Eridian Weapons

Eridian weapons are the alien guns found throughout Pandora, and were developed by the Eridian race. Eridian weapons look more organic and are made of a heavy material that reduces a user's movement speed when wielded (however, unlike most weapons, Eridian weapons allow you to move at normal speed when scoped in). There are Eridian equivalents to all conventional types of in-game guns except pistols and combat rifles, but they don't use conventional ammo and have their own proficiency class. Many variants deal damage. New types of Eridian guns have been released with The Secret Armory of General Knoxx that deal fire or corrosive damage.

While they can be found on bosses or high-level Crimson Lance, level 49 variants have only been found in high-level oval chests, however the 3rd DLC has released Eridian level 61 variants. Most Eridian weapons have a rarity color of, but appear to be much harder to come by than other guns. Despite this, other weapons of the same level tend to deal significantly more damage; the main benefit is the slow ammo regeneration. There is also a possiblility of getting a blue or orange version of an Eridian weapon in The Secret Armory of General Knoxx.

There is an Orange version of the Eridian Cannon called the 'Mega Cannon'. This particular version is incredibly powerful and can fire more projectiles before it has to regenerate.

Archetypes
There are Eridian weapons of many conventional classes of weapons, though they have their own weapon proficiency. Many of them deal damage, though the manner in which they do so is unique to each archetype. For example, the Thunder Storm shoots a spread of bouncing lightning balls and sounds like thunder when fired.

Weapons of the same archetype will always have the same function, description, and general organic appearance, but many other things can be different, even among guns with the exact same name. The Eridian Blasters seem to be the hardest to come by and come in four variants: Eridian (standard), Mercurial (faster fire rate), Wave (high damage and wave pattern shot) and Ball (slow velocity shot, high damage and minor heat-seeking ability).

Components


Eridian weapons are composed of 7 different parts, each of which affects the gun's unlisted stats, like the effective magazine size and the recharge rate. Except for the barrel, the same base sets of parts are used across all archetypes. However, certain archetypes don't have stocks, and haven't yet been encountered with all possible types of each part.
 * Barrel: Each archetype uses its own unique barrel.
 * Stock: Determines half of the model number. Doesn't appear for the Thunder Storm, which has a stock type of none. Also affects the reload speed stat, whatever that means for Eridian guns. This is different from the cooldown rate, which is determined by the magazine.
 * Body: Determines damage. Guns with body type 1 deal about 92.5% the damage of guns with the other body types.
 * Magazine: Determines the number of shots a gun can fire and how fast it recharges. Also used to determine the model number.
 * Sight: Determines whether the gun can zoom and how well. Sight 1 and 6 provides no zoom; sights 2,4, and 5 seem to have the same zoom capability; and sight 3 provides an iron sight which is slightly off.
 * Grip: Nothing obvious.
 * Accessory: Nothing obvious. Can also have an ID of none, observed on Eridian Lightnings.

Getting the actual values for the stats currently requires using the debugging console until more data is gathered. Available data is on the Talk:Eridian weapons page.

Name generation
Each gun's name is composed of two parts: the binary model number, then the archetype. One example is the 1110 Eridian Lightning in the upper-right. However, the true model number is actually 6 bits long; anything shorter than this can be padded with 0s at the beginning (so the 1110 Eridian Lightning has a true model number of 001110). The first three numbers correspond to the binary representation of the stock number, while the last three numbers correspond to the binary representation of the magazine number. This can be verified by looking at the raw data on the Talk page. Note that the Thunder Storm model numbers will always be less than 4 characters long since none of them carry stocks, which is represented by the string 000.

The number of available model numbers is only 42 (7 stock possibilities x 6 magazine possibilities). From the data gathered, none of the archetypes share model numbers, but how they are allocated is unknown.

Manufacturer tier and level requirements
There are 5 manufacturer tiers, each corresponding to one or two sale values and base level requirements. Any other variations on the level requirements are due to the user's Eridian weapon proficiency, which lowers them when guns are equipped. The manufacturer tier can be seen when the gun is picked up from the ground, in the debug console, or when sorting by the Brand in your inventory. While the maximum level of all other items in the game is level 48, the max is 49 for Eridian weapons, with the only confirmed level 48 Eridian weapon being the Cannon dropped by Master McCloud during playthrough 2.5.

Eridian magazines
Eridian weapons don't use regular ammunition, and instead use an energy source that recharges (even when the gun isn't being held). Although the magazine size is marked as infinite, each shot of the gun uses a certain amount of energy. The energy source will not recharge immediately after firing, and will delay even further if it is completely depleted (the gun overheats).

Eridian weapon instances vary in the number of shots that can be fired before the energy meter is empty and how fast the meter recharges. More specifically, the magazine type directly affects the effective clip size, overheat delay, and recharge rate. The effects seem to be constant across all archetypes.

The cooldown bonus you get for proficiency affects the regeneration rate, or how fast the gun can replenish its energy source.

In general, magazines 4, 5, and 6 seem to be the more useful magazines, as they either have larger clips or have much faster regeneration times. However, when compared to conventional weapons, the relatively slow recharge rate doesn't lend itself to run-and-gun type gameplay.

Roland's 'increase magazine size' heavy gunner mod will affect Eridian weapons just as any other weapon, but neither his ammo regeneration nor Lilith's 'decrease team cooldown' seems to have an effect on the recharge (as her cooldown skill affects cooldown of the Action Skill). Also, if you empty the magazine then switch away from that Eridian gun while 'increase magazine size' is in effect, the gun will only recharge to its normal ammo capacity. It needs to be in your hands to get its 'overcharge'. Once completely recharged, however, you can switch away and the magazine will retain its extra shots as long as the weapon is equipped.

Weapon Proficiency.
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Magazine speculation
The magazines of Eridian weapons glow bright purple when pointed in any of the four cardinal directions on the Xbox 360 version; PC & PS3 users see no effect. In both threads the people with graphics programming experience have written it off as shader inconsistencies, though Gearbox has remained silent on the matter.