and restore Badass Rank in the event it was lost,” reads the firm’s official patch notes. “To ensure you are credited for as much progress as possible, please load your character, select ‘Continue’ on the Main Menu, and then ‘Save and Quit’ after you enter the world. Repeat this process for each character in your character list.”

While this fix is long overdue — initial reports of this bug began to surface on October 9 — the patch also brings with it a number of other fixes, including a helpful confirmation dialogue for the Golden Chest found in Sanctuary, alterations to a number of quests that prevent them from becoming irreparably broken, and a host of changes to the game’s available DLC packs to fix any glitches players have found within them. You can find a full rundown of the patch notes on Gearbox’s official Support site, or you can simply fire up your Borderlands 2 platform of choice, pull down the update for yourself and see how the in-game world has changed. The patch doesn’t add any notable new content to the title, but those players whose journey through Borderlands 2 was prematurely derailed by one of the glitches addressed by this patch should see this update as an early Yuletide gift from Gearbox.

Most importantly, with the fixes included in this update, Gearbox has finally crushed all of the most glaring technical flaws in Borderlands 2. As of this morning prospective players have exactly zero extant reasons not to own this game. It earned a massive four nominations on our “Best Games of 2012” list (one for best cooperative multiplayer game, one for best first-person shooter, one for best roleplaying game, and one for best general-purpose shooter), and even much higher-profile blockbuster titles like the recently-released Halo 4 pale in comparison to Gearbox’s game. In short, buy yourself a copy, then buy an extra for every fan of wanton destruction on your shopping list. You (and they) will thank us later.